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I'm playing GC'41 as Axis and now, when the German rampage is over, I wonder how much have I crippled Soviets Production ability? As previous analysis shoved that is impossible to hurt Russians by denying them resources and heavy industry (at least in '41) I will focus here on manpower and armament points.

My spy from Moscow provided me with following Soviet production figures (turn 25):



Soviets started with 370 factory armament points. As you can see they now have 298 + 6 being repaired. So, in total I managed to capture/destroy only about 18% factory armament points. It is probably not enough to seriously cripple Soviets war effort. It is something, but I'm not sure how much does it hurt. Armament factory points need to be evaluated together with manpower and here is what surprises me. According to some posters on forum, Germans have chance to deny only about 15% manpower to Soviets before blizzard. Here it seems that I reduced manpower roughly by 30% (2619 vs starting 3742 manpower factory points, despite fact that I didn't capture Moscow and Leningrad - which is isolated). But I wonder why Armament and Manpower pool is not empty? There is 72.516 men and 203.676 armament points. If we know that Soviet rifle division (TOE 42b) has 12.706 men and it cost 7.632 armament points, Soviets have enough items to immediately fully equip about 26 rifle divisions, but men for only 6 rifle divisions.

So, does anyone can provide more insight into how much does it count this reduction in his mobilization effort?

According to manual, each manpower factory point will result in 50 men in Soviet pool each turn during '41. So in next turn Soviets can expect additional 2619 x 50 = 108.450 men to put in about 8-9 rifle divisions. Also as 1 factory armament point will produce notional 250 armament points during 1941 (500 in period 1942-45) they can expect additional 300 x 250 = 75.000 armament points each turn (or 150.000 from 1942 to 1945). That is enough for equipping 10 Rifle Divisions or for producing, for example, 2.500 howitzers each turn - but nothing else. And double of that after '41.

Additional info - Soviet losses (at turn 25):

Men - 3.6 mil.
Guns - 52.663
AFV - 15.579
Airp. - 10.002

As far as I can tell my experienced Sov opponent optimized for combat and force preservationand railed out nothing, as he likely knew it didnt matter, so everything (Arm,HI, Fac etc.) from Leningrad, through Moscow, Kharkov, Rostov, Tula etc. was destroyed. It is now the Blizzard and his army is enormous and about to send me back from Moscow to Poland and Finland.

ORIGINAL: Farfarer

As far as I can tell my experienced Sov opponent optimized for combat and force preservationand railed out nothing, as he likely knew it didnt matter, so everything (Arm,HI, Fac etc.) from Leningrad, through Moscow, Kharkov, Rostov, Tula etc. was destroyed. It is now the Blizzard and his army is enormous and about to send me back from Moscow to Poland and Finland.

OK, I can buy arguments that it is difficult--perhaps too difficult--to cripple Soviet production, but the statement above is very difficult to believe. If he is beating you that badly with no virtually no tanks, planes, or artillery, you are doing something wrong.

I am on my first PBEM as Soviets and feel as though my production is, well if not crippled, near so. Turn 24 and Moscow, Leningrad gone and in the south the Axis holds Rostov. Manpower is 2341, HI 167, Arm 243. The tank factories were withdrawn intact, producing 173 KVs and T-34s per turn. IL-2 factories saved as well. But with blizzard approaching, I have almost 800k in the manpower pool waiting for a rifle. I'm not sure if the start of '42 will bring that down as the APs double but by that time the best chance to do damage to the Axis will have passed. I'd be interested to know if anyone has had a competitive game into '42 with similar production.

ORIGINAL: Farfarer

As far as I can tell my experienced Sov opponent optimized for combat and force preservationand railed out nothing, as he likely knew it didnt matter, so everything (Arm,HI, Fac etc.) from Leningrad, through Moscow, Kharkov, Rostov, Tula etc. was destroyed. It is now the Blizzard and his army is enormous and about to send me back from Moscow to Poland and Finland.

If he railed out nothing, he will lose. There are stocks you can draw from through 1941, but after that, he'll be running on empty.

Your opponent doesn't know how the game works

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS
But with blizzard approaching, I have almost 800k in the manpower pool waiting for a rifle. I'm not sure if the start of '42 will bring that down as the APs double but by that time the best chance to do damage to the Axis will have passed. I'd be interested to know if anyone has had a competitive game into '42 with similar production.

I had about a million men in the pool in late 1941, it dropped precipitously in early 1942. You should be fine!

