Couple Soviet Questions

[Q-Ball]

I am playing my first PBEM against CarnageInc, and started the Soviets COLD (no play vs. AI). A few questions for the gallery:

First, trucks are clearly a problem. It seems like you can take some steps to free some up; please comment on whether these make sense?
-Disband MOTO REGTS: Low-combat value truck-hogs (125 ea or so)
-Disband empty CORPS: They are headed for disbanding anyway, I am NOT re-using any once units are destroyed. If they have nothing attached, I send them home. Is this wise? 250 trucks per.
-Set MOT DIVS to STATIC: Use them as garrisons in cities. They are major truck hogs; may as well die.
-AIRBASES: Do we really need all these airbase units? How many do you need? They also use a bunch of trucks.
With these steps you can't really close the Truck-Gap, but maybe make it less bad

FORCE DISPOSITION: Southwest Front begins the game with the strongest forces by far, including several decent Tank Divs. North of the Pripet marshes, there is hardly a decent Tank unit anywhere. Do others move a couple of these Tank Div up north? Anything else get sent?

APs: What do you spend APs on early? Unit builds seem too expensive.

[Flaviusx]

Some of the testers think that disbanding corps is a waste of APs. I personally swear by the practice for a variety of reasons:

1. It frees up some trucks, yes.

2. More importantly, it frees up a ton of manpower that can be quickly redirected to fleshing out your understrength formations. There's literally hundreds of thousands of men you can tap this way.

3. SUs attached to corps get kicked up the chain of command immediately and cheaply. (Far cheaper than reassigning them individually.)

4. It simplifies and rationalizes your command structure.

5. It returns many good leaders to the pool making them available for reassignment to armies.

6. It reduces the number of leaders exposed to attrition and displacement losses.

7. It cleans up the map.

8. It allows you to concentrate your good leaders into few HQs with higher command capacity.

Corps HQs are an eyesore and the Red Army quite simply doesn't get a whole lot out of these small HQs. When you launch counterattacks, you very often need more forces than a single corps HQ can command. Red Army divisions just aren't that strong. Armies can command enough units to launch credible counterattacks and minimize (and hopefully eliminate) command related penalties.

I'm willing to drop 60 or more APs in the first couple of turns on such disbands. (The other major priority being construction SUs.) Then I can begin to put in first class leaders in critical army locations.

SW front does begin with many mechanized formations, but frankly, I think they are mostly crap. The rifle division is the real strength of the Red Army in 1941, both on defense and counterattack. Tank divisions have terrible mobility, poor construction values, and a tendency to spontaneously reform into tank brigades and be removed from the the map.

In 1941 I spend my APs on HQ disbands, construction SUs, unit reassignments, and leadership. No unit builds. During the winter I may start converting certain air units to shturmoviks. (U2Vs and the ShaP I15bis regiments.) Otherwise, the airforce is set to automatic upgrades.

Edit: also, no need to empty the corps before disbanding them. Why waste the APs on reassignments? Just disband them from the getgo. Their units will be reassigned automatically to the army up the chain of command.

[ComradeP]

Trucks are mostly a problem in the first few turns. Mobilization and losing many mobile units will quickly solve it for the moment.

I mostly hoard AP's as the Soviets, spending them only on some reassignments and construction units.

Of course the benefits of disbanding HQ's also applies to when they do so automatically, but you might want all of the benefits early.

Flavio likes motorcycle regiments, I generally dislike support units that use more than 2 or 3 equipment types.

You could do what Flavio suggested and place motorized divisions to static as they'll eventually morph into units that are cheaper to reactivate.

As to air bases: I prefer both my Axis and Soviet armies slim and tidy, so you could perhaps disband some, but the game automatically creates new ones based on the number of air groups (I believe Pavel mentioned that).

Tank divisions's CV depends more or less solely on its tanks, and they lose them by the hundreds per battle, so you should not put too much faith in them.

[bwheatley]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Some of the testers think that disbanding corps is a waste of APs. I personally swear by the practice for a variety of reasons:

1. It frees up some trucks, yes.

2. More importantly, it frees up a ton of manpower that can be quickly redirected to fleshing out your understrength formations. There's literally hundreds of thousands of men you can tap this way.

3. SUs attached to corps get kicked up the chain of command immediately and cheaply. (Far cheaper than reassigning them individually.)

4. It simplifies and rationalizes your command structure.

5. It returns many good leaders to the pool making them available for reassignment to armies.

6. It reduces the number of leaders exposed to attrition and displacement losses.

7. It cleans up the map.

8. It allows you to concentrate your good leaders into few HQs with higher command capacity.

Corps HQs are an eyesore and the Red Army quite simply doesn't get a whole lot out of these small HQs. When you launch counterattacks, you very often need more forces than a single corps HQ can command. Red Army divisions just aren't that strong. Armies can command enough units to launch credible counterattacks and minimize (and hopefully eliminate) command related penalties.

I'm willing to drop 60 or more APs in the first couple of turns on such disbands. (The other major priority being construction SUs.) Then I can begin to put in first class leaders in critical army locations.

