Unit size for senario creation

[EasyGreen]

I am trying to determine the number of units to include in senarios. If I consider one ship as one physical ship and one plane as one squadron (12-25 physical planes) what should a rifle unit be (brigade, regiment, battalion, company)? How about a tank unit? Is it a tank brigade? This would determine how many rifle or tank units to include in a division, etc.

Also trying to find where the hex size is located. I see where to put the length of a turn, but there must be someplace to tell the senario how far it is from hex to hex. I think this must be used to find the distance a unit can travel in a turn.

I've read the manual section on the game editor and gone through the senario creation tutorial, but I'm not finding the answer to these questions.

Thanks for any help.

[SMK-at-work]

I think you can pretty much pick a ratio for yourself that makes sense.  as long as all forces use the same ratios then it really doesn't matter.

what does matter is the relative ratios between the various types of unit....eg if you choose an infantry unit = 1 company (say 1-200 men) and a cargo ship can carry 200 of them (just for the sake of the discussion) then that means the cargo ship is effectively a lot bigger than if you choose 1 infantry = 1 platoon of 30-40 men - the cargo ship can still only carry 200, but that is now only 200 platoons instead of 200 companies, or 20-25% of the total.

I'm doing a "historical start" mod for WW2 & have decided an infantry division is 15 infantry units (Rifle & SMG combined) & 1-2 MG and mortar units, with a couple of horses, a Panzer division is 2 lt tanks, 1 flak, 2 trucks and 5 infantry, and so on.

[EasyGreen]

Thanks SMK-at-work, that's making some sense now. The units may be different things in different scale scenarios. Just so the relationship between land, sea and air units is right. What about hex size? Is it set in the editor somewhere or is it not relevant? I don't see how the game knows how far a unit (say a tank brigade) can move in a given turn, unless the hex size is known.

[TPM]

I asked this same question a while back...it intrigues me. Vic, tweber, etc., there must be some rational when creating units for a scenario...even though this is only a game, by its very nature there is a historical connection. I would ask the question this way: if I'm building a WWII scenario, building a standard German infantry division (let's say the division is the standard unit, HQ's being Corps and Armies), how would I go about doing it? I can look at historical books and see how many man are in the division, how many mortars, artillery, machine guns, engineers, etc., but how would you relate this to the game? Depending on the what kind of scenario you're going for, a division could have 20 Rifle or 60, or 100, whatever you want, but my question has always been what is the size relationships of the units between eachother? What is 1 Rifle compared to 1 Mortar? 1 company to 1 actual mortar? If I know how many infantrymen and how many mortars were in an actual German division, how would I relate this to the game?

Although I know this is hard to answer, but there must be some rational because these units have all been given different strengths...

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this...

ORIGINAL: EasyGreen

I am trying to determine the number of units to include in senarios. If I consider one ship as one physical ship and one plane as one squadron (12-25 physical planes) what should a rifle unit be (brigade, regiment, battalion, company)? How about a tank unit? Is it a tank brigade? This would determine how many rifle or tank units to include in a division, etc.

Also trying to find where the hex size is located. I see where to put the length of a turn, but there must be someplace to tell the senario how far it is from hex to hex. I think this must be used to find the distance a unit can travel in a turn.

I've read the manual section on the game editor and gone through the senario creation tutorial, but I'm not finding the answer to these questions.

Thanks for any help.

[tweber]

Wikipedia has some interesting data on relative sizes of the different WWII economies and production levels. I have used this for determining production levels and relative amounts of different combatants. (e.g., German vs Soviet tank levels). You can drill down and get very specific data (e.g., how many t-34 tanks were produced in 1940).

However, this does not help with relative proportions. To do this, I think the best way is to make units and then test them with combat sim (runs a battle 200 times and then reports results). When building units, it is important to understand the costs and relative combat performance of units across terrain types. In general, I like to try to get the make the effectiveness per unit cost reasonably similar (otherwise, you would only ever by a few exceptional effective units). You do have to make allowance for other characteristics (e.g., para is less cost effective than infantry but makes up for it in mobility).

Other considerations is the production available on the map and the cost and consumption of supply. If you put lots of production on the map, regimes can build lots of supply and support larger armies.

Another factor to consider with consumption is how long it takes a regime to replenish it's order of battle. It would be unrealistic, for example, for combatants in WWI to be able to completely replenish their OOB in 1 month, so I set production levels accordingly.

In general, there are lots of trade offs and you never get it right the first time. In developing the War in Europe, I probably went through 50+ revisions and tweeks.

