Mullah Fayyad for real

[Erwin]

Sorry for the post on wrong scenario thread due to brain problems. 

So, for Mullah Fayyad:  Was doing great with only 3 casualties and elected to get the convoy on the map safely bg4 assaulting the "village" objective.  Didn't seem to be enuff smoke to shield the assault troops from both flanks.  I thought I had done a lot of damage to the buildings and occupants with arty, Javelins and STGM's, but defenders were in fine shape and knocked out almost 20 guys.       Have a foothold now, and hopefully can assault the rest of the buildings with far less casualties if any.

Otherwise a great scenario...  Enjoying it.  Hope I can still pull off a TV. 

So...  What is the best way to assault across the road and into the village without taking (more than minimal) casualties?

[Combatintman]

From your description you seem to have approached it using a similar scheme of manoeuvre to that which I used which was to ignore the village and push on to marry up with the convoy. Once the convoy arrives you should have more than enough resources to do the job. My general approach was to put short/quick indirect fire (personnel) missions onto any building with a walled roof and from there advance slowly while keeping the HMMWVs at standoff distance. As targets pop up to engage, I would just smash them with direct fire. This will get rid of most of the opposition leaving just small elements lurking in compounds needing to be dug out with close assaults.

[Erwin]

The challenge is that one has to cross the road with enemy fire from the right flank as well as from the village.  I tried smoke on the right and left of my troops' advance, but the smoke dissipated in 2-3 minutes when I was expecting at least 5 mins. 

Also, even though I sent two TOWs into the buildings immediately across the road that the US has to take first, there were enuff defenders surviving to hurt my guys badly.  I vaguely recall threads about CMSF HE being less effective than it should have been. 

But, yes, I tend to avoid area firing at targets when there is no evidence that the enemy is there.  (Esp with the Brits who often seem to have less ammo.)  So, in those cases, the enemy's ambushes hurt.

[MOS:96B2P]

On 3/30/2017 at 8:23 PM, Erwin said:

<Snip>   (Esp with the Brits who often seem to have less ammo.)  <Snip> 

The trucks in the convoy have ammo to loot.  (I mean Acquire.)     

[Erwin]

Isn't there something in the briefing re victory conditions require the force to be capable of further action, so ammo and force preservation is important.  That's one reason I didn't want to waste it.  (These are US units btw, so ammo is not a big problem.) 

Also, one is supposed to not overly damage the village buildings (with HE and blasting presumably) or you lose points there as well. 

Taking the village is fun once one has a foothold.  Once the village falls things seem to get quiet.  Am advancing on the final objective with one inf platoon backed up with a couple armed Humvees and an FO.  The beat up engineers occupy the village as IIRC that is an "occupy" objective.  The supply trucks and 2nd inf platoon are approaching the crossing that is sure to have an IED.  Will use lots of smoke to cover the crossing - like I did when the inf safely advanced in the other direction. 

[Erwin]

The final 15+ minutes of the scenario was anticlimactic after the village was captured.  The enemy has no fight left and there was no further attempt to stop the convoy.   It was easy to capture the final VL with no friendly casualties.  The convoy arrived at base with no interference.

Was surprised that there were still 7 IED's active.  I think I activated only one which killed a Humvee.  Some of the other IED's were right underneath units, but the numerous trigger men scattered around (all Elites btw) for some reason didn't blow em. 

CF'd with 17 minutes left as  convoy reached safety of its destination and final objective was captured.  Only got a Tactical Victory. 

Main reason would have been too many friendly casualties in the initial village assault (lost about 10 guys).  But, also the insurgents got IIRC 200 points as I hadn't killed enough of them.  That was tough as one gets the impression that getting the convoy to its destination plus getting the VL's are the primary objectives, not going on "unnecessary" expeditions to kill the enemy.  In this scenario, there is no incentive to hunt the enemy down. 

I got 50 points for my ammo situation.  I wonder what the max points are for ammo conservation?  My sense is that I probably used too much ammo.  Am assuming that it doesn't matter if one reloads from the trucks, it's the total amount of ammo carried by all units at the end of the mission which is important.

This is a satisfying scenario in which minimal friendly casualties and ammo conservation is important.  I really liked that.  It would be good to have a couple more VL's in areas where there were still intact and untouched enemy units to "encourage" the US player to assault there.

Am going to reload the turn where I started to assault the village to see if I can use better tactics and avoid casualties.  My main problem was that I allowed my engineers to enter the buildings after blowing holes.  They ran into a nasty ambush, and half a platoon was lost - probably costing me a Total Victory.

[Erwin]

Retried a saved turn several times to practice assaulting across the road to get a foothold in the village with minor or zero casualties.  (Trying to play as if I have no foreknowledge of the enemy positions.) 

