STGOD! OOC Thread.

[frigidmagi]

Cleric, CT you have until Saturday morning to reply. If you do not reply, I will write the replies. You won't like that. The battles are not won, but y'all are under very heavy attack.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Um.... Havoc, Cat. Could you please do me one favor?

Can you allow me to keep a tiny portion of my personal dignity and kiss me before ass-raping me? Please. Sirs?

[Cynical Cat]

Pucker up, you get your last request.

[rhoenix]

That was one hell of a match someone lit. This is going to be entertaining.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Pucker up, you get your last request.

*does so*

[frigidmagi]

1) Build Costs for Attachments
Currently the build costs for attachments to divisions are all messed up. I noticed this while making a new one for my proposed time system. I though we were going for everything costing twice as much as it's actual worth to make from scratch, unless it's a reserve unit in which case it costs its worth. The current build list has regimental attachment costs all over the place. The most egregious is the heavy tank brigade. It's 50% cheaper and 2/3 faster to build than a heavy tank division. Let me say this again, I can get 400 tanks for the price of 200, and get them faster, if I buy them in brigades. The Elite Infantry Regiment has the opposite problem: I can pay 10 points for 2000 men, or buy a division and pay 30 points for 10 000 men.

Please amend the regimental buy list to match the rest of the costs.

Wait... What? *checks* Aw damnit. Yes that's a what you call a clerical error, I'll fix that. Good catch Hadri. If anyone has had their build order fucked to hell by that come talk to me and we'll hammer out something, I won't punish y'all for my screw up. The heavy tanks are suppose to be 20 pts.

2) Building during Wartime
Okay, we did discuss this one over IM, as I begged you to have an industry bonus during mobilization. I conceed such a bonus may have not been a good idea since it encouraged people to mobilize to have cheap infrastructure/indistry/economy upgrades. However, I just noticed something interesting that should be addressed before anyone finishes their mobilization.

Currently, a fully mobilized nation builds a unit and designates it to be reserve then it will only costs half as much and come online immediately. I would like one of two things. Either a blanket "all units costs half as much when economy is fully mobilized", or it being set in stone that new reserve divisions will not need to be mobilized if you're already mobilized. Either one represents a wartime economy in different ways. One is more industrial focused, the other one personnel focused. Naturally I prefer the former one, but the latter also works and doesn't impact gameplay as much.

Let me qoute the rules ""You cannot build reserves during a time when your reserves are mobilized. During such a period all units are automatically active duty ones."

My answer is the costs will remain the same in war as they do in peace.

3) Demobilization

Okay, a player's economy score gives one a given ammount of time that one can be mobilized before economic strain sets in. For example. a value of 3 gives 2 years of mobilization.

Let us suppose an Econ 3/Infra 4 player begins mobilizing in August. They will finish mobilizing in October. They can stay mobilized for two years. Suppose they demobilize one year in, wait a month, and then mobilize again. Do they get two years again? No, that doesn't make sense. You don't get rid of of wartime strain in a month.

My suggestion is that you have to spend time demobilized in order to gain more mobilization time. Our hypothetical player was mobilized for one year, and demobilized for one month. My suggestion is that once remobilized they get one year and one month of mobilization. So if they want their full two years back, they have to spend two years not mobilized.

In a calendar it would look like this:

Orders mobilization August '30
Is mobilized in October '30, has two years of mobilization counting from now
Orders demobilization October '31
Orders remobilization November '31
Finishes remobilizing January '32, has one year and one month left

Note that the time spent mobilizing doesn't count either way, and that demobilization is assumed to be instant.

Alternatively, a player's infra score also determines how much time it takes to demobilize. Which means that our Infra 4 player needs to wait two months from the time the demobilization order is given to the time that they start getting their mobilization time back. In that case I would suggest 2 months mobilization is gained per every month spent mobilized, up to the current maximum.

Either way adequately deals with the demobilization loophole that exists as rules currently stand.

Hrrmmm, there do seem to be a hole in the rules there. Even I gotta admit that. I won't change the rules but right there don't seem to be any rules covering this at all. Let me think about this for a bit. I'll get back to you by Friday.

[Hadrianvs]

My answer is the costs will remain the same in war as they do in peace.

I pains me so that even with a pretty unobtrusive way to implement the mobilization of one's economy, you still refuse to even consider it. The most important, the defining characteristic of warfare in the Industrial Age... absent.

*sigh*

Hrrmmm, there do seem to be a hole in the rules there. Even I gotta admit that. I won't change the rules but right there don't seem to be any rules covering this at all. Let me think about this for a bit. I'll get back to you by Friday.

Okay then. If you want my input in hasing it out you can always IM me.

