Rattler

oh, forgot a possible solution: Limit the max delay time to something sensible like an hour or so, this, while punishing the planner for his mistake, makes it playable without umpire input.

while this may be true in some cases (not ina all as seen in the replay files), the delays caused by this mistake just are out of scope for tactical scenarios: 700 hours I think was the longest delay reported by a unit (others reported 100 and 170 respectively), and I think even a whole BN (and we never had this amount on a bridge) should have made a river crossing by then under worst circumstances

This is the RED S2 and RED Arty Commander AAR for the VORTEX CPX, run by Jeff Gilbert DEC 16th, 2006. It will be fairly detailed and long as we have had newbies on the team as well as on the list recently and as this CPX was a great example for how to work the details might help. Scenario: Cuban BDE Intrusion into South Africa on Map 783 (30x6km; dl at http://www.tacopshq.com/Maproom/index.html#anchor4836993 ), if you only want to take a look at http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/aars/pages/cuba_map_overlay.html Replay files: http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/dls/cpx_replays.html (2nd below my special section) BLUE (SADF) team: Frederik Scheuer (DE?) Paul Czsokay (AT) RED (Cuba) team: John F. Monahan (US), CO + Reserve BN Matt "Rattler" Ohlmer (DE), S2+Arty Henk Stoffers (NL), YELLOW Axis BN Dennis Huff (?), BLUE Axis BN Tim A (?), RED Axis BN George (?), TANKS BN Bernard Cousin (FR), Planning Aide and much missed in actual game Ken (?), dropped due to taking a suicide pill after a DGI visit :-> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS: 1. Planning 2. How it Went 3, Lessons Learned 4. Stuff for Discussion with respect to the TacOps engine 5. Personal remarks 1. PLANNING I came in a bit late into the team, but nevertheless we had 5 weeks planning left before STARTEX. CO was already decided, and was given the job of S2 Staff Officer. The material I received was a bit desorganized and ambiguous, so my first job was to parse all what we had got and pester High Command with some clarification requests that were eventually answered. What we had on our hands was to penetrate with a Cuban BDE ( 2 BTR60 BNs, 1 BMP1 BN, 1 M72 BN) into SouthAfrican territory from EAST to WEST over various rivers (that could be bridged and forded at some places where the rest was not crossable due to impassible terrain) to a depth of around 27 km within 3 hours. We had some INTEL about enemy force composition courtesy to our Mozambiquian Brothers (basically we were facing a BN+ in the rear of the map, a hastily composed militia type force in the middle and some border posts close to our Assembly Areas), and Bernie Cousin had molded those into some on-map potential OOBs. We knew that visibility at STARTEX was to be 1200 mtrs only, and that only BLUE had limited thermal sights. Furthermore both arty and vehicle smoke would defeat any thermals. We had a lot of arty that was supposed to be supplied by log packs, so one of my first jobs after we knew our setout forces was to calc how long we could sustain fires with different mission and tubes combinations. As a result we realized that the 122MRL rockets we were given were quite useless while consuming lots of ammo, and that only by leaving this one out of our plans we could sustain fires (initially we had planned to use mainly smoke) over a large part of the three hour scenario (for anybody interested on how I calculated this,see: http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/aars/pages/121606_arty_analysis.html ) Next job almost equally important was to provide a terrain analysis (never managed to finish that and Bernie contributed all essentials in this respect so this moved to backburner), an enemy OOB threat analysis ( http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/aars/pages/121606_enemy_oob.html ), and both enemy and friendly team commander profiles (censored) which I threw out as fast as possible despite heavy spousal unit CB fires at the time consumption... :-> Another thingy we were worried about initially was the fact that umpire wanted to run the CPX with the "Firing Units Always Spotted" preference turned ON and that enemy could simply by disabling scrolling spot our arty and send out airstrikes after them, which in turn meant we would have to be on the move all the time with the majority of our assetts. About half of our team was quite participative in this planning stage with lots of comments and ideas crossed, but from Ken (later dropped), Tim, Dennis and George we heard nothing (Tim and Dennis got more active later as game day got closer). SIDENOTE from soapbox and the heart: This is an important issue, I was quite frustrated about not hearing anything from so many team members until game day, you dont know where you stand (and it had a lot of influx on the actual game as I will comment on later), many of the actual maneuver commanders didnt participate at all in dry runs and only a few in planning to a certain stage, this attitude resulting in the majority of our hickups during game. In general over 10 years CPXing I have realized that for some reason the more time for planning is availiable the less participative ppl become, probably because they think "Bah, there is still sooooo much time left, I will catch up later...." MY ADVICE TO UMPIRES: 1. Facilitate decision for players whether to participate and on which side by advising on the degree of planning involved, e.g. SKETCHY, DETAILED or EXTENSIVE, so that players can make up their mind whether they will be able to cope. 2. Dont give more than 2 weeks for planning, the effect will be surprising as you are to get better results due to the time pressure. MY ADVICE TO PLAYERS: SPEAK UP about what you expect and what you can contribute, drop put if you see you cannot handle what is thrown at your team. CPXes are a team effort and by joining you assume some degree of responsibilty in making this an enjoyable event for everybody. In case of asymetrical missions or attackers usually heavy planning is involved, and if you are too lazy too get organized or even read your emails for a week or so it will be hard for you to follow and stay in the picture just by the sheer load of information dropping onto you that the others already have evolutioned into understanding. Not acknowledging receipt of OPORDS, OOBs or direct requests within reasonable time (36 hours) is treason to your team members because it introduces a lot of friction, even more so if/when you dont have a clue of what the team effort is about on STARTEX. MY ADVICE TO COs: If a player starts out or becomes irresponsive and is not contributing or reacting to acknowledgement requests, drop him (as Rikki told me once its more diplomatical to move him "to reserve" :-> ). You spoil your own teams planning effort and the actual game fun if you find yourself with players that are not willing or able to implement commanders intent on game day, better to run with a few dedicated than with a bunch of lazies. END SIDENOTE, stepping off soapbox. Our CO had a plan ready: We would concentrate forces on a two axis advance and smash right through the enemy under smoke cover, wherever possible bypassing anything we would find for sake of speed. This formed into an initial OPPLAN (see our map overlay at http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/aars/pages/cuba_map_overlay.html): 2. MISSION: We will attack westward into the Transvaal at dawn from Beit Bridge, Mozambique into South Africa along Highway N1 heading toward Pretoria to destroy SADF forces and create a bridgehead across the far western river. 3. Commanders Intent: Advance on two axis ( YELLOW and BLUE) to the west with one Combined Arms battalion in each column. Lead Battalions will establish Route Opening Detachments (ROD), one for each axis of advance. ROD to consist of Reconnaissance, Engineer and Mounted (BTR) Infantry assets. Helicopter to drop FOs and ATGM teams squads as they recon. Helicopter will be used for reconnaissance, not fire support. They will fire in self defense only. Columns will not delay to wait for tanks. Advance at the fastest possible rate until we secure a bridgehead over the river vicinity Wambad. and we decided to run a first test game where our CO would host and run BLUE and Bernie, Henk and myself would run the BNs to test our initial plan. We discussed whether to centralize arty under one command (myself) but on COs insistance left the mortars with the BNs in direct fire support for the first test game. This first test turned out to be a disaster from our Cuban POV: We got congested on our advance on only two axis, stuck in minefields or on bridges, got hammered by arty and took way too long to even cross the first river. Arty wasnt responsive enough. As a result, the TF composition was changed, the BNs broken up and recombined and the plan for an airmobile part of ops developed. In one more dryrun we proved the idea valid while still needing a few refinements and our CO came up with the FINAL OPORD. I post it here in full length as its a great example of what you expect from a team CO in a CPX: Cuban 1st Tactical Brigade OPORD 1-06 1. SITUATION: The war between South Africa and Namibia has ground to a halt only 10 kilometers south of Windhoek as massive Cuban reinforcements take over the fight for the overmatched Namibian Army. The SADF has committed the bulk of its army in Namibia fighting the Cubans or scattered throughout South Africa quelling internal unrest. This has left South Africa's Northern and North-Eastern frontiers almost bare allowing our Cuban High Command to secretly move three brigades to take advantage of this opening. a. Enemy Forces. Overview. The SADF border defense in this sector is under the command of the 31st Veldt Commando Battalion headquartered in Wambad vicinity 225399. Despite its auspicious name, the 31st Veldt Cdo is a reserve formation of second class troops and equipment. The battalion's main supply depot is located in a wooded area North of a small town vic 202419 and is guarded by a platoon of light infantry and light AAA. There are two other minor supply depots near Neboomspruit and Thorndale. Our operatives are still attempting to locate them. Your avenue of attack only contains the 2nd Company, 31st Veldt Cdo, a motorized-infantry unit (truck & LUV borne) headquartered in Thorndale vicinity 394400. The company has three infantry platoons, a weapons platoon of light mortar and minimal AAA. Only one infantry platoon mans the border checkpoints at a time and rotates out weekly. b. Border Forces. Approximately a reinforced platoon dismounted ground troops of reserve quality only armed with small arms and a few light to medium machine guns and a scattering of infantry anti-tank rockets. There are three (3) identified border outposts posts and are located at 453396, 455391 and 444412. Additional border strong-points are believed to be under construction but no further information is available at this time. Each post has one or two infantry teams with their trucks/LUVs within 500 meters. There are unconfirmed reports that the SADF has been deploying mixed minefields near the border. c. Crossing Points. (1) Bridges. All bridges in this sector are fairly weak with no more than 70t max load. It is not believed any bridges within 15 km of the boarder has been set for demolition. (2) Fords/Crossings. Although mostly shallow, the identified ford crossings would require vehicles that are amphibious. These fords could will provide excellent bridging locations for alternate crossing locations for your heavier vehicles. (3) The SADF has limited bridge destruction capability. There are mines but not within 300 meters of the border. 