Technologies - Unit Types, Armour & Equipment

[IainMcNeil]

Sounds interesting if I get the time Keep me posted!

[tora_tora_tora]

not light or heavy, but I'd like to have half-sized armored corps, kind of demi-armored corps, like demi-brigade.

If it takes a relatively long time to make armored corps and need lots of resorces,
then at about 60% of time and resources and maintenance costs, to make half-sized one could be sometimes good option.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsches_Afrikakorps
For exsample, Afrika Korps have rather small units under the name of corps.

But this could be cumbersome, as if there is half-sized, there could be merging two demi-corps into one full-strength corps,
and spilitng full-sized one into two half-sized corps, or upgrading from half-sized to full strengthed, and make depleted full-sized
into full-strengthed half-sized corps and so on.

IF this could hamper AI's smartness, which means less enjoyable solitaire-mode, then not worth to try, I guess.

[kyle]

At the moment you cannot stack corps in a hex. The idea is that the scale of the map reflects what size a corps should fight on.

We also wanted to keep the UI easy to manage. Allowing stacked units makes it extremely difficult to show at a glance what is in a hex and complicates the process of picking the unit in the hex.

There are obviously arguments for and against this, but this is what we've decided to do for this version.

I'm not sure you guys switch between your units in your legion games, but I would assume you could do the same here

[malthaussen]

It seems to me that the R&D system, as described, is actually too complicated compared to the simplicity of the game. If so many different things are researchable, then units should be more complicated than just a homogeneous corps-sized unit.

There were so many different specialized units and roles in a WWII corps, that they cry out for some kind of player-defined composition. Yet this is not included in the game as it would be "too complex." It is not, however, "too complex" to separately research armor, AT guns, AA capability, and "weaponry," (whatever that is). This seems inconsistant.

Anyway, definitely no heavy/light corps.

-- Mal

[honvedseg]

Perhaps what is needed is to distinguish between a tank corps and an armored infantry corps. The first would have two tank divisions and one motorized infantry division, the second would have one tank and two infantry. These would still be greatly outnumbered by the pure infantry corps of three infantry divisions each.

The deployment of armor also varied greatly between the various powers. The British wrote the book on armored warfare, and concentrated most of their armor into larger formations, but used the slower Churchill tanks for direct infantry support The Germans read the British book, then improved on it, adding armored infantry and SP artillery to the formation to create a complete combined-arms rapid-strike armored force. The French, on the other hand, parcelled out nearly all of their armor into a multitude of seperate tank platoons in direct support of their infantry, which resulted in their armor ALWAYS being badly outnumbered in every engagement, even though France had twice the number of tanks as Germany. The Russians began with their armor in small formations, with only one radio per tank company and the rest controlled by signal flags, but quickly began to mass their armor in direct response to the German tactic.

[SMK-at-work]

Um that's not true about the French!!

French tanks were divided into infantry and cavalry roles, but even the independant infantry tank battalions were usually concentrated in "Gourpements" at army level.

French command and control with 1-man turrets was abysmal - there's an oft seen quote that French tanks beat German ones if htere was up to about a battalion on each side, adn lost if there wwere more because the the C^3 functions.

French tactics also shied away from the attack - theoretically they were exactly the same as the German ones - armoured forces and manouvre were to isolate the front line forces, then infantry would finish them off.

Blitzkrieg was NOT an official German tactic in 1940 - it resulted from individual officers often going beyond their immediate orders when they saw an opportunity. Both Rommel and Guderiandeliberately disobeyed direct orders to halt and let the infantry catch up and instead they pushed their troops as far east as they could - v Kleist actually removed Guderian from his command for this, but was over ruled by v. Rundstadt.

These actions resulted in the Panzers being strung out and short of fuel and ammo - ripe for counter attack. But the French were stunned and didnt' even contemplate attacking - on hte 15th of May French PM Reynaud phoned Churchill and said "We are defeated" - the attack had completely broken the political will and morale of hte French higher echeleons long before their army was even close to being defeated.

However the French army was not well off - it's best units had moved forward intoi Belgium, and had lost a lot of fighting power with hte move due to breakdowns, etc - 1 DLLM had only 3 Souma tanks operational out of 80 on 10 May when it finally contacted the Germans near Dunkirk - having moved north into Holland and then south again!

The infantry tanks were organised in specialised units optimised for breakthrough of fortified positions - they weren't actually capable of any meaningful mobile offensive operations at all, and splitting them up to fight as a screen was probably the best thing that could be done with the Char B's.

The mechanised units cut off in Belgium by the German advance could probably have retreated south and been reformed, but not the 30 or so infantry divisions there, and so none did.

All the French strategic reserves had gone north into Belgium - the only reserves the french could find were stray units taken from the Maginot line - as can be imagined these were not the best units for conducting a mobile defence!

So IMO the difference was in the boldness of the commanders - Germans had a system that allowed local commanders to take advantage of situations at all levels - from platoon commander upwards - the French army OTOH was pretty much hide-bound and did almost nothing without orders.

[honvedseg]

Blitzkreig had already been tested and refined through the invasion of Poland. By the time the Germans rolled through France, they had already developed a solid background of cooperation between ground, air, and artillery to concentrate on a single point and break through to the "soft underbelly" of transport and command elements. The bulk of the infantry was left behind, but small contingents on motorcycle and bicycle kept pace with the advance of the armored units in several cases.

[SMK-at-work]

it depends what you regard as Blitzkrieg.

German operations in hte Polish camapign conformed to their doctrine - armour gets into the rear areas, infantry follows up and destroys the fightign forces. It was fast, but it was also exactly the same doctrine that the French had!!

The difference in France was that armoured penetrations destroyed the enemy on their own, without waiting for the ingfantry to catch up. This was different to every body else's doctrine. But it was also an illusory doctrine - it worked because the Anglo-french were in such disarray in hte first place.

Armour only attacks then became the raison d'etre of the German way of war, and appeared to be successful in Yugoslavia, Greece and Russia. But they failed when the enemy was better prepared - such as at Alam Halfa and at Kursk.

[malthaussen]

I recall reading somewhere-or-other (perhaps an old S&T article) that what made German tactics so effective was that they combined the infiltration tactics of 1918 with the shock effects of armor, and had c3 capability sufficient to deal with the mobile actions that resulted. This separated them from the allies, who were split over the massed tank/infantry support tank/cavalry tank schools of thought, and attempted to be all things to all people. (Of course, the Germans were also somewhat split on this issue, or there would have been no need to develop the PzIII and PzIV in the manner they chose)

I wonder how, if at all, the devs can employ the fruits of this discussion of ancient tank doctrine.

-- Mal

[Redpossum]

I recall reading somewhere-or-other (perhaps an old S&T article) that what made German tactics so effective was that they combined the infiltration tactics of 1918 with the shock effects of armor, and had c3 capability sufficient to deal with the mobile actions that resulted. This separated them from the allies, who were split over the massed tank/infantry support tank/cavalry tank schools of thought, and attempted to be all things to all people. (Of course, the Germans were also somewhat split on this issue, or there would have been no need to develop the PzIII and PzIV in the manner they chose)

I wonder how, if at all, the devs can employ the fruits of this discussion of ancient tank doctrine.

-- Mal

Malthaussen, that's spooky. I remember reading that same article in S&T.

Many people today don't recall that the germans actually developed those infiltration tactics, and used them so successfully in 1918 that the USMC had to stop them at Belleau Wood to halt their drive on Paris.

It's a very accurate observation, though. The germans were the only ones that truly learned the right lessons from the horrors of the First World War.

Oh there were a few individuals on the allied side who saw. B H Liddell Hart for one, and George Patton for another. Then again, Patton went to the french cavalry school at St Cyr with Guderian...

[SMK-at-work]

The Germans were not the only ones who learned the - the guru for the Panzer Generals was Basil Liddel Hart - a British officer who served at Ypres and the Somme, ended the war as an infantry company commander, wrote the "Infantry Training Manual" in 1920 and was invalided out of the British army in 1924.

After this he was military correspondant for a few papers, and wrote up his works on the use of armour as long range independant strike forces to cut troops off from command and supply.

However the Germans were the only ones who really worked hard to try to make it work properly - payign attention to all teh details, figuring out the problems and getting fixes for them. All the other natins wrote up the doctrines, had a few annual wargames, and then pretty much ignored the fact that they might actually have to fight a war one day!

And of course even German Stosstruppen tactics weer copied from French ideas dsicovered in a captured pamphlet in 1915 - but again put into practice better.

By Bellau Wood the Germans were already exhausted - not to put down the Americans who fought there, but they didn't save Paris, nor did they end the offensive, which had already run out of steam - but the appearance of fresh American troops was certainly a major morale problem for the Germans, as was the quantity and quality of supplies they found behingd teh allied lines - they had been assured that teh allies were suffering from lack of supplies just as they were, and it was a rude shock to discover the real situation.

[Redpossum]

The Germans were not the only ones who learned the - the guru for the Panzer Generals was Basil Liddel Hart - a British officer who served at Ypres and the Somme, ended the war as an infantry company commander, wrote the "Infantry Training Manual" in 1920 and was invalided out of the British army in 1924.

LOL, check my post just above, bro. I mentioned B H Liddell Hart by name

It is also worth mentioning that there were a few, a very few, russians (of all people!) who were paying attention. Tukhachevsky is the name that spings to my mind, but unfortunately Iosif Dzugashvili (aka Stalin) had him killed.

Note that the wikipedia article referenced above is currently the subject of a "historical accuracy dispute". This dispute is purely about the (alleged) conspiracy issues that led to his execution. Nobody disputes that he was a proponent of combined operations theory and "Deep Operations", the russian equivalent of blitzkrieg theory.

[honvedseg]

The Germans were enthusiastic readers of Liddel Hart's book, and tested his ideas during their earlier "occupations" of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Poland. By the time they entered France, many adjustments and refinements had been added to the original concept. The French and British had to learn the same corrections the hard way from the Germans. While Hitler was enthusiastic about the new tactical ideas during the early stages of the war, he became increasingly more determined to fight a WWI style trench war, as things turned for the worse, declaring cities and roughly entrenched lines with no real natural protection to be "fortresses", and refusing to allow the defenders to withdraw (such as at Stalingrad).

A number of prominent Russian officers were sent to Germany before the war for training, including one named Zhukov. Apparently something besides alcohol got absorbed during his time there.

BTW- I stand corrected on my earlier comment about the 76mm gun: the US DID develop its own, rather than use the British model.

[syagrius]

So in the end, will artillery will be included as separate units in the game or not??

[firepowerjohan]

So in the end, will artillery will be included as separate units in the game or not??

Nope, but Artillery is added as a technology in game that you can research. Getting artillery upgrades will improve the shock value of your infantry units.

There are alot of units on map already and artillery would just plotter the map if being separate unit

[syagrius]

Okay thanks. Keep up the good work, can't wait to play this game

[freeboy]

I read about AAA, is that true as well that AA, or AAA is not a seperate unit? confused I am??? ok it is a tech. .thanks

[funker42]

The thing is, to not make game too hardcore and tough for the casual gamer, we want to give each country the same values so same tech levels (there are several techs for tanks) would produce the same numbers when leaving the factory regardless of nationality.

So, if dividing them into several armour classes we need images that differ. Some models look too alike so if u dont zoom in or have very much tank knowledge u wont see the tech level directly on map. Our goal is that the game is hard to master but easy and fast to play especially so that multiplayer games of this big scale can be completed in one session. We also would not want a 1945 light tank to look indentical to a 1939 heavy tank hence there need to be some kind of manipulation. Another way would ofcourse be that there are only light tanks at the start of the war... and with technology you can build medium and heavy tanks later on. We are open to suggestion. Again it is the realism vs playability issue.

I registered just to respond to this. Hearts of Iron II had the same issue, but however they dealt with it by saying year types rather than model types. Generally, entire tank divisions were not made up of Tigers, but rather a mix of tanks.

So rather than saying "This is a Corps made up of tiger tanks", you could say "This is 1944 era Tank Corp". It would be easier than just trying to simulate tank numbers of how many PzIV, Stugs, Tigers, and Panthers that corp contains. Displaying the icon is fine to give a better visual representation (I like Nato symbols myself).

So simply referring the tank makeup by comparable year of the real war would work I think. If you dumped all your research into tanks and didn't bother with sub warfare or air power, maybe you could get a 1945 tank division makeup by1943 and the same would apply to the airforce etc.

Or if you didn't focus your research you could get behind and have a "1942 Era tanks corp" in 1944 and so on.

[firepowerjohan]

"So simply referring the tank makeup by comparable year of the real war would work I think. If you dumped all your research into tanks and didn't bother with sub warfare or air power, maybe you could get a 1945 tank division makeup by1943 and the same would apply to the airforce etc.

Or if you didn't focus your research you could get behind and have a "1942 Era tanks corp" in 1944 and so on."

Yeah, that is indeed a nice abstracted way of showing it

[IainMcNeil]

That's effectively what we do - the icons are only representative