FWWC - Adjustment to number of turns

[Volcano Man]

It comes down to it being really difficult to encircle or destroy a force moving at the same speed as your units, even when Disrupted. The possibility is indeed there for disaster, but it's not likely to happen at the scale it did in the war.

True, but I have to mention (and this is not criticism!) a current campaign I am in (F14 Grand Campaign A). The Belgians fought valiantly there, but were ultimately cut off by the German 1st and 2nd Armies and their field army was completely destroyed (although of course a similar disaster could befall the Germans later in the campaign and push the result in the other direction, though). This delayed the German advance by some days, but it also provided a plethora of VPs that helped put the Germans immediately reach a DRAW at this stage, and left Antwerp open. You figure that both of these things would have had long lasting effects on the war (imagine a Race-to-the-Sea situation where no Belgian Army is present), so I am happy with the effect on the campaign (VPs) and with the demonstration that you can actually round up and completely destroy a full army in about a day or two once you isolate it (which is encouraging to know that it wouldn't take weeks to do).

Of course the trick is always what both sides do. Will the sacrifice of time versus the sacrifice of forces be more important in our campaign, or vice versa? I guess we will see. Again, not a criticism on our allies but rather just a demonstration of what can happen in a campaign. In their defense, I am sure the plan was more about using the Belgians to hold and delay the Germans advance for days, then fall back - and they did this, but as is often the case, the delay stuck around too long and two HKKs swung in behind during that time. The Belgians nearly got away with French help but the Germans closed the escape route just in the nick of time. It was a good battle.

All too often though the historical and a-historical (here in these games) behavior directly depends on how much both sides cooperate. Often the historical is difficult to replicate, but you can just imagine that if the commander in these games did similar movements then it would be. As a designer, all I can really do is allow for the possibility to exist, and in some cases encourage it (for example, the French can attack into the Ardennes for a few days to try to get their early termination win), but I am very much against "on rails" effects (like having the Russian 2nd Army get withdrawn when they were historically destroyed -- no way). Still, I think the above situation with the Belgian Army does at least demonstrate that the elimination of a field army is indeed possible, at least, and this makes me happy to know what is possible.

As an aside, I've been thinking about ways to make moving small units by rail less of a nightmare in terms of rail capacity used. Maybe MG and foot movement infantry type units with less than 200 or so men not using rail capacity might be an option just in FWWC.

This is interesting, however no matter what is done it will result in gamey effects. The idea behind the rail capacity levels right now is that it is based on what historical forces were actually moved around, and that they often moved those forces in "hops", meaning they moved part of a unit down the line and, in a long journey, disembarked somewhere. Then they moved up the other part and continued. These MG units are part of the original capacity total, so they are already factored. On the other hand, someone certainly could say 'to hell with those small MG units' (as the French for example), and just move all the big infantry units first. Fine, but infantry without those MG sections really have trouble holding (I do know that "holding" usually means the MG sections is eliminated in the process, but at the very least the MG units help deny the Germans from taking the ground in the same assault, and help keep French casualties lower from direct fire in the time before they are eliminated). So, leaving the MGs behind does have a sacrifice (and these MG sections are sacrificial units in 1914).

Long story short: I don't see the diminished capacity from MG unit movement as a bad thing, as it was already factored and it comes with a pro/con situation if you want to leave them all behind. Also consider that MG units do have a larger footprint than infantry when in travel by rail, in that they often had horses, large quantities of ammunition (consolidated at brigade level, usually) and their actual MG and equipment. Of course a section of MGs would not be comparable to an infantry company of a thousand men, but an MG company certainly would be comparable.

Still, maybe only the smallest units of <= 30 men could ignore capacity, but not the 200 men units. I will have to think about that.  As you say though, I dislike the idea that the allies would theoretically be able to transport masses of MG units in advance, but doing so would come with a trade off of being out of command, having a quality level loss, and wouldn't necessarily be effective at doing anything by themselves, however, I have already seen opponents just pile in masses of MG sections into stacks with other divisions despite this. So I tend to lean towards this being a bad thing as it would allow some players to easily and repeatedly mass their MGs from other divisions by rail into one place, to act as a huge speedbump.