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Rattler

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Posts posted by Rattler

    Fun Test CPX tonight (SUN) 1700 GMT

    in TacOps 4

    Posted

    Rules and OOBs:

    You have a coy+ of either GM, US or OPFOR, more or less all with same strength, and additionally 3 teleporters (logpacks) + 8 Bombs as teleported arty (you may set range between 50 and 500 mtrs)

    All units may teleport, i.e. magic moved by the players according to following RULES:

    - units to be teleported need to be within same grid square as a teleporter

    - units can only be teleported into a gridsquare with a teleporter present

    - teleporters can teleport at any time over a distance of 2 gridsquares

    - bombs can be teleported anywhere at any time

    Scenario: Custom USMC, Map 109 (dl here: http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/dls/Map109c.zip )

    Objective is the Garrison at app. map center, vic 1105; who has sole possesion at game end of this garrison wins

    Smoke does not defeat thermals, vis 2000/2000

    Lets see how this works out... :->

    Rattler

    0

    Fun Test CPX tonight (SUN) 1700 GMT

    in TacOps 4

    Posted

    A bit like JeffGs yesterdays CPX, but with some differences (for

    testing) and for pure irrealistic fun.

    Plenty of bangs: Different force colors, futuristic teleporting arty,

    FOW *COMPLETELY* turned OFF (i.e. you will see all units all the

    time, spotted or not), race for one objective.

    You may chose one of three types of forces:

    - OPFOR Mech inf

    - GE mech inf

    - USMC mech inf

    All units can teleport (i.e. displace on the map any time) as long as

    they have their teleporter (provided by umpire) intact.

    Any takers?

    Rattler

    0

    Tech AAR crossloading

    in TacOps 4

    Posted

    We had a multiplayer test game (5 players on 2 force colors, 5 total force colors, + umpire) that tested crossloading of PINs and force colors, no netprobs from my side as host (though Alex Ingles got discopnnced a few time due to time out with timeout set to 60 secs but always could rejoin w/o probs)

    We crossloaded PINs (5 PINs) up 1 level (i.e. nothing that had something loaded was loaded elsewhere), we had different PINs loaded into other PIN units, no problems at all as far as I could tell.

    Force crossloading did not work, so in the midlle of the game we even

    changed some PINs force colors (by exporting and deleting original

    units, chaning force color in Excel and improting new force color

    again) and loaded to other PINs, no problems as far as I can tell.

    Only thingy that called my attention is that I have to save the

    changed exported OOB from excel as tab-delimited text, but with .xls

    suffix, else TacOps cannot rcognize the file.

    In summary, with a lot of (admittedly unusual and even strange) umpire inputs and many things that were questionable we had no probs at all.

    I consider the crossloading prob (for 1 level) fixed (which is what we suspected), we will soon hard test 2 level crossloading.

    Rattler

    0

    CPX JAN 20th is a go - STILL, WE COULD USE MORE PLAYERS

    in TacOps 4

    Posted

    Okies, my January CPX is a go...

    We have the minimum players potentially, still: WE COULD NEED STILL MORE !!!...

    CPX will take place JAN 20th, 1600 GMT, and feature a US high tech force vs. a third country low tech one, both around BN size in total (forces per player around a coy+).

    The scenario will be tough, especially on the US side: Small mistakes will result in disaster, flawless execution will result in a major victory, the margin to make the difference is thin... Team play will decide...

    Estimated Scenario time not more than 1 hour, in RL this should guarantee (even with some hickups included) for not more than 4 hours play.

    I will enforce force cohesion and chain of command on both sides, I forsee (in difference to other CPXes with lot of surprises) a training exercise of coherent plan execution that can be repeated almost unlimitedly and hope to mark a milestone for teamplay (famous last words.... :->).

    STARTEX on 20th is 1600 GMT, I expect the whole thing to be over by 2200 GMT latest.

    High adrenaline levels on both sides guaranteed.

