Fortress Europe

Contrivance is working on a couple of mockups to show, but I can give you a quick answer in the meantime:

We do not have Conscripts, but rather Strelki (Riflemen) and Avtomatchiki (Submachine-gunners). The former is organized as a 9-man Rifle Squad, with 1xPPSh-41, 7xVM-91/30, and 1xDP-42. The latter is organized as a 9-man Submachine-gun Squad, with 9xPPSh-41.

As for Shtrafniki (Penal Riflemen), they are basically organized in a similar manner to the Strelki and Avtomatchiki, but with different traits that set them apart.

Oh wow, I'm actually surprised that conscripts are taken out of the Soviet faction. Is there going to be a meat shield infantry unit for the Soviets or are they just generally horrible infantry across the board?

Also, did USF really have more soliders than USSR per squad? You mentioned 11x USF compared to the soviet standard 9x. How would that be designed in the mod in terms of balance / historical?

I'm not part of the team but from what I've read US rifle squads were 12 men while the Soviets had 9-10 men rifle squads just like the German standard rifle squad. Can't say for the Volksgrenadiere divisions though since they supposedly had smaller individual squads.

Source: http://www.ww2f.com/topic/41867-squads-sections-teams-and-their-sizes-us-uk-commonwealth-and-germans/

Show SpoilerCan't find the one I read regarding Soviets though.


@FE team. What will guards rifle squad be like and what would distinguish them from the more common riflemen?

US Rifle Squads will be 12 men, eliwOOd mentioned 11 with rifles and 1 with a BAR (or M1919A6, in the case of Parachute Rifles).

As for Conscripts, a small misunderstanding here. They're not gone, just renamed, since there never was a specific military unit called Conscripts in the Red Army, since most of the Red Army was conscripted in the first place. The CoH2 Conscripts unit is supposed to represent Strelki (riflemen), so we just renamed them to such and reorganized them to the correct 9-man structure.

Guards units were identical to regular units, since regular units would get the Guards term as an honorific for proving themselves in battle. So in our mod, a Guards unit has better stats due to their experience, but otherwise has the same structure and options.

Though we will have hardened veterans in the form of Rifle and Guards Rifle units using the 'diminished' structure. Basically the Soviets did not cycle units off the front line nearly as much as other nations did, so manpower would steadily deplete due to a lack of reinforcements. In order to make these depleted divisions still combat effective, they reorganized the personnel, which resulted in trimmed down units that had fewer men but the same amount of machine-guns and supporting weapons. A diminished Guards Rifle Squad or Shock Rifle Squad has only 6 men, but has even better stats, since all of these men are veterans from the beginning of the war and their experience has not been diluted from the introduction of fresh replacements. In the case of Shock Rifle Squads, that also means better combat efficiency at close range and less of an accuracy penalty when moving.

So standard organization Rifle and Guards Rifle units are for recently formed divisions, and the diminished style is for divisions that have been fighting since the early years of the war.

What about brits, wher and OKW??

Keep in mind that we have a unified German faction. If we were able to remove OKW, we would, but for now selecting one or the other makes no difference. The only thing we might do is split up some of the units based on which faction has their speech codes.

A quick recap:

The American Rifle Squad has 12 men, organized as 11xM1, 1xM1918A2.

The British Rifle Squad has 10 men, organized as 1xSten, 8xSMLE, 1xBren.

The German Grenadier Squad has 9 men, organized as 2xMP40, 6xK98k, 1xleMG42.

The German Volks (Sturm) 1st and 2nd Squad have 8 men, organized as 8xStG44. 3rd Squad also had 8 men, organized as 6xStG44, 2xleMG42. There was a (Schützen) Squad that was basically the same as the normal Grenadier Squad, but with one less K98k.

The Soviet Strelkovyy Squad has 9 men, organized as 1xPPSh-41, 7xVM-91/30, 1xDP-28.

They will each have their own traits and costs that set them apart. Also, the 1st American and British Rifle Squads will have an M9A1 Rocket Launcher or PIAT Mk. I replace one of their rifles by default. The 2nd and 3rd are as shown above.

This has always been a good introductory site to TO&Es, War Establishment Documents, and KSTNs: http://bayonetstrength.150m.com/General/site_map.htm

He used to have Soviet Shtats as well, but removed them a few years ago. You can use the wayback machine to get those, or find newer sources.

While we're on the topic of the Soviet Rifle Company, here's a WIP mock-up of what the UI will be for the final stage of building your battlegroup.

In this example, the company is the aforementioned Rifle Company, broken down into the Company elements, and the supporting elements available from the Battalion, Regiment, and up to the Division, Corps, and Army levels.

