Moscow 42, winter. Ivan is on the offensive...can delayed disruption reporting help him in his attack?
Joe cannot gun duel Hans...we all know that. When the soviet infantry gets close, its time for spades, grenades and mg pistols-not simple direct shooting. Can he afford to wait for each unit in a stack flipping to disruption before he assaults?
So the russian stacks up infantry and cav simply to assault. Once the stacks are formed he is going to assault every chance he gets, regardless of the order/disorder of his targets....and this is especially true in shorter games.
Why does the russian player need to immediately know whether or not the units in the hexes he is assaulting are disrupted. Its good to know but is it essential?
Conversely, if the german player sees armor and infantry facing off against his grunts in any type of terrain, he is going to pick off his infantry targets in order to create combined arms penalties and disrupt assault stacks. He is also going to want to target cav and enigneers, and C quality infantry, not for kills but for simple, and immediate disruptions, preventing those units from assaulting.
With immediate feedback, the high quality german artillery can chain disrupt units. Immediate feedback lets the german move on to another target as soon as the previous one disrupts, thus increasing the odds of disrupting another good order unit and upsetting the assault synergy the russians are trying to create.
With delayed disruption reporting, the germans are handicapped while on defense, in their ability to pick and choose which targets need to be disrupted in order to stop Joe from charging into his trenches. Also, in many games, especially early turns, the germans have superior infantry unit direct fire power which lets them target adjacent units very effectively, enabling company and battalion gun dueling. This can produce immediate disruptions against infantry ready to assault. These small arms units will then move onto the next unit in the stack, and target them for potential disruption.
So I think Delayed Disruption Reporting is not a rule that automatically helps the german defender, when the russians are on the attack.
So I am testing this out in a 40 turn game against Sgt. Fury. We will see how it pans out and report back. We just finished the same game without delayed disruption reporting, and with me as german, I felt fairy comfortable in getting that immediate feedback on which units I was disrupting when shooting at them.
Now one thing: With the russians on the defense, in long games, I think delayed disruption reporting is a must, because the germans can finesse and gun duel/assualt and the russians need that one turn delay to survive on defense.
I think it is especially interesting that delayed disruption was considered to only affect the attacker. I think the argument raizer makes that the defender can exactly manage his defensive fire to cause maximum disruptions without the DD OR in effect is a benefit to the defender that has never really been discussed.
Good points!
Dog Soldier
Well, the Moscow '42 might just be a somewhat unique or at the least uncommon case due to the gap in quality between the opposing sides. The Soviets have only 1 or 2 B quality divisions IIRC.
raizer's idea of the Germans being able to attack and disrupt Soviet units one by one is true, and it's also sort of the only thing that will keep the Germans from being grinded into a pulp through assaults initially. I'm still quite sceptical about the German chances of holding out against repeated assaults to the extent that they'll withdraw at a historical pace without that making their later defensive positions untenable.
In my opinion, a rule like Delayed Disruption Reporting mostly hinders the side that relies on superior unit quality and/or an advantage in firepower. The Soviets will have to Urra! their way across the map in any case, it's going to be bloody and it isn't going to be subtle. Their units are slow in any case. German units rarely disrupt (even though I'm seeing wildly variable results for attacks against units in bunkers, more so than against units in regular terrain). The Germans will have to use their artillery to inflict as much damage as possible whilst trying to keep their losses at an acceptable level, which is where knowing exactly when a unit is disrupted comes in as a big aid.
At the moment, I can't think of a longer game where Delayed Disruption Reporting when the attacker is at least 2 quality levels below the defender and has less mobility than the defender due to the defender having more motorized units or the terrain imposing serious movement penalties due to weather or terrain type hinders the attacker more than the defender, because the attacker will have to assault his way through the defender's line in any case. Due to the differences in quality and the chance to disrupt the opposing side, it will allow the defender to sort of "min/max" his defensive setup.
It's just a rule. It doesn't really 'affect' one side more then the other. It really comes down to how a player blends his knowledge of the rules into an effective attack/defence.
In some games, as the defender, I may never fire a shot. When I played Kasserine I am pretty sure we had Delayed disruption on....and it probably made no difference. If I am playing as the Russians in one of the campaign games, I would not let it influence me on my assaults. I would still move adjacent to the Germans in 2 or 3 adjacent hexes (probably 3), fully stacked...then assault assault assault. I probably wouldn't even shoot first, since my goal is not to take the hex, but to shoot his fatigue up so high that when he disrupts, he breaks.
As a defender, If I am dug in enough to have the luxury of shooting at an adjacent enemy, then I will concentrate my fire on high profile units like engineers, or spread out my fire...depending on the situation. If he too strong to shoot at all his units, then perhaps it is time for me to back up a hex to delay his advance.
So really, I think it is all very situational, and may even depend on your own play style.
The game really uses a lot of probabilities. You can shoot all your stuff at one thing, to give yourself a higher probability of disrupting it, or spread it out so you don't know what unit may end up disrupting.
