Coyote

I have a somewhat modified version of TF DeGoey saved as a .tac file. If I can find it, I'll send it to you. Gary

Night illumination is highly variable. Shadows are much deeper in moonlight and all color vision is lost as well. Even if you can see 400 meters in open terrain, like a road, your ability to spot targets in the brush is likely less than half of that at best. Passive night sights (Starlight Scopes) amplify natural light between 5000 and 35000 times depending on how new the technology is. In practical terms, individual weapon sights can extend a soldier's night vision to at least 400 meters in clear starlight and 800 in moonlight. Sight for heavy weapons at least double that. From my experience, the limit of the sight is as much the resolution as the illumination. Passive night vision technology is always slightly grainy and has less contrast than thermal imagers. Thermals present a synthetic picture to the user so the contrast is much higher. Unless you are trying to depict bad weather of some kind, thermals have the same ranges at night as in the day time. Coyote

Light Division Cav Squadrons used to have two Air Cav Troops and One Ground Troop. The Ground Troop was 8 Tow Humvees and 12 with light machineguns. I think each air troop was 4 Cobras and 6 OH-58s. There was a plan to add a second ground troop if the division was deployed but I don't recall that it lead to anything. Eventually the Air Troops were to upgrade to Apaches and then replace all 10 Aircraft with 8 Comnaches but who knows when that will happen. This sounds like an interesting scenario. What victory conditions could you come up with that reward effective reconnaissance/counter-reconnaissance?

Because TacOps models all weapons at their stated max effectiveness, any troop quality factor you apply will lead to less effective units. Perhaps all we need is single percentage on unit effectiveness that you set in the preferences dialog box that pops up before the first turn begins. I played TF Peterjohn last week with an approximate 1973 Arab/Israeli OOB (M60A1 vs T62). I had a blast Give it a shot. [ January 07, 2003, 10:00 PM: Message edited by: Coyote ]

I guess part of the answer depends on what one supply point represent. It seems to be around a pound,+/- a little fudge factor. Almost 20 years ago (shudder!), I was a battalion S-4. I had enough lift assest (trucks, etc) to move about 50 tons of bulk material in good weather. Take out some capacity to cover food, water, tents, duffle bags, chemical suits, barbed wire, empty sandbags, POL, medical supplies, spare parts (you get the idea) and you could probably expect to have at most 1/2 of that capacity. Delete a few trucks for maintenance problems plus a few more that are way back in the division rear picking up a load and you are down to 1/4 or 12.5 tons. That would work out to about 25,000 points if my initial assumption is correct. I did notice that the default when adding a supply point unit is 5000 points which would be about 2.5 tons. Can any one provide the current vehicle information for the Support Platoon in a heavy battalion?

A significant number of the players you'll meet on this forum are retired or active military. Few of us ever got a chance to "spend money" to buy better units. A real field commander gets handed a mission and has whatever troops will fit on the plane. The flavor of TacOps generally reflects this, "come as you are" reality. The second major problem is Command & Control. There are no Headquarters units that effect play in a positive or negative way. I don’t find this realistic..

You never depend on luck but you always plan for it the same way, maintain a reserve. If you have bad luck you can commit your reserve to shut it down. If you get good luck you use your reserve to exploit it. Good or bad, luck favors the most prepared.