It's tough.  Unseen uncon across the gully tend to pick off guys as they run over, despite using arty smoke.  Usually 3-4 guys go down as they run over.  Then after blasting into the first building, any unit that runs in after the blast gets cut up by uncons in the square walled/sandbagged area just on the other side of the building (despite them being conscripts).  If they stay outside the building they still slowly get cut up by enemy fire.  I may have reduced friendly casualties by 30%-50% but that's still 6-7 guys (instead of the 12+ suffered previously). 

It's also hard to see how one can avoid losing at least one vehicle to an IED as there are quite a few scattered around.  And that will very easily reduce one's victory level downwards.

Other than that, a very enjoyable scenario.  Now onto "Into The Green".  Finally...  

[Sgt.Squarehead]

My preferred method for blasting into buildings:  Use two teams immediately outside the building.  If the building has windows on the wall to be blasted have one team Area Target it, if not set that team a Cover Arc for the whole building. Have the blast team set to Area Target too if possible and also to Quick or Slow move back out immediately, I never use Fast as they usually seem to get shot in the back that way.

FWIW

Edited April 9, 2017 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Combatintman]

@ErwinGetting into the compound on the corner is tricky - I don't think I ever managed it without suffering casualties - unfortunately war is like that sometimes.

You got all of the VPs on offer for ammunition consumption so the difference between lower levels of victory and a Total Victory will be down to the respective casualty counts. I can assure you that you do not have to chase all over the map to hunt people down to inflict sufficient enemy casualties to get the points. All that is required is a measured tactical approach.

I am confused by your description of 'capturing the final VL' - If you mean PB Rushdi Mullah, it shouldn't need capturing because you should have kept a security element there.

To that end  I would be interested to see your VP breakdown and casualties as well as your scheme of manoeuvre.

Edited April 9, 2017 by Combatintman

[Erwin]

If I'd known I coulda sent you a bunch of saved game files, but all deleted now.  By "the final VL" I meant the one in the corner that one can only reach after capturing the village.

It's actually a pretty straightforward mission.  There are only two tricky parts:

1) Getting across the first crossing without getting blown up.  It looks like a trap so I instinctively used a few smoke grenades and everyone crossed safely.

Didn't have enuff time to secure the village b4 the convoy entered. So it seemed that I had to secure the convoy entry point first and did so with few casualties.  I think maybe 2 WIA or KIA to this point.  Saw there were uncons covering the "final" VL.  I figured I could deal with em later - probably with mortars.

2) Attacking across the main road to secure a foothold in the village (supported by the convoy vehicles).  I think 2-3 men were plinked by snipers or some sort of small arms fire while on MOVE towards the "jump off" point just across the road.  There was HE arty falling but I don't think anyone was hurt.  Used all the smoke from the bigger guns on both sides of the assault route.  But, the smoke wasn't quite enuff.  After I finished the scenario I restarted at this point several times to see if I could do this without loss.  But, I always lost 3-4 guys running over the road. 

Used split ENG teams and ran a platoon across the road with one team set to BLAST the wall to get into the first building (which had been previously hit with ATGM's btw).  Gave them pause so they would BLAST but not run in.  That part worked.  But when the guys did enter (and kill any surviving occupants), the real damage was done by the uncons in the square low walled/sandbagged on the other side.  The uncons would have been easily killed by arty had I known they were there.  But, now it's too late.  A stand up fight between units in the building and these uncons always resulted in heavy friendly casualties.  With the benefit of hindsight I experimented by sending guys around the RHS of the wall and was more successful taking these uncons from their flank.

Uncons in the buildings on the other side of the gully to the right revealed themselves and I tried to hose em down with the 50's on the trucks and the MG's.  But, they seemed to be able to plink away at men still at the wall.  Probably shoulda used at least another few smoke grenades to cover the men at the wall while they waited to move to safety inside.

Once the foothold was made, it was fairly simply MOUT tactics to clear the rest of the village with no loss.  After that there was no real challenge left and the rest of the mission was easy.  Taking the final VL was not a problem.  

One just has to keep enuff smoke grenades in reserve to cover the recrossing of the gully by the convoy.   

[MOS:96B2P]

On 4/9/2017 at 11:58 AM, Erwin said:

<Snip>   But when the guys did enter (and kill any surviving occupants), the real damage was done by the uncons in the square low walled/sandbagged on the other side. <Snip>  

IMO the OpFor on the outside of the back wall is one of the most dangerous aspects of building clearance in CM.  When I don't know if the OpFor has LOS into the building/room I'm entering (which is probably most of the time) I have the entry team use Slow.  They will still stop and shoot when using Slow and are more likely to do so instead of using Quick all the way to the back wall.  I also have support teams Target Light into the building. Some of this Target Light fire will pass through the building and help suppress any OpFor behind the building.  The friendly Target Light may also suppress your entry team to some degree but is generally useful if there are OpFor outside the back wall.    

