Western front 1944-1945 Development Thread

[Telumar]

On Italian TO&E, I don't know. I doubt all divisions were full strength, but anything more than an uneducated guess would require research. Feel free to suggest changes.

Just added a few links regarding the fascist italian forces of the RSI:

http://www.comandosupremo.com/RSI.html
http://www.comandosupremo.com/RSItanks.html
http://www.comandosupremo.com/Production1.html
http://www.feldgrau.com/rsi.html

No particular TO&E information but better than nothing. Is the Divisione Fanteria di Marina "Decima" on the Axis OOB? I don't know if we should add the GNR (Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana) as its task was anti.partisan operations (including war crimes..)

 

[Veers]

Just added a few links regarding the fascist italian forces of the RSI:

http://www.comandosupremo.com/RSI.html
http://www.comandosupremo.com/RSItanks.html
http://www.comandosupremo.com/Production1.html
http://www.feldgrau.com/rsi.html

No particular TO&E information but better than nothing. Is the Divisione Fanteria di Marina "Decima" on the Axis OOB? I don't know if we should add the GNR (Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana) as its task was anti.partisan operations (including war crimes..)

Since we took out the Partisans best not to include those Fascist Italians that were primarily used against the partisans.

 

[Menschenfresser]

I'm just beginning to consider the jeep conversion. Without a better solution, I'm going with Jamiam's suggestion of converting 6 jeeps into 2 light scout cars and 2 trucks. (Is anyone averse to this conversion?)

An example of the conversion: 413 jeeps (the most oft used number) turns into 136 light scout cars and 136 trucks.

A few questions for the dev team:
1) Is it necessary to leave any jeeps in infantry divisions after the conversion?
2) Certain US tank destroyer units have 200+ jeeps. Should they also be converted?
3) Some UK divisions which use regular scout cars as the primary recon vehicle still have 50+ jeeps. Should these be converted?

Let's start with these. I've yet to do a thing on this issue, so everything's still on the table.

EDIT:
And here's a list of changes I've already made for 2.1(g):
-Added major escarpments to the Gothic Line to make it more difficult to cross the mountains, creating passes where the roads traverse the range.
-Removed the rail line that ran from Florence to Bologna (several maps, including Chuck's Gothic Line scenario, does not show a rail line here).
-All coastal garrisons & westwall forts are set to static (which allows them to dig in), with a release on T100 (essentially not before the allies arrive).
-Removed horse teams from westwall forts.
-Added 3 fixed 150mm guns to each coastal garrison to simulate the fact that there was a danger to Allied ships (these guns have an anti-shipping rating of 99) even if they didn't come much into play historically. However, being in units with garrison typology, these guns can only fire on ships if fired upon.
-Allied rail is reduced to 5,000 from 50,000.
-Removed local reserve setting on German units in Italy.
-Re-divided the two German divisions on the Gustav line.
-Fixed more German units with more assigned panzers than authorized.

Discuss!

 

[Veers]

Discuss!

I would, but most of this has gottent oo technical for me. :laugh:

 

[Menschenfresser]

I just ran through the Allied turn 1. First round limited attacks with artillery support. After that 4 more rounds of limited losses/normal attack. I didn't break the German line, except for Cassino. German divisions held, and even the division holding Cassino, forced back twice, still had more than 50% of its TOE. Allied casualties were quite high and German Korps HQs seemed to have an effect where they supported the defense.

Allies ended the turn with down 42 loss points from casualties taken.

This was run with 2.1(g) where I've also set all front line German units to ignore losses (were previously limited losses).

First reaction is that the Allied advance won't be rapid and attacks at breaking German lines will have to be careful and concentrated.

EDIT: Also I changed (as a test) the 88th US ID in Italy. Removing all jeeps and substituting 136 LSCs & 136 additional trucks. Movement was raised from 17 to 19. Anti-armor dropped from 13 to 11. Anti-personal dropped from 19 to 17. Recon stayed at 99%

 

[Chuck]

Discuss!