I've been most successful when attacking from north and south simultaneously. I leave most of my anti-armor weapons north and east of the camp to catch the reinforcements when they arrive. I only take a few in to get any BTRs that survive the airstrikes. In Marks, I leave my mortars in the set up box outside the camp and start suppressing the OPFOR MGs from the first round. The hill in the northwest corner is a good place to put a mortar section as they can reach accruacy level 5 in one round. With all of the intell you have in this scenario it is not unrealistic to have a couple of artillery TRPS preplanned as well. If you do this you should see a dramatic improvement in first few critical turns. The last time I played Marks, I put some blue civilians in the woods on the west side of the camp in a barbed wire enclosure as POWs and "rescued" them on my way out. Since they are unarmed, they cannot be moved until you've taken out all of the nearby enemy units. I had a blast! Unless you take the optional blue units you can expect some fairly heavy casualties on this one. I often end up losing 20 - 30%. ---------------- UPDATE: I ran Fullerton last night without optional units and all prefernces unchecked. Time Left: 6 minutes Mission results: Blue - Mission accomplished Red - Mission failure Blue exit % - 72 Blue Occupation Minutes - 23 Point results: Blue Attrition Points - 3607 Red Attrition Points - 1531 -------------------------------------------------- Blue Status: UNIT----------------START--NOW--ELIM--EXITED Inf, Sniper Team------ 4 -- 0 -- 0 -- 4 Helo, CH146 Griffon....44 -- 0 -- 9 --35 Inf, HQ Command [-].... 6 -- 0 -- 1 -- 5 Inf, Section.......... 18 -- 0 -- 2 --16 ATGM, Eryx............ 18 -- 0 -- 8 --10 Mortar, 60mm.......... 8 -- 0 -- 4 -- 4 ATGMV, Iltis LUVW TOW. 12 -- 0 --10 -- 2 Mortar, 81mm.......... 4 -- 0 -- 0 -- 4 Force Lethality Value, Start: 5566 Force Lethality Value, Now: 0 Casualty percentage: 27 Force Lethality Ratio, Start: 1.2:1 Force Lethality Ratio, Now: 0:1163 ------------------------------------------------- Red Status: UNIT-----------------START--NOW--ELIM--EXITED Inf, Team-------------- 12 -- 1 -- 11 -- 0 Inf, MG 7.62mm PKM Team 17 -- 5 -- 12 -- 0 SAM, SA16 Gimlet------- 12 -- 2 -- 10 -- 0 APC, BTR80------------- 39 -- 2 -- 37 -- 0 Inf, Squad------------- 27 --17 -- 10 -- 0 Inf, Team-------------- 2 -- 0 -- 2 -- 0 APC, BRDM2------------- 1 -- 0 -- 1 -- 0 APC, BMP2 IFV---------- 1 -- 0 -- 1 -- 0 ATGM, AT7 Saxhorn Team- 6 -- 4 -- 2 -- 0 Inf, AGL AGS17 Team---- 4 -- 3 -- 1 -- 0 Inf, SPG9 Team--------- 4 -- 1 -- 3 -- 0 ATGM, AT4 Spigot Team-- 4 -- 0 -- 4 -- 0 AAA, SP 23mm ZSU-23-4-- 2 -- 0 -- 2 -- 0 Mortar, SP 120mm 2S23-- 6 -- 0 -- 6 -- 0 Force Lethality Value, Start: 4770 Force Lethality Value, Now: 1163 Casualty percentage: 75 Force Lethality Ratio, Start: 1:1.2 Force Lethality Ratio, Now: 1163:0 [ November 28, 2002, 10:05 AM: Message edited by: Coyote ]

Nucs are just to big for a game played at the battalion/brigade level. Biologicals don't operate in the time span a typical TacOps game. And I can tell you what chemicals will do from prior study, field exercises, and board games/sims. If both sides are unprepare for chemical release, the whole thing comes to a grinding halt. If one side is unprepared, the other side wins. If both sides are prepared, the battle continues at a reduced pace. Infantry moves at a reduced rate as heat build up in their protective gear becomes a major factor in (unless the weather is fairly cold). Weapons crews take longer to acquire and engage targets of all types. Happy Gaming

Acceptable loss rates vary greatly by society and situation. Stalinist Soviet or Maoist generals could loss entire formations and still be promoted if they the met the political leadership's objectives. The modern west in contrast has become increasingly risk averse as anyone who gets so much as a hangnail gets an hour on the evening news. In strictly practical terms, a unit that loses 30% or more of its strength generally requrires a couple of days to reorganize and replace the leaders it has lost. If you are doing a raid and all of the survivors get airlifted to home base that may be okay. If you are sizeing a major objective and expect the enemy to counter-attack with everything available then maybe you need a more conservative approach. You also have to look at losses in key weapon systems. In an armor rich environment you cannot sacrific too many anti-armor teams or vehicls or what you have left will be largely irrelevant when that next enemy tank battalion shows up. IRL your orders from higher headquarters would provide much of this information and could contain secondary mission requirements such as, "be prepared to continue the attack on order." Hope this helps.

