Early and Late war armies

[messenger]

Ok here is an idea Kyranzor and I have been batting around.
We all have heard of the Opposing Front's expansion, the fact it has two new factions on it is nothing new, however the use for those two spaces can be if we want it to!
Basically right now we have late war Germans and Americans on KMOD, however we could quite feasibly with the new expansion make it so we could technically have two further factions!
Think of it, we could make a Late War faction for both Axis and Allies and then Early War faction for Panzer Elite and British.
In the Early War faction for Allies we can put in each doctrine's place an Allied country, so we could put in British, America and Russia, Late War versions of these would go in the other faction.
This will allow us to add many units, doctrines and styles of war we wouldn't be able to before for instance with Early War Axis we can have the magnificent Early War German army at the height of it's power with Luftwaffe support, Kettenrad driving troops, Panzer I's, II's and III's without any worries about things like Panther's being superior to them as you can't field them in an Early War army!
This also has an additional bonus in that we can add weapons and tanks that were not in either Early or Late War! Germans could use captured French tanks such as Char B-1 and Sumoa 35s.
Yet another bonus of this would be you can see the way the military of all these factions changed over the war, allowing you to Blitzkrieg with the Early German army and dig in with the late.
However as with all ideas, we need the community's say on this so post your comments and vote on our poll!

[LtSoucy]

I love it! I really would love to see the early Germans have no Defenses really. That would be great if lte they could make bigger trechs and stufff.

[messenger]

Well I think machine gun posts should still be available along with wire and mines however tank traps aren't needed/ weren't used much early war so that can be left out. Also come to think of it, Fallschrimjaeger will be able to parachute- with FG42s!

[Orrie]

Its a great idea! But it will take time, right?

[messenger]

Indeed it will, we don't have OF yet ;). However hopefully we will get some model exporters or something or we shan't be able to do this properly :(.

[Orrie]

I don't know much about the Exporter, does it include an Importer too? Or we cannot implant the models ^^,

[messenger]

I dunno people call an exporter as you export your models in CoH :D.

[LtSoucy]

ya but still the germans can have air planes fun!

[Orrie]

Hey, Messenger, I'm currently making the list, I'll post it here when I'm done.

[messenger]

Which list is this?

[whitewolfmxc]

Frankly , although the idea is very interesting but i personally hate it ><

Why we need to do such things when we can go from period one to the end ? Thats the beauty XD

you will still need time and lots of effort to go through the whole unit roster so there isnt a problem with balance or what so ever (when its completely done im speaking)

PS: above are my personal opinion it does not represent the offical KMOD

[messenger]

Not really, if we had all the tanks etc there would be no point in getting the early ones as you could just spend the resources on teching up. Plus this isn't bloody Age of Empires, we should be able to play with realism!

[whitewolfmxc]

well for realism you shouldn't stop people playing with panzer 2 's even its 1945 , as they are still serving but not important roles is it not ?

[messenger]

No, Panzer II's were withdrawn from service completely in 1943 as they were inadequate for anytasks. The few that might have been around were used against partisans, not for battling the Allies.
The thing is, with this split we can actually play using units we wouldn't be able to or bother to use if it was all under one faction.
For instance, Panzer II- it would be useless against anything post 42 as all the tanks against it can slaughter it and so can any tank rifles, mines or possibly even grenades. Pre 42 it could still do some useful things and even be a battle tank for a while... Not to mention the fact we could have a campaign using this kinda stuff :D.

[Kyranzor]

varients of Pz 2 and even Pz 1 were still being used as ammo carriers and transports.

[messenger]

Indeed, they weren't real Panzer I's and II's were they ;).

[Orrie]

Hmm, I'm low on internet, I've something wrong with the Lan-Card (doesn't work, so no net..) So I'm have to sit on my parents computer ..... BLAH!!!
Trying to fix it ASAP....... Sorry Messenger... :(

[Dietrich]

ya but still the germans can have air planes fun!