The first two Rifle platoons are mandatory, but you can add in the third platoon and the company's machine-gun squad as options.

Under the fourth column, the Flamethrower Tank Company has been selected, which locks out the other three options in that group.

If all the points were spent, there'd be room for four to eight more supporting elements to be added, so this is just a style test and not a full fleshed out example of what a complete battlegroup could deploy. However the supporting elements are all up to date for the Soviet Rifle Company, and named according to English translations of the Russian unit names. For example, the Guards Rocket Mortar Battalion is the translation for the Katyusha unit, and gives you the option of off-map artillery of one or two batteries (4 Katyushas per battery) with either BM-13-16 firing 16 132mm rockets or BM-31-12 firing 12 300mm rockets.



Click on image for full size

Does the fact that a rifle squad has 12 men mean you won't really ever be putting them in farmhouses and other small buildings?

It seems like if only a few riflemen can fire it wouldn't be worth using a whole squad to occupy a house.

If necessary we'll increase the maximum occupancy on ambient buildings and adjust things as needed. Occupying and defending buildings is not a part of the gameplay we want to negatively impact.

Buildings, by default, have a capacity of 12. As Contrivance points out, this can always be modified if necessary.

Buildings, by default, have a capacity of 12. As Contrivance points out, this can always be modified if necessary.

This reminds me of the funny case back in vCOH that you could stuff 12 people in a shack that only had 1 window.

But even if you can get twelve men in a house, if it only has 5-6 windows on its largest side, you are cutting your firepower in half.

While it is definitely something we will look into, it is not a priority for our first release.

Is there any plans to have some type of units like Airborne or infiltration units like partisans and JLI have special traits like not showing up on mini map or something?

I feel like currently in the game, they are just frontline infantry that are just better overall. Nothing about them feels special other than the fact that they perform better.

We will most likely not have partisans, but there are plans to have units like Spetsnaz with infiltration abilities. Contrivance could better fill in the details regarding that.

For the most part, Airborne units will be elite infantry units with a collection of special equipment and traits to set them apart from regular infantry units. Soviet Airborne units were basically just Guards Rifle Divisions, but with blue pilotkas and some slightly different equipment (such as the PPS-43), so we would like to include them as well (if we ever get more tools from Relic). The type of support for Airborne units will differ greatly from regular Infantry units, so that will give them some additional flavor as well.

We have often discussed coup-de-main glider assaults (mainly for the British) and parachute landings as a deployment method, but this will likely be something we add post-release. So, Airborne units will be on foot or motorised, depending on the country, for our first release.

Spetsnaz!

So basically the Spetsnaz that people know of now didn't formally exist during WW2. While the Special Forces unit we know of didn't get formed until 1950, the Red Army did form special reconnaissance and sabotage units during WW2 that were also called Spetsnaz (a shortening of the Russian words for Special Purpose).
We definitely want our Spetsnaz to be excellent infiltration and sabotage units, capable of causing all sorts of mayhem behind enemy lines. They'll also have the option of starting off with captured German half-tracks, allowing them to not show up on the minimap while riding in them.


Reason why we're probably going to shy away from Partisans is because we're focusing on battlefield units. Certainly Partisans contributed to the war effort, but almost entirely through sabotage and attacks behind the front lines. Once the Red Army had linked up with Partisans they tended to absorb them as replacements rather than fighting alongside them.

Volkssturm, on the other hand, did fight on the frontlines alongside regular German units, so this is a unit we'll probably add in the future.

We will see Pershing and Hetzer in F.E.?

What about others Ardennes Assaults toys?

Absolutely. We are still deciding internally how to handle rarity, as only 20 M26s were sent to Europe, but they will most likely be a 4th (Heavy) Platoon for some Medium Tank Companies.

If we ever get a T26E4, that would also be an option (of a single tank).

As for the Jagdpanzer 38(t), those were pretty much the standard Panzerjäger for Infanterie-Divisionen, so they will definitely make it in. The Flammpanzer 38(t) was used during Operation Nordwind in limited quantities, and will likely be available as support for related units.

Unfortunately, it seems as though Relic modeled the Jagdpanzer 38(t) without a remote control MG, as it had historically, and permanent Flammpanzer 38(t) states. So, that limits our options.

As for Ardennes Assault, can you be more specific? The main thing that they added that was new, at the time, was the M1 81mm Mortar. We will definitely be using whatever our units used historically.

As for Ardennes Assault, can you be more specific?

Sherman 76mm, Cavalry Rifleman, Rangers from AA, P47 infantry Strafe.