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HLYA and I are doing a game. I am pretty slow in writing and doing PBEM/MP turns so hopefully we can go the distance.

Settings for the game.

Multi-Player (MP) Server game
1. Normal
2. TB full control
3. NO Air AI
4. Full FOG of WAR
5. Locked HQ
6. Current patch & will update on each new release

House Rules
No para drops more than 3 hexes from front lines

All other rules in the manual are a "GO", even motorization & all the GA you want.

We both are agreeable to each other reading each others AAR's. I know I need all the help I can get and I got some from Tyrone, Roger, M60 (Ed) and HYLA (Ben) lol, my opponent is a great mentor, I hope to give him a challenge and to make the game go into 1945, but HLYA may mop my deck by the end of 8 turns lol, we shall see.

NOTE: I have never played the Soviets yet in WITE2 and I have learned a lot from HLYA about how to play as the Axis, so this should be quiet fun to say the least.

Turn 1 - June 22, 1941

Turn Summary


At turn start notes:
HLYA did some awesome attacks for turn one.

Reinforcements
Looks like I have 93 ground and 5 air replacements, I'll check those in the ground phase.

Friendly Losses
215,649 men, 4,414 guns, 1,279 AFVs and 4,278 aircraft lost in one week. Pretty impressive.

OB Changes
Nothing to show yet.

Logistics
As you can see the trucks needed for units is short by 96,225! So hopefully the Soviet production can remedy that shortfall? I have 58k in my Depots, 9,5k in the pool and 997 in repair. The tons recieved is also short by 10,5k. Ammo recieved seems nice and the men recieved is also good at 172k.

Combat Unit Alerts
Overall it reports I have 354 total on map units, with 53 low supply, 0 critical supply and 89 units isolated. Of those 354 units 58 are understrength, 167 are unready and 13 are depleted.

Sounds like I have some work cut out for me to sort out this mess.

Air Planning Phase

I reset all the Air Doctrines like so:


I have deciced to be a little bit agressive (crazy or mad?) and created 35 AD as follows:





On the map zoomed out they look like this:







For the ones in the NW Air Command I am trying an experiment and all were set to 5(auto) with the number of strikes set to how many visible German units I could see. I also threw in a Naval Patrol in the Riga sector. The Baltic Fleet also is doing a Naval Patrol attack in the Riga area. Western Air Command is also similar as NW AC. Both NW and Western AC are doing some long range airfield only attacks at night to see if they can get any lucky hits on the German airfields, these also are set to 5(auto) for three nights and based on the number of airfields in the area (see the example below). For SW AC I decided to mix things up a bit since the Axis was not as agressive here. So for these missions I set them to Auto for nummber of Strikes, and Auto(Auto) for Req AC(Esc) (see the second screenshot below). Southern AC had two GA missions, one against a bunch of Rumanian regiments and another night attack on some Rumanian airbases.

GA Airfield


GA Auto Spread


Southern AC's GA missions


Lets find out if this was suicidal or successful.

...to be continued...

Well first good luck to both of you.

Now some questions

1. you mentioned your hoping this game can go to 1945, so is this " The NO Sudden Death " campaign ?.

2. All other rules in the manual are a "GO", so Amphib landings are in ?

3. I'm old fashion and use the standard unit icons so a curiosity question, would you be using " The NATO symbol mode " or something different and why are your IDs not showing ?.

regards

Thanks.

1. No we are playing SD.

2. Yes.

3. Yes, I am using my board war game font mod, my board war game custom counter and symbols mod and I was zoomed out. I only use NATO counters.

Here is some shots showcasing that.

It looks a little grainy cause I have to scale the images since I have 5k monitor.

Some direct links:


https://i.imgur.com/SBqJ3Md.png

https://i.imgur.com/qWWE56d.png

Here is some screenshots from the German side using my custom fonts and counters and symbols:


Direct link:
https://i.imgur.com/5mxft0S.jpg

Scaled image:

Hi Zovs, how did the air phase go... I fear for your bombers

Glad you asked @KenchiSulla, your fear was founded.

