Perdition - a Red v Red mini campaign

[tankibanki]

Thanks Paper Tiger !

But i have a question...

What are the yellow terrain objectives that can be seen on your screenshots to.

There are green and yellow ground color for the terrain objectives, what is the different ?

I don't think the yellow areas are objectives. They are just suggestions how to assault the town. At the end of the scenario, the green objective zones are what counts.

[Wiggum]

I don't think the yellow areas are objectives. They are just suggestions how to assault the town. At the end of the scenario, the green objective zones are what counts.

I got the right answer here:

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=82940

But that yellow ground color on my game is in different places to that on the screenshots on site one...

Gruß Wiggum

[Paper Tiger]

But that yellow ground color on my game is in different places to that on the screenshots on site one...

Yes, that's because those screenshots were taken of a special version of the game map that was made solely for the purpose of creating a tactical map and those promotional screenshots. Have a look at the tactical map in the briefing and you'll understand. Those yellow arrows won't appear in the game and they're not important. You'll find that I used the same technique to make the tactical maps in Hasrabit.

[The_Red_Rage]

Amazing work as usual. Liked it less than Hasrabit, but that is mostly due to armour heavy force balance. For people who prefer armour heavy engagements this is a solid 11 out of 10

[Paper Tiger]

Red Rage

Liked it less than Hasrabit, but that is mostly due to armour heavy force balance.

Then you're going to like the next installment in the Perdition mini campaign series. So far, the two battles I'm and playtesting are very good infantry bashes. You have a single company of BDRM Infantry with a small number of T-72Ms in support. I really like the BDRMs in support of the infantry. They're not as sexy as the BMPs but they're like WW2 armoured cars and I'm having a lot of fun playing with them. In fact, I have to confess that the first of the two, currently called 'First Blood', is the best thing I've done to date.

BTW, how did you get on in Perdition? Did you get a good armour battle in the second mission?

[The_Red_Rage]

First battle went very smoothly. With abit of luck i managed to finish it with 2 men dead and 5 men wounded. Not going to spoil anything, but arty is the key in the opening 15 mins.

Second battle is the one i enjoyed the most. Positioned my armour just as the briefing stated (BMPs on one hill and T55s on another). Really fun shootout with enemy armour; in the end i had 4 T55s left operational (2 were diasbled early on, and 2 survived the hill battle). I had about 70% of Task Force B intact, so i decided not to proceed to bonus objective and save them for the final engagement.

Third battle was challenging up to the point of North Crossing collapse. I had massive amounts of arty left ( i used it only in the first mission against suspected ATGM postions), so needless to say when my infantry entered town....well there was no town left. South Crossing fell quickly as well - i charged it with 3 T55s and 3 T62s in line formation across the wheatfield (VERY WW2 like experience), infantry was following behind on foot. I entered the town in a parade column formationg since, as i mentioned before, nothing was really left standing.

Great campaign! Thanks and can't wait for next installment!

[Wiggum]

...i lost the first mission...

*SPOILER*

i move my forces carfully throught the hills, expecting the enemy everywhere but if i know before that nearly all enemys are in the town at the end of the map i had more time to win.

As i started to attack the town i had only 15 on the clock, after my artillery attack it was zero. i got 10 minutes extra time but thats not enough to win.

[Paper Tiger]

Sounds like you'll have to give it another go. Be careful though as there are five AI plans for the first mission, each with the same probablility of being chosen and they all do something different.

[Wiggum]

Sounds like you'll have to give it another go. Be careful though as there are five AI plans for the first mission, each with the same probablility of being chosen and they all do something different.

Hello,

i started to play it again (its a great battle).

I lost to T62 to ATGM's but they got killed by my other tanks.

I feel that i can win this time...

[handihoc]

*****BIG SPOILER ALERT******

PT, I have a query. Just completed the first battle. Lovely map, and thoroughly enjoyable, with some nasty ambushes along the way. But I only got a draw, which meant I lost the campaign. I was baffled by this because I completely cleared the village and the two hill houses, with 15 minutes to spare. But when I subsequently checked the map I found an enemy Sp Forces HQ occupying The Crossing, and 2 rifle squads and an rpg team in the Road House.

However, I had previously occupied and cleared these buildings, so these guys must've slunk in later, after I'd moved on. Is that so?

