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Mosul (Iraq) The small red-headed child of an epic MOUT map!


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On ‎2‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 1:59 PM, Sgt.Squarehead said:

If you meet your objectives and the map doesn't look any worse than this:

That's a victory.

THEN CONSIDER ME WILDLY VICTORIOUS! SUPREMELY VICTORIOUS! ULTIMATELY VICTORIOUS!
I just finished the scenario. Video to follow. Damage was kept to an absolute minimum. In fact, I'd go so far as to say the residents of this portion of the city can go home immediately.

It does seem my unorthodox style allowed me to bypass quite a few headaches.
That looming sense of dread I told you about? Never materialized.

I fed men into the grinder, secured all remaining buildings (and Phase Line Charlie, as well as two hidden objectives), and clicked the cease-fire button.

Result: Major Victory.

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On ‎8‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 4:47 PM, Sgt.Squarehead said:

In the process of making the new map I did actually discover one borked doorway on the old one.....There may be a prize for anyone who finds it!  ;)

I did discover one building impossible to enter, until I blasted the wall around it with 120mm fire.

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Love the new video and before I go any further I want to thank you for all the time and effort you spent to making it (especially for a first time scenario designer like me).....That is very much appreciated.  B)

Really impressed with your result.....That was actually a rather brilliant victory (Highlight to reveal hidden text):  As you probably guessed ISIS were about to emerge from all the concealed tunnel entrances and have a crack at taking the mosque back!  You beat them to the punch by several minutes.....Very, very well done indeed!

In the first seconds your Abrams did you a humongous favour (Highlight to reveal hidden text): The buiding it fired on was the location of the Triggerman for the Huge IED in the Taxi!

Great to see the citizens of Mosul getting in on the fight, but amazed to see the ISIS SPAAGnical alive so late in the game, that one usually attracted a JDAM in my tests!

Felt a bit sorry for the team at about 12:30, they were within yards of the Ansar Road, but ISIS are everywhere!

Enjoyed the coordinated assault on the Local ISIS HQ & the way your CTS dealt with the ISIS leadership was just classic.....Your dudes genuinely looked p*****d off!  :angry:

16 hours ago, SLIM said:

It does seem my unorthodox style allowed me to bypass quite a few headaches.

Taking the mosque as swiftly and efficiently as you did, was a very good move indeed.

12 hours ago, SLIM said:

I did discover one building impossible to enter, until I blasted the wall around it with 120mm fire.


Any chance you could ping me a screen shot of the location, I suspect it's the same one that @sburke found, but I'd like to be certain.....Pathfinding on this map is complex enough without me screwing the player in advance. 

You can probably understand why building it took so long now that you've had a wander around it and for this one all I was doing was tweaking @LongLeftFlank's work to better match an area of Mosul (if you are interested in making a comparison, this was formerly the area to the east of the cemetery in Ramadi).....I owe a huge debt of gratitude to @Combatintman who wad the patience to check it for me more than once (& much more besides). 

For 'Al Hutumah', the sequel to this mission, I've had to make rather more drastic changes and it's taking me absolutely ages! 

15 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:

As a reward you get to continue the attack into the next area of the city at 0400hrs tomorrow.

Close.....It's actually around 0400hrs in a month's time, so you will be back to full strength and you even get a couple of new toys.

This also gives me cover to explain all the destruction on the overlapping section of the new map that @SLIM didn't actually cause (But @borg so did!  :o ).....ISIS had to emerge from those tunnels at some point and dealing with them would probably have made a mess.....Which incidentally is pretty much exactly what happened historically.  ;)

Edited by Sgt.Squarehead
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On 2/11/2018 at 2:14 PM, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Love the new video and before I go any further I want to thank you for all the time and effort you spent to making it (especially for a first time scenario designer like me).....That is very much appreciated.  B)

Really impressed with your result.....That was actually a rather brilliant victory (Highlight to reveal hidden text):  As you probably guessed ISIS were about to emerge from all the concealed tunnel entrances and have a crack at taking the mosque back!  You beat them to the punch by several minutes.....Very, very well done indeed!

In the first seconds your Abrams did you a humongous favour (Highlight to reveal hidden text): The buiding it fired on was the location of the Triggerman for the Huge IED in the Taxi!

Great to see the citizens of Mosul getting in on the fight, but amazed to see the ISIS SPAAGnical alive so late in the game, that one usually attracted a JDAM in my tests!

Felt a bit sorry for the team at about 12:30, they were within yards of the Ansar Road, but ISIS are everywhere!