SW front does begin with many mechanized formations, but frankly, I think they are mostly crap. The rifle division is the real strength of the Red Army in 1941, both on defense and counterattack. Tank divisions have terrible mobility, poor construction values, and a tendency to spontaneously reform into tank brigades and be removed from the the map.

In 1941 I spend my APs on HQ disbands, construction SUs, unit reassignments, and leadership. No unit builds. During the winter I may start converting certain air units to shturmoviks. (U2Vs and the ShaP I15bis regiments.) Otherwise, the airforce is set to automatic upgrades.

Edit: also, no need to empty the corps before disbanding them. Why waste the APs on reassignments? Just disband them from the getgo. Their units will be reassigned automatically to the army up the chain of command.

+1 to flav's removing corps. I also set my motorized units to static which gives me a metric crapton 15AP per motorized division i put into static.

[bwheatley]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

I am playing my first PBEM against CarnageInc, and started the Soviets COLD (no play vs. AI). A few questions for the gallery:

First, trucks are clearly a problem. It seems like you can take some steps to free some up; please comment on whether these make sense?
-Disband MOTO REGTS: Low-combat value truck-hogs (125 ea or so)
-Disband empty CORPS: They are headed for disbanding anyway, I am NOT re-using any once units are destroyed. If they have nothing attached, I send them home. Is this wise? 250 trucks per.
-Set MOT DIVS to STATIC: Use them as garrisons in cities. They are major truck hogs; may as well die.
-AIRBASES: Do we really need all these airbase units? How many do you need? They also use a bunch of trucks.
With these steps you can't really close the Truck-Gap, but maybe make it less bad

FORCE DISPOSITION: Southwest Front begins the game with the strongest forces by far, including several decent Tank Divs. North of the Pripet marshes, there is hardly a decent Tank unit anywhere. Do others move a couple of these Tank Div up north? Anything else get sent?

APs: What do you spend APs on early? Unit builds seem too expensive.

Regarding your tank units in the south. If you can somehow manage to keep 1 the tank division with 100+ T34's you are a lucky man. Mine got encircled on t1. I had hoped to get him behind the lines and save some of those precious t34's to be used later in the "seperate tank brigade" support unit.

[raizer]

One of the biggest challenges to me is the Soviet clutter-I think this is a good strategy to disband corps...I need a tidy map and a feel for where my stuff is going-both the trash at the start and the stuff I want to horde...This disbandment is a good tip and something I would not have thought of on my own.

[Klydon]

There are several tank divsions in the south with a good number of T-34 and KV 1 tanks. The Second Mech Corps (just across from the Rumanian armored division) has around 200 T-34's between its two tank divisions and also has a good mech division. The presence of this unit led me to abandon the opening I have seen a lot of Axis players take with driving all the way to the Rumanian border to cut a lot of Soviet units off. I could not figure out a way to keep the Soviets from getting supply back to the pocket playing around with the border units there and if the Germans try to break down a Panzer division to get solid line coverage, the Second Mech Corps will absolutely send a panzer regiment reeling and still have enough movement to get away.
 
Different question, but for the Soviets is it worth disbanding fortified zones early in the game to recapture the material? I am talking about ones that are in danger of getting wacked, not all of them at once.

[Mynok]

Yes, there are some very tough Soviet mech units in the south. Those guys are easier to deal with on turn one though. All you need to do is pin them with some infantry.

[sillyflower]

I agree about disbanding corps HQ early - they are a real nuisance half the time. I suggested this on another thread a while ago and was much criticised for wasting APs ( fair enough) so glad to see the idea becoming more popular.

[ComradeP]

Different question, but for the Soviets is it worth disbanding fortified zones early in the game to recapture the material? I am talking about ones that are in danger of getting wacked, not all of them at once.

I disband all of them ASAP, with the limited Soviet equipment production, the guns are quite useful, and there's little need to give the Germans ~1500 prisoners more or less for free for every fortified region as the fortified regions generally inflict around 100 losses at best.

I consider disbanding corps HQ's to be, if not a waste, an inefficient way to use AP's.

[Q-Ball]

I don't think either side should EVER leave a Fortified Zone in harm's way. It's waste of men for either side.

As the Soviet, I will leave them up to dig until they are threatened, then disband. The only other use I see is manning the Finnish border.

As Axis, they are OK city garrisons, and diggers, but that's it.

As Soviets, they are diggers or border guards.

[cookie monster]

Found this in the manual

23.3.3. SOVIET GENERIC VEHICLE MOBILIZATION
The Soviet motor pool starts the war at 60,000 vehicles. In addition to normal production,
to represent vehicles mobilized from civilian use, the Soviet player will receive an additional
number of vehicles during the logistics phase of the first ten turns of the scenario as follows:
Turn 1: +50,000
Turn 2: +40,000
Turn 3: +30,000
Turns 4-10: +20,000

That should help the vehicle pool

[ComradeP]

Soviet mobile units generally lack a full vehicle complement early on, so losing them in pockets in the first couple of turns will ease your motor pool problems quite a bit as the amount of required vehicles drops substantially whilst the number of available vehicles doesn't, which eases the situation together with the mobilization of vehicles.

[CarnageINC]

AH, all this advice is rubbish!  If I were you I would do none of it and just except fate and roll over dead. [:'(]