Red Rage, your results are impressive. What difficulty level were you playing at? At Elite level I found it very challenging indeed. There weren't a vast amount of enemy troops, but the ones that were there were extremely tough, and very well-positioned to inflict maximum harassment on my advance.

[The_Red_Rage]

I usually played Red on Red on Veteran to avoid spotting frustrations with Red side, however I just fired up Hasrabit (for the 4th time:)) on Elite and the experience is not that much different so far. After i'm done with Hasrabit, i'll try out Perdition on Elite to see how it goes (should give me enough time to forget enemy positions and what i did before - to keep the freshness factor).

Btw, i got REALLY lucky in the 1st mission of Perdition. To take the first position, in all my "genious", i decided to simply park my tanks on top of the hill that separates starting area and the small village beneath. Both ATGMs fired and both missed, but not before revealing their approximate location. I backed my tanks off the hill, but still managed to lose one of the recon BMPs as it tried to advance towards the village at high speed using the road (it was a gamey move, i admit, since its only puspose was to confirm second ATGM position while sacrificing the BMP). Good news was that the crew crawled out unscratched, even though BMP caught fire.

[Paper Tiger]

handihoc:

However, I had previously occupied and cleared these buildings, so these guys must've slunk in later, after I'd moved on. Is that so?

>Evil cackle<

Red Rage

(should give me enough time to forget enemy positions and what i did before - to keep the freshness factor).

The first mission has 5 plans and they're all different so, unless you get the same plan when you replay it (1 in 5 chance), it'll definitely play differently with enemy units going in different positions and doing different things. Even in that little village at the crossings... The other missions both have two plans and once again, they're very different.

Both ATGMs fired and both missed

Then you were very lucky my friend. Those ATGM teams are GOOD. You definitely got a better result in the first mission than I ever got in all the times I playtested it. Well done.

[handihoc]

Yes, Red Rage, you had the fabled luck of the Irish with those ATGMs. Maybe in Veteran they are a little less accurate, but in my experience they rarely miss, particularly against a static target. I certainly had no such luck.

Of course, once they'd given away their positions I was able to hold off a little until I'd blitzed them with artillery.

Paper Tiger, that is truly devious. You will suffer in the next life for that.

Frustrating to have to start again after doing so well, in real terms. But it makes perfect sense for the enemy to retake a crucial location by stealth and hence command the road again to disrupt supplies/reinforcements etc.

As The Who famously sang: 'Won't get fooled again!'

[Elmar Bijlsma]

*spoiler*

*spoiler*

What struck me with the 1st mission is that just about every squad is lying in ambush in some backroom, only targetable if you walk right in. While this is fun once or twice, there was entirely too much to feel realistic. Apart from the ATGMs I had the run of the battlefield (town excluded) and could go pretty much everywhere unhindered looking for the ATGMs. ATGM squads almost unsupported meant that once discovered they were easily dealt with, the enemy infantry protecting little more then the room they themselves were in. With ATGMs gone every room without a view was levelled by my armour. Recce, illiminate, bombard, no gunbattles or shootouts at all. Very dull and didn't feel realistic.

Please get some interlocking fields of fire and add a few machineguns as some sign the enemy wants you to stay out of their turf, this setup felt really gamey and silly.

Sorry to come down so hard, it's a beautiful map and a fun force mix. There just wasn't all that much for me to do but move chesspieces around.

[Paper Tiger]

Aha, some negative feedback. Please allow me the opportunity to reply to your points sir.

What struck me with the 1st mission is that just about every squad is lying in ambush in some backroom, only targetable if you walk right in.

First, in 4 cases out of 5 this is the TAC AI's choice of placement and not mine although it sounds like you got MINE. I give the AI a fair amount of freedom in its set-up to keep ME guessing when I'm playtesting so I can't take all the blame for that.

Second, there's only one building on the whole map that is 'only targetable if you walk right in' and that's the mosque. You don't HAVE to go through the gaps/gates in the walls from the streets and you know this. Anyway, that's what the engineers are there for. And as you say next...

Apart from the ATGMs I had the run of the battlefield (town excluded) and could go pretty much everywhere unhindered looking for the ATGMs.

