the first russian mission

[Capt. Shark Bait]

what's the best way to survive it, liberating somewhere? seems far more difficult now, thx Z, than before the mod, i've gone down the main road, thru the trees on the far left, the gap in the trees just to the right, thru the trees in the center and still end up destroyed by Tigers with x-ray gunsights

[ZeeWolf]

Originally Posted by Capt. Shark Bait

what's the best way to survive it, liberating somewhere? seems far more difficult now, thx Z, than before the mod, i've gone down the main road, thru the trees on the far left, the gap in the trees just to the right, thru the trees in the center and still end up destroyed by Tigers with x-ray gunsights

The best thing to do is stay on the road. Then let the units on your left take the heat from the Tigers. On your right the main attack comes from your reserve units. They will take out the reaming guns and Nebelwafers. My tip is stay out off the field if you can get that far and let your comrades do the hard work. Remember: with in a mile (1600 meters) the T34-85 hits hard.
As for the x-ray eyes, well I pretty much fixed that and that will be in a new update for the members very soon.

Cheers

ZeeWolf

[Capt. Shark Bait]

thx. nice to know the enemies will be "blinded", but where's the fun in letting the AI do it all for ya?

[frinik]

Sharkbait, if you think the first mission is tough try the last one now!Repikhovo's Last Stand has become one for the Russkies.I used to win that mission fairly often.It was tough but I could do it.Now with those Stugs and Panzer IV that just don't look cute and let themselves be shot anymore it's a killing field for T34s.Now thanks to ZW's new improved Tank Ai they fight and they kill most of the attacking T34s.And there's lots of Stugs and PZ IVs not to mention the AT guns.That mission has become extremely difficult but again I don't mind being burnt as a Soviet....

The first mission I won after 4 attempts juts taking the right patch and staying behind( just as ZW advised) while my comrades were taking the heat.Then hidden behind a destroyed T34 I saw the 2 tigers and in 6 shots I was able to destroy them. Mind you the last one gave me a big scare as it took me 4 shots to kill it and I came close to being killed myself.

[Capt. Shark Bait]

can't wait hehe

[frinik]

But I am warning you; even if and whne you pass the first mission the second one is unwinnable in it's present form.There are just too few T34s to complete it successfully against 6 Panzer IV, 2 or 3 Tigers and 3 APCS.The German AI tanks are now too aggressive and your T34 will not survive very long.This is one thing that will need to be reworked.Those Soviet missions were originally conceived with balance( the developpers own idea of balancing the odds) in mind.The Tigers were made to be weaker(rate of fire, armour and shell impact-wise) by the Russian developers to give the weaker T34s the edge.That was fine because the German AI tanks were so inept you could hope to succeed. Now with ZW's tweaking, the German AI tanks are so aggressive and tough that you need a much greater number of T34s to hope to succeed. Until it happens forget about winning some of the Soviet side missions.

[Capt. Shark Bait]

managed to get thru the first, w/out getting a single kill, and then the next 2 with no real prob. for some reason,tho, the 3rd, after survivng that, restarted itself, unless i clicked restart rather than continue w/out realizing it.

yeah, i had noticed, after the first few times, in the first German mission that it took several shots to destroy a t34 than were historically accurate. thx to Z, things are as they should been in the first place. one would think that the russians think they won the war all by there lonesomes

[growbag]

...well, they did really!

Even the British historians are starting to admit the fact that the Russians did close to 80% of the work in terms of fighting AND numbers lost.

The interesting thing is that if Hitler hadn't have listened to Göring when he promised to supply the troops by air (along with many of his other insane decisions), the Germans would have overrrun Moscow and the oilfields in the southeast, and could have then gone on to crush the rest of Russia.

Think about it, it took nearly a year for the d-day landed allied troops to get to the German border (how long did it take the Wehrmacht to take France?), the German troops were massively outnumbered in both troops and tanks, and had no supplies whatsoever, and no air support.

It even took the Russians 3 weeks to secure Berlin when they had 16 million fully equipped troops against 1 million "troops" that comprised of a handful of Wehrmacht, old men, and Hitler Youth kids! The Russian tanks outnumbered the German's by something like 30 to 1.

Even the traditional US "cannon fodder" policy would have failed against a resupplied 3rd Reich (as in sacrificing 3 Sherman tanks to take out 1 tiger).

Hitler wasted millions (I would guess at 80%) of his best troops in Russia, mostly starved and frozen to death.

If Hitler was a little less arrogant he could have done a lot more damage. All he had to do (as regards the Russian campaign) was read Napoleons campaign diaries, he also got bogged down in Russia with mud, snow, and crappy supply lines.

I have a really good documentary which details the problems and errors Hitler made in Russia. I can put it on my server if anyone is interested in downloading it (just ask), it's about 400 megs I think, but extremely interesting.

War always comes down to supply lines, it's always overlooked by history, but without food, fuel, and ammo, any army is doomed to failure.