Helping The Soviets

[larry marak]

If you want to help the Soviets, add some historicity to the post August '42 scenarios. There should be penal platoons included in the O.B. for almost every scenario dated after that date. Red army processed new men into the penal units till April of 1945 and it would be unusual for them not to be present in a scenario. Right now they are only present in scenarios from Heroes, Red Warriors, and Little Saturn (our Italian friend read his history books).

Jay, how many penal platoons are included in Kursk?.

[Shad]

Larry,

Do you suggest adding them in addition to the listed OOB, or some sort of substitution ratio?

[larry marak]

In addition, in scenarios where the USSR is on the offensive. Penal Troops were used as mine clearers and as "chaff" to draw opportunity fire and thus reveal concealed enemy positions. They were still in use in the battles of Brelau and Berlin.

In the Kursk volumes, you should see them included in the Soviet counterattack and pursuit scenarios (assuming there are pursuit scenarios).

[J6A]

The trouble with a basic morale number is that it becomes inflexible. ASL had some things of interest and a good example was its treatment of Americans. In PG, they are generally 8 moraled so that you have a chance of getting them to do what you want to try and do with them. This 8 morale compares with the best (heck US Paras are bloody 8/8 !!). Yet in ASL, they were often a point lower in morale than the other big nations BUT had the ability to rally quicker in game terms with a higher number AND did not suffer from DM (desperation morale).

In PG terms, that for example might equate to putting them as '7' morale, but have them recover from disruption with a rolled 7 rather than the "1 less than your morale value" as per other nations. No DM might be no compounded demoralisation or indeed only on 4 higher rather than 3 higher .....

I think this is built in to leaders with morale bonuses, and varying morale for various quality troops. What you're theoretically suggesting is giving them something like 7/8 morale, which would be way out of what any other PG nationality does.

The Soviets recovering from DEM is not really that significant given how many times in a game you actually roll for demoralised units. I rarely achieve the double 1 (rightly) so a 3 or less might give 1 more unit per game if that. Also, for them to then continue forward (in combat movement), the recovered platoon would still need a leader with it anyway.

You don't need to roll double 1s, because you're too busy rolling them on your fire attacks and good order morale checks. Giving the Soviets triple the capability of anyone else to recover to instant good order is a HUGE advantage over other nations, especially in bigger scenarios. I think the whole point of the Soviets is that you have a lot of them. You're going to lose a bunch in the attack, which reflects reality. The Soviets won not from any great tactics (although they did have some very capable generals), they won because they had huge manpower reserves. It didn't matter if 100,000 died in an assault that killed only 20,000 Germans, as they could send another 100,000 tomorrow.

I just think its fun to toss around a few national characteristics (the Italians have the surrender rule as strangely do the South Africans ?). You also forgot to mention about us drinking Tea, but we only did that when our German cousin were munching down on their wurst !

I think the morale and leadership mix already accomplishes this. The Italian Surrender rule reflects Italian behavior at the specific battles to which it applies. If there were Soviets who bounced back quickly, I think it would be a special rule for that scenario or just reflected in higher morale/more leaders.

Basically, I'm not in favor of this rule.

[larry marak]

Morale checks is such a fundamental part of the casualty system for PG that fiddling with it isn't a good idea.

Another way to help the Soviets is to allow the Soviet player to inject 3 C&C leader characters into the scenario. That improves the efficiency of Soviet leadership without pushing the scenario out of balance very much.

[vince hughes]

I'm not theoretically suggesting a 7/8 morale factor at all J6 ?
I was actually suggesting nothing.
What I was doing was discussing how another game system handles American morale and a rather succesful game system at that. I didn't propose any change to PG ? I did however entertain how interesting national characteristics were.

Rolling a 3 or less instead of a 2 is not triple the chance ? Its double the chance (1 in 36 v 1 in 18).
Again, rather than look at bare stats of chances (as shown by Shad), it is just as important to look at how many times this happens in a game before looking at other stats. In fact, I'll put it out there now as an example. Did you have a DEM unit recover fully from a DEM state to GO in one roll in your last game. If yes, how many ? The usual answer will be 'no, none did that' and that shows how rare the event we are talking about anyway.

"If there were Soviets who bounced back quickly, I think it would be a special rule for that scenario or just reflected in higher morale/more leaders."

Thats kind of what I said. SSR's :-)





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[Matt W]

Vince we need to work on your probability calculations, it does indeed go from 1 in 36 to 1 in 12

1-1
1-2
2-1

would be saving throws.

Having said that I could certainly see some SSRs with quicker recovery when the situation warranted.

[J6A]

Oh, and to out myself, this is Joshua Gottesman (for those who know me from CSW).

Also, War of the Equator, Scenario 1, I had 2 different Ecuadoran units recover on snake-eyes.

[vince hughes]

Oh, and to out myself, this is Joshua Gottesman (for those who know me from CSW).

Also, War of the Equator, Scenario 1, I had 2 different Ecuadoran units recover on snake-eyes.

I know Josh, but I thought you were using the J6 on purpose. Its one of the avatars you had on CSW

[vince hughes]

Vince we need to work on your probability calculations, it does indeed go from 1 in 36 to 1 in 12

1-1
1-2
2-1

would be saving throws.

Having said that I could certainly see some SSRs with quicker recovery when the situation warranted.

Matt,
Yeah, I guess you're right. I was going by the 1 in 3 chance of throwing a 1 or 2 with one dice, followed by the neccesary 1 in 6 chance of obtaining the 1 on the other die.
3 x 6 = 18

Doh ! Just forget it