I'm doing some analysis about Soviet production. I hope I will come out with something meaningful and post it here.

For now, I will post this map which can be useful to other player as well. There is defined maximum possible German line of advance in '41. IMO opinion that is what German player can do in best circumstances (e.g. below average Soviet player, lot of skill and luck).

First dotted line represent zone 1 (approximate line of advance during first 6-8 turns. In this zone lies 19,5% manpower but only 1,9% Armament points.

Between first two lines is zone 2. This is, what can be achieved in 12-16 turns (maybe without Leningrad, but you can subtract Leningrad to correct figures). In zone 3 there is 14% of Soviet armament production and 14,5% manpower.

Finally, zone 3 (which should be reached and occupied after 18-24 turns) is area between second dotted line and maximum hypothetical line of advance in '41. Combined, all three zones account for total of 53% manpower and 61% of armament production.

Also there are some specific areas which can be used for adjustment...

I think you need to include plane and AFV factories to get a more accurate picture.

Leaving out the huge plane industry in Moscow substantially understates its importance. Or the tank factories in Kharkov and Stalingrad, which are no less than 2/3 of your t-34 production.

But this is a good start.

Edit: also, rail cap. Note taking this area depicted above will drop Soviet rail by something like 40% of its start capacity.

Nice map Emir. I did a study like this some time ago (no nice map tho and my zones were a bit different) in the war room.

Stalino area is a little understated because if you include Rostov, D-Town and Z-Town, the armaments and industry percents go up a fair amount. There are a ton of armaments points in this area. The issue of course is getting there in such a way the Russians can't get them railed out in time.

I was going to say if the Russian's start with 196 resources. This might be an easy target as well. How soon till they start to feel a signifigant reduction in the loss of Resources.

And then if the Germans are capable of doing a 42 offensive then what about fuel and oil as an industrial target. And when will the Russian begin to feel the effects of railyards being captured.

Hi to everyone.

As I promised here are results of my modeling of Soviet production. For those who are not willing to go through all of these numbers, short summary is: forget about crippling Soviet production by reducing industry! Only reasonable way to hurt Soviet war machine is by reducing it's manpower.This is somewhat different conclusion comparing to Klydon's analysis.

First, please note that I didn't take into account AFV, aircraft and rail yard production. Competent Soviet player will not let AFV and aircraft factories to fall into German hands anyway. Maybe I will some day extend this analysis to include these type of factories also. Right now, I have focused primarily on armament industry and manpower. Although, you can see numbers for resources (RES), heavy industry (HI) and vehicles I didn't analyzed this in more details. My conclusion regarding HI, RES and Vehicle production, although anecdotal, is same as Klydon's. Simply, I haven't seen a game where Soviets have difficulties with HI and RES production. So let's back to armament and manpower.

Primary goal of this analysis is to put into perspective soviet mobilization efforts together with production of different equipment required by typical Soviet rifle division (RD). Why RD is important? Because RD is backbone of Soviet Army. At the beginning of operation Fall Blau (27.06.1942) RDs (together with Rifle Brigades) amounted 59% of all soldiers in Red Army (game data). This analysis will help you to get answer to questions such: How much did I hurt Soviets if I advanced that far on map in '41? What can I expect in summer '42? How much is Moscow important as source of manpower? Etc.

As you can read from my previous post (#6) I have divided map into three zones. Each zone represent area which can be taken by German player at some tempo. I have chosen equally spaced intervals of eight turns for each zone, so Germans will, at beginning of turn 25 (first blizzard turn), have all three zones in their hands. Exact zone boundaries are presented at the map (post #6) and in table 1.



In table 2 you can see production numbers for each zone.



Table 3 represent reduction in Soviet production after fall of each zone. Here are first assumptions which I needed to make:

1.) I have no idea how much population will migrate from cities. My best conservative guess is 30%. So if I get this number far off reality please let me know and I will correct figures.
2.) Numbers in table 3 represent case of no industry evacuation. Scenario 2 will correct this (see table 6).
3.) Evacuated manpower factories are not damaged and are operational immediately after evacuation. This will not be a case in real game but I don't think numbers will be significantly different. In my ongoing PBEM game I managed to take a lot of territory, but at start of blizzard Soviets don't have significant number of damaged factories (see post #1).



To get more realistic numbers I have calculated average production in each zone during this hypothetical scenarios (table 4). For example, it is more realistic to assume that Zone 1 will produce materials and manpower until it is completely taken, then that it will produce at 100% capacity for eight turns and on turn 9 it's production to drop to zero.



