Polish OOB

[DRG]

Originally Posted by wulfir

IIRC, in older versions of the game the Polish 1939 rifle platoon was made up of five-six smaller sections...

Which everyone ( well maybe not everyone but everyone at the time ) agreed gave the Polish infanty TOO MUCH tactical flexibility

[DRG]

11 years ago that change was made...........eleven years and now it's an issue?
This is the organization for the last DOS version.... before it was modified



and that was broken down to

1/ 12 man Heavy infantry
2/ 8 man infantry
3/ 11 man med infantry
4/ 8 man infantry
5/ 11 man med infantry
6/ 8 man infantry
7/ 9 man med infantry

[SaS TrooP]

Shouldn't flexibility be limited by effective firepower? Half of platoon has way weaker firepwoer due to lack of LMG. Then again, do we want this how it should be or to make it "balanced". Because simulator shouldn't make the balance of serious importance. If Polish company numbered that much, let us show it. Eg. German player will have to focus on bringing as much MGs as possible to hinter the advance of more numerous infantry itself.

Oh, BTW, there is one more thing, if we speak about Polish OOB. I am not fanatical or something, just pointing out some singular things worth quick fixing
25mm French AT gun (unit 401 if I am not mistaken. Pardon me if I am). These are available till August 1940. In fact, should be available till June 1942. Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade managed to evacuate significant amount of those guns from Syria in 1940. They were used regardless of British weaponry standarization. They were also used with good effect in Siege of Tobruk (till December 1941) and later, around Gazala.
These guns were probably withdrawn together with the brigade and most likely scrapped as ineffective in mid 1942.

[DRG]

I'm not saying no and I'm not saying yes. What you propose is far more work than you think it is and extends to existing scenarios and campaigns which would all have to be rebuilt.

However, this could be handled similarly to the MBT Canadian OOB that has regular SP infantry formations and "Detached weapons" ( DW ) formations that break units down into smaller units and both are offered to players . I have filed this away and will consider it further over the winter

How many LMG's were in a Polish platoon ? and Militia PL

Don

[Warnevada]

A somewhat related question. Is the effectiveness of the rifle in a squad affected by the number of men in the squad? That is, are three men firing rifles as effective as 19 men firing rifles? If yes, would it be possible to adjust effectiveness based on the number of men in the unit?

I have also noticed in playing 1939 scenarios, as noted in this thread, that the 19 man Polish squads have a hard time. They take more hits, which adds to their suppression, which makes them less effective.

Another thing worth taking a look at is experience level. The Poles had more experienced noncoms and officers because in the 1920s they fought the Soviets and some of their other neighbors, whereas the Germans experience was from WW1, except for some "volunteers" in Spain.

[scorpio_rocks]

Originally Posted by Warnevada

A somewhat related question. Is the effectiveness of the rifle in a squad affected by the number of men in the squad? That is, are three men firing rifles as effective as 19 men firing rifles? If yes, would it be possible to adjust effectiveness based on the number of men in the unit?

From the guide:

Class 1 - This is the infantry primary weapon class. This covers Rifles, SMG and so forth. Infantry units with a class 1 weapon in weapon slot will have their fire effect adjusted for the number of men in the unit and range in hexes, less bonus at long range. This reflects the number of riflemen in the section. Inf Prime weapons not in slot 1 do not get this bonus.

So yes 19 riflemen ARE more effective than say 10.

[AMX]

Originally Posted by Warnevada

A somewhat related question. Is the effectiveness of the rifle in a squad affected by the number of men in the squad? That is, are three men firing rifles as effective as 19 men firing rifles? If yes, would it be possible to adjust effectiveness based on the number of men in the unit?

Good of you to remind me, it looks like SaS Troop missed that bit in his analysis.

Originally Posted by Mobhack Help

Class 1 - This is the infantry primary weapon class. This covers Rifles, SMG and so forth. Infantry units with a class 1 weapon in weapon slot will have their fire effect adjusted for the number of men in the unit and range in hexes, less bonus at long range. This reflects the number of riflemen in the section. Inf Prime weapons not in slot 1 do not get this bonus.

edit: scorpio was faster than me...

[SaS TrooP]

Thing about number of men is I have not found any evidence it works as Scorpio says. 19 men vs. 10 men seems to be the same effectiveness (eg. in accuracy tests). I believe that aspect is lowered when certain percentage of casualties is reached. That explains why eg. 3-4 men straglers from 10 men original squad are not as effective as full squad.

But it would be better to have developers speaking about that.

@Warnedava - about experience... that's a helluva topic that could be covered in a different thread. I generally say experience is OK as it portraits Polish army was fine, but nothing over the top in low-level leadership. It must be noted many 1920 experienced commanders were responsible for ineffective decisions. Also pressence of Polish volunteers in Spanish Civil War was weak as these men were considered criminals under polish law of that time.
Polsih doctrine was build on "eastern basis". It was sort of a self-invented blitzkrieg, but relaying on cavalry formations that should be used for long range independent attacks, encirclement and elimination of Soviet forces in the offence.
These concepts were badly stopped by actual Blitzkrieg doctrine.