2. MISSION: We will attack westward into the Transvaal at dawn from Beit Bridge, Mozambique into South Africa along Highway N1 heading toward Pretoria to destroy SADF forces and create a bridgehead across the far western river. SETUP: We will deploy east of the far east river in covered positions. Task Organization: Cuban 1st Tactical Brigade: 1 x Bde HQ (PIN 21) Assembly Area grid 4739 First Combined Arms Battalion (Call sign YELLOW) COMMANDER Henk (PIN 22)- Axis YELLOW. 2 BTR Company, 1 BMP Company, two engineer squads in BTRs, one MTK2 Mine clearing vehicle, 1 reconnaissance Platoon, 1 BMP Battalion support Company(-) 1 AT Platoon, two Truck Cargo _ M ton, 1 infantry command and observation post. Assembly Area east GRID 4737 Second Combined Arms Battalion (Call sign BLUE) COMMANDER Dennis (PIN 23)- Axis BLUE. 2 BTR Company, 1 BMP Company, two engineer squads in BTRs, one MTK2 Mine clearing vehicle, 1 reconnaissance Platoon, two Truck Cargo _ M ton, 1 BTR Battalion support Company(-), 1 AT Platoon, 1 infantry command and observation post. Assembly Area east of OBJ C Third Combined Arms Battalion (Call sign RED) COMMANDER TimA (PIN 24)- Axis RED 1 BTR Company, 1 BMP Company, two engineer squads in BTRs, one MTK2 Mine clearing vehicle,1 reconnaissance Platoon, two Truck Cargo _ M ton, 1 BTR Battalion support Company, 1 AT Platoon, 1 infantry command and observation post, Assembly Area east of OBJ A Tank Battalion (Call sign Tank) , COmmander George (PIN 25) three tank Companies, one engineer squad in BTRs, two MCV IMR2M Obstacle clearing vehicle, four empty BTRs, four VLB MTU72 AVLB Bridging vehicles one infantry command and observation post Assembly Area GRID 4739. Reserve Battalion (Call sign Reserve) COMMANDER REDCO (PIN 21)- Axis BLUE 1 BTR Companies, one Engineer PLT, 4 FOs, 1 Anti aircraft Battery, four VLB MTU72 AVLB Bridging vehicles. 5 helicopters. Assembly Area GRID 4839 Artillery Battalion (Call sign ARTY) COMMANDER RATTLER (PIN 26)- All Airstrikes, 1 122 self propelled Battalion, 1 122 MRL Battery, 1 220 MRL Battery 3 Mortar Companies, one truck Battalion with logpacks, four VLB MTU72 AVLB Bridging vehicles. Assembly Area vicinity GRID 4738 Commanders Intent: Advance on three axis (YELLOW, RED and BLUE) to the west with one Combined Arms battalion in each column. Lead Battalions will lead with Recon and BTR units. Airmobile Assault at 07:00 on IRIS by Reserve battalion. Hinds will be used primarily for reconnaissance, not fire support. Columns will not delay to wait for tanks. Advance at the fastest possible rate until we secure a bridgehead over the river vicinity Wambad. SPEED IS OF THE ESSENCE. Do not stop to clear town or other defended points except OBJ C. Use little smoke, it blocks our vastly superior firepower. I anticipate a decisive battle with the enemy reserve between phase line RED and phase line YELLOW. It may be mobile or a river defense. Counter battery efforts are my single highest priority. I will reinforce success!!! Not failure. Execution: The three Combined Arms Battalions will advance along their respective axis at maximum speed. Swim across as needed, do not wait to throw bridges. Axis YELLOW is the main effort and will receive priority of support. Reserve Battalion will follow on Axis Blue, Artillery on Axis Yellow. Bypass dismounted infantry after destroying their vehicles. DO NOT STOP TO ENGAGE DISMOUNTED INFANTRY except at OBJ C, BYPASS THEM. Avoid engaging infantry at ranges under 700m (Eryx range 600M). Reserve Battalion will conduct a Company sized airmobile assault Vicinity OBJ IRIS starting 0700. All Battalions will detach 2 ATGM teams to the reserve BATTALION, vicinity GRID 4839 (done in OOB). Artillery will fire heavy rockets on SADF artillery location at 07:00 (done by umpire). Artillery will fire heavy prep on OBJ C at 07:00. Specific instructions: Bridges will be recovered as the last vehicle crosses. Bridges will normally need to be deployed in pairs to fill the 200 meter rivers. Bypass dismounted SADF infantry whenever possible. Try to stay 800 meters away from possible enemy positions (ERYX range 600 Meters). Maximize combined Arms overwatch. Overwhelm the piecemeal enemy with fire, each Combined Arms battalion is equivalent to his entire reserve. Tank Battalion will pick up infantry with tanks as we lose armored personnel carriers. Reserve company BTRs are allocated to all Battalions. Deploy into platoons before river crossing. Cross bridges with only one platoon per turn. Combined Arms battalions keep type companies together as possible. Push hard, "Even a victorious army has casualties". Signal - Channels #tacopsred, All Commanders will set their nickname to their Call sign. Report passing phase lines and capturing objectives. Issues: How many players will we have? - If 7 then 1 BRIGADE Commander, 3 Combined Arms Battalion Commander, 1 artillery battalion Commander, 1 S-2, 1 Reserve Battalion Commander. - If 6 then no S-2. Artillery officer assumes S-2 duties) - If 5 then no Reserve Battalion Commander. Brigade Commander assumes Reserve Battalion Commander duties. With the plans and the jobs decided (Bernie had let us know that he was not availiable on game day) CO handed out the OOBs to the players so that everybody could split them down and deploy in his AA, but apart from Dennis nobody did so within 48 hours (Tim at least let us know he had no time but the others didnt even ack receipt). CO had ordered me to do the work as a backup in the background, so when the time was up we had them ready. With permission from CO I requested umpire to accept a pre-setup .tac file from us on the reason that with such a large force and the problems at crossing points we would not lose too much time at STARTEX for everyone to give orders and set target priorities (BTRs targeting vehicles instead of inf, ATGMs targeting tanks) which would have been impossible to do with exported OOBs (export would also have set our log packs to zero again to be filled up manually by ump before STARTEX). Permission was granted so I set to work it out and after a few tries and uncounted hours had a setup ready that would not have us clog up in the initial river crossings and guarantee a smooth CPX start even if ppl came in late. Once having this out the only things to finish were the .names file for the map (for OPSEC reasons and to faciliate inter-team comms and calls for fires we had assigned 170 BPs all over the map, basically one in each square), finish our final overlay and pack a briefing package for eventual reserves that would have to get to speed fastest, then we were set to go. 2. HOW IT WENT At STARTEX most everybody was present except Henk who had announced he would arrive late, so CO took Axis YELLOW forces. I had a checklist prepared on final issues and reminders which I posted to a separate IRC channel for everybody to read and soon we were underway. First, from a tech POV this was smooth as can be, great job umpire! Unlike others I have seen other CPXes run smoothly as well (incl some of mine), but this one was nearly perfect and we were instantly submerged in a strainous 1 min turn exchange that I think ran at a 1:3 relation to RL incl all pauses, one of the best ratios I have ever seen. Initially things went as planned: We crossed in the center and south and had the known enemy forces under control there rapidly, but our first round Rockets on enemy arty failed in turn 1 as it had been set with accuracy zero. I could compensate a bit with my own 220 rockets 2 minutes later and a rec on airstrike but then botched it in turn 7 when I had forgotten to correct the targets for our 3 follow up airstrikes that went for the logpacks instead for the battery, still it was quite successful as we took out 4 of the 6 tubes. After about turn 10 I realized that we were saving ammo in a much bigger way than I had anticipated and so could use the Rockets again after resupplying them, this time targeting the 2nd battery at around minute 25, another success in combination with some airstrikes. As I had all hands full as arty commander to coordinate fires and get my units on the move to follow our advance I cannot comment on the overall aspects of the game as I only focused on my stuff mainly, but apart from that we followed the plan successfully basically I still recall some hickups of interest: - At STARTEX umpire granted us some bridges in the north which was counterproductive in a way that neither Commander RED (northern) Axis nor I as S2 had anticipated: The units had initital orders to swim the ford in our .tac file (which took them 7 minutes in our tests), but as they now found the bridges in the way, arriving all more or less at the same time, they got stuck and it was not until minute 30 that umpire magic-moved them, so we basically lost our thrust coordination between axis as they were 20 minutes lagging behind our other forces. - TANKS commander