NEW: Prokhorovka 5: The Historical Battle

[Crossroads]

After 33 turns we decided to end our battle with a draw. Germans out preformed the historical outcome by leaps and bounds. I aggressively went on the attack from turn one. Gathering most of my armor, I sent them south to find and destroy whatever they could find. When encountering the fixed units who had already received terrible casualties' from the artillery falling on loaded fixed units.
The fixed units must have been a frustration for Cole, my Russian opponent. I was able to systematically move along his lines without fear of him mounting a response. His tanks had to sit and wait for me to fire on them.

That made it a -1700 score by turn twenty when he was able finally begin to move against me. And the point score began to diminish. But I projected that the Germans were on a path to a minor V or draw. Way better then the historical results. This scenario needs some alterations to have a more historical outcome.

It was awkward towards turn 30 when I realized all I had to do to gain a major victory was withdraw all my leaders off board to keep Cole from getting those points.  But to my surprise Cole informed me he had two exit hexes where he could withdraw all his transport and what ever else to gain points.

Thank you for your comment Zap, this is a monster so any playthroughs and lessons-learnt are appreciated.

Oh yes, the mobile group Trufanov, it did not participate in the battle and maybe then it should not be there at all, nor the exit hexes as Soviet victory point sources. Alan's design notes mention this though, they are fixed in place should the German forces enter the area, in which case they could play a role. But given the Soviet formations in play, maybe they would not be required at all. Difficult decisions from scenario design point of view.

As for the fixed Soviet formations, Alan in his design notes mentions that the fixed units are there to give Germans the momentum for the early turn. I'd personally like to see this scenario shorter, but Alan opted to have the full 100 turns to depict the length of day, as this has been a heated subject. His logic is that if someone wants to play that long, the scenario will allow for it. But as things go with larger scenarios especially, all things taken into account that logic does not hold for historical results. Things speed up, due to "god's view" of the player of all friendly units, the fact they obey each and every order, there's no fog-of-war in that manner as there historically was. Making this shorter, maybe 60 turns, and reallocating the releases and reinforcements for that duration, might solve some of
the issues you discuss. 

You mention the damage especially the artillery does, this is a problem with the game engine at the moment, and how artillery is modeled, as in any larger scenario if you put the historic artiilery formations to map the whole thing gets seriously out of whack. Previously, many scenario designers have opted to remove historical artillery units to maintain a play balance, but that is obviously a wrong way to go about it. 

Thanks for sitting it out though, a monster of a scenario for sure, historically immaculate, it is just the final play balance that we need to put in place, still