I've been reading the discussion here. Some notes:

1. Good idea reducing the jeeps. They give too much of a recon advantage to the Allies. Makes for unrealistic results where the best move is for the Allies is to launch an ignore losses attack on the recon-poor German defenders.

2. There wasn't a rail line between Bologna and Florence. There were two. One went through Prato and another through Pistoia. The Germans flooded the tunnels the rail lines used though so it would have taken a few months to fix them.

3. While trucks (and mules) were important in Italy for the Allies, there were certainly railroads there as well. Rome saw the first Allied train in July 1944. Here is an article (discusses other theaters as well):

http://www.milhist.net/history/mrs-soloc.pdf

Figures sometimes bring facts into startling focus. During the five months ending October 1, 1944, a total of 21,759 trains were required to carry over 7,000,000 tons of military freight to Allied Armies in Italy. To accomplish this Allied Force Military Railway Service operated 2,478 miles of railroad, assisted by Italian personnel. Over 1,000 miles of that track had to be rebuilt, 450 miles of it being totally demolished and 650 miles badly damaged by bombing and shellfire. A total of 3,154 troop and 812 hospital trains were run during that period. Over 15,000 feet of new bridging built; 24 tunnels with a total length of 20 miles reconstructed; half a million cubic yards of earth moved for filling craters and gaps in viaducts over dry beds. Over 750 miles of signal routes repaired or rebuilt.

4. The 6th South African Armoured Division had a 10,000 man railway repair group. Probably not needed in this scenario but they were there and should be part of the automatic rail repair calculations.

 

[Menschenfresser]

Excellent stuff!
1) The jeep issue doesn't seem to be an easy fix. Jamiam's solution still leaves IDs with 99% recon. If I remove all jeeps, without adding in other equipment, they only drop to 47%. Whereas their German counterparts have around 35%.
2) Hmm...then I'm tempted to leave them out. ???
3) The article on France would lead me to give the allies a second (or third) rail repair unit upon the invasion of S. France. Thoughts?
4) The scenario being what it is, I'm trying to steer clear of automatic rail repair for the Allied side, requiring them to focus on where/when/how they'll move forward repairing track.

Comments:
-What if, I added a second rail repair unit to Italy, but more or less, split the first unit's equipment with the second (perhaps adding a more), resulting in two units with less than 99% repair ability. This way the Allies have units to work on multiple tracks but don't have a guaranteed 2 hexes per turn repaired. Say--each one with 66% repair ability?

Again, thanks for the comments...

 

[Chuck]

Excellent stuff!
1) The jeep issue doesn't seem to be an easy fix. Jamiam's solution still leaves IDs with 99% recon. If I remove all jeeps, without adding in other equipment, they only drop to 47%. Whereas their German counterparts have around 35%.

Yeah, you might want to get rid of 90% of the jeeps and replace them with a handful of MG APCs. The APCs have an armor of 2, though. But it represents some of the added firepower the jeeps gave the infantry.

2) Hmm...then I'm tempted to leave them out. ???

Well, the problem is I suspect they were vital for the kickoff of the 1945 spring offensive toward Bologna. Actually, I don't know if it would have been logistically possible without railroads. It may be OK in TOAW not to have the railroads, though, as supply will flow anyway.

4) The scenario being what it is, I'm trying to steer clear of automatic rail repair for the Allied side, requiring them to focus on where/when/how they'll move forward repairing track.

Comments:
-What if, I added a second rail repair unit to Italy, but more or less, split the first unit's equipment with the second (perhaps adding a more), resulting in two units with less than 99% repair ability. This way the Allies have units to work on multiple tracks but don't have a guaranteed 2 hexes per turn repaired. Say--each one with 66% repair ability?

Again, thanks for the comments...

I think this is way too low after reading that article. Looking at the map. It is roughly 18 hexes from Rome to Azerro. This line was fixed in a month (9 game turns). So just the 5th Army alone needs two of these units. I'd add a third because the rail line along the coast needs to be fixed too.

This doesn't even take into account the British 8th Army.

Also, about the AT weapons of the opposing sides. Fairly equal at the start of the scenario. I think the Germans got improved AT weapons but not until the start of 1945. Both sides should get AT- capability for infantry. Maybe add some AT Teams for the Germans that kick in at some point.

 

[Chuck]

Some other quick points:

1. The Commonwealth armored divisions in Italy should not have Cromwells. These only served in NW Europe. Replace them with Shermans. Replace the Cromwell CS with Fireflies.

2. Likewise, I don't think the Commonwealth armored divisions in Italy should have Archers. Replace them with M10/Achilles?

3. Should there be independent, 1-1 AT regiments in a divisional level scenario? Probably should just farm those AT guns out.

4. LOL. Get rid of the Italian infantry division with strength similiar to British and American infantry divisions. There were some decent Italian divisions introduced in 1945, but they should not be as strong as other infantry divisions nor should they be on the map in May 1944.

5. I don't think the Italian RSI divisions (Monte Rosa, San Marco, ect) received AT weapons. At least not very many.

6. You might give lower proficiency to the 162nd Turkoman Division. They folded very easily from what I read. This was a division made up of men captured by the Germans in 1941-1942 from Turkistan, Armenia, ect.

7. Don't know if this is covered, but Livorno and Ancona were major ports for the Allies. You could have major reinforcements like the BEF and 10th Mountain Division arrive at Livorno to represent the need for the facility.

 

[Telumar]

Chuck, you made some good points.

I would drop the Jeeps out of the allied TOE. Or maybe leave just a few light scout cars instead adding MG APCs.

Also, about the AT weapons of the opposing sides. Fairly equal at the start of the scenario. I think the Germans got improved AT weapons but not until the start of 1945. Both sides should get AT- capability for infantry. Maybe add some AT Teams for the Germans that kick in at some point.

I second that.

LOL. Get rid of the Italian infantry division with strength similiar to British and American infantry divisions. There were some decent Italian divisions introduced in 1945, but they should not be as strong as other infantry divisions nor should they be on the map in May 1944.

Some of them saw action against the allies, though i don't know when. They should not be that well equipped and proficient like american or german units, but these are no more the 1942 italians. The TOE should be oriented somehow on the german TOE but with lower proficiency and less heavy equipment. From my link further above, they seemed still to use old and some newer italian equipment.

 

[Kraut]

Also, about the AT weapons of the opposing sides. Fairly equal at the start of the scenario. I think the Germans got improved AT weapons but not until the start of 1945. Both sides should get AT- capability for infantry. Maybe add some AT Teams for the Germans that kick in at some point.

I disagree on this, infantry with -AT or even AT capability should represent infantry carried AT weapons, such as the Bazooka, Piat, Panzerfaust or Panzerschreck. All other AT weapons can be modeled by assigning the individual equipment to the TO&E of the division, no need to change the infantry for that.

Now, the allies had the Bazooka and the PIAT, which both showed poor results against the german heavier tanks (Tiger, Panther,...) at that time because their penetration value was only 100mm, while the germans had the Panzerfaust and the Panzerschreck, who, with their 200mm penetration, could easily knock out any allied tank unlucky enough to cross their path.

Also were panzerfausts cheap to produce, one panzerfaust cost about 13 Reichsmark, compared to 300.000 Reichmark for a Tiger tank, and the germans were mass producing the Panzerfaust at the end of the war.

So giving both sides the same AT values for their infantry seems wrong, the germans should have the better AT infantry, I would take away any allied AT ratings from their Infantry, replacing them with RS and HRS, and maybe add some AT teams to their divisions to simulate Bazooka teams.

 

[Menschenfresser]

Some other quick points:

1. The Commonwealth armored divisions in Italy should not have Cromwells. These only served in NW Europe. Replace them with Shermans. Replace the Cromwell CS with Fireflies.

Check...