[TPM]

OK tweber, this makes a lot of sense, but I still have some questions about the unit compositions...I'll put it to you like this:

In your Barbarossa 1941 scenario, the formations on the German side (and Russian probably as well, although I didn't look at them) all are standardized...in other words, an infantry corps is 40 Rifle, 5 machine guns, 5 mortars, and 5 horses (I don't have the game in front of me, but I think this is what it is), and the panzer corps are also set to some standard configuration. My question is this: putting aside production and other matters, how is it that you came up with this configuration? Why not 3 machine guns? Or 6? What is the relationship between 1 Machine Gun and 1 Rifle? I know there's no exact numerical ratio, but I can't help wondering how you came up with this. Did you look at the numbers in a Germans corps and see that they had a certain number of men and a certain number of machine guns, and then correlate that to the game? And thus when you created the Soviet corps (armies), maybe you gave them less machine guns?

Or am I just way off track here, and you just came up with some configurations that seemed to provide desirable results when battle testing?

Further...one of the reasons I ask is that when I'm creating a unit, say a division, I want it to be somewhat based on reality. So, let's say I've decided I'm going to have 30 Rifle and 2 trucks so that it's fully mobile and there is some space for other units. How many machine guns should I add? I know I can add whatever I want, but remember, I'm trying to make this somewhat realistic...let's say it's a US division...what is the relationship between 30 Rifle and 1 Machine Gun? Let's say I had a division with 30 Rifle and 30 Machine Guns...wouldn't you say that is somewhat lopsided compared to a division in "real" life? What is the basis of that judgement...your answer has to involve some kind of ratio...in other words, you might say, "30 Machine Guns is too much because in this game 1 Machine Gun is equal to 1 machine gun in real life (x desired scale) and 1 Rifle is equal to 1 man in real life (x desired scale), and in most divisions the ratio of men to machine guns is 10:1 (obviously not reality, just throwing this out there), and therefore you should really only have 3 Machine Guns in your formation, if you're going to have 30 Rifle. If your divisions are going to have 60 Rifle, then you should have 6 Machine Guns, etc." Do you see what I'm getting at?

Sorry for the long post, but I'd love to hear more of your (or anyone's) thoughts on this. Thanks.

ORIGINAL: tweber

Wikipedia has some interesting data on relative sizes of the different WWII economies and production levels. I have used this for determining production levels and relative amounts of different combatants. (e.g., German vs Soviet tank levels). You can drill down and get very specific data (e.g., how many t-34 tanks were produced in 1940).

However, this does not help with relative proportions. To do this, I think the best way is to make units and then test them with combat sim (runs a battle 200 times and then reports results). When building units, it is important to understand the costs and relative combat performance of units across terrain types. In general, I like to try to get the make the effectiveness per unit cost reasonably similar (otherwise, you would only ever by a few exceptional effective units). You do have to make allowance for other characteristics (e.g., para is less cost effective than infantry but makes up for it in mobility).

Other considerations is the production available on the map and the cost and consumption of supply. If you put lots of production on the map, regimes can build lots of supply and support larger armies.

Another factor to consider with consumption is how long it takes a regime to replenish it's order of battle. It would be unrealistic, for example, for combatants in WWI to be able to completely replenish their OOB in 1 month, so I set production levels accordingly.

In general, there are lots of trade offs and you never get it right the first time. In developing the War in Europe, I probably went through 50+ revisions and tweeks.

[tweber]

There are 2 benefits from standard units.  (1).  It is easier to make units that are copies of another.  (2).  It is easy for a player to quickly scan units and understand what they have.  This is a trade off between playability and realism.
 
The standard German infantry unit has 50 infantry units.  This is 50 stack points.  So you can have basically 2 units per hex w/o crowding.  Production is set based on my estimates of the ammount of German and Soviet GDP that was devoted to the war.  I set absolute production levels to a point where the German army cannot get much bigger and still purchase adequate supply.
 
I gave the Germans a mix of mg's and mortars so they will be extra effective in both attack and defense.  A mortar is basically 5x the attack effectiveness and an mg is roughly 2.5 x the defense effectiveness.  This unit now fights like a 60-80 infantry stack of rifle but takes less space and costs less to supply.  All in all, it is pretty effective (although it will need it if the Soviets survive the first year). 
 
