East Front and Your Obsessions

[Wild Bill Wilder]

In support of 0311, may I say that all theaters of war deserve a shake at being depicted in the Combat Mission game.

The Pacific has been my predilection for many years. I guess seeing (at the movies when it came out! ) "Sands of Iwo Jima" hooked me.

My uncle also served in the Pacific in the USAAF.

After years of extensive reading and study

on the subject, it is still my favorite.

I have pleaded and begged BTS to give it thought. I think it will happen. There will be a Pacific module, or that is my hope.

Think about it. CM is an infantry game. I know this because I have worked on it for over a year. I still have my alpha and three beta disks.

Tanks are there, but this is infantry. I think most designers and testers will agree as well as Charles and Steve. Tanks are a corollary to infantry fighting.

Now where will you have more infantry fighting than in the islands of the Pacific or the jungles of Burma?...Merrill's Marauders, Edson's Ridge, Battle of the Ilu, Banzai charges, infilitration, night attacks, so many things that could be effectively modeled.

Tank battles from Saipan, the Philippines (early and late), Betio (yes, there was a short engagement between US and Japanese armor there!) and on and on I could go.

SO yes, enjoy the East Front. In fact, I recommend you read my Overview of the War on the East Front going up Thursday, May 11th at the SPWAW special site. It was a year in the writing.

I wanted to have personally a general understanding and quick grasp of all fighting in the east, so I spent the time reading and writing as I read.

Its a year by year coverage of the war there.

But enough of that. I too advocate a Pacific Module in CM. Listening, Steve? I know you are

The Kunel

------------------

Wild Bill

Wild Bill's Raiders

Director of Scenario Design,

The Gamers Net

billw@thegamers.net

http://wbr.thegamers.net

[killmore]

You can call both sides barbarous. - I can agree with that.

Just don't call German civilized and Soviets barbarians.

[Gespenster]

Well said Steve, I agree totally ... the pictures I have seen while doing my research on the Eastern Front are truly horrific, and not for the faint of heart ... but I have seen photos from both sides ... to put it plainly, it was just pure hell. As for the statement that 10000 Soviets were executed for rape and other crimes againts Germans, I would have to agree w/ Major Tom and like to know from where these numbers were obtained ... it is however a fact that on the first night of the occupation of Berlin by the Soviets in May 1945 there were over 100,000 rapes reported by the German population ... to say nothing of the rapes that weren't reported ... If the Soviet Government did have rules against committing atrocities (of which I have never heard of in my 12+ years of researching the Eastern Front) I don't think anyone bothered to tell the troops.

~G

[This message has been edited by Gespenster (edited 05-05-2000).]

[PanzerLeader]

Tommi, you convinced me I guess. One cannot do much against numbers.

If the myth of Soviet numerical superiority is really a myth then it is a persistant one too.

[Guest Big Time Software]

PL, the only myth is that the Soviets had a HUGELY greater number of men under arms at the same time. As Tommi documented very well, this was not the case. The Soviets had more TOTAL men go through its ranks by far, but there is only so much one country can keep under arms at one time.

BTW, one reason the Germans chewed through the prewar standing Red Army was because of their deployment. There were three major echelons, each with a specific purpose. When the Germans attacked the border regions were supposed to fall back to the operational reserve, then hold there. The strateigc reserve would then move up and throw the Germans back to Berlin. Problem was few of the border units made it back to the operational positions (roughly Minsk to Kiev) and because of that the operational line became easily enveloped due to it being under manned. The strategic reseverve was not ready, but things were really bad so it got tossed in to simply hold the line, which it BARELY did after some brutal fighting. Then winter hit, slowing down the Germans, which allowed troops from the Far East and Caucauses were brought up to replace the former stratgic reserves.

Very interesting story that one is

Steve

[Tim]

Well, by time writing I´m so drunk I can hardly sit on my office chair, but I´ll try to make my point anyway. I see the Eastern Front as being the most important and interesting part of WW2, but I can´t see how it could be possible to depict this war correctly. As far as I have concluded by reading several eyewitness reports, the mayor differenses between the Armies was the way they were lead. The Russians seemed to lack qualified leadership, and this seemed in the end to cause a lot of unnessesary cassualties on the Russian side. The problem, to me, seems to be that CM makes you the leader of a battalion, and therefore gives you an advantage over your real world counterparts. As the Russians you would have a mayor supperiority in manpower the only way to counter this would be to make moral and leadership checks for your troops.

I hope this makes sense, but I´m so drunk I don´t really care anyway. Have a great weekend.

Tim

[Username]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Tim:

I hope this makes sense, but I´m so drunk I don´t really care anyway. Have a great weekend.

