WitE 2

[Simon Edmonds]

Was reading the comments on major river crossings and bridges. I recently finished Glantz's Barbarossa Derailed which touched on Guderian's crossing of the Dneipr. The engineers practically strung the pontoons overnight. Note that the pontoons had to stay there until either the previous bridge was repaired or a new one was built. As the amount of bridges the Axis had to fix rose and the resources they had to fix them with fell this meant that the pontoon crossings stayed there increasingly longer. Why couldn't the Axis simply erect new crossings to retreat across the Dneipr in 1943? They lost most of them in the Stalingrad disaster the previous winter.
The developers should be able to check through the records to find how the the bridging resources capable of crossing major rivers were attached to the HQs. Personally I don't think that either side should be able to dance back and forth across major and significant rivers the way they currently do. As the story is told one German panzer division failed to reach a critical battle at the battle of Kursk due to little more than a deep creek and a bridge they could get across.
A thought on the subject of capturing bridges. It should be possible in a hasty attack (on the fly) but not in a deliberate attack.

[miv792]

Rescue pilots will be implemented? WITP:AE was implemented.

[Capitaine]

Absolutely stunning map Red Lancer. Now this is a real War in the East simulation map worthy of the name. I'm so looking forward to this new version.

[thedoctorking]

Nice map, great improvement over WitW. The map will cover all of Europe and North Africa? So modders can get to work to create 1939-45?

[xhoel]

The map looks stunning, looking forward to WITE 2

[thedoctorking]

Yes, I think this is a good point. Maybe some sort of construction task to build bridges and a lesser one to repair? And then include some construction engineer elements and perhaps on-map construction engineer units that can do these tasks? I think it would take at least a week to build a bridge across the Dnepr or Volga that could carry tanks.

[Zorch]

Forgive me if this has already been asked. Will there be a WitW 2 to go with WitE 2? Or will any changes to WitW be in a regular patch?

[zakblood]

might be a better question to ask,

and it's when will WITE meet WITW and roll into Gary Grigsby's The World At War 1939 to 1945[:D]

or

Gary Grigsby's World at War: A World Divided 2

[RedLancer]

ORIGINAL: Zorch

Forgive me if this has already been asked. Will there be a WitW 2 to go with WitE 2? Or will any changes to WitW be in a regular patch?

Perhaps.....it takes 3-4 years to develop these games and WitE2 isn't done yet. I don't believe anyone has a definitive answer.

What I can say definitively is one of our scenarios has been created to dovetail with WitW and is being tested alongside WitW so you can play East and West in concert across both games.

[martinsmit]

very beautiful map, please, write more news about the game

I think it would take at least a week to build a bridge across the Dnepr or Volga that could carry tanks.

Germans in 1941 in the region of Kremenchug built a 16-ton pontoon bridge across the Dnieper in two days

[thedoctorking]

ORIGINAL: martinsmit

very beautiful map, please, write more news about the game

I think it would take at least a week to build a bridge across the Dnepr or Volga that could carry tanks.

Germans in 1941 in the region of Kremenchug built a 16-ton pontoon bridge across the Dnieper in two days

16 tons is plenty for trucks but can't carry a tank. PzIVH was 25 tonnes, PzIIIJ was 23. And you'd want to have more than one at a time on a bridge if you were going to move a Panzer Army across the river in less than a week.

[Searry]

ORIGINAL: thedoctorking

ORIGINAL: martinsmit

very beautiful map, please, write more news about the game

I think it would take at least a week to build a bridge across the Dnepr or Volga that could carry tanks.

Germans in 1941 in the region of Kremenchug built a 16-ton pontoon bridge across the Dnieper in two days

16 tons is plenty for trucks but can't carry a tank. PzIVH was 25 tonnes, PzIIIJ was 23. And you'd want to have more than one at a time on a bridge if you were going to move a Panzer Army across the river in less than a week.

Is the bridge a 16 ton bridge or is 16 tons a max that it can hold before sinking?

