Holien

Glorious March to Victory Post # 10 - "The Nadir" (21-24)
  So in every engagement it is normal to have a low-point and for my troops this was right here.  Everything that can go wrong, does, and nothing really goes right.  Worse, it is the point that you can clearly see your mistakes...after you have already made them.  I have found that in this position it is where the true mettle (and metal) is tested and one must 1) admit the errors and 2) come up with a way out, cause no one else is not going to do it for you.
   So the decent started pretty innocently enough in turn 21:

That brave little BMP that is responsible for probably half the damage I have done to Bil thus far did not make it out.  It was completely out of AT3s by this point but I wanted that little crew to make it...sadly...

So at this point I am still pushing up that ridge in pursuit of Bil's forces.  My aim here is to keep the old man on his back feet in order to make sure he does not collect enough combat power to re-take the objective...and to kill as much as possible with a pretty potent force.  But then badness started to happen:

Ok, despite being on the wrong end of things, this shot is really cool.  That is a newly modeled Dragon missile about to take out a T62...oh, yes that's right, Bil has Dragons.

And they work.   Then down in the village:

Bil's creeping tank platoon sees one of my T62s first and well...ok, I can live with this.  Going to have to break a few tanks to make a tank omelet.   But as we move into Turn 22 it is time to admit that I have a long standing problem:

Yep, I am an over-extender always have been.  I do not know why the siren song of the offence always pull me in but it does.  And here it is in action.  My armor is taking off on my infantry in the best blitz tradition...and it is not a good thing.  But all is not bad news:

Down in the town, my second T62 takes out another M60.  So all in all, I tell myself, it is not that bad....oh foolish past The_Capt....so foolish.  Turn 23...sigh:

Right about here it dawns on me that maybe charging forward was a bad idea.  That is a second Dragon kill.  So I am thinking about holding up and letting my infantry catch up, right about here.  It is not all bad news though:

As the Soviet player, that is a very happy screen shot.  My MANPADs are doing their job.  But then I notice this:

Ya, so all those other icons up on the hill I have been tracking...but that is a new one and it is very bad news.  So I swing a couple T62s and a BMP over because maybe Bill is scratching around the backdoor.
Turn 24: as with most of these things...just a little too late.  An extra 30 seconds maybe but Bil's last tank platoon looks to have finally showed up.  Of course I suspected there was another one up here and of course it shows up in exactly the wrong place, at the wrong time.  And from here it just get uglier:

This is an interesting shot actually, first that is a second T62 (so 4 lost on that hill in about 3 mins) dying, but that is also a 73mm BMP 1 round actually hitting and penetrating an M60 (I think it was HEAT)...but not enough by a long shot:

So here the gods of war clearly are punishing me.  That BMP died for trying but those two explosions are AT3s that both miss (seriously?!)
Ok, so 'new plan' cause the old one clearly was not working.  I am going to have to swing what is left of my Teeth (now with quite a few knocked out....see that last BMP dying on the far right) and consolidate on the hilltop.  I will fend off this tank platoon, while at the same time really dig in on the objective.  The sad part is that right about here, I am out of offensive options.  I will need to play defense from here on out and am basically fighting to hold the objective.  
By this point I have a couple M60 kills, Bils M150s are pretty depleted, a couple M113s and a some scouts...oh and a Cobra.  That is not enough for 5 x T62s (half my force) and 2 x BMPs.  At least my screens and infantry are intact.  A side-note, Bil is really obsessed with the outskirts of the objective (that hashed blue line) and for the life of me I cannot figure out why.  Seriously, we are quite a few turns ahead as of writing this and he spends the next ten minute pounding the same  peice of real-estate, that basically has a single squad and MG team trapped in it.
Anyway, live, learn and love and all that.  I will post up the next series tomorrow...things do get better.
 

It ain't over til the fat lady sings, and my god the music you two have made is epic and truly enjoyable. 
We feel your pain and joy...

😳 some times you get things wrong....
Now to find how I delete old forum entries....
🥴

Ermmmm
I will get my coat...
😀
 

😳 some times you get things wrong....
Now to find how I delete old forum entries....
🥴

😳 some times you get things wrong....
Now to find how I delete old forum entries....
🥴

Some people are soooo demanding!!!!
It would be great material to see but I am sure Bil has enough pressure on him already. 

Ermmmm
I will get my coat...
😀
 

The Dragon streaking towards the BMP is a beautiful picture...
I bet you are feeling happy with that turn...
 

Looks like Bil has the Arty back on line fairly quickly, not sure the 6 minute delay will help him as things moving too quickly.
I guess they heard the Arty spotter kick the can....
🙄

The above from The Capt's own words... (My bolding)
Well he has analysed the dangers to himself very well!!!
Let's see how he can adjust his plan when he sees what Bil has / is doing! Bil has a great eye for  knowing when things are not working and trying to adjust his plan. Excellent game so far and more popcorn ordered.

Superb updates and really showing the game off well. Thankyou.
Good to see you modifying plans when things don't go as expected.
The Weekend has come early!!!!

Yes it is. It can be set up to follow your mouse cursor, so you can move the magnifier around for reading the briefings or the UI. It's not perfect but it certainly helped me read that stuff.

Woot...

