Need some advice for breaking the bank

[Lt. Smash]

On 11/1/2018 at 11:09 AM, Erwin said:

Wow... I would say the exact opposite.  It's the large mostly featureless desert expanses and larger maps with long LOS that differentiates CMSF from the other more "claustrophobic" titles. 

It's one of the reasons that I love CMSF: great variety of battles from wide open terrain to building-to-building fighting! The other reason? Variety of forces. Each country is so different in terms of force composition ans weaponry. I only wish we had more variety from the Syrian side (i.e., Russian advisors, Iranian help, etc.).

Smash, out!

[chuckdyke]

I do what I was taught. Don't enter any building or room through a door or window. The method in Vietnam was a Centurion blast a hole with HE followed by 'canister'  only then you enter a building. I try to copy this in CM but it takes sometimes all the HE of a tank it doesn't breach a wall with one shot. If you have engineers problem solved. Look making an assault team from your squad the other team has LMG to precede the attack with area fire. The trick is to break the morale of the troops inside and make sure your assault team is fit.. Once they have nervous or shattered they are more or less useless. 

[MikeyD]

Hah, I had 'blasted' my way into a building with a demo charge while playing a scenario just this morning. Successfully occupied the location and KO'd a nearby BMP-2 on the far side of the building. Unfortunately there was an unseen RPG guy diagonally across the street that KO'd all my squad with a single RPG round! Aaaaaagh! I cannot remember losing so many men from a single RPG round before. That was quite a shock.

If you have MOUT forces, regular infantry should be carrying demo charges so no need to include engineers.

[Sublime]

*****SPOILERS******

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one was relaly tough and I took way heavier casualties than necessary. I advise agaisnt a broad front advance. Pick a line of advance. Concentrate your men. But dont expose them all to fire. Be very csreful with buildings and your warriors and tanks.  Use your engineer teams to blow holes in building walls so youre not at the mercy of doorways. 

MAKE SURE you look at move points that end in buildings from the enemys line to yours. Mame sure there isnt some balcony!!

You have a lot of time.  Be very sloe and methodical.  Wait. Move glacually slow. Give units minutes to spot.  Call in arty and wait till it kos a target before moving.   Youll get a helo later - in my gane my men were spent. And it didnt even really have enemy tsnks to target. My tanks got them but they also killed a couple challys.  Wait. The helo can do thst job.  Use your arty. Let your snipers do their thing just place them well.

Your javelin team is very important. Use an armor only arc and keep them a block behind your main body of troops.  See the javelin team is your emergency tank response. Its an almost guaranteed armor kill.  You want it where yout challengers arent in case Red gets frisky you can respond and probably defeat an armor attack with just the team.  Just be mindful dont use them to simply pick off enemy armor you can see - theres bettet ways of doing it. I did exactly thst. I saw a keyholed T72 then another IFV so I jav.d them. I believe red gets armor reinforcements because my left flank as the Brits came under attack mid game and my javelin team could have stopled rhem cold. Unfortunstely they were out of rounds and a few warriors died before the threat was handled.

This was my first battle after a year or more away so I was rusty but its a bit tough for sure

[General Jack Ripper]

On ‎11‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 8:27 AM, The_MonkeyKing said:

Here is some gameplay with even worse urban scenario. He plays pretty well. Good place to start learning.

Thanks for the plug.

You can watch through my entire playthrough using the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc6P5rUN400&list=PLmW_vcwM_qxs2gduawKbwEN4fcCY5vyM7&index=41

 

I think @domfluff has the gist of it. MOUT is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle where every piece you get wrong will kill you, and even some of the pieces you get right will kill you too.

The most important thing for me in an urban environment is actually managing the game clock. Don't go too slow, but most importantly, DON'T GO TOO FAST.

 

Part of my TTP video series contains an unscripted rambling about street fighting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Q4vs6G0P4&list=PLmW_vcwM_qxukdDjpfUEerpICUzTrTKek&index=13

Personally I think the quality is somewhat dubious, but I received enough positive feedback to leave it posted.