    As BLUE needs extensive planning and great force coordination but even newbies can participate, and as RED needs experienced players firstmost, I have taken the liberty to assign teams as follows (players choices included as best as possible):

    BLUE Team:

    - Paul Czsokay, email: tacops@csokay.at

    - Bernard Cousin, email: bcousin@libertysurf.fr

    - Panta, email: panta@netgate.com.uy

    - Alex Ingles (in for an easy job, he claims to be a bit rusty), email: A.Ingles@abertay.ac.uk

    - Jeffrey M. Gilbert (probably; havent heard back yet), email: JeffreyMGilbert@TampaBay.rr.com

    - TimA (probably, he will let us know later this week), email: tim-battlefront@kosmo.com

    RED Team:

    - John Monahan, email: johnfmonahan@hotmail.com

    - Henk Stoffers, email: combatmission@tiscali.nl

    - Peleg Wasserman, email: roman_w@gbrener.org.il

    Teams, please recruit in places you know (both teams could use more players with following constriction: RED needs experienced TacOps players) and choose CO, OPORDS will go out later today.

    Team COs OPORD (and a .tac file on US side) have to be in at TUE, JAN 18, midnight GMT or the CPX is a no-go.

    All teams please include umpire (myself, email: rattler@eventfoto.com) IN ALL EMAIL EXCHANGES, however unimportant they may seem to you.

    Good Luck!

    Rattler

    0

    TT 2001 Final: Replay Files (JAN 6, 2007)

    in TacOps 4

    Posted

    TacOps Tourney 2001, final game, played between Berny Cousin and Matt (Rattler) Ohlmer (myself) on JAN 6th, 2007.

    Here go the first 58 minutes of replay files (17 min lacking but will update once I receive).

    http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/dls/cpx_replays.html (right under my special helos section click on TT2001 Final: Replay Files").

    This shows the part until my starting to move to the center for the final breakthrough (see AAR) and includes the battle in the North.

    Enjoy,

    Rattler

    0

    AAR TT2001 Final Game - Red Player

    in TacOps 4

    Posted

    SCENARIO: 2p-net "Capture The Flag US Tanks" on map 1

    PLAYERS:

    BLUE: Bernard Cousin (FR)

    RED: Matt (Rattler) Ohlmer (DE)

    OBSERVERS: James Furnival, John Monahan, Alex Ingles, Mike, Bono (not

    all present all the time)

    REPLAYS: Not yet ready (waiting for John Monahan to distribute, will

    announce once theyre out)

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    CONTENTS:

    1. Background: TacOps Tourney 2001 recap

    2. Setup and Planning

    3. How it went

    4. Lessons learned

    5. Issues

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    1. BACKGROUND, TT 2001 RECAP

    TT 2001 was a tourney organized by myself (like 1999 and 2003) and

    was set up as a pure fun and pretzel tourney that had not much

    resemblance with any serious military tasks.

    Basically, the layout was that two players with equal 10.000

    lethality value OOBs would race against each other, whoever reached

    opposite map edge first or had penetrated furthest within the given

    time limit was declared winner.

    Tourney started out with 12 players on SEP 1, 2001 and was played in

    KO system by PBM on TacOps version 3: Winners would proceed to next

    round, losers were out. Every map was only to be played once, next

    map and side were chosen by dice randomly by the referee (Wolfgang

    Drotleff).

    Maps that were played out were:

    1) map 9

    2) map 11

    3) map 15

    4) map 100

    5) map 650

    6) map 888 (***

    first round map ***)

    Detailed rules and player roster with OOBs here:

    http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/tourney2001/tt2001rules.html

    http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/tourney2001/oobs.html

    Some screenshots of some games final positions also have made it

    through the years, see here (there was no replay feature present in

    TacOps v3, so we used those):

    http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/tourney2001/round2screenshots/index.htm

    After round three and one player having dropped out only two players

    were left standing, Bernard Cousin from France and myself (Rattler)

    from Germany.

    While scenario and map for the final and decisive game were clear

    (Map 15, Bernie BLUE, myself RED; I still have the setup present

    together with v3.1.1 on my machine) we somehow never could agree on a

    date to play the final game out and with the apparation of v4 guess

    had lost too much interest in playing v3 games, so the years went by

    and the tourney was never decided (berny had offered a few times over

    the years to concede the tourney win to me, but as organizer I could

    not accept that and hoped that one day we would still play it out).

    Now, yesterday JAN 5th, we both coincided in meeting on IRC for a

    netgame I had proposed and thought it worthwile to slug it out and

    decide the tourney once and for all.

