New S42 Campaign!

[Ricky B]

Perhaps a better solution is to simply not have the Russian supply increase at all. The way it is currently, it just gets significantly higher as the campaign proceeds, which is probably contrary to what needs to occur. Having it remain the same throughout and with the use of VST means that their supplies will begin to suffer as their lines are stretched, and the Germans will have better supplies in the area of the Winter Storm counter attack simply because they are closer to their own SSs, and the Russians are very far away from their own. This seems logical to me.

That may work Ed, my concern would only be that if it is high enough for the first couple of days and stays at that level, then even without bumps to a higher level, the Soviets may have enough supply to continue attacking the pocket as soon as it forms, rather than having an operational pause as they struggled to push supply forward. I had run some tests I setup during a team game of the SS to the Rescue variant where the Soviet artillery seemed to be firing constantly. I found that with the map edge supply set to something like 110 or 120 (after 1-2 increases), the lowest supply level for the Soviet troops as I set them up in my test around a possible pocket was still up around 85, but most were in the high 90s on the north side of the pocket.

Now this is going back awhile, so I may be slightly off on parts but I do know that about half the hexes I tested were close to 100 for a supply level. So if you set the supply to start at 80 and leave it, the Soviets would still be close to maybe 60 in most areas, with the worst being at 40. This may work the way you want it, I would just like to see the supply levels at the pocket drop to more like a 20-40 range than 40-60, for awhile, then climb back up to the desired range, 40-60 or whatever that level might be.

I guess to summarize I don't think the VST drops quite fast enough along its route, so I suggest an enforced drop off for awhile, then return, rather than leaving it at a single level the entire time, allowing too much action for that week or however long. There could still be action, but historically there were only a few drives against the pocket at first, and none of them were major offensives, so it should be limited through supply problems for awhile.

Rick

[Volcano Man]

Perhaps a better solution is to simply not have the Russian supply increase at all. The way it is currently, it just gets significantly higher as the campaign proceeds, which is probably contrary to what needs to occur. Having it remain the same throughout and with the use of VST means that their supplies will begin to suffer as their lines are stretched, and the Germans will have better supplies in the area of the Winter Storm counter attack simply because they are closer to their own SSs, and the Russians are very far away from their own. This seems logical to me.

That may work Ed, my concern would only be that if it is high enough for the first couple of days and stays at that level, then even without bumps to a higher level, the Soviets may have enough supply to continue attacking the pocket as soon as it forms, rather than having an operational pause as they struggled to push supply forward. I had run some tests I setup during a team game of the SS to the Rescue variant where the Soviet artillery seemed to be firing constantly. I found that with the map edge supply set to something like 110 or 120 (after 1-2 increases), the lowest supply level for the Soviet troops as I set them up in my test around a possible pocket was still up around 85, but most were in the high 90s on the north side of the pocket.

Now this is going back awhile, so I may be slightly off on parts but I do know that about half the hexes I tested were close to 100 for a supply level. So if you set the supply to start at 80 and leave it, the Soviets would still be close to maybe 60 in most areas, with the worst being at 40. This may work the way you want it, I would just like to see the supply levels at the pocket drop to more like a 20-40 range than 40-60, for awhile, then climb back up to the desired range, 40-60 or whatever that level might be.

I guess to summarize I don't think the VST drops quite fast enough along its route, so I suggest an enforced drop off for awhile, then return, rather than leaving it at a single level the entire time, allowing too much action for that week or however long. There could still be action, but historically there were only a few drives against the pocket at first, and none of them were major offensives, so it should be limited through supply problems for awhile.

Rick

Yeah, I think I will go that route and see what happens. It is probably not the best solution but it will keep (as you say) the soviets from getting > 100% supply from their map edge SSs around the pocket. One other idea might be to lower the Russian SS levels that are near the pocket map edge themselves, but keep the ones on the shoulders of the pocket high. This say, it won't place the supply levels at the pocket location in the 90s. Hmm... we might be onto something. ;)

[Volcano Man]

Yep, thats the answer. It is not too difficult to do, the SS immediately east of Stalingrad must be set to the Russian global supply level (75%), and the others near it must be set to 80% (an 80% must be added just south of it @ 249,171). The ones along the north edge (one added at 230,0) can remain at 90% and this all ensures that the supply level on the front line is roughly 75% at start, which is the global value (which is consequently the levels that all the Russian map edge SS are at in all the sub scenarios too). Of course VST must be used to get the intended effect, otherwise the supplies for all Russians on the map will be 90% as long as they can trace a line of supply to the northern SSs.

