Western front 1944-1945 Development Thread

[sPzAbt653]

'Though I have not seen a wing auto-assign itself to interdiction.'

And they will not.

'...to have them withdraw when the activation period is over.'

This can be done. Such a change should be made for a patch release, so that the same version is available to all.

'...give the Allied player one extra turn for each activation period, at the beginning of which he has to put these planes on "rest". '

This wouldn't be entirely bulletproof, as a unit could possibly go into 'reorganisation' for the last turn, and be unavailable for change of orders.

 

[Menschenfresser]

The ideal change would be for Ralph to correct this little issue on the engine side. I doubt that's going to happen right away, so the second best would be to have them appear and withdraw. However, with three separate events you will need three versions of the formations...which isn't difficult...because I don't think you can reintroduce units into a game which have been withdrawn.

I'll make that change when I have a bit of time.

 

[sPzAbt653]

However, with three separate events you will need three versions of the formations...which isn't difficult...because I don't think you can reintroduce units into a game which have been withdrawn.

I hadn't even looked at the scenario when I suggested withdrawing the units in question. When I did look at it I noticed the multiple events. Wouldn't it be 6 because of the 15th AF? You are correct that once withdrawn they cannot return, so each withdrawal would have to have separate coloured units. And each formation/unit name should be slightly different from it's other, to prevent the computer getting confused. As you said, not difficult, just takes some time. Also, instead of 'withdraw formation' you could withdraw each unit, one by one, if you have enough events, and time! That way the colours could be kept the same.

 

[Telumar]

Otherwise I suppose it can only be solved by what I said before, give the Allied player one extra turn for each activation period, at the beginning of which he has to put these planes on "rest". :shy:

That's what i did with my Anzio scenario.

This wouldn't be entirely bulletproof, as a unit could possibly go into 'reorganisation' for the last turn, and be unavailable for change of orders.

Right. But after reorganisation - what deployment would they switch to?

 

[sPzAbt653]

Right. But after reorganisation - what deployment would they switch to?

I'm currently playing a scenario where the air units suffer somewhere from 5-70% shock every turn, so most of them are in reorg. But I check them all each turn to see if any are available, if so I give a mission. Thru 33 turns I notice that they come out of reorg in whatever the last assigned mission was (I know this because I assign missions by icon). None have been in 'rest'. So I'm guessing they switch from reorg to the last assigned mission.

 

[Veers]

Very exciting AARs Marc and Held! I cannot describe how awesome it is to be able to read an AAR on the scenario that I DIDN'T write!
It will be excellent to see a live playtest of our beloved Western Front 1944-1945! :hurray:

 

[Heldenkaiser]

Some Comments / Suggestions

As promised, after completion of my game with Marc (see AAR), I have a few minor suggestions for improvements for what to me is one of the best and exciting scenarios I have played.

1. Place name errors
63,19 DUISBURG (not Duisberg, map correct, but news string isn’t)
69,13 Osnabrück (not Osnarbrück, delete first “r”)
83,7 Lüne – this is not a place – should it be the Lüneburger Heide?
93,16 Schönebeck (not Schonebeck, umlaut “ö” instead of “o”)
94,17 Köthen (not Kothen, umlaut “ö” instead of “o”)
97,24 Zwickau (not Zwicknau, delete “n”)
98,15 Wittenberg (not Wittenburg, “e” instead of “u”)1
103,19 Lauchhammer (not Luachhammer, “au” instead of “ua”)

2. Small problems with map hexes
91,41: Airfield in alpine hex with no road cannot be entered by ground troops. Planes keep sitting up there and even "engage" Allied troops passing by on the road below.
59,15: In my opinion a river hex that contains no militarily relevant feature and cannot be entered except by moving an engineer unit downstream from 60,15 (i.e. Allies have to go all around that hex and return to occupy it) doesn't warrant a "5" objective in an area where all other objectives are "2"s. I submit that the objective should instead be on Arnhem bridge, 58,15, adjacent.

3. Other things
- One considerable problem, there are tons and tons of German flak units reconstituting in the Allied rear in France. Seeing how the Allies have to cover an insane amount of ground with just the troops they need to fight the Germans and just cannot afford to garrison all bridges etc. in their rear, is there anything that can be done to prevent these reconstitutions? If not, then I submit the Allies need second-line garrison troops to secure their rear areas.
- As discussed earlier in this thread, I am not sure the Allies deserve a VP bonus for landing in Britanny. I'd go for it again any time. Closer to own air cover, further from German reinforcements, easily defensible in the build-up phase, the only problem being is that you finally have to do some sort of COBRA to break out from there because it's also easily sealed off, but hey.
- In my considered opinion, the map needs a good deal more airfields, especially in Germany, and there again especially in the center and south. I encountered real difficulties keeping my fighter wings close enough to the front lines for lack of airfields. And this is Germany, not Siberia. There is an airfield outside virtually every city that's on the map, some of them major. Now of course the problem with TOAW is that once there is an airfield, I can park 800 Flying Fortresses there as long as they're in 3 wings, but really, there ought to be some more. It can't be that my front line is outside the range of half of my fighters simply because they lack airfields close enough to the front.
- The AT regiments of the British corps - towed guns, trucks, all passive defenders and nothing else - are they useful at this scale, when everything that fights comes in divisions with 300 rifle squads and 100 tanks? I didn't find a role for them, as they can't fight off anything, tend to retreat right away when they're engaged, and regularly send their entire corps into reorg. I am no scenario designer, but these units don't seem to make sense to me. Maybe their AT guns could just be parceled out among the infantry divisions?

Well, that's it from me. Maybe Marc has some more comments from the German side? :shy:

 

[Bob Cross]

Hmm. No mention of the fact that you reached Berlin five months ahead of schedule? That kind of seems like an issue to me.

 

[Heldenkaiser]

Hmm. No mention of the fact that you reached Berlin five months ahead of schedule? That kind of seems like an issue to me.

I am not in a position to judge whether this is a problem. I limited myself to things that were obvious to me. Personally, I would not infer so much from a single game. If every time people play this they would end up deciding the war by January 1945, I would say there's a problem ... but from one single game? They can't all turn out the same. Strategy, abilities of the players, chance ... I would always say one needs more data than one game. Wouldn't you?

 

[Heldenkaiser]

Some more thoughts on that issue ...

- Marc deliberately retreated long distances, thus saving me the trouble of fighting over much of the map: from Britanny all the way to the Rhine (!), from the Rhine to the Weser, from the Weser to the draw line, and in the south all the way from the Alps to the upper Elbe (!!). Had I had to fight my way through all of France and all of Southern Germany, I surely wouldn't have been in Berlin by New Year's.
- The scenario has a positive feedback loop for the Wehrmacht by reducing their replacements when key cities are lost and having reconstitution points for units in German cities so that these units won't reconstitute when these cities have become occupied by the Allies. In other words, once the Allied player is ahead of historical "schedule", he is likely not only to remain so, but even to increase his headstart. - But that the Wehrmacht's power of resistance crumbles when it starts losing large chunks of German real estate seems to make sense historically. So a linear projection of the progress of the actual campaign in NW Europe into the game makes no sense once the course of the game starts deviating much from that campaign especially in the early stages. Had the Allies been over the Rhine in September (as I was), they would most likely have been in Berlin by Christmas.
- Generally I am not convinced that the historical course of events should too much determine the course of a wargame scenario. Give the players the tools, once they start playing they change history anyway, so keep the forces and events historically plausible, but don't force the historical outcome on the players.
My € .02.