fite question

[m5000.2006]

the manual says: "Soviet Production:
Soviet replacements start at 34%. A certain number of Soviet cities will drop the replacement level, these cities where historical cities of production or huge significance.
As most of the replacements are of historical proportions, it has great effect that the German player at least reaches his historical 1941 goals, as this is used to calculate the historic replacements. If the German player gets further that historic, he will lower the replacements below the historical numbers. On the other hand if the Soviet player is able to hold on to more (or longer) than historical he will have a produce more than the Russians did historicaly."


the cities of production loss are the following: Cities of production loss:
Minsk, Smolensk, Bryansk, Orel, Kiev Voronesh, Odessa, Zaporrozhe, Stalino, Rostov, Voroshilovgrad, Krasnodar, Dneprpetrovsk, Tula Tiblisi, Grosny, Saratov, Ryzan, Yaroslav, Murmansk and Vologda


obviously, some of them were never taken by the germans
as far as the ones that fell are concerned - when were they taken? could someone who knows barbarossa details list the historical dates?

e.g. it's 23rd July 1941 and my opponent has captured Misnk, is it later than the germnas captured it? earlier? did i gain or lose some production points?



thanks

[Zort]

This is from one of the after action forums

Town..............Date.......Hist Turn
Minsk............27-Jun-41....3
Smolensk.........16-Jul-41....8
Zaporozhe........18-Aug-41....17
Dneprpetrovsk....25-Aug-41....19
Kiev.............19-Sep-41....27
Orel.............03-Oct-41....30
Bryansk..........06-Oct-41....31
Kalinin..........13-Oct-41....33
Odessa...........16-Oct-41....34
Stalino..........21-Oct-41....36
Kharkov..........24-Oct-41....37
Rostov...........20-Nov-41....44
Sevastopol.......01-Jul-42....108
Voronesh.........06-Jul-42....109
Voroshilovgrad...18-Jul-42....113
Krasnodar........18-Jul-42....113

[Telumar]

Minsk and Smolensk are very hard to take on those turns, well, i took Minsk on turn 3 in a current stock FitE game, but was surprised by myself..Smolensk on turn 8? Uuh. It's not too far from Minsk but normally the soviet player sets up a defence here, costing valuable time. And that's what the germans don't have.
Interesting is that Kiev usually falls way before its historical date from what i've seen in the numerous AARs. That would compensate somehow the probably 'later-than-historical' fall of Minsk/Smolensk.

[Veers]

It's largely because of the usually large difference between the Soviet player's chosen defensive lines and where the Soviets actually defended.

[SMK-at-work]

Yes a Soviet player wil not try to defend Minsk as Stalin did, but rather will assemble a line at he land bridge between Orsha and Vitebsk.
 
Other things that get in the way are numerous - Soviet units in the frontier zone are far too strong (they should only be at 40-50% strength), and German players are usually not as aggressive as Hitlers commanders were and do not follow the correct tactics fo sending the panzer divisions deep until they can go no further and letting the infantry mop up and then catch up.

[LLv34_Snefens]

40-50% is a bit low. It was more in the range of 60-65%

Keep in mind also that the TOE of the RD in game are chronical understrength. A 100% strength RD in 1941 would have something like 324 squads.

[SMK-at-work]

Good point - no I hadn't noticed the lower squad limit - why did you do that?

The source I had is at work so I can't get to it until next week - it had the border formations (to about 60km deep) at about 40-45% strength on average, those in the 2nd echelon (60-100km deep) at 60-70%.

I see there's a lot more info on the Sov dispositions around now - a series of pamplet-books at the Nafzier Collection for example - more info is coming all the time - wish I could afford more (or even any[:(]) of it!

[LLv34_Snefens]

Being understrength became the norm rather than the exception. The TOE for the rifle divisions changed somewhat during the war, but even after lowering the authorized strength from some 14,000 to about 10,000, most of the divisions seemed to have suffered from shortage. Even to an extent, where there were official guidelines for how a division should reorganize once it reached ~7,200, ~6,200, ~5,300 and even ~4,400. In the latter each regiment consisted of only 2 battalions, each with 2 companies, each with 2 3 squad platoons, totalling about 24 squads for the regiment or 72 for the division!

I have the average strength on June 22nd of Leningrad MD rifle divisions to be 83%, NW MD at 60%, W MD at 64% and SW MD at 60%.

[SMK-at-work]

Is that % of full wartime strength, or peacetime?

 http://militera.lib.ru/h/fugate/app.html gives some information on peacetime strengths of rifle divisoins, with 2 basic shtats (TOE's) - 1 of about 6000 men, one of about 10,000 (viz full wartime of 14,000+).  It notes that some of the divisoins with hte 6000 shtat were closer to 7000, but unfortunately does not identify any individual divisions.

This series of articles (a book really) notes that Zhukov deliberately kept as much as he could out of the 3 armies in the Bialytosk bulge, as he regarded the area as undefendable.  Artillery in particular was sent rearwards for "firing practice", but he could not move out any armour as it would be too obvious, and besides the armour that was present there was consideed obsolete and expendable (sucks to be a Sov tanker in 1941!!)