had not understood that we needed to bridge the fords below BLUE (center) axis in two lanes and that his bridgelayers were required for that, didnt happen until ENDEX despite alerting him various times to the fact. - BLUE axis commander got stuck in a minefield and allowed the better part of 2 coys bunching up there and got hammered, also he - contrary to commanders intent that was to bypass where possible - later engaged in a town fight in HOTEL and cleared it out losing units big time. - CO was overwhelmed with running his air assaults plus the YELLOW axis forces and so got way stretched out leaving the recon teams behind that could have spotted way ahead the ambushes that YELLOW later ran into. Also he didnt have time to clear the minefields at ford E on his axis (2nd river) which lead to arty getting stuck down there later when I attempted to close in on the lead units with the low range mortars. - Myself had big problems getting my supply train to follow once over the first river: Because of the fact that my focus lay in the front where the fires fell 10 km away form my actual units I didnt realize until too late that I got stuck several times on minefields or bridges and had to get magic moved as units wouldnt accept orders anymore. Partially this is due to an umpires mistake who set the minefields basically to invisible which had the effect that we couldnt see them despite being on top of them and had no clue why our units wouldnt move until maybe two or three turns later when they suddenly appeared on the screen (this happened various time and probably also was the reason for BLUEs mishap) 2nd, as arty commander your view is far away from your units and you only control them every 5 turns or so to see how they follow and to correct orders, and usually in the heat of battle it might take two times this to realize they dont move by which time of cause the situation has developed in something unsolvable by player (units report 170 hours e.g. to leave a bridge) after getting stuck e.g. on bridges for reasons I still dont understand: My mortar or support platoons always had 3 minutes spacing advancing to bridges, still they would clog up within the 10 or 12 minutes I needed to realize something was wrong. Also the bridgelayers didnt work as anticipated, when I had to bridge ford E (300 mtrs) there was no way to get the third bridge layer off the bridge and all my units couldnt cross for 30 minutes. Towards the end of game this really had me go mad and frustrated to the point that I was about to throw it, as it was simply not possible anymore to provide arty coverage for the front or to resupply my tubes (all the magic moving eventually disrupted all my supply train organization and I could not find the supply depots anymore in the 1 minute turns and 10 km behind the front, and when I finally found them empty ones had mixed with full ones and there was no way to tell without clicking at all of them). I sincerely apologize for my acid remarks during this period to my teammates, I sincerely was at the point of losing it (which resulted in umpire reporting to the other side that "RED becomes unglued" as I could see from the transcripts). Luckily this only took about 7 game minutes only or so and towards game end we had caught track again of our plan and opted for speed in smoke tunnels which would have allowed us to finish the job rapidly with the decimated enemy as ammo was there plenty to smoke him until ENDEX. Overall a fascinating and interresting game that had me fully consumed and was great tun, we figured in hindsight that with all the hickups we were lucky to have won. 3. LESSONS LEARNED - good planning and a pre-setup .tac file help a lot for a smooth CPX. Just imagining the time it would have cost us to give the orders before STARTEX makes my skin crawl, we would have got stuck all the way right from start - during planning phase insist on players acknowledging that they have read and understood the plan, as basic and gross mistakes are hard to correct while the battle unfolds. In our case I think that not every player was at the hight of things at STARTEX. - a final checklist helps, the idea to post one to a separate IRC channel I think was a good one - BDE or REG+ size is too big to run as attacker with only 5 players. E.g. we never used our many engineer assetts to clear mines, neither for the leading nor for the following units, and we paid a big prize for that during the clog-ups and massacres that resulted from them. Had Bernie been present we should have separated all engineer assets under his command (he did great in all tests with respect to mine clearing and bridgelaying and may well be called a specialist in this respect) like we did with arty to liberate maneuver commanders from this task and to assure that ways would have been cleared for the follow up units and bridges laid and recovered. Also CO should be free to look at the big picture and not run any units whenever possible, in our case this would have probably prevented the BLUE axis disaster in the mines and the town. - Minefields if used should be visible at least 100 mtrs, the way they were set they were not visible under the markers as units would only stop right on top of them. - More than 2 forced river crossings is too much IMHO for a TacOps scenario of only a few hours. To cross a river under fire takes a long time and to do so several times on a distance of 27 kms is out of scale for just one CPX - use the names files and overlays: I received the majority of calls for fires by coordinates, which takes a long time to resolve in the short turn times. Had we addressed them with reference to our BPs ("Smoke north of BP 67") this would have been much easier as I would not have had to look up the digits in IRC every few seconds (memorizing 4x 6-digit coordinates at one glance you tend to forget whether it was 435412 or 453421 that was called for, and the constant changes between TacOps and IRC take a lot of your precious time, especially when the coordinates have long scrolled out of sight in IRC) - Dont voluntarily play S2 more than once a year: You will suffer from burn-out syndrome faster than you might believe and the damage due to friction with spousal or attached units might take some time to fix... :-> 4. STUFF FOR DISCUSSION WITH RESPECT TO THE TACOPS ENGINE Here some things that I think should be addressed in a discussion on the list or by the Major: - It would be great to have a way to discern empty from full log packs without having to open them, either by symbol or by mouseover or by right-clicking - I think it might be about time to advance the import/export feature to a new level: I know it has never been intended to be used to set up CPXes, but as far as I see this has become its main use as every CPX I can recall over the last years relied on it at least partially. In a first step one column more would carry ammo of logpacks on map when transferred, currently the logs are reset to zero every time and the umpire has to set them to the desired levels manually before STARTEX (in our case I think there were over 70 in total, quite a tedious work). Alternatively the default for log packs should be 5000 instead of zero as this already would save a lot of work in the majority of cases. Last a feature to maybe set all seleceted logpacks to a copied load (like SOPs) would solve this problem. In a 2nd step it would be really desirable to have exported OOBs export the target priorities and SOPs set of every unit, again to shift work from just before startex and connected to host to the planning stage of a CPX Optimally an exported OOB would also include any orders given, but I can imagine that is a lot to ask for... - From what I have now experienced during the dry run testing and the game, I think the engineering part of TacOps doesnt follow the basic conceptual layout (I suspect the reasons are in the specific wishes the major had to address for his mil contracts, but I still want to mention it): A lot of micromanaging is asked for bridging, e.g., and I dont see the reason why it cannot be addressed like all the other units: In order to bridge a 300 mtr river I have to not only run the layers to the ford, but also to withdraw after the 2nd one deployed in order to allow the third one to deploy....? This is not intuitive and I would expect that if I sent a platoon of 3 bridgelayers in one marker there and order deployment it would simply span the river after a given time. I do not understand why three bridgelayers cannot operate from one terrain cell without removing one first, as I think in the conceptual 100x100 mtrs there would be enough space for one to conceptually get out of the way of the others. Same with getting stuck on bridges: While I understand the idea behind it (too many vehicles overload or block themselves) I have the feeling there should be better solutions to unsolve such a situation: Either the bridge could simply break (in case of overload) and the non-amphibs lost, but the rest at least would be able to be addressed again, which currently is not the case. Or maybe units should be allowed to be removed from the bridge by orders (maybe just go backwards?) or sticking times should not be so long (hours to cross a bridge is not realistical even under the described situation). Best would be to have units ***automatically*** stop before crossing a bridge and a button that would specifically order them to "Cross Bridge", as this would leave the responsibility to order this in a common sense way instead of leading to the unresolvable clog-ups. Just some thoughts to start a discussion... 5. PERSONAL REMARKS Thanks everybody for a great CPX, it has been fun and maybe we should attempt to replay it with us as SADF, I think Cuba would miserably fail in the same setup (of cause, replaying as Cubans we would win again... :->). Special thanks to Jeff who did a great job as first-time umpire, to our CO who excelled in planning and motivation, to Bernie who we really missed during game for engineers ops, to Henk who did a great jobs w/o recon teams to destroy the major forces of enemy, to Dennis who took his disasters as a man and made me stay on when they hit me, to George who reminded me its just a game - two-lane-bridges or not... :-> . And of cause many thanks to our esteemed opponents for letting us win...:-> Rattler

