New S42 Campaign!

[Mr Grumpy]

Scenario now has its own thread in the Mod scenario sub-forum. :)

[Strela]

Hi Von Nev,

Thanks for your work on this campaign - personally I know how much work goes into balancing up a scenario like this.

Few comments :

- It looks like you don't have Ed's latest version as you are missing the new Soviet Tank riders that are present in every tank brigade.

- You have fixed up an error that I believe has been perpetuated through a number of either the stock or Alt scenarios where German Panzer Grenadiers show as being in Maultier half tracks where they should only be in trucks. The German's had very few of these soft halftracks and they were used for heavy weaponry towing versus riding into combat. Ed needs to give you a different graphic.

- Very interested to hear how your fix / unfix goes. This is a novel approach for a complex problem. I have used something similar with the 24th Panzer in Korsun '44, but it is more to represent Hitler's indecision than to limit the players freedom of maneuver.

- Also interested to see how your bunker line goes - I have had to do something similar in Korsun for the INITIAL defences so that they last at least one day - the German's need at least a battalion in a bunker to not be assaulted out by a Russian regiment. I am toying with having to define the pocket in Korsun the same way, as it is just to easy for the pocket to be squeezed - even when it is in trenches.

All in all, looking forward to hearing how your scenario plays out and any other learnings you have.

Strela

[Volcano Man]

- Also interested to see how your bunker line goes - I have had to do something similar in Korsun for the INITIAL defences so that they last at least one day - the German's need at least a battalion in a bunker to not be assaulted out by a Russian regiment. I am toying with having to define the pocket in Korsun the same way, as it is just to easy for the pocket to be squeezed - even when it is in trenches.

Yes, I agree. I am interested in hearing how the BUNKER defenses work out as well. Actually, I added some bunkers to the most recent S42_Alt, but not very many. I have learned to make little changes at first so as not to go "too far", but it is always a question of if "more" needs to be done.

[von Nev]

Hi Volcano Man,

Before I switched to bunkers I tried everything to give the Germans a fighting chance to hold the pocket. The Russian armor and artillery was just too powerful. In my campaign as the Germans I formed a very solid pocket with the nearly full strength A morale Panzer divisions of the 14th and 24th Panzers as reserves. When the Russians unleashed their attack I threw both of these divisions at the attack (which came from the northwest) trying to hold entrenchments and both divisions were crushed in about 10 turns. The Russians just bowled them over with artillery plastering each German stack to the point most units broke. The German armor was completely unmatched against the Russian T-34 and KV-1 stacks.

The only way to hold the German line was to give them bunkers and in some very critical places pillboxes. Honestly, this makes sense historically too. Once the pocket formed, every town, village and settlement was turned into a defensive strongpoint. Russian artillery would pound these for days and still not get through.

The PzC game engine, IMHO, tends to favor the attacker and the casualty rates show it (i.e. defender has higher casualty rates than the attacker - which is opposite what typically happens in WWII battles). This makes PzC campaigns where the Russian has more men to start with hard to balance. In these campaigns historically, the Germans inflicted more casualties on the Russians which "balanced" the historical battlefield. In PzC games when the Russians inflict more casualties on offense against a smaller German opponent at some point in the game (my experience is usually around turn 70 to 90) the German defense just implodes through attrition and losses. The Russian juggernant gets statistically bigger and bigger relative to the Germans over time. This is typically made worse by the Russians having higher recovery rates. The net net of it all is the Russians gain more men on a higher base of troops all the while inflicting higher losses on a shrinking base of German troops.

The only way to offset this effect is to A) increase the German attack values (which is hard), B) increase the defensive terrain values, or C) put bunkers and pillboxes all over the place to offset the Russian artillery and mass infantry advantage. In my campaign I elected to parts of all three.

We will see if it works.

[Marquo]

Marty,

Historically the Soviets were operationally and tactically hamstrung whereas the Germans had much more flexibility. PzC can never fully model this - further, often the Axis was just plain lucky.

However, a very powerful tool to help emulate this is HQ command values/radius. The ability to rally, undisrupt and refuel is critical - if you adjust these values right then the hordes of Russians will often be disrupted and unable to assault....

Marquo :chin:

[Liquid_Sky]

I notice that in games where their is lots of terrain, the battle is more attritional, and when you have games where the terrain is open, you get mobility/isolation....

For example, I am on turn 220 in Normandy, and the line is a pretty solid one from one end of the map to the other, most of it in Bocage (90% defense with TRENCH). The result is the attacker (either allied or German) has to take some punishment with assaults to weaken the defense in order to finally take it in an assault. Losses favour defender. The German bunker defense in Kharkov is the same....the russians throw themselves at it repeatedly, until you can crack one or two of them, which allows you to outflank the others....again...takes time, and losses. And sometimes you just get too beat up to take the bunker. And it takes many turns to move few hexes forward.

I am not sure if the HQ command value will make a big difference. If the value is low, I will just mass the unit more. If the unit is massed, it doesnt matter too much if even 1/3rd of the unit is disrupted....they can at least soak up defensive fire.


I am thinking that the big killer in PzC is fatigue. Perhaps if the Russian battalions formed up into (large) Regiments, they would suffer greater amounts of fatigue for being in combat, or be too unwieldy to use if combined. For example a regiment could break down into 3 - 400 man Battalions. Or be one 1200 man Regiment. Probably quite a bit of work in the editor though.

[NicholasBell]

My take on the ahistorical results points to unrealistic flexibility of Soviet artillery which works just as well as late war US artillery. Anyone who has done any serious reading knows that the Soviets where still shooting direct fire with everything up to divisional level artillery right up to Berlin, and that all those higher level artillery units took days if not weeks to setup, register, plan and coordinate their fires.

In like manner the Soviets are able to plan and execute - and change plans in the middle of that execution - at a totally unrealistic manner. They simply were not that nimble.

Since the game engine does not allow for proper reflection of the differences between opposing forces on these "soft" factors, the only way to achieve more historical results is to impose house rules enforced by the players themselves.

You might want to also considering increasing the hours per turn to slow down the action.

[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

[James Ward]

Could you play around with HQ's to make it more likely that units would be Low Fuel? By that I mean could you withdraw specific HQ's just before midnight to make it more likely a unit would go low fuel?
They could then re-appear as a reinforcement after the midnight turn.

[Volcano Man]

Well, there is a Refuel Percentage parameter in the PDT file if I am not mistaken. This value could be set very low to make low fuel more likely to happen. The only problem is, it would effect both sides. Hmmm, maybe this is desirable here... :chin: