undead reindeer cavalry

the problem is getting a target to fire at. enemy won't offer targets as long as they don't need to. just firing from distance won't kill the enemy and you are just begging to receive arty fires and offer enemy a good chance to react to your attack (activation of reserves etc). "blind" fire at enemy positions would most likely be used just as a feint to distract the enemy, or at best some sort of supporting overwatch, while the actual attacking force flanks and storms the positions. you need to take those enemy positions anyway. firing from distance won't accomplish it. you need to go in. infantry and tanks support each other. yes, part of the reason for infantry to be there is to act as eyes for the tanks. infantry would use things like tracers and flares to point out targets for tanks. to simplify things, tanks take care of enemy machinegun nets and other strongpoints, infantry takes care of mines and enemy close range units. line of sight is so bad in real world that you typically need to go in before you can see what's in there. spotting from distance is not too useful. recon helps if you have time. in the context of the first quoted paragraph, tanks would both suppress enemy (fire from distance) and help storm their positions. infantry would clear and hold those positions.

continuing this off-topic discussion, sorry. there were NKVD border troop regiments who, as i understand it, had only light arms. don't know if there were NKVD arty units on the border, but i'd imagine garrisons had at least some arty of their own. the regular infantry divisions were in 1-up stance and had arty as normal. their arty did start firing about one hour after German fires ceased. there were also Soviet airstrikes soon after those. so there was Soviet arty from day one. fire at preregistered targets is ineffective if the fire is not observed. even if the fire itself would be accurate, you don't know what preregistered point to fire at. i don't know how many shells the Soviet divisions got off. IIRC Finnish divisional arty firing blind at preregistered targets in summer 1944 got off only something like 2000-5000 shells. the fires caused minimal losses, because they were totally unobserved (Soviet fires had kicked up dust & soil cloud 200 meters high).

the problem with arty and maps is that maps tended to be relatively inaccurate due to various issues, part of which were inherent to production of maps. IIRC the inherent error of margin for a good 1:50 000 map was around 30 meters on average. and the map you've got might be 1:100 000 or worse, and the map (thru number of versions) might be based on Napoleonic era data. i am not exaggerating. usually maps were considered quite worthless. it was the arrival of effecitive air photography based mapping that changed things dramatically (though not what comes to elevations). knowing your position and target position is also just one part of the needed data. you also need to know things like temperature, air pressure, shell velocity & weight and so forth, if you want to be accurate. armies produced all kinds of tools to make this stuff faster. still, due to the number of variables, and due to the relatively high accuracy required, any purely calculation based fire is going to miss the target by some hundreds of meters. small calculation errors simply add up. some of the stuff may be very hard to calculate accurately, due to differences in shells, propellants, individual gun wear and things like changing wind speeds. calculating all that stuff takes time and you have to recalculate it again every time. to the surprise of some, post-war OR studies found out that such precalculated fires were so inaccurate still in 1944-45 that less than one in ten had been effective. thus, to make fires faster and more accurate, you would have a forward observer guide the fires (spotting rounds or not) to the target. for most nations the FO would acctually have to report the changes in relation of the firing unit to the target (not in relation of forward observer himself and the target). so he needs to know the position of the battery and he needs to imagine a line from the battery to the target. he then needs to be able to report the needed changes from the viewpoint of the battery, on both two axis, as degress (minutes) and range. so instead of saying "left 200 meters, drop 150 meters", he would be saying something like "zero minus 14 degress 50 minutes, 5950 meters". not rocket science but often not as easy as one would think when you add other practical difficulties into it. there were other types of fires as well of course. preregistered targets and such. and there were exceptions, especially across nations.

waiting for the release as well.

cool ideas. have to try some of these.

if you look at battles like Arracourt in 1944, i think Panzer IIs would have done just as well. i agree about the scale thing. the context in this thread appears to be post-Kursk battles of 1943. i guess one could evaluate Panther vs IV on at least a couple of different levels: 1) performance of panzer regiments which either had or did not have Panthers 2) performance of Panther battalions vs Panzer IV battalions what comes to the intended use, i think it's safe to say that Panthers did not perform as intended in 1943. too many teething problems.

that 193 km (120 miles) figure for Sherman originates most likely from this: as seen, 193 km figure is the upper margin for diesels. of all the over 50 000 Shermans built, only some 8000 (A2 and A6) were diesels. what comes to the petrols, 56 miles is 90 km and 90 miles is 145 km.

indeed. T-34 certainly has a significant reliability advantage over Panther what comes to long range marches on tracks. probably it exists at ranges somewhere between 100 and 300 km. what comes to Panzer IV J and T-34 i don't think there's really any difference what comes to road marches on tracks.

what kind of stuff do you have in mind exactly what comes to higher strategic mobility of T-34? i'm not really questioning the point, just interested. simplistic operational ranges of some tanks: T-34 early - 100 / 300 km (off road / road) Panzer IV early - 100 / 200 km (off road / road) T-34 M1942 - 400 km (increase created by external fuel tanks) Panzer IV J - 300 km (increase created by internal tanks) T-34/85 - 300 km (decrease created by added weight) Panther - 100 / 250 km (off road / road) IS-2 - 250 km weights: T-34 - 26 t T-34 M42 - 28.5 t T-34 M43 - 30.9 t T-34 / 85 - 32 t Pz IV D - 20 t Pz IV G - 23.5 t Pz IV H/J - 25 t IS-2 - 46 t Panther D - 43 t Panther G - 45.5 t (yeah, including IS-2 is slightly OT, but at least i dind't post less than flattering numbers for e.g. Sherman)

war is not necessarily negative even if your GROUP does lose. it creates a pressure for changes which leads to adaptions in the society. these adaptions keep your higher clan of societies competitive against other higher clans. even for those who die in battle the war may be a good thing. after all your personal genes are not as important as those of your sibling gene tree. and those are not as important as the whole genetic pool of your society. and so forth. it applies as much to genes as it does to economics, science, society or memes. the only exception is a war of total annihilation. then it will suck if you lose. and that's why you need those smaller wars, so that you keep competitive. a multimillenia dynasty of umparalled wealth, science & peace is worth nothing when the white devils arrive with their cannons & opium. "i'm in your base, breaking your vases."

Harrison's paper i was referring to earlier is "Stalinist Industrialisation and the Test of War". quotes follow: ok, i'm down only some of the first pages and i already want to kill myself. i mean, seriously, WTF is the dude thinking? orly? perhaps captain Kirk will travel thru time and change history so that your writings can have some actual value. dude, it would help the reader to form an answer to your question if you told them the Soviets didn't believe Germans would ever reach as far as Kharkov. as a consequence Soviets were most focused about industries located in immediate danger area. unlike you, they didn't know how deep the Germans would penetrate.. apparently, then. argh, so why do you even write about it? if it's meaningless why do you keep talking about it? a good bet or not, did you read anything you just wrote earlier in your paper? hey, the guy just at least partially debunked his other paper which doesn't know why USSR didn't die in 1941. anyway, it would have been nice if you had told the reader that the Soviets had been preplanning the evacuations since late 1920ies and actually had prepared some target areas in advance. it would help if you understood how USSR worked. after all, you are apparently a historian and you are writing a paper about it. perhaps, just perhaps, it had nothing at all to do with self-sacrifice or heroism of the workers. eww. dude, you need a reality check. those guys who own the factory complexes, or lobby for their region on the higher political levels, don't care too much about that stuff. they just really don't like it when you try to take their stuff away. yeah, USSR was not supposed to be like that, but that's how it worked in reality. like you know, you a historian specialized on the subject, right? surely it would. hey, while you are it, why not calculate it so that your paper has some validity and makes it worth reading it. and about this "choice", didn't you already previously conclude that there really wasn't much to choose from? like, uh, why are you STILL talking about this? exactly, free markets would have built the production complexes at Urals and Siberia almost automatically! a nice question. so are you gonna tell us what these alternative policies would be like? cool. OMG. someone please kill me so that i don't have to read this whole paper. yeah, tolerate alternative perspectives of those heroic workers! after the saturday orgy they may perhaps notice the evil & gamey German deceit. oh noes. i value your scepticism on this question. lol, in a broad sense yes kinda one of the keys. of course nothing like the heroic oppressed workers with alternative perspectives. maybe not entirely, yeah. i am sorry but i am done trying to reread this paper.

