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Originally Posted by Raellus
Really good work, Heffe. You've clearly put a lot of thought and effort into this particular aspect of 4e. It seems to me that the paid writers did not, and I wonder why. Isn't it ironic that there's so much more unit detail in v1, created a decade pre-internet? The v1 writers might have made some mistakes, and odd decisions, but they certainly put in the work.
Anyway, it's interesting to see the similarities and differences between how v1 and 4e handle the Summer 2000 Offensive. Unlike with v1, for which, AFAIK, the strategic objective(s) of the Summer 2000 offensive is never categorically stated (and the hints in canon are few and vague), Free League has stated, multiple times, that the purpose of what they call Operation RESET will, at some point in the not-so-distant future, be revealed.
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Thanks, Rae. It's interesting, no doubt. I've been neck deep in Soviet OrBats for a bit now, and I don't know if I'd agree that FL put little thought into unit detail. Not at all, really. The information about Soviet units that I've been able to find is fairly spread out and disjointed, even now, 30 years later; for the most part, the unit information that FL has been running off of has been fairly consistent in its approach, and outside of the differences in a few unit names that I called out above, everything else seems to line up surprisingly well. To me at least, that suggests a level of rigor that I wouldn't have initially expected.
Regarding FL deciding to use the GSFG as the units in Poland, I can't say I disagree with the decision, as they would likely have been some of the units closest to the front, as well as being the units with the most experience in that environment. I suppose an argument could be made regarding units in Belarus, but perhaps those units simply were held back in reserve or were committed early in the war against the French. Even the units in Ukraine can easily be explained away by the 4e canon material regarding the late war push into southern Germany, and there's such a glut of NATO forces in the Balkans that I'm not too worried about those units and how things shake out in that part of Europe. My biggest questions are going to be about what happened to the units up near St. Petersburg - did they get bogged down in Finland? And also the rest of the NATO units in Europe such as the other German divisions, French divisions, etc. Canon mentions the French getting mauled early on, but reason would have it that the Soviets would have been hit pretty hard by the French during those initial engagements as well, which doesn't seem to be born out with the Soviet units still remaining in Poland in the Ref manual. There could be all kinds of reasons for that, so speculating on it too much probably isn't worth my while. Plus, any actual potential issues there could be resolved later on without too much trouble.
One thing that has stood out to me from this process of reverse-engineering the 4e canon material - whomever FL has guiding their unit decisions (their "military advisor"), that person is absolutely working from specific orbats, and they clearly have a definitive vision for how the European conflict should look. Unit designations and unit placements are considered and thought out as though there's a serious process in place. And while v1 and v2 did a surprisingly good job with PACT/Soviet units for their time, I actually think 4e has a more accurate list of actual Soviet units, mostly just due to having so much more real world data to work from. To be perfectly honest, it almost feels as though FL's advisor has a deep trove of information that they're pulling from and using to determine unit movement/placement, and for whatever reason all of that data just didn't make it into the actual release. Maybe it was an intentional decision by FL to keep things from getting too gritty for their players? In any case, I expect that the information is all there at FL to provide a higher level of granularity - it's just a question of whether they'll ever actually release it or not.
As for the summer offensives, I'm super curious to see how FL ends up handling this "Operation Reset" business. It's clear from my research that the Soviets have a fairly large bulge of forces pushing into a southern Germany from the Czech Republic and Austria (supported by canon info of Soviet unit locations, as well as the sheer mass of units they would have had available to commit to that line of advance), and that the axis of the front line takes on a more horizontal approach just south of Poland. Where the 5th Mech ID in the old versions is operating pretty far behind enemy lines and ends up encircled and cut off, in 4e the 5th Mech ID is just one part of a larger push eastward by numerous BLUFOR units. Most American units in 4e seem just as screwed as the 5th, though the Germans and Brits seem to be in a much better position.