Soviet Rail Capacity (Or finding the balance)

[Mrtyphoon]

Finding it very hard to evacuate all those factories and still have enough Rail capacity to move the combat units forward from the deep rear by rail to where they need to be digging. Just read the factory evacuation guide which should help a lot but looking for some more helpful hints on the best use of those Soviet railways are the troops digging in the right places more important than getting all those factories away where exactly is the right balance?

[Longshanks]

I'm a new player having played several scenarios, one game vs AI as the Germans on standard difficulty, and currently a game as the Soviet vs AI on Challenging. I mention the level of difficulties because I pulled out the factories at Tula, Kharkov, D-petrovsk and Zap. without any need to (as least so far into the game at Feb 42). I left the KV factory in L-grad intact but pulled out the rest. The AI made a run at Leningrad but never got closer than 2 hexes and is currently along the Luga, on average 6 hexes away and has moved all the armor to the South, indicating to me that is where the Summer offensive will be. Moscow factories totally intact.

In short, it seems to me that there's no reason to pull a lot of factories out at these level of difficulties. I haven't moved any since the fall mud turns, meaning I have a LOT of excess Soviet rail cap and when I move I use it nearly every time except at the front. Before that I never went more than one turn before moving units from the rear to the front. You can stop moving them with 15 movement left, detrain, and reduce the Rail Cap carry-over effect to the next turn if you like.

This may change when 1942 Clear weather arrives, but that's what I've seen so far. My next game will be at the next harder level which will probably change the German advance and therefore the need to pull out factories.

[gingerbread]

When playing the AI, you have plenty of time to get everything out and move troops as well. That is not the case vs a player. So use your AI games to develop and practice executing an evacuation plan that can be used in vs player. Check the replays to get an indication of the pace of advance in PvsP and have some slack in your plans for surprises.

You start with 370 ARM, and can write of up to 50 of them and still have enough once they are repaired.

HI/supply is tighter in 1.08 and I think that 200 (out of 236) is a nice round figure but it could be too high. Moving all those high R-cap cost HI will have an opportunity cost. You'll understand what I mean once you get tired of planning with pen & paper and gets serious using a spread sheet app. [:)]

No one plans on loosing Moscow, but everyone should plan evacuating it.

Vehicle factories are nice to have, but don't produce that much. For example, the entire 20 point factory that starts in Kharkov will produce 5700 vehicles during '42. This is roughly the equivalent of one turns worth of LL during '43 (OK, it's 5700 vs 4500). Learn how to be frugal with vehicles and you can skip some V-fac evacuations.

The AFV & AC factories grow back in size, but this takes time. Study the factory upgrade paths. In any case, always get at least 1 point out before the Axis takes the hex. As an extra constraint, AFV & AC factories must be moved in one lift.

There is a stickied thread in the War room by Walloc.

[morvael]

IMHO: Every single truck is needed by Mother Russia. [:)]

I agree with gingerbread that good factory evacuation plan (and execution) plays a very important role only when playing against a human in a PBEM. Against AI there is time to evac nearly all factories, especially those from big cities in the rear.

[Mrtyphoon]

I'm talking against a human opponent against the a.i I have had no real problems with rail capacity. However that said player to player and I've had a real disaster and have seemed to spend way to much rail capacity getting those factories evacuated and even then have lost some bad HI and armaments. Leningrad and Kharkov take up a lot of RC over a number of turns which has left rifle divisions slogging forward on foot from the rear. The factory evacuation guide I hope will help my next attempt but again all other pointers are welcome.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: typhoon

I'm talking against a human opponent against the a.i I have had no real problems with rail capacity. However that said player to player and I've had a real disaster and have seemed to spend way to much rail capacity getting those factories evacuated and even then have lost some bad HI and armaments. Leningrad and Kharkov take up a lot of RC over a number of turns which has left rifle divisions slogging forward on foot from the rear. The factory evacuation guide I hope will help my next attempt but again all other pointers are welcome.

from bitter experience, I'd say you need to plan on getting 200 HI out. To achieve that you need to make some hard choices.

One is very partial evacuation of named factories compared to Walloc's old guide. Possibles for this are the KV factory at Leningrad and the T-34 at Kharkov ... you won't really need either till 1943. By that I mean, your armoured formations will not be a major part of your army till then. Others I would move marginally are the Pe-2 factories, you can usually cope without too many LB's deployed and the Lend Lease A-20s are both good and plentiful from 1942 onwards. In fact you may want minimal LB production to save supply in any case.

All the tank divisions/brigades that appear in the Urals, I'd leave till the winter. They don't really help you out that much in combat (set their TOE to 50%), so they don't use the rail cap. For the rifle divisions, they are cheapest to move when very low on TOE so if they arrive in a weak state (and you can't stop the first turn reinforcement) and you can't move them at once set their TOE to 50% and leave till you can move them. I wouldn't walk them west. Fatigue etc will cost you so many elements that the end cost (in supply for replacements) will be worse than the cost of losing a unit of HI.

Trucks I'd agree with morveal, you need everyone you can, if anything I'd let HI be lost to maximise extraction of the truck factories.

I think with the 1.08 changes, you need to save less arms pts factories than the old advice but not so sure.

The June 1942 campaign scenario is an excellent guide. If you want a historically sized army in 1942, then that level of industry is a good rough guide.

[Mrtyphoon]

Thanks for all the words of wisdom everybody. And Loki100 for some really excellent AAR's both for this and PON. It's certainly a very different game when real people are involved got to step up to a whole new level or suffer accordingly. At the moment my Soviets are certainly doing the suffering. Turn 12 Leningrad will fall Moscow is under real threat and chaos reigns supreme.