Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

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Dinglir
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Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by Dinglir »

I have just finished my first turn of first winter blizzard after the last patch was released.

I was pretty surprised to find that I have actually destroyed a number of Soviet formations with localized counterattacks.

Is this caused by the patch or has it been like this always (remember, I have never really played the Germans before, and I haven't suffered this as the Soviets)?

I have attached a file showing one of the battle reports.
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tyronec
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by tyronec »

Could the change in support elements have made a difference ?
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morvael
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by morvael »

Counterattacks are possible and necessary if you want to keep your line of defense. But only with reduced blizzard.
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HardLuckYetAgain
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by HardLuckYetAgain »

ORIGINAL: Dinglir

I have just finished my first turn of first winter blizzard after the last patch was released.

I was pretty surprised to find that I have actually destroyed a number of Soviet formations with localized counterattacks.

Is this caused by the patch or has it been like this always (remember, I have never really played the Germans before, and I haven't suffered this as the Soviets)?

I have attached a file showing one of the battle reports.

Inexperienced units thrown in the front of my main line with Experience under 25 and no place to retreat too. I throw them out front for a reason. You should see when you open up turn 26 what I am doing.
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HardLuckYetAgain
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by HardLuckYetAgain »

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

ORIGINAL: Dinglir

I have just finished my first turn of first winter blizzard after the last patch was released.

I was pretty surprised to find that I have actually destroyed a number of Soviet formations with localized counterattacks.

Is this caused by the patch or has it been like this always (remember, I have never really played the Germans before, and I haven't suffered this as the Soviets)?

I have attached a file showing one of the battle reports.

Inexperienced units thrown in the front of my main line with Experience under 25 and no place to retreat too. I throw them out front for a reason. You should see when you open up turn 26 what I am doing.

Basically I'm going for casualties to you. You also suffer higher loses when you do attack & I don't care about my loses as you see for turn 26
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HardLuckYetAgain
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by HardLuckYetAgain »

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain
ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

ORIGINAL: Dinglir

I have just finished my first turn of first winter blizzard after the last patch was released.

I was pretty surprised to find that I have actually destroyed a number of Soviet formations with localized counterattacks.

Is this caused by the patch or has it been like this always (remember, I have never really played the Germans before, and I haven't suffered this as the Soviets)?

I have attached a file showing one of the battle reports.

Inexperienced units thrown in the front of my main line with Experience under 25 and no place to retreat too. I throw them out front for a reason. You should see when you open up turn 26 what I am doing.

Basically I'm going for casualties to you. You also suffer higher loses when you do attack & I don't care about my loses as you see for turn 26

I also see that the bane of attacking German Regiments is to attack them with Russian tank Brigades. The tank brigades do awesome damage to them. and after the 3rd attack it is normally pro Soviet damage. But still if I attack the German Regiment with a Division it is basically murder by firing squad damage. So for now on those pesky regiments are getting fired up by Tank brigades and or Inf brigades which do like damage to those pesky German Regiments.
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M60A3TTS
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by M60A3TTS »

I guess my tank brigades need more training.

Also, nice to see 1,200 aircraft flying and nobody gets hurt. lol.

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morvael
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by morvael »

Insane number of defending aircraft in the air (I guess they were responsible for some of those 1200 Soviet casualties). Is all of Luftwaffe in one place?
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by Nix77 »

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain
ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain




Inexperienced units thrown in the front of my main line with Experience under 25 and no place to retreat too. I throw them out front for a reason. You should see when you open up turn 26 what I am doing.

Basically I'm going for casualties to you. You also suffer higher loses when you do attack & I don't care about my loses as you see for turn 26

I also see that the bane of attacking German Regiments is to attack them with Russian tank Brigades. The tank brigades do awesome damage to them. and after the 3rd attack it is normally pro Soviet damage. But still if I attack the German Regiment with a Division it is basically murder by firing squad damage. So for now on those pesky regiments are getting fired up by Tank brigades and or Inf brigades which do like damage to those pesky German Regiments.

I'm guessing the German regiments are good because of this:
(v1.08.05)
Reworked the fire penalty for large attacking forces, introduced in 1.04.28. It is no longer based on
abstract stack points tied to unit's nominal size, but to the number of men in the attacking and defending
forces. It is also applied evenly to all elements, instead of being partially random, and affecting elements
firing at shorter ranges. When the ratio of attacking to defending men exceeds 3:1, the penalty will be
applied. However, the ratio is affected by the strength of enemy fortifications and terrain. So it's possible
to attack strong positions with more troops than enemy than in the open, and not suffer from the penalty.

