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[RT]Barbarossa 15.07. - 05.08.41 - Heeresgruppe south

Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2013 3:37 pm
by Nebulas
Hi @ all,
attached my newest scenario "Unternehmen Barbarossa" continuing on 15.07. untill 05.08.41 - "Heeresgruppe" south.
It based on the original frontline of "Heeresgruppe" south and allied forces.

Playtime about 30 min.
AI movement in the first turn about 1 min.

Cheers,
Neb

Re: [RT]Barbarossa 15.07. - 05.08.41 - Heeresgruppe south

Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2013 9:25 pm
by Arctic-Nation
Played, BV without problems. I liked the messy situation in the North, where it's rather unclear who's trying to encircle who. This time, the AI huddling around the Axis objectives, rather than trying to push through the massive gaps in the line, was rather appropriate, but ultimately useless. Still, I had to defend my starting positions a lot longer than I had anticipated. In the critical areas, there just wasn't enough infantry to cover the holes.

As with the other scenario of the invasion of the Ukraine, key is the proper use of the Hungarian and Romanian units. The Romanians in the very South start completely out of supply, I don't know if this is intentional, but it did slow down my initial advance. Other than that, it's a matter of not allowing them to be destroyed uselessly. I used the two weak starting Romanian armour divisions to cut off the enemy supply lines, don't know if I would've been able to break through in time otherwise.

On that note, how do you judge the relative strength of the Soviet versus the Romanian and Hungarian units? Though I'm quite unfamiliar with the whole invasion of Bessarabia and the western Ukraine, I can't quite believe that the Axis allies in 1941 already were as weak as they would be two years later (and vice versa for the Soviets, of course).

Re: [RT]Barbarossa 15.07. - 05.08.41 - Heeresgruppe south

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2013 4:38 pm
by HolyDeath
On that note, how do you judge the relative strength of the Soviet versus the Romanian and Hungarian units?

Manual is very useful here. Each unit has its own attack value (lighting), defense (shield) and movement (arrow). To correctly judge unit's values you need to multiplay its attack/defense by its strength. By strength I mean little blue/red dots. Now, let's say unit has strength of 5, so you take its attack (let's say - 7 attack and 5 defense) and multiplay it. 7 x 5 = 35 attack and 5 x 5 = 25 defense. Then you add attack and defense of unit's speciality (see this for details) and you'll have rough estimate of unit's combat values. But take into consideration that terrain (like swamp/forest/city/rivercrossing) and abilities (specialists' traits, unit digged in) can influence the outcome. Also, outcome of battle is not scripted so there will be some variety. Sometimes outcome will be better than expected, sometimes worse. They are not the best of units, but one can never know when Hungarian or Romanian unit might be needed to save the day.

Re: [RT]Barbarossa 15.07. - 05.08.41 - Heeresgruppe south

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:41 pm
by Arctic-Nation
That's a very nice explanation of how the game works, but I was rather looking for how Nebulas tried to emulate the historical situation here. Since the absolute strengths of all units are hard-coded, one needs to fiddle around with veterancy settings and support units to be able to give the Axis Allies a fighting chance against the Soviets, even if the historical situation (which I don't know anything of) might actually have been a walkover.

Re: [RT]Barbarossa 15.07. - 05.08.41 - Heeresgruppe south

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2013 9:03 pm
by Nebulas
Yeah, true a very nice explanation. From my point of view the strenght of the romanian forces are realistic, even at the beginning of the campain.
The assessement of the OKW about the romanian troops were "not usable for offensive duties but security in the outback and narrow offensives at weak frontlines" (extract of the OKW diary).

@Arctic-Nation: still no feedback about my newest map ;)

Re: [RT]Barbarossa 15.07. - 05.08.41 - Heeresgruppe south

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2013 10:00 pm
by HolyDeath
I misunderstood the meaning of your first post then... Still, back to the point - I think that allied forces are represented well enough: the 6th German Army at Stalingrad was encircled because Romanians have failed to keep the flanks secure and given that even the Germans had problems to withstand the impact of Soviet counter-offensives and offensives (especially after the Battle for Moscov) I think that portraying Hungarians, Romanians and Italians as units weaker than Russian and German seems to be a correct one historically-wise. If you want to even the odds - from gameplay perspective - then you'd have to forget about historical accuracy, I think. The game seems to strike balance well enough. When enemy is weakened even allied forces can do good so I don't consider them "throwables".

As for the map - how to download this scenario properly (I mean where to put it and what exactly I am supposed to do)? I'd like to see/play it, but I am green in terms of replays/user-made scenarios and by experimenting on my own will surely cause some disaster.

Re: [RT]Barbarossa 15.07. - 05.08.41 - Heeresgruppe south

Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2013 1:03 pm
by Arctic-Nation
Nebulas wrote:Yeah, true a very nice explanation. From my point of view the strenght of the romanian forces are realistic, even at the beginning of the campain.
The assessement of the OKW about the romanian troops were "not usable for offensive duties but security in the outback and narrow offensives at weak frontlines" (extract of the OKW diary).

@Arctic-Nation: still no feedback about my newest map ;)

I should google around a bit to familiarize myself with how things went there - Wikipedia has nothing between "Romanian forces joined the Germans in Operation Barbarossa" and "Romanians forces were completely obliterated in the battle of Stalingrad, and here's how that went..."

And yeah, I played your latest scenario shortly after you put it up, then real life caught up again. I should find some time to play it again this weekend, somewhere between heat wave and thunderstorm.

HolyDeath: community scenarios files (.usc) go in the username/appdata/roaming/unity of command/user/scenarios folder, then they show up in the Scenarios/User generated scenarios menu in UoC.

Re: [RT]Barbarossa 15.07. - 05.08.41 - Heeresgruppe south

Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2013 6:13 pm
by HolyDeath
Thank you. I'll play it and give my thoughts.

Re: [RT]Barbarossa 15.07. - 05.08.41 - Heeresgruppe south

Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 8:05 pm
by Nebulas
Yeah, heatwave here too. Thats the reason why i havent created any new scenario yet. I prefer beeing on the lakeside at the moment :D
Cheers, good summertime to everyone!!!

Re: [RT]Barbarossa 15.07. - 05.08.41 - Heeresgruppe south

Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 10:58 am
by HolyDeath
I see one big problem with this scenario - Germans have a lot of ELITE(!) reinforcements while Soviets have some infantry, greenhorns and some veterans (2 or 3 with 1-star)... Disparity of forces is so vast that I had little problem blasting away all enemies off the map before taking the objectives. I also disliked how much supply Germans have on the map - no supply issues at all. On positive side I liked how the borders were made at the beginning. Overall it's a nice scenario, even if somewhat unbalanced.