Slitherine

One odd observation - some air transports with Soviet paras stay in the southwest quarter of the last dlc 43 east scenario and do never move nor drop their paras (to be more precise - the last unit I left alive deliberately never did).

My guess is these do act as markers. My question is, wether their existence is somehow bound to Soviet prestige. The reason I ask is another odd observation: Starting turn 13 an ever increasing number of Soviet JS 1 spawned each turn (for a total of about 15). These would not be a particular problem, but they spawn at experience 3 stars, which IS a particular problem even for Tiger I, as the JS 1 is an exact match (attack minus defence) on paper and has the same initiative of 11.

BUT these spawns petered out around turn 18, after which the AI suddenly only had prestige enough for 2 BA 10 per turn and not even enough prestige to fully re-strengthen damaged JS 1 to 10.

So my question is simple - what happens if I leave all the marker transports alive?

Regards,
Thorsten

A good question.

I'd noticed a weak para unit (5 strength) sitting near one of the cities towards the bottom of the map, but had no spare fighters to get rid of it. After a few turns I parked one of the reserve units under it to deter landing until my mobile AA units were free, and then shot it down, but the behaviour (and the 5 strength) seemed strange .

I was lucky that the IS1 swarm attacked experienced grenadiers in cities from forest hexes or succumbed to Elefants in the open, but it would be good to know if there are ways to delay, weaken or stop them.

If I counted correctly there are 3 of these completely passive units.

And to a certain extent I had the same result: As 1 victory hex in Kiev was in Soviet hands since turn 3, the JS 1 headed this way. If they all would have attacked me in the open, I would have lost units, including Tigers.

Regards,
Thorsten

Anyone that can shed light on the issue?

I've been looking through the scenario with the editor, and there are indeed four Soviet para transports that are set to 'hold position - passive' meaning they will just sit there. I didn't see anything that would indicate they are used as markers, maybe they are flavour items or it is an error. I've noticed similar things in other maps, for example early in GC'39 there is an AAA gun that doesn't do anything.

I did spot four bonus hexes on the map that give the player additional prestige (200 each) if they are conquered:

31,16 (Shramkivka)
37,16 (Velyka)
28,11 (Zhurivka)
37,22 (Orzhytsya)

As for the Soviet forces, there are three counterattack 'waves', those are released for attack during turns 5, 9 and 13. The weather is changed to encourage snowfall on turn 12.

Thanks for the info ThvN.
I'll keep an eye out for the bonus cities when I next play 43 East.

Thank you very much. So my assumption proved to be wrong. Regarding the scripted counterattacks - only the last one turn 13 is noticeable. Either because it already comprises of JS 1 or because this is the same time as the first JS 1 present themselves.

Regards,
Thorsten