The actual formula is ROUNDDOWN(SQRT(MIN(1,mend*(fl+2)/mena)),2) where mend is the number of
defending men, fl is fort level (including terrain bonus, equal to 1 in clear terrain with no fortifications), and
mena is the number of attacking men. The resulting multiplier is never larger than 1, and is applied to the
number of attacker's firing elements.

On the other hand, when fort level will exceed 1 and the attackers will outnumber defenders, defending forces will be able to fire more times. The actual formula is ROUNDDOWN(MAX(1,SQRT(MIN(fl-1,mena/menb))),2). The resulting multiplier is never less than 1, and is applied to the number of defender's firing elements.


These two multipliers work together to represent a few things. First, the diminishing returns when using
overwhelming forces to accomplish an objective that could be achieved by using much less forces.
Second, the bloodier nature of combat in defensible terrain and/or fortifications. Third, the higher
effectiveness of smaller forces that are of better quality, which will be able to deal more damage when
defending, and retain most (or all) of their strength when attacking. On the other hand (comparing to older
rules) these multipliers will allow to attack with hordes of poor quality troops, and they will be able to deal
some significant damage too, albeit suffering increased losses. Ammo restrictions apply as before, so
elements won't be able to fire if they exhaust unit's ammo. However, usually only a fraction of elements
gets to fire due to other multipliers that are applied, thus there are natural limits to how many elements
will fire, even if the defender's multiplier will be large.

In a sample battle where 109641 men attacked
22870 in clear terrain with level 5 fort, attacker's multiplier was 1.0 and defender's multiplier was 2.18.

In another battle, where 52213 men attacked 8672 men in level 1.4 fort (level 1 and 40% of next level),
attacker's multiplier was 0.85 and defender's multiplier was 1.18. So in the second battle the effectiveness
of attacking elements was 85% and of defending elements 118%.
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Dinglir
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by Dinglir »

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain
So it's possible to attack strong positions with more troops than enemy than in the open, and not suffer from the penalty.

That actually surprise me.

I have always believed that one of the main purposes of defensive positions was to restrict the enemy's lines of approach. This could be done by digging anti tank ditches and placing mines and barbed wire.

Once the lines of approach were limited, the defender could then pre register fire on the still open approaches and inflict carnage on attacking troops.

As for doing battle with weaker forces, I believe this should come with a stiff "price" in morale. This could be done by having units suffering defeats of more than 3:1 suffer an extra hit to unit morale. If above 5:1 another hit would be taken and above 10:1 yet another. After all, it is extremely demoralizing for the soldiers in the various units to believe that their leaders simply do not care about their losses and their suffering.
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Stelteck
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by Stelteck »

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

I guess my tank brigades need more training.

Also, nice to see 1,200 aircraft flying and nobody gets hurt. lol.

Image

Never saw so much planes in the air. And especially why utility planes are flying a ground support mission ?
These planes numbers are very suspicious.
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morvael
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by morvael »

ORIGINAL: Dinglir
ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain
So it's possible to attack strong positions with more troops than enemy than in the open, and not suffer from the penalty.
Once the lines of approach were limited, the defender could then pre register fire on the still open approaches and inflict carnage on attacking troops.

Exactly this is shown in the examples. In the first example with higher fort defender has a mighty 2.18 multiplier, and the attacker 1.00. Attacker has no negative multiplier, but the relative ratio is 2.18:1 in favour of the defender. Defender should kill more attackers.
In the second example with lower fort the relative ratio is 1.39:1, though defender has only 1.18 multiplier.

It's all here:
These two multipliers work together to represent a few things. First, the diminishing returns when using overwhelming forces to accomplish an objective that could be achieved by using much less forces. Second, the bloodier nature of combat in defensible terrain and/or fortifications. Third, the higher effectiveness of smaller forces that are of better quality, which will be able to deal more damage when defending, and retain most (or all) of their strength when attacking. On the other hand (comparing to older rules) these multipliers will allow to attack with hordes of poor quality troops, and they will be able to deal some significant damage too, albeit suffering increased losses. Ammo restrictions apply as before, so elements won't be able to fire if they exhaust unit's ammo. However, usually only a fraction of elements gets to fire due to other multipliers that are applied, thus there are natural limits to how many elements will fire, even if the defender's multiplier will be large.
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HardLuckYetAgain
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by HardLuckYetAgain »

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

I guess my tank brigades need more training.

Also, nice to see 1,200 aircraft flying and nobody gets hurt. lol.