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

Maybe thats a TYPO and should be reverse: Blue Reg vs. Red BDE? Your analysis seems on the spot with one exception: As the USSR had only limited thermals they would have been slaughtered in open battle and would have had to resort to WMD really soon, at least thats what we always came up with Just guessing in both respects, though... Rattler

didi this one ever come to pass? Would like to see some AARs... Rattler

as always: RECON, RECON, RECON ! Rattler

nice AAR...:-> I enjoyed to do some arty work again, really had gotten rusty. I will try and get together an umpire checklist in the next weeks, search for it here.

As I believe this PBM with its unexpected and unique outcome can be quite instructive especially to people that so far only have played the AI: The replay file can be found here: http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/dls/cpx_replays.html. Passwords are BLU = armor4, RED = silento. Enjoy, Rattler -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Baghdad, FEB 22, 1991 (Reuters) The outcome of a major battle in Iraq near the city of Hafar-al-Batin and a highway commonly called "Pipeline Road" has been heavily contested verbally between the involved parties yesterday. The Iraqui Information Ministery informed yesterday that, quote, "...under the spirited guidance of our Great Leader Saddam and the Baath Party the balance in the Mother Of All Wars has finally tipped in our favor, as was predicted long ago. A great part in this had Gen. Madda Al-Ratla, commander of the 12th Republican Guards Tank Regiment, the "Hero of Hafar-al-Batin", who dealt a smashing blow to the infidel invasion forces with the help of Allah..." Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi Minister of Information (informally known also as Baghdad Bob), stated: "All international media are invited to join me on an excursion to the town of Hafar-al-Batin where you then can witness with your own eyes the smoking wrecks of several hundreds of American tanks who were no match to our elite Republican Guards T72s. My feelings - as usual: We will slaughter them all, our initial assessment is that they will all die. I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide under the walls of Hafar-al-Batin. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly." Mr. Saeed al-Sahaf went on: "The supposedly technically much superior tanks fell like flies facing the spirited determination of our troops, and the smoldering wrecks are just one more proof of the hilarious exaggerations and lies of the American infidels. We expect the Americans to understand that they never will make it to Baghdad airport and to leave, humiliated and as the proven cowards they are. As I am speaking, by now, even the American command is under siege. We are hitting it from the north, east, south and west. We chase them here and they chase us there. But at the end we are the people who are laying siege to them. And it is not them who are besieging us. We are not afraid of the Americans. Allah has condemned them. They are stupid. They are stupid..." - here he made a dramatic pause - "...and they are condemned." Journalists were somewhat taken aback a bit by a statment of a miltary spokesman for the US Department of Defense which they couldnt relate to the issue at hand at first glance: "The heathen infidel pagan louts have been routed. God willing, they will scalp themselves before we do it for them. They might have a chance if they could ride horses. But they fall off. We have been surprised by this. They think that by surrounding us, they will gain the advantage, but the lying cowards will see who is surrounded. I am just reporting what anybody will tell you has to be obvious from looking around. Indeed, I doubt we will need to meet tomorrow, since they will all be dead or prisoners, because not only can´t they ride, they are cowards, too. God praise General Custer!". It is widely belived that this is supposed to mean a denial of an Iraqui victory in this battle and that the spokesman wanted to refer to Col. Mark Rosser, commander of the 2-8 Cav Battalion of the 1st Cavalry Division but in the heat of action got him confused somehow. ------------- This is the RED forces commander AAR for a "TF Peterjohn" PBM played between DEC 23, 2004 and JAN 11, 2006, resulting in a total RED victory Players: BLUE: Marc Rosser (US?) RED: Matt "Rattler" Ohlmer (ES) Game was played with factory settings (RED no thermals nor improved warheads) except no enemy OOBs shown. 1. The Plan When Mark, a guy new to TacOps PBM (I think it was his first game versus a human player after playing the AI up to then), challenged me to a TF Peterjohn game I really did not expect to have much fun victorywise: Too strong is the technical advantage of BLUE over the RED forces, BLUE attacking under smoke cover with thermals left me (w/o thermals) theoretically no chance of even getting close to victory despite the huge numerical strength difference. The layout only allows valid side shots on enemy tanks, and this only if theyre outside smoke, also the RED tanks and ATGMs did not have improved warheads. Still, I promised to give a good fight and set up without much of a plan really (first time for me to play Peterjohn ever), but carefully calculating the points where I had to stop my units outside enemy agressive envelope in intitial advance to have a chance to spring traps against advancing enemy tanks in case their expected smoke cover slipped for a moment. My basic guess was that the southern advance straight to Objective would be well covered and that in order to put up a fight I would have to take the northern heights and cross to the WEST of the map in order to attack objective from NW and NE simultaneously and that to stage anything with chance of success I would also have to take the central high ground plateau vic 0303. So, my strategic goals were to interdict enemy movements right north of the town, and to not allow any movemnts outside smoke, thinking to wear support down to a point where a charge had a chance of success. To achive this I sent one whole tk bn north, one south, and distributed one as a faint all over the center to occupy "trap" positions, grouped together with the majority of my APCs (at game start I still thought that the BMPs could also affect side shots at the M1s, which proved to be wrong). After march to contact I would take it from there and react to enemy intent and setup, given that 60 minutes is a fairly long time for the straight 10 min drive to objective I figured I would have time to regroup and re-organize along the way. 2. How it went The game started out much as expected, in the first four turns BLUE laid a nice smoke screen all over the central portion of the map, impeding my LOS and slowing my advance. All I could do during this time was to register arty accuracy and proceed as planned, but I registered that BLUE had expedited all his 155er smoke in those first minutes and intended to make use of that. In turn 5 enemy adjusted his 155er ***behind*** my forces, clearly out of his LOS, so I expected inaccurate enemy arty for some minutes. Also in turn 5 we made contact in the very center of the map, 3x APCs versus 4x M1, enemy popped smoke and my APCs were lost. In turn 6 I got a first idea of enemy layout: Obviously I was facing one full blown tank coy in the south of the center valley, one more in the north of it and one more in the north on high ground. This - and the fact that I had advanced in the direct southern approach to objective to Easting 043 without being attacked - made it clear that the southern approach was completely undefended. Inaccurate ICM started coming in, and after the 2nd minute of contact I had already lost 8% - but: My trap positions had successfully been ocupied in the center. I decided to lay low in the southern and northern part of the center and to try and rush towards the central plateau, and to make the best of the direct approach while it was undefended and get as close to objective as possible while being unobserved. In turn 7 I realized I could never make the last 600 mtrs to the central plateau, my tanks in the center fell like flies (casualities now 14%, one turn took out the better of two companies in the center), but I also realized that 1. the enemy tanks fell back after firing, that 2. they were not firing on APCs in the north, 3. the southern approach still was uncontested, and enemy was *not* employing mortar smoke (and was out of 155er) but entirely relying on his units popping smoke. I drew first blood by elimminating 3 M3s on the central plateau from the northern high ground, and my arty was ready to supress enemy positions. Turn 8 showed that enemy had also understood that he had to take care of my APCs in the north, he eliminated a major portion of them but then *withdrew* from the high ground there. As I knew I could not go on like that I bet on little arty smoke and unloaded infantry along the whole line of my advance to bait enemy tanks to fire on them and to use up their smoke pots on their tanks. The next two turns had me move infantry only, with the exception in the south, and enemy took the bait: The mortars started firing HE on the moving inf, the tanks fired on them, and in the south a M2 platoon came up to high ground w/o smoke cover and was quickly dispathed of. In the south my forward APCs had reached 500 mtrs to twown and stopped there unloading their inf, and their position became a key element in the plan that slowly started forming: As far as I could see the majority if not all M1s were engaging me north of the town, which in turn meant that only 6-10 Bradleys were defending objective, nothing I could not overwhelm in a last minute charge. Turn 11 sprang one of my traps (UTM 048036) when enemy tried to penetrate my lines in the north, rewarding me with my first two M1 kills (losing 4 myself, casualities now at 20%). I decided to wait my time: Enemy was hitting my inf with arty, leaving my vehicles alone; his tanks were also engaging my moving inf, allowing me to get a fairly clear picture about his setup despite the smoke: I now had confirmation that all enemy tanks were north of town, popping smoke after firing and retreating 100 mtrs every time they fired. I switched to recon-by-explosion, moving only single vehicles to provoke fires on them and so keep my nowledge about enemy positions up-to-date. Also I saw 4 northern tanks running without smoke into one of my traps, to be lost quickly, totalling enemy losses to 10 tanks of the northern coy. I also realized form my recon-by-explosion that enemy started shifting forces away from the center, something I did not want, so now I made my plan: In turn 15, I decided to withdaw major forces from north AND south (enemy had seen them, so whithdrawing them would make those approaches a credible faint to bind his forces there) and concentrate them in the center in a vertical line to get side shots in a final assault through the center. I hoped like this to draw all his tanks to the center, while I planned to use my forward APCs in the south (stopped, and with 1:30 travel time to objective) to make the final charge right at minute 58 and to use everything else to distract enemy from this (gamey) idea. At 0716 my suspicions were confirmed, when enemy made a big mistake: He withdrew from the high ground north (this from the replays, during the battle I was not sure about complete withdrawal until 0719), so that my re-positioning into the center went completely unobserved. At 0719 enemy loses 4 tanks in the south on high ground close to the objective ( confirmation: !!! he had repositioned allright !!!) due to having run out of smoke, a central psycholical vicotry as I knew he would not come up high ground there in force anymore and positioned my tanks and APCs to cover against such an attempt (just inside the 2km line covering the crest EAST of town and with hard DRP 500 mtrs asround and to protect my APCs that were so dangerously close to it). As by now i had figured that the northern high ground wasnt occupied anymore, I rushed forward there to make it to the crest, and pushed inf to gain LOS into the valley, keeping my vehicles just 20 mtrs out of enemy LOS. This regrouping and cat-and-mouse playing (plenty explosive recon) took until 0726 when a major strategic goal of mine was reached: I had LOS into the valley off north, clear view on the rest of the northern tank coy deployed there. During this time also some inf units had reached the central plateau which allowed me to clear it from the remaining M2s, and now I knew the center was getting weaker. Of cause, my recon-by-explosion proved costly, by now I had lost 32% of my forces. At 0729 the scales started fianlly and unexpectedly to tip in my favor: In a resupply I received 2 rounds ICM for each battery. While historically surely not correct, it was much welcome and allowed me to attack the known northern tank positions (7 tanks left) and I got rewarded with a series of explosions (4 tks killed): Enemy withdrew to a containment line around NORTHING 04, and I figured that would open the way for crossing the gap in the north on the long run, which proved correct assessment. 0734 tested my luck by pushing forward some recon APCs into the gap and realized enemy wasnt firing on inf nor APCs anymore (red priority tanks?). So, I decided to make use of that and move inf forward into observation range in one big push with APCs. 0736 executed the move, worked like a charm: 450 mtrs of more observation space w/o losing one vehicle of the 10 involved. Observation made it clear that only 4 tanks were blocking the move over the gap, I calculated that I had until 0745 to cross it, so devised tactics to get rid of the major threats there and push the rest of the forces to over 2000 mtrs distance to northern map edge (having been hammered by my arty whenever I had a fix enemy was using retreat-after-firing SOPs, so provoking him to fire on inf constantly pushed him back some 150 mtrs). I focussed my ICM on the norhternmost tanks gaining accuracy first, and grouped into coy markers to prepare to cross the gap (high risk, as one good ICM would have hit 42 tanks all bunched up). 0739 ICM had killed two tanks, leaving two, and the rest was out of the 2k envelope, so I started my move 0740, counting on the numbers and side shots to take out the remaining two tanks (had LOS to them and under supressive fires). I figured that once the remaining two tanks had been taken out I could cross rather unobserved, so I started some distraction movments in the center as well to fix enemy forces there and keep them from re-inforcing north. APCs that were closer to the northern tank threats were used to bait enemy tanks to fire on them and so keep an eye on developments (shielding tanks and recon-by-explosion again) Again this worked like a charm: 0741 had my tank coys well advanced into the gap, enemy had fired on APCs and inf and was under supressive HE, the move in the center made him flinch and he lost 4 tanks there instantly when they tried to withdaw. Obviously he had been unaware of my buildup there and I used the extra space to advance rapidly into the temporary void (I knew there were 10+ tanks lurking to cover the center) and set up a trap in case they should want to move in. 0742 return fire of one of my northern tk coys had taken out the 2 remaining tanks and now I started to hit the accelerators big time (calc showed I had only 3 more minutes to waste did I want to make it ino objective from north). At this point for the first time I saw a realistic chance to win this and crush enemy between two hammers coming from WEST and EAST and to sneak in my souther APCs in the last minute. Now I counted on my numbers: 80 tanks left, well distributed to two sides of more or less an enemy tk coy, so 0743 I pushed in and took the heights in the map center first to get more observation on enemy positions. Plan was a coordinated charge into the enemy tks AO from two sides bringing in the numbers to get him piecemeal. At 0746 I had the central plateau heights taken in numbers and clear LOS on enemy positions, my northern coys were ready to move into the 2k range on enemy, and my center had taken out a fairly annoying 4 Brads in the town. I set up everything to bring all tanks at the same time into range, and again it worked like a charm, enemy vehicles started dropping like flies... 0749 no enemy vehicloes were left, and now it was all about pushing into town without losing too many more troops to the dragons, of whom I had no idea yet where they were. 0751 I had them spotted and they were quickly dispatched of under supressive fires. 0757 started the final charge, and by 0759:45 had all troops into the town entering simultaneously from all 4 directions, killing the last remaining inf team in the act. End game status: Enemy losses 100%, friendly losses 57%. 3. Lessons Learned - You can beat an enemy that does not use smoke by using numbers even if you are way technically inferior if you employ good tactics. - In order to get side shots on M1s it is imprescendible that you move in perfect lines spread out over 2+ kilometers and to face one tank platoon every time only. - under 2k the T72 can do damage - NEVER give up LOS into high ground as defender in this scenario if you dont have to - Recon, recon, recon. Knowing where the enemy was exactly allowed me to tip the scale when ICM arrived for my batteries and to position my tanks always in a manner that allowed me to charge in perfect synchronisation. OTOH enemies failure to do good recon had him suprised more than once and cost hiim piecemeal but adding up. I had a lot of fun after all, I think the replays will show that...:-> Thanks to Mark for keeping patient and holding out to the end, I am sure this outcome also will have opened his eyes about difference between playing the AI and a human, I can only hope he also enjoyed it despite losing so severely. All in all: Good Game!

