A humble question to all of the history experts out there on uniforms (Wehrmacht Moscow 1941)

Mess Room
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Recently, I got another wave of nostalgia for the Moscow campaign, where I started out Enlisted.
I wanted to try and do my best to create a loadout that would be as close as possible to that time period, at least in appearance if the devs refuse to create a simple, well-made or even intuitive appearance system.

However, while I do have some grasp of what my Soviets should look like, I unfortunately have absolutely no idea about what their Wehrmacht (cough cough thanks for the prevalence of electrician loadouts DF) counterparts should look like.

Therefore, if some HA enjoyers or experts (sorry to bother you, but @ErikaKalkbrenner perhaps?) on this could tell me what I should be at least giving preference to, that would be greatly appreciated. Potentially, I would love to create the same style of topic for all factions and periods that people seeking HA could refer to, but I don’t want to burden anyone with large demands so this is what I will start with.

The position I am in is -

Very few original Moscow squads unfortunately, though I might be able to conjure up a half-playable nostalgic starter squad Moscow lineup of something like this

Spoiler

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So squad accuracy can only really be used in terms of what HA customization is available for that specific squad,

Weapons accuracy is not too bad as I have grinded my way up to Tier 5 Germany,

The squad types (from my perspective) that would be most popular would be Assulters/Machine gunners, although Riflemen might(?) be more accurate for WWII,

And so the uniforms are basically all that could be addressed and sadly happen to be the aspect I am completely clueless about.

So, if any kind sould could give me some basic pointers on what I should be using from the customization to make BR2 at least a little more authentic for all of us, I would be very grateful.

May HA prevail!

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Laudable initiative, I always appreciate people who go the extra mile to achieve a historical line-up!

Unfortunately, whilst I am very interested in Commonwealth gear, knowledge on German uniforms are not on the same level. But, I’ll try to be as helpful as possible anyway, from what I know.

The Moscow Campaign represents the first winter on the eastern front (1941-42), which was particularly harsh on the German army as they had failed to adequately prepare for the Russian winter (thinking the Soviets would collapse way before that). As such, winter specific gear would have been hard to come by, and not at all standardized, soldiers would be gathering whatever they could get their hands on, such as the few Army issued coats, coats from home, “borrowed” from Russian civilians or captured from enemy soldiers.

Now of course, neither civilian coats or captured Soviet ones are available to the average squad in the customization options, so what I’d do is mix greatcoats with varying colours together with regular summer uniforms in the same squad. You can give all soldiers gloves, it’s not unreasonable that they’d manage to each secure a pair, and you can mix headgear (plain helmet, helmet with hood, and caps) as well.

Hope that’s enough of an idea to get you started, I won’t be touching weapons as you said you already had that covered!

And, should you be making Commonwealth line-ups in the future, I wouldn’t mind answering some questions for that! Not much choice in terms of Commonwealth uniforms though (they, as well as the Italians, are in a very sorry state), and both winter and tropical uniforms are about 80% wrong too, but that’s another matter!

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The game is pretty realistic with the default uniforms

around 5:10 they start showing Germans and Army group Center starts at 6:10

If you look closely, you can see how freezing cold it is on the soldiers.
infantry is in long coats, gloves, balaclava scarfs. Some are wearing trophy boots, gloves, furcaps and even coats captured from Soviets or perhaps looted, these clothes were warmer.
Almost all frontline soldiers have their helmets whitewashed, something which does not get our game right.

However its worth noting that while red army uniforms were somewhat warmer, those were too completely inadequate to the insanely cold winter of 1941, which was 3x colder than any other in the past decades.
Soviet propaganda machine silenced the suffering of its own soldiers and instead only focused on the German side, heavily exaggerating.
Soviet soldiers had to resort to looting for warm clothing just as well, which they did so ferociously, that often nothing was left for the Germans to grab in villages and cities captured from Soviets.

I think its also worth noting that many Moscow maps take place during the autumn or the spring of 1942, while only a few seem to be set in the dead of the winter of 1941 so the lighter clothing some squads have could be HA as well.

But during the winter of 1941 German soldiers should look something like this:

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ignore pouches often being wrong, I cant do anything about it.