Other than that, I think it will have the best effect rather than going to the extreme with all other avenues that avoid the primary issue -- that he soviets had > 100% supply which allowed them to easily reduce the pocket with artillery fire. With 60% supply around the pocket, and even less to the south, it will make their actions slower going and more deliberate.

[von Nev]

I made some changes to the scenario. Here they are. Interesting, I made these changes before reading the rest of the discussion between Volcano Man and Ricky and I landed in nearly the same spot.

- Reduced Russian arty setup to 50 from 60
- Changed all the units of all the panzer divisions in Stalingrad to start with "Low Fuel"
- Lowered Russian supply pretty dramatically after the historic closing of the pocket. Their supply goes down 40 points total in stages beginning on Nov 26. It is raised by 20 points also in stages beginning on Dec 10 to Dec 15.
- Raised the German supply point on the bottom map edge that supplies Winterstorm to 100 from 90.
- Reduced the German supply points in Stalingrad the city from 30 to 25
- Eliminated one of the one-time 5 point German supply reductions. Now there are three 5 point German supply reductions for a total of 15.
- Changed some of the Romanian bunkers along the northern flank to trenches to make sure the Russians can break through within a historic timeframe

The official and most up to date file will be located in the Stalingrad forum of the scenario thread. I am putting the file there so I don't have to change it in two places.

[Dog Soldier]

Here is a link to the thread in the mod forum for Marty's S42 sceanrio and updates.

Von Nev S42 Campaign

Dog Soldier

[Marquo]

Guys,

I think you are changing the supply is an ahistorical manner. The Soviets supply situaton was robust whereas the Axis situation dwindled by the day; the charts of air dropped tonnage corroborate this.

If fact, historical accounts of plans of the never executed breakout paint the picture of a mob of otherwise doomed men striking out across the steppes on foot to link up with Winterstorm - without supporting vehicles because of no gas.

Maybe another solution would be to increase the vehicle breakdown parameter for the Axis tanks to simulate mice chewing on the electrical harnesses and the tanks running out of gas.

This will require a OOB trick - the armored units in the pocket will have to be named differently from those arriving as reinforcement i.e Winterstorm; so a Pz IV in the Stalingrad Pocket will be called Pz IVp whereas the Winterstorm Pz IV will be called Pz IVw - that way the all the parameters could be the same except vehicle breakdown.

Of course the above would cease to be a work around if Winterstorm succeeded...and the Pz IVps broke out or the Pz IVws got trapped in the pocket...in which case the players could change the OOB at that point to reflect the different status of the unit.... :whis:

Marquo :stir:

[NicholasBell]

Hey, I just wanted to clarify that when I wrote of excessive Soviet artillery flexibility, I was not speaking so much of moving around as their ability to fire at any and everything as if the Soviets had the integrated communication abilities like the US. As being discussed, slowing down movement, lowering the probability of setup and adjusting supply are fine in addressing the problem in some form. But the real problem is more the ability to call fire where ever needed - they just didn't operate like that. Without going to phased game turns and introducing player enforced non-firing of artillery above divisional level, that just isn't possible in the game engine.

And just to make clear, I don't want to reduce the effectiveness of Soviet artillery when employed in a historical manner. Once established, they should have the ability to blow holes in the German lines as they did. Too bad the "one shot weapon" attribute can't easily be utilized - and reset as needed.

Let me toss out a few other random thoughts you can shoot holes in:

1. Reorganize the artillery so there are limited numbers of integral HQ's acting as FO's which would be the only units capable of calling artillery. This would not solve the excessive firing capability, but it would at least inhibit artillery firing all over the place "as needed" (as opposed to the historical reality "as planned") to areas within LOS of the FO.

2. Lower the soft attack value dramatically of non-divisional arty units, and increase the stockpile fire bonus tremendously to offset the lower values. Hopefully players would rather wait for the stockpiling than plink away with crippled units. Wouldn't work against the AI though...

Couple with some of the other ideas discussed, these might give the Soviet player the powerful tools needed to recreate historical results at a slower, more realistic pace.

Nick

[Volcano Man]

I think you are changing the supply is an ahistorical manner. The Soviets supply situaton was robust whereas the Axis situation dwindled by the day; the charts of air dropped tonnage corroborate this.