awgh. remember that guy. i read just a couple of months ago a paper written by him. or tried to read, as i couldn't make myself read it in full because it was like reading a college essay in which the writer is more eager to use as many words as possible to support some strage fixation of his than actually describe something of value. the paper had to do with efficiency of Stalinist pre-war industrialization. it was full of nonsene about if only perestroika had arrived 50 years earlier, about the marvels of democratically elected governments, the value of people being very motivated if they are not forced to work hard and so forth. for a historican who could name some modern papers about the subject (while still failing to actually quote them) he sure displayed impressive ability to not deal with some of the actual realities under which Soviet industrialization programs existed. he appeared to not understand at all how crucial politics (regional lobbying etc), self-serving interests (factories trying to suck up as much money from ministries & army as possible) and such were. no, it's about those poor Soviet citizens who don't have democracy. why do Germans manage to overrun so much of Soviet industry in 1941? because Soviet people are oppressed, because of inefficient Stalinist centralization, right? of course it can't be that Soviet military planners never thought Germans could reach as far as Kharkov, not to mention Stalingrad, that Soviets had unfound doctrine in which the defensive war is almost instantly thrown to enemy soil. after all, that's the type of stuff that most modern papers about the subject, wether written by westerners or Russians, deal with. anyway, i'll try to reread it again, as i remember it had some stuff about agrarian societies. i don't mean to sound like an arrogant ass, which i am, but i read a good number of papers about military history every month, and i really disliked that paper by Harrison. when you read lot's of papers you tend to get a feel for different types of writers. i prefer those who avoid extra words, actually quote their sources, clearly show the data they derive their conclusions from and avoid ideological or philosophical drivel. if you could give some of his references, or offer some of his key points, it would of course be great.

it was extremely hard for intelligence to penetrate Stalinist USSR. the glorious strategic insight praised by JasonC estimated USSR would fall in just a few weeks. they based it on intelligence data they had collected and all sorts of production, logistical & such calculations. they all failed to see the full industrial & military power of USSR. they simply did not know what USSR was. in hindsight it is clear. there was simply no reason why it would not have survived. the German strategy of taking Soviet key industrial concentrations failed. Soviet industry survived 1941. thus they could keep fighting. due to the huge reserves (unknown to others) the Red Army survived as well. Stalinist central controlling brain pulling the strings survived as well. no need to collapse.

lol, back to the normal broadcast that's a ridiculous argument when we are discussing the existence of infrastructure for tank production. let me make it more clear with yet another example: after years of construction the Stalingrad tractor factory is finally ready in 1930 and it builds its first tractor. a decade later it has built 200 000 tractors. lot's of tractors yeah, but those are even worse match for a Panzer III than all those BT & T-26 tanks. in mid 1941 the Germans invade. instead of tractors the very same factory now starts to build T-34s. for the rest of the 1941 it is responsible for building more than half of all the T-34s build in USSR, building almost 1000 tanks. in 6 months, including whatever it took to turn production from tractors to tanks. compare to the Vomag case i gave earlier. this freaking tractor factory, built in 1930, is almost twice as effective as Vomag's brand new mass production facilities of 1943 if we look at just tank output. it didn't take two years to make the tractor factory spit out T-34s in 1941. it's not accidental or a coincidence. the Soviets planned it that way and they did it in 1920ies. here's another fact you are going to love: Germans used a higher percentage of their production on military sectors than USSR. the reason is brute economic and industrial power. say, in 1940 US government officials watch panzers race thru France and tells Chrysler it needs some tanks. Chrysler builds a new factory in a year and can build more tanks than the goverment ever needs or wants. nonsense. mobilization of the German economy happens already in 1930ies. there's no sudden rise after Stalingrad. it emphatically does. what you don't appear to connect to this subject is that still when Germans plan for the French campaign they plan for a WW1 type war. they don't see or fully understand a "blitzkrieg". the armaments production is not targetted for a short fast panzer blitz, it's targetted for a long trench fight type war. 1940-1942, predating Stalingrad, sees heavy German investments into tank production. the high tank production figures of 1943-44 come exactly from these factories which by then have become operational. Stalingrad has nothing to do with it, get over it. it has to do with awakening to the nature of warfare after they see "blitzkrieg" live on TV in 1939-1940. as a result US wakes up for tank production in 1940. because of their economical & industrial muscle they can afford it. just the same Germans boost their tank production by starting construction of additional tank factories. Soviets are in practice the only exception - they saw it decades ago and already had it all in place for massive tank production. German tank production figures have nothing to do with being or not being fully or partially mobilized. they could build as many tanks in 1944 even if they had zero mobilization for war. in the big picture tank production itself doesn't eat that much resources, it's, what, some 5% of all military spending at the peak. it's building the required infrastructure that is the true bottleneck. so, could Germans have build more tank factories before 1939? yes, they probably could have, on the expence of other things. in hindsight it's relatively clear that especially some of the naval projects didn't really pay off (though don't say that in some forum about WW2 naval crap). but should it go into tank production, or at an attempt to do something about keeping late war air less hostile, or perhaps higher motorization of the armed forces in general or other such things? if they had built less tanks they could have built more airplanes and perhaps pushed UK out of the war after France fell. etc etc. whatever one thinks in hindsight about what Germans should have done is irreleavant to the fact that German late war high tank production numbers are the result of long term investments into tank production made already years before Stalingrad.

my point was that if you are going to include purely eye candy details, it would be cool if you could make some of those details to be related to military gear instead of just civilian environment. yeah, it doesn't need to be as heavily damaged as the one in the photo. you already have all sorts of damage to vehicles in the game. perhaps allow those models to be used in the maps, with some extra editability like ability to place them partly dug in ground and such. i realize it takes development time and you most likely won't do it. let's not get into this sort of argument. there is no virgin battlefield if there have been military units in there, with or without a previous battle, with or without prep arty or air strikes. but let's not get in this, it's not important. i know i am the last person to ask for more eye candy. that's not my point at all.

they tell something, but not as much as they are usually made to tell. to offer a simplified example (note that this doesn't go into the real details like component flow): Vomag built some tens of tanks per year before 1943. it was slow and inefficient. things change starting on about 1943. now they build on the level of 1000+ tanks per year and it's obviously quite efficient. are they building 10 times more because Panzer IV design was made more efficient? if not, i note they are building mainly TD variants, it's because of that surely? those fools, why didn't they builds the TD variants from the beginning, as they are obviously 10 times chearper to build!? and why didn't they streamline the Panzer IV design two years ago, if it can be made that much more efficient? why oh why didn't Speer come to rationalize that lunatic German economy already years before, as surely this miracle can only be credited to Speer! except, uh oh, turns out that what really happened is that after two years of construction Vomag's new mass production facilities are finally ready. efficiency of production, or production numbers, had in practice nothing to do with tank design. it had to do with means of production available to them. it doesn't make production numbers or units of cost totally irrelevant, but to make an evaluation really worth something you'd need to go check the details of the whole production flow. don't do that. it won't work. you are confused about the cause & effect here. it's the other way around.

the difference is this: - Soviet report states it took 3 weeks to have the factory pump out tanks - German report states it took 2 years to build the new factory with those numbers it takes 35 times longer to build a new factory. that's enough of a difference to spend an army or two in delaying the enemy enough so that you can transport the facilities. BTW has anyone looked at the 1941 operations from that perspective? and besides, it's not a coincidence than a factory like the famous one in Stalingrad, after making some 300 000 tracked tractors, can almost instantly start to make T-34s instead. it's part of the Soviet long term planning made in 1930ies. yes, though i'd recommend using those references i gave links to back then, because they go into greater depth.

cmon, Soviets have a headstart of a full decade. by the time Nazis get in power the Soviets have already begun their long term infrastructure projects for the armaments industry. by the time Nazis build their first tank the Soviets already have full strength tank fleet. nothing the Germans can do can change it. you contradict yourself. early German armaments production is aimed for long war of attrition and that specifically eats from things like tank production. if Germans have an intitial problem, it's exactly that they plan for a too long and too large war in the beginning and that they direct way too much of their resources into armaments production. their economy is very close to collapsing because of it already before the war has even begun. the later achievements were results of earlier long term investments into building up the industrial capacity. it takes years. Nazis get hold of power in 1933-34. five years and you have WW2.

still some more, to make use of your bandwidth:

with almost every game it feels like the combat troops teleport out of thin air. the civilian & natural scenery may look great, but it's almost like it and the combat troops would not exist in the same dimension. if there's eye candy, add eye candy that makes it look like those grunts have actually lived there, that the rear & support elements are around, that the area has seen warfare. make it less clean, less sterile. just some pics after super quick googling:

awgh, that's gross.

exactly. ooh, it's satisfying to finally read this from you. the only beef i have with any of the above is the part about German and Soviet prewar industrial capacities being equal. if we are talking about tank production, the capacities were quite unequal. Soviets had the system ready already before the war. i discussed this with Stalin's Organist in here perhaps a year ago and i refuted every single Soviet tank factory he listed as new. they did lose some factories but all the new factories were basicly just old factories they transported to Urals. many of those factories were up and running in just weeks after arrival. compare that to the Germans, who still keep investing in tank production infrastructure well after Barbarossa. it's slow business, construction of a factory takes years. it's these later factories capable of mass production that are the cause of the huge late war tank production numbers. without these there's just no way to build that many tanks and the production itself is far less economical.

i am a great fan of OR studies and there are some that actually do go to the level of effects made by differences between tanks. Brits made some great studies about that. one good book that includes stuff about them is "Stress of Battle". my issue is with the fundamental logic of going into production numbers of different tanks, or units of production cost, or strategic / operational loss stats and then deriving qualitative difference between different tank designs from it. the first reason is that production numbers and units of cost are directly related to resources and means of production available. it's not as simple as just choosing to build a really economical tank, or choosing between design A and B. the second reason is that you can't derive things like that from strategic/operational level loss statistics. on that level other things will always be more important than the differences between tanks. just look at for example Arracourt or 1941 tank battles. the superior tanks lose real bad and it's not about numbers. if you want to do it well, do it like the Brits and analyze a good number of individual small battles and try to find patterns. if we forget about high level statistics or production numbers, i agree that looking at tank attributes can be very interesting. i still fear that differences between tanks is not going to matter. at best it's going to be the difference between a medium tank vs heavy tank, tank vs tank destroyer, AT gun vs tank destroyer and so forth.

i get a feeling there is slight trend of people returning to the forum to check out about how various things are going to be different with the Normandy game. perhaps someone could keep a FAQ of some kind, officially or unofficially, so as to keep noise ratio a bit lower. i myself feel stupid, useless and lazy for asking things which have just been answered a day or two ago. that feeling may be justified in general, but in this case it would have been convinient for my interests if there had been such a FAQ post.

good to hear that command delays might return as a WEGO option. i realize you folks are still just thinking about it, but are you planning to make the delay system utilize the fancy chain of command system of Shock Force? so if a given platoon has a radio, it may have shorter command delays for example? now that i am speaking, or rather typing, i want to inform the world that since 1980ies i have enjoyed tactical wargames that have strong command delay systems (as an example of one such ancient computer wargame; Panzer Strike and the command point system in which many turns could pass without you being able to adjust given orders). i get twisted satisfaction when it takes a while for my men to follow my orders as it adds another dimension to the battle. somehow it feels more realistic to me, though of course in reality it's just my highly subjective, if not almost private, obsession.