Bletchley_Geek
Posts: 2114
Joined: 11/26/2009
From: Living in the fair city of Melbourne, Australia
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ComradeP
Well, you can still see lost equipment when you look at the losses after a battle, although you can't see in detail what caused them.
Hmmm, how can you tell apart whether you lost, say, 2 82mm mortars or 2 122mm Howitzers, other than by comparing the TOE before and after?
quote:
ORIGINAL: ComradeP
Usually, a large part of the artillery that is destroyed during/as a result of a battle is either destroyed in the battle or destroyed after being damaged and not purely from the retreat. There are losses after a retreat/rout, but they are rarely punishing for units with fairly good experience. AT gun and mortar losses can be substantial, though.
Something to keep in mind is that it's also somewhat logical, considering the combat system, that not a lot of heavy equipment is lost, because there's generally much less heavy equipment around than support weapons.
The first part, yes, indeed. Spiking guns and destroying ammo was quite a common practice when forced to retreat.
But the part about the heavy equipment... certainly not during tactical combat, since it will usually be far away from the line. The only they have to face is counterbattery fire, which during the period wasn't very effective, I think.
quote:
ORIGINAL: ComradeP
AT gun losses are in my opinion possibly too high, it's sort of a pet peeve of mine that I regularly lose AT guns when attacking, but artillery losses are usually not punishing. There are, of course, instances where it can be punishing particularly for mediocre experience units. Early war, Soviet artillery regiments have a tendency to be blown away if hit hard more than once during a turn.
I think it makes a lot of sense. Just take a look about how fast you can move pushing a 75mm Pak40 ATG, or an infantry gun, in CM:BN or PC:O. That would be the kind of equipment more prone to be lost, because being so difficult to move out.
quote:
ORIGINAL: ComradeP
As to disruption caused by artillery and Panzer division losses, I've attached a screenshot of a combat report.
It's atypical because the Panzer division probably has ~50 experience or so as I think it was destroyed at some point pre-blizzard, but here you can see how (you could say) disproportional disruption caused by tactical bombers is compared to that of artillery. If you look at the battles in 1941 where the Luftwaffe shows up in force, disruption is generally ugly for the Soviets, but the vast majority is caused by the Luftwaffe and not by the high experience artillery assets that support the attack.
That's a very good point and something I'll be looking at more closely, Comrade.
quote:
ORIGINAL: ComradeP
One thing to keep in mind is that the manpower losses inflicted by tactical/level bombers can look more impressive than they really are during the battle because air support just loves going after the 20 man support squads (this has puzzled me for months), which don't really contribute to the defense.
Not really Comrade, it's just the opposite. From the air, it's far more easy to hit something stationary - as the depots, toolshops, hospitals, etc. - represented by Support Squads, as well as people and vehicles on the move along roads.
Certainly not the guys entrenched in camouflaged positions.
What it seems to me WitE isn't modeling at all is CAS support in the style that Germans used to great effect, for instance, during the battles around Prokhorovka from July 11th to 13th 1943. That's very well documented. What it seems to me is modeling is more like - I don't know how to say in English - a stationary mission with CAP and roving groups of bombers striking at targets of opportunity.
quote:
ORIGINAL: ComradeP
My casualties were surprisingly low for an attack across a minor river, probably due to the low experience of the defenders and presumably many Motorized Rifle squads being disrupted.
Low experience, highly fatigued/disrupted troops won't hold their ground, being them either German, Romanian, Finnish or Russian.
quote:
ORIGINAL: ComradeP
As an aside: one of the peculiar things about WitE is the strange way losses scale. You can have an attack where about 250 men die (like the attack above) and then 1000 men are struck down by the hand of God when they retreat. Attackings like this can quickly be punishing on the defender. I also had a retreat/rout result this turn when one of my stacks was attacked where losses during the attack were OK but I lost (I believe) ~5500 men to retreat/rout losses. One the other hand, you will rarely see a REALLY ugly attack, even as the Soviets, where the defending unit just ceases to exist.
Remember that discussion we had regarding experience and retreat losses in my AAR thread? If those Russians experience was in the 20's or 30's those losses feel really familiar to me. I not understand, though, very well why such a result shouldn't rather be a SHATTER result.
quote:
ORIGINAL: ComradeP
When artillery starts to get a chance to fire more often, artillery divisions should really become something to be afraid of in terms of casualties and not just in their ability to give the sapper regiments a chance to knock your forts down a size. Currently, casualties are probably a bit too high for smaller scale attacks and too low for huge ones. Throwing more men into a battle not automatically resulting in more casualties for the defender is a well known military "law", but more shells not causing all that much more losses is a bit strange.
In this point I really agree with you that this is a bit strange.
Great discussion Comrade 
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