[LLv34_Snefens]

That's of the war-time strength of 14,483.

For 4th Army defending the southern hinge of the Bialystok bulge the following numbers can be found in "Colossus reborn: The red army at war, 1941-1943" by Glantz:

6th RD: 11,592/14,483 (80%)
42nd RD: 11,505/14,483 (79%)
49th RD: 11,690/14,483 (81%)
75th RD: 11,712/14,483 (81%)

Of course if the 64% is the average for the MD, there need to be some divisions in it with significant lower strength than these four have.

[SMK-at-work]

I've got that book on order

Those 4 would appear to have 110% of the higher "peacetime" strength listed in the url I gave above.

[freeboy]

remember even books lie, ESPECIALLY books form the former USSR, getting reliable data is one of the most difficult things to do, so while a unit is supposed to have "X" and an example has "Y" during a war like WW2 there can be such great fluctuations.

[Veers]

ORIGINAL: freeboy

remember even books lie, ESPECIALLY books form the former USSR, getting reliable data is one of the most difficult things to do, so while a unit is supposed to have "X" and an example has "Y" during a war like WW2 there can be such great fluctuations.

Aye, but we have to go by something.

[Telumar]

ORIGINAL: Veers

ORIGINAL: freeboy

remember even books lie, ESPECIALLY books form the former USSR, getting reliable data is one of the most difficult things to do, so while a unit is supposed to have "X" and an example has "Y" during a war like WW2 there can be such great fluctuations.

Aye, but we have to go by something.

Sure, but we can't go with something that is obviously wrong or distorted in any way for political reasons.
German Wehrmacht sources (unlike the official propaganda) are quite reliable, but what do they know about the exact strength of the enemy? Currently designing a scenario by my own i learned that you don't always have exact info and sometimes one has to do it at one's best guess (and with hindsight to effect rather than accuracy - or could you give me an exact TOE in TOAW terms for "Wachzug OB Südwest"?[:D])

[SMK-at-work]

The quality of info coming out of the fUSSR is a lot better now than it was when it was hte USSR - eg for US$240 you can get the Official Soviet Order of battle for ww2 on CD rom...sadly in Russian, but hey...one thing at a time....  see http://www.eastview.com/xq/ASP/sku=RC00 ... t_view.asp

And if you don't use what is available, then what do you use?  German info?  Wellwe've had that for 50 years, and we know how "good" it is....

[Telumar]

How do you mean "how good it is"? At least it's easier to learn the language...

EDIT: German sources at the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv are available for free no 100 kms from here, btw...[:D] Followed your link and was shocked by the prices..

[SMK-at-work]

I happen to know a very pretty Russian meteorologist who has an interest in history.....[;)]

And 100km from your place is no good to me, and hte language is jsut as difficult to learn....

But seriously, German sources have been shown to be unreliable quite often - they put down what they thought was happening, but they were not hte Russians - they often got it wrong.  We know this already...they'rebetter than Western sources for tthe Sov's because at least they were there and had some insight, but they are rapidly beign shown to be not nearly as good as the Sov sources themselves are on hte Sov's - and why on earth would you expect anything else?

The site I linked to is of course a commercial concern, but even the Nafziger 12 volume set on Soviet formations raised in WW2 by Charles Sharp will set you back US$239.40 plus postage....which will be more for the books than for the CD......

[Telumar]

It's a germanic language as english and uses even the same letters...[;)]

Of course german sources about the soviets are not that accurate as soviet sources about the soviets.[:D] Thought you meant german sources about the germans.

Costly thing this OOBs, how on earth did i get a complete OOB of Anzio without investing some money..except for the copies i made at the university's library. EDIT: yes of course i know this is the western theatre, italian campaign, well documented by both sides..

[DesertedFox]

Guys, I read in this forum sometime ago about the question of Soviet strength at the start. An informed individual who had some previous contact with the developers of Fite said that the actual number of Soviet Divs is reduced. This was due to the fact if they are placed onboard at start, it gives the Germans a real hard time in making ground and destroying them as well. So some Sov divs are not there at the start but their equip has been added to the remaining Divs that are there. So that accounts for the slightly larger size than the expected 40-60% strength fo the sov Divs.

Now, I went and found a source detailing the exact number of Sov Divs at start and their location (Military District). Guess what, in Fite, they come up short. So he is right.

I am reading a lot in the forum about how strong the Russians are. Well Germans, you only have to survive, not capture Moscow. Though capturing Moscow would certainly help the cause.

regards,

Mark

[Shawkhan]

...FITE would need a 'Stalin' rule to actually use the full Russian OOB w/o making the job of the Germans impossible. Russian units were afraid to move w/o orders from the Kremlin in the crucial first days of Barbarossa, and Stalin was busy having a nervous breakdown and couldn't issue coherent orders.Stand in place and die is what they subsequently did. And let us not forget the leadership purges, resulting in too many incompetents in positions of authority.
...Talking about German knowledge of the Soviet OOB is amusing, considering the fact that the Germans were seemingly unaware of such 'trivial' matters as the T-34 and KV-1, not to mention expecting Soviet forces to be half the size they really were.