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Thank you! I was honestly not thinking about that aspect, and that is a very valid point. I guess the initial randomized loadouts are there for a reason. I suppose something like this, with some variety sprinkled in for each soldier is what you have in mind? (Aka spread similar to the squad, wearing something along the lines of the lone soldier). Ignore Mkb and solothurn : )

Spoiler

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Yes, the pouches and other equipment are the most annoying part. If I’m not mistaken, there was a point in time when soldiers would come “blank” and giving them real equipment was what would add on to the basic uniform… but I suppose that time is gone.

Customization overall needs an overhaul, and I think most people would appreciate that much more than the current “we copy-pasted 2 new tanks from WT and added another 5 experimental post-war ugly skeleton guns!” “major” update style.

Ideally, “blank” uniforms shoud come with customization unification for all campaigns so that we do not have to buy the same things that many time (the way it is for Stalingrad and Rhzev) and identification on the element when you buy it that shows what campaigns this piece of clothing would be realistically used in for those trying to create HA loadouts. Then, something like squad presets (essentially just letting us access this panel to save presets that will automatically be used without having to change the pool of available uniforms) would be an acceptable solution, I believe.

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Of course, the Devs will probably not go for that. As much as the current system is overloaded and inconsistent, this isn’t very premium-able so we’ll be lucky to get Afrika Corps uniforms for German squads that don’t have them in Tunisia. But I still cling to the hope…

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I’ve personally never liked that particular tint for the Feldgrau we have in game. It’s just too blue looking, makes it look cartoony, and that’s why many of the Werhmacht uniforms we have in game feel a bit out of place.

I’d like for it to be more with a grey-ish tint, and that’d be perfect. I know there were many versions of the Feldgrau, but the grey version looks the best and is the most visually striking.

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I’m pretty sure it wasn’t even that common either. Sadly, the greyish ones are locked behind a select few premium squads.

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They did as much research as possible, resulting in mostly clown suits.

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well, hello there.

if you are looking for cosmetics of how they should look like in moscow, you’re a bit in a though spot.
because enlisted never really has been historical accurate.
and with the issue of not being able to select pouches, only makes it worse.
( because the cosmetic selection has stg and even g43 pouches… well beyond the actual battle ( 1940-1942 )

so, for the most part, your troops should be wearing mp40 and kar98k pouches.

but doing so, someone in the cosmetic department thought it was funny to overdue mg13s pouches for no reason.

i’ll start by equipment pieces slots. commencing with

for torso pieces:

generally,

anything that does not have camouflages, and isn’t brown.
because the brown uniform was primarily used in north afrika, and by the volkssturm in berlin…
as for camouflages, well, it depends if you want to go for a 1942 look. but generally, from 1940 to 1941 camouflages weren’t that common.
instead, the german army did used green and gray uniforms ( sometimes not even matching ).

white uniforms were mostly given to some assault troops as they could use and get all the coincilment that they could get.
also panzergrenadiers had access to camouflaged items.

pourply depicted by hollywood and other media, always portrays most german soldiers in the winter being white, but that was far from being the truth.

majority of units did wore greatcoats. but weren’t always available.
hence, standard m40s tunics can be used.

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just to reiterate:
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as for Headgears:

  • Helmets:

helmets were for the most part, painted in white:
OIP
but if they couldn’t, ( because the only troops who had access to paint were tank or motorized units. they were standard green ( which will come in the next update ) or the recently issued ( from 1940 onward ) feldgrau / gray helmets.

( https://www.wehrmacht.es/en/blog/post/guia-de-colores-del-casco-aleman.html )

there were some rare occasions where black helmets were still in service by SS troops. but were mostly replaced / painted from 1941 onward to apple green and as the war drag on, feldgrau.

  • hats

despite what you see regularly on the enlisted battlefields, or in media,
hats WERE NOT that common. especially in a warzone.
last thing you want, are shrapnels flying in your direction.

Unless, you’re trying to portray hiwis / warned out / badly equipped troops / rear guards units ( which the german army was in a rough shape deep in the outskirts of moscow due to priminent and overlooked logistical issues )

and worse, most are 1943 hats.

helmet decorations:

the german army tipically used them for coincilment and / or holding in place vegetations or object.
in enlisted… they don’t hold much.

so, if you are interested in any, the grid and the darker brown tubber helmet band could be used among troops irregularly ( due to engineers or … special purposes troops for you to recgonize on the field )

but the rest are pretty much anacrhonistic or avoid to use due to being more of a hiderance and not in the correct enivroement.

and last but not least, as much officers looks cool with their cord hat, they quickly found out they would make the best targets. and stopped wearing them in the field.

so, as in visual:
green = good
Yellow = should be rare, or only for 1941-42 looks
Red = bad, don’t use it as it’s not historical
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and to conclude,

pants:

due to being early war and mostly in the winter, you’d hardly see half boots or gaters especially this early.

mostly long boots

image image

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Dear Lord.

