BTS: Soviet advantage in night operations for CM2

[Grisha]

Just thought I'd plug this in, since the Soviets possessed this advantage over the Germans throughout the war. Not sure how it should be implemented, but here are some possibilities:<UL TYPE=SQUARE><LI> superior command ranges for the Soviets.<LI> advantage in sneaking.<LI> advantage in hiding.

[Terence]

This is interesting. Why do you allege that the Soviets had this advantage?

[M Hofbauer]

f l a m e b a i t

[Grisha]

Terence,

I didn't think someone would call me on this one. I thought this fact was so well known that it didn't need verification. Well, let me dig up my references, and I'll get back to you.

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Best regards,

Greg Leon Guerrero

[Grisha]

Here's a list of some reasons why the Soviets were better at night operations than Germans:<UL TYPE=SQUARE><LI> Forced to conduct operations at night from the beginning due to overwhelming German airpower.<LI> Soviets commenced many attacks at night, launched forward detachments mostly at night, conducted troop reconnaissance usually at night.<LI> At Stalingrad, ground gained by the Germans in the day was retaken by the Soviets at night.

I know this isn't much of a list. There's also a pdf file, TheSicilianCampaign, at this site that jasper posted, containing a translated Soviet article on night operations. Of course, all things being equal, the Soviets preferred to do most major operations during daylight. It's just that since things weren't very equal for about half of the war, the Soviets tended to use night as an equalizer for various things.

Honest, this wasn't a troll. I sincerely thought this aspect of Soviet operations was well known. Sorry if I ruffled any feathers.

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Best regards,

Greg Leon Guerrero

[This message has been edited by Grisha (edited 02-13-2001).]

[Terence]

Originally posted by Grisha:

some reasons why the Soviets were better at night operations than Germans.

Ahh. Hmmm. Well, I'll take your post at face value and will not reply "Otlez, gnida" as was my first instinct. Ha ha ha!

I would say that what you have written there are reasons _why_ the Soviets carried out night operations.

But I don't see any reasons why the average Soviet soldier would be any better at it than the average German soldier. Just cause you operate a lot at night doesn't necessarily mean that you are good at it. Does it???

[aka_tom_w]

I guess I should not comment (and this may return to haunt me) BUT....

I don't know all that much about the war on the eastern front....

BUT I do know that the Soviets were the defenders and should know the lay of the land and the area they are defending, OK only in the early part of the war and the Eastern Front, the Soviets were defending and mostly getting killed alot.

I would suggest the being the defender and know the lay of the land and fight at night alot would give the soviet defenders night fighting experience (perhaps modeled in the game as simply as a LESS likely chance of friendly fire incidents) and should be good at hiding ambushing and defending, since they had so much experience at it being attacked all the time.

now that might be a VERY simplistic view of the Eastern Front but maybe the soviets won't be so likey to die by friendly fire at night in CM2? It could be modeled as something that simple? (maybe)

-tom w

[Grisha]

You're right, Terence, I don't really explain why the Soviets were any better. I could say that being forced to conduct night operations from early on, combined with their emerging skill at maskirovka resulted in an advantage, but that really is nothing but conjecture. I guess I'll just leave it for BTS to decide.

I should say most of my knowledge of the Russian front is primarily from Soviet sources, though I have read a few German memoirs, like Guderian's. What I have read has generally alluded to a Soviet advantage at night, something that was swiftly rectified at dawn, I might add

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Best regards,

Greg Leon Guerrero

[Michael Dorosh]

The Eastern Front ranged over thousands of miles. What are the odds a soldier would fight on ground that he grew up on, or even trained on?

Squad Leader penalized the Russians heavily for not having leadership at all.

They also made the Finns out to be superhuman - would be interestnig to see how CM deals with this.

15 man squads will be interesting, too.

[Terence]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

I would suggest the being the defender and know the lay of the land and fight at night alot would give the soviet defenders night fighting experience (perhaps modeled in the game as simply as a LESS likely chance of friendly fire incidents)

Yeah, maybe. I certainly am not qualified to dispense Truth. At least, not on this subject. But how would knowing the terrain help you to better see at night to distinguish friendly troops from enemy ones?

And not all soldiers were local either.

When the Soviets stopped the German army at the gates of Moscow with the Siberian troops they had no experience with the local terrain at all.

Wow would you model that? There seem to be an awful lot of variables.

I'm suspicious that this night fighting advantage actually exists. It sounds like national characteristic bonus, and we've all seen those discussed to death. Anyone care to clarify?

[Urban Shocker]

In both Squad Leader (the board game) and East Front II, the Soviets are considered the worst in maintaining communication (e.g. calling in arty in Squad Leader; the command radius in East Front II). I assume that these are based on real characteristics of the Soviet army (at least, early in the war they were poor). I've also read that Soviets units would become practically immobilized if they did not have the proper commander given them their orders. I believe the rationale for this was the potential punishment for doing anything without the proper orders. Anybody else read this?

[This message has been edited by Urban Shocker (edited 02-13-2001).]

[Grisha]

Originally posted by Urban Shocker:

In both Squad Leader (the board game) and East Front II, the Soviets are considered the worst in maintaining communication (e.g. calling in arty in Squad Leader; the command radius in East Front II). I assume that these are based on real characteristics of the Soviet army (at least, early in the war they were poor). I've also read that Soviets units would become practically immobilized if they did not have the proper commander given them their orders. I believe the rationale for this was the potential punishment for doing anything without the proper orders. Anybody else read this?

[This message has been edited by Urban Shocker (edited 02-13-2001).]

As far as games go, Avalon Hill's card game version of Squad Leader, Up Front!, gives the Russians the best infiltration skills of the group.

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Best regards,

Greg Leon Guerrero

[Guest Offwhite]

Originally posted by Terence:

I'm suspicious that this night fighting advantage actually exists. It sounds like national characteristic bonus

It also sounds like something that could better be effected by giving the Sovs in such a night scenario a higher experience rating. Giving the advantage to all Soviet troops would be hard to justify - it's reasonable to say that certain units might have been especially good at night ops, but my guess is it's because they had some special training (maybe) and some previous experience, not because their hats bore a little red star instead of an eagle.

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Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep

Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap

- Rudyard Kipling, "Tommy"

[This message has been edited by Offwhite (edited 02-13-2001).]

[Freak]

Grisha:

How would one come up for german superiorty in the early parts of the war for CM2? Judging from the early part of the war, the Germans must have had some sort of superiorty, considering Germany was close to defeating Russia in summer of 1941.

I am going out on a limb here, becouse I do not know exactly how close Germany was from taking Stalingrad. But I do know that it must have been pretty close, and the if Stalingrad had fallen to the Germans, Russia would not have such an easy time fighting back.

So if the russians are given special superiority over the germans in the later war, then should not the germans deserve some sort of superiority over the russians in the early war?

I am not sure this would be a great idea to implement. Maybe it would be good maybe not. But it certainly would be historical if so. The only problem ism what do you do with battle pertaining to Kursk, where Germany won some decisive battles...what do you do then? tone the russians down?

So you see where this may lead, and I for one do not think its is a good idea.

Freak

[Skipper]

I suspect BTS will leave these things to scenario developers, and I think they will be right at that.

In the real life, it was one of the things frontline soviet infantryman quickly learned from experience and lore: "germans don't fight at night; we do".

There was a reason, as I understand (there is always a reason). Night fight = close combat with light weapons and high bodycounts = attrition war. One of the elements of soviet strategy (at least, while RKKA had not enough mobility and heavy weapons for multiple large scale operations across the front) was to force germans into attrition war. To that extent, all sorts of things were used, such as frequent recons by force, small unit night missions, tactical attacks etc etc.

It worked, by the way.

[Terence]

Indeed it did work.

No to be vague, but I suppose anything will work, up to a point.

What I suppose I was having trouble with was the idea that just because the Soviets did this a lot that it made their troops inherently better at it. Key word: inherently.

Maybe, instead, they were about as good as anyone else and kept doing it cause they decided that this was a good way to spend manpower. Maybe the German army did not choose to operate across the entire front in this way.

Practice often does make perfect, but perhaps not in every case.

To ramble on further, if the Soviet soldier from 1941-45 had been issued a pair of night vision goggles and a lifetime supply of batteries, I'd be conceding the point like mad, but I'm not sure that being made to operate at night and doing it a lot is quantifiable in terms of the game mechanics.

[jgdpzr]

Interesting points. This is another illustration of the challenge BTS faces in this undertaking. In CMBO, they have been able to effectively make the case that national differences really don't need to be factored in. The Eastern Front, however, is more problematic. Much of this is due to the allusions many of the knowledgeable folk on this board have made regarding the realization that the Western understanding of combat on the Eastern Front may be tainted by historically embraced biases. In other words, we in the West are left to make assumptions that the Russians were good at this, or bad at that because of information whose accuracy may be questionable. BTS has done a remarkable job (IMHO) of sticking to a "just the facts mentality" that stresses hard data over anecdotal evidence. In the East, this may prove more problematic because of these preconceived notions that Westerners may have of combat on the Eastern Front. Sure, many of us quibble over details of how combat is portrayed in CMBO, but I think we can all agree that it feels 'about right.' But there are some things that almost without question must be handled differently to represent combat in the East. One example I can think of off the top of my head are command and control concerns for Soviet armor. This situation cries out for different handling for the opposing combatants. How this type of thing is handled is going to represent a tightrope that BTS was able to hop over in CMBO.

