A Modified 41-45 GC Scenario ?

[GamesaurusRex]

I'm reposting this from the AAR section discussion at the suggestion of Red Lancer to discover what is necessary to create a modified GC scenario with the editor.

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OK, Gentlemen, just focusing on 1941... and thumbing through some of my admittedly incomplete library of War-In-The-East themed books... when I compared them with the game's 1941 reinforcement schedule ('41-'45 GC), I did not find any massive inconsistencies, but I did notice a few "missing pieces" that did jump out at me.

To whit:

1) The 28th Army should start in Viazma, not way up north where it does.
2) The 53rd Army should appear in August '41, not October, '41.
3) The 58th Army should appear in December '41, not June '42.
4) The 59th Army is missing entirely and should appear in December '41.
5) The 60th Army is missing and should appear in December '41.
(it appears incorrectly later in game when the 60th was redesignated as the 3rd Shock Army.)
6) The 61st Army is missing entirely and should appear in December '41.

As for TOE and morale initial values, I suppose they'd be clones of the 50th-60th Armies.

After the above corrections and looking at the way the game fleshes out all the "shell" army units as they appear, I guess the obvious answer is to simply boost the Russian AP per turn allotment (with intial game setting) to increase the Russian ability to generate replacements to a level suitable to support suicidal wastage of manpower. Then I suppose formulating some sort of HR (sudden death or time linked bonus VP?) to require Russian defence of forward Russian population/industrial centers would be in order to complete the mayhem. Anyway, something like this could improve the '41-'42 game period and avoid the "Running Russian Syndrome".

This sort of adjustment would increase both German and Russian '41-'42 casualties in the simulation (which needs to happen) and would provide the Russian an incentive to fight forward to avoid HR penalties and to inflict attritional damage on the German Army early in the game.

What do you think, Red Lancer ?
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[GamesaurusRex]

OK Red Lancer... reposted as requested. Now please continue to educate me about your thoughts on the proper way to go about implementing this sort of modification. I'm guessing maybe your comment about AP not needing to be increased is because the arrival of the missing Army HQs will arrive with their own AP allotment in the modified reinforcement schedule ? Is that what you were saying ?

(BTW, I got these details from referring to two books... "When Titans Clashed" by Glantz & House, and "War Without Garlands - Operation Barbarorosa 1941/1942" by Kershaw).

From reading the Editor Manual, I gather it is possible to load the original 41-42 GC Scenario and edit it to make these changes, taking care to save the changes to a different file name, so as not to overwrite the main scenario... yes ?

[RedLancer]

GRex

This is my suggestion.

Firstly set yourself a clear aim for the scenario. After all selection and maintenance of the aim is the first principle of war. I find doing so helps make better design decisions when a difficult choice needs to be made.

- Amending an existing scenario is the way to go. Pick the GC41 scenario you think best meets your needs in terms of victory conditions (Vanilla/Alt Victory/Sudden Death). In campaign scenarios the VPs are hard coded so we are stuck with them.
- If you hate the Lvov Pocket you may wish to consider changing the start date - perhaps by only a day or the whole first turn. This would remove the hardcoded first turn surprise rules. We could then put the units into their historical positions. I'm not saying we can stop the Lvov Pocket but we may be able to ameliorate it. This suggestion could warrant its own discussion.
- APs. APs are set in the editor as a starting value and then points per turn. If you want to increase them it is possible. I've never written an early war scenario with changes to the Russians so I don't know whether an additional Army arriving will bring an AP bonus - I don't see why not. If evacuation costs APs and you want to encourage fight forward then reducing APs may be the way ahead.
- Replacements and Reinforcements. For clarity I define a replacement as a ground element built by production or a player created unit built at a cost of APs. Reinforcements are units set in the scenario data to arrive on a set turn.
- My strong advice is that you concentrate on amendments to reinforcements as it is much easier to program. In the editor we can set arrival date, arrival location, strength, experience and morale. This could also include changing current unit arrivals so that they arrive as complete units instead of shells.
- The reinforcement approach requires more research. That is going to require some time and effort. My research for Stalingrad to Berlin took months and not days. Creating an arrival schedule that includes as a minimum all the Combat Units is a must.

Hope this makes sense.

[Gabriel B.]

If you put the soviets on historical position , the axis would advance faster but the number of traped units would be smaller .

I had modified the road to kiev scenario for myself by moving the soviets, where they actually were on 22. june 1941 .

22nd , 4th , 15th mechanised are dommed regardles .

[GamesaurusRex]

Thanks Red.. That helps. Just adding missing reinforcements is what I had in mind. As for months of research..., not being able to read Russian (and not having access to original Russian OOBs anyway) I think I can settle for readily available sources like Glantz and House for details sufficient for my tastes. The Lvov pocket problem has already been solved by the HR Wheat and I use (and I'm mulling over some HR VP bonus ideas to use with the increased reinforcement schedule.)

Anyway, being able to tailor these things with the editor is just great !

[Schmart]

There is a more historical Russian OOB in the works for WITE that I'm working on. Probably initially as a mod and perhaps later on as part of 2.0. The problem with simulating even just Russian Army HQs (let alone all the other Russian units) is that many changed designations multiple times, converted to Guards, disbanded (or disbanded and then later resurrected) etc. It's not so easy to make heads or tails of them.

[GamesaurusRex]

@Schmart:
I see exactly what you are saying. The more you dig, the more confusing it can become. German sources say one thing, Russian sources say another... then later Russian sources say entirely different things [:'(]. So I suppose, in the end, you just use what seems legitmate and consistent with a good game.

My aim in this case was just looking to find any "missing" Russian troops in the '41 schedule to enable the Russian to throw more bodies at the Hun early in the game. The unmodified Russian reinforcement schedule seems to me to be insufficient to support an all out Russian forward defense. Without some positive modification, a Russian forward defense will result in the loss of too many unreplaceable units and it is "game over" by '42. Others on the forum have commented about the lack of viability of a Russian forward defense as well. It just seems to me, if there are any "missing" early units, that adding them would be an easy and obvious improvement.