Well, no actually. Who says that 75% (its starting value) is not "robust"? It all comes down to interpretation. 75% is certainly nothing to sneeze at, and is higher than the starting Axis supply level. To put it into perspective, 75% is higher than both sides supply level in Budapest '45, and is also higher than the Russian supply level in Minsk '44. Also, by the end of the Stalingrad campaign, the Axis supply will go down to 50% (30% in the pocket), while the Russians will remain at 75%. I just don't see how that could not be considered "robust" to be honest. What then is "robust"?

So what it comes down to is, subjectivity, but, and most importantly, it comes down to game play effects. All this talk about how the Russians can run over the Stalingrad pocket so soon, well, to me the most elegant solution is to do something about the Russian's 90-100% supply levels.

In reality *nothing* was really changed here, which is the beauty of it. What I mean is, and as I hinted before, if you look at all the sub scenarios, their map edge supply levels are set at 75% which is the global supply value in the campaign. All I did was change the map edge supply sources in the campaign to where the local supply level is 75% by the time it reaches the front line (with VST on), so it is not like they have anything less than was obviously intended. The problem came in where the 90% supply sources on the map edge, for use with VST, was too close to the Stalingrad city itself, so the supplies in that specific area were 90% while the other areas of the front were between 60-80%. With a little creativity and variance in the supply source levels it was put in line *with the existing (stock) sub scenario supply levels*. Now whether someone thinks the supply situation should be 80%, or 85% -- what matters is the end result which is the addressing of an a-historical game play situation of the Russians being too powerful in the reduction of the pocket, all else does not matter.

Now it is true that I removed the Russian gradual supply level increase in the recent _Alt update because I felt that they don't need it, which seems obvious given how S42 has played out and which makes logical sense to me since the Axis level drops gradually (which means that the Allied level will, in comparison, rise even further above the Axis as the campaign progresses). I admit that might have been "too far". The safer solution would probably be just to adjust the map edge supply sources to match the sub scenarios (like what was done), but leave the supply variation increases. Oh well, only time will tell. ;)

Additional: I just realized that part of the problem is that we are talking about two different scenarios in this thread (which is entirely my fault). I think von Nev made similar changes but changed the Russian supply level so that it drops, then rises again. So maybe you were referring to that. Anyway, it is my fault for hijacking the thread in the first place and causing any confusion. :(

[von Nev]

I think you are changing the supply is an ahistorical manner. The Soviets supply situaton was robust whereas the Axis situation dwindled by the day; the charts of air dropped tonnage corroborate this.

I agree with Volcano Man. I think the supply is closer to reality.

The German supply in the pocket falls dramatically. Once the pocket is closed the German supply only comes from the airfields. They start the game at 50 and then are reduced by 15 over the course of the game length. That is 35 by game's end. This level should keep the Germans in the pocket supplied but if the Germans venture too far out of the pocket using the airfields as their supply lines then they will start to be affected by low supply. If the Russians never close the pocket then the German supply level around Stalingrad should be coming from outside the pocket because net net it will have a higher level even assuming VST is used.

The Russians start with supply sources in the 85 to 90 range. In my scenario they go down by 40 from Nov 26 to Nov 30. So the Russians are in the 45 to 50 range. This will reduce the effectiveness of Russian arty and Russian armor mobility. This should help the Germans keep the pocket intact. Beginning on Dec 10 the Russians go up a total of 20 points to get them to 65 to 70 range at the end of the game. If I continue this thought through the remainder of the "campaign" assuming that the scenario goes to Jan 13, I would increase the supply to near 90 to 100 by that date. By that date the Russian supply situation would be good and they would crush the pocket as they did historically.

[Marquo]

Ed,

I did not mean to imply that your values were robust or not - I was refering to the historical situation, not the game or your/Marty's solutions.

I agree that play balance may dictate taking some liberty with history and empathize with Marty's efforts; however I disagree that the Soviet supply situation deteriorated from Nov 26 to Nov 30. I think that increasing vehicle breakdown for the Axis will simulate degradation of Axis armor capabilities; as for the Soviets - well, they won; if anything lowering the morale of the Soviet armor may work to lessen the impact of their onslaught.

Let's not forget that there was a fearful slaughter of Axis units; they were cut off, surrounded, unsupplied and frankly the mythology of festung Stalingrad is just that. These were not very cohesive units capable of an organized offense, and the Soviet meatgrinder could only kill so fast which[/align] is why the seige lasted as long as it did.

Marquo :stir: