FITE2 PBEM General Patton(Axis) and me (Soviets )

[larryfulkerson]

General Patton twisted my arm and suggested we play FITE2 with me as the
Axis and the Russian war is my favorite topic so I thought I'd try instead of
doing my D21 game. So I started up a new game and asked for the jump map and
this is what I see. The map must be huge. I need a jump map for the jump map.
The black rectangle is over Scandanavia because I have some troops in garrison
mode there and the OOB has them listed first. I'll post stuff about the scenario
to help introduce those of you who want to play this thing. It's a PBEM only kind
of scenario so you'll need an opponent unless you want to play hot-seat mode.
There's like 1700+ units to move on the Axis side and I'm guessing about 2K Soviet
troops to move. I'm going to take a look at the aircraft before I move anybody.

[DanNeely]

For as often as I've seen you starting new games is it the whole war in the east that you love, or just the first few months of rampaging through semi-defenseless Soviets?

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: DanNeely
For as often as I've seen you starting new games is it the whole war in the east that you love, or just the first few months of rampaging through semi-defenseless Soviets?

For me the Russian war has everything you could ask of a conflict. Advancing, defending, air war, naval units, it's
got it all. My favorite period too. I guess you could say it's my favorite scenario. And yes, the early war period
is the most exciting and the late war period is when the Axis has to defend and they aren't configured for good defense.
The Axis units were best at advancing and offense. Not so good at defense. I like it.

[larryfulkerson]

Okie dokie....I've started working on my first turn moves. It's Sat. 13:10 or so and I'm going to time myself to see
how long it takes to do a turn of FITE2.

EDIT: I just now noticed how many planes have been shot down and I haven't even started the airfield strikes.

[larryfulkerson]

I've been working on my moves for about three hours now and I estimate that I'm 1/3 the way through the OOB. I'm
going in OOB order. Except that I configured the planes before I moved anything. I'm surrounding the Soviet units
with my Panzer units because they have the MP's to get to the places I need to get to.

[larryfulkerson]

Every once in a while I have to zoom up to get my bearings because the map is scalled
so small. I've got the 7th Panzer Division that I need to assign to a mission and I
thught maybe it's a good time to head over to Minsk and see what's going on over there.

I've shot down an enormous number of Soviet planes already and I haven't flown any
airfield strikes yet. The air war must be hot right now. My air shock is like 115 and
the Soviet air shock is like 5. So no wonder the Soviets are dropping like flies.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the front lines look like in the south right now. I'm infiltrating my units
in and around the Soviet stuff so as to have everything surrounded before it gets killed
so I'm thinking that by the end of turn two most of this Soviet stuff will be gone.

EDIT: it's 18:18 local Tucson time and I estimate that I'm about 1/2 way through the OOB.

[larryfulkerson]

So it turns out that approx. 1/2 of the OOB is in garrison mode or in reserve and I
went through it all digging them in and boosting them to three dots. The Hungarians
and Rumanians, and Slovackians and Bulgarians, because the Italians haven't entered
the game yet.

So as of about 19:10 local tucson time I finally finished moving everybody and pulled
the trigger on the attacks and 20% of my turn was consumed by the attacks but I got
rid of a lot of the Soviet stacks I had surrounded. Now the units can move on to
further adventures.

EDIT: I just now discovered that TOAW IV by itself takes up about a gig of RAM in
the process of running FITE2.

[larryfulkerson]

It's 02:18 Sunday morning and I've been moving units for a long time now.

Here's the front lines after two combat rounds and the elimination of a lot of Soviet units. I surrounded them and killed
them and now everything is moving again.

[larryfulkerson]

It's 05:07 Sunday morning and I've clicked on the end-turn button to end my turn
and the game got saved and I guess Brian will receive an email about his turn now
and we're on our way. I'll post a picture of the front lines.

EDIT: Well, I WAS going to post some pictures of the front lines but the PBEM++
system didn't write an END_TURN_DO_NOT_SEND file for me to peruse. I'll have
to wait until I get the moves back from Brian and he doesn't get up for another
half hour yet. We'll have to wait.

[larryfulkerson]

Okie dokie....It's Sunday 21:37 local tucson time and I've just received Brian's moves
and I'm poised to watch the combat replay. I wanted to time it just to see how long
it takes. I'll edit this post with the times.

EDIT: I decided that editing this post with the times would obligate me to go back
after several posts and find it first and I'm too enebriated to do that right now.
I'll post the times when it happens. Besides, the times have been negated by the
many posts I'm putting up while I watch the combat replay.

[larryfulkerson]

I've stopped the replay to show you what I see. It's hard from this image to get the idea that Soviet units are
retreating to the NE toward Riga and some of them to Pskov futher to the east.

[larryfulkerson]

In this image all the Soviet units are retreating to the east.

[larryfulkerson]

Okay.....it's 21:55 tucson time and I'm ready to move the units now. So the
total elapsed time was just a little over enough time to do almost 4K events.
Maybe 4 full minutes. So I'm going to start moving my units now for turn 2.

[larryfulkerson]

So before I move the LCU's I like to check out the supporting units including the aircraft....
so I'm moving the airplanes to better positions and assigning them to airfield attacks ( gotta
keep doing those while the air shock is so greatly in my favor ). And I've come upon a Soviet
Jet Bomber at a specific hex and I'm wondering if that's a game breaker or not. We'll have to
get somebody to investigate this bad boy.

[larryfulkerson]

One of the biggest problems with chasing the Soviets is all the broken bridges. My engineers are busy trying to repair
them all and they can't keep up with demand.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a confused section of the front lines. Toward the north of the map. I think.
And you can see the way I'm trying to surround them before I kill them to prevent a
lot of BTS's all over the place. Sometimes there's no alternative to chasing them
but that's to be avoided.

[larryfulkerson]

Down south I'm starting to run into some stiff Soviet resistance and the advance is slowing down to form into a sort of
front line to confront the enemy.

[larryfulkerson]

It's Monday 01Jan2018 and I failed a force proficiency check right after the first combat phase
and the turn is over.

[fogger]

Larry do not forget to capture as much rail line as possible for the first 4 turns and do not forget the objectives as per the rules


The shock values are determined by historical advance:
Turn 6 these 3 cities must be in Axis control:
Riga (184,266), Vilnius (194,309). Lvov (174,397)
Turn 12 these 3 cities must be in Axis control:
Pskov (228,253), Mogilev (248,325), Zhitomir (229,392)
Turn 18 these 3 cities must be in Axis control:
Tallinn (194,221)
Smolensk (267,308)
Kherson (278,457)
Turn 24 these 3 cities must be in Axis control:
Luga (243,236)
Roslav (277,323)
Kiev (252,388)
Archiving this will give the following effects the following turns (turns 7,13,19 and 25)

Germany will get a 150% Air and Land shock when each of these checks are successfully made. However, it will also activate a supply shock with a 1-2 turn delay were the German supply is reduced to 1. (only for the last 2 events) Turn 6 and turn 12 achievements gives the Soviet a Shock penalty of 90%.
The turn 24 Shock bonus will in TOAW4 have a movement bias of 50% for the Germans, as the Panzers run out of fuel, and need rest and refit. The penalty last for 1 turn and will appear with 1-2 turns delay, like the supply.