Table 5 provides final production results (mens, tons, etc.) instead of production points. Table 5 figures are based on non-evacuation of Soviet industry (worst case scenario).



Table 6 shows results of hypothetical scenario where Soviet player managed to relocate 50% of his industry.



Finally, in table 7 we have comparison between historical start of 1942 campaign and hypothetical worst case scenario for Soviets. Scenario assumes that there is no fighting between turn 24 and turn 54 and hence no Soviet losses in that period. To see full effect of Soviet worst case scenario we should subtract Soviet losses in men between turns 25-54 from number of recruited soldiers. What are typical Soviet losses in that period anyway? I'm inviting other players to feed some numbers from their own experience.

Also, previous numbers (table 5) are adjusted to take into account that most of soviet men and armament points (59%) will be used for making rifle divisions up to 70% TOE (which is historic average by game data). Rest of 41% will be used for something else (support units...).



In above scenario, Soviets will have enough armaments points to equip 985 Rifle Divisions with 70% TOE, but men for only 407 RD. Even worst case scenario, lost of all armament points west of maximum possible German line of advance in '41 (61,4% of total armament factories), will not cripple Soviet armament production. In such case they will be able to produce enough equipment for 545 rifle divisions (70% TOE). Bottleneck is manpower but not armament industry.

Number of 407 divisions is really huge one. For example, from northern edge of map to Rostov there is 123 hexes. That means that Soviets can put three hexes deep belt of Rifle Division from North to Rostov and they will still have around 30 divisions in reserve. If we take into account Soviet losses, for example of additional 1 million men only in RD's during first half of '42, we would still have enough men for 236 Rifle Divisions. Now compare this number to average of 120 to 200 destroyed rifle divisions in initial German attack (first 24 turns).

We can adjust numbers above by taking out factories from different areas from initial calculation. For example, if German player don't manage to take Moscow area, that will result in additional numbers of rifle divisions until 27.06.1942. Soviets will have additional 15 rifle divisions and much more armament points.

I hope that I made all calculations right and that I haven't made any major oversights. In attachment you can find excel file with all formulas (just change .txt to .xls extension after download). All you need is to feed some numbers or coefficients to create your own "what if" scenarios.

Comments, questions and discussion are welcome.

Expressing manpower replacements in terms of packages of divisional equivalents is highly misleading. The Soviet chokepoint for unit construction is APs, not manpower per se.

It would be far more accurate to take that manpower and express it as a raw figure per turn. Taking Q-ball's game as an example, he's getting 103k manpower a turn right now. To the extent his per turn losses are less than that, he grows. If they are greater, he doesn't. If he is topped off entirely, then he can accumulate replacement in the pool. This replacement situation will dictate the pace of operations and how much the Soviet is willing to push the Red Army. It is entirely possible to burn it out if not properly managed.

Also, the manpwer production is subject to a multiplier that changes each year, and diminishes over time.

But what he is not doing, and no Soviet player does is simply churn out a bunch of new rifle divisions based on manpower. You get more than enough as reinforcements, and nearly 80 more once rifle brigades get merged. APs need to be spent on other things, not new rifle divisions.

If the German is forcing the Soviet to build new rifle divisions, then he's getting ahead in the game by forcing an AP crunch on the Soviet -- that's the real chokepoint, and needs to be examined separately from this replacement analysis.

Couple different ways to look at things I think Flav. While the actual rifle divisions may not be constructed, it does give both sides a rule of thumb to work under much like what you mention with the 103k manpower per turn; just a different way. You can look at the 103k manpower as essentially 10 rifle divisions worth a turn.

Part of the thing with the armaments is rifle units are probably the lightest unit when it comes to armaments points needed. The real heavy drain on armaments will come with the artillery and mech/armored units. The Russians also need these in order to defeat the Germans in a reasonable amount of time.

I look at 10 rifle divisions a turn as 100 AP, Klydon.

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Expressing manpower replacements in terms of packages of divisional equivalents is highly misleading. The Soviet chokepoint for unit construction is APs, not manpower per se.

...

Also, the manpwer production is subject to a multiplier that changes each year, and diminishes over time.

...

Flavio, I don't advocate that Soviet player will pump new rifle divisions based on manpower. As Klydon said, Rifle divisions is just a way to show what all this massive Soviet manpower means in terms of units. My intention of using rifle division is to have something which has more meaning to most players then simple number of men.