... once the ATGMs are taken out, you have ALMOST complete freedom to go where you want and this allows you to take out almost every location without a problem except for the mosque. And you simply have to hit it hard with artillery or tank fire to 'open' it up. Neither are in short supply in this mission. The high ground completely dominates the town so it's YOUR decision where to hit and what not to hit. After all, look what you say next...

With ATGMs gone every room without a view was levelled by my armour. Recce, illiminate, bombard, no gunbattles or shootouts at all. Very dull and didn't feel realistic.

Bearing in mind that the mosque is the ONLY non-targetable location you obviously chose to target the easily accessible locations where YOU expected me to deploy my forces, and didn't target the 'less easily accessible' ones where the Special Forces were actually located. How is that a bad set up? I'd be very surprised if a human opponent didn't set his forces up the same way to take advantage of this too.

No gunbattles or shootouts? That's a definite possibility in this mission as you have massively overwhelming firepower. Dull ...? Not for me I'm happy to say but we all have different tastes. Didn't feel realistic? Sometimes, in real life the odds are stacked so high against one side that it's not 'realistic'. For me, I usually relish the opportunity to rampage as retribution for all the (potential) hassle caused by the ATGM teams. Once the ATGM teams are taken out it's effectively GAME OVER for the Red side and that's the way I designed it. I don't want EVERY mission I make to be incredibly difficult. It would have been easy to make it that way by removing two of the T-62 tank platoons from your OB. Then you get shoot-outs and gunbattles. Nah, this one's about the tanks.

Please get some interlocking fields of fire and add a few machineguns as some sign the enemy wants you to stay out of their turf, this setup felt really gamey and silly.

Hmm, you obviously haven't started up the second mission yet. Which brings me to my final point... it's a campaign, not a scenario. There is a much larger design here than you're seeing by playing only one mission (well, maybe not MUCH larger). When you've finished the third one, I'll look forward to hearing your comments.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

... once the ATGMs are taken out, you have ALMOST complete freedom to go where you want and this allows you to take out almost every location without a problem except for the mosque.

No, I had the freedom of the map prior to taking out the ATGMs. The infantry that you had so cunningly concealed were so concealed that they defended nothing and I moved past on foot without getting shot at. Taking out the ATGMs with my infantry is a doddle if the defending infantry don't shoot at you because they are in a too remote a location to get LOS.

Here's how it went down. I lost three men crossing the fields in front of the crossing. This was actually pretty fun as two enemy squads were firing at me from Yellow and Green and a sniper from Red, as I advanced. It took a lot of suppressive fire to get away with only three men lost. The arty helped too. So far so good, very enjoyable. I lost a further man being fired upon from the backroom at Yellow as I occupied Green. I bump in to a squad hiding in a room at Red, losing four further infantry. Wise to your tricks I suppressed the heck out of the backrooms of Road House and assault it. No losses. And that was the battle over with, pretty much.

I combed the hills with my infantry for the ATGMs. Then I moved along the map edge past the Hill Houses with a platoon, took down the ATGMs at the far end while the rest recce towards the town but finding no-one. With the ATGMs at the back gone, I risk moving my armour up the hill, pound the hill houses to dust and then, with my forward BMP not being killed when it sat on the ridge near the last Hill House, I could've lined up all my armour and flattened the entire village from afar. Suitably bored, I decide on a frontal attack instead. :eek:

It's important to point out that from about 1:35 (when I bumped into the hidden squad at Red) till 0:40 (when I launched the attack on the town) I wasn't shot at. (I think an ATGM squad may have gotten a few rounds off, but I'm not sure) And had I wanted to I could probably have finished without getting shot at as well. Had there been some AI infantry/MGs on overwatch I would've found my infantry severely restricted in their movements and I might have had a battle on my hands. At the very least I would've been kept busy.

It's not that it was too easy because as you rightly point out many battles were easy for one side (indeed, rare is the battle where the balance is like the typical CM scenario) but that there was a small skirmish at the crossing that lasted roughly 15 minutes and then there was no real fighting anymore. This despite there still being a force present that could've easily given my forces a bloody nose.

Pity is, when I pressed my assault on the town I was bored and disinterested so what followed can only be described as a Grozny style assault with tanks and APCs driving up to and past the enemy. The tried and tested frontal infantry attacks had equally predictable results. So I ended up with a draw. LOL No second mission for me. I'll be sure to try again someday and hopefully I get a different AI plan.