    To keep things more or less according to the original tourney rules

    we decided on a standard TacOps delivered "Capture the flag US TANKS"

    game on map1, as it would also see the opponents racing towards each

    other with the idea of crossing the map and winner could be evaluated

    according to the tourney rules. Of cause, the OOBs were not the ones

    we had chosen but the scenario quite balanced, so Bernnie threw a

    coin to decide his side and cought BLUE, myself was left with RED.

    We decided on 5 min for setup and then to play it out in 1 min auto

    turns with me hosting.

    2. SETUP and PLANNING

    5 min setup is not much, so I had to hurry. I split my forces into 4 parts:

    - Flag on EAST map edge behind the town, defended by a coy of tanks

    - 1 BN- taking south route, split in platoons and spaced around 150 mtrs

    - 2 BNs- taking north route, split in platoons and spaced around 150 mtrs

    - 1 coy of each BN as mobile reserves vic 1203 (turned out to be only

    around 2 coys actually, as I took the forces platoonwise from the

    other BNs)

    My initial idea was to race with strong forces in the north to deny

    enemy the woods vic 0705 as OP so that I could move unobserved in the

    center, while securing the ridge vic 0701 defensively with the BN-.

    Once I would have reached my strategic goal of denying the eastern

    wood edge in the north (0705) by bringing forces within 1000 mtrs to

    it I would reorganize according to game turnout and recon results and

    attempt a decisive crossing of the valley into enemy half of map.

    RED in this scenario is well equipped with arty, so I planned to

    provoke fires by moving single low value vehicles and recon air and

    use my arty to decimate enemy in key locations.

    120 minutes is a long time, so I gave myself 90 minutes for the prep,

    and then 30 minutes rush to enemy flag.

    3. HOW IT WENT

    The game overall was bugged by a lot of tech mishaps:

    Bernie as well as some of the observers got dropped off several times

    and regularily every 5 turns which took a long time to repair as as

    Mac user I have to restart the whole machine to establish net

    connection after a net dropout in 2-players host mode. You cannot

    situpdate a joining player in 2-p net mode nor adjust default 15 secs

    orders exchange delay times, so there was no way around this until

    after turn 29 John Monahan took over the game to host us in

    multiplayer to facilitate the frequent restarts (Bernie was fine then

    for a while with the new 45 secs delay time)

    Towards game middle Bernie then ran into a serious TacOps bug that

    crashed his game every tie he wanted to address the arty indirect

    fire window.

    Apart from this the game was a lot of fun:

    In turn 1 enemy flag was revealed to be at the bottom of the west map

    edge in the corner.

    Forces advanced unopposed until turn 4. In turn 5 my air recon came

    in on enemy, I saw he had split equally into a BN+ north and a BN+

    south, as I could account for all units of his OOB this meant flag

    was undefended. It also revealed he had not split up his units which

    I hoed with the 1 min auto turns would give me some advantage in

    distribution. also, I got some 5 tanks in the 2nd airstrike, nice

    game start...

    At this turn, expecting his flyboys, I had stopped my whole

    formations and set ranges to 400 to not give too much away to his

    recon efforts, but enemy air didnt turn up until later. This turned

    out to cost me somewhat as my forces were delayed by 600 mtrs and

    came to the central valley too late to take key positions unopposed.

    In turn 7 enemy air appeared in the south and took out my lead BTR

    but without decisive recon information to enemy as my units were well

    spread in the line formation march.

    In turn 9 I botched, my units in the south had SOPs to stop when

    spotting enemy and I had forgotten to give moving orders again, so

    they were stalled all in a bunch around 2 k behind the ridge. Any

    enemy air strike in this moment would have wrecked havoc and, had he

    known, enemy could have taken the crucial ridge right then (he had

    only 500 mtrs travel to it according to my calculations and nothing

    that could prevent him as I had nothing on high ground).

    I confirmed my suspicions in turn 10 with a recon air south and

    corrected imidiately, luckily this recon revealed that bernie was

    going to set out defensive in the south and not take the hill with

    major forces. This finding and first contact in the north gave me a

    first clue to his game plan which seemed to be more defensive than I

    had thought (and hoped for: defender has a high advantage as you run

    your forces into prepared positions and cannot advance w/o lots of

    casualities).

    Turn 11 saw a lot of enemy air strikes, but none without too much

    effect, and when nothing much happened in the southern hills in turn

    12 I got more confident that my mistake had gone unobserved and

    unexploited.