they are accessible via my CPX replay page http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/dls/cpx_replays.html What it was all about, you can see here (as it was a re-make of a CPX run 1997) until i finally come around to write an AAR...: http://www.tacopshq.com/HQ/text/CPX/cpxaars/uzbekaar.txt Enjoy!

they are accessible via my CPX replay page http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/dls/cpx_replays.html What it was all about, you can see here (as it was a re-make of a CPX run 1997) until i finally come around to write an AAR...: http://www.tacopshq.com/HQ/text/CPX/cpxaars/uzbekaar.txt Enjoy!

Now that I am into the swing, I will run another one: Saturday OCT 22nd (11 days from now), STARTEX 1730 GMT The CPX can accomodate quite a few players (up to 12 total, minimum to run it 6) and features engagements on map 15, estimated game length 80+ turns. Both newbies and veterans can play, but the COs should be experienced players. More detailled planning needed than in the last one this one also should grant a lot of bangs and hopefully also tension, fun and exitement. Players sign up here with their email please. Kind regards, Rattler

This is the Umpires AAR for the TacOps CPX run on OCT 8, 2005, US customs scen USMC, map 260 (Players AARs will be posted summarily later) UMPIRE: Matt Ohlmer (ES) BLUE TEAM Chaim Krause (IL), CO Peleg Wasserman (IL) - did not turn up at STARTEX Martin Cracauer (US) Paul Csokay (AT) RED TEAM John Osborne (US), CO - had to drop out for RL reasons Jeff Gilbert (US) - took over for John as CO Ralf Pichocki (DE) Bernard Cousin (FR) Valentin Dumitriuc (RO) - could not play due to tech probs REPLAY FILES: http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/dls/cpx_replays.html top link ------------------------------- AAR CONTENTS: 1. Setup 1.1 BLUE Brief 1.2 RED Brief 1.3 BLUE Plan 1.4 RED Plan 2. How It Went 2.1 STARTEX delay 2.2 Actual Game 3. Lessons Learned a) Umpire Players 4. Questions to the Major --------------------------------- 1. Setup I had planned this CPX for a long time, the setup was simple and supposed to be especially newbie-friendly provided the newbies played RED. Accordingly, I balanced the scenario a bit in REDs favor forcewise to keep it rewarding even after heavy losses. As it turned out only one newbie signed up (Valentin from Romania) but in the end could not play. The scenario was placed on map 260, basically a map 1 where the central NS road is replaced by a river - I had chosen this map as I assumed all newbs would be familiar with map 1 -, and it featured two completely different missions for BLUE and RED: - BLUE had to search and extract the crew of a downed German Tornado ERC with a TaskForce comprised of elements of the Netherlands 11th Airmobile Brigade - RED had to secure and rig up for destruction the three bridges over the central river employing three SA 10 btys against air. 1.1. BLUE Brief see: http://eventfoto.com/privat/mil/aars/pages/081005_bluebrief.html The crew, unknown to BLUE, were located about 2k EAST of the middle bridge over the river, spaced 800 mtrs, and they had hidden in the woods (I had not received specific orders from them by BLUE, so the followed SOP). I had placed a Tornado Wreck about 300m EAST of the middle bridge, both as a clue to BLUE and RED where to search for the crew. BLUE CO never gave orders to the Tornadoe Crew, so there was no radio comms at all that could have been detected by RED (I had, with help from Paul Csoky, foreseen to run dice to determine detectiona dn pinpointing loc of the crew by RED had they communicated) 1.2 RED Brief see: http://eventfoto.com/privat/mil/aars/pages/081005_redbrief.html The SAM 10s in TacOps have a min range of 5000mtrs (I had assumed 4000 from tests) and so had to be trailed this distance behind the forces to provide effective cover for the bridges, one of the things RED was supposed to figure out during planning. 1.3 BLUE Plan BLUE CO divided the zone EAST of the river into three search zones (alpha-charly) and assigned each to one of his three strike plns. CO ran the HQ, arty, support and air. Plan was to set up blocking positions against eventual enemy forces in the east of each search zone, locate crew and extract them, and not to engage enemy forces where not necessary for the mission completion. 1.4. RED Plan RED CO divided his three coys between the players, gave the offmap arty to Valentin and kept himself as observer/reporter. At this point - as Valentin was new and with FFOW on wouldnt have seen any friendly forces to supprot with arty - I assgned three motorized FO teams (one to each coy) for liasion. REDs plan was to rush as fast as possible to the bridges (they assumed enemy would be there before them) and take them against assumed resistance. About 2 days to STARTEX John, the CO, had to drop out and Jeff took over, he assigned 2nd coy to valentin and himself took the arty and the FO teams but did not change the plan. 2. How It Went 2.1 STARTEX Delay I had planned to keep STARTEX c.t. (i.e. with a delay of max 15 minutes), as I know that those delays are on of the things that annoy players most about participating in CPXes. Hence, I had briefed the COs and players that I would start with all players present or not and that everybody had to come with the latest patch installed. Also (having implemented one of my earlier LessonsLearned from another CPX) I had called for reserves to be present at STARTEX to jooin in case players didnt turn up. Alas, Murphy was with us as always, and problems arose right from start: - A BLUE player never turned up, so it was decided to give his slot to a reserve (sorry, dont recall who took his slot, the reserves playing where callsigns Nimrod - probably Peter Gower, UK - and Delta99), but of cause the guy had first to dl the löatest patch and to get briefed - On RED similar things occured, Valentin came unprepared and had first to dl the patch, and then found out he had no scenario USMC (I had told him in one of our earlier test games that - given he wanted to train US only and that he has limited disk space - he could safely delete all non-US custom scenarios.. stupid me, he deleted all except US Army...). Sending him the USMC file didnt work either (he couldnt load it for some reason), and as time was getting short I decided to replace him by another reserve present - who in turn had to dl the patch first and go through the briefing cycle. - when a player got disconnected during orders phase, he took his units with him and I had to manually add them As a result we got off playing about 1 hour late, not bad given the problems i think, but not what I wanted. 