This was exactly what I needed and thought I might get from you.

Thank you, and hats off for the commitment.

:heart: :heart: :heart:

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it’s a shame not all squads got the new items though:

the ones you have, ( from the moscow capaign ) don’t actually get:

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might come in a future update though.

but as of yet, not in the test server, and only for some premium / event squads.
( as far as moscow preset goes )

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In the case of legacy squads, there is very little chance that they will ever get updated customization options.

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well… as a cope-out,

thank god i use the editor and get to at least change clothing there.
but yeah, not many hopes for the base game with the rate of speed things goes.

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Those are event squads though, right? The rocket artillery ones?
If that is the case, at least there is a chance of getting them from the silver boxes.

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Is it that hard for the devs to just unify all customization from all campaigns and squads into one giant list and remove all the ones that repeat themselves though? That would be such an easy and simple solution, even if they made it so that your squad could only have one setup at a time. Goons could enjoy their… I dont know, Soviet motorcycle ninja balaclavas everywhere and we could make actual accurate setups, at least for one time period for 1/6th of the cost.

Even better, add presets to that (aka you get blank/random soldiers, and for each “set of fronts/time periods” your FULL inventory of everything you bought, even if it is being used in another preset) and then just let us mix and match.
What do you think? The first half at least should be quite easy to implement, although @ErikaKalkbrenner might shoot me down if the code does not allow you to use certain outfits or transfer them between campaigns.

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well, part of the reason why that wasn’t and isn’t done,

  1. spaghetti code

even now, they haven’t figure out how to prevent pouches from overplacing the cosmetic ones.
two,

as the ex CM said,

  1. no time and resourches

so they opt instead to keep using the flawed system ( that was disguised and justified as historical accurate desping never being " it " )

  1. error of convenience
    currently, it’s in their best interest to keep this system.

because you do occasionally lose cosmetics out of the thin blue, and you are forced to buy the same cosmetic across the same guy in different campaign presets.

( also:

yes )

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Delete all cosmetic ones maybe? And then with each actual pouch/equipment piece added give a randomized other cosmetic pouch so that soldiers do not look so “empty”. I think there was a time when this was the case (the first part at least), should be possible(?)
And should come with the added bonus of removing the giant pool of repetitive pouch options.

Argh. At this point I would not mind them taking all my cosmetics, refunding everyone 200 orders per faction and then implementing the system I suggest. But of course there will be those that don’t want this…

And here I am powerless. I guess we will have to wait until AM flops.

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yes,

that would be the reasonable and logical thing to do.

but they still haven’t done it and opt to add more cosmetic items on top of it.

which right now, will most likely end up in a fiasco because carrying things over is often difficult and caused losses of items among players
( hell, i am still missing half of my US tan uniforms. but since the code was different and scrapped, i was compensated with 6 different shirts for an entirely different campaign too so… )

so,
i think they are afraid of the " backlash " and worse, not being able to fully unite the cosmetic for compensation back.

yeah well, that didn’t used to be the case.

perhaps with the ticket orders added to the shop, maybe that’s what going to happen.
and i hope.

but ugh… no concrete evidences or talk were made about this.

after all, not many people care about cosmetics.
which it’s… true.

pretty much.

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also, kinda forgot a main point,

but the other way it benefits them, is that they don’t have to work on pre-merge / legacy squads.
aka, have a smaller pool to add the new cosmetics.

mater of fact, they barely touched older squads for even add medics. or in vehicles case, alow wider choice of vehicles.

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I don’t quite get your point here - do you mean that they don’t have to add cosmetics from old squads or that (since they add cosmetics to each squad individually) the current system makes it so that they can choose to only give new cosmetics to some squads?

That is just pain. Having the Ju 188, Fw something, P47 and the US 75mm bomber, as well as the Chi-Ha Kai without being able to use them is just peak Enlisted experience is suppose.

Anyway, it looks like all their “problems” come down to “we aren’t getting paid enough”.
All I can say is… make some cosmetics available only for gold, perhaps? Or bring back some legacy squads as premiums? There are so many easy ways they can literally use to print money, but I suppose AM must get more attention than even that.