Second, when you are talking about AP choke point please have in mind that Soviets will have plenty of reinforcement in 1941. That means AP free units. Also, don't forget that all Soviet rifle divisions destroyed before November 1941 will come back, again AP free.

Third, I know that manpower is subject to a multiplier that changes each year. In above analysis that is applied on manpower production (see notes after tables 5 and 6). In 1941-45 that multiplier is decreasing for Soviets but for first four years is always at least 5 times greater then German multiplier (which is also decreasing).

Fourth, you says: "It would be far more accurate to take that manpower and express it as a raw figure per turn." But there are raw figures for my scenarios. In tables 5 and 6 you have total numbers of men. Just divide it with number of turns for each period. For example, in first eight turns Soviets will have on average 1.254.000/8 = 156.750 men each turn. In 1941 that will be 3.848.040/28 = 137.400 men each turn.

Finally, topic of this thread is how to cripple Soviet production in 1941. That question, I believe, every German player asked himself at least once. Based on analysis above he doesn't need to ask that anymore. Answer is he can't do anything to cripple Soviet production. Armament factories, which are thought to be only way to hurt Soviets, are not. Same goes for resources and heavy industry. Probable exception are AFV, aircraft and vehicle factories but only total beginner (not even AI) will let these to fall into German hands. At the end, manpower centers and Soviet losses are only way for Germans to get upper hand in first and probably second year of the war.

ORIGINAL: Klydon

Part of the thing with the armaments is rifle units are probably the lightest unit when it comes to armaments points needed. The real heavy drain on armaments will come with the artillery and mech/armored units. The Russians also need these in order to defeat the Germans in a reasonable amount of time.

Klydon, in analysis above I have used 27.06.1942 as benchmark. On that date, Red Army historically (at least according to game data) have 6 millions of men (table 7). Out of that number, 59% (3,5 millions) are in rifle divisions and brigades. On average, Soviet rifle division has 70% TOE.

In my scenarios above, Soviet total production from turn 1 to 54 is 6,1 million men and 5,2 millions of armament points. From that figures just 59% goes to rifle divisions (to be in match with historical benchmark). That leaves 41% for producing other units and equipment.

Just to put in perspective, if we know that one 122mm howitzer cost 8 men and 60 armament points, 41% of what is left after rifle divisions, is enough for producing 35.690 pieces of 122mm howitzer but nothing else.

I have attached spreadsheet in previous post and it is easily to make adjustments to how much manpower goes to rifle divisions and percentage of TOE of that divisions.

Emir, crippling Soviet production is something that happens over the long run. If you confine yourself to 1941, you're never going to be satisfied with the results.

You're not going to knock out the Sovs in one year. You've proven this mathematically! But there was hardly any need to do so.

In order to really appreciate the effects of reductions to manpower and industry, you have to play the longer game.

It is true that the Sovs get a bunch of units for free in 1941. But it's equally true that for the rest of the war they do not. And this matters a great deal.

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Emir, crippling Soviet production is something that happens over the long run. If you confine yourself to 1941, you're never going to be satisfied with the results.

You're not going to knock out the Sovs in one year. You've proven this mathematically! But there was hardly any need to do so.

In order to really appreciate the effects of reductions to manpower and industry, you have to play the longer game.

Flavio, I disagree on this. I don't see anything in years after '41 that Germans can do to make harm to Soviet industry. Baku, maybe, but still we have to see player able to take it. Even in worst case scenario for Soviets (table 5), Soviet choke point is manpower, not industry. Not to mention that in any other, more favorable scenario to Soviets, evacuated industry will be far from German reach.

If you kill enough stuff in 1942, the Red Army will collapse, or be so crippled as to not ever be able to reach Berlin in time, giving the German player a win on points. It's been done in several AARs. And reductions in manpower and industry in 1941 help create the conditions for said collapse.

Then it is a question of getting ahead of the Soviet AP and replacement curve. A Soviet player taking in 60 APs and 100k manpower a turn (about what he'll get after a very strong German 41) has some real limits to content with.

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

If you kill enough stuff in 1942, the Red Army will collapse, or be so crippled as to not ever be able to reach Berlin in time, giving the German player a win on points. It's been done in several AARs. And reductions in manpower and industry in 1941 help create the conditions for said collapse.

Then it is a question of getting ahead of the Soviet AP and replacement curve. A Soviet player taking in 60 APs and 100k manpower a turn (about what he'll get after a very strong German 41) has some real limits to content with.

I am not arguing it won't collapse. I'm just saying it will collapse much more likely because of manpower losses then industry losses.