[Erwin]

I've read that entering SLOW is the way to go in the game. But, it bothers me to use that gamey tactic. 

Maybe the game system's "gaminess" should be an excuse for humans to be gamey as well.  I dunno...  I mean, where does it all end... with AFV crews being used as infantry or summat!!!!??? 

[Combatintman]

Ok … here’s how to approach this then …

 

Extract the important stuff from the ‘Enemy Paragraph’ …

 

‘Yesterday a HMMWV was destroyed by an IED as it transited a track leading to the MULLAH FAYYAD Highway.  Identified  firing points in AO ROCKY and the site of the IED incident have been marked by the S2 on the Tactical Map’.

 

‘…from isolated small arms engagements to more sophisticated complex attacks involving the use of a combination of IEDs, indirect fires and small arm/RPG engagements.  There is likely to be a 360 degree threat and insurgents will likely attempt to isolate maneuver elements using aggressive flanking maneuver’.

 

Extract the important stuff from the ‘Mission Paragraph’ (which in essence is all of it)

 

Mission:  Team Bravo 4-31 Inf attacks along the MULLAH FAYYAD Highway to seize BP T148 NLT 0830hrs to control AO ROCKY.

Tasks:

1. Secure PB RUSHDI MULLAH (Occupy 100 VPs).

2. Seize BP T148 (Occupy 200 VPs).

3. Clear the MULLAH FAYYAD Highway to LOE CRAMPON NORTH, CENTER & SOUTH (Touch 100 VPs).

4. Escort the Logistics convoy.

When you do your analysis of the ground and your mission analysis having plugged in the other bits and pieces of information, it quickly becomes clear that to achieve the mission, you have to clear and cross the canal at the SE Crossing Point (this is what is termed by the military as an implied task).

It should also be obvious that it is reasonable to assume that the enemy is likely to make this difficult.  In the current operating environment you need to always work on the assumption that there will be people watching your base locations and key terrain/vital ground (or decisive terrain as it is known in some militaries).  From there it is not too much of a leap of faith to assume that there will be some form of direct fire element covering it and possibly indirect fire available to fire on it.

Working from those assumptions it is a case of looking at the ground in detail and templating.  You will see in the image below that I have boxed off in red some areas where enemy elements could be located to cover that crossing.

Once you’ve done that it is a case of allocating resources to counter these elements and a scheme of manoeuvre.

Because IEDs are challenging to defend against, it is worth understanding their in-game characteristics (page 105 of your manual refers).  While I won’t go into huge amounts of detail regarding IED defeat TTPs, in relation to the game (and real life to an extent), if you can defeat the trigger man you defeat the device.  There are numerous ways of doing this but in simple terms they boil down to:

 

Kill the trigger man.

Deny the trigger man observation of the device.

Employ technical means such as ECM.

In this scenario, you lack ECM at the start of the mission (and it has no effect on wire IEDs) so your plan needs to do one of the first two or a combination of the first two.

I rarely use smoke in missions and I didn’t employ it in my testing for this one, but what I can assure you is that if you focus on getting eyes on the red boxed areas in the schematic, you are likely to be able to defeat enemy attempts to interfere with the crossing.

You should also work out that realistically you don’t have the resources to be able to cover all of them so this is the point where you decide how much risk you are prepared to accept and in my case, I focused on the closest areas for areas to look and shoot while simply using ‘Fast’ moves of split squads across the canal.

Once across the canal, the tactical decisions are essentially:

Sort out BP T148 first.

RV with the convoy first at LOE CRAMPON SOUTH & CENTER.

Do both of the above.

In an ideal world you would do both of the above but the problem now becomes one of time and distance analysis and how much risk you are prepared to accept because it should quickly become obvious that it would be challenging to clear the compounds at BP T148 and meet up with the convoy.

My analysis always led me to the belief that the best COA was to focus on the convoy (accepting that I could not get troops to LOE CRAMPON NORTH until after I had sorted out the compounds at BP T148 but could at least get eyes on and fire on likely enemy positions North of the highway.

So my scheme of manoeuvre up until the arrival of the convoy looked like the schematic below.

Once the convoy arrives, you then have more than enough resources to tackle the BP T148 compounds and positions likely to overwatch it. Importantly, the HMMWVs bring you considerable firepower in terms of GPMGs, .50 cals, MK19s and TOWs which allow you the luxury of standing off and suppressing.

Simple as that really …

[MOS:96B2P]

30 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

<Snip>  Employ technical means such as ECM.

