TOAW III AAR on Overlord '44

[larryfulkerson]

So um......hey you guys, how about an AAR using the Overlord '44
scenario. Why that one? Well, TOAW III is about to be released *soon*
and this is early June so.... But I'm open to suggestions, so if there's a
scenario you'd rather see done lemme know and I'll consider *it* as well.

A PLAN, gotta have a plan. Can't have a decent attack without a plan.
D-Day was the invasion of France to get a foothold on the continent of
Europe, destroy the Germans, or at least push 'em back into Germany and,
oh yeah, win the war.

In Overlord '44 you gotta capture the ports before re-construction can
begin so you can use them for supply so obviously we have to include the
stipulation that the ports are to be captured as part of our plan(s). I'm
gonna split the pictures into pieces less than 1Meg so I can put 'em on a
server somewhere so I can show you rather than trying to describe the
plan.

Here's the NorthWest Quadrant:



I have drawn yellow circles around the drop zones and the green arrows
show the approx. axis of advance. Notice I plan to widen the beachhead
first, to capture the ports and give more leg room for the troops to follow
the first wave.

It's important to capture Cherbourg as soon as possible so I've circled it in
red. The paratroopers are to head west to cut the lines of Axis supply to
the peninsula.

Here's the plan for the British:



They are to capture the coastal ports and most importantly the city of
Caen.  Note how I have planned to cross the river and approach it from
both the NW and the SE ( if possible ).  The British 6th Airborne are to
capture the bridge and hold it so that the seaborne troops can use it to
cross to the other side of the river.

[larryfulkerson]

But before we load up the paratroops and send the transports outta the harbour we ought
to soften up the beaches a little bit with some ship bombardment and some air strikes.

So where to put the ships? Ideally, the best place to put the ship(s) would be where he
( the ship ) could fire upon a target but he couldn't be reached by the target's fire. So
we need to know the ranges of the targets on the shore.

I've put together a series of charts to show the range of the various shore
guns ( in white on a black field ) to help us position the ships correctly for
the bombardment.

Here the range charts are. First, going from the West to the East:



and the next one:



And in the British zone:



And here's the last one:



 
In theory, we should use the aircraft to target the longest ranged guns so
that the ships can bombard the shorter ranged guns without fear of
getting fired upon.  So now we can begin to move the units.

[JAMiAM]

It should be noted that Larry is using his own personal terrain mod in this series of pictures above. This is NOT what TOAW III looks like.

Larry, please switch over to the standard graphics on the rest of the pictures, so that people can see what the actual game graphics look like.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM

It should be noted that Larry is using his own personal terrain mod in this series of pictures above. This is NOT what TOAW III looks like.

Larry, please switch over to the standard graphics on the rest of the pictures, so that people can see what the actual game graphics look like.

Okie Dokie. I can do that.

[larryfulkerson]

Checking the weather:



we find that there are at least two hexes that have cloudy and/or inclement weather in
them. Are airstrikes on those hexes wasted? I honestly don't know. We need to ask an
expert about that, but in the real world I would expect that the results in those kinds of
conditions would be less than nominal. I think, as an experiment, that I'll go ahead and
order airstrikes on those hexes and just compare the averages in damage to see what
difference it makes.

So here's a list of the targets:

 
There are enough aircraft for each target to be struck by approx. 2 aircraft.

[JAMiAM]

Larry, go ahead and switch to the new graphics that ship with TOAW III, so that the audience can see the tiles in all their splendour and glory. What Larry is showing here are the original TOAW terrain tiles, which also ship with the program, and are easily swapped back and forth with the new terrain, by use of a Start Menu item in the TOAW III program group.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what I propose for the positions of the ships in the NorthWest part
of the map. The larger ships, longer ranged ships can park at 42,25 and
the ships ranged 3 can park at 41,29. That way they have the fewest
shore guns trained on them:



And I found those spots by plotting the beaten zones of the shore guns like this:



So I propose parking these ships thusly:

 

And in the West British Zone we find:



So I propose that the British deploy their ships thusly:



And in the Easternmost British Zone we find:


 
So that the British might consider parking their ships this way:
 
 

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the drop zones looked like for the 82nd and 101st:



Here's what the British 6th Airborne Division looks like after the drop:



So, with everybody moved and ready here's the front line at the start just
before hostilities:

 

After posting such a large picture I just had to post a tiny one.  The softening
up phase cost us 20% of the turn:



Here's what the softening up phase and the paradrops cost us:


 
Some units overran the German defender and didn't have to battle to get
ashore:
 
 

[larryfulkerson]

For the initial attacks I'll set all the aircraft on combat support missions.
Any attacks by the paratroopers will have to be in the last combat round
since they have at most 2 movement points left of their initial 8 and will
therefore eat up all the rounds remaining if they attack.