Image

Well there are a couple of things that is the issue here. First, which has been pointed out, is the large number of airplanes involved in this battle. That will contribute to your overall loss of life on the Soviet side without saying. Next is your command penalty, that also added to the loss of life. The next thing is is that you have 2 divisions also attacking with the Tank Brigade. So that is my fault for not explaining exactly what is to be done. You will only attack with the Tank brigade to cause causalities on the German Regiment. Now please realize I'm just going for dead or damaged for the German side, not to make the hex retreat with these soak off attacks. When you finally attack with your divisions these regiments will take very nice losses :) Get out of the mindset of only doing one attack on the hex, imho as the Soviet ;-) Use quantity vs quality especially if you can afford the losses.


Couple of interesting things on your snap shot.

1. No aircraft got shot down, that is interesting.
2. Utility Aircraft flying in defense of a hex, that is interesting.
3. Why does the II/39th Howitzer Battalinon have a (-933) value??????????
4. As can be seen attacking German Regiments is death by firing squad!!!!! (even without the planes contribution the attackers loses would be 300~400) But come on 3 German artillery loss to 661 Soviet men & 13 artillery. I would normally say this is a one off but after having 100's of battles like this it is 100% in the code to give German Regiments/Brigades a step up on damage. German Divisions dont even get results this good. If German Divisions did more damage than this I would not be so vocal but German Division don't. Seriously, for now on I see a broken down German Regiment/Brigade they are getting attacked with Soviet Tank Brigades (full MP hasty attacks on those MoFo's) and/or Soviet Rifle brigades to inflict as many pre-casualties before the Soviet Infantry divisions attack.
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morvael
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by morvael »

I think success of multiple attacks lies in the fact that ammo is exhausted because units can't conserve ammo and fire with all they got, even on a weak target.

Would be happy to see the save from that game, multiple interesting issues there to check: number of planes, utility planes (this may be simple problem with classification due to new types added), negative CV that wasn't seen for a long time.
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morvael
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by morvael »

I think new tactical bombers may be shown as utility aircraft if someone plays scenario with new data but old exe. I really must add a mechanism to block this, even for minor version increase.
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HardLuckYetAgain
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by HardLuckYetAgain »

ORIGINAL: Nix77

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain



Basically I'm going for casualties to you. You also suffer higher loses when you do attack & I don't care about my loses as you see for turn 26

I also see that the bane of attacking German Regiments is to attack them with Russian tank Brigades. The tank brigades do awesome damage to them. and after the 3rd attack it is normally pro Soviet damage. But still if I attack the German Regiment with a Division it is basically murder by firing squad damage. So for now on those pesky regiments are getting fired up by Tank brigades and or Inf brigades which do like damage to those pesky German Regiments.

I'm guessing the German regiments are good because of this:
(v1.08.05)
Reworked the fire penalty for large attacking forces, introduced in 1.04.28. It is no longer based on
abstract stack points tied to unit's nominal size, but to the number of men in the attacking and defending
forces. It is also applied evenly to all elements, instead of being partially random, and affecting elements
firing at shorter ranges. When the ratio of attacking to defending men exceeds 3:1, the penalty will be
applied. However, the ratio is affected by the strength of enemy fortifications and terrain. So it's possible
to attack strong positions with more troops than enemy than in the open, and not suffer from the penalty.

The actual formula is ROUNDDOWN(SQRT(MIN(1,mend*(fl+2)/mena)),2) where mend is the number of
defending men, fl is fort level (including terrain bonus, equal to 1 in clear terrain with no fortifications), and
mena is the number of attacking men. The resulting multiplier is never larger than 1, and is applied to the
number of attacker's firing elements.

On the other hand, when fort level will exceed 1 and the attackers will outnumber defenders, defending forces will be able to fire more times. The actual formula is ROUNDDOWN(MAX(1,SQRT(MIN(fl-1,mena/menb))),2). The resulting multiplier is never less than 1, and is applied to the number of defender's firing elements.


These two multipliers work together to represent a few things. First, the diminishing returns when using
overwhelming forces to accomplish an objective that could be achieved by using much less forces.
Second, the bloodier nature of combat in defensible terrain and/or fortifications. Third, the higher
effectiveness of smaller forces that are of better quality, which will be able to deal more damage when
defending, and retain most (or all) of their strength when attacking. On the other hand (comparing to older
rules) these multipliers will allow to attack with hordes of poor quality troops, and they will be able to deal
some significant damage too, albeit suffering increased losses. Ammo restrictions apply as before, so
elements won't be able to fire if they exhaust unit's ammo. However, usually only a fraction of elements
gets to fire due to other multipliers that are applied, thus there are natural limits to how many elements
will fire, even if the defender's multiplier will be large.