Tim <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Here, Here

I am personally exploring a new potent brew called 'Ele-(hic)-phant' beer, ahem, 7.2 % and very effective TD.. uh ..I mean..brain destroyer..BD! beer. Happy cinco de Mayo ya'all!!

::Lewis:: (hic)

[Tim]

Hey, I hear you Lewis !

A couple of weekends ago my local brewery just launched their new and improved Easter Brew. 7,5 % brain busting brew and only served in portions of at least ½ litre, man life is beautiful.

Aquavit, the water of life.

Tim

[Username]

HEY MIND YA P's AND Q'S!!! (thats pints and quarts ya non metric pizzantz)

heppy mexikana or whadeveah!!

(whads da selebraashion again?)

Lewis

[PanzerLeader]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>BTW, one reason the Germans chewed through the prewar standing Red Army was because of their deployment. There were three major echelons, each with a specific purpose. When the Germans attacked the border regions were supposed to fall back to the operational reserve, then hold there. The strateigc reserve would then move up and throw the Germans back to Berlin. Problem was few of the border units made it back to the operational positions (roughly Minsk to Kiev) and because of that the operational line became easily enveloped due to it being under manned. The strategic reseverve was not ready, but things were really bad so it got tossed in to simply hold the line, which it BARELY did after some brutal fighting. Then winter hit, slowing down the Germans, which allowed troops from the Far East and Caucauses were brought up to replace the former stratgic reserves.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I believe the Germans had superior numbers and firepower at most parts of the front in Barbarossa, but what fascinates me is the summer offensive of 1942. It looked like a classic Blitzkrieg with Panzers rolling unopposed on the steppes of the Ukraine, and Hitler even thought that "the Russian is finished".

Yet when you look at it a bit closer you realise that from August onwards Stavka was almost toying with the Wehrmacht, keeping its powerful reserves behind for one crushing blow. During the autumn, when the Germans were sending all of their replacements and reinforcements at Staingrad, Stavka only sent a fraction of theirs to the city. All the rest was kept more or less hidden on the bridgeheads of the Don. This gives me the impression of a very large numerical superiority in favour of the Soviets.

[Guest Big Time Software]

Don't mess with Danish beer man! They KNOW how to drink

Yes, the leadership issue is more pronounced on the Eastern Front than on the Western. However, there are ways of making command and control very difficult for the Soviet player. We have a few ideas already, but the obvious one is long delay times. This means, practically speaking, that the player can plot big moves, but if things go wrong... oh boy are you going to be hosed! Picture making some sweeping flank move on the left and right. The right runs into trouble, so you cancel the left. But now it has to sit idle for a full turn or more, unlike the 10-30 seconds right now. That is a huge tactical disadvantage. One of our ideas, BTW, is to make cancelling orders difficult to do, so perhaps you CAN'T call off the attack on the left when the one on the right falls to pieces

In short... trust us, we can do it

PL wrote:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>This gives me the impression of a very large numerical superiority in favour of the Soviets.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nope, not at all. Why did the German '42 offensive (Case Blue) go ahead so fast? Because there were hardly any Soviet troops in front of them. So the Germans probably had 4:1 local superiority or in some cases 10:1 I would imagine. So when they smashed into the thin Italian and Rummanian lines, they did so with all the troops that had not been involved before, and therefore got significant local superiority again. It all comes back to Tommi's point that the Soviets were masters of concentrating their forces and the Germans were childlike with their intelligence gathering.

It troubled the German commanders greatly, in fact. They kept driving and driving and driving and weren't finding anything big to smash up, which is what the plan called for.

So they made a huge mistake and just kept going East and South East, instead of rolling up the Central front. To the shallow minded senior commanders, like Hitler, the lack of resistance was proof that the Soviets were finished. But others suspected what was going to happen, and it in fact did happen.

Steve

[PanzerLeader]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>It all comes back to Tommi's point that the Soviets were masters of concentrating their forces and the Germans were childlike with their intelligence gathering.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Steve, I believe that the Germans in Case Blue had great numerical superiority at the front, but I was talking about the huge operational and strategic reserves behind the front, especially in front of Moscow(Soviet Intelligence had thought that Case Blue would be a re-fight of Typhoon).

The Germans had almost no such reserves. And this is why I say that it gives me the impression of great numerical superiority in favour of the Soviets, because they always had, from 42 onwards, a large reserve behind the front. The Germans on the contrary had a habit of throwing everything they had into the battle(Stalingrad, Kursk...), so at the front numbers may have been more or less equal but the Soviets had powerful reserves.