8MP Team Game - The Axis team

[Telemecus]

Pre-Treppenwitz

Now with the summer starting would be the official launch of Operation Treppenwitz - our 1942 summer operational name. Adele's Skyfall would be the official theme tune. With Crackaces taking on the Axis side the analysis and plans have been handed over to them for them to either follow, adapt or ignore. But I hope the team plan as it was can be uploaded and described at the end of the summer campaign - perhaps to be contrasted with what did happen.

However during the alternating mud and clear period of weather we were able to carry out early the first stages of Treppenwitz. So it is worth describing what did happen in what can be described as "Pre-Treppenwitz"

The first phase of Treppenwitz was to capture three key rail junctions at Gryazi, Svoboda and Likhovskoy. As we go further east the Soviet rail network becomes much less dense. As a result by capturing these three rail junctions we will be able to deny our opponents large parts of the lateral rail network now being using to transport units and keep their formations in supply. For example Soviet units now in the Don bend will have the nearest rail line behind them go through Stalingrad. Transporting units from near the front at Voronezh to Rostov would first mean having to go east to the Volga. Soviet units at the front will then be far from supply.

[Telemecus]

Pre-Treppenwitz: Strategic Ground Situation

By turn 49 we had captured Likhovskoy, would be able to ZOC Svoboda from the other side of the major river which would cut the rail route just as well, and were a couple of turns away from capturing Gryazi.

The weather until then had left the south static, but given the centre a chance to lunge a long way forward from their blizzard start lines. Our Soviet opponents reacted seemingly by moving all of their best units to oppose us there.

But with turn 49 the weather changed and we were to have several turns of good weather for the south while the centre faced mud. This left us with the strategic situation pictured below.



All the good Soviet stuff was stuck in the centre of all the mud. Meanwhile the south was able to surge ahead advancing between large clusters of Soviet units and their only rail line to escape while being trapped to the North by mud.

Strategically we thought we were in a really good situation with our Soviet opponents completely off balance.

Looking further south there was a conspicuous lack of Soviet units in the Caucasus. Recon had grown used to finding lines of Soviet units digging in second, third and more lines of defence between Voronezh and the Volga. But looking to the Caucasus, where we would have expected some units preparing back-lines of defence - NOTHING.

[Telemecus]

Pre-Treppenwitz: An Active North

Unusually for games in this period our North has remained relatively active - with our mud warfare expert timmyab always looking for opportunities to nab a hex here or there. The picture below shows some of the their ideas for the North on turn 34. Two or three mobile units have been kept in the North to support this. We believe that this has paid dividends in that the Soviet side has disproportionately had to react with sending more units there than they would have wanted to.




As a team we speculated on whether the Soviet side would have been better off withdrawing to a line between Lake Onega and Lake Rybinsk. The territory which would have been given up had nothing of any importance. But our North commander estimated it would have released a dozen or more divisions for other more important areas of the front.

[Telemecus]

OOB End of Axis Turn 54

[Telemecus]

Ground Losses - End of Axis Turn 54

[BrianG]

For reasons I will post in a seperate post, small village bombing will be more effective than bombing large cities when it comes to reducing Soviet manpower. But it seems to me there is a greater possible exploit. In future Axis air commanders will be able to send their bombers up to a quiet part of the front to spend half a dozen turns training them through village bombing to super high levels of experience and morale before turning them on the front. So I soon expect to see several AARs of other players to use this exploit before Morvael nerfs it in a future version change. Or alternatively Morvael may nerf it in V11.04 if he reads this post.

Maybe not so nerf: The Russian air power here is decimated. If both air forces were more normally equal, then the Russians can clearly build plenty of spread out fighter bases. Thus this simple tactic could prove costly in German air losses if air defenders emerge. And it might enhance the use of air bases in spread formation instead of in clumps.

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: BrianG
Maybe not so nerf: The Russian air power here is decimated. If both air forces were more normally equal, then the Russians can clearly build plenty of spread out fighter bases. Thus this simple tactic could prove costly in German air losses if air defenders emerge. And it might enhance the use of air bases in spread formation instead of in clumps.