In a sample battle where 109641 men attacked
22870 in clear terrain with level 5 fort, attacker's multiplier was 1.0 and defender's multiplier was 2.18.

In another battle, where 52213 men attacked 8672 men in level 1.4 fort (level 1 and 40% of next level),
attacker's multiplier was 0.85 and defender's multiplier was 1.18. So in the second battle the effectiveness
of attacking elements was 85% and of defending elements 118%.

Yes, I know about this but the question remains, "Why do German regiments/brigades inflict more casualties than a German Division when attacked by a larger force"? What makes them so special? Again maybe I'm missing something.

Secondly, why such a "HUGE" loss of life to one side and not the other. Normally the small side takes next to nothing in losses. I know there are so many variables but when I have Guard Divisions with 55+ squad experience & morale take horrendous losses to a German Regiment it just doesnt seem right. But when same Soviet Guard Division attacks a German Division the casualties look correct.

I'm no expert on these things & people smarter than I am on the rules and coding can fill me in. Until that time frame those German regiments/Brigades are getting molested by Soviet Tank Brigades/Soviet Rifle Brigades ;-)
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SparkleyTits
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by SparkleyTits »

I think with M60s air numbers post that it might be in our Eight MP game and the battles reports have made the statistics to show incorrectly as it also did the same for me when I had my turn
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HardLuckYetAgain
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by HardLuckYetAgain »

ORIGINAL: morvael

I think success of multiple attacks lies in the fact that ammo is exhausted because units can't conserve ammo and fire with all they got, even on a weak target.


I'm doing this in my current game with Mild Blizzard. I had over 200+ attacks in my turn. Had 30,000+ German attrition losses and almost 30,000 casualties. I'm hoping for many more casualties for turn 27 from these attaks, we shall see.

I also have some Cav Corps decked out with 3 AT Regiments each that I want to try out on German Armor Division. Want to see how many tank casualties I can do with these Cav Corps attacking multiple times ;-) Of course I will put them with a HQ that has the AT Brigades & AT Regiments as Reserve Movement too :) Just looking to cause tank casualties. We shall see. Unless someone has already done this.



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HardLuckYetAgain
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by HardLuckYetAgain »

ORIGINAL: morvael

ORIGINAL: Dinglir
ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain
So it's possible to attack strong positions with more troops than enemy than in the open, and not suffer from the penalty.
Once the lines of approach were limited, the defender could then pre register fire on the still open approaches and inflict carnage on attacking troops.

Exactly this is shown in the examples. In the first example with higher fort defender has a mighty 2.18 multiplier, and the attacker 1.00. Attacker has no negative multiplier, but the relative ratio is 2.18:1 in favour of the defender. Defender should kill more attackers.
In the second example with lower fort the relative ratio is 1.39:1, though defender has only 1.18 multiplier.

It's all here:
These two multipliers work together to represent a few things. First, the diminishing returns when using overwhelming forces to accomplish an objective that could be achieved by using much less forces. Second, the bloodier nature of combat in defensible terrain and/or fortifications. Third, the higher effectiveness of smaller forces that are of better quality, which will be able to deal more damage when defending, and retain most (or all) of their strength when attacking. On the other hand (comparing to older rules) these multipliers will allow to attack with hordes of poor quality troops, and they will be able to deal some significant damage too, albeit suffering increased losses. Ammo restrictions apply as before, so elements won't be able to fire if they exhaust unit's ammo. However, usually only a fraction of elements gets to fire due to other multipliers that are applied, thus there are natural limits to how many elements will fire, even if the defender's multiplier will be large.

So why do German Regiments seem to inflict substantial more losses than German Divisions in like situations?
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Stelteck
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RE: Destroying Soviet formations in First winter?

Post by Stelteck »

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain
I'm doing this in my current game with Mild Blizzard. I had over 200+ attacks in my turn. Had 30,000+ German attrition losses and almost 30,000 casualties. I'm hoping for many more casualties for turn 27 from these attaks, we shall see.

A small question. You do not fear to raise the morale of the enemy with so many attacks ?
Maybe there is something i'am missing, but with so many victories the enemy divisions could quickly reached 99 ?

I'am currently wondering if causing damage but raising morale of the enemy worth it.

99 morale ennemy divisions are very nasty.
Brakes are for cowards !!
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