[WarInEur] CWIE-2 placement

[sgminfo]

Yes, the critically misplaced unit was something I pondered for a while.
but I realised, equally well, that the critically /well placed/ unit was 
perhaps the reverse side of the same abusive (gamey) coin. The 4-4s 
tumbling into the line at Modcow as the Panzers approached the outskirts 
of the city
I.E. Being able to tune your replacement and training organisation to 
the degree that one month it produced infantry, the next it produced 
tanks, but on the whim of the tactical battlefield commander where he 
willed  was just as much the same problem, albeit from the other side.
There was not such a degree of control in where stuff was produced itrw. 
Tigers were produced at the Kassel plant, and contnued to be so, 
whatever the tactical/operational situation. The truth is, at the 
operational level, and the strategic level we do not have the degree of 
control that could be implied by the game, production and training 
facilities being abstracted and mixed irretreivably. Speers dispersal 
programme was an attempt to respond to a strategic threat, but one which 
is incapable of being duplicated in the game with the airwar system, nor 
does it hold much merit in any terms of portrayal we use. Perhaps the 
nearest might be a training center only for armoured forces would be  at 
Munster, Or airpoints out in Bavaria.

The selection of sites for this or that type of unit never really 
occured through such considerations, stuff was built and mobilised 
wherever it was most economic to utilise existing plant and machinery, 
plus historical training facilities.

Had it done so then most fighter assembly plants would have been located 
rapidly somewhere like  Silesia, and the Augsberg raids would never have 
had any histoeical basis. Augsburg was not chosen for fighter assembly 
for reasons of strategic deployment, it simplyhappend to be the place 
where such stuff was produced by accidents of geography and finance. 
Likewise in the UK Supermarine had their main production facilites on 
the South coast, not the most intelligent military decision, but then 
such considerations played little part in prewar planning.

Thus to have the ability to train and equip formations at particular 
sites, is possible, but extremely unlikely, the actual systems used 
resulted in a scattering all over the placefor  the Reich (for that read 
any other power).

To have a longer term fixed location for trained output is equally a 
seismic shift in strategy, and was abandoned  in War in the East for 
precisely a similar reason, namely, it wasn't worth the hassle, but such 
a randomised distribution possible evens out the abuses and exploits of 
the current system. On the Soviet side, such is the pressure on 
placement and deployment, what arrives where is often less important in 
the early game than simply finding somewhere to place it on the map.

An automatic placement situation solves several annoyances...such as 
hunting around to find where to place a unit on an already choked 
situation, whereas computer random deployment saves a great deal of 
drudgery. Since most "stuff" has to use rail to assemble in the 
operational theater in any case, little is gained for the efforts expended.


At least, of the face of things, that is my thinking.

The tactical effect of the current placement rules severely favours the 
defender, most noticably in France 1940, whilst the attrition option 
does much to mask such abuses (i.e. Newly , expertly positioned "sh1t" 
is "sh1t" none the less and not likely to revolutionise the tactical 
balance in any case, so from that option it would indeed make no 
difference. Indeed it might make a nice wrinkle to add to that 
particular choice, thus making it an entirely optional  routine..

-|steve|-
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