Barbarossa PBEM campaing

[seabolt]

I did some more research into micro-scaling this fight, but I'm about to give it up because a serious problem is becoming clear: To give the German side any hope of replicating the historical outcome, much less improving on it, you'd have to lower Soviet skill/morale/experience/leadership settings to the point that no sane SP player would take up their cause. I'm about convinced that the Red units would just have to be nigh unplayable rabble. From a pure assets standpoint, boots on the ground and tanks on the prowl, the Red Army should have kicked the Wehrmacht's teeth in.

Shrinking the fight by 100 makes it easier to visualize, at least for me, so: The start line would be only 240 hexes to begin with. (I was misremembering the front at its mid-war longest in my previous estimate.) That actually would fit at a diagonal on one huge map.

At this scale, you'd model a German infantry corp (3 divisions) as an SP company roughly so:

HQ (Infantry Squad)
3*Infantry Divisions (as platoons), each:
...Infantry Squad
...Infantry Squad
...Scout team (4 man)
...AT team
Engineer Squad
AT section (37mm guns) transported by wagon
Howitzer section (105mm) transported by wagon

That may seem terribly small, but keep in mind that a German division of some 12,000 men only mustered some 2,200 non-scout riflemen. We're not modeling crews, clerks, and cooks here.

The backbone of the attack would be about 23 of these corps. That's about 160 rifle squads supported by 80 scout teams, 80 AT teams, 23 engineer squads, 45 AT guns, and 45 105mm tubes. That actually sounds about right for a 240-hex front, and it's a force that (by game standards) is just bristling with AT capacity.

Of course, the Soviets have a roughly identical force spread out on defense, backed by 13 strongpoints (each representing a scaled-down Fortified Region).

Breaking through at less than 1:1 odds is going to be awfully tough, but then the Germans have their panzer troops. Here's what those would consist of at 1:100 scale: 2 panzer Is, 7 panzer IIs, 1 panzer II flame tank, 2 35Ts, 8 38Ts, 10 panzer IIIs, 4 panzer IVs, 3 StuGs, 1 jagdpanzer, and 2 FO tanks. A platoon consisting of 2 panzers, an infantry squad, and a truck would represent a panzer division.

That's 40 AFVs for the entire front, with only 17 of them really suited for a breakthrough role. Facing about 50 45mm AT guns, 13 strongpoints and *200* Soviet tanks. Granted, most of the Red tanks would be even more craptacular (the T-26)---the defense would begin with only 4 T-34s and a single KV-1---but only the panzer IVs and StuGs can really laugh off the ubiquitious Soviet 45mm light tank gun.

As for all of that AT capacity in the German infantry units, how much of it can keep up with the panzers and support them in their breakthrough role: just about zero. Pushing wagons into the attack in SP models real life pretty accurately ...

As you can see, it models real grim for the Germans, because in real life the Reds were horribly trained, their officers were in the midst of a massive reorganization that probably was over their heads, and their command and control was too deplorable to be modeled here. The only way to model that in SP is to scatter units so that none of them are in contact with their HQ and drastically lower their already awful historical rating, as far as I can figure.

My two cents and change, anyway.

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