TheVulture
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Posts posted by TheVulture
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For me the assault command is one of the commands I never use as it just seems made to get your guys killed. I think it would be better to have the guys not moving into assault to be firing at the assaulting target.
Likewise. Assault is massively worse than splitting teams and doing suppressive fire / quick move manually. It serves no purpose at all in WeGo. I suppose it is a useful short cut in real time play to avoid micro-management.
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Turn 5
Plan
The infantry squads of groups V and H will move up through the trenches towards the houses, V up the left, H up the right. They are split in to teams and will move with 10 second spacing so we have more guys stationary at any time for spotting. The MMG stops its suppressing fire and goes back to overwatching.
Group R start to climb up the ridge.
Action
Damnable MMG - forgot to set its cover arc after cancelling the fire order, so it decides to target the bunker instead. Spends the whole minute pumping rounds in to it. Fortunately the Syrians are unable to spot where the fire is coming from and do nothing. One of my marines gets the "unlucky bastard" award as he advances up the trench, only his head above ground level, and is taken out by a piece of shrapnel from 150m range. But otherwise, the movement up the trenches gets no response from the defenders in the village. Hopefully that means that the suppressive fire has been effective.
Just at the end of the turn, the reversing pickup hails back in to view, back by the bunkers and the dam. The second bunker is at the location of the contact markers in the bottom right.
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Turn 4
Plan
I decide to risk the MMG opening up on the rifle squad house (it can't see the squad, so area fire time), since none of the units in the trenches have good enough LoS to area target the house. All the trench units will hold position and cover the houses for better spotting, and to return fire on anyone who shoots at the MG overwatch.
Group R will regroup in some trees and let the stragglers (particularly the injured SMAW gunner) catch up before starting the climb up the ridge.
(NB infantry in trenches split in to teams, red circle indicates position of enemy MG team)
Action
Group V's MMG duly opens up on the house, but no reaction is visible. No enemy contacts at all this turn. The only event of note is one of those exciting bits of pathfinding fun where the FO, chosing a route from A (with forest) to B (with forest) strays out of the forest, and loses his radio operator to a piece of shrapnel from a shell 80m away. Bugger. Fortunately the observer himself is fine, so he should still function okay. Will send the lurking sniper HQ to treat the casualty once the artillery stops.
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Turn 3
Plan
Group H will move to join the men in the irrigation ditches, except for the sniper who goes for a wander over to the east to try and find a vantage point to see over the dam complex from. So when the attacking squad move up through the ditches they have a second squad, MMG and SMAW potentially in overwatch. I'm a little wary of letting the MMG loose though, since it is in LoS to one of the bunkers at about 500m range. The sniper in that group is engaging the pickup this turn to drive it out of the area. Group V infantry will wait about 20 seconds for the men joining them in the ditch, then hunt forwards through the trenches by fire teams.
Action
Before group V start their hunt move, a Syrian MMG team is spotted on the roof of one of the buildings. A few bursts of fire take out one man, and another is seen running down into the building. The sniper fires off one shot at the pickup, which as expected hits reverse and scurries backwards until it is behind a building. At the end of the turn, an enemy rifle squad is spotted in the house next to the one with the MG. Group H exchange a few cursory shots with it, but to no effect.
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A question. Will you be putting in suppressive fires on the village as you start to assault or are you going to try and sneak in quietly and only fire if the enemy opens fire on you?
I'm going for the sneaky approach. Partly because that is my playstyle (in PBEM I do tend to keep everything out of sight and keep my opponent guessing; less so against the AI since it can't use the info), and partly because with 7 or so buildings facing out over my direction, I can't suppress all of them, and area firing one or two buildings is often a good way to get the 3 other occupied buildings opening up on your overwatch units, with negative consequences. I prefer to let them reveal themselves and then have my overwatch return fire with overkill.
But obviously is does depend on the situation.
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Turn 2
Plan
Group H's sniper team looks for a position to engage the pickup from. The FO is directed to the group V fire base (I foolishly left him languishing away with group R, which seems like a perverse decision in retrospect). I'm tempted to drop some 120mm mortar rounds on one of the bunkers to see if they have any effect (although obviously they are currently tied up with the pre-planned fire - forgot to mention that I timed the missions on hill 67 to start in 5 minutes time).
Action
Group R continue their move and get far enough away that the Syrian arty won't bother them any further. Group V reach the irrigation ditches, apparently without having been spotted.
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Turn 1
Plan
Already covered the opening plan...
Action
Immediately Syrian artillery starts to fall near our line of departure. In a stroke of good fortune it happens to land between group R in the west and group V in the east, and the teams from group R that are closest to it happen to have a decent bank of earth between them and the surface detonations. Two men pick up minor injuries. One of them is the SMAW AT specialist, and it slows him down considerably, what with carrying the SMAW around as well.
A few enemy contacts are detected: one pickup between the dam and hill 67, and two MG bunkers near the dam covering the approach routes.
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I've decided to try my hand at an ongoing AAR of snake_eye's El Derjine campaign. I've not played any of the scenarios before, so I'm coming at this blind. Hopefully it won't be too embarassing.
Mission 1
I'm given the job of seizing a dam in a night time attack. The forces at my disposal are:
1 marine platoon (HQ, 3 x 13 man squads, 2 x MMG, 2 x SMAW)
1 sniper platoon (4 x 3 man teams, plus an HQ)
1 javelin team
1 FO
1 60mm mortar battery (3 tubes)
1 120mm mortar battery (2 tubes)
The briefing suggests basically attacking the village and positions on the surrounding hills first, and using those as a base of fire to attack the dam. Sounds fair enough to me. There are 7 or 8 victory objectives on the map in the village, trench positions on various hills, and the dam and surrounding buildings. I have 30-40 minutes to complete this.
The Overall Plan
Phase 1
Clear the village and surrounding high ground (ridge and hill 67 in the map below) of enemy.
Phase 2
Reposition fire base to hill 67, regroup, and attack the dam complex.
Yeah, it's not the most complex of plans. In a little more detail:
Phase 1
I divide my forces up in to 3 groups
Group R
1 infantry squad, 1 MMG, 2 snipers, 1 SMAW, 1 javelin
These guys will sweep to the west of the village up to the ridge, and then work their way along it. The ridge has three separate trench positions (each one an objective). I intend to put mortar fire on each trench before assaulting it. Hopefully most of the support units will therefore be redundant and can use the high ground of the ridge to harass enemy units in the village.
Group V
1 infantry squad, 1 MMG, 1 sniper.
This infantry will move through the trees and into the irrigation trenches in the fields just south of the village. I'm praying they won't be mined. The trenches allow access right up to the houses. The MMG and sniper will deploy at the start position as a fire base.
Group H
1 infantry squad, 1 SMAW, 1 sniper.
This group will ultimately occupy hill 67, but their first task is to support group V attacking the village. Basically both infantry squads will attack through the trenches, and once I'm happy that the situation is in hand, they'll break off and take the hill.
I also plot a pre-planned barrage of the two trench lines on hill 67 - one linear target from each mortar asset. So hopefully group H won't actually have to fight for the hill top, just waltz in and throw the bodies over the edge.
There is some flexibility in this - group R will be on high ground above the village for extra fire support from a different direction, and it will be easy to divert the infantry squad in to the village should it be necessary.
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Go go hcrof - always good to see DARs / AARs on the forums (I'm just starting one for the El Derjine campaign as it happens).
Good luck!
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Brit artillery is rather effective vs tanks, since it seems like a target armour mission will have all the shells landing within about 3 meters of the target point, resulting in a high number of direct hits on the vehicle (if it is stationary...). But I've only tried 155mm vs tanks that I can recall (which was pretty effective). I'd imagine that several direct hits by a lower caliber would put a tank out of action fairly reliably though (although obviously not something as small as 60mm).
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The second man in a sniper team is, of course, there to spot targets not to get involved in the shooting. It would seem that this particular number 2 decided to help his marksman friend by opening fire himself. Needless to say the bloody idiot was firing 5.56 tracer, which showed their position to one of the T72s the Challengers didn’t take out. He won’t make that mistake again, or indeed any other – and the bloody Kornet team survived.
I've noticed similar behaviour recently with marine snipers - possibly an unintended patch 1.21 change? In my case, I have 3 man marine sniper teams (spotter, sniper, security?). The 3rd guy has a rifle with underslung grenade launcher, and when the sniper engages a target, both other guys open up with standard rifles (with tracers), and UGL if in range. Granted, in the scenario I'm playing it hasn't hurt since apparently all the Syrians are blind and, like bats, use echolocation that is stymied by all the explosions going off around them (and one UGL grenade took out 5 men in one hit, considerably upping the sniper's effectiveness), but it surely isn't realistic or intended behaviour.
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It would be nice if it could be done without too much interface hassle.
And you can do it to some extent - if you select your target waypoint and issue a face command there, the action spot highlights move around and you can have some control over where your guys end up. It's not perfect, but it can be useful to stop some guys wandering off into weird places. (And if you want to use a target arc instead, figure out the facing via the face command and then make the arc center on that direction).
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I do like using infantry smoke (and Brit 51mm mortar smoke rounds), although it can be less useful in turn-based games since it can involve a certain amount of luck to get your guys moving at the right time to be effectively obscured (particularly with wind about).
I do try to avoid the deliberate use of smoke moving through buildings, since that is rather exploitable, but sometimes it is an unavoidable consequence of putting smoke in the right place.
The one time I used an artillery smoke mission (marine campaign somewhere) I managed to get some of my guys killed but it, since I assumed (not being remotely aware of such things) that i could move guys up through falling smoke rounds safely, when it turns out that exploding WP shells can actually harm people.... who knew?
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Because it is virtually impossible to calculate in CMSF, I suspect. CMx1 used to calculate some kind of hit chance (I believe), generated a random number, and then fired the shot (which particularly when tracking moving vehicles, could pass through buildings or solid ground as necessary to achieve the hit or miss). AIUI CMx2 does something more like calculate an aim point (taking into account vehicle movement), and then apply a random offset depending on the skill of the gunner, the equipment etc. This determines the trajectory, and then the shell moves, the vehicle moves, and if they happen to intersect then it is a hit of some kind. There is never an actual 'hit chance' that exists in the program, so there is obviously no way of showing that number. You could conceivably generate an estimate of it by running a few thousand simulated shots (making some assumptions about the vehicle movement while the shot is in flight), but I'm not sure that it's worth the CPU hit to calculate that number every time you target something (and, in RT, update it continually as things move).
Same sort of argument applies to kill chances. There is no simpole number that can be generated - it depends on where on a vehicle a shot hits, what material it hits, at what angle etc.
You simply have to get a feel for these things based on experience. You can be pretty sure an M1 Abrams is 99% likely to hit first shot. My personal experience is that the better Syrian tanks (t-72 TURMS, t-90) have a 50%ish chance of surviving any given hit. Anything else is virtually guaranteed to be toast the moment the round leaves the barrel.
WWII will be a different kettle of echinoderms however, with much lower hit chances and far stronger armour (in relative terms). Much more experience needed to get a feel for the numbers, although the relative strengths ought to be fairly intuitive.
But then, how often do such numbers matter? I don't recally very many time splaying CMx1 when I thought "my odds of a successful shot aren't that great, I won't bother shooting". The vast majority of the time, you take any shot you can get, or wait in ambush until the tactically appropriate moment (not until the kill chance gets higher).
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The pixeltrudden to not fire on the move on "Fast" and they do on quick. That is one of the major differences. And now since there is certainly a higher fatigue issue in difficult terrain with "quick", i've already found myself using "move" more.
It would make 'move' more useful.
Playing it ain't half hot mum, with the weakened troops who are meant to tire quickly to simulate the hot conditions, it is still faster to move around with quick and then wait until troops get back to 'rested' than to use 'move'.
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It can also cause problems when the rest of the team is still alive but someone from a different squad performs buddy aid. Suddenly you have an MG team that has lost its MG to another squad and can't get it back.
Maybe picking up heavy weapons via buddy aid should be allowed only if no member of the original squad is alive, although that would also have people complaining about bugs where they can only recover weapons sometimes, and the reason why isn't obvious.
Whichever option you chose is going to be imperfect.
Agree on the sharing ammo though. One PBEM I had some syrian special forces running around with RPG-29s (very nice weapon). One squad lost its AT gunner, and the weapon wasn't recovered during buddy aid (damaged, presumably) but was still lugging around several RPG-29 rounds. Another squad had used up all its ammo, and had a now useless RPG-29. And of cousre there is no way to transfer ammo from one squad to the other, short of getting one squad killed off and ripping the ammo off their corpses (although I don't know whether looting RPG rounds from a different squad via buddy aid is possible or not).
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Ah, good point! In the game scenarios veteran-or-better is usually reserved for Red Special Forces or Republican Guards, reflecting the relative lack of training given to reserves and militias. So your 'typical' Syrian force may already be thinking about surrendering (and survivng) before the battle starts! The exception would be Fighters and Combatants who can be as green as grass but fanatical in the extreme. They won't hit anything they aim at but they'll die like a man.
Or, in "It Ain't Half Hot Mum", some of the green troops will hold their positions like beserkers, and are apparently immune to just about everything.
One particularly troublesome command squad in a building 2nd floor was the lucky recipient of one helictopter run, sustained HMG fire from 2 HMGs, the intermittent support of a GMG, and two squads of infantry at relatively close range. Since this was failing to cause even a single casualty or get them to leave the building, eventually a tornado came in and dropped a bomb on the building, reducing the whole thing to rubble.
Whereupon the squad somehow survived and continued to fight from the ruins.
Do Syrian squads sometimes turn fanatical like squads could in CMBB?
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The primary problem with SHOWING you guys stuff is that we have not prioritized the artwork for the terrain or soldier textures. There are plenty of vehicles to show off, but not more than initial test examples of the other stuff. We're trying to concentrate on the features rather than the brute force grunt work that is needed to make the game complete. The design and initial implementation stuff doesn't do well in screenshots
That being said, I'll see what I can do to get you guys to stop talking nonsense about BMP-1s going up against Panthers
Steve
Entirely innocent question:
how much work would it be for you guys to knock up a screenshot of a BMP-1 and a panther or tiger? Or even a quick, internal use only scenario?
<runs for cover>
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I was surprised to read that line, considering how close you were by then. About that point I tend to stumble on that one unit hiding in that one house I neglected to supress which make my life very difficult.
It sounds like you were doing something even old hands tend to neglect. There's a LOT of machinegun firepower available to the Brits in that scenario but for some reason it gets underutilized. 7.62 will got through building walls at ranges 5.56 won't.
That's how I dealt with the scenario. You have something like 20 vehicles with MGs mounted on them. I kept up a pretty continuous rain of MG fire just about every floor of every building with 200 m and LoS of my infantry. Area fire is your friend. And use target light - keep the HE rounds until you are firing at confirmed targets.
Just before I started the mission I'd made a post here mentioning the AI's tendency to bug out of buildings when taking heavy fire, so I saw the long building as a great rat trap that I could drive the Syrians along with MG fire. So before my men moved into the next building, it had a minute (or more) worth of fire from 2 MGs, while the next two (or even three) buildings along also had a single MG hitting them, just to make sure any troops driven out of building 1 were still taking more fire as they tried to run. With the intention of making them panic or rout.
Unsurprisingly, when I got to the end of the building, I found 5 or 6 depleted units in various states of disarray in the last few blocks, or cowering in the undergrowth outside.
Then it is just a case of remembering to use demo charges to blast through some of the doors with no LoS to the other side, and dropping some arty on the prefab barracks (a few line missions flattened everything rather quickly).
First time around I lost about 5 men and two vehicles to RPGs. On a later replay I think I lots only 1-2 men. Making the Syrians run the gauntled of buildings being hit by MG fire seemed to work well - they were all driven to the end, and a lot of Syrians were missing in action in the AAR. Being panicked and running in to a building where you are still receiving even more fire tends to get guys routing off the map.
I don't think my tactics would work in real time though. There was quite a lot of fiddling around with short moves and area target orders to keep the MG tunnel of death going, and organising lots of different vehicles area firing in different, co-ordinated places is something that you probably can't do without pausing. (And is probably rather gamey too in detail, if not in principle).
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Did they mention if they have actual landing invasions with combined arms, ships, landing craft, airplanes, etc. ?? If so, that would be a great thing!
I played a quick demo and it seems to work okay!
The actual amphibious assault is out of the scope of the game - too much specialised code and equipment.
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I have just started the Marines campaign.
During the first mission my Sniper teams took a bit of a beating - but I also managed to dish out alot of death from above.
Thing is - I took out several buildings in this mission, yet in the second mission those same buildings appear re-built (repaired) and a few other building are destroyed instead.
Is ground deformation not carried through from battle to battle accurately?
I did a search but couldnt find anything on this...
Short answer: landscape damage isn't carried through in to the next battle.
As far as the engine is concerned, it is a new scenario with a new map. There is currently no way of using the same map (or sections of) for a second scenario with persistent damage. It's one of the many things on the wish list.
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About the Taliban possible dead and seriously wounded. I'm seeing some rather odd arguments here BigDuke6, you are apparently saying that it's implausible that the Taliban were able to remove a high number of casualties because of all that heavy firepower. Well, if that were the case then isn't it logical that all that firepower was causing casualties? I mean, logic would say one of two situations happened:
1. They suffered significant casualties from the heavy firepower and were able to remove the casualties.
*or*
2. They didn't have to evacuate casualties because, despite all that heavy firepower, they didn't suffer casualties.
Based on empirical evidence from countless battles in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I think #2 is less likely than #1.
I think what BigDuke is suggesting is that the evidence is that the Taliban were gone before the heavy firepower arrived. The reasoning being that if they had been there when the airstrikes etc. were called in, they'd a) have taken casualties from the heavy firepower, and
been unable to remove the wounded and dead from the battlefield because of the heavy firepower. Hence there would have been bodies and injured taliban around to be discovered. -
Exactly, a code issue. Well, "issue" may be putting it a bit strongly. It's great that this game puts the first non-driver/non-crew up on the gun. Seriously. But it would be BETTER if you then gained vehicle status information to include the ability to shoot the gun.
None of this is game breaking; I post it purely to bring these minor observations more notice so if BF.C has time, they can work them into the next patch. (If they're deemed even being needed to be fixed.)
Ken
My personal wish for a bit of code tweaking is to stop the dratted warriors turning their entire body to face their cover arc, thus exposing their under-armoured front armour rather than their considerably tougher side armour. For most vehicles that is sensible behaviour, but for the warrior I'd like it so stay facing the way it was moving, so I can angle it how I like for maximum security.
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c3k: I imagine it is one of those code quirks. Once the state of the vehicle is checked and found to be "dismounted", it doesn't bother looking at whether it has any targets etc. to shoot at; it is just assumed that the whole vehicle is out of action. So the fact that you can put a guy in there who mans the gun doesn't make any difference in code to the vehicle's behaviour. Of course, the guy can't man the vehicle and make its state not "dismounted" since he isn't the crew for that vehicle. I'll be if you managed to get the driver back in there, the gun would be fired just fine by the passanger.
It's one of those cases where you have to think how the code sees the situation, rather than what reality is like. The idea of a "dismounted" (i.e. unused) vehicle that none the less has the gun manned and able to fire is the kind of thing that falls through the cracks very easily.
been unable to remove the wounded and dead from the battlefield because of the heavy firepower. Hence there would have been bodies and injured taliban around to be discovered.
El Derjine campaign AAR
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted
Turn 6
Plan
The sniper is going to play games with the pickup some more, since it's there. The MMG however will not continue playing with the bunker and will get back to the overwatch job on the village. The squads in the trenches will continue their advance on the village by fire teams. There is only one building with a door facing the tenches (visible in the first turn 5 picture above), so one fire team will put area fire on that building since we are going to want to go in there. The SMAW team will nip over to give buddy aid to the marine wounded by the artillery.
Up on the ridge, contact with the first trench is unlikely this turn, but we should be getting close to LoS. Since this group have a nice vantage point over the village, one of the sniper teams and the MMG will deploy in overwatch where they can cover the roads in the village, and more particularly, the exits from the known occupied houses.
Action
My pre-planned barrages start to pound the trenches on top of hill 67. With the Syrian artillery still falling, there's an awful lot of HE flying around considering the extremely limited contacts so far. LOS is gained to the first two (of three) trench positions on the ridge, and each one contains an MMG team. Their night vision is about as good as the bunker's it seems, since we've been moving with 2-300m of them in full(ish) view without them noticing.
The first susprise of the mission:
There seems to be a recon patrol returning to the dam area. 2 BDRM-2 and a BTR, currently stationary in the next valley. Probably a good thing therefore that I have a javelin team and a SMAW team up on the ridge. Not sure yet whether to let the javelin loose - it's possible overkill given that the SMAW and organic AT assets of the infantry squad are more than capable of killing the vehicles in the right situation.
Here's my best estimate of the current disposition:
Unit markers are placed where there are confirmed contacts, even if the units are guesswork. With one squad and an MMG seen in the village, my guess is that it is defended by a platoon reinforced by one or more MGs. And I'd imagine that the final trench on the ridge, and the hill 67 trenches (see the red circles) are occupied - probably another MMG on the ridge, and an MMG and infantry squad on the hill.