MemoryLeak wrote: Thu Oct 20, 2022 5:02 pm
I bought this back in January and still haven't played a turn yet. Going to try again. Many many hours spent reading posts, the manual and watching videos. Still can't make sense out of most of it. Air war, Su's, rail repair system and Supply are still a complete mystery to me.
Is there one place to find out what all the abbreviations and numbers in a thousand different parenthesis mean? And what each thing refers to? The commanders report might as well be written in Chinese.
I'll try to insert a very minor example and does anyone know precisely what the abbrvs and things in Parenthesis mean?
And if there is one place where I could download and print what each number in every parenthesis means or refers to?
Screenshot 2022-10-20 093531.jpg
I totally understand were you are coming from. It seems what may be holding you back is something analogous to -"don't let the 'perfect' be the enemy of the 'good'."
1) To start, I would let go of the details and just start painting with broad strokes. (e.g., what is the main objective of the scenario or Grand Campaign I'm playing?). -to some extent you can still "beer and pretzels" this game. Let the air be handled by the AI.
2) Support units- can be transferred around the map (between units) to help beef up your attacks in certain areas - and some have special abilities (e.g., Pioneer battalions give big bonuses when attacking heavy field fortifications and urban defenses).
3) Rail system (and its repair) and supply are related, as you might imagine. Click your "N" key (don't worry about the colors that appear for now) and that will show you the farthest reaches of your rail line and which depots are active. Basically repaired rail line shows you the farthest potential extent for freight (aka supply) to travel by rail-- and depots (which you can also build as needed) represent designated areas for that freight to be dropped off and accumulated. (Depots can be built on any rail line- but only start accumulating supplies if located on a repaired rail line/ you want the depots that are closest to your units to be set at priority level "4".)
In most cases, if your army is advancing , then you need to repair the rail as close as possible to your current frontlines so that you can manually build depots as close as possible to said frontlines (specifically the combat units on the frontlines). For the Germans- units designated "FBD" will let you repair rails manually during your movement turn.
Historically and simulated/tracked by the game, the Germans only had so many trucks (and only a limited capacity to build them)- so you need to take into account the truck travel distance of supply from the depots to the final destination (the unit)- because ultimately that costs wear and tear on the the trucks (called vehicles in the game)- and has tactical implications on fighting capacity and movement points of individual units and also strategic implications on running out of the necessary amount of trucks - which could jeopardize the whole show- (i.e., bring an offensive to a complete halt because of a supply crisis occurring). -to summarize- trucks are the final link in the supply chain- between the the depots and the units- and the longer the distance/and terrible terrain- the worse the results.
4) There are a lot of examples with a parenthesis beside it- there is no master sheet on what they mean- but it is intuitive- it usually means something like "what is available now - and in parenthesis shows what is the potential" - or something like that - In your specific screen shot- that JU52 squadron (Zbv 106) has 8 working planes out of 44 total. This is meant to show that there are 36 planes on the airfield that are currently being repaired. (this squadron may have participated in the previous Crete operation (Heraklion) and is still recovering).
5) The CR (commanders report) can be intimidating, but is absolutely essential to get a handle on for efficiencies sake. For example- using the CR you can easily/conveniently count/find out how may total German pioneer battalions are on the in the eastern front (52) during the 41 Grand Campaign and how many are in other theaters. This info can allow you to make plans on how you distribute these particular SUs around the front. but the CR has much more utility than that- but it will take time and effort to learn. Once you get the hang of it, it will be your friend.
In essence you can manipulate the CR to show you info/allow you to do things that would otherwise take you 10 times longer to accomplish/figure out. Another example is when the AI does air attacks on you. By using the CR you can locate where those attacks occurred and the results- if you did this by just looking at the map - you might miss info- or just be confused. Of course, not knowing where and what type of air attacks occurred is not necessarily a show stopper in single player games. In addition it allows you to change/ manipulate things en masse- instead of "one by one(ing)" them on the map, which can be beyond tedious, especially on the Grand Campaign scenarios.
6) long story short, as you play you will begin to remember learn these things- and soon it will be quite simple-- its just that short hump players need to get over.
