New S42 Campaign!

[Ricky B]

You raise a good point on the artillery, Nicholas. My feel from having played a Stalingrad campaign is that there are a few problems, one of which is hard to replicate. My feel was the following needs tweaked for the campaign, versus the battles themselves which are balanced:

1. Biggest change, use explicit supply. That is hard to get to the right levels, but will help with many of the issues in the campaign. The inability to split supply between fuel and ammo hurts this idea a bit though. But the German forces in Stalingrad were short of fuel, not so much of ammo. The Soviets, once they encircled the Axis troops, had a tough time getting supplies to their troops that had moved around the pocket, both fuel and ammo for awhile, artillery ammo for the levels they liked to use it for an extended period of time.

Virtual supply trucks are usually good but leave too high of a supply level at the Soviet spearheads, allowing too much pressure. So an alternative might be cutting Soviet supply levels, Glenn did this earlier with the stock version after I brought up that with boosts from the start level the Soviet troops at the front lines were at 100 and higher meaning they never went low ammo or fuel - so maybe cut it slightly, drop it a lot after day 2, then boost it again after a couple of weeks. That might be a way to go.

2. Cripple the German panzer divisions in Stalingrad - they had low levels of fuel, and it took consolidating a lot of reserve fuel to send a single panzer division to the west to try and find out what was happening - there just plain wasn't enough fuel to send more divisions without them ending up stranded on the steppe. There is no way the Germans could have pushed their tanks north and destroyed the Soviet troops there, both due to fuel and fatigue/weakness, and low fuel to start can fix this issue - but with explicit supply the Germans can refuel everything, then end up low ammo later on which isn't right, but using explicit supply would probably happen.

3. The Soviets had a tough time moving artillery to their spearheads, not just setting it up but actually moving it forward due to the terrain, lack of prime movers, fuel, etc. It took them quite awhile to move it up and that prevent hard pushes against the nose at Marinovka, for example, for quite awhile. Lower artillery movement rates or higher non-road terrain costs would help this a lot.

4. As you suggest Nicholas, artillery setup rule, which is present, could be used to slow down the Soviet setup. That can allow the Axis to have a high value, 80 or something, and maybe 20 or 30 for the Soviets, making it take a day on average, maybe, to setup their artillery, which I think is fairly reasonable.

5. The ability of the Soviets to totally ignore the threat of a relief effort while crushing the pocket. Historically, the Soviets had to wait to launch a strong effort against the pocket because they lacked supply to their encircling troops, artillery wasn't in place, etc, plus the lack of knowledge as to when a relief effort might be launched. Fixing Soviet units that should be dedicated to the out ring, protecting the inner ring, for an extended period, would help prevent this issue - no outer ring formed, then the German attack will have a lot of advantanges when it does get launched, which is very historical. Getting this just right is tough, I think.

Some of this has been done in this mod, but this is how I see the details, from having played it through.

So I see the keys as: explicit supply for this campaign over all others (but hard to set right and no fuel differentiation), or supply level changes with VST, low fuel German panzers, slower off road movement for Soviet artillery, long artillery setup times for the Soviets, and fixed Soviet troops that should form the outer ring.

If casualties still don't balance out better, as that is an issue but I hope lower supply for the Soviets would buy a lot more time for the Germans already, then higher Axis loss recovery would balance it even if it is a bit ahistorical.

Rick