Enjoyed the coordinated assault on the Local ISIS HQ & the way your CTS dealt with the ISIS leadership was just classic.....Your dudes genuinely looked p*****d off!  :angry:

Taking the mosque as swiftly and efficiently as you did, was a very good move indeed.


Any chance you could ping me a screen shot of the location, I suspect it's the same one that @sburke found, but I'd like to be certain.....Pathfinding on this map is complex enough without me screwing the player in advance. 

You can probably understand why building it took so long now that you've had a wander around it and for this one all I was doing was tweaking @LongLeftFlank's work to better match an area of Mosul (if you are interested in making a comparison, this was formerly the area to the east of the cemetery in Ramadi).....I owe a huge debt of gratitude to @Combatintman who wad the patience to check it for me more than once (& much more besides). 

For 'Al Hutumah', the sequel to this mission, I've had to make rather more drastic changes and it's taking me absolutely ages! 

Close.....It's actually around 0400hrs in a month's time, so you will be back to full strength and you even get a couple of new toys.

This also gives me cover to explain all the destruction on the overlapping section of the new map that @SLIM didn't actually cause (But @borg so did!  :o ).....ISIS had to emerge from those tunnels at some point and dealing with them would probably have made a mess.....Which incidentally is pretty much exactly what happened historically.  ;)

Hahahah oh the joy of destruction ! :) see you soon lads

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  • 3 weeks later...

Testing of scenario #2 'Al Hutumah' - The Crusher is tentatively under way.....I'll no doubt have to do a lot of fiddling yet, but it's finally getting somewhere.  ;)

3iTyyNP.jpg

Dawn, Mid December 2016.....CTS Scouts keep watch as an INI agent (escorted by the renowned 'Baba Tahseen') drives to the Ansar Mosque to meet with a local Imam who has been covertly assisting Coalition forces:

08KsW2G.jpg

The Imam is concerned that ISIS are becoming aware of his activities and fears that they may assault the mosque compound at any time, he requests that CTS protect the mosque from ISIS.....CTS' mobile element will take around 15 minutes to arrive, local forces must secure the Ansar Mosque until their arrival. 

A group of armed locals have been cooperating with CTS and they have volunteered to assist in securing the mosque and protecting the Imam, no doubt greatly reassured by the clattering rotors of a pair of Hind gunships orbiting overhead:

BEB3u4t.jpg

Further reinforcements from 9th Armoured Division have been promised and a US Navy SEAL Trident Team is on the way to secure & debrief the Imam (they'll be bringing some F-16s too, just to be on the safe side).

This may be an opportunity to catch ISIS off guard.....Can CTS exploit it?

As I said, I suspect lots of fiddling still lies ahead.  :rolleyes:

PS - Iraq just bought BMP-3s:

bmp-3.31238.jpg

http://gurkhan.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/3_18.html

So it looks like BF's decision to include them in the game turned out to be a wise one after all.....Same with the T-90SA as we've also learned fairly recently:

T90SI.jpg

Hope that won't stop BF chucking in a T-90 & T-90A or two.....You can never have too many!  :P

I just bought this one:

s-l1600.jpg

But that's probably for another forum.  :D

Edited by Sgt.Squarehead
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  • 5 weeks later...

Banality of evil, ISIS edition. Quality journalism from the NYT here. 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/04/world/middleeast/isis-documents-mosul-iraq.html

Most accounts of how the Islamic State became the richest terrorist group in the world focus on its black-market oil sales, which at one point brought in as much as $2 million per week, according to some estimates. Yet records...  show that the ratio of money earned from taxes versus oil stood at 6:1.
Despite hundreds of airstrikes that left the caliphate pocked with craters, the group’s economy continued to function, fed by streams of revenue that could not be bombed.... 

The financial reports tallied over $19 million in transactions involving agriculture alone.

The documents describe how it made money at every step in the supply chain: Before a single seed of grain, for example, was sown, the group collected rent for the fields it had confiscated. Then, when the crops were ready to be threshed, it collected a harvest tax.
It did not stop there.

The trucks that transported the grain paid highway tolls. The grain was stored in silos, which the militants controlled, and they made money when the grain was sold to mills, which they also controlled. The mills ground the grain into flour, which the group sold to traders.

Then the bags of flour were loaded onto trucks, which traversed the caliphate, paying more tolls. It was sold to supermarkets and shops, which were also taxed. So were the consumers who bought the finished product.
In a single 24-hour period in 2015, one of the spreadsheets in the briefcase shows, the Islamic State collected $1.9 million from the sale of barley and wheat. 

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Interestingly in combatting al Sadr the US took the approach of disrupting access to funds like this. The wall built along route Gold had as one goal to specifically target revenue acquired from criminal activity at the Jamiliyah market. Much of al Sadr’s support was from simple criminal gangs running rackets.  Their relationship with al Sadr was more a franchise opportunity. This became increasingly problematic when he would try to call a ceasefire. These groups could not afford the truce period as the US would actively move to disarm them. Without their weapons they were effectively neutered whereas al Sadr was playing more for political legitimacy and authority.  This lack of a unified organization was evident in the attacks on the wall.  Each sector would attack as the wall was being built at their location with the net result they would wear themselves out as the wall progressed  They could simply have allowed the wall to get built and when US and Iraqis forces moved onto the next section just blow the wall forcing them to come back to repair it.  There was however no coordination at that level  

ISIS seems to have vastly expanded the criminal enterprise aspect in a much more centralized fashion. . 

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On ‎3‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 2:38 PM, Sgt.Squarehead said:

That's the spirit!  ;)

With a bit of fiddling in the editor you can create some interesting units with the current version of CM:SF, so I'm itching to see what the new one will offer.  B)

One of my favorite parts of Combat Mission is being confronted with the Force Selection screen, given a chunk of points, and just seeing what kind of highly customized, and finely tuned force setup I can make.

It's like a game within a game...

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6 hours ago, sburke said:

ISIS seems to have vastly expanded the criminal enterprise aspect in a much more centralized fashion. .

Practice makes perfect I guess.

4 hours ago, General Jack Ripper said:

It's like a game within a game...

Sadly it's one we won't be able to play in CM:SF II in quite the same way.....I fear my Mosul CTS Core would wind up as a bunch of Syrian SF, some Abrams and unarmed HMMWVs and a selection of interesting supply dumps (with the wrong calibre ammo), some of them quite substantial.  :rolleyes:

Progress can be a bugger sometimes.  ;)

Edited by Sgt.Squarehead
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10 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Sadly it's one we won't be able to play in CM:SF II in quite the same way.....I fear my Mosul CTS Core would wind up as a bunch of Syrian SF, some Abrams and unarmed HMMWVs and a selection of interesting supply dumps (with the wrong calibre ammo), some of them quite substantial.  :rolleyes:

Progress can be a bugger sometimes.  ;)

That is an oddly negative reaction.  Why would you think the experience is going to be so much worse?  Is there something about force selection in CMBS that would lead you to that conclusion?

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1 hour ago, Erwin said:

Wonder if MOS' innovative ideas could help accomplish something similar for CMSF2.  

Well yes obviously - CMSF2 will be upgraded to the same engine standard as CMBS and anyways, the narrative and intelligence sharing concepts which are the main drivers behind MOS's TOC project are perfectly achievable in CMSF as it stands.

Edited by Combatintman
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1 hour ago, sburke said:

Why would you think the experience is going to be so much worse?

That's not what I said.....What I said is that I strongly suspect that it won't be technically possible for me to build the Mosul CTS core (or similar) in CM:SF II.

To create it I used an awful lot of dismounted vehicles, mostly from supply platoons.....In CM:SF II these will not appear as vehicles, they will appear as supply dumps.

Edited by Sgt.Squarehead
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4 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

That's not what I said.....What I said is that I strongly suspect that it won't be technically possible for me to build the Mosul CTS core (or similar) in CM:SF II.

To create it I used an awful lot of dismounted vehicles, mostly from supply platoons.....In CM:SF II these will not appear as vehicles, they will appear as supply dumps.

So use an escort platoon or something else. There are probably a dozen different ways to skin this cat..... sorry PETA

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3 minutes ago, sburke said:

There are probably a dozen different ways to skin this cat..... sorry PETA

It's not that easy.....The same seems to apply to dismounted platoon vehicles too.  @MOS:96B2P brought this up recently in discussion of the [TOC] concept.

Plus I've already tried similar things in CM:BN, CM:FI, CM:RT & CM:BS.....The result?  Supply dumps.  :(

Edited by Sgt.Squarehead
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Have a try.....I've done so in several V:4 games already without success. 

On the bright side the engine should be more flexible overall and with some generosity on the specialist teams and single vehicles front from BF** we should still be able to do a lot.....But this particular trick is done for it seems.

**You may recall me using this exact phrase a while back.....This is exactly what I was alluding too (I've been experimenting with V:4 since it came out).

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