Air Execution Summary



Well it wasn't as good as I thought, lol. Lets examine a few things.

I ran (way too many) a total of 12,519 sorties and lost 1,071 aircraft and had 175 damaged while only knocking out 58 Axis and damaging 19.

Breaking down the numbers.

Total sorties to losses only amounted to about 8.55%. But the difference of Soviet aircraft lost to Axis is 179% if the math calculations are correct.

Here are the four days of sorties for the SW Front.





Breaking down D1 a little (for reference and learning) I had 646 fighters sortie and lost 5 (or 0.77% loss ratio), I had 750 bombers sortie and lost 19 (or 2.5%). So for D1 its not too bad. I put down as high as +8 and as low as +0 for interdiction yet only managed to knock out 157 men and 13 guns.

D3 was a bit worse, I had 333 fighters sortie and lost 79 (or 23% loss ratio) and 318 bombers sortie and lost 12 (or a 3.77% loss ratio) and the Germans sortied 32 fighters and lost 7 (or a 21% loss ratio). So the net difference is a 8.8% loss ratio favoring the Germans here.

D5 had the worst time of it (I won't do the math), 24 fighters sortie and I lost 19 and 24 bombers sortied and I lost 24 so that was really bad.

Looking over the Western AC Night airfield attacks, these were not very successful, in general each 5 plane mission lost 1-3 planes but did little to no damage to the airfields. Likewise the Day 5(auto) missions had very light (if any losses) but the effect was +0 and at best a +1, so I'll discontinue any 5(auto) missions. Same with the Southern AC.

Here is a screenshot of the Southern AC's Night bombing missions.



So what was my Air Phase damage?



As you can see I lost a total of 1,097 aircraft to 59 Axis.

I think the worst part here was the loss of 833 pilots KIA this turn. It was a risky gamble and I'll have to rethink how best to do this going forward.

Breaking the numbers down:

Total aircraft losses 1,097

(Number loss) Loss ratio's:
Fighters (105): 9.57%
Fighter Bombers (186): 16.95%
Tactical Bombers (48): 4.37%
Level Bombers (696): 63.44%
Torpedo Bombers (36): 3.28%

Loss by type:
A2A (749): 68.27%
Flak (104): 9.48%
Ops (244): 22.24%

The percentages tell it all.

...to be continued...

Ouch...

Could you show a picture of plane types lost (SB2s, Mig etc?)

I had some success with unopposed bomb raids against Railyards (Minsk) in daylight (DB3, IL4 and TB3s). Then I became ambitious and made several raids from center to south and I lost 550 of the 650 committed bombers, mostly against well protected targets. What I mean by that:

- When a bomb raid is successful and damaging, no more raids are sent after the first day (AI call)
- When a bomb raid is intercepted and destroyed, the AI keeps sending new raids - as instructed

What I would do differently next time when planning airbase and railyard raids: Set it to a single day of action and 1 raid max - then you do not reinforce failure.....

Sure, here is my aircraft losses thus far:

Ground Phase

Weather
Weather is clear.

Reinforcements
The Turn Summary indicated I had a lot.

The CR for the Soviets does not have a way to sort by any of the fields (IIRC like how the Axis do), for example I could not sort the To column and instead had to use the filter. Also, there does not seem to be a way (for either side to sort by turn, I think especially for the Soviets that would be useful).

Soviet Reserves
1x Mech Corps (69%)
1x Tank Division (78%)
1x Mech Division (72%)
18x Rifle Divisions
1x Motorcycle Regiment
Plus sundry support elements
5x Air Groups

Transcaucasus
1x Rifle Division

Map
3x Tank Divisions
1x Mech Division
21x Rifle Divisions
2x Mech Corps
6x Rifle Corps
4x Armies

Mess Fixing
Too much to do to list or write up everything. But in summation moving all units in the pockets to either irritate the Axis, bunch up near airfields or attempt to break out. Units outside of the pockets to either help free their trapped comrades (highly unlikely since HLYA did a spectacular job of protecting that aspect), form some kind of a defense, or regroup near key locations. Sorry I know its pretty vague but when you have been sliced, diced and chopped up there is only so much you can do.

