FITE v.5.0 Ian Soviets larry Axis

[larryfulkerson]

This is T2 after I've been moving some units. I'm sending out the recon vehicles and they are starting to zoom up and down the countryside converting hexes on the roads and rails. I didn't quite make it all the way to Riga this turn. Maybe next. I'm meeting scattered Soviet units and I'm leaving a follow on force to deal with them and zooming off with the rest of them. I'm having a blast with this game. I hope it's still fun for Ian.

[larryfulkerson]

Down south the Soviet units aren't always close to each other and there's these magnificent gaps to drive divisions through and I've found one of those and I'm moving forces through it into the German backfield and I've zoomed some combat engineers into enemy territory and repaired a bridge that had just been dropped by the Soviets the turn before. I got there too late to save it and now I have to repair it. Hopefully it'll just be a minor hassle and not a game stopper.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on just north of the marshes. The Soviets are making it especially hard to go around them and several of the strongpoints are of significant strength and it's slowing down the advance. D'oh. I have sufficient engineers to fix all the bridges that are broken so that's not a bottleneck yet. I've been repairing the rails from where the RR engineers are parked toward the units needing the supply but pretty soon the front lines are going to advance further than the supply will support and I'll need to gang up on specific routes instead of all over the map.

[devoncop]

Soviet Turn 2

Chaotic scenes continue with many of the Armies trying to move forward being in reorganistation as the shock of the invasion is all too much for them.

Rudimentary defences are constructed along the Dnepr and Riga is prepared for imminent assault and almost certain conquest.

In the far north despite another sally by the Baltic fleet the Finns are besting the Soviet 7th army at the border as shock levels remain terrible (shocking?[:)])

In better news the Black Sea fleet sank a Rumanian destroyer flotilla and also decimated some Rumanian Blenheims with an airfield strike.

As the turn ended prematurely with them still floating around happily I do not expect to see them again [:)]

The Germans are pushing particularly hard in the north and are moving into the marshes in the centre.......

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the front lines look like in turn 3. I haven't started moving anybody yet so there's a possibility that I can

grab Riga this turn. I'm aiming for Daugavpils to get across the river but actually any crossing will do

in a pinch. I'm in a foot race to get to Pskov before the Soviets can beef it up so much that my Panzers can't

brush it aside and keep going to Leningrad. I'm observing the red green yellow rule so there's no rushing

in with the tanks glowing red and grab Leningrad with just 12% supply left. My soldiers fight civilized and they have a

union and everything. Anything over 8 hours in a day is overtime and you can sell your sick days for cash. Annual leave

is a week's pass around your birthday. That will be a popular perk as soon as we get the rails up and running. Twice

daily express runs to Berlin non-stop, that's the goal.

Ian has sneaked, ( snuck ? ) some ships over to MY side of the waters by hugging the coast for some reason. At any rate

he sank my ship(s) and bombarded my planes and when the turn ended for him, the ships were still out in the water

vulnerable. I need to fly some Stuka's down there and two or three squadrons of fighters to make some sea int

attacks this turn. I'm wondering how many Stuka's I have in the inventory. I'll take a look and give you guys a full

report.

[larryfulkerson]

I squashed most of the Soviet air force in T1 so I don't need the fighters on AS so much any longer. I think

what I'll do is put the Me-110's on AS because they have a range of 45 hexes and I can use the 5 or so

of them to cover the front lines and then the shorter ranged fighters, the Me-109's with a range of 28...I'll

put them on INT missions and THEN maybe we'll get some INT value show up on the air losses meter. I'm expecting to

have a lot of fighter losses....I'd best go check out how many are on hand, and I need to remember to take all the fighters

off three-dots and put them on two-dots. And the light-green almost yellow ones I'll put on one-dot.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the losses for the aircraft and I'm thinking that I'm going to lose many more than just the 12 on hand. I'm thinking that this INT mission thing with the fighters...that might be just a one-turn experiment.

[devoncop]

Turn 3

The land shock values thankfully become a little more balanced the=is turn with the Axis on 115 and Soviets on 100 ...and boy do I need it !

Amazingly the small Riga Garrison did manage to fight off an assault by Army Group North last turn but I still anticipate it falling next turn.

Up pn the Finnish Border there is a creditable performance by the 115th rifle Division which inflicts 45 Infantry Squad losses on the Finnish 18th infantry Division for the loss of 10 Infantry squads of their own and a similar performance from the 142nd Infantry Division which fought off the Finnish 45th Division.

Down in the Black Sea after a brief resumption of shelling of Paris Kommuna airfield in Rumania disabling another 7 Blenheims, the Black Sea Fleet attempts to reach the safety of friendly ports but suffers fearsome interdiction and barely makes it back.

The overall strategic situation is that the Germans have reached but not yet crossed the towns on the Dvina in the north and are approaching the Dnestr in the south but again have yet to force a crossing.

In the centre the juggernaught approaches the Soviet garrison in Minsk.

My approach has to just view the conscript armies that the Soviet Union can pump out at the beginning of the war as just a human roadblock and try and conserve the Shock Armies when they arrive so they can launch a fightback at that point. This is a big ask though and it may be that the thin crust collapses before the more reliable troops arrive...........

[larryfulkerson]

There used to be two Soviet MLR's in this AO and I'm just now destroying the last elements of the first one and without letup I'm going to advance to the next one and gobble it up too. I feel like I'm on schedule and things are going well.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the supply situation near Riga and as you can plainly see it's adequate for sustained operations. The rails are bringing 42 units per turn to Siauliai. What are the units?? Tons, kiloTons, Pounds, teaspoons-full, gallons, man-hours, what?? I'm going to say plain Tons. Tons per turn. How's 'at.

I've got to get somebody across the river and to the east side of Riga to get a good surround on the place before I try a take-down. I want to get them all.

[larryfulkerson]

This is the rail situation and from the middle on down it's okie dokie, the rails are up to the front lines, but in the north the front lines are starting to creep away from the railheads and that can't be a good thing. This calls for reinforcements in the way of RR engineers to help lend a hand. To get the rails caught up; for the priority is in the north for the push to Leningrad.

[larryfulkerson]

This is what I've decided is needed. I've got two stacks of RR engineers for the dozen or so hexes yet to Riga. You'd think I'm serious about getting the rail built *THIS* turn or soonest. That's the plan and I'm going to get all of them busy to get the rails caught up with the front lines. When I get this area caught up I'll go to the next needy spot and fix them up and so on until everybody is caught up with the front lines and it stays that way. Once this area is caught up I'm thinking I'll drop off one RR engineer unit to maintain the progress of the rail line in this AO and the rest of them will go to the next brushfire.

[larryfulkerson]

I've been eyeballing the front lines and I've come to a spot that might qualify as the Next needy spot to be RR engineered. And this spot won't take much in resources to fix either, being mostly gaps between sections of repaired rail. I could fix this spot easily with about a dozen RR dudes. And the rest of them could be used, most probably, down south. This area has priority over further south being as it is, one of the lines to Moscow.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a view of the supply situation of the south and it's plainly obvious that that there's a need here for RR engineers and soon. But the priority is in the north and these guys will just have to make do.

[larryfulkerson]

My security forces have moved into the northern peninsula and have found no more Soviet forces that weren't already known about. There's that one fortress on the coast and the next threat seems to be Riga itself. I'm in the motions of putting forces on the east side of Riga so that I can trap them all, no one gets away.

[rhinobones]

I’ve always been curious about exactly what the “supply” indicators mean. In the Larry’s posts. I see “15” and other numbers in the blue supply dots.

What does 15 mean? 15 of what? 15% of something? What is the something? Does 15 mean that mechanized and foot units get the same allotment?

Regards, RhinoBones

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: rhinobones
I’ve always been curious about exactly what the “supply” indicators mean. In the Larry’s posts. I see “15” and other numbers in the blue supply dots.

What does 15 mean? 15 of what? 15% of something? What is the something? Does 15 mean that mechanized and foot units get the same allotment?

Regards, RhinoBones

Those are great questions and I'd like to know the answers myself. In another post I decided that it was tons per turn but that's just me. I assume they are the same units that the supply variable for the particular unit uses whatever they represent. Pounds per second. Kilotons per picosecond.

"Who's on first?"
"Who".
"Yes who".
"That's right."
"No. I'm asking."
"Who is on first."
"That's my question."
"No I'm telling you who's on first".
"So tell me." < anger is rising >
"Yes who."
"What?"
"What's on second."
"Idonno."
"No, he's on third".
< louder this time > "Who?"
"No, he's on first."

[Cfant]

@supply:it is not tons. The daily need for food for one infantry division was 22 tons already &#128521; maybe 42 percent of theneeded supplies.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what Riga looks like in the fourth combat round. Not changed very much at all even though I've been attacking and so far it's been no go. Ian has turned it into a fortress and it's a hard go here. I'm going to have to cut it off from it's supply, first of all, and bring in some arty to help break this logjam. Meanwhile I can look for crossings in other places to get on the east side of the river.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Cfant
@supply:it is not tons. The daily need for food for one infantry division was 22 tons already &#128521; maybe 42 percent of theneeded supplies.

Oh. Okay then. I've decided it's metricTons per picosecond.