Actually it is a good point and betrays my own lazy language. Here in 8MP we have had actual strategic bombing, whereas I think the norm would actually be each side threatens strategic bombing and each side prepares defences against it so that actually not much of it ever really happens. Ironically having lots of fighters spread out actually defending the Soviet Union rather than clumped together near the front would be more historical.

I think the comments are still valid though in as much as strat bombing is a potential threat that must be deterred. And village bombing would need an even more extensive spread of fighters than other types of potential threats.

[Telemecus]

Air War Review

My final set of posts as a player of this game will be a review of what did and did not happen in the air war of this game. I also promised in another thread to add some notes on good airbase placement at the end of this AAR, I think it was a commitment to Nix77 but I cannot find that thread now. (Edit: found it - tm.asp?m=4371349&mpage=2 ). As for me this is the end I will incorporate that into this my final series of player AAR posts.

Because of the particular need to combine ground with air operations on turn one the air war then was largely left to the ground commanders - my role as air commander was relegated to only the frozen Rumanian area. There are other good guides to the turn 1 air war so I will not comment on it here as I have little to add. But it is worth pointing out that the Soviet air losses at the end of Axis turn 1 were 4954 - good but not the 7000+ that top players can achieve. Indeed the Soviet losses did not top 7,000 until turn 5, so at least early turns Soviet losses cannot be said to have been exceptional.

[Telemecus]

Phase I Turns 2+: Staging the Kabuki

Convention at the time was to push airbases along slightly behind the ground forces. This meant typically airgroups used upwards of 20% of their air miles in ground movement at the start of each turn just to keep up with the front lines and enemy air forces - two thirds of the air miles they could have flown on airbase bombing say which meant really they were a ground force and not an air force. Also typically they would be well ahead of the repaired rail line and so would have a large logistical cost including accumulating damaged vehicles which exacerbated the shortage during the blizzard. Thus the wisdom of the time that the air war did not matter was on that basis correct. It could not deliver much and was costly to do. Thus most other AARs at the time had a mostly passive air war with missions being largely left to the AI.

Innovations in this game were to use the Kabuki Dance and Staging Bases intensively compared to other AARs at the time.

Outside of these forums it had been drilled into me to use staging bases for all air missions wherever I can and to place staging airbases where the AI was likely to use them for auto missions. Indeed for these turns I mistakenly believed that staging bases reduced miles flown as the first stage flight to the staging base was treated like an air transfer (i.e. ten miles flown per hex) and only after the staging base as a combat missions (multiplies of ten miles per hex), indeed the colour codes for the flight paths in the game would indicate that, but testing by EwaldvonKleist has since shown this is not true in the latest versions of the game. Nevertheless staging bases allow combat missions (other than interceptions) to be conducted at ranges 50% further than their radius (thanks to Mamluke for working out this exact number). This meant for example that a Ju87B dive bomber with a radius of 11 could be placed on an airbase 16 hexes away from the front lines and still provide ground support so long as there was a suitable staging base in the middle. This meant 5 hexes closer to a repaired rail line and 5 hexes less of the rail supply modifier. It also meant the airbase was out of range of many Soviet aircraft such as the many short range fighters they start the war with in 1941. In theory the Bf109 fighter (except the E3) could be based outside of Soviet fighter range while still in range for interception over the front lines and escort well to the rear of enemy lines. This would make them (almost) impregnable to Soviet airbase bombing.

The term "Kabuki" dance was only coined much later by Crackaces but the idea existed before. The principle for Axis airgroups is that they should not move to more easterly airbasing by ground movement but instead use air transfers, which used very few airmiles, or by going into and out of National Reserve which had no logistical or fatigue effects. HardLuckYetAgain wrote earlier posts on keeping airbases empty to air transfer airgroups to - although if left empty during logistics they would not be suitable for bombers that need a lot of fuel and ammo. This could be partially relieved by air transferring to another air base and then air transferring back to the same airbase if the first air transfer was to an airbase in the same hex with a larger ID number. 56Ajax (AKA johntml) posted on how airgroups could go in and out of National Reserve on the same turn (i.e. by not going through transit) by using the auto-commitment system which provided another way to move airgroups in the same turn without fatigue and over infinite ranges although arriving with all air miles spent. By moving airgroups with air transfers however they would typically arrive with only 1% or 2% of their air miles flown - leaving them with three times as many miles for airbase bombing as the conventional method.