[Sublime]

On 2/14/2019 at 10:45 PM, chuckdyke said:

I do what I was taught. Don't enter any building or room through a door or window. The method in Vietnam was a Centurion blast a hole with HE followed by 'canister'  only then you enter a building. I try to copy this in CM but it takes sometimes all the HE of a tank it doesn't breach a wall with one shot. If you have engineers problem solved. Look making an assault team from your squad the other team has LMG to precede the attack with area fire. The trick is to break the morale of the troops inside and make sure your assault team is fit.. Once they have nervous or shattered they are more or less useless. 

I find the autocannon on warriors or USMC 40mms work well to demolish those high concrete walls that surround some compounds etc.

For mouseholing demo charges works better.. Ill lay down. Target light as the game gives friendly infantry a pass on small arms.  

Not sure if you know this trick but asigning the blast command PARALELL to what you want to blast through will make the team blast the wall but not rush in.  Or rush through.

[MikeyD]

First time for me  last night a blast command parallel to  the wall converted to a 'quick' waypoint. I think it was because my 'blast' command wasn't the end waypoint but was in the middle of a waypoint string.

[Erwin]

Unless it's been changed in the latest engine, a blast command parallel to a wall or hedgerow may not always work - it depends on how the thing to be demolished lies relative to the map - ie kinda the same issue with jagged sawtooth roads.

The other item, assuming it hasn't been changed, is that one should always split an engineer squad, otherwise a full squad may use 2 charges for one blast.

[37mm]

5 hours ago, MikeyD said:

First time for me  last night a blast command parallel to  the wall converted to a 'quick' waypoint. I think it was because my 'blast' command wasn't the end waypoint but was in the middle of a waypoint string.

Yeah this got me a few days ago... apparently it's a known & reported bug.

You have to click on the "quick waypoint" & convert it back to a "blast waypoint".

That fix worked for me.

[Erwin]

Just completed this with a Total Victory playing WEGO Elite.  Enjoyed the challenges.  I did redo a couple of turns where I thought I'd done something really stupid or careless or there were weird AI pathing issues.  However, am thinking that one has so many Warrior AFV's that one can afford to lose 4 or 5 without it affecting firepower too much (so long as one had acquired most of the ammo).   Most of the time, I didn't know what to do with all the Warriors and they sat around guarding flanks.  Losing a tank is morale-hurting.  But, so long as it's not right at the start, I think one can still win with one tank - since one has 3 Javelins to use vs enemy armor. 

 

 

*****************  SPOILERS  *******************

 

 

It's nearly always best to concentrate forces on one flank.  So, concentrated almost all forces on the left flank to go after the objectives with the highest VP's - leaving only the two snipers and two engineer teams with a Bulldog and Warrior observing the right flank, just in case...

It was good to have spare Warriors sitting idly around guarding the flanks as the enemy inf attack from the left, walked into them and were massacred with the loss of only two Brit troopers.  Also, the enemy armor attack was easily dispatched by the Warriors and Challengers, with the Javelin teams killing a couple of enemy tanks.

The approach was slow and steady, making sure nobody attacked without max support fire.  The first objective was easily gained - IIRC the Brits had only suffered 4 KIA and maybe 8 WIA at that point.  However, taking the Bank was very bloody.  The very effective enemy ambush technique of garrisoning interior rooms is very hard to overcome as it doesn't seem that AFV fire penetrates through the first room into the 2nd room.  One is forced to rush in with a lot of inf and he first guys thru the door are usually massacred.  Attacking and taking the bank tripled or quadrupled Brit losses in a few turns, including a tank and a couple Warriors.

Meanwhile some spare Warriors and a Bulldog escorted by 2 engineer squads and a sniper team slowly worked their way up the right flank road.  At the same time the heavy arty and helicopter attacked the 2 objectives on the right flank road.  Lost a couple men and a Warrior.  But the arty fire forced the enemy to flee from the buildings. and the game ended with 11 minutes left with a Syrian surrender.

Good scenario.

 

 

[FlemFire]

I streamed this battle awhile back for anyone interested.