I chose the ratio of 4 standard infantry to 1 special infantry to make the German infantry corp somewhat better, but not insanely better.  I also gave  the infantry corps 5 horses so it was fully carried by horse.  The German army used lots of horses in Russia, so I wanted the unit mix to reflect this.
 
So particular reason why I choose 5 and 5 for mortars and mgs other than I wanted to strike a balance between offense and defense.
 
The total infantry ratio between the Germans and the Soviets was in line with some of the historical sources I have seen.  The Soviets had a larger army, but were badly surprised at the outset.  I model this with a large readiness penalty.  I also make the Soviets short on staff to reflect the state of the officer corps after the purges.
 
You can certainly make the map larger or smaller, add more or less detail to the units, change the time scale (I choose 20 days as it gives the Germans a reasonable chance to get close to Moscow by December), or even tinker with events.  I would be interested to see what other variants players come up with. 

[tweber]

Further...one of the reasons I ask is that when I'm creating a unit, say a division, I want it to be somewhat based on reality. So, let's say I've decided I'm going to have 30 Rifle and 2 trucks so that it's fully mobile and there is some space for other units. How many machine guns should I add? I know I can add whatever I want, but remember, I'm trying to make this somewhat realistic...let's say it's a US division...what is the relationship between 30 Rifle and 1 Machine Gun? Let's say I had a division with 30 Rifle and 30 Machine Guns...wouldn't you say that is somewhat lopsided compared to a division in "real" life? What is the basis of that judgement...your answer has to involve some kind of ratio...in other words, you might say, "30 Machine Guns is too much because in this game 1 Machine Gun is equal to 1 machine gun in real life (x desired scale) and 1 Rifle is equal to 1 man in real life (x desired scale), and in most divisions the ratio of men to machine guns is 10:1 (obviously not reality, just throwing this out there), and therefore you should really only have 3 Machine Guns in your formation, if you're going to have 30 Rifle. If your divisions are going to have 60 Rifle, then you should have 6 Machine Guns, etc." Do you see what I'm getting at?

I think it is hard to get hard historic data to determine ratios between types of infantry. Most sources will tell you number of troops, tanks, etc... You can look at data to get paper strength of units, but that also changes based on a lot of factors. I think making the unit ratios is part fact, part guess work, and part adjustments based on the actual mechanics of the game.

[elmerlee]

A great source of info is the "Nafziger Collection" but for some reason all I can get on the net is the way to get printed copies of the data. When I went to the sight a couple weeks ago it was all available to view. As a matter of fact I've used the sight for at least ten years.

My other source is a book by John Ellis."World War Two - A statistical Survey". This is a great source of statistical info of all kinds. As an example a German 1939 Panzer Battalion was comprised of 34 PZI, 33 PZII, 5 PZIII, 6 PZIV. According to this source anyway. As mentioned, different places may have different figures but this has interesting stuff.

[TPM]

I think it is hard to get hard historic data to determine ratios between types of infantry. Most sources will tell you number of troops, tanks, etc... You can look at data to get paper strength of units, but that also changes based on a lot of factors. I think making the unit ratios is part fact, part guess work, and part adjustments based on the actual mechanics of the game.

Thanks for the insight tweber...this answers my questions...in a game like TOAW, where the attempt was made to model everything down to the rifle, you can just plug in the numbers...AT (and PT) isn't quite the same, and so I've always been curious how you designers came up with the numbers. Thanks again...this a great freaking game, I'm really enjoying playing it!

[SlowHand]

this a great freaking game, I'm really enjoying playing it!

 
Amen. And this has been a really interesting and useful thread for "grokking" some of the nuances of AT. Particularly tweber's comments on MGs and Mortars. And on rationales for Unit size of stk=50. And etc.

[leastonh1]

I have a fascinating (but very expensive!) book called Wehrmacht by Tim Ripley, The Brown Reference Group Plc, 2003, ISBN: 1 84044 137 2. I hope the information below (from the book) helps you with scenario design and numbers. Here's what the book has to say about the make-up of a German WWII Division in 1939:

Infantry Division:
600x Officers & Officials
2,500x NCO's
13,400x Enlisted troops - Machine guns (500), Mortars (140), Infantry Guns (25), 37mm Pak Guns (75), Howitzers/Cannon (48), 20mm FLAK Guns (12), Armoured Scout Cars (3), Tanks (0), Trucks (500), Passenger Cars (400), Motorcycles (500), Sidecars (200), Horses (5,000), Covered Vehicles/Wagons (1,000)
Total: 16,500

