Stalingrad 42 Breakout Group Zhuravlev

[Ricky B]

Just trying to inform you how the game works, and it has nothing to do with sophistication but I would assume a design decision. Of course, I am not the creator of the game and so would be putting words in his mouth here to even try, but it strikes me as a design decision, very possibly before the PzC series started. I may not even be correct about purely random retreat chances, but in all my years of playing the games it seems completely random.

After this long, I doubt it would be changed, but maybe? However, there would need to be a lot of logic implemented, and even then not everyone would agree on a reasonable mix of what happens when the man in the trench retreats without guidance, as from my lack of real world experience but lots of reading, it sure seems fairly random once it gets below the "orders from above" stage of retreat, which is what your situation is. In your example above, I believe current retreat odds are 25% per available hex. You suggest 1% chance of retreat to the "bad" hex is reasonable. I agree 25% is too high for that hex, but feel maybe 10% is about right, maybe even 15%. And someone else may feel 0%. And another 5%.

No matter what, trying to apply rules to what is an act of survival or panic or whatever - each soldier is different but a herd instinct takes over - is still going to result in undesired outcomes. In the meantime you can adjust your deployments to try and minimize the chances of this happening, so maybe it won't happen 3 times in one turn. That seems off no matter what, but then hard telling how many retreats happened that were more what you expected. People focus on the unexpected and so they seem to happen more often, and then adding in clumping makes it worse.

Anyway, enjoying the write up, hope at least a few Soviets escape but not looking too good right now.

Rick