A General Observation

Norm Koger's The Operational Art of War III is the next game in the award-winning Operational Art of War game series. TOAW3 is updated and enhanced version of the TOAW: Century of Warfare game series. TOAW3 is a turn based game covering operational warfare from 1850-2015. Game scale is from 2.5km to 50km and half day to full week turns. TOAW3 scenarios have been designed by over 70 designers and included over 130 scenarios. TOAW3 comes complete with a full game editor.

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Michael T
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A General Observation

Post by Michael T »

From the designers notes 'Road to Moscow I'
If the foot infantry is assigned their TOE number of trucks (approx 500 for supply and admin), their movement is faster than armor ! So- TOE admin transportration should not be included in TOAW units.

I think this is a problem with numerous scenario's. And an observation I made decades ago about TOAW. Foot units movement rates relative to Motorized units in many cases seem to high. Could this be the reason why? Designers putting Admin/Supply vehicles in to the TOE of Foot units when its not appropriate for this game system?
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RE: A General Observation

Post by r6kunz »

ORIGINAL: Michael T

From the designers notes 'Road to Moscow I'
If the foot infantry is assigned their TOE number of trucks (approx 500 for supply and admin), their movement is faster than armor ! So- TOE admin transportration should not be included in TOAW units.
I think this is a problem with numerous scenario's. And an observation I made decades ago about TOAW. Foot units movement rates relative to Motorized units in many cases seem to high. Could this be the reason why? Designers putting Admin/Supply vehicles in to the TOE of Foot units when its not appropriate for this game system?
Thanks for the observation.
When I started playing TOAW, I played Smolensk 41 (now in the Classic scenario folder). The relative rates of advance made no sense. The German Infantry Divisions greatly outpaced the Panzers. The S&T Panzergrouppe Guderian had been on of my favorite board games. I pulled it out, and sure enough, Smolensk 41 was a direct conversion from the board game. The problem was the units all had their full TOE allotment to trucks. I started making modifications to Smolensk, but soon found it was easier to start from scratch and that was the genesis of the Road to Moscow series...

As has been discussed previously, but not clearly stated in Norm's notes, a "Truck" in actually a "Truck Unit", and even allocating one Truck unit per motorized infantry squad will give an unrealistic rate of march.
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Michael T
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RE: A General Observation

Post by Michael T »

I very much agree with your take on this. And your experience mirrors my own. Except I removed TOAW from my HD in disgust at the silly relative movement rates I observed when the game was first released. Little did I know back then that this was not a game system problem but a scenario design problem. This is my first look at it again since then.

Looking at your Road To Moscow scenario's it is so refreshing to see relative movement rates that fall in to line with my experiences with board games I have played, and my perceived view of reality.

Do you have any plans to design some East Front games ala Road to/from Stalingrad?
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Michael T
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RE: A General Observation

Post by Michael T »

Looking at Road To Moscow I, I think this German ID might have a tad too many MG's assigned :)

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RE: A General Observation

Post by Lobster »

To confuse things even more, as a transport unit halftracks are treated the same way as trucks, it's an unspecified number of vehicles, but when halftracks are involved in combat one halftrack is one halftrack.
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RE: A General Observation

Post by r6kunz »

ORIGINAL: Michael T

Looking at Road To Moscow I, I think this German ID might have a tad too many MG's assigned :)

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Which Road to Moscow I are you using? I just checked v2.0 and it has 97/112 MMG (apparently in v1.2 there was an go-getter G4 that cornered the market in MMG). There should be the latest versions in the RtM thread- but I will see if I can repost.
Thanks for your review of the data. Herr Oberst has also been helpful in checking these scenarios.
cheers
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RE: A General Observation

Post by r6kunz »

ORIGINAL: Lobster

To confuse things even more, as a transport unit halftracks are treated the same way as trucks, it's an unspecified number of vehicles, but when halftracks are involved in combat one halftrack is one halftrack.

Quite correct that transport units can be confusing. I usually assign truck units on a 1:3 ratio truck:combat unit, and then adjust to give what I feel is a reasonable rate of march in the time/distance of a given scenario. I treat halftracks as one halftrack.
cheers
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RE: A General Observation

Post by r6kunz »

Thanks for your comments and interests. My favorite is the What if? scenario...

I have not looked at Stalingrad except played Wintergewitter 1942 by Pelle. 5 km/hex at one-day turns. Six weeks, starting 11Dec42. I did not think I could improve on his scenario.

I have a pre-beta Kursk that I worked on a while back. I felt a bit overwhelmed by the Kursk scenarios (of course, the battle was overwhelming), and wanted to reduce the scope somewhat. SPI had a board game Kurst that was one of their earlier games, that was more or less on the Road to Moscow scale. It was designed by Sterling Hart, who was actually the guy who introduced me to wargaming. We were on a CPX in Germany and he had a copy of Avlon Hill's Afrika Korps...

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Michael T
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RE: A General Observation

Post by Michael T »

Ok, I am using the version that came with the game. I will grab V2. Thanks :)
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Michael T
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RE: A General Observation

Post by Michael T »

Would be nice if there were a sticky thread that had updated scenario's for all the 'official' versions in the game. I am wondering what other scenario's I am looking at that have perhaps been updated??
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RE: A General Observation

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ORIGINAL: HPT KUNZ

I have not looked at Stalingrad except played Wintergewitter 1942 by Pelle. 5 km/hex at one-day turns. Six weeks, starting 11Dec42. I did not think I could improve on his scenario.

Playing this right now. It's a good scenario, but off the top of my head;

Transport levels need to be slashed (ironically, given the thread we're in) as they cause major and unrealistic traffic penalties.

The fortified status of initial deployments needs to be reviewed, as it's very hard for either side to make the kind of rapid progress they historically did in the opening phase of the scenario.
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RE: A General Observation

Post by golden delicious »

ORIGINAL: Michael T

Would be nice if there were a sticky thread that had updated scenario's for all the 'official' versions in the game. I am wondering what other scenario's I am looking at that have perhaps been updated??

The disk Rhodes was updated to clarify a house rule- that's my contribution to the world of updates.
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RE: A General Observation

Post by Oberst_Klink »

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: HPT KUNZ

I have not looked at Stalingrad except played Wintergewitter 1942 by Pelle. 5 km/hex at one-day turns. Six weeks, starting 11Dec42. I did not think I could improve on his scenario.

Playing this right now. It's a good scenario, but off the top of my head;

Transport levels need to be slashed (ironically, given the thread we're in) as they cause major and unrealistic traffic penalties.

The fortified status of initial deployments needs to be reviewed, as it's very hard for either side to make the kind of rapid progress they historically did in the opening phase of the scenario.
The pre-3.4 scenarios can (of course with the permission of the original creators) be easily reviewed and adjusted. There are the following points that pop into my mind-

a) transports level and amount of trucks for most non-motorized units (already mentioned)
b) replacement levels in most scenarios, especially the short campaigns with less than 1 week/turn, are too high
c) entrenchment/engineering rates, especially in short scenarios, too high, in particular where the weather conditions and the terrain would make it impossible anyway to built fortress like hexes in less than half a week

My solution(s), not perfect I mind you, are:

a) Trucks or halftracks for the purpose of transport in pure Inf.Div to be assigned for heavy equipment only, e.g. guns with calibres 75mm or more. Naturally, most artillery pieces for Axis Inf.Div and Soviet Rfl.Div were horse drawn. For logistic purposes and the transport sharing, trucks and horses can be assigned to Korps or divisional logistic units with the size of a Btl. or Rgt. (see Pelle's Wintergewitter and the updated Kharkov '43)
b) 1-2% max to compensate for infantry and light equipment, unless of course there are good estimates available how much manpower was funnelled to the front in a particular scenario for each side. Ad-hoc or batches of replacement can be simulated with dummy units (off map) that can or will be disbanded by the player or events to fill up the replacement pool.
c) As a rule of thumb and my tests, for <1week/turn scenarios, depending on the theatre/terrain and what historical documents hint, 25%/33%/50% rate (again, depends on the time-span/turn)

Together with the movement bias, supply consumption/readiness most old scenarios can be nicely tweaked.

Klink, Oberst

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RE: A General Observation

Post by shunwick »

ORIGINAL: Oberst_Klink
The pre-3.4 scenarios can (of course with the permission of the original creators) be easily reviewed and adjusted.

Michael T,

Just to clarify that...

Permission from the original creators is only required if the modder intends to publish the resulting scenario. Modifying a scenario for their own use requires no permission.

It is always best not to modify the original scenario but to create a copy and work on that.

Best wishes,
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Michael T
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RE: A General Observation

Post by Michael T »

Ok thanks for info :)
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RE: A General Observation

Post by viridomaros »

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

Transport levels need to be slashed (ironically, given the thread we're in) as they cause major and unrealistic traffic penalties.

i agree with you for the other point
for this one you can use the hq who have high military police rating to reduce the penalties.
unless i missed something
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RE: A General Observation

Post by golden delicious »

ORIGINAL: viridomaros

i agree with you for the other point
for this one you can use the hq who have high military police rating to reduce the penalties.
unless i missed something

One can, but having to drag an HQ around the map so a panzer regiment can pass through the lines of an emplaced infantry regiment is both ridiculous and annoying. And since the HQ will always pay the full movement penalty (since there are no MPs in the hex until after the HQ has moved in), it's rare that the HQ will be able to move far enough.

Moreover a lot of HQs in this scenario contain artillery or other useful combat elements. Exhausting the supply and readiness of these elements for the benefit of a platoon of military police is not helpful.
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RE: A General Observation

Post by larryfulkerson »

And while we're talking about things that need to be changed I've found one in my TGW game: This was pointed out by scenario designer Steve Still. When a ground unit moves into an enemy airfield hex that contains airplanes the airplanes bug out as expected.
But when you move some arty unit(s) adjacent the airplanes just sit there and allow themselves to be bombarded instead of bugging
out. And when you're fighting the PO the airplanes sometimes stay at the airfield in question and allow themselves to be bombarded
turn after turn. I'm seeing that behavour from Elmer in my game so I know it happens.
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RE: A General Observation

Post by Oberst_Klink »

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

And while we're talking about things that need to be changed I've found one in my TGW game: This was pointed out by scenario designer Steve Still. When a ground unit moves into an enemy airfield hex that contains airplanes the airplanes bug out as expected.
But when you move some arty unit(s) adjacent the airplanes just sit there and allow themselves to be bombarded instead of bugging
out. And when you're fighting the PO the airplanes sometimes stay at the airfield in question and allow themselves to be bombarded
turn after turn. I'm seeing that behavour from Elmer in my game so I know it happens.
Well, which version, Onkel Larry? The beta in process or 3.4.022? Got to check this now... never realised that Ari can capture an airfield...

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RE: A General Observation

Post by larryfulkerson »

Which version? I'm guessing that this kind of behavior is an artifact of ALL versions of TOAW. I'm seeing
this behavior in 3.6.0.115 but I'm pretty sure they all do it.
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