2. Likewise, I don't think the Commonwealth armored divisions in Italy should have Archers. Replace them with M10/Achilles?

Check...

3. Should there be independent, 1-1 AT regiments in a divisional level scenario? Probably should just farm those AT guns out.

The small units in this game have always irked me design-wise, but I'm not so sure they're completely a bad idea...at least on the German side...allowing the player to tweak his defense. I'll look into it. The AT regiments on the allied side should probably be integrated.

4. LOL. Get rid of the Italian infantry division with strength similiar to British and American infantry divisions. There were some decent Italian divisions introduced in 1945, but they should not be as strong as other infantry divisions nor should they be on the map in May 1944

5. I don't think the Italian RSI divisions (Monte Rosa, San Marco, ect) received AT weapons. At least not very many

6. You might give lower proficiency to the 162nd Turkoman Division. They folded very easily from what I read. This was a division made up of men captured by the Germans in 1941-1942 from Turkistan, Armenia, ect.

7. Don't know if this is covered, but Livorno and Ancona were major ports for the Allies. You could have major reinforcements like the BEF and 10th Mountain Division arrive at Livorno to represent the need for the facility.

Check...

Another question I had last night. Anzio's supply situation never reached a critical stage, but how much longer after the breakout did the allies use it for dropping supplies into Italy. If the supplies were insignificant thereafter, I'm inclined to get rid of the supply point once, say, Rome is taken.

So giving both sides the same AT values for their infantry seems wrong, the germans should have the better AT infantry, I would take away any allied AT ratings from their Infantry, replacing them with RS and HRS, and maybe add some AT teams to their divisions to simulate Bazooka teams.

Perhaps, doing as Chuck suggests, giving the German divisions authorized AT or AT+ teams at the start of 45 to simulate better equipment. I'm not sure dropping HRS AT- from the Allied equipment is the way to go. I'm inclined to replace half(?) with plain HRS squads.

Well, the problem is I suspect they were vital for the kickoff of the 1945 spring offensive toward Bologna. Actually, I don't know if it would have been logistically possible without railroads. It may be OK in TOAW not to have the railroads, though, as supply will flow anyway.

If the Allies repair it up to Florence, the major highway to Bologna over the mountains is only 5 or 6 hexes long, IIRC. That should provide supply to reach that city. Even if the Allied player succeeds here but fails to move through Rimini, supply should be adequate to progress beyond the mountains, or hook east or west.

I think this is way too low after reading that article. Looking at the map. It is roughly 18 hexes from Rome to Azerro. This line was fixed in a month (9 game turns). So just the 5th Army alone needs two of these units. I'd add a third because the rail line along the coast needs to be fixed too.

Check. I'll give Italy three at 75%. I still want to leave the % lower than 99 so that if things go the Allied way, rail repair move ahead quickly. But I'd also like to leave variability in this scenario (i.e. the chance for events to happen slightly out of whack with history). So if the Allies continually come up unlucky on rail repair, they might fall behind.

 

[Chuck]

I disagree on this, infantry with -AT or even AT capability should represent infantry carried AT weapons, such as the Bazooka, Piat, Panzerfaust or Panzerschreck. All other AT weapons can be modeled by assigning the individual equipment to the TO&E of the division, no need to change the infantry for that.

Now, the allies had the Bazooka and the PIAT, which both showed poor results against the german heavier tanks (Tiger, Panther,...) at that time because their penetration value was only 100mm, while the germans had the Panzerfaust and the Panzerschreck, who, with their 200mm penetration, could easily knock out any allied tank unlucky enough to cross their path.

Well, the panzerschreck was not created in large numbers. 4,000,000 panzerfaust were created in 1944 but they didn't have a good range.

Also were panzerfausts cheap to produce, one panzerfaust cost about 13 Reichsmark, compared to 300.000 Reichmark for a Tiger tank, and the germans were mass producing the Panzerfaust at the end of the war.

Increase the replacement rate for AT Teams. Right now it is only 75. It could be doubled.

So giving both sides the same AT values for their infantry seems wrong, the germans should have the better AT infantry, I would take away any allied AT ratings from their Infantry, replacing them with RS and HRS, and maybe add some AT teams to their divisions to simulate Bazooka teams.

The Allied AT weapons were certainly capable of an AT value of 5. Whether they were capable of disabling Tigers and Panthers, I don't know. But there are other armored vehicles out there like StuGs, panzer IVs, recon cars, and halftracks.

The scenario seems fairly favorable to the German side, as is. Infantry divisions get 108 AT Teams from the start. The Fallschirmjaeger have a huge number at 250 per division. These give the German divisions a huge number of units with an AT value of 8.

The Allies don't get AT Teams at all. So even leaving it as is, they aren't close to being equal.

A handful of German AT+ Teams could be added to begin arriving in the spring of 1945. Say a production of 40 per turn starting in February 1945.

 

[Chuck]

Some of them saw action against the allies, though i don't know when. They should not be that well equipped and proficient like american or german units, but these are no more the 1942 italians. The TOE should be oriented somehow on the german TOE but with lower proficiency and less heavy equipment. From my link further above, they seemed still to use old and some newer italian equipment.

Oh, I meant the yellow unit on the Allied side. There were a number of Italian divisions used by the Allies in 1945 after a stint of British-led training and re-equipment. But, they weren't available in May 1944.

As for the Italian divisions on the German side, they were trained in Germany and basically given German equipment except for the AT infantry weapons. However, their morale was very low. They should have a proficiency around 40% or so and no AT Teams.

 

[Chuck]

Another thing. The 75mm AT Gun (PAK 97/38) was NOT Germany's main 75mm AT gun. This was a varient produced from captured French equipment in 1942. There should be several hundred of these in the various French garrision and security divisions. The rest were probably destroyed by this time.

Otherwise the main German 75mm AT gun at the time was the PAK 40. The problem with using the PAK 97/38 is that its AT number is only 6, compared to the AT number of 11 for the other gun.

 

[Kraut]

Well, the panzerschreck was not created in large numbers. 4,000,000 panzerfaust were created in 1944 but they didn't have a good range.

here are the production figures:

1944:
1.418.300 Faustpatrone (early PF model, 140mm penetration)
4.120.500 Panzerfaust 60+100 (60m or 100m range, 200mm penetration)
238.316 Panzerschreck (reloadable, similar to bazooka but better penetration) with 1.805.400 grenades for the Panzerschreck

1945:
Panzerfaust: 2.351.800
Panzerschreck: 25.744 + 240.000 grenades

In 1945 some Panzerfaust 150 were produced, but I dont know how many, probably not enough to be worth modeling in this scenario.

I dont know how many of those Panzerfausts went east and how many west, but I would reckon about 2/3rd went east, that would still leave about 155.000 Panzerfaust per month for the west-front. Thats about 7 Panzerfaust for each Rifle Squad each month.

Couldn't find any production figured for the Bazooke so far, but stumbeled upon this:

Fireing trial of a bazooka vs a Panther:
http://www.100thww2.org/support/776tankhits.html

But to get back to my inital point, making allied and german infantry AT weapon equally effective seems wrong if you remember that the german produced weapons were about twice as effective as the american ones (PIAT and Bazooka also only had a range of about 100m, Panzerfaust between 60m-100m, Panzerschreck about 150m), and while the Bazooka had to score side or rear hits to be effective (while having almost no effect on the Tiger + Tiger II thanks to their all around good armor) the Panzerfaust could take out any allied tank even from the front.

The Bazooka was usually operated by a 2-man team, so using AT- Teams for the US + normal rifle squads seems to be the best approach, while the Panzerfaust was directly delivered to the german Infantry (making them HRS AT seems in order to model the better AT weapons) + adding some AT or AT+ teams to the german TO&E which would be the Panzerschreck teams, which, similar to the american bazooka team, operated as a team, one gunner and one loader.