    I decided to prepare the strategically decisive assault on the

    northern woods and moved my units into position over the next turns.

    Turn 15 had my southern units in their defensive positions (replays

    show he would still have slaughtered me had he tried to advance, but

    now it would have cost him and my reserves probably would have

    finished off any assault direction flag). I shelled the northern

    woods with smoke to make it difficult for enemy vehicles firing to

    retreat into saftey before they caught return fire (moving in smoke =

    half speed, supressed = again half speed). Again, in the heat of

    battle I botched, my tanks were still set to 400 mtrs range and

    several times did not engage targets until I realized and corrected.

    In turn 16 I draw some blood in the south and wiped a tank Pln, in

    hindsight probably made Bernie go more defensive there instead of

    slaughtering me and having revealed by air recon that I had no

    significant forces to stop him as he never moved to exploit this

    finding.

    I took me up to turn 25 to position my forces for the assault in the

    north; I had pulled some rear units into positions where they could

    rush for the woods on command, prepped 4 airstrikes both for recon

    and supression turn 27 and had all arty ready for turn 28.

    The plan worked well: both to airstrikes, return fires and arty more

    than a coy of enemy vehicles fell in the north and I could see they

    retreated into the tree lines, so I smoke the whole thing to slow

    them in coming back. This time my units used to advance into better

    firing ranges, still, due to flanking shots from the town valley I

    also lost around 2 coys until in turn 35 had the woods scecured by

    positioning around a coy of tanks within 1000 mtrs to it (this would

    make sure enemy could not go to the tree line anymore without coming

    under surprise fire, bernie tried two times, lost the units in

    question and then thought better of it and never appeared there

    anymore: Strategical goal reached...:-> ).

    (Shortly before John Monahan had taking over hosting and ran the game

    for us, so we had a few flawless rounds until about turn 60).

    Once this assured I focused on the south and tried to prepare for an

    enemy breakthrough there by wearing him down: The next 25 turns saw

    me moving the reserve BN into overwatch positions to the hill crest

    woods and provoking enemy fires with inf scouts that I ferried around

    and had mount the crest. Once enemy revealed units they would come

    under arty and return fire from me and slowly but surely got weaker

    and retreated into the woods.

    Once I was convinced that Bernie had bitten on the diversion in the

    south I made my final plan: I would retreat and concentrate all my

    southern units and the reserves (incl the flag defenders) vic 0903

    under smoke cover on northern woods (this would secure Bernie could

    not spot my movements as I could see there were no vehicles in the

    treelines due to my first goal reached). Once there, after careful

    air recon, arty prepping and provoking fires with my BTRs from north

    and center I would cross into the valley at 075035 around 0825 and

    make it with a few units to either high ground or direction south end

    of the northern woods to outrun him to the undefended flag. I could

    mass around 45 tanks and estimated defenders to be too weak and

    distributed to prevent me from doing so.

    This was when the sh.t hit the fan: Bernies TacOps crashed various

    times fatally (he was basically left without being able to control

    his arty as opening arty window by whatever method crashed his

    TacOps), and when we could not get the game going again by 0815 we

    started a discussion on whether to continue next day.

    By then we had played 6 hours RL in a tough and fast paced game and

    it was 0200 in the morning for both of us.

    Probably because of all of those factors together Bernie said he had

    not enough forces to win the game (he obviously had not realized my

    south was completely undefended after my retreat) and conceded the

    win to me.

    I accepted and FOW was turned off for both of us, showing that it

    probably would not have been so easy for me to cross as I had

    thought, all would have depended on whether berny would have realized

    my idea as when we stopped I still needed around 9 min 20 secs

    preparation before attempting to cross, some rear units were still on

    the way to their AAs. OTOH my arty was prepared and ready (I had

    conserved salvos and all howitzers were at 100% ammo), it was 46

    tanks versus 25 (Bernie had 56, but those were not in position to

    defend a crossing at the time we stopped), and I am convinced I could

    have pulled it off.

    Once through there would have nothing been there to stop me to race

    to his flag, and even a counterattack (rushing to mine) would not

    have made it in time as his travel time was 6 min longer than mine.

    Overall an exciting game, maybe I won with a bit of luck considering

    the mistakes I had made (had Bernie played more aggressive in the

    south he would have made it much harder for me if not slaughtered me).

