As mentioned in a previous post I am thinking of playing Barbarossa again using Vassal, specifically the AGN/AGC combined campaign. Vassal makes it easy. It doesn't have the feeling of being in some kind of military HQ, but it can be played sitting down (depending on your PC desk configuration) and doesn't take up any space or setting up/sorting out counters time.
First my comments on Richard's essay.
Great minds...
It just so happens I have loaded up AGC/AGN combined campaign on Vassal. I am trying to resist playing, but Covid has got me feeling miserable, so it would be a good distraction, but also a challenge I could do without.
I have given railroad repair units some serious thought. In Vassal I found a counter I can use and repair rates etc are not problem. Issue was how many. I thought about one per bridge unit. Then I got stuck. I could only find 4 on the maps (4th Army D2825, 9th Army C2831. 18th Army C2018 and "2nd Army" D3028). This then got me looking at the OOB on Wiki. 2nd Army must be 2nd Pz Army. This then generated the question: why do the other Pz Armies not have bridging units? What about 16th Army AGN? The Vassal counter mix has units for Armies 2, 4, 9, 18 and 16 plus 6, 11 and 17 for AGS. This is where I got to and with Covid brain fog hit a wall of annoyance.
That said, one RR unit per bridging unit seems about right. That would give 4 or 5 based on the counter mix for AGC/AGN. Each can do four points of repair (one point does one hex in clear/fine weather etc), but it is a different rate for Baltic States and East Poland. There is also a bonus 2 points that can be allocated per turn (which I rather like as it represents extra effort/resources being applied).
Then I thought I better look at the naval rules as this is important for AGN and something we didn't really tackle. Same goes for air transport/supply. All this requires I read some rules (which I have access to mostly so not a problem).
That still leaves the special reinforcement pools. Vassal is not a good easy way to look at them.
50 turns of Barbarossa was a major life achievement. Thanks for the opportunity.
There was a further comment about the weather which I really think would work best with a chit system. The cup contains only so many bad days as there were historically and if more than two bad ones are drawn in a row, return chit and draw again. Once a chit is drawn it is removed from play.
Now my challenge is how many bright ideas do I try and implement if I play again on Vassal?
When I was into GR/D's Europa, the Europa magazine IIRC had an historical analysis of railway engineer regiments for Eastern Front. I sold my copies unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Google will turn anything up. Although it remains a bit abstract with the game scale and mechanics, but still...
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