My estimate is that in 8MP we probably flew twice as many air base bombing missions for the same amount of airgroup miles/fatigue as in conventional games and used the further miles gained from the Kabuki in flying missions over longer ranges by staging bases compared to conventional games. This change in the relative costs and benefits of airbase bombing meant it made sense to keep doing it and not stop in turn 1 as was conventional. I contend this was the key reason why the air war was successful for these turns of the game.

Our Soviet opponents, not aware of this innovation, would assume we were making a terrible mistake and would soon regret overusing airbase bombing as was the normal belief at the time. Overall they did not use staging bases, which would have benefited them even more than the Axis air forces. They did not commit to any aggressive air action. On one turn I completely forgot to provide fighter cover to a cluster of airbases full of heavy bombers. I was convinced the turn would return with hundreds of bombers destroyed on the ground - a similar mistake had just appeared in an AAR of the air war of Dinglir versus Hermann ( tm.asp?m=4266269 ) at the same time and I was convinced I was going to be po faced at a similar humiliation. But it never came.

[Telemecus]

Phase I Turns 2+: Airbase movement

The picture shows airbases in the North and part of centre on turn 6. Airbases with the heaviest aircraft with the longest ranges were placed on the furthest repaired rail hexes east which meant usually one turn of rail repair behind the FBDs. Usually the Luftflotte HQ would be with them as the Luftflotte range can impact air ratings, and here they would be closest to the greatest concentration of airgroups under them. Each turn they would be Kabuki danced up to where the FBD was at the start of the turn. Shorter range aircraft like fighters and dive bombers which did not have the range to operate from repaired rail hexes could be placed on airbases closer to the front, but still as close to the repaired rail line as was possible. Finally staging airbases with no airgroups in them were placed near to the front lines.



This set up provides the most optimised logistics for the airgroups while still allowing them to perform their missions. However if our Soviet opponents had known this they would then have known every turn exactly where most of our airgroups were based without needing any reconnaissance.

[Telemecus]

Phase I Turns 2+: Bombing the Finns - Right Idea Wrong Target

EwaldvonKleist caused an international outcry and was condemned at the League of Nations for his bombing of the then neutral Finland. But he had me worried. If had started by bombing the Finnish fighters we would have had a problem. A tactic I have seen used in other games is for the Soviet air forces to concentrate on attacking the Finnish air force in the early turns. They can do this from airbases which the Luftwaffe is prohibited from attacking. On turn 2 we already had a Luftwaffe base at Koenigsberg for shipping to Finland and some airgroups to transfer there to protect the West of Finland. But the Soviet air force could fighter sweep the frozen Finnish air force bases in the German no fly zone, and if the Finnish air force wanted to support advancing Finnish ground forces they would have to do it on their own. In effect the Soviet air force could avoid a big air war with the Luftwaffe and concentrate on an airwar with just the Finnish air force - which they would win and use to build kills, morale and experience for the Soviet air forces in the early turns. Luckily for us they did not bomb the Finnish air force but instead ground bombed the Finns - much to my relief.

[Telemecus]

Phase I Turns 2+: Soviet Airbase Placement - Aggressive Too Soon

The analogy was given to me once that airbase placement is a bit like tennis. When you want to be aggressive and move in for the kill - move to the net. Otherwise keep well back. For all the early turns Soviet airbase placement was highly aggressive - they brought them to within a few hexes of the front-line (net) - but without the air force that could deliver on this. They should have kept to the golden rule that when you are on the back-foot, move backwards.

The picture below shows a typical example from turn 11. Even though, in air terms, the Axis are the ones being offensive in the air war from the deployment of the air bases you would think the reverse is true.



Amazingly the German Ju87B, which only has a radius of 11 hexes (or range 16 with a staging base) is actually bombing the airbase of an Il-4 air group which has a radius of 102 hexes. If an Il-4 airgroup used a staging base it could even fly missions from 153 hexes away! In these early turns the Axis air forces were prioritising the destruction of modern fighters, reconnaissance and these very long range bombers above all else. Normally the Il-4s and DB-3Bs get moved to the Urals on turn 1 and spend the rest of the game raining death and destruction from airbases in the Urals you cannot even get close to. That is why it is important to destroy as many as you can when you can - especially on turn 1. Yet here on turn 11 we find them just a few hexes from the front-lines?

[Telemecus]

Phase I Turns 2+: Soviet National Reserve - Used Too Little?

ORIGINAL: Hortlund
We will not send the airforce to the national reserve.

I remember the Soviet team commenting a lot on not sending air groups to national reserve and saying this was the main reason for doing badly in the air war at the start. But initially the Soviet AAR was not accessible to the Axis team so it was only much later that I came to see this comment.

I have been given the number of airgroups that were in the national reserve at the start of the first dozen Soviet turns (in brackets are the number of these air groups that were arrivals that turn and were not sent from the map to NR according to scenario data)

1 - 22 (11)
2 - 69 (1)
3 - 74 (1)
4 - 52
5 - 39 (1)
6 - 44
7 - 46
8 - 46
9 - 57
10 - 64
11 - 150
12 - 177

Soviet team players will have seen the full data and perhaps can give more context. But at least it can be seen that, whatever may have been said, it was not literally true that no airgroups were sent to the National Reserve. Reserving lots of airgroups on turn 1 would have resulted in a large number of them appearing at the start of turn 2 in the NR so perhaps that is quite a low number. But at least to me the number of airgroups sent to national reserve each turn on these figures could be described to be low, but not extraordinarily low. So I would still contend that the relative Axis success in the air war in the early turns owes more to innovative use of Kabuki dancing and staging bases by the Axis side than low use of National Reserve rotation by the Soviet side?

[M60A3TTS]

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

Phase I Turns 2+: Soviet National Reserve - Used Too Little?

ORIGINAL: Hortlund
We will not send the airforce to the national reserve.

I remember the Soviet team commenting a lot on not sending air groups to national reserve and saying this was the main reason for doing badly in the air war at the start. But intially the Soviet AAR was not accessible to the Axis team so it was only much later that I came to see this comment.

I have been given the number of airgroups that were in the national reserve at the start of the first dozen Soviet turns (in brackets are the number of these air groups that were arrivals that turn and were not sent from the map to NR according to scenario data)

1 - 22 (11)
2 - 69 (1)
3 - 74 (1)
4 - 52
5 - 39 (1)
6 - 44
7 - 46
8 - 46
9 - 57
10 - 64
11 - 150
12 - 177

Soviet team players will have seen the full data and perhaps can give more context. But at least it can be seen that, whatever may have been said, it was not literally true that no airgroups were sent to the National Reserve. Reserving lots of airgroups on turn 1 would have resulted in a large number of them appearing at the start of turn 2 in the NR so perhaps that is quite a low number. But at least to me the number of airgroups sent to national reserve each turn on these figures could be described to be low, but not extraordinarily low. So I would still contend that the relative Axis success in the air war in the early turns owes more to innovative use of Kabuki dancing and staging bases by the Axis side than low use of National Reserve rotation by the Soviet side?

I do not have turn 1, but turns 2 and 3 can be examples to show what you are missing.

Here are the 69 units of the National Reserve sorted by lowest morale. You can see no units under 40. Therefore they would in my mind all be eligible for deployment.



Here is the VVS at the start of turn 2 sorted by lowest morale.



Here is the VVS with all air units with morale of less than 30 sent to the NR. 208 remain after sending 77 to the NR.



Now, if I deployed the 69 units eligible in the NR, it would be empty and await arrival of the 77 units I sent it. Numbers wise, it's close to what data you show.

Here are the 74 air groups in the NR at the start of turn 3. To be clear, these are not the ones I sent there, but the ones in the turn that came back from the Axis team long ago.



Now if you compare the first image with the last, you see the issue. THESE ARE THE SAME AIR UNITS SITTING IN THE RESERVE WEEKS 2 AND 3. The beaten down air units in the field did not come out and the combat ready units did not go back in. This went on week after week in the early stages of the war until the morale of some Soviet air units was down to 10. As I have said before in another thread, this was not some accident, nor some dumb move. It was the way the former Soviet C-in-C wanted the air campaign to be conducted despite the objections of other team players. That was his prerogative, but it had an impact that the Soviet side has been living with to this day.