The absence of German airpower in CoH vanilla saddened me. But CoH vanilla was meant to depict the period in the war when the Allies had air superiority and the Landsers were so often asking, "Where is the Luftwaffe?" And the Allies get just one P-47 at a time (as opposed to a flight of four), so it makes sense for the Axis to have *no* planes.

Playing an early-war game, though, the Allies could have strafing or bombing attacks, and the Axis could have Stukas and Jagdbombers! :D

Don't know if the game mechanics would allow for this, but in a 1941-era Soviet vs German game, for example, Axis gets Stukas and Allies get Shturmoviks.

So yes, I dig the idea of early- and late-war armies.

[messenger]

Well I think it will be upto the player mainly...
Right now I am wondering what armies could fight alongside Germany- Early War= Germany and Italy, Late War= Germany :P.
Meanwhile on the allied side = Early War- Britain, America, Soviet Union, Late War= Britain, America, Soviet Union.
Right now it seems the only time Axis players get to be somebody other then Germany is Early War Italians, perhaps Czechoslovakia is a good addition?

[Dietrich]

What about Hungary or Rumania as Axis, um, allies?

[Pvt.Jonez]

Sounds like a jolly good idea. What will be great (in adition to the differences and such) is that for the early war, we will be able to create small new sides that were involved in the early 1938-41 campagins like Poland, Norway, France and early Italy and just a hypohothedical thought, Ethopia (Italy invanded them). This way we could truly recreate the rise of the Axis forces.

This is completely speculating, and like Messanger said, kicking stuff around the bucket.

[Rommel]

Yay! Mabye you Kmodders could make a small campaign to show the rise of the Reich! But please don't add the luftwafte after reading some extensive history on them.... Hermann Goring and his goons didn't do much, in fact there are some instances were Hermann Goring left his post to go shopping.XP

[messenger]

The Luftwaffe did plenty, the only way we are able to add them in at the moment is with them Stuka diving etc anyway so it's fine :D.

[Dietrich]

Len Deighton notes in his book Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk: "The Luftwaffe . . . did not provide the constant artillery bombardment which is often credited to it. Its bombers were assigned to the battle according to need, in that same opportunistic way that all other weapons of blitzkrieg were used." Later, in the section on the Luftwaffe, he writes: "Air support for the blitzkrieg was needed to supplement artillery units which were often in the process of moving up--leapfrogging one over the other--when they were most urgently needed."

Thus, in an early-war game, Stuka divebombing could function somewhat like off-map artillery--you call in an air-strike (which might take a few or several seconds from call to completion) to bust bunkers or pound dug-in defenders.

Another valuable Luftwaffe-derived ability would be recon flights temporarily clearing the fog of war like the P-47 fly-overs currently available to the Allies.

[Pvt.Jonez]

Yes, the screwup at dunkurk, i dont really blame the Luftwaffe on that one, insted i do, like you said, blame the Luftwaffe kommanders, they should have moved the panzer divisions ahead and used combined arms tacticts to decimate the enemy. The russians were particularly good at combined arms, but in my opinion, the Germans really were the daddies of Combined Arms in the modern age.

As far as Early/ Late War goes, i think that would really be a wonderful idea to explore in the future, becouse like all wars, they are changing tacticts, weapony and camo patterns that really make the begining of the war and the end incredably different and cant be so simply avoided by COH. This was an excellent idea.

[messenger]

Orrie and I are in the process of writing down army lists for this so stay put.

[Fallschirmjager12]

I'm dying for some Luftwaffe such as the Me-109s or the Stuka etc :P

It sounds like a great idea.:)

[Totenkopf]

The only prob with that if making and getting new models for the ME-109 and JU-87 (Stuka)....who is really good at models....like 3D..plus the have to have functioning animations to go along with it...it'll be alot of work but have faith the the KMOD dev-team

[Dietrich]

In the early part of the war, Luftwaffe ground attack was handled mostly by the Stuka, with a little help from the Henschel Hs 123 (which equipped the sole ground-attack Gruppe in the first two years of the war). Tactical (low-altitude) recon was handled by the Henschel Hs 126 and the Focke Wulf Fw 189 (which was relegated to the night recon role from 1943 on).