[Paper Tiger]

Okay, now that's much better. I can learn from that. The main challenge in this mission was to eliminate the ATGM teams without taking too many vehicular losses. It would appear that nobody's having any trouble eliminating the ATGM teams which means that I failed to accomplish what I wanted in this mission. However, since I always found this mission challenging and never boring when I playtested the hell out of it, that just means that my own personal tactics suck. Ah well, that's quite possible and of course it's going to have a major influence on my work.

Have you ever played a mission where the enemy has reinforcements that suddenly show up in LOS of your own forces? Did you enjoy that experience? Those 'cunningly concealed' infantry are actually 'reinforcements'. You found them hiding in their remote location waiting to be activated and they'll fight back if found and attacked. That strikes me as being a better way to 'do' reinforcements than potentially dump them straight into the acton. People complain quite strongly about that sort of thing.

I'm a bit surprised that you didn't have to fight for the hilltop houses. They can be quite tough to overcome, especially if there are still some ATGM teams active. But I don't understand this last part. In spite of being bored and disinterested, you only managed to get a draw. Since you're not forced to make any frontal infantry attacks on the village, AND, as you admit, you have overwhelming firepower at your disposal, how did that happen? I actually enjoy this final part of the mission and in spite of the firepower advantage, it's still not that easy to do with minimal casualties.

Finally, it's a campaign and you don't get any replacement ammo for your artillery. If you blow it all in the first mission to get a nice easy, albeit boring, win, you'll have very little left for the later missions. You might feel like you have too much in the first mission but if you use it all in mission 1, you'll pay for it later. You'll have to play it all the way through to fully appreciate the challenge, not just the first mission.

[Paper Tiger]

I suppose it serves me right for posting my reply too quickly. I missed your bit about pounding the hill houses to dust with your tanks first so that explains why that phase of the operation was so easy for you. I know my tone is a bit defensive but trust me, this has been very helpful feedback and I appreciate it. I'll give some thought to this when I revise this mission for the full-scale campaign.

[handihoc]

****SPOILER*****

Elmar, I have to disagree with you on some of your points.

>>What struck me with the 1st mission is that just about every squad is lying in ambush in some backroom, only targetable if you walk right in.<<

Which, given the force composition and balance, is pretty much how I would have set up against a human player. For the enemy Specials, seeing all that heavy metal rolling towards them, it would've been senseless suicide with very little return to try to fight it out in direct line of fire. At least in the back rooms they can inflict major casualties on infantry trying to enter, and if undetected can cause severe damage to vehicles driving past.

>>Apart from the ATGMs I had the run of the battlefield (town excluded) and could go pretty much everywhere unhindered looking for the ATGMs.<<

That may be so, but those ATGMs were very well placed and certainly caused me a heck of a lot of problems. On pair had to be rooted out with infantry as I had too many friendlies in the near vicinity to risk an artillery bombardment. It was a tense, painstaking process, and I lost several men completing it.

>>Please get some interlocking fields of fire and add a few machineguns as some sign the enemy wants you to stay out of their turf, this setup felt really gamey and silly.<<

MGs would've died the instant they opened fire, blitzed at long distance by the mass of armour facing them.

Not gamey or silly at all. It was a search and eliminate mission, with a relatively small, modestly equipped specialist force trying to delay and inflict as much damage as possible on a much larger and more powerful one (more like US v Syria, I'll admit). Under the circumstances the enemy had little chance of a win, but for the attacker it was a case of 'advance with extreme caution if you don't want to lose half your force'.

When I completed it first time I was, I will admit, a little annoyed at first that, after clearing the village, I found a small unit of special forces had crept in behind me and re-taken the crossroads and road, thus depriving me of a victory. But when I thought about it I realised that was exactly what I would have done against a human player. It would have p***ed my opponent off no end, I have no doubt. And maybe some players, too, would've abandoned the campaign at that point. But it was a legitimate and entirely logical manouevre which, in real world warfare, would have created major disruptions and delays to the advancing force.

In short, I think Paper Tiger is giving us in the main some really well thought out, and very varied missions. Tactics that will work well in one may be unsuitable to another. Enemy forces act pretty intelligently and make me work for a convincing victory. In this one they employed guerilla tactics for the most part, staying well concealed while systematically delaying and hampering my advance. I have no issue with that.