Motorised Infantry Division:
600x Officers & Officials
2,500x NCO's
13,400x Enlisted troops - Machine guns (500), Mortars (50), Infantry Guns (25), 37mm Pak Guns (75), Howitzers/Cannon (48), 20mm FLAK Guns (12), Armoured Scout Cars (30), Tanks (0), Trucks (1,700), Passenger Cars (1,000), Motorcycles (1,300), Sidecars (600), Horses (0), Covered Vehicles/Wagons (0)
Total: 16,500

Panzer Division:
500x Officers & Officials
2,000x NCO's
9,300x Enlisted troops/crews - Machine guns (220), Mortars (50), Infantry Guns (10), 37mm Pak Guns (50), Howitzers/Cannon (28), 20mm FLAK Guns (12), Armoured Scout Cars (100), Tanks (324), Trucks (1,400), Passenger Cars (560), Motorcycles (1,300), Sidecars (700), Horses (0), Covered Vehicles/Wagons (0)
Total: 11,800

Light Division:
500x Officers & Officials
1,600x NCO's
8,700x Enlisted troops - Machine guns (460), Mortars (60), Infantry Guns (10), 37mm Pak Guns (50), Howitzers/Cannon (24), 20mm FLAK Guns (12), Armoured Scout Cars (100), Tanks (86), Trucks (1,400), Passenger Cars (600), Motorcycles (1,100), Sidecars (600), Horses (0), Covered Vehicles/Wagons (0)
Total: 10,800

[darrellb9]

Thanks Jim_H. Very helpful.
Don't suppose you have a fascinating (and expensive) book with that same info for the Allies [;)][:D]

[leastonh1]

db99 LOL!! At £80 ($160) for the book, I doubt my wife would let me buy any more in the series without earning serious brownie points first!!! If you're interested in WWII, it is well worth the money and can be bought much cheaper as a used copy.

I do happen to have a copy of another amazing book called: The World War II Databook by John Ellis, published by Aurum Press Ltd 2003. This one does have OOB's for combat divisions, but it's broken down into individual countries. I can post the odd specific if you have a country in mind, but we're talking 25 pages of tables, complete with organisational charts for each country and division. And that's just for starters. This book is over 300 pages of facts & figures for absolutely everything you could imagine from WWII, including maps, casualty lists, OOB's, equipment lists etc. etc. all broken down by country! Again, well worth buying a copy.

Regards,
Jim

[elmerlee]

I have an idea that the Ellis book I mentioned was the same Ellis book I cited.
It is pretty darn good.

But here is the real reason for my post.

http://web.archive.org/web/200208022007 ... /index.htm

This has about all the info a person would want in OOB and such on WWII. If you are not familiar with Nafziger he seems to be a AAA authority on this type thing. And not just WWII.

[elmerlee]

I meant the same book as Jim_H cited.

[leastonh1]

Wow, that's a good reference site elmerlee!! Thank you for the link, I'll probably use it a lot now I know of it. Too much to read about WWII and not enough time!
 
I'm glad someone else likes the Ellis book too. My wife nearly fell off her chair when she learned how much it cost. Boy, did I pay for that purchase! [:D]
 
Regards,
Jim

[davetheroad]

Has one of the original questions been answered? How do you determine hex scale and its EFFECT ON THE GAME
 
Dave

[darrellb9]

Thanks Jim, I may look around for that Ellis book. $160 a pop for the other series would pretty much kill my games budget [:D]

In the meantime that site elmerlee posted looks great! Thanks for that elmerlee.

[tweber]

Also trying to find where the hex size is located. I see where to put the length of a turn, but there must be someplace to tell the senario how far it is from hex to hex. I think this must be used to find the distance a unit can travel in a turn.

There is no place to specify size of the hexes. But, with map overlay, most of the scenarios are overlays from either Google Maps or the West Point Military Atlases. I never worried about actual hex distance since I assumed that the maps were good. The trick is to balance distance, unit speed, and time. The design guideline is that I wanted was for Germany to be near Moscow by December which is roughly turn 9. It is about 24 hexes from the border, so the Germans must make almost 3 hexes per turn. This is a good clip - almost as fast as an unhindered infantry can walk. Distance - speed - time are related. If I made the map bigger, I would have to either give the units more speed or more time in turns.

BTW, the distance from Kiev to Moscow is about 475 miles. In the Russia War scenario, it is 24 hexes so a hex is roughly 20 miles. You can make similar measurements of other maps to come up with hex distance and this is probably something that could be in the scenario description.