2.2 Actual Game Once we were underway, things rapidly started to run differently than what I had imagined: I had not anticipated the effects of FFOW, so, at turn 4/5 (the time BLUE helos got LOS to the crews) they "magically" (if in total concurrence with game engine design) appeared on their maps at spotting distances of 500 and 800 mtrs respectively despite theoretically only being visible 100 mtrs and in hiding. Consequently BLUE deployed to extract them, and already in this early stage the planned setup for a Search-and-Rescue mission had turned into a "simple" extraction mission, something I feared might have been resolved rapidly without even contact occuring. Via private message unbeknownst to his team I informed BLUE CO of my screw-up, he suggested I should down a 2nd plane with other force color crew, but I let it run and prepared to throw in difficulties in the style of Israeli CPXes should the mission be too easy. In turn 6 contact evolved finally and RED took out some extraction vehicles, still, in turn 7 the first crew member (WO) had been extracted, and in turn 10 finally the pilot. After this BLUEs only goal was to extract the forces deployed, until game end in turn 29. BLUE proceeded doing so without much coordinating forces, sending in the helos peacemeal against not smoked or not supressed enemy and so in the cause lost another 8 CH47s. At turn 28 BLUE decided to let the last stranded forces fall POW and withdrew the rest of his forces with 19% losses. RED, on the other hand, throughout all the game showed high coordination and execllent communicative and tactical behaviour and had almost made it to bridges by turn 29. The had also in the course of the deployment discovered the min range problem with the SA 10s and decided to rear-deploy them. In turn 16, after heavy skirmishes that they thought to be enemy SOF ambushing them they requested more support from HIGHER (which was granted in form of two additional offmap 152 btys assigned to them), but it was clear already then that they had not assessed enemy intention nor compostion correctly and so couldnt fulfill their secondary mission fo providing higher with exact intel (they even shot up the Tornado wreck in turn 25 IIRC but never got the clue this supposed, nor did they try to prevent the extraction). At ENDEX they had suffered 16% losses, but all key units were intact. In summary I would access the CPX outcome as a draw in favor of RED: Both teams performed and succeeded in fulfilling their primary missions, but failed in other aspects. For RED, the loss of 10 blue CH47s are supposed to be a good start in producing "newsworthy losses to NATO" (if here only to Netherland forces) in anticipation of the ground offensive and in the overall scenario. As a sidenote: In turn 16 my TacOps hung up fatally and I coulndt get it to let me host again (later turned out that my hosting port had been blocked by a net helper program that refused to quit), so we changed hosts to paul, who ran the game to the end with myself joined as observer. 3. Lessons Learned a) Umpire - if you want a team to search for friendly forces give the target units another force color. In the set of this CPX this would have meant to make the wreck and the crew maybe green force color, like this they would not have become visible on large distance to BLUE due to the FFOW mechanisms and a true search would have had to be performed (interestingly, I had them green until just before STARTEX but changed them to blue fearing a TacOps crash if the blue helos had had to load green troops) - always have the briefings ready for reserves or players taking over: I had changed machines to run the CPX and had the breifings left on the other. Next CPX I will post the breifings to my webpage before STARTEX so that any reserves find an easy way to get to speed - same goes for OOBs in excel form: When BLUE CO got disconnected a few times before STARTEX he took his units with him, i.e. BLUE was suddenly lacking forcesa dn I had to re-add them manually without a clue what I had given to them, another delay of 10 minutes. - have a copy of the savegame file you start from: During the theoretical 30 minutes to STARTEX players were giving orders and I pulled them when they were done and then saved the file. As we had lost some units in the process of cause my start file was overwritten and the original setup not present anymore, a copy of the setup file wouldhave solved that. - Try to hold STARTEX at all cost; despite having announced that I would start with all players present or not I decided far too late (at STARTEX) to employ reserves; they stood by to start at STARTEX -30 but I let them wait. Next CPX I will exclude players that are not present STARTEX -30 - have a channel #observers for observers: One thing that kept disrupting me a few times were observers trying to log without announcing this intent during orders exchanges or situpdates; use the channle to brief observers to expected routines (e.g. only join at umpire command) - If your TacOps crashes, *physically* reboot your machine: I had selected restart three times but the hosting port remained blocked, only after physically shutting down the machine (i.e. switching off power) it was free again (discovered after ENDEX... ) Players - read the briefings with time and in detail: 90% of the questions that I received from players were covered in the briefings already (e.g., "where do we start from?", "do we need a new patch when its out?" etc. one player even set up his units in enemy territory in the first orders...:->) - come prepared: always check on the list whats the latest patch and have it and the map ready at STARTEX-30; despite having advised that 3x in the course of preparation, one player still dint turn up with the latest patch. 4. Questions to the Major - when some players get disconnected they sometimes take their units with them (this seems to happen when umpire gets the notification that they got disconned but the player not: After then manually disconnecting the player the units were lost everytime). Any chance to avoid that? - if BLUE helos load green units, would this put the game process at risk still? ALL: Thanks for an interesting and fun CPX, thanks for bearing with me when Murphy hit, I could re-affirm a lot of my formerly present umpiring skills and learned a lot additionally. Great game from my POV, hope you all saw it like that also despite the quirks. Rattler (aka Matt Ohlmer)

easy: Major, Sir, please, consder to transport Your Great Work Of Lifetime to OS X unix based code, it will be the future wor windowze anyway as well... :-> Remember TacOps started on Macs? My 2c (but if necessary I *will* buy a PC to support your efforts of yoou should decide to discontinee Mac support in the future. TacOps, whatever browser is "en mode" and mIrc will be the only programs running on that one, and I already foresee a battle with the spusal unit to where we will locate that baby asides of our three Macs on our 42 sq mtrs house...(maybe dump one of the dogs?)...:->)

