How to make the game playable

[chuckfourth]

Heres a summary of what I think would make WITE 2 playable. I've covered all this in detail in previous posts.

Get rid of the first winter surprise rule.

German capabilities were no different on week 1 than week 2. What actually was different on week 1 was that about a third of the Russian troops were caught in their barracks on day one.

So the German values should be left standard on week 1 (surprise rule removed) and the Russian attack and defence value decreased by about one third on turn one.

The unjustifyable surprise rule doesnt correspond to anything in reality. It a quick easy fix covering up that the German units are underrated and the Russian units are overrated, or that the game mechanism is faulty.

The Germans used the amount of supply required to fight forward. IF the Russian retreats supply requirements should drop significantly.
Up until mud arrives the Germans should be able to move supply 300 miles from railheads BEFORE distance penalties are applied.

German could and did live off the land. So...
Large supply bonuses need to be delivered to the Germans every time they capture a city.
For example best fodder for horses is fresh grass. USSR is full of grass Russian horses eat it to. Fodder should be removed from supply calculations until winter.

There needs to be a priority supply button added to each unit same as refit button. So the German player can choose where to send his supply rather than distributing it (wasting it) where it isnt needed.

Rail repair rates are way below what was acheived historically.

Appreciable partisan activity doesn't start until about 6 months into the operation. Restricted to forested areas, not cities.

German report series The soviet partisan movement 1941-1944 says this
Road from Minsk to Moscow qualifies as a US "superhighway"
USSR contains 2400 miles of asphalt road. 64200 miles altogether.
USSR contains 60000 miles of railroad 16000 miles of this is doubletracked. 15% was heavy capacity. On page 6 of this book are the details as to where this quality line ran.
This book also contains maps which don't correspond to what the game has. Especially it has large dense wooded areas in front of Moscow and around Bryansk and Polotsk these don't appear on your map.

Artillery allocation for attacks is not random/haphazard it is always there as planned.

Some of these issues may have been fixed already, I haven't bothered with this game since my last post in the forum. Personally because of the Supply nerfing I feel I bought a $80 lemon (WITE 1). Also having various forum members try to bully me into silence with the blessings of the "moderators" didn't help either.

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: chuckfourth

....

I haven't bothered with this game since my last post in the forum. Personally because of the Supply nerfing I feel I bought a $80 lemon (WITE 1)..

Good, you can stop bleating on about it then. No game is perfect for every one.

[chaos45]

I think you need to read more history and actually learn how atrocious the German supply network was in 1941 after basically the axis of Pskov/Smolensk/Kiev.

Additionally no German horses could not live off the land as you say, they were a different breed of horse from the Russian breeds= why many died off and the Germans started using as many Soviet horses as they could capture/steal in the winter of 1941+

I would actually say in fact Soviet units are much, much underrated after the surprise turn and the combat system much to gentle on German losses in general compared to historical.

Many historians now note after Soviet archives have been opened that German generals overcompensated/overestimated their victories and capabilities vice the Soviets to bumnp up their street cred to not look bad and get employment with the western allies after the war as advisors.

Again you need to study the Eastern front more to get a true appreciation of how tuned the game is. In all reality it gives the German player a much larger than historical chance of success to make it a game and not a historical simulation.

[Hanny]

Your not looking at WiTE 2 surprise rule it appears, supply is food etc, you need the same intake per day if you fight or flight, ergo, your posting from both ignorance of the game supply system and actual history. Or for that matter WITE in its current form either.

It takes around 8 hours of daylight grass grazing to get the same intake as 12 lbs of grain plus dry fodder given at the end of the working day, guess which method the worlds armies have used, the ones spending most of the daylight waiting for horses to feed, we’re those lacking the technology or means to bring food to the horse, and took the horse to the food, and that stopped centuries before. Example WBTS Bragg at Missionary Ridge, sent his Art horses to graze as local grass was used up, and could not move his Art when attacked, Union attack broke his lines and captured most of it as it was imobolised and was useless as it was on the top of the mountain to bombard the city, and could not R.E. deeply to mil crests to stop the uphill charge, QM records of the War show how important horse fodder was to an Army of that age, almost a third of the QM budget was to procure and transport fodder, just as QM records explain the Germany Armies reliance of bringing fodder to the horse and the logistical burden of doing it by rail in there Age.

Edger Howells book ( which on line for free)you referenced, US super highway refers to when it was written, in that trucks had overtaken railways as the principle freight mover in the USA, ie over 50% of freight was hauled by trucks, SU in 1940 it was 2% see Hunter, using Soviet freight records. Howelll goes on to give German best guess number values for roads in Russia, made in 1938, when we know these numbers are inaccurate as we have the 1940 road mileage, again see Hunter.
, ditto rail length.

The most likely reason the Pre War German maps don’t match the in game map is due to use of SU maps for the in game map, rather than pre war best guess German maps that were inaccurate, you know, like pretty much you have ever posted.

If you look at numbers of players,( steam charts for instance, you can see the game retains its player base, so it appeals to those with an interest in and understanding of history) and has increased it every year since launch, so losing you was to be expected, as your not the target audience.

[ajds]

And that, my friends, is how you respond to a troll. +1.

[joelmar]

Holy Moly!!! [:D]