Just as a teaser then (given that's what these AAR are all about)

This is from an in game scenario, so will be available for all to enjoy
Yes he is, and there is not much cover on the slope. His only other option would have been down through the wooded area, with the risks inherent with that.
Warren was forced through a bottleneck earlier in the game and now it is Bil's turn.
P

There is an outstanding suggestion I made a year or so ago for the ability to save variable set-ups that would cover things like this (and for not knowing what will be faced against the AI).
Not sure if it will ever get picked up, but it would be another good tool to have.

I have also suggested this in some feature request threads. I think a quite simple way of doing this could be if in Scenario Editor you could select an option for some unit that it would be included in a battle only when that side is played by the AI.  If this option is not selected, then the unit would be present whether that side is played by the AI or human player.
This way you could have good force balance both in H2H and when playing against the AI.

These are my friends recollections of the Sheridan
 
"
Thoughts on the Sheridan.
First, you need a good crew. The armor will stop a .50, but anything bigger is going to go through the hull. It's a vehicle that must rely on speed & maneuverability. This is especially compounded by the caseless ammo for the main gun. The powder was kept in place by a wax paper shell, so any big spark & it all cooked off. We lost 3 soldiers to a misfire doing qualifications back in 93 because of that.
The shillelagh wasn't too popular either, as we had to remain stationary, with the engine revved while it fired. The tracking system was an IR laser, & the strength of the beam was dependent upon the engine revs. I forget the exact RPM, as it's been near 30 years now.
Another problem with the vehicle was the outdated electrics. We'd use the turret motors to get on target, but then always fine tune the shot with the manual T&E. 
The recoil would kill or seriously injured someone that didn't know what they were doing. Firing the main gun would lift the front half of the 551 off the ground. The plus on that one is that you didn't really have to worry about getting back into hull down after firing. The recoil did that job for you.
They were fast as you like, though. My driver had been a NASCAR mechanic before enlisting. He fiddled with the engine, & we had an MP with a radar gun clock us at 53mph.
The vehicle is 20ft long, 9ft wide. We consistently could outmaneuver any M1s we encountered during the FTXs against them.
The thing was light. 12 tons empty, 20 combat loaded.
We forded countless small rivers with a good running start. We never needed the flotation kit. I only used it once in training. In my time on them, we never got one stuck. Our losses were 1 burning in due to parachute malfunction, & the misfire I mentioned.
We grew to love them because they were the bastard child of armor, but we could put the Abrams to shame with them.
We held the consensus that, given a dense type terrain, such as forest, swamp, or urban, we could outmaneuver any armor we encountered. We all knew we'd be ****ed if we had to do a kursk style engagement, though.
There's a quick overview. I hope it helps. If you have any other questions about my favorite tank, let me know.
One other item: if I remember correctly, the thermal sights didn't come in until around the time of Panama. Before then the doctrine was: 1 tank uses its spotlight to illuminate targets for night fire while the others shoot. The vehicles would cycle through their turns, but the spotlight still made you a big target at night."

Wow the game is going to get pretty interesting soon with Bil's plans, looks like his arty has not hit the mark according to the Capt?
The loss of another Tow system is painful but maybe not an issue as he is aiming to get into a knife fight up close...
As ever cracking reports from both players. 

If you want some Shillelagh porn, here's a missile missing a T64B by inches.

As Holien said Bill's explanation hits the nail on the head, hull down keyholed armour has a major spotting advantage.
Worth mentioning the terrain is quite strongly in favour of Bill for the nature of this armoured engagement. The Capt's Armour is hemmed into his side of the map by the forest, all the trees and foliage will be heavily limiting the amount of firing angles and positions he has available and spots within the forest will likely have poor firing angles so to engage Bills armour he is being drawn to the edge of the treeline where his tanks face a punishing 30 second crawl back to cover if they are spotted whereas Bill has the choice of the larder, if his tanks are spotted he can pull back into defilade at will and reposition to a new hull down spot.
I'm not the biggest fan of how the T64's were used here but the fact The Capt was expecting better tanks than T62's as his reinforcements goes a way to explaining that, if he had a Company of T64A's as reinforcements the losses on the field would be far less important. As it is most of his best armour has been whittled away in a gun duel that favoured Bill from the offset.

Well maybe we will get to see some of your tanks go pop?
😉
Nice to see Sly is a BETA tester now, of course he will be even harder to defeat in a HtH.
Looking forward to the next instalments. 

Thanks for the weekend treat, your kills are building up, I guess you have the spotting edge at the moment. 
Looking forward to seeing how the arty works out for you. 
Cheers 

@Bil Hardenberger
Congratulations on bringing a vision of CM so many of us have pined for to reality!  This is the most excited I have been for a CM game in some time and the potential to build off of the initial title only heightens the anticipation.
Speaking of the visual representation of infantry, wouldn’t it make more sense to model disposable AT rockets (M-72, RPG-18, etc.) as collapsed when on the backs of infantry models?  Just an opinion from the outside looking in seeing as this would be the correct depiction for the vast majority of the time the models are displayed to the player.  Rendering them in firing position all of the time to satisfy a firing sequence that lasts only a second or two seems backwards to me if a choice has to be made.
Anyways, thanks again for your dedication, here’s hoping the final pieces fall smoothly into place for your team.

Graphics ( and indeed, much in the way of flavour objects and other "clutter" ) could be better, but I appreciate the emphasis on the fidelity of the simulation.   
And modders can make a big difference as this pic shows ( posted by someone else here )