Krak Wrote:It seems strange to me, that if your ascertion is correct that an obviously intelligent commander such as Rommel would denote Alexandria as his objective when he had no means to get his army there in the first place. My understanding of the reasons why the German High Command gave Rommel permission to continue his offensive operations beyond Tobruk were twofold, the possibility of the destruction of 8th Army AND the capture of Alexandria.
Rommel was tactically gifted and operationally brilliant, but as a logistician he was anathema. He gave no thoughts to supply and expected his staff to muddle through.
As for his permission to proceed to Alexandria, that was Hitler's doing, and it was against the advice of saner council. Kesselring was against it, as was the Italian Commando Supremo. As it turns out they were 100% correct and Rommel 100% wrong.
Krak Wrote:Surely the stockpiling of of supplies at forward dumps allows operations beyond the range of truck supply transit legs. Numerous games or simulations I have played allow for stockpiles to be created so that operations can continue onward to the objective. Otherwise how did Germany supply its Panzer/Motor Divisions in the Caucases? Or the deep penetrations in the summer of 41-42 in Russia?
Yes text book stuff. But in Russia the Germans used rail as the primary supply mover, with dumps at the ends of rail lines and trucks from the dumps to the FLOT. And as you are likely aware in Russia the logistics effort was hardly barely adequate after the first 2 months of Barbarossa. In North Africa the Germans has no rail lines. Everything moved by truck. In 1942 when Rommel moves east from the border Benghazi has been wrecked (it was an artificial harbor) and Tobruk was under the RAF's interdiction range and very unsuitable for shipments. Which means that everything was being shipped to Tripoli and trucked the all the way to Alamien. That's got to be 100s of miles, possibly a 1000 or better. At those ranges it's simple math, the trucks are consuming almost as much fuel as they can deliver and that's not delivering the first round of ammo or box of food. Simple failure to understand the basics of supply did more to doom Afrika Korp than the 8th Army did prior to Alamein.
Krak Wrote:The Operational Combat Series has one of the most detailed logistical systems I have played, and indeed it is possible to advance motorized units to Alexandria or Baku through the use of forward supply dumps.
I don't use explicit supply in PzC because I don't believe the extra brain work required by driving supply trucks around gives an equivalent gain in realism. For me I would like to see seperate ammo/fuel supply resources that are moved in truck or wagon units, where the truck or wagon is a seperate transport unit, the possibility to create supply dumps (thus freeing up transport units to move ahead and extend the range of operations) and the direct allocation of supplies to individual units i.e allowing the commander to prioritise which units get fuel and/or ammo. That would be a supply system of merit worth the extra effort to run. It would also show the player why offensives come to a halt, why the resupply of forward dumps has to occur before the offensive can resume. But such a detailed supply system won't happen for all the reasons you mention. So I stick to VST. A pretty good abstraction.
The only OCS game I own is DAK, and it is easily among my favorite top 3 board games. But it's supply system is simple compared to Berg's supply system design for SPI's CNA. If you want to truly understand logistics get a copy of those rules. Personally I agree with you that more complicated supply rules appeals to me, but it's not in the cards for this series of games I'm afraid.
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