[EwaldvonKleist]

Having been there at the time, I agree with M60s comments and can add more. There was no air strategy or micromanagement. It was explicitly forbidden for front commanders to touch the air force. I think the reason for the latter measure were foreign-policy related [:D]

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist
It was explicitly forbidden for front commanders to touch the air force. I think the reason for the latter measure were foreign-policy related [:D]

First it was bombing neutral neighbours, then it was the U2VS - you do know how to annoy superiors with air power![:D]

[Telemecus]

Phase II Turns 7+: Spinning the Airbases

Conventionally at the time I saw many other Axis air offensives peter out in these turns for logistical reasons. The amount of fuel, ammo and other supplies and support an airbase gets depends on two factors

Closeness to West X Number of Aircraft

An airbase with many aircraft - particularly heavy aircraft - during the logistics phase will mean that airbase gets a lot more supply. As airbases move east, they start to get lower supplies due to the distance from rail and the rail supply modifier. Players typically react to this by moving airgroups off the airbase as there are not enough supplies for them. But this only makes it worse in the next logistics phase - as the airbase has fewer aircraft it will get even fewer supplies. I have seen this vicious cycle now in several games.



There are two ways to break this cycle
i) Disconnect the number of aircraft on an airbase during the logistics phase from the number used during the action phase: At the start of every turn as air commander I spent a long period of time getting airgroups OFF airbases so that only a fraction of those that started on an airbase for that turn remained on it during that turn. Similarly at the end of the turn I spent a long period getting airgroups ON to airbases so that when the turn went through the Axis logistics phase far more fuel and ammo went to the airbase. Typically I did this by sending a lot of aircraft to the National Reserve at the start of the turn and calling back all airgroups from the National Reserve at the end of the turn. In many cases I was calling airgroups out of reserve at the end of one turn only to put them right back in at the start of the next - but that still helped logistically. Ju88D-1 recon groups, of which we have more than we can ever use, typically bring in quite a lot of fuel to an airbase - far more than they would even need for a turn if they were being used. Thus the rotation in and out of National Reserve has an important logistical effect as well as one for airgroups morale etc. But this can also be done by rotating airgroups to rear area airbases not meant for action (for example to recover from fatigue in the current bugged patch). To give some idea of scale if the supply modifiers meant that your airgroups were only getting half the supplies they needed then you would need to halve the number of aircraft on an airbase at the start of your action turn, and then double the number of aircraft at the end. In effect this would mean one third of your aircraft could be going into National Reserve at the start of the turn, one third would be called back out of National Reserve at the end of the turn, and the air war during your turn would only be conducted by a third of your air groups. This sounds low to many - but I have found it is better to have a third of your air force fully supplied and at the best morale than a larger airforce with less.
ii) Rotate airbases between front-lines and the rear: Fill up airbases with fuel and ammo using heavy aircraft in the rear/near rail then move them forward to be the airbases for your forward airgroups. Meanwhile forward airbases that have run dry of fuel and ammo get pulled back to complete the cycle. This in effect removes the distance from rail and easterly rail supply modifiers between the rear and forward airbases. Typically during these turns in 8MP our airbases were being filled up in logistics phases about 20 hexes to the west and closer to rail than where they would eventually be used for action. Those last 20 hexes were supplied not by generic vehicles moving supplies from the railhead to the airbase during the logistics phase with all its penalties, but by moving the airbase with the fuel already organically in it during the action phase and without any penalties.

These logistical rotations and cycles were described in this diagram below from post 259. The cycles of airgroups in and out of national reserve and of the Kabuki dance are well known. But I believe the rotation of airbases between the front and rear - shown in green on the diagram is just as important and was the key reason for Axis success in these turns. Far from petering out it meant the Axis air offensive was able to sustain itself and even accelerate. Sadly no one has yet to coin a name for it as they have with the Kabuki - any suggestions?