In this scenario, you lack ECM at the start of the mission (and it has no effect on wire IEDs) <Snip> 

This is interesting.  Well the entire post was interesting but new tactics and game mechanics almost always get my attention.  Is there a way to use ECM in the actual CMSF game or are you referring to RL?  I gave the Unconventional Forces section of the game manual a quick scan but didn't see anything reference ECM.  

[Combatintman]

39 minutes ago, MOS:96B2P said:

This is interesting.  Well the entire post was interesting but new tactics and game mechanics almost always get my attention.  Is there a way to use ECM in the actual CMSF game or are you referring to RL?  I gave the Unconventional Forces section of the game manual a quick scan but didn't see anything reference ECM.  

ECM does exist in game (page 206 of the manual shows you the icon) - however you raise an interesting point about the relationship between (in-game) RCIEDs and Cell IEDs and ECM equipped vehicles. I had always worked on the assumption that ECM equipped vehicles would cause some sort of adverse modifier to the 10% device failure rates as stated on page 105 but there is nothing written anywhere in CMSF documentation to indicate that this is the case.

I suspect it is the case but have never tested it (and am not going to) - I'm sure someone will (or probably has already) ...

[Erwin]

Probably a spoiler, but in this mission imo it makes much more sense to smoke the hell out of the bottleneck crossing point as that is MUCH easier and quicker than trying to spot a trigger man who could be in any of the areas in CInfMan's diagram. 

It is hard to predict LOS accurately in CM2, so one has little idea of what can and cannot be seen from any location.  So, the best thing is to ensure that nothing can be seen. 

If the point is to accomplish the objectives as quickly and economically as you can, then smoke worked for me both in making the initial crossing safely and in getting convoy safely back over.  If there was a mine rather than an IED... well there is nothing anyone can do about that.

If part of the mission is "search and destroy", then there needs top be additional VL's to encourage the player to go after some of the other locations where the enemy is lurking.

Really enjoyed this scenario.  Not sure if it has replay value - other than trying to reduce friendly casualties.  But, it's the surprises in an unplayed mission that is most of the fun.

And ECM in CMSF - never encountered that ever b4...   How does that work (in the game)?

 

 

Edited April 14, 2017 by Erwin

[MOS:96B2P]

12 hours ago, Combatintman said:

<Snip> I had always worked on the assumption that ECM equipped vehicles would cause some sort of adverse modifier to the 10% device failure rates as stated on page 105 <Snip> 

Okay, thanks.  I'll take a look at this.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I wonder if that explains an incident I had, where a platoon of British Engineers in a buttoned Bulldog (Enforcer) spotted a minefield by driving past it, without setting off a mine?

[Erwin]

Hard to understand why ECM would enable easier spotting of a minefield.  Probably an outlier probability.

[Combatintman]

1 hour ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

I wonder if that explains an incident I had, where a platoon of British Engineers in a buttoned Bulldog (Enforcer) spotted a minefield by driving past it, without setting off a mine?

It would be doubtful because ECM does not work that way - it won't give you an indication of the presence of a device, it simply blocks/disrupts the signal between the triggering mechanism and the initiator. Again I can't go into huge amounts of detail but in essence it works on one of two principles. It either permanently sends out a blocking signal across a set frequency range or scans frequencies and sends out a blocking/disruption signal when one is detected across a certain range.  It will not detect mines, victim operated (eg pressure plate IEDs) or command pull devices.  This is why CIED measures comprise a number of techniques (eg ECM, mine detectors, CIED TTPs and intelligence).

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I was thinking the ECM might represent a broader electronic counter-IED suite (as it was an Engineer vehicle).....A demining campaign could make an interesting scenario concept, but the vagaries of detection and inability to actually clear mines kind of mitigate against it. 

Edited April 14, 2017 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Erwin]

As C says, ECM isn't going to help with passive devices like mines.  But, you could substitute Search for and "Mark MInes" as part of a demining campaign... same thing really.  Once you know where the mines are you can avoid em.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Looks like it may be possible to assign them as the target for a 'Spot' objective, so locating them for points could be doable.....Anyone tried? 

[Combatintman]

3 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Looks like it may be possible to assign them as the target for a 'Spot' objective, so locating them for points could be doable.....Anyone tried? 

Nope - but it is an interesting concept which, from my understanding of how the mechanics of objectives function, should work.  Whether it is viable as a scenario/campaign concept is another matter and, based on the numerous threads about mines and how hard they are to detect, my impression is that it would be difficult to execute in a manner that would drive people to play said scenario/campaign.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

My use of the word campaign was definitely inappropriate there, was thinking of something along these lines as a Mosul option.....Locate all the mines, under sniper fire and don't mind the mortaring! 

Come to think of it, some nasty scenarios for CM:A in the Salang Pass area spring to mind too! 

Edited April 15, 2017 by Sgt.Squarehead