If that appeared, I could only recommend a change in increasing morale to 70 as defenders were historically motivated and fighting for "survival" - Poles of that time well understood what lost war will mean to entire nation. Army did well when comes to motivation generally, there were few desertions, quickly organizing partisans, good ad hoc commanding. Quick note: it was not rare that officers and troops committed suicide when their positions were about to be overrun. There were cases that junior officers revolted against senior ones if those proposed surrender. Infamous Westerplatte case is not clear to this day.

@DRG - Platoon had 3 Wz. 28 LMGs - one per squad. There is one thing I forgot to mention before: the UR-35 anti tank rifle. It was officially provided to every platoon. It is currently well represented with "medium infantry" unit having option for those. If we split it into three "medium infantry" there will be a spam of AT rifles.
My suggestion:
1. Either one squad of support weapons be "Heavy infantry" and have the same things "medium infantry has" plus AT rifle.
2. Or platoon gets an integral "AT-Section" of 2 men carrying an AT rifle. It could also be solved by attaching "Inf-AT section" formation (having 3 ATRs) into company: player would dispose those among platoons.
Yet, not every division received those rifles.

I recommend option 1.

Militia: ON units should have an possibility to be bought in companies also (standard 3x Militia Platoon will do). Info about heavy weapons is scarce, but from what I see it could be 1 LMG per platoon. Thing is it was quite vary and it will be very hard to represent it to make it fully realistic.
There were several ON battalion types. Type IV is the best one, introduced in April 1939 but not fully adopted. In such battalion, company looked like this:

"1 kompania strzelecka (Rifle Company)

poczet dowódcy (HQ & Staff)
drużyna gospodarcza (technical team)
sekcja sanitarna (podoficer + 4 sanitariuszy + 2 pary noszy) (medical section: NCO + 4 medics + 2 stretchers)
3 plutony strzeleckie a. 3 drużyny (3 rifle platoons with 3 squads each)
pluton karabinów maszynowych a. 3 drużyny (MG platoon with 3 sections (?)) - unclear on this one
"


I can get you complete organization of that battalion. It had no integral MG Company, and according to equipment list, entire battalion should have 9 LMGs and 6 HMGs. That would split it roughly to 3 LMGs and 2 HMGs per company.
I am not sure if LMGs were integral part of a squad. Could be, 2 HMGs could have been theoretically qualified as platoon.

About DW: I was thinking of such option, but company would have enormous sizes in units and would really give too much advantage to the Polish player. Especially because BAR sections would have to be 0-sized units, such as Fallschirmjager LMGs. I am not sure if that would work well, so I proposed 6 unit platoon instead.

As of scenarios, current organization "as a whole" is correct. I am not sure if that would be necessary to update these scenarios.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by SaS TrooP

Thing about number of men is I have not found any evidence it works as Scorpio says. 19 men vs. 10 men seems to be the same effectiveness (eg. in accuracy tests). I believe that aspect is lowered when certain percentage of casualties is reached. That explains why eg. 3-4 men straglers from 10 men original squad are not as effective as full squad.

But it would be better to have developers speaking about that.
.

He's quoting the Game Guide so he's already quoting the developers.

Fire effect IS adjusted for the number of men in the unit but that may not be at all obvious in a casual test. As we keep saying there are a host of factors the game takes into consideration between when you shoot and when the effect of that shot takes affect, experience, morale, whether the target is moving or stationary or pinned and how much punishment it may have taken to that point. A slightly different example is APCcalc.....that shows the average of 1000 simulated shots because anything less is not an accurate sample of the averge

A 19 man Polish squad firing on a 10 man squad and the reverse may not show the results right away, sometime it takes many shots to generate a casualty, sometimes not, that's the random number generator doing it's job and some days you can get different results simply by turning the game off and restarting. Anyone replaying a saved turn again has seen that

The bottom line is the code is set up to take the number of men firing slot 1 weapons into consideration.

Don

[Pibwl]

Originally Posted by SaS TrooP

25mm French AT gun (unit 401 if I am not mistaken. Pardon me if I am). These are available till August 1940. In fact, should be available till June 1942. Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade managed to evacuate significant amount of those guns from Syria in 1940. They were used regardless of British weaponry standarization. They were also used with good effect in Siege of Tobruk (till December 1941) and later, around Gazala.
These guns were probably withdrawn together with the brigade and most likely scrapped as ineffective in mid 1942.

Rather not. 25mm guns evacuated from Syria were next handed over to the British, who needed any AT weapons, while the Polish brigade had not been ready to fight yet. For sure most known guns used during later combat (Tobruk defence and Gazala) were 37 mm Bofors (Polish manufactured!), there were also captured Bredas (20mm, probably also 47mm), and possibly 2pdrs. There could have been 25mm guns, but they would have to be given by the British, not original ones - and I haven't heard about their usage at that time. Maybe you have some sources, that would explicitly mention 25mm guns in 1941-42 combat.

As for infantry platoon - I have no thoughts at the moment, and I'd have to re-check the subject, but I don't think it's worth twiddling..