[Telemecus]

Phase II Turns 7+: Playing the doctrine

Although the Soviet pools would have at first contained plenty of aircraft in the pools, the replacement inefficiencies meant they were not getting to the airgroups faster than we were destroying them. And we were starting to notice that the complements of ready aircraft at the start of the turn were looking distinctly low. The diagram below shows how this interacts with the air doctrine. Airgroups with complements of ready aircraft below the percentage required to fly will not see any of their aircraft fly at all during the turn. Usually there are lots of fighter airgroups with some margin above the air doctrine required to fly so that there will continue to be some fighter cover even after losses.



But what we were starting to see in our opponents airgroups were lots of fighter airgroups with very low complements to fly. If their air doctrine was high enough I knew many of those fighter airgroups would not fly at all, and many others could be made to not fly with a little helping hand from us. Once I knew that the Soviet percentage required to fly air doctrine was 50% and seeing the state of their fighter air groups the game was on. A complete change in the air offensive took place. Instead of flying escorted bombing missions on enemy airfields, the norm from now on was to fly fighter sweeps to stop all enemy fighters flying and then bomb their airfields in broad daylight without interception or escort. Posts 868 to 878 describing the air war in turn 54 provide a step by step description in how this can be done.

Given that normally Axis air offensives peter out in these turns it is not irrational not to send aircraft to the National Reserve at this point. Indeed bringing "all hands on deck" whatever the morale or experience could be a good idea to tip the balance at a critical point. With the different logistical set up this petering out did not happen. Instead when fighter groups started to be sent to the National reserve in greater numbers, Soviet air losses actually then got larger as there were even fewer fighter air groups to provide that thicket of fighter cover before it was suppressed by us. By trying to hold back the flood, it made it worse when the dam did break.

[Telemecus]

Phase II Turns 7+: The Great Game

One particular example has remained in my mind from turn 11. It was not the most successful or the most important - but being based in the Crimea it is an easy example to show. Reconnaissance found only one hex with airbases in the Crimea at Fraydorf with an impressive array of bombers and 21 ready fighters to defend them. No other airbase was in range to provide fighter cover for that hex. But we knew the percentage required to fly of their air doctrine was 50% - so already all of the aircraft in one of the two fighter airgroups we knew would not fly at all (32IAP-ChF). The other airgroup (9IAP-ChF) would stop flying as soon as it lost 3 fighters. Using reconnaissance we found a suitable fighter sweep target - placed at the maximum range for their fighters and minimum for ours where no other airgroup would also be involved. This was in the south of the Ukraine just to the north of Crimea. On the very first fighter sweep 9IAP-ChF intercepted, just as we anticipated, and lost exactly the 3 fighters we needed it to lose in combat. Even if it had lost less in combat, in all likelihood it would still have had three fewer ready aircraft and we could have readily checked this on the airbase as the ready aircraft numbers are automatically updated. With this task accomplished we knew there was no fighter cover left in the Crimea - and our bombers were free to get to work bombing with impunity in broad daylight without needing escorts.



I do think this was a bad deployment of the Soviet air force. The safety of hundreds of aircraft should never be reliant on not just losing three fighters.

My estimate in this time is that 95% of the fighter interceptions that could have flown and should have flown did not because of Soviet air doctrine. And so 95% of our success must be put down to that. By leaving their air doctrine so high and for so long the Soviet side effectively grounded their own fighters while still leaving them in place on the map to be bombed.

Although this was not possible everywhere every turn, there were always enough places on the map where fighter cover could be eliminated to keep all of our bombers busy. Soviet aircraft losses as a result went up sharply. This mechanical process of first confirming our opponents air doctrine, eliminating fighter cover from parts of enemy territory and bombing with abandon was the great game played repeatedly over many turns.

[Crackaces]

If you look at Telemecus’ diagrams with the pictures and arrows pointing to the scene of the crime .. one does not need to inquire further why my first reaction was “this is a crazy Kabuki Dance!”

However, the edge iIs enormous in terms of having aircraft, bases with fuel and supplies, and the ability to project air power into the battlespace. The details here I continually try to grasp. These details are the difference between German air power is inconsequential all the way to being a dominate force that needs to be nerfed by home rules. The designers did well in that at least the game keeps growing with community learning. I do know that I would have never understood any of this as a newbie and this the power of a team game.

It does take special players that want to learn the game rather than win.