Bagration

[TSkoopCRP]

Has there been any scenarios or maps done covering this battle ? Nice to see all these Eastern Front scenarios coming to life .

[ChrisMaiorana]

Hi Skoop . I have not worked on Bagration yet. Not sure about others.

Chris

[TSkoopCRP]

I notice many of your scenarios are are 1941, is it just a matter of creating the estab for soviet / German '44 units and creating maps as needed ?

Oh I just saw that you have one for Riga in '44.

[ChrisMaiorana]

Hi Skoop. To create Bagration you could probably use the estab files I have already done to cover about 60% of the Soviet units) and then you would need to work on the maps. GE units for 1944 are already included from Bulge and HTTR and could be modeled for Bagration pretty easily I think. Creating the estab files can be very time consuming so the more you can use existing ones the quicker the process.

[ubiquitous]

CapHillrat, I am curious: what kind of reference sources do you use when constructing your estabs? Getting the broad OOB for a battle is usually quite straightforward, but I have more difficulty getting the finer details about organisation and equipment necessary to think about making an estab.

[ChrisMaiorana]

Hi Ubiquitous. I had to research each weapon/unit strength on the internet or dig up the info from books I have about WW2. It is incredibly tedious so I have kept things as simple as possible. I didn't try to model every weapon variation, I used the main weapons for each unit and the main vehicles. I deliberately avoided Soviet motorized formations and battles that featured them as I couldn't imagine modeling the many vehicles these units employed. I am certain when CO creates the EF estab for their scenarios it will be incredibly more detailed.

[BletchleyGeek]

Ubiquitous,

the go-to resource for working out TO&E's is the Nazfiger collection that you can freely consult from the CARL website here:

http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/nafziger.asp

besides orders of battles, there are pretty detailed TO&E's for major WW2 combatants, at various time points. Just one note of caution: there are some notorious omissions and mistakes, especially dealing with later war German TO&E's, and some over-simplifications when dealing with the Red Army.

[ChrisMaiorana]

To add to what BG is saying, Nafziger is great and I have used it as a jumping off point for almost every scenario I created. I would add on the Nafziger sourcing, that its also worth spending sometime doing individual unit history research as sometimes the Nafziger collection details don't match the research done years after the fact.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: CapHillrat
as sometimes the Nafziger collection details don't match the research done years after the fact.

Indeed. Most of the Soviet data was extracted from (captured) German intelligence assessments. So besides the understandable mistakes in translating that information into English from a German language source, there's the "noise" coming from mistakes in those intelligence assessments (either from misunderstanding the finer points of the Russian language, or because of actual "bad" intelligence data).

Another source can be other games out there. I find that the TO&E work in the newer Combat Mission games is of very high quality, and more up-to-date than the Nafziger collection assessments.

[jimcarravall]

ORIGINAL: Bletchley_Geek

ORIGINAL: CapHillrat
as sometimes the Nafziger collection details don't match the research done years after the fact.

Indeed. Most of the Soviet data was extracted from (captured) German intelligence assessments. So besides the understandable mistakes in translating that information into English from a German language source, there's the "noise" coming from mistakes in those intelligence assessments (either from misunderstanding the finer points of the Russian language, or because of actual "bad" intelligence data).

Another source can be other games out there. I find that the TO&E work in the newer Combat Mission games is of very high quality, and more up-to-date than the Nafziger collection assessments.

Makes me think about an effort I undertook and some questions I've seen here about force structures, terrain features and historical background for specific scenarios.

Perhaps it would be worth having those who have built scenarios intended for public release discuss establishing a kind of "referencing standard" for reporting along with the historical scenarios.

It would seem a list of references to historical accounts used to outline the scenario and its timelines, the map sources used for the combat terrain, and sources of the OOBs / TOEs for any new Estabs and scenario forces would be useful for those interested in the background for a specific scenario or in building new scenarios that account for smaller engagements that spin off from the larger scenario or later engagements in the location or among the same forces. If the sources are on line, the location would help a number of those who might be interested in developing a scenario to discover sources for documentation into their own research.

The document could go into the "documentation" folder and provided along with the estab, map, and scenario data released by the creator.

I know it may sound tedious at first, but my experience is there are specific "go to" documents that are used so regularly for a specific scenario they are either bookmarked in a web browser or stored in personal on line file systems, or set aside from bookshelves for quick access during scenario development.

[ubiquitous]

Thanks for the tips, and I am definitely happy to share details of my sources.