[Hadrianvs]

A word about the upcoming war in Europe. Don't take what happened when the Nazis invaded France too much to heart. That operation ended the way it did, total victory for the attackers in a month and a half, because the French just gave up. As a friend of mine put it, "the French completely folded in WWII like a cheap card table". If they had kept fighting, things would have slowed down to a more grinding affair, a repeat of Fall 1914 but without devolving into positional warfare. If Hungary and Rome are hoping for a quick victorious war, they better think again. If the Franco-German Alliance decides to fight, it's going to be a while.

That said, the first couple of months, when the fighting is at its most intense, are going to be extremely bloody. In the month and a half of fighting that was the Battle of France, the Wehrmacht lost 1/3 of its tank park and 40% of its aircraft. Ouch.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Um. Sunhawk. Have you read the thread recently? Germany just got betrayed and invaded. It is not going to be a threat to the status quo for some time, if ever again.

[Comrade Tortoise]

A word about the upcoming war in Europe. Don't take what happened when the Nazis invaded France too much to heart. That operation ended the way it did, total victory for the attackers in a month and a half, because the French just gave up. As a friend of mine put it, "the French completely folded in WWII like a cheap card table". If they had kept fighting, things would have slowed down to a more grinding affair, a repeat of Fall 1914 but without devolving into positional warfare. If Hungary and Rome are hoping for a quick victorious war, they better think again. If the Franco-German Alliance decides to fight, it's going to be a while.

That said, the first couple of months, when the fighting is at its most intense, are going to be extremely bloody. In the month and a half of fighting that was the Battle of France, the Wehrmacht lost 1/3 of its tank park and 40% of its aircraft. Ouch.

I have no hope of winning. But I will fight, and my reservists will certainly engage in asymmetric warfare.

[Sunhawk]

Ahhh, but CT, considering the speed of communications without an internet or satellites, we probably just found out about the attacks after we sent the note.

[General Havoc]

A word about the upcoming war in Europe. Don't take what happened when the Nazis invaded France too much to heart. That operation ended the way it did, total victory for the attackers in a month and a half, because the French just gave up. As a friend of mine put it, "the French completely folded in WWII like a cheap card table". If they had kept fighting, things would have slowed down to a more grinding affair, a repeat of Fall 1914 but without devolving into positional warfare. If Hungary and Rome are hoping for a quick victorious war, they better think again. If the Franco-German Alliance decides to fight, it's going to be a while.

That said, the first couple of months, when the fighting is at its most intense, are going to be extremely bloody. In the month and a half of fighting that was the Battle of France, the Wehrmacht lost 1/3 of its tank park and 40% of its aircraft. Ouch.

Germany attacked a French army that actually outnumbered them in 1940. I just hit a French army that I outnumber by a factor of 5:1 in men, and 10:1 in guns.

I expect results slightly different from 1940 AND 1914

[Steve]

You also conducted some amphibious landings IIRC, which can be difficult. Though I can't remember what Frig ruled on our tech level for such.

Anyway, with Pacifica having mobilized I'm getting a Reservist OrBat put together. Mostly laying out where each unit is coming from, I'll post where they're stationed as I get more units in service over the coming six weeks IRL (since we're on the 1 week = 1 game month scale now). But I need sleep now.

[Hadrianvs]

Germany attacked a French army that actually outnumbered them in 1940. I just hit a French army that I outnumber by a factor of 5:1 in men, and 10:1 in guns.

Wait what? I know your army's big and France's is small but how did that...

*looks up France's force deployment*

*winces*

Good God is that an utterly incompetent deployment, and you have Provence. France might have been able to hold even outnumbered 5-1 at the Alps, but there's nothing but open terrain before you. On the other hand, your're going to be outrunning your supply lines. That's the one thing that will keep France from simply ceasing to exist. Heading straight for Paris the Latin Legions will make it to Lyon at the furthest before having to stop.

[General Havoc]

I conducted amphibious landings over very short distances. The Thirteenth Legion did an end run bunny hop of about 60 miles. The Fourteenth crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, which are seven miles wide. The longest distance was the Fourth Legion, heading to Casablanca. Even that can't be more than a hundred miles from the nearest major Roman base.

And as to supply lines, Lyons is less than a hundred miles from my border. Armies from the Dark Ages had more of a reach than that. I do not have to pause for supply re-organizations every time I move five feet. By that logic, the Russians could never have driven on Warsaw in 1920 (as they did) nor the Poles on Kiev.

[Comrade Tortoise]

You do realize that the fastest the german Wehrmacht could move in russia was 250 km a month right?

[frigidmagi]

You're not Russia. You have an infrastructure of 4. Your invaders get the nice roads and railroads that German engineers are famous for.

There's a downside to the Autoban.

[General Havoc]

That was also relative to the campaign they were fighting. Russia gets the Rasputitsa every autumn and spring that utterly shuts movement down, not to mention General Winter.

Evaluate this campaign in its own terms, not in terms of what happened to a different army in another country under totally different conditions.

[Hadrianvs]

And as to supply lines, Lyons is less than a hundred miles from my border.

Sorry, I thought your border was further south and I misestimated the distances anyhow.

Armies from the Dark Ages had more of a reach than that. I do not have to pause for supply re-organizations every time I move five feet. By that logic, the Russians could never have driven on Warsaw in 1920 (as they did) nor the Poles on Kiev.

I didn't mean stop as in dead stop. I meant wait a couple of weeks for supplies to catch up.

You're not Russia. You have an infrastructure of 4. Your invaders get the nice roads and railroads that German engineers are famous for.

You forgot that most of these roads and railroads have to run through narrow Apline passes, which are not hard to close in the era of high explosives. So no he's not Russia, he can hide behind a mountain range.

That was also relative to the campaign they were fighting. Russia gets the Rasputitsa every autumn and spring that utterly shuts movement down, not to mention General Winter.

250 Km per month would be along the main axis of advance and through October. So let me try something different.

Army Group North's 18th and 4th Armies had the best advance out of the entire Wehrmacht before the onset of the rains in October. They were moving through the Baltic countries, which had better and denser infrastructure than the rest of the Soviet Union. They also had the advantage of resupply by sea from the Baltic parallel their axis of advance. Between June 22nd and August 25 they moved from Tilsit to Narva and Novgorod. That's a distance of over 700 Km.

If your attack fares as well as 4th Army's you will be fighting in Orleans in a month.

Evaluate this campaign in its own terms, not in terms of what happened to a different army in another country under totally different conditions.

I'm trying to use real life examples to derive information regarding the behaviour of military formations in wartime.

I also know know more about the Eastern Front than I do the Western Front of WWII, but hey can do the German invasion of France. Roughly the axis of advance of Army Group B was Aachen-Brussels-Paris. It covered a distance of 380 Km through what was pretty much the most built-up region of the planet at the time. Operations were started May 10th, first German troops entered Paris June 14th.

If you do as well as the lead units of Army Group B, you'll be a little North of Orleans in a month.

[The Cleric]

*looks up France's force deployment*

*winces*

Sorry for not taking the time to study maps and historical invasion routes before throwing troops together in groups. Didn't expect to be gangbanged by the two largest armies in Europe :P.

[General Havoc]

None of the attacks you mentioned went straight to the locations they were going. Army Group B, for instance, was stopped by order of Hitler so that the Luftwaffe could bomb Dunkirk, and did not make directly for Paris until long after that operation was concluded.

Besides, this is the exact same terrain that Caesar's soldiers crisscrossed with no roads and heavier loadouts per trooper, and they managed forty miles a day on foot. I do not expect to do significantly less without reason.

[Hadrianvs]

Sorry for not taking the time to study maps and historical invasion routes before throwing troops together in groups. Didn't expect to be gangbanged by the two largest armies in Europe :P.

I meant the part where you put half your armed forces, including armoured and motorized formations, in the colonies instead of France. And I'll have you know that if half my army wasn't in Asia, you'd be getting gangbanged by the second and third largest armies in Europe.

None of the attacks you mentioned went straight to the locations they were going. Army Group B, for instance, was stopped by order of Hitler so that the Luftwaffe could bomb Dunkirk, and did not make directly for Paris until long after that operation was concluded.

Army Group B stopped because they were disorganized, out of fuel, low on ammo, and too far from their field commands. If Hitler hadn't given the other to stop, they would have stopped themselves. The push to Paris had to be done in a separate operation because the German armies badly needed rest and refit at the conclusion of Fall Gelb.

Besides, this is the exact same terrain that Caesar's soldiers crisscrossed with no roads and heavier loadouts per trooper, and they managed forty miles a day on foot. I do not expect to do significantly less without reason.

They weren't being shot at, for one.

[The Cleric]

I'm used to playing against AI opponents. No such thing as doublecrossing, simply application of force where needed.

[Hotfoot]

I've got to be honest, after looking at force deployments and so forth, I really have to question what you both were thinking. Rome alone would have proven an unlikely conquest for France and Germany just given the standing military levels for all included. Throw in the deployments and it really made no sense.

Was your entire plan based on having other nations doing your heavy lifting?

Also, what games have you played where the AI never breaks alliances? I've played plenty of games where the AI will break alliances at the worst possible times, especially in Space Empires 4. I've lost several fleets by having formerly friendly territory turn hostile.

[General Havoc]

Besides, this is the exact same terrain that Caesar's soldiers crisscrossed with no roads and heavier loadouts per trooper, and they managed forty miles a day on foot. I do not expect to do significantly less without reason.

They weren't being shot at, for one.

Indeed. That would be a reason