In the Stalingrad campaign I played, the Germans were all in bunkers along the encirclement, mostly stacked one per hex. I probably only had around a 2% chance of disrupting a B quality german in a hard target with artillery (and alt rules). But I fired maybe 25 artillery pieces a turn (twice). SO something was going to disrupt, I just had to make sure I was able to exploit it when it happened.
With Delayed Disruption on, I would never know, and it would give the defender a 'rally phase' to undisrupt so that by my next turn, I may never know that I actually disrupted that bunker.
The problem is that you can wage sort of a "mathematical" war. If you move adjacent to one of my units/stacks from 2-3 sides, and I disrupt most of your attackers, I can decide to stay put as statistically speaking the chance of all or even most of the attackers becoming undisrupted is not that high. I also benefit from two more abstract rules: that defensive artillery fire hits the entire stack, which means everybody can disrupt, and that defensive artillery fire in terms of how many units fire at the attacker is random.
I can thus make a simple cost/benefit analysis of the chance of how likely you are to take a hex. If I see that none of your units became disrupted as a result of my bombardment or direct fire, I might move back.
Having no exact knowledge of if a unit is disrupted or not as a result of what I do in my turn can make a substantial difference. The primary weakness of the side that can more or less only "assault assault assault" is that you can't assault with disrupted units. If most of the attacking units are disrupted, my defending unit is not likely to take much of a beating from assaults during the attacker's turn. Damage from artillery fire is a different story.
Also: in a game like Moscow '42, the Soviets are not deployed for offensive action along most of their initial frontline, so it will take up to 2-3 days to get everybody where you want them to be for the "1 division per 3 hexes" attacks you're describing.
One additional thing to consider...if you don't have the luxury of getting immediate feedback on whether or not your arty, air, small arms are disrupting units, it will prevent you from knowing about a key disruption and then moving on to target that you do not want recovering losses or fatigue. Units that are a few hexes back resting (now we now that is not optimal but sometimes you have to rest when you can) and if those units are in LOS, it is pretty frustrating to see some arty come in there just to mess up your recovery.
Do you take that shot at those rear units or even the HQs if you have a 2 or 3 enemy BNs that have just moved next to your lone BN or Company or are you going to pour all you can into the adjacent units in the hopes of disrupting them.
Wouldn't it be the attacker that benefits most from immediate feedback? Since he has units available to assault to take advantage of that knowledge? If there is a key disruption, wouldn't it be the attacker who would make best use of it?
An attacker who is disrupted on your turn, may rally, and the attacker may never know that you actually disrupted his unit.
As for important units behind the lines in LOS....There are some targets that are always a priority for my artillery...other artillery, HQ's, infantry in the open.
A lot of times it is easier to damage the enemy hitting those units, since they will be harder to hurt in the front lines.
You seem to have looked at a specific situation, and are trying to apply it generally as a rule.
Generally: I do not shoot at adjacent enemies as a defender. Being disrupted by defensive fire is way worse then the damage I can cause.
Generally: I shoot artillery at defenders individually, and once (lacking a priority target). A habit I got into from Normandy's campaign. If you play with artillery striking all the units in the hex, then that is moot.
Generally: I want to know if the hex I that I want to take contains a disrupted unit or not. If I have the luxury of lots of units (I am Russian) then generally it wont matter.
Generally: If your opponent can only afford to put single units in a hex for defence, then I really want to know if I disrupted a unit or not. It is usually the defender that has single units per hex.
While I will concede that in Moscow '42, delayed disruption may help the defender more then the attacker, I haven't played this one yet, so I can't really comment on this specific game..but on the other ones I have played using it: Sealion (defender), Tunisia (attacker/defender), Sicily (defender), I haven't really noticed any sort of 'advantage'.
I should add that in any given scenario, the role of attacker/defender can flip....or even be applied to both sides on different parts of the map.
As the russians, I am better off if my opponent cannot immediately know if his A/B qual arty is disrupting me as he is shooting me. If by chance he gets good shots at my adjacent units and knows instantly if those adjacent units immediately disrupt, what does that enable him to do? Immediately move on to the next unit in the stack, with the hopes of disrupting them. As the russians, in Moscow42, in the scenarios I have played, I would rather the german defender have to guess if he disrupted those units or not, which prevents him from moving on to the next unit, disrupting those and then me having to hope for a about a 30% chance of a rally on my turn, and that is with no fatigue. I don't need the feedback because, as you have said the german in usually spread out, I am moving a stack adjacent to one maybe 2 units max (the other unit an AT gun under 3 guns) simply to assault next turn.
If you read my post I am talking about the winter scenarios in M42 only-nothing else. Delayed disruption reporting would screw over the germans in bluge 44, where they are pressed for time, on congested roads and all those US Engineers around blowing bridges, it would screw them over in F40 and any of a number of scenarios, but in these few scenarios in M42, with the russian assault tempo so key to achieving anything, due to the 1 hex per turn movement of infantry, I think its not a rule that it is necessarily just an aid to the german defender.
I am just talking about Moscow 42 winter scenarios that I have played- Vaslov heads W and Kaluga-nothing more. Maybe check them out and see what you think. I also said I am testing this currently with Sgt Fury, so it is not something I am arguing is crystal clear yet.