If in the late-war army mode Germany gets some air support, then we can have tank-buster Stukas armed with dual 37mm cannon, Fw 190s dropping 250 kg bombs on tanks/light armor and SD-2 bomblets on emplacements and infantry. However, during this period of the war the Allies had air superiority on all fronts, so sorties from the Luftwaffe would be few and far between.

[messenger]

It would probably be better to just leave out Luftwaffe for late Axis.

[Dietrich]

Yeah, that makes sense. If the Amis get just one P-47 flyover/strafing run at a time, proportionately the Luftwaffe should be absent.

[messenger]

Indeed, I heard that the most airpower used in the Battle of the Bulge by the Germans was 2 aircraft on 2 sorties.

[Dietrich]

JG 26: Top Guns of the Luftwaffe by Donald Caldwell states that the Luftwaffe's only appearance over the beachhead on D-Day morning was a pair of Fw 190s from Jagdgeschwader (JG) 26 which strafed the British troops on Sword Beach and flew unscathed through the barrage of AA fire from the fleet just offshore. From June 6-30, 1944, Luftflotte (Air Fleet) 3 flew 10,061 single-engine fighter sorties, while the Allies flew an estimated 120,000-140,000 sorties. JG 26, for one, flew sorties almost daily thereafter until May 4, 1945. The Jagdwaffe continued to be active, but by D-Day the entire Luftwaffe had become accustomed to being outnumbered on every front.

[messenger]

Yeah their airsupport was peanuts compared to the Allied and Soviet's.

[Fallschirmjager12]

But to include it in early Axis:P

[kislui]

Would be nice to see some late WWII german helicopters and some Soviet Katushas :D

[Dietrich]

Would be nice to see some late WWII german helicopters

Like the Focke-Achgelis Fa 61 gyrocopter that Hanna Reitsch flew inside the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin in February 1938? :-P It was only a research aircraft.

[whitewolfmxc]

No they did have an small production line for a Helicopter "Focke-Achgelis FA223 Drache" AKA the Dragon or something like that it was used for for medic and supply drops also a special case like rescuing Mesilini in Italy when it was hold captive by rebels but the plane was abandoned by using gliders instead , so it was used through out the whole war


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0flSwzjnMA vedio of it

[kislui]

Yep one of those...and it's a pitty that you can not play for soviets :(

and regarding those choppers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_Fl_282

[messenger]

What really would be the point in adding those though?
They were barely used, let alone for military uses so there would be no real value in adding them.

[kislui]

A light and sneaky recon/observer with two bombs on board? Can I have one?
It's great for taking out MG nests from above :D

Plus it's just another tribute to Nazi advanced technology.

[messenger]

I would say a Stuka is better for taking out MG nests myself.

[kislui]

Junkers Ju 87? Yeah, that thing is a monster, a chopper just seems like a more elegant solution :D

but hey, screw the chopper, I am way more upset with the lack of Soviet Armies in COH >:(

--
STOP DOUBLE POST!

-Orrie

[Dietrich]

Any 'copter would be quite vulnerable to AA fire. I haven't suffered strafing the last few games I've played, but I've seen even infantry squads and SdKfz gunners let fly at passing P-47s.

[Halftrack]

Indeed, I heard that the most airpower used in the Battle of the Bulge by the Germans was 2 aircraft on 2 sorties.

Really dont know where you heard THAT, but if you said normandy landings, that would be true.

During the Battle of Bulge, the Luftwaffe was quiet active...

while allied airforces were grounded because of bad weather, Luftwaffe was still active and performed their last "big" actions... Ju 52s dropped Paratroopers
near Baraque Michel, several bombing runs on st.vith and bastogne,
and last but not least the operation bodenplatte on January 1st 1945,at which more than a thousand planes took part... wasnt a real success, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bodenplatte

[Dietrich]

Yeah, in Bodenplatte some German fighters were fired at by their own flak and shot down because the flak units hadn't been properly informed of the flight paths.