Do you know about turn-based tank crew management RPG with better production values?I can't believe people are paying money for this in 2020 either!
I can't believe people are paying money for this in 2020 either!
I'll need to think about that.
This LP is fun and all... but are you saying we can't criticize the game without non-sequiturs being thrown back at us?
Can someone throw a game with the Greek front to Dayallu so we get some stories about that too!
agreed, much better to tank them than to thank themYou know it's some kind of miracle we didn't lose anyone despite playing like blood-crazed madmen? I guess we should tank the low-power British guns.
D'Annunzio
Sir Arthur Harris said:I never engaged in these idiotic pamphlet-dropping exercises. They only served two purposes really - they gave the German defences endless practice in getting ready for it, and apart from that they supplied a considerable quantity of toilet paper to the Germans.
Of these, Carcano-style rifles and carbines have been the most frequently observed style of bolt-action rifle. They were predominantly used by rebels in the Nafusa Mountains. These old weapons saw combat once again due to the rebels' limited access to modern firearms. Additionally, some Libyan rebels preferred to use their familiar hunting weapons over the more modern, yet unfamiliar, assault rifles available.[9][10] According to Al-Fitouri Muftah, a member of the rebel military council overseeing the western mountain front, as many as 1 in 10 rebels in the region were armed with World War II-era weapons.[11]
Someone on the Paradox Interactive Forum does an AAR with the Poles, and I convinced him to do the same kind of "historical mutterings" as you did, but from the Polish point of view
Dayyālu for all i care (might not be much), you can skip or accelerate the game and focus on the commentary - it might be a cliche but i'm lovin' it
Got your back broI would love to read it. But alas, I can't.
Very well
The polish strategic situation was quite poor in the autumn on 1939. Germany had previous year run over Chekoslovakia, annexing Bohemia and western parts, and forming the Slovak puppet state of the eastern part. Germany had in spring 1939 cancelled both non-aggression pacts they had with Poland.
Germany thus could attack Poland from three directions, from west mainland Germany, from north from East Prussia, and from south from Slovakia. The eastern border however was thought to be safe, as Poland and Soviet Union had both unilater and international non-aggression pacts assigned. The "Romanian gateway" in south-east was regarded as the vein of polish life-blood, as through that Poland expected to recieve help from Great Britain and France in the even of war, and it was also the route through which the polish governement intended to evacuate the state treasury to ensure the money would be safe to wage the war.
Germany had given ultimatums to Poland regarding the free city of Danzig and the so called Polish corridor to Baltic Sea. While the polish ambassador in Germany (on the urging of Great Britain) informed Germany that Poland would accept the ultimatum, he also was forced to inform he didn't actually have authority to sign the agreement, but would have to ask the polish governement to send somebody who had the power to sign the agreement. Germany told Great Britain and France that Poland had rejected the agreement.
The polish strategy relied on keeping the routes open to south-east to Romania, while defending a line from Warsaw to the industrial heart of Poland in Silesia. The forces at the border were thin and didn't have many prepared positions. The strategy relied on leaving gaps between the various polish armies, which would allow german forces to moved further in, where polish reinforcement armies would stop and engage them and then the front armies would be able to cut off the advanced armies, destroying the encircled german troops. Poland didn't have any dreams of winning alone though, they assumed Poland would alone fall in six month, and thus help from Great Britain and France were expected.
Poland did smell the coffee, and general mobilization was ordered on August 29th. Poland sent their destroyer fleet to Britain (they arrived on August 30th), as it was apparent the ships would else be sunk. The general mobilisation was crucial to get the reinforcement armies into position, so that the polish strategy could be carried out. However, next day the mobilisation was cancelled, as France and Great Britain threathened to cut their alliance with Poland if the poles were adamant of going into war. The mobilisation was cancelled, which caused lot of confusion and the public transport nearly collapsed as men were trying to get home and others (who hadn't yet got the orders the mobilisation was cancellend) tried to get to their position, and the public transport companies didn't know if they should give the mobilised men priority passage or not. When the hostilities broke out, only some 300 thousand men were in position of the 1.35 million men that would have been in position if France and Great Britain hadn't meddled.
Germany and Poland would have had near parity in men if Poland would have been allowed to mobilise their troops, but that wasn't meant to be (in the end, only some 70% of the 1.35 million men made it to their units, as the polish public transport system collapsed because of air-attacks). Although Germany had a tenfold of tanks compared to Poland, the new german armour doctrine wasn't yet in use (although the orders of the new doctrined had been given earlier), and tanks mostly operated as support weapons for infantry (quite opposite to what the german propaganda led everybody to believe, where Hitler painted pictures of german tanks rolling through the polish lands). Poland also had no lancer units (except for parade use), and there were no real cases of polish cavalry charging tanks (again, quite the contrary to the nazi propaganda). The heavily outnumbered polish airforce wasn't destroyed on the airfields as the nazi propaganda claimed, but fought on until they ran out of fuels and air-fields from where to operate from.
During the early hours of September 1st German forces crossed the border in west, north and south. Germany and Poland were at war.
Poland had on September 1st quite the fleet of armoured fighting vehicles, in all some 880. Ie compared to Germany about a third of their 2750 AFV's. Unfortunately, more than two thirds of the polish ones were small tankettes, and many of those the nearly useless machinegun tankettes (they could kill Pz I's on a lucky day, and of course take out lighter recon vehicles).
To understand why tankettes were so popular in the 1920's and early 1930's one has to understand what led to their development. During WW1 the real tanks had no problems of breaking through trench-lines, but they could then easily be cut off and destroyed as friendly infantry were not able to move to help them. The tankettes proved the answer to this, being essentially mobile machine-gun nests, which allowed friendly forces to move in after the tanks had broken through the trenches.
In Poland, as in many other countries too, it was in 1920's thought actual tanks would be useless in situations where war hadn't stagnated to trench-war. The tanks were heavy and slow lumbering hulks who could be sighted from miles, and who would be lucky if they could move 5 km before breaking down. Tankettes on the other hand were fast, nearly invisible in broken terrain, mechanically quite reliable (and so easy to fix any tanker would be able to fix the usual problems themselves). In Poland it was seen very unlikely warfare would become trench war anywhere except perhaps around Warsaw, if an enemy by some miracle would make it there. Thus Poland did show great interest for the quite affordable tankette concept, and only mild interest for actual tanks (who by defauly were manyfold more expensive than tankettes).
Poland bought a few Carden Loyd tankettes from Britain in 1929. Poland also acquired a license to build more of their own, and to further develope the tankette for polish needs. The polish weren't entirely happy with the tankette, so immediatly began to plan improvements. The first two prototypes (TK-1 and TK-2) were seen as improvements, but not good enough yet.
The third version, TK-3, was the first polish model that went into production (in 1931). The tankette had as armament a 7.92 mm machinegun, Ford truck-engine, could reach around 45km/h, and had an operational range of well over 100 km. In all some 280 were built. In game this tankette is shit, it can only hurt soft targets, and during rain it gets bogged down all the time.
The improved version of TK-3 was the TKS. Same shitty equipment, with a polish Fiat engine instead of the Ford, and with improved suspension and armour lay-out. Some 260 were built in all. It is essentially just a utter crap as the TK-3, though it does not get bogged up as easily in mud.
The Spanish Civil War had shown the world the power of tanks. In Poland it was realised the tankettes might be utter shit if they could not be used against tanks. In 1939 a frantic program to upgrade TKS tankettes with the new (had entered production in 1938) polish 20mm machineguns (originally intended for AA work, but it was soon realised they were pretty good as AT guns too vs the lighter armoured vehicles). While ammuntion load for the 20 mm machinguns had to be kept to just a couple hundred rounds (instead of the 2000 7.92mm rounds in the earlier version), this proved to be of little problem, as the tankette hardly could use the 20mm gun on autofire mode. Only 24 TKS tankettes had thus been refitted before the war broke out, and yet these 24 proved to be much more useful than the hundreds of the earlier version. In game these tankettes are pretty good, as they have low profile (aka hard to hit), don't become easily bogged, and can punch through even PzIV armour (admittedly, reliably from the flank or rear only). The problem is that they are destroyed by anything hitting them, so even Light Mortars and machine-gun equipped motorcycles can kill these with ease when they just hit.
Carden Loyd had presented Poland the opportunity to buy also their tank version in addition to the tankettes. Poland got interested, and bought some 50 Vickers 6-Ton tanks. Some 36 were in service at the outbreak of the war. The basic concept of the tank were extremely sound, though it was under-gunned and its frontal armour too weak. In game this tank is a bit meh, it is hard to hit anything with the short gun, and when you hit something armoured shells just tend to bounce off of them.
Just like Soviet Union built their T-26's based on the Vickers 6-Ton tanks, so did Poland build their 7TP's based on the same tank. The difference is that Soviet Union built about 11,000 T-26's while Poland built some 135 7TP's between 1935 and 1939. The design was quite excellent. Reasonably sturdy frontal armour for a light tank, an accurate main-gun (the 37mm Bofors gun), good cross-country ability, reliable diesel engine, good optics; their only drawback was the thin roof armour, so they were dead meat against hostile strafing planes. The 7TP's were quite the match for german tanks of the time (while the armour couldn't stop a shell from a close-range PzIII or PzIV, the 7TP could engage german tanks accurately and reliably from much further ranges), but there were just so woefully few of them. In game this is the only Polish vehicle that feels like a proper tank; you have a good chance of hitting your target, and you have a good chance to actually hurt the target.
That was a fun read. Sadly it doesn't seem like my cup of tea, and the game is seemingly still stuck in EA, but your LP provided enough amusement.
You seem to enjoy doing short LPs, for good or bad. Also, from your historical trivia and what I read somewhere else, one of the reasons why the "good" goys won the war is because Italians were terrible allies of the Germans.
Isn't the story about Albania is that in one of the landing zone the Italians put all their troops in ONE [1] transport ship, but said ship's engine stopped working a few hundred meters from the port, and the only reason the Albanians did not shoot at the ship was that the Italians had bribed the Coast Guards and bought all their ammos beforehand ?Also Albania, but that barely counts.