[Telemecus]

The Soviet PMP floating bridge of world war two could carry 60 tons and be erected to cross a river 390 metres wide in hours (you can even google videos of it)...

IF you have the bridging equipment there and they are not under fire.

I think there was never a problem with bridging large rivers in world war two - indeed they became very good at it through practise. The problem was always getting control of the other side first. And getting a big enough bridgehead to keep the bridging process from direct fire. From most of the historical ToEs I have seen every motorised division in every army had a heavy bridging unit. So if it was not lost in action it would usually be at most half an hours drive away.

[thedoctorking]

I remember in a game about the Market Garden offensive, the bridging units were key. You could bridge a minor river in a turn (8 hours), but a major river took a day IIRC. And the bridging units were vulnerable and started out far from where they needed to be. But for that operation, capturing intact bridges over major rivers was key to victory. Same thing with the US offensive across the Rhine - capturing the Ludendorff Bridge intact was key to 3rd Army's move across the Rhine - the other armies were a week or ten days behind because they had to build bridges. And the Germans ultimately destroyed the Ludendorff Bridge but by that time the US engineers had deployed several pontoon bridges.

At the scale of this game, don't know if it is worth getting to this level of granularity but certainly commanders at the Army Group and Front levels were concerned about holding or destroying bridges. Having to build a bridge versus being able to cross an undestroyed one, and even being able to repair a damaged bridge versus starting anew made a big difference to the speed that motorized forces could move across major rivers.

[Telemecus]

I think what thedoctorking says is valid - but the keypoint is conditions in a battlezone. Famously in market garden one bridging unit was held in a traffic jam for hours.

In a peacetime practise you can create large pontoon bridges across large rivers very quickly. But the reality of wartime is they never matched those timings - infact there were many multiples of it. So abstracting creating a bridge under even indirect fire to a day or even days once you include all the mitigating factors is fair. And why capturing a bridge is preferable.

I know some of this discussion is about having extra movement point costs for crossing major rivers per se - and there I think it is unnecessary. The extra movement points needed to cross a river in an attack, or into the ZOC of an enemy unit I think does a good job of reflecting that reality when under fire?

[Searry]

ORIGINAL: thedoctorking

I remember in a game about the Market Garden offensive, the bridging units were key. You could bridge a minor river in a turn (8 hours), but a major river took a day IIRC. And the bridging units were vulnerable and started out far from where they needed to be. But for that operation, capturing intact bridges over major rivers was key to victory. Same thing with the US offensive across the Rhine - capturing the Ludendorff Bridge intact was key to 3rd Army's move across the Rhine - the other armies were a week or ten days behind because they had to build bridges. And the Germans ultimately destroyed the Ludendorff Bridge but by that time the US engineers had deployed several pontoon bridges.

At the scale of this game, don't know if it is worth getting to this level of granularity but certainly commanders at the Army Group and Front levels were concerned about holding or destroying bridges. Having to build a bridge versus being able to cross an undestroyed one, and even being able to repair a damaged bridge versus starting anew made a big difference to the speed that motorized forces could move across major rivers.

Market Garden was a terrible operation from the start. They planned a whole corps moving via a single road.

[topeverest]

+1 on map

[topeverest]

I haven't read this entire thread, so if this has been covered - - - apologize in advance

Rather than a firm 3 unit hex limit without consideration of the force itself, what about either a troop limit or a declining unit participation rate in combat as troop density increases past a certain point. I also like the idea cited above by Michael T on lightswitch ZOC vs gradient ZOC.

Also, will the game stay IGOUGO or transition into WEGO?

[MrBlizzard]

Can we ask Santa for the game? [:D]

[Capitaine]

ORIGINAL: topeverest

I haven't read this entire thread, so if this has been covered - - - apologize in advance

Rather than a firm 3 unit hex limit without consideration of the force itself, what about either a troop limit or a declining unit participation rate in combat as troop density increases past a certain point. I also like the idea cited above by Michael T on lightswitch ZOC vs gradient ZOC.

Also, will the game stay IGOUGO or transition into WEGO?

A bridge too far. What, are you trying to give devs and players nightmares?