Took 5ish hours to complete. Elite difficulty, turn-based, and trying to play fast of course leads to mistakes as does actual mental exhaustion of streaming and talking while playing, which CM isn't really tailored for (ordinarily, I'd play a single scenario across a week or two, not one sitting). Nevermind doing this after working but hey, here it is.

 

Highlight: Combat Mission Shock Force 2 - Breaking the Bank, Heavy Urban Environment - Twitch

 

My own approach and of course

~ Minor? SPOILERS ~

 

 

First thing I looked at in the battle was that I did not have enough soldiers to tackle the whole town.

Second thing was that the middle areas were an obvious, Cannae-shaped kill zone and should be avoided.

 

With that in mind, I chose the left flank for attacking and held one platoon on the right. The idea was to have the advancing element swing through most of the objectives including the 'bank', and at that point I would then start moving the right flank up to complete a total pincer on the final objectives, but this ended up not being necessary. A few things caught me offguard, including the surprise counter-attacks that spawn right on top of your guys which I of course whined about. I also found the culdesac entrance was indeed a killing zone as a grenade launcher managed to easily wound or kill a few of my men the second they showed their faces. One squad died to an ATGM as well which was quite unfortunate.

 

Tactically, the map plays by the book, and if you just be careful it can be done as you can largely use the urban environment to dictate the firefights. You're guaranteed to eat losses in places just by the nature of urban combat, though, and I certainly had my share. My main operating assumption is that there is an enemy in every building and to act according to that principle. The scenario does give you oodles of vehicles to use, but I was too scared to deploy most of them heh. That said, if a vehicle was in combat range, it was shooting: either at enemies or where I assumed enemies were. Unused ammo is of no use, so better use it. Some of my assets went unused or underutilized but that comes with the territory of approaching scenarios blind.

I also tried to not demolish every structure possible to maintain some LARPing value as a prop'er British bluefor heh.

I believe I got lucky in some regards and unlucky in others, so it all evened out. The luckiest factor was the map simply ending when it did, instead of requiring me to greenlight the 2nd offensive into the rightflank. There was a solid contingent of Syrians left on that flank, and in the back of the map a smattering of elite Syrian soldiers still lingering around. They were inflicting damage, too, right up until the end of the map. I personally don't think it was the 'victory' the game gave me, but hey I'll take it.

 

~ SPOILERS end? ~

 

All in all, it's a tough map. I think one of the toughest out of SF2's catalog as it punishes mistakes and over aggression with force-deleting measures.

 

 

[domfluff]

Well done man. Yeah, the mental tax is real in this kind of environment. Your approach sounds valid - broadly I think you really want to choose right or left and commit to it. I think both approaches are valid.

It's definitely a grind, but it's a very well done urban map. The main thing you're looking for in urban maps is variety in terrain - you want constantly changing geometries, where turning a corner presents you with a whole new set of problems. Breaking the Bank does this really well.



 

[Erwin]

I recall playing this and enjoying it a lot.  IIRC one had to be very systematic in one's approach and it did get to be repetitive.  

 

********* SPOILERS  *********

 

It seemed best to put nearly all the force on the left flank and assault along one section of town.  Only a few spotters/snipers on the right flank to keep an eye on things.

 

[chuckdyke]

On 11/1/2018 at 8:03 PM, RexSaur said:

What am I doing wrong?

RISS Recon Isolate Secure and Seize. It seems to isolate each house or building is the problem. My complaint is the balconies which results that so-called Elite Troops don't make basic common sense decisions. 

[FlemFire]

1 hour ago, chuckdyke said:

RISS Recon Isolate Secure and Seize. It seems to isolate each house or building is the problem. My complaint is the balconies which results that so-called Elite Troops don't make basic common sense decisions. 

Balconies got at least five or six of my guys shot dead. Eventually you work them into your scouting: is an enemy here, and is there an enemy balcony here 

[chuckdyke]

2 minutes ago, Khalerick said:

here an enemy balcony here

Point taken regard them as hypothetically 'boobytraps'. 

[Erwin]

Putting units on building levels with balconies is generally a bad idea.  Units that move onto those balconies are very vulnerable to enemy fire.  Better to put units on rooftops that have walls.