    4. LESSONS LEARNED

    - net games are fun

    - tech mishaps reduce the fun to a point where only veterans will

    endure, I am sure any newbies would have quit much earlier and never

    have tried another one after what happened to us

    - Capture the Flag is a fun scenario allright, like announced in the

    "about the scenario", if youre into beer+pretzels give it a try once.

    - arty wins... :->

    5. ISSUES

    Some things to think about:

    - Major should somehow make it possible to adjust orders exchange

    delay time from the default 15 secs to longer times also in 2p-net

    mode as it already is possible in multiplayer mode. The constant

    dropping off of bernie and alex due to expired orders exchange time

    was a PITA

    - Once a player dropped off I would really like to see a joining via

    situpdate from the host in 1p-net games (as is possible in

    multiplayer), as it takes out the nerve costing delays of restarting

    (Mac) the machine and having the players go one turn back to the last

    autosave...

    Overall, great game and great fun after all, I would have loved to

    see how the outcome had been had we played it out but am content with

    winning,.. :->

    Thanks to John for his patience and willingness to host, to the

    observers for sticking with us despite the mishaps, and of cause to

    Bernie who proved to be a worthy opponent and tourney finalist in all

    aspects. Thanks again!

    Rattler

    0

    AAR impromptu 1-1 netgames JAN 22th

    in TacOps 4

    Posted

    I had two quick impromptu netgames with one Mike who got the notice of one of the forums and wanted to give net game a try.

    We played team Hall twice, I was red both times. We had three observers (Mr Mox, John Monahan and Frederik Scheuer) and all went well techwise.

    First one I lost rapidly (had the enemy misspotted to have all his force in the south and moved tanks right into fire) with only one blue tank lost once all mine were gone in minute 8. Stupid me...

    Revanche game saw me re-inforced with the optional units BTR platoon, got Blue decisively about minute 16, he hadnt crossed half map. A bit of luck was involved in this later one as I got a free airstrike which I used for recon in the north, in general I can say mike moved too slow, even if I hadnt decimated him he wouldnt have made it through smoke within time.

    Nice games, I hopw we have a new gentleman onboard!

    During the next days I will offer more impromptu netgames on short notice, nice way to pass some hours in the cold winter here, so stand by... :->

    Rattler

    0

    CPX JAN 27th, Alternative Date?

    in TacOps 4

    Posted

    So far some six people have shown interest but at first glance it looks there might be a schedule problem for some of you guys:

    Paul Czsokay

    Ralf Pichocki

    Jeff Gilbert

    John Monahan (REDFOR)

    Panta

    Henk Stoffers

    I can run the CPX a week earlier as well (JAN 20th), but this would mean we would have to have the teams together by JAN 7th (9 players optimally, 7 minimum). As we have 6 ppl interested potentially this sounds plausible, so pls you guys let me know ASAP whether that would work better for you.

    Anybody else interested in either of the two dates?

    Rattler

    ------------- refers to the JAN 27 CPX thread below: ----------------------

    If we find enough players until JAN 13th I would love to run a CPX on JAN 27th.

    It features a US high tech force vs. a third country low tech one,

    both around BN size in total (forces per player around a coy+).

    The scenario will be tough, especially on the US side: Small mistakes

    will result in disaster, flawless execution will result in a major

    victory, the margin to make the dfference is thin...

    US should optimally have 5 players, but 4 can do. Extensive planning

    and excellent force coordination are the key here, so the CO should

    be fairly experienced and the players commited (newbie players find

    their slots w/o problems as long as theyre willing to follow the

    planning). Extensive INTEL provided.

    REDFOR should optimally have 4 players, but 3 can do. Not more than

    basic planning required (but a solid plan helps), the players,

    though, should have some experience. Fair amount of INTEL provided.

    Estimated Scenario time not more than 1 hour, in RL this should

    guarantee (even with some hickups included) for not more than 4 hours

    play.

    I will enforce force cohesion and chain of command on both sides, I

    forsee (in difference to other CPXes) a training exercise of plan

    execution that can be repeated almost unlimitedly and hope to mark a

    milestone for teamplay (big last words.... :->).

    A proposed start time on 27th would be 1600 GMT, I expect the whole

    thing to be over by 2100 GMT latest.

    High adrenaline levels on both sides guaranteed.

    Any takers?

    Rattler

    0
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