Based on some excellent advice from some folks I did transfer 20th Army to Western Front and reassigned 20th Army from Remezov to Tolbukhin and also transferred all the artillery with low morale (50) to the Soviet Reserves (31 units) and or STAVKA (37) to build up for a snowy day. There are 30 artillery units that are frozen for now and 15 that are isolated (and will be lost).

End of Turn Overview

Not much to say, everything is in shambles. More on turn 2.

OOB:



...to be continued...

ORIGINAL: Zovs

....
Not much to say, everything is in shambles. More on turn 2.

....

probably the best summary of the opening turn from a Soviet POV that I have read on the forum [:)]

NOTES
We upgraded to version 1.02.16 Beta.

Turn 2 - June 29, 1941

Turn Summary


Reinforcements
77 Ground and 98 Air.

Friendly Losses
622446 men (up by 406,797 from last turn), 9,702 guns (up 5,288 from last turn), 3,966 AFVs (up 2,687 from last turn) and 1,258 aircraft (down 3,020 from last turn) lost.

OB Changes
Down 301k in men, 7,6k in guns, 3,1k in AFVs and 1,2k in aircraft.

TBs looks good except for AFVs and aircraft.

Logistics
Trucks in unit is short by 62,978.
Trucks in Depots and Pool look okay for now (not sure how the Soviets trucks situation runs), seems a lot in repair.
Supply tons received is down 3,716, ammo received and men received seem okay. The Tons Dif is not defined in the manual from what I can tell, but it has the fuel icons, anyone know?

Combat Unit Alerts
Have 265 on map units, of which 77 or low supply, 5 Isolated, 53 understrength, 84 unready nd 9 depleted.

Events
Nothing interesting.

Logistics Phase Report
I like to view this first (especially as the Axis) as it tells me a lot of info.

Freight
Generally overall looks good.

Replacement
184 damaged AFVs returned to the pool.
41 damaged AFVs were not repairable.

Rename
14th Rifle Corps to Coastal Group Corps

Arrival
9 IAP transferred to Reserves.
4x PVO IAD disbanded.
I'll go into the arrivals more later.

Leaders


Maybe he stepped on a landmine, wrecked his car or someone shot him on accident?

Upgrade
Various small upgrades, nothing special.

Supply
220 trucks have been lost during the campaign due to unit movement (the Germans are worse at driving, lol).

1,057 trucks were repaired and returned to the logistics pool.

Production
Oh, the Axis never see this!
40,000 trucks were mobilized!

This is not so good, 10 listings of Isolated Manpower Factories (total of 457).

I'll have to keep an eye on factories and see how well they do. Posting this for reference later.

Air Planning Phase

Well bombing cows (as HLYA so lovingly put it) had its good and bad, but lets see if we can mix things up a bit differently this week.

Just left everyone on GS, put all the depleted units into Reserve.

Nothing to see here folks.

Air Execution Summary

With everything on GS, I still managed to loose 6 aircraft out of 192 sorties, not sure where the sorties were to.

ORIGINAL: loki100

ORIGINAL: Zovs

....
Not much to say, everything is in shambles. More on turn 2.

....

probably the best summary of the opening turn from a Soviet POV that I have read on the forum [:)]

[:D]

Thank you, I'll be here all through the war, lol but its so true shambles...

Turn 2 is done. But I need to step away for the evening. I'll post the ground phase tomorrow.

ORIGINAL: Zovs

Air Planning Phase

Well bombing cows (as HLYA so lovingly put it) had its good and bad, but lets see if we can mix things up a bit differently this week.

Just left everyone on GS, put all the depleted units into Reserve.

Nothing to see here folks.

Air Execution Summary

With everything on GS, I still managed to loose 6 aircraft out of 192 sorties, not sure where the sorties were to.

I am curious, for GS, would targeting specific units be more effective versus letting the AI pick and choose?

I don’t let the AI choose anything. For GS I selected which and who supported what.

I don’t let the AI choose anything. For GS I selected which and who supported what.

Thanks. I mixed up Ground Support will Ground Attack.