Workshop for the new guys - Directive 21 (D21)

[larryfulkerson]

12/14/2017 20:01 tucson time.......I've decided to suspend this AAR and work on putting a really good
Axis PO in D21 so people can play the Soviet side against the Axis.

EDIT: I've had a good look at the relative force size ( Germans vs Soviet ) and I've determined that
Elmer doesn't know how to do a "mobile defense" like the Germans did and there's way too few Axis
units to make up a solid front line from top to bottom, which is the ideal Elmer situation and that
the performance of any PO would be unempressive at best. The Soviet player would probably have a
blast against the stumbling Axis PO. Or become bored with such a low performer and quit after Moscow
is captured. Either way about 50 turns or so is about right for the quality that can be installed.
And the existing copy of D21 already has an Axis PO for about 50 turns so my trying to redo what
Steve, Ricki, et.al. have done already would be pretty much redundant labor.

I've decided to forget about using Elmer and just continue the AAR playing it by hand.

[angel42052]

Larry,

Thanks for the very detailed D21 AAR. It inspired me to start a D21 game & I'm having a blast.

A couple of questions:

1) What do you mean when you say a unit, "respawns?"

2) It seems like D21 would make a good PBEM game but I sense that the TOAW grognards would rather play something else.
a) What scenario is superior to D21 for PBEM?
b) Why isn't D21 a good PBEM?

Again, thanks I really like your AAR's.

Steve

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: angel42052
Larry,
Thanks for the very detailed D21 AAR. It inspired me to start a D21 game & I'm having a blast.

Good for you. How about doing an AAR so I can post helpful hints?

ORIGINAL: angel42052
A couple of questions:
1) What do you mean when you say a unit, "respawns?"

When a unit is killed typically it will reconstitute and enter the game again, or spawns in a
specific hex, the reconstitution point for the formation. So I deemed it respawn-ing.

ORIGINAL: angel42052
2) It seems like D21 would make a good PBEM game but I sense that the TOAW grognards would rather play something else.
a) What scenario is superior to D21 for PBEM?

FITE is a really good one for PBEM games. American Civil War is PBEM only. General Patton and I
started a D21 game as a PBEM and I think it went just fine.

ORIGINAL: angel42052
b) Why isn't D21 a good PBEM?

I'm not sure....the scenario designers said something about it being designed specifically for
playing against the Soviet PO and for a hunam player to attempt to play the Soviet side is
said to be a game that is unbalanced or something.

ORIGINAL: angel42052
Again, thanks I really like your AAR's.
Steve

I'm going to go see if I can't find some WWII pictures to post in them for the immersion factor.

[angel42052]

How do I get permission to post graphics? Who should I contact?

[larryfulkerson]

If I were you I'd go to this guy first. He makes things happen
on the beta team. Other than that you'd need to get the attention
of the monitor of this forum and I'm really not sure who that is.
But I think Tamas K. can come up with a solution for you. I've
got my fingers crossed.

tamask(at)slitherine(dot)co(dot)uk

[erazerhead99]

Hey Larry, very nice tutorial. Helped me to clear some things up. The game (and also the manual) is not that good in explaining its many feutures by itself.

I have one question regarding your very first turn: why is the rail damage factor set to zero? To my knowledge, the germans had next to zero trains for the different rail width in russia. And converting their existing ones would have been rather hard, i assume. So why does Germany start with instant and free rail conversion? One might assume that they instead start with 100% damage and only reduce this factor slightly with time, stopping at something like 70% (representing a number of obtained soviet trains and custom built ones).

[DanNeely]

ORIGINAL: erazerhead99

Hey Larry, very nice tutorial. Helped me to clear some things up. The game (and also the manual) is not that good in explaining its many feutures by itself.

I have one question regarding your very first turn: why is the rail damage factor set to zero? To my knowledge, the germans had next to zero trains for the different rail width in russia. And converting their existing ones would have been rather hard, i assume. So why does Germany start with instant and free rail conversion? One might assume that they instead start with 100% damage and only reduce this factor slightly with time, stopping at something like 70% (representing a number of obtained soviet trains and custom built ones).

The Russians hadn't gotten around to converting the Polish/Baltic states rails from standard to Russian gauge. I'm assuming that was because it was easier to simply reload cargo at the old borders than to modify/replace all the captured rolling stock.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: erazerhead99
Hey Larry, very nice tutorial. Helped me to clear some things up. The game (and also the manual) is not that good in explaining its many feutures by itself.

I have one question regarding your very first turn: why is the rail damage factor set to zero? To my knowledge, the germans had next to zero trains for the different rail width in russia. And converting their existing ones would have been rather hard, i assume. So why does Germany start with instant and free rail conversion? One might assume that they instead start with 100% damage and only reduce this factor slightly with time, stopping at something like 70% (representing a number of obtained soviet trains and custom built ones).

DanNeely hit the nail on the head. But I have more verbage yet. I did a mod on a scenario so I guess that makes me a scenario designer of sorts and they have tricks to make the scenario more realistic and to make it more playable and so on. I'm guessing that Rick set the rail damage factor at 0% for the first turn to help the Axis get a start on converting the rails. As you know supply is problem number one for the Axis and allowing them to "convert rails for free" may be for balancing purposes to make the Axis side less impossible. We would have to ask Rick to know for sure.

[TPOO]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

ORIGINAL: erazerhead99
Hey Larry, very nice tutorial. Helped me to clear some things up. The game (and also the manual) is not that good in explaining its many feutures by itself.

I have one question regarding your very first turn: why is the rail damage factor set to zero? To my knowledge, the germans had next to zero trains for the different rail width in russia. And converting their existing ones would have been rather hard, i assume. So why does Germany start with instant and free rail conversion? One might assume that they instead start with 100% damage and only reduce this factor slightly with time, stopping at something like 70% (representing a number of obtained soviet trains and custom built ones).

DanNeely hit the nail on the head. But I have more verbage yet. I did a mod on a scenario so I guess that makes me a scenario designer of sorts and they have tricks to make the scenario more realistic and to make it more playable and so on. I'm guessing that Rick set the rail damage factor at 0% for the first turn to help the Axis get a start on converting the rails. As you know supply is problem number one for the Axis and allowing them to "convert rails for free" may be for balancing purposes to make the Axis side less impossible. We would have to ask Rick to know for sure.

There are 3 main reasons why the rail repair is set this way. It is also set similar to this in FITE2
1. The Baltic states still had a lot of standard gauge rail that was not converted yet by the Soviets so the Germans could just use those lines.
2. The Axis did capture trains locomotives and cars quickly because of the blitzkrieg and could use those on the Soviet cause lines. The Germans did actually use a lot of Soviet gauge rail.
3. Because of the Blitzkrieg surprise there as not to much time for the Soviets to destroy rail lines and it was easy initially for the Germans to add quickly a third rail to convert lines to standard gauge. They had a line almost to Minsk by early July. Which I think is well represented in this scenario.

[erazerhead99]

Ah, this all makes sense. Thank you for explaining.

[jarraya]

Larry,
Awesome AAR (like all of yours). One thing I struggle with in most games is supply. Sometimes my units sit still in Defend or Fortified on a hex showing supply of 30 and never get past orange.
Can you provide some advice, maybe in the form of a "supply checklist" that one can go through every turn? In other words, what should I do to get the max supply to my units?
Many thanks!

[larryfulkerson]

what should I do to get the max supply to my units?

park them on a rail, or a road, in that order....Don't move your units unneccessarily, park them in urban hexes if possible
and stay out of marshes or other bad terrain. Use the supply bubbles button to check the supply levels frequently, at least once a turn. If you need to rest and refit a unit park it in the better supply areas with an HQ adjacent to it. But most of all don't move it unless you absolutely have to. Moving the unit depreciates the supply the unit will receive that turn.

[jarraya]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

what should I do to get the max supply to my units?

park them on a rail, or a road, in that order....Don't move your units unneccessarily, park them in urban hexes if possible
and stay out of marshes or other bad terrain. Use the supply bubbles button to check the supply levels frequently, at least once a turn. If you need to rest and refit a unit park it in the better supply areas with an HQ adjacent to it. But most of all don't move it unless you absolutely have to. Moving the unit depreciates the supply the unit will receive that turn.

Thanks Larry, that's very useful.
One more if you don't mind - how do you keep your artillery from shooting for a round. Once they are on Tactical Reserve they fire to support attacks in their range, correct? How do you prevent them from doing it? Do you need to set their range to 0?

[larryfulkerson]

how do you keep your artillery from shooting for a round

just unentrench the arty unit. It won't fire unless it's in one of the
dig in deployments: 'D', 'E', or 'F', or set it to 'T'.

[Bamilus]

This was helpful as hell, you tha man Larry

[larryfulkerson]

Have you discovered the "recon by cursor" method? Just select one of your fighters or bombers and move the cursor about the enemy side of the lines and when the cursor turns from a regular cursor into a "target here" cursor you know there's an enemy unit in that hex even if it appears empty. It will also turn into a "target" cursor when you run the cursor over bridges. I've never tried to drop a bridge with just P-47D's and I think maybe I ought to try that and see what happens.

When you are curious about what the game engine will do with a certain situation you can just save your game, set up your attack(s), and pull the trigger. Whatever happens will very likely be similar to what happens when you try it in your official game. You can save your test.sal and run it more than once and take the average scores to get a more accurate answer.

[StuccoFresco]

Damn, recon by cursor is a legitimate hack.