All the first wave elements got ashore except for three hexes at Omaha beach:



There's 20% of the turn remaining, which means time for one more round.
So obviously, the ships offshore should concentrate on those pillboxes to help the guys get ashore in the next ( last ) round. 

Since this is likely to be the last round and we won't get a chance to
assign the aircraft to interdiction missions again I'm going to assign the
fighters to combat support missions and the bombers to interdiction
missions, now.



Here's a movie showing the moves and final positions of units during the Allied turn 1:

 

[larryfulkerson]

The German pillboxes should concentrate on the embarked units offshore. Here's a German pillbox targeting the most juicy thing within range:



The loss of the German units within range of ships is a forgone
conclusion so I'm setting them at ignore losses to extract as many Allied
losses as I can:

 

Most of the German units are in reserve and can't move and of those that
could move the first three German units that attempted to move were
evaporated due to interdiction so it'd probably be best to wait until night
to move ( then next PM turn ).

I'm just now discovering that what I thought were coastal guns ( that shoot at ships ) are inland nests ( that don't shoot at ships) [ Well, live and learn.  This tells me that I didn't do as good a job on my recon as I ought.]:

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the Allied losses so far:
 

 
If we compare this list with the earlier list we see that the Germans inflicted serious damage on the first wave. 
But then we expected that didn't we?

[larryfulkerson]

It looks like we're only going to get two rounds this turn so I'll show you the moves that took place during the
first round:
 

[larryfulkerson]

As an example of the kinds of situations that come up during battle, here is some regiments of the Big Red One confronting a German regiment that's backed up by a couple of artillery batteries.  I'm thinking that rather than attacking now, tonight ( turn two is a PM turn ), I might ought to wait until morning and call in some air strikes and some ship fire on those batteries to soften 'em up somewhat first:


 
The paratroops of the 101st have cleared the way and the 4th Inf Div is making a night move north along the NE coastal highway on the Carentan peninsula.
 

[larryfulkerson]

During the night of June 5, 1944 the Germans blew up an important bridge:


 
The Germans are putting up a pretty spirited defense of Caen:
 

[larryfulkerson]

Take Note all you Overlord '44 players:  The Allied 5th Corps HQ unit also doubles as a rail repair unit ( with a 1 out of 5 chance to repair ):



Also, Notice how devestated the 29th Inf Div was coming ashore:



This argues strongly for the proposition that the softening up phase last more than one combat round.  Perhaps for a full day ( two full turns ).

The 82nd is stretched thin trying to block three major roads and the 101st is coming across the bridge to the rescue:


 
Here's a movie showing the moves taking place before and during the Allied
turn 3 first combat round:
 

 
.

[larryfulkerson]

The Germans finally got some defenders into Caen and more are on the way:
 

[*Lava*]

Hi!

Noticed on the map that the fields seem to be hex independent.

Does the game not still mesh similiar terrain together (I assume it does looking at the forrests, marsh, etc.), or is this a new feature?

Ray (alias Lava)

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: Lava

Hi!

Noticed on the map that the fields seem to be hex independent.

Does the game not still mesh similiar terrain together (I assume it does looking at the forrests, marsh, etc.), or is this a new feature?

Ray (alias Lava)

It still does. You're looking at an alternate graphics set that we're providing created by one of the users.

[larryfulkerson]

Hay Ray:
 
Um...independent terrain hexes.....I'm not sure that the terrain "meshing" is always successful but I suppose it was intended to be.  One of the wonderful things about TOAW III is that you can make up your own terrain "tiles" and make it look like you want it to look.  I have a collection of MODs that I use ( ordinarily ) when I'm playing TOAW and they can be found here: 
 
http://www.strategyzoneonline.com/forum ... le&id=1125
 
They can be used by the older versions of TOAW ( like COW ) as well, but back up your original graphics files first, is my advice.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a movie showing the Allied moves that happened in turn 4: