LongLeftFlank

No, it took the Iraqis some time to get going as well. The Sunnis started attacking US forces in earnest in late 2003; as you know April 2004 was a military disaster for them (although like Tet it got spun otherwise by antiwar Western media). By 2005 they had settled into their "groove" of IEDs plus sniping. All that is going to happen in Syria too. Regime core forces will lose their mobility, and control of much of the countryside will go with it. Commerce will grind to a halt, and cities and towns will be indiscriminatelt bombarded and their public infrastructure torn to bits. There's no win here for the regime, or the people. This genie is out of the bottle.

Detailed and thoughtful US think tank paper here on the Syrian resistance, dated last month. http://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Syrias_Armed_Opposition.pdf Senator John McCain said in early March 2012, “Increasingly, the question for U.S. policy is not whether foreign forces will intervene militarily in Syria. We can be confident that Syria’s neighbors will do so eventually, if they have not already.” The danger, he continued is that these neighbors “will try to pick the winners, and this will not always be to our liking or in our interest.” ....Regarding concerns that Syria’s armed opposition remains disorganized, it is important to distinguish between fragmentation and localized organization. The armed opposition has shown a propensity for organization at the local level. Insurgencies are inherently decentralized; finding a single leader who commands the allegiance of the grassroots resistance movement is not a reasonable expectation. Despite this natural constraint the, rebels across Syria have shown a willingness to share in the brand-name of the Free Syrian Army, even if this affiliation comes without meaningful logistical support or a chain of command. ....by early 2012, the insurgents demonstrated increasing effectiveness, and were able to maintain control of key terrain near Damascus and central Homs for weeks at a time, despite the regime’s efforts. The rebels have achieved these victories by forcing the regime to fight in many places at once, stretching the security forces thin. ....The operations the regime has conducted in Homs and Zabadani have driven insurgents out into the countryside but have not destroyed the fighting units. ....The Assad regime is likely to continue its strategy of disproportionate force in an attempt to end the uprising as quickly as possible. Indiscriminate artillery fire allows the regime to raise cost of dissent while preserving its increasingly stretched maneuver force. The Syrian regime has not yet demonstrated the capacity to conduct enough large, simultaneous, or successive operations in multiple urban areas to suppress the insurgency. But it is possible that the technical and material support that Iran and Russia provide will enable the regime to increase its span of control. ....This increase in weapons prices in neighboring Lebanon and Iraq demonstrated the fact that weapons were flowing into Syria.... Shortly afterwards, the same rebels met with an Iraqi Shammar tribesman who sold them assault rifles, RPGs, and a medium machine gun. One of the smugglers explained the high weapons prices. “We have emptied Mosul; no more guns there,” he said. ....Journalists on the ground have noted that the armed opposition is fundamentally a popular resistance movement. But as the militias continue to face overwhelming regime firepower the likelihood of their radicalization may increase. ....Iraqis probably represent the bulk of foreign fighter participation in Syria, although many of these “foreign fighters” are in reality Syrians who fought in Iraq with Sunni Arab insurgent groups....the cross-border networks Syrian and Iraqi militants developed during their fight against U.S. forces in Iraq may now be reversed, facilitating the flow of experienced fighters from Iraq into Syria. The Sunni Arab tribes of western Iraq would benefit from the Assad regime’s fall, especially as they move to resist Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s consolidation of power in Iraq. Sadoun al-Husseini, a 36-year-old engineer from Ramadi, a veteran of combat against U.S. forces in Iraq and a member of the Anbar Awakening, was interviewed in Idlib province near the Turkish border. Watch out, regime mech forces. Looks like Ramadi's washing-machine-timer IEDs and paint can EFPs are coming soon, to roadsides near you! They are probably setting up the clandestine bomb factories already. Notwithstanding gloomy current BBC headlines about "the opposition failing", this fight is nowhere near finished.

Hell of a bloody place to die, innit?

Re empty pads: when tanks are taken out of service, usually due to a combination of age and declining or shifting oilfield production (as happens even in Iraq), they are usually torn down for scrap, but the empty pad and containment berm remains. "Brownfield" in the developing world tends to be "blackfield"

....Can't imagine why. SB, I'm working on the Red forces setup and then we should be able to get started.

I thought you'd dig it, thanks. All in all, this is likely to resemble the ASL Warsaw liberation scenario "To the Square". The FSA haven't a prayer of stopping the regime tanks, but they can certainly make them bleed. As you recall from Ramadi, the map fights for the defender.

For those interested, here are some excerpts from the BLUE mission briefing, giving background and context. As I've said many times, I'm more of an amateur historian than a gamer, so this stuff is important to me. But for the benefit of gamers who just want to get right into the fight, I've put the "Quick Start" bullets right up front (hat tip, Erwin)..... QUICK START (Dude, spare me the history lesson! How do I win?) 1. You have 3 Control objectives, the Consumer Centre traffic circle, the Thabit School and the nearby Zubair bin al Awam Mosque. If you control these and lose less than 8% of your force, you will win. Otherwise, you must inflict at least 50% losses on the enemy without losing more than 20% of your own force to win. 2. You have 2 mobile forces totaling 200 men (mostly Special Forces command units in body armour, without RPG-29s) mounted in 10 BMP-3s and various jeeps, plus 5 T-72 TURMS tanks. The second (commando) group will arrive after 10-15 minutes in the area marked "highway". 3. Your firepower is mostly mounted in your AFVs. Even though most of your infantry are "Special Forces" and part of an elite praetorian division, their morale and leadership is poor relative to NATO troops. They prefer not to die. 4. RED strength is unknown. The only known threats are RPGs and small arms. IEDs and mines have never yet been encountered. Roadblocks, both deliberate and incidental (rubble from the lengthy bombardments), create another hazard in the narrow backstreets. Their ammo is low but they know they won't be taken prisoner. BACKGROUND Strategic map BABA AMR district, Homs, Syria, late February 2012. In the twelve months since the popular protests of the "Arab Spring" reached the streets of Syria's cities, the Assad regime and army had reacted with increasingly brutal force. The roots of the unrest were not primarily sectarian, but demographic and economic. With no oil revenues or Cold War Soviet aid to draw on, and the Levantine merchant classes of this ancient crossroads in economic and demographic decline, the Ba'ath welfare state was now failing. For millions of Sunni Arab young people crowding into crumbling cities, Syria had little future to offer beyond day labour and grinding poverty. In contrast, on the age-old despotic pattern, the Assad court clan of the Alawite Shia sect had systematically amassed to itself all political, military and economic power. The armed forces remained lavishly funded, but unlike Egypt, Turkey or Pakistan their commanders no longer had any institutional loyalty to the nation, only to the Assads. With little ability or inclination to create broader wealth or opportunity, the rulers had devolved into pure kleptocracy, extracting a Mercedes Benz lifestyle for a shrinking elite. They feared that a Sunni-majority government would exact a brutal sectarian revenge on its oppressors. Thus, with nothing to offer the people, the regime's sole option was to crush them with armed force. And the more blood they spilled, the more there was no turning back. During 2011, as troops began firing on demonstrators, thousands of ordinary soldiers deserted in disgust to the loose collection of armed opposition groups known as the "Free Syria Army", taking their rifles. This influx of dedicated fighters, who knew there was no going back, allowed rebels to carve out large denied areas in the vehicle-unfriendly cities, and in hilly areas near the borders. More ominous still for the regime, the FSA negotiated informal truces with local garrisons, allowing supplies and arms to flow in. By the end of 2011, aware that its control was slipping away, the regime marshaled its most reliable forces to crush key rebel centers using brutal, overwhelming force, in the hope of intimidating the rest, as it had done in Hama in 1982. Its first target was Homs, Syria's third largest city, an ancient trading center whose multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian population had a long tradition of thwarting the will of rulers. In December 2011, hundreds of tanks arrived to seal off restive districts. The siege conditions, together with chill winter weather, began taking a toll on the FSA rebels and their civilian hosts. But ejecting the FSA from the Old City and the crowded Sunni tenement districts that had sprung up all around it continued to pose a formidable challenge for the armour-heavy regime forces. The neighbourhood of Baba Amr was particularly hazardous. As BMPs and tanks spread out into the narrow streets, unable to support each other, the rebels would incinerate a few with point blank RPG shots, then melt away. They would then return at night in force to overrun isolated outposts. Inevitably, the army was forced to withdraw to defensible bases, unable to hold what it had taken. Frustrated at the lack of progress, the army ratcheted up the siege of Baba Amr in February, using weapons the rebels could not counter: weeks of intensive bombardment by 122mm artillery and 140mm rockets. Tactically, these weapons were ineffective, as rebel fighters were killed only by accident. But the suffering inflicted on civilians, combined with the privations of the ongoing siege, was grievous. Situation: Friendly Forces You command a company of the 402nd Guards Mechanized Infantry Battalion, reinforced by T72s of the 417th Armoured Battalion and Special Forces commandos (see below). Your parent formation is the elite Fourth Armoured Division, commanded by the President's younger brother Maher al-Assad. The Syrian army suffers the same rot afflicting other Ba'ath institutions. For years, its officer corps has been selected and promoted for loyalty, not effectiveness, and has focused its efforts on graft, neglecting training and readiness. Soldiers and NCOs are virtually unpaid conscript labour, their scant wages routinely skimmed by their superiors. The army's primary strength is that it remains lavishly equipped owing to generous aid from Russia and Iran. Even with slipshod maintenance and logistics, more than enough mechanized forces can be moved about the aging highway network to saturate flashpoints with an intimidating presence and overmatch lightly armed rebels. In addition to leadership, the most awkward point is the ordinary soldiers (jundi), who are drafted from the same poor populations they are now being ordered to beat, shoot and lately, bombard with heavy artillery. Even "elite" troops are showing themselves highly unwilling to risk life and limb against determined opposition. They remain in or near their vehicles, sending bullets and shells, not men, allowing the streetwise guerrillas to escape and strike in another place. Moreover, as of early 2012 the army finds itself badly short of infantry. Many soldiers in frontline combat formations deserted to the opposition in 2011, bolstering FSA combat power. In response, the command hastily reorganized its frontline forces, keeping large numbers of Sunni draftees locked down in barracks. Reliable troops have now been redeployed to a smaller number of mechanized divisions which have large amounts of armour and artillery, but whose bayonet strength is as little as half their full establishment. In multiethnic cities like Homs, these units are augmented by paramilitaries known as Shabiha (Ghosts), drawn from Alawite and other loyalist sects. However, while these thugs know the locale, their combat effectiveness is even poorer than the regular Army. All in all, the Army units have massive firepower, but lack cohesion, competence and determination in closing with the rebels, much less fighting door-to-door. As a Praetorian formation tasked with crushing the rebellion, the 4th division has an attached battalion of better paid and trained Special Forces commandos (Wahdat al-Khassa). These experienced fighters are more likely to close with and kill the enemy, although they too have limits on their willingness to die for the regime. Situation: Enemy Forces Regime propaganda notwithstanding, it appears none of the Baba Amr fighters are Al Qaeda fanatics, but rather a mix of army deserters and local militiamen, largely though not exclusively Sunni. No foreign volunteers have been confirmed, dead or alive. Furthermore the trademark tools of AQ -- IEDs and suicide belts -- are not (yet) in noticeable use here. The primary resistance weapons at present are what the deserters took with them: rifles, a few machine guns and an even smaller number of RPGs. Ammunition is very short, so they are unable to sustain lengthy firefights. Their C3 and discipline is extremely poor; they tend to flock to firefights in an unruly mob, and this could be used to trap them if army troops would act more aggressively. As it is, they tend to vanish when confronted with superior force. A few foreigners remain in Homs; ostensibly doctors and journalists. As far as the regime is concerned they are spies and provocateurs working arm in arm with the traitors. Rumours aside, there is no evidence of Western military support or advisers. ALL SUBUNIT COMMANDERS BE ADVISED: The irahibin (terrorists) have announced their retreat from Baba Amr under heavy pressure from our forces. Our sniper/observation posts in the high rises have reported a noticeable decrease in activity of all kinds. It is also reported that fewer than 4,000 residents remain of the original 50,000+. Any rafidha (renegades) remaining have no civilians to hide among. Thus, anybody seen on the streets may be deemed an enemy and treated accordingly. [the Population Density setting has been lowered to reflect this]. Mission: Overall Description Heartened by FSA announcements to the foreign press that its fighters are withdrawing "temporarily" from Baba Amr, the Division has ordered your units to spearhead a final advance into the rubble and trash-filled streets. Your force objectives are to establish a permanent command post in the heart of the district and secure a nearby mosque that is a known center of rebel activity. Your attack has been devised personally by General Assad and, with typical flair, dubbed Operation "Adiyat" (Warhorse), after a sura of the Holy Qu'ran. Your forces are effectively committed, and needless to say, you are not inclined to modify your orders. Operational map Departing from the battalion's forward operating base near the University high rises, your reinforced company is advancing west (South on the map) along the district's wide commercial boulevards. This move is expected to draw any remaining rafidha north toward you. Meanwhile, a jeep-mounted Special Forces commando platoon accompanied by two tanks is to dash boldly along the elevated highway that forms the eastern boundary of Baba Amr [REMINDER: "East" is North on the game map] and secure the mosque. As the irahibin react to this coup de main, you will catch them on the move between your forces and slaughter them like the traitorous rats they are.

All right, nearly ready to start playtesting H2H here, although AI will take a while longer for single player. SBurke has kindly volunteered to be my opponent in the first go-through. Here's a pano of the BLUE force setup, looking toward the objectives.

Any chance of CoPlay, however basic? It doesn't need all the bells and whistles; we can do our own C3 workarounds.

Wot, all 1084 of 'em? Any way you can be a little more specific? Keywords or sumfink? I'm busy back in CMSF-land recreating brutal current events in Syria, trying to coax AI-controlled T72s into Assaulting in column down 8m wide streets.

I notice the Dromedary webpage is under construction (Extreme Makeover, I presume), but I'm going to be VERY interested in learning more about your shop, and the backstory of how you and BFC partnered up. Be sure to post interviews and whatnot.

.... Venturing into "wish land", I'd love to see scenario designers allowed to program AI plans for both sides (which you can do now), with the difference being that the human player's units would attempt to execute their preprogrammed AI plans except as otherwise instructed by the player. Presumably the briefing would tell the player what the plans are beforehand, so he has some idea of what his units will be trying to do and when (unless he intervenes). In a RT environment that would take some of the pressure off you to be everywhere at once, micromanaging. It could also allow you to choose to play the role of a platoon commander within a larger operation. On the other hand, too much intervention could easily expose units to danger as they try to execute their plan with far fewer forces than the designer envisioned (because you've called those units away elsewhere).

Well-written and thoughtful post. Hope to hear much more from you in the future. I generally play RT with a lot of pausing, although I've come to appreciate WeGo more lately in small PBEM games. The philosophy and the tempo are different, as you say, although I would still say I favour "paused RT" for reasons described below. As many others have said before, unlike the player who can only be in one place at any given time, in both RT and WeGo the AI exercises simultaneous control over all its units, acting within the limits imposed by the programming: 1. the by-the-clock AI plans programmed by the scenario designer, plus 2. the limited suite of reactive "return fire", "move out of danger" or "go around" TacAI routines that all units -- player or computer controlled -- are wired to execute in response to stimuli like enemy fire or terrain obstacles. So in answer to one of your questions, no, the computer doesn't benefit from the WeGo interval or play any differently. It's you who are forced to play differently. In most situations other than static defense, you the human player can't just be the battalion or company CO and let your units fight it out, you have to control every single subunit leader. Absent orders from you, your units will do nothing beyond elementary self-defense. So you're inherently at a disadvantage in RT against a computer opponent with a well-written set of AI plans. So under those conditions, a certain amount of pausing to issue orders in "RT" is more, not less, realistic. This is even more true in infantry-heavy fights in complex terrain like cities, where a lot of finesse is called for in tactical movement in order to avoid heavy BLUE losses. In cities you can't depend on precision weapons in overwatch to instantly silence RED positions moments after they open fire, and enemy ambushes generally take place at close ranges where the Kalashnikovs become a lot more lethal. "Finesse" in CMSF/CMBN tactical infantry movement requires careful positioning of waypoints, plus a lot of fine-tuning of orders, including: - extensive use of Covered Arcs - use of Pauses (e.g. pause 5-10 seconds between running up to an unscouted building and entering it). - use of the unit Face command (that will keep your men closer to available cover, like walls, as opposed to out in the middle of the street). I have found you can execute most combat drills used by modern armies quite accurately with these tools, but making sure they do it right takes time and attention. And in larger unit fights, or ones where your forces are widely dispersed on the map, this level of micro can distract you from the "bigger picture" command and threat assessments. That might explain why you feel "caught on the back foot" more often when playing RT.

The "quotes" around the "forum" name make me " suspicious". I still think this product is real, just still at vapourware stage.

Well that relationship is about to be tested... You think she'll want to swap for your man-cave 30" wall-mounted LED monitor + recliner with 2 years of Doritos and CokeZero down the cushions?

Did you check out the new building types in that tutorial? Real stuff or a mashup from a WWII shooter? I don't play those things so I wouldn't know.

Ah, as in, "this is a real product, but available April 2nd.... 2015."

Vulcans never bluff. A couple of instant reactions upon viewing the Tutorial. - Fantastic, intuitive UI! Best I've seen since StarCraft. Our prayers have been answered! - Rumours of the demise of WeGo were greatly exaggerated. 30sec turns -- yay! - Can CoPlay be far away? That would send this thing viral and be the biggest wargaming framebreaker since, oh, CMBO. - You guys have seized the high ground in wargaming once again, with a capable partner. Well done, sirs! Just 5 bucks for the app? -- that's the part that may be an April Fools joke.... Unless you're planning to generate a revenue stream for additional content, vehicles, scenarios, etc.

Building out the AI plans for the BLUE (Regime) force, tossing in some basic opposition for interest. T72-TURMS bushwhacked twice by RPG shots on the elevated highway; minimal damage. MBTs are tough to kill from the side with RPG-7ds.

Just kibitzing here (killing time during a child's ballet rehearsal), but I'm idly mulling how to represent oil infrastructure using the limited building set in the game. One decent trick I found was to use the "stilts + no-railing" balcony type with the "breached" wall surface to create a skeleton that can variously represent a partly constructed building, a parking garage or, as shown in this shot, a large water tank tower. I can't clearly see them in the imagery, but the site probably contains a maze of above-ground pipelines mounted on frames; probably next to roads. Third World facilities generally don't bother to bury these things except where a road needs to cross them which would be most cheaply accomplished with a gravel culvert. The single feeder pipes (feeding out to the tank farm) would seem best represented for tactical purposes by the low stone walls (laying down hundreds of oil drums end-to-end would be a nightmare. For the larger pipeline arrays coming in from the oilfields (multiple larger diameter pipes seated in parallel on a frame), you might consider the long thin 1x2 square building with "shot out" sides as shown above. To lower the profile for LOS purposes, maybe sink the elevation of the squares they're in by a meter or two. FWIW.

Easy. Just hit the "quote" button on my previous post and you'll see how to do it. It's HTML: you precede the filename (ending .jpg, .gif, .png, whatever) with squarebracketimgsquarebracket and then end it with squarebracket/imgsquarebracket. Spaces between brackets and text not required. Squarebrackets being [ and ] The VC for this scenario should be quite interesting. I assume the Coalition has a number of "Preserve" building objectives which for the Iraqi side are "Destroy", involving emplaced IEDs or sumfink. So the commandos need to neutralize the triggermen before they demolish the valve control buildings and the valves themselves. Not much in the way of prepared defensive positions in this complex, I'd imagine; maybe a blockhouse (bunker) at the entrance plus a barracks area where the majority of the Iraqi defenders would be located. I can't see them sitting in trenches around the complex, especially at night. But I haven't read the book.

I've had no trouble myself, although I may not have the entire mod set a(ISTR one of the 3 rar files refused to open). I still get palm trees, but that's OK.

In theory, I suppose ammo cookoffs from a burning tank could damage the structure. Although I never noticed whether or not vehicles wrecked and burning at game start cook off.

Nice! Glad to see someone (else) covering Iraq. I considered laying out an oil facility for a Libya Red on Red fight last year but never got around to it. You can embed your screenshot in the thread by putting "img" tags on your jpg. Like so: Any chance of seeing a 3d pano?

Some of the most intensive bombardment I've seen yet: Hamidiya, Homs March 26. Again, no military purpose whatever is being served by this -- it is pure terror. Note the church domes in the target area (second clip). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L3k5rvE404 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lItpfXA3e54 A glimpse of the hell on the incoming end.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD2LwPSr6ME&feature=relmfu