Team Murray is a nice little company size offensive op. Once you learn how to attack with one company you can start working on how to coordinate 2 - 5 companies as a task force. After that, try TF Gebhard, it isn't quite as hard as TF Stubblefield. The oldest rule-of-thumb is 3:1, try to concentrate three attacking platoons on one defender from a position or direction that prevents other enemy units from assisting the defender. One of the tricky things about offense is planning each unit's movement so that it is either covering or being covered by the units to it's flanks. Keep dispersed and keep moving! Don't stop in a position the enemy can put fire on. Artillery in the hands of a competent opponent will tear you to pieces. Use columns only for admin or covert movement. Once you make contact, spread out. Play with the Preferences in your favor until you get the hang of a scenario, then make it harder by making the enemy more capable. And the number one rule, HAVE FUN! This is both a learning tool and a game. The one supports the other.

Excellent! Best video I've seen all night.

IMHO, Law has historically lagged behind other societal advances and behind technological advances most of all. The current debate on Iraq is an excellent case in point. Western democracies have traditionally been loathe to strike first, on the principle that any amount of negotiation is always better than any amount of combat. But weapons of mass destruction in the hands of unstable leaders turn the equation on upside-down. The first hint a nation may get of danger is a mushroom cloud, smothering one of its cities. To make matters more complicated, the common people of a "rogue" nation may have no say in the selection of the leadership or the conduct of the nation's foreign policy. Yet they are the most likely to suffer in a major armed conflict. How do we balance our right to defend ourselves against the lives of people who might not be our enemies if they had a choice in the matter? What do we do if radioactive, chemical, or biological agents are blown over neighboring countries because of our strike against a rogue nation? If we have an opportunity to take out a rogue nation's leaders and thereby prevent war, is it morally justifiable to kill them? This is no longer just an idle academic exercise. Young people in high school today will be debating, voting on, and acting on these very issues within the next few years. It won't hurt them at all to give these problems some serious thought right now.

Update - It didn't quite work the way I planned. Putting a ditch in the middle of an on-map bridge effectively cuts the bridge, but . . . When I used an AVLB to cross the ditch, the ditch remained "breached" when the bomb blew the bridge up. When I put an Umpire/Engineering tool bridge over the ditch, the ditch took precedence and vehicles would not cross it. I'm still playing with all of the new tools.

I think you'd have to have a human opponent to use it as a booby trap. The owning player would have to determine the most advantageous time to set off the charge. What I did try last night was bridge demolition. I built an anti-tank ditch, put a load-class 70 umpire emplaced bridge over it, and put transportable bomb on that with a 300M damage radius. The bridge worked fine, until the bomb went off, then it went "poof" and only the ditch was left. Since adding a ditch overwrites the underlying terrain, I bet this would be an effective way to simulate siezing a bridge that your opponent was trying to blow. I still need to play with it to work out the details. [ September 29, 2002, 06:50 PM: Message edited by: Coyote ]

New question: Anybody out there want to take a wild guess at how many "supply point" = 1 ton. I figure we've got some useable logistics play tools now so why not use them?

But see the other discussion thread covering "Logistics Packages".

