Dont suppose you could be a champ and say a little bit more?
It's a complex issue due to the number of variants, and many units just not reporting when they received conversion kits when they got them. However, in one example, the Sd.Kfz 251/9 - which was armed with the 7.5-cm KwK 37 - was in use since 1942 and continued use until the end of the war. Most sources state that conversion kits were issued to 'upgrade' them to the /22 configuration, armed with the KwK 40, beginning in December of 1944.
That is exactly what this phase system does, I don't see your argument. In the first phase tanks and SPGs will be few in number and expensive as compared to infantry and recon assets who would actually be at the head of any advance.
You can accomplish the same thing with a well-made and balanced economy without hard-locking units in arbitrary phases. The first is a 'soft' restriction that affords players the opportunity to flex their strategies. The later is a 'hard' restriction that just shuts player agency down.
I'm sorry, but how are staged deployments not realistic? Have you any idea of how combat, particularity meeting engagements like we see in Wargame and SD, play out? No real military swarms armored columns down a highway to slam head-on into whatever the enemy might have with no preparation. Order of march and force concentration are priorities.
I'm getting tired of seeing this argument, frankly. It's always preceded with a highly disrespectful comment and tone.
No, advance/reconnaissance forces didn't always clash first-thing in any given battle. Combat in the modern age, much less WWII, was not quite so symmetrical. The Second World War was not tanks and infantry standing in box formation, like the armies of antiquity, and preceding the fight with a bout of the skirmishers exchanging fire.
How they modeled it for SD follows realistic battle flow:
First your light infantry and cavalry recon elements establish where the enemy is coming from, who they are, and what the situation on the ground is.
Next your main battle formations begin to filter in and engage their opposite numbers on the enemy side, lines are drawn and the battle begins in earnest.
Finally, you commit your reserves, normally your best assets harbored to achieve the breakthrough and punch a hole in the line where you think the enemy is weakest. The other use of such reserves is to shore up your defenses where you think an enemy force may be making a breakthrough.
Battle of Arracourt. No German reconnaissance units came in contact with American reconnaissance units before the battle was joined. Now, in this case, it was partially because the Panzer-brigades did not have organic recon units. But that's the point; they don't come into play all the time. It's almost as if, in the minds of some people, 'surprise' doesn't exist. Initiative doesn't, either, I suppose.
As far as 'reserves' being 'veterans' or 'heavy hitters;' once again, you're thinking that modern armies circa 1944 were Roman legions, where the Triarii were typically held in the rear line to serve as the final wave of the battle. In fact, however, period TO&E doesn't agree with you. The late-type American Armored Division TO&E, for example, has its batallions split up into three 'Combat Commands.' A, B, and R. 'A' and 'B' were the active maneuver elements, and Combat Command 'R' was typically reserved for units awaiting reinforcement or otherwise being taken off the immediate divisional front for one reason or another. Now, the world isn't black and white, and they could be called into action as an element in their own right. But to say that the 'reserves' of a unit are the 'elite, heavy hitters' is absurd.
If we're to see another example; U.S. Tank Destroyer Battalions. These units were envisioned as a unit to be kept in reserve, to be massed and ride in like the glorious cavalry of old to counter a tank attack. Were they ever actually used this way? No. They were most often assigned to Infantry units to provide them with direct support from their motorized guns, ala German StuGs; which are another example of this whole 'phase' thing being nonsense in its own right.
Hard-locking equipment according to a time table, as if everyone agreed to play by the same rules as far as force deployment, isn't realistic. It's silly, and the only arguments I've heard in support of the idea that it is realistic, are done so from people who say
"Oh, you just don't know how combat was!" while, ironically, showing off that they, in fact, have no clue themselves.
I suppose the Roman maniple must have worked exceedingly well, if they were still using it in 1944!