IRC channels for CPX: MAIN: server schlepper.hanse.de, port 7024, channel #tacops. Should this one be down, then ALTERNATIVE: server www.combatmission.com, port 6667, channel #tacops Please all players be online 1630 GMT, STARTEX 1700 GMT ATTENTION OBSERVERS: If you want to be copied into one or the two teams brieifngs and intra-teams comms in the planning stage, let me know to my email "rattler AT eventfoto.com", (read the AT as "@", just trying to avoid still more spam)

Recruiting for CPX FRIDAY 8th is closed, here is what we have (observers/reserves still welcome): 1. BLUE team (PINS 1-10) Chaim Krause, CO Peleg Wasserman Martin Cracauer Paul Csokay --------------------------------------------- 2. RED team (PINS 11-20) John Osborne, CO Ralf Pichocki Bernard Cousin Jeff Gilbert Valentin Dumitriuc (rather new to TacOps) One more player, Henk Stoffers, is not sure whether he can participate, so he is the reserve and will be exlded from orders and planning to keep him potentially fit to join either side. Orders will go out until Wednesday latest, here what you have to do: - Add your team colleagues to your email - DL and install latest patch (AA currently) @ http://www.tacops.us/support/ - standby for orders and particiapate in planning... - COs let me know who takes what UNTIL FRIDAY NIGHT GMT BTW, due to a new job assignement will have to shift STARTEX one hour to 1700 GMT, hope thats ok for everybody. Kind regards, Rattler (aka Matt Ohlmer)

Roster is full

I will be hosting a CPX on Saturday, OCT 8th, 1600 GMT. This is the second go for this one, I figure Saturday is better for players and hope for response... CPX Features missions on map 260, can accomodate 3 players + CO per side. Newbies and veterans can play alike (though its designed especially newbie-friendly), fairly simple format, but the commanders should have some experience. Lots of bangs granted, time frame about 60 turns. First thing I would need is a BLUE CO, as he needs to give input that will influence the setup/start position. Any takers report in here. Rattler

The CPX that is announced in this section for FRIDAY, SEP 30th, has been cancelled. 2 players at this stage is too little, also the only newbie that signed up had some RL issues impeding to play after all, so, as its a good setup and I want to play it out with some teams in strength I am cancelling. Next try wil be for Saturday, OCT 8th, 2005, announcement out soon. Thanks and kind regards, Rattler

We have two sign-ups so far, but need more players (minimum 2 better 4) to get this baby flying. Here the details: I want to run a CPX on Friday SEP 30th, 1600 or 1700 GMT. Features missions on map 260, can accomodate 3 players + CO per side. Newbies and veterans can play alike, its a simple format and so especially newbie-friendly, but the commanders should have some experience. Lots of bangs granted, time frame about 60 turns. First thing I would need is a BLUE CO, as he needs to give input that will influence the setup/start position. Any takers report in here, with your email for contact

Taking up the thread again, nothing much happened that I know of in the TacOps Tourney 2003 lately, and I would like to know who of following gents is still present and interested in continuing: Tim "Delta99" A. Gary Bezant Joe Brunetti Mike Buchanan Russell N. Butturini Ewen Campbell Bruce Chapman Gary "GCoyote" Chilcote Bernard "Berny" Cousin Martin "Redwolf" Cracauer Paul Csokay Jeremy Cullis Chris Dingman Wolfgang "Ciofi" Drotleff Randy Erickson Jim Holman James "GoatChomper" Hood Steve Lohr Paul Mason Nick "Manic" Moran Scott Mortimer John "Red6" Osborne Ralf "Pi" Pichocki James Rapkins Gary Rost Jens Sarton Javier Surroca Peleg Wasserman Christian Wendt Warwick "Wazza" White A simple "Here!" will do...

>The autosave or game replay files are in the folder named "Auto Saves". In order for the feature to work properly you will usually need to either keep that folder clean of multiple games or else move the files for a particula game session into another folder.< This is btw something really annoying. While I have no intant solution I feel it might be a good idea to automate this process so that the autosaves of a game are always neatly packed together no matter how many games I play. Maybe have the engine pack the contents of the autosave folder into a sub/ or new folder whenever you start a new game?

Posted 3 (three) challening custom made ready-to-play (downloads include games files with OOBs, overlays, instructions, map etc.) scenarios to the files area at http://www.strategyzoneonline.com/f...hp?do=cat&id=53 today: 1. Special Forces Night Raid A 2-player-netgame or PBM scenario featuring an US Special Forces nighttime raid against a drug barons HQ. Duration 25-40 minutes. Difficulty: High Heavily unbalanced in favor of US this scenario allows to establish a valid score for the US player testing his attack skills and is meant to be played as a 2-legged game in tournaments or to challenge another player: Both players take US position once and can measure their respective performance by their respective scores they achieve, the results should be representative of the players tactical skills in airborne infantry assault. Its not an easy scenario for US by any means: While the drug baron´s forces are way outnumbered by your forces, initially asleep and only use ´60s equipment they can still ruin your career as SOF commander by managing to evade your strike and attritt you heavily if alerted too early to your presence. The challenge for OPFOR is to find a sneaky way to preserve your produce and forces... --------------------------- 2. Mod Team Sposito - Test Your Defense Skills 2-player-netgame or PBM custom scenario featuring an US last point defense of a bridge against onracing OPFOR hordes. Duration 20-40 minutes. Difficulty: Medium Heavily unbalanced in favor of OPFOR this scenario allows to establish a valid score for the US player testing his defense skills and is meant to be played as a 2-legged game in tournaments or to challenge another player: Both players take US position once and can measure their respective performance by their respective scores they achieve, the results should be representative of the tactical skills in armored defense. Its not an easy scenario for US by any means: You are way outnumbered by technolically equal forces and your performance depends on making some right tactical choices. The challenge for OPFOR is to coordinate his attack troops and to find the right pace. --------------------------------- 3. MEU Naval Extraction Ops A 2-player-netgame or PBM scenario featuring a MEU evacuation operation of stranded UN units from a third world country versus rebel forces. Duration 30-45 minutes. Difficulty: High Heavily unbalanced in favor of US this scenario allows to establish a valid score for the US player and is meant to be played as a 2-legged game in tournaments or to challenge another player: Both players take US position once and can measure their respective performance by their respective scores they achieve, the results should be representative of the tactical skills in naval assaults. Its not an easy scenario for US by any means, gung-ho attitude wil ruin your career as MEU commander... : While the third world rebels have only low tec equipment they still can make your life hell by good tactical deployment/ops, the key is to plan your assault in detail so that you avoid heavy losses while accomplishing the extraction mission, also timing is crucial. Enjoy! http://www.strategyzoneonline.com/f...hp?do=cat&id=53

Impressive AAR! I read: As is, the TACOPS HMMWV are vulnerable to everything from rifles, LMG's to or vulnerable to everything but pistols and I can't be sure that a pistol won't take out a TACOPS HMMWV. Looking at some TOE's it seems that the Marines don't have any of the Uparmored HMMWV and I know that Major Holdridge did a version of TACOPS for the USMC and that may be why there are no Uparmored HMMWV available. This is going to take a little while for me and the group to get used to. As far as I understand rifle or pistol shots being effective assume the driver(s) targetted. Rattler

its still going though we might need some reserves to jump in (hint, hint! :->) Check: http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/tourney2003/main.html