Now this would really spice up DeGoey and counter terrorist raid scenarios, Fenwick/Marks. Deploy them to represent either booby traps or terrorist nukes. I feel another sleepless night ahead

All too true. I tend to use stay behind forces when I'm just playing for amusement, not when I want to study a problem in some detail. I also tend to rate my improvement when replaying a scenario according to my loss rates. Trying to preserve your own forces rather than using them up like gas or bullets imediately turns TacOps into a tougher but still very enjoyable game. Hmmm, I think I hear a bugle blowing somewhere . .

After reading your post I went back into TacOps (after just having finished playing TF Fenwick) and started playing TM Kelly. I realized that a) I was way to tired to do anything creative and I was getting pretty much the same result you described. I was trying to shoot 'n scoot individual vehicles and as you said, the left over infantry from each unit I killed was calling artillery and air down on me. A competent human player would probably kick the blue players butt 90% of the time because he knows what a real world commander would not, namely the scenario conditions! I'll try this scenario again (after I get some sleep and my work done!) My general plan is: 1) After roughing up each battalion, move the entire front line back 4 - 5 kilometers. That should remove the surviving dismounted infantry from the equation and the AI will have a harder time guessing which new positions I've occupied. 2) Use the mines to guard my flanks and the helicoters to overwatch them. I don't have enough of either to control the center of the zone but if I use them on my flanks I can free up units to use where I need them most. 3) Keep putting smoke between me and the OPFOR. I have more thermals than they do so it is a net benfit to me. 4) I may use my rifle squads on the flanks as observers. This isn't as effective on this map because the terrain is so broken up. The alternative is to leave them as close to the west map edge as possible and pick them up on the way through. At least it will keep them alive and buy me a few more percentage points toward the victory conditions. They can even walk off the map given enough time. I was also thinking it could be fun to swap the tank company for an armored cavalry troop which would be more likely to draw a mission like this anyway. I'll let you know how it turns out. May not happen until next weekend. "It is a good day to die, and the day is young!"

If any of you have access to TechTV (DirecTV carries it) you may want to see some of this Canadian hardware in a training environment. The program is called Tech of a Battlefield. It is 30 minutes long and documents an exericse with comments from the unit's Brigade Commander. You can find the show schedule on TechTV.com. Note that this is not the same segment as the regular feature Future Fighting Machines. FFM is mostly short video clips (sales demos?) with some chatty and uninformed comments by an off camera narrator.

HMMWV weapons platforms are just a composite shell bolted onto the standard chassis leaving space for a crew of 3-4 and the weapon system itself. The shell is basically the same material as a kevlar helmet and about as tough with windows of laminated tempered glass and polycarbonate plastic. The shell is designed to stop grenade and mortar fragments and slow small arms fire. The crew is supposed to be wearing body armor as well, and together with the shell this increases their chances of surviving the first minute of contact with enemy infantry. None of this makes any HMMWV an armored fighting vehicle and it will only survive an encounter with one by shooting and killing it before the AFV sees the HMMWV. Like the previous poster said, 1) Use your weapons at max standoff range, 2) Pop smoke and MOVE after every shot. In addition, I try to mass my fires against the attacker's lead units so that everyone close enough to engage me gets killed in the first volly. Then I can pop smoke and bug out before the next units can close and engage me.

This is actually one of my favorite passtimes. Just adjust the blue force mix using the "Change Weapons and Equipment Blue". You can study this command in the Demo version to see how it works. By choosing a scenario you determine the mission and starting position of the OPFOR. You can also change their weapons and units. Save the game before playing the first turn in case you make a mistake, then blaze away! Enjoy!

Good comments. In Steel Beasts , a standard battle drill worked best for me. I left an overwatch element behind me to suppress/kill enemy weapons. When my lead vehicles took fire from ATGMS, I turned to put my frontal armor toward the enemy, popped my smoke grenades, and reversed back into the smoke cloud. Because TacOps doesn't allow a unit to change orientation through an SOP, the normal "Reverse if fired on and pop smoke [200m]" function can back you out of you smoke screen and re-expose you to enemy fire. Good comments on two great games. Gary