 

[Chuck]

Some more notes:

1. I think you're overrating the German AT weapons. Currently the divisions look like this:

German Infantry Division

162 HRS AT- (AT 5)
108 AT Teams (AT 8)

American Infantry Division

243 HRS AT- (AT 5)


Pretty reasonable, and the Germans already have better AT infantry weapons. Each American division did have over 500 bazookas assigned. How many were produced, I don't know but I'd guess they had lots of them, like everything else.

2. Yes, it is harder to destroy Panthers and Tigers than Shermans with an AT- weapon. However, there is no need to downgrade the Allies because they had trouble knocking out Panthers with bazookas. In TOAW the Sherman has an armor rating of 8 while the armor ratings for the main German vehicles are:

Panzer IV - 7
StuG III/IV - 8
Tiger I - 10
Hetzer - 12
JadgPanzer - 12
Panther - 13
Tiger II - 19

3. Notice that the panzerfaust 60 doesn't even begin production until August 1944. This is the weapon with the 60m range. Before that was panzerfaust 30, which only had a range of 30m and less propellant. The panzerfaust 100 doesn't begin production until November 1944. Overall, these advanced versions take a while to appear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerfaust
http://www.geocities.com/Augusta/8172/panzerfaust2.htm

4. Partisans. When you get your copy of TOAW 3 in the mail, check out the partisans in Gothic Line 1944. I went with your suggestion of making them static and giving the German player an incentive for destroying them.

5. Supply. Weren't the additional ports needed to support the 30+ divisions in NW Europe?

 

[Dicke Bertha]

To reproduce the vastly increasing number of panzerfausts appearing for the Germans maybe their divisions need to have slots for HRS AT+ gradually increasing as HRS AT- decreases with time as Chuck and Mensch has mentioned.

Also, what is the rationale in the scenario to have such extreme MG weight in the divisions?

 

[Kraut]

1. I think you're overrating the German AT weapons. Currently the divisions look like this:

German Infantry Division

162 HRS AT- (AT 5)
108 AT Teams (AT 8)

American Infantry Division

243 HRS AT- (AT 5)


Pretty reasonable, and the Germans already have better AT infantry weapons. Each American division did have over 500 bazookas assigned. How many were produced, I don't know but I'd guess they had lots of them, like everything else.

Well, the AT teams are the Panzerschrecks, so they fall out of this comparison, which again leads us to germans and allies having the same AT ratings for their infatry, while even you agree that the german panzerfaust was better.
So I propose the following:

German Infantry Division

162 HRS AT (AT 8) <-- AT to show the quality difference compared to the Bazooka, which is AT-
108 AT Teams (AT 8) <-- The Panzerschrecks (the number might have to be lowered, dont know how many Panzerschrecks were assigned to each division)

American Infantry Division

243 HRS (AT 1)
XXX AT- Teams (AT 5) <-- The bazooka teams

That way the Allies get their bazooka teams and the germans still have a slight edge because of their superior infantry AT weapons.

We _could_ give the germans HRS AT- up to Aug. 1944 and than switch to HRS AT to simulate the weaker Panzerfaust 30 compared to the later models, but that would lead to the well known problem that a division won't reconstitute if none of its primary equipment is available.

 

[Dicke Bertha]

Just wondering about this:

the well known problem that a division won't reconstitute if none of its primary equipment is available.

Ah. How about in playtesting identifying which equipment is most prone to always run dry in the replacement pool, and have a few TO's for the Germans to choose to create (at a cost) depot units with certain set compositions, for example only HRS AT, or trucks, or HRS AT-, or HRS AT/HRS AT-/trucks, or HRS AT-/MG/trucks, etc... A few such depot units could be made available at a few intervals in the game? It also sends a realistic signal to the German player that he is exhausting his reserves at an unacceptable speed.

That approach could be used also for the discussion on Allied Rail Repair assets. A few TO's giving them such units for limited time, to use before offensives...