Ah yes, and the artillery. I took note of the briefing, and hence only used two of my arty units as I wanted to preserve them for later battles. Possibly, had I used them up in this mission, I'd have had a much easier win but, as PT cautions, it's likely to cost me dearly later.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Handihoc, your missing the point. What was keeping the AI infantry safe from being pounded by armour was not their location but the ATGM coverage. Their limited field of fire instead prevented them contributing to the defence of the ATGMs. After breaking out at The Crossing and Road House I was able to clear the hills and back ridge from all ATGMs without a shot being fired to oppose me. When that happened my armour was of the leash, unopposed.

[Paper Tiger]

>SIGH< I guess I'm going to have to develop a thicker skin if I'm going to continue with this lark Let met just say that Elmar won't be able to do this with some of the other AI plans as the ATGM teams have ACTIVE fire commands and they'll shoot at infantry as well as tanks. In the plan he played they'd probably got a NORMAL or CAUTIOUS fire order and they so were a bit more conservative with their fire. A single AT-14 hit will take out most of a squad on sight, FAR more effective than a MG team so when that happens that will make him think twice. Since I saw this happen many times during playtesting I never let the infantry get too far from their rides and so never picked up the flaw in this AI plan. I actually tried his tactic a couple of times against the ACTIVE teams and it won't work.

Please consider that a scenario designer has to make some sacrifices when designing missions as he has only 8 AI groups and 16 orders available to him. It sounds like a lot but it ISN'T. Further, I don't have the world's most powerful computer and so performance plays a MAJOR factor in my scenario designs. The more troops and the bigger the maps, the poorer the overall performance especially when the bullets are flying (literally). When I playtest I usually look to economise and not ADD forces. I guess this is one of the occassions when it bit me on the bum. I'll make sure that when I compile the full campaign and give it the dynamic artillery that I've been desperately asking for for so long, this mission will be more than tough enough for everyone.

[handihoc]

Actually, I forgot to mention, but I had the ATGMs open fire on my infantry several times, with extremely painful results. On one occasion (which I've mentioned in a different thread as I thought it was a bug) my engineers were blasting through a wall in the first hill house and got hit by a missile. It was devastating. Every squad was pretty much taken out!

At the time I thought they'd been killed by their own demo blast. It was only after several replays that I discovered it was a missile from a hidden team. By sheer chance it hit them at exactly the same moment that their charges exploded.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Paper Tiger,

Sorry if I offended. I'm a rather blunt person and writing that almost straight after playing that scenario it was probably blunter still. Also, I tend to forget that a compliment on the really good map tends to fall in undeserved obscurity if the rest of the post is several paragraphs expounding on a point of criticism, despite me attaching equal value to both.

I usually enjoy your scenarios very much. I guess it was a case of that particular version of the scenario and my actions came together to do exactly the things that made this flaw cripple that particular run through. All the planets lining up, kinda thing.

Again, you are doing seriously good work, PT. Don't get disheartened because of my big mouth.

[Paper Tiger]

Hey, don't worry about it. Believe it or not, I was actually considering asking you to playtest things for me in the future because I thought that was a good catch.

Anyway, please don't misinterpret this guys but I've temporarily removed both 'Hasrabit' and 'Perdition' from CMMODS until I can rework them to introduce AI artillery. NOT because of this. I have been wanting to do this since BFC made the announcement about the new features. I was feeling a bit despondent that people were still downloading the 'old' version of Hasrabit because they probably won't bother with the new version when it comes out sometime next month. The new versions will be put back up as soon as possible. Apart from enabling dynamic artillery and retexturing some maps, I'm not planning to make any changes to scenario OBs or anything major although I'll probably tweak the AI plan in the 'Road to Amarah' to prevent people from doing this.

[Paper Tiger]

Well, from what I've managed to glean from the posts about AI artillery, I think I might have 'Perdition' version 1.1 ready. Elmar, if you're still reading this thread, you're a beta tester aren't you? I will probably post the 'new' version at CMMODS tomorrow so perhaps you could give it a try out and see if I've implemented the artillery correctly? BTW, you'll be happy to hear that I've tweaked the first mission somewhat to prevent your infantry walk-over.