On a side note, I think Offwhite may be on to something in terms of balancing these factors with experience. BTS may have to leave it to the scenario designers to fill in some of these dynamics in precisely this fashion.

[Guest Andrew Hedges]

You know -- assuming for the moment that these accounts are true -- it could be that Soviets shouldn't get night-fighting bonuses, but that perhaps Germans, to the extent that they normally have a tactical advantage over the Soviets, would not have it at night. Or to put it in less national-characteristic terms, maybe all units fight like green squads at night; if the Germans have more veteran and regular squads, and the sovs more regular and green, the sovs would do better to fight at night because the edge that the germans would have had during the day would be blunted by dark.

[Grisha]

Freak,

I see your point, and I'm not sure what to do about it either. The usage of varying experience levels seems like an elegant solution, but it may not be encompassing enough given the nature of the conflict being simulated. Maybe an elegant solution would be to also give the Soviets more commanders with Stealth ability than the Germans, on average. But first, I guess there needs to be a judgement on whether the Soviet did have better stealth ability as a whole. In hindsight, I think I jumped the gun on this issue, since the engine may be able to handle such an ability w/o modifications.

jgdpzr,

Regarding armor I was thinking that a possible solution would be to tweak the CM engine, so that Soviet tanks are grouped into tank platoons much like infantry platoons with a tank platoon HQ. This would definitely limit Soviet armor capabilities, since they would need to clumped together to be command effective. Maybe, from 1944 on this restriction could be lifted since radios were much more prevalent in Soviet tank units.

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Best regards,

Greg Leon Guerrero

[Michael Dorosh]

Let's not confuse "national characteristics" with "doctrine."

[GriffinCheng+]

I am not sure about the EF but in North Africa, Rommel made remarks the Australian and New Zealanders were very good in night fightings. It is reflected in the game "World @ War: Operation Crusader", this game gives these troops night combat bonus, apart from other Allied troops. However, since in CMBO does not give any nationality any special bonus, I am not sure again if this will be included.

Griffin.

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"When you find your PBEM opportents too hard to beat, there is always the AI."

"Can't get enough Tank?"

[Guest Offwhite]

I still have trouble buying the idea that a certain country's army as a whole should receive some night advantage - did they eat more carrots than the Germans?

Not to pick on Andrew, but how could a Green Soviet unit, which by definition has seen little or no fighting, be significantly better at a certain kind of fighting (in this case, night) than a Green German unit? And if the Soviets were good at night fighting because they did it so much, doesn't the same apply to the Germans who were defending against it every night?

Anyway, the desire simply seems to be for one side to be disproportionately effective in a night battle - if that's how you want your scenario to play, I still think it's best controlled with experience levels, and perhaps leader attributes as Grisha suggests; but on a scenario-by-scenario basis rather than globally.

Wow, two posts in a thread I didn't start - that's gotta be a record. Interesting topic, guys

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Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep

Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap

- Rudyard Kipling, "Tommy"

[Guest Germanboy]

Originally posted by jgdpzr:

BTS has done a remarkable job (IMHO) of sticking to a "just the facts mentality" that stresses hard data over anecdotal evidence. In the East, this may prove more problematic because of these preconceived notions that Westerners may have of combat on the Eastern Front.

Well, I think they have done this to a degree with CMBO (German Uebertanks anyone?), and I am sure that there will be hell to pay when they do it again with CM2, but I think they will anyway. See it as an educational effort on BTS' part

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Andreas

Der Kessel

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[Sig]

Originally posted by Offwhite:

(snip) but how could a Green Soviet unit, which by definition has seen little or no fighting, be significantly better at a certain kind of fighting (in this case, night) than a Green German unit?

Your comment gave me an idea: if units have to penalised during night fighting, it should be based on experience. It makes sense that a green unit will lose more of its combat value during a night fight than a veteran under the same condition will.

Alternatively, instead of decreasing the combat value, impact on the *moral* could be increased at night, always in relation to unit experience. This would simulate a green unit loosing its nerve faster at night, when under the same circumstances, a veteran would retain cohesion, having already experienced this kind of situation.

Do you think this could be worth implementing?

Sig

[Sig]

Ack...the infamous "back". grr

[This message has been edited by Sig (edited 02-14-2001).]