Subcomandante

I have a feeling that your exact performance is also very much dependent on luck. A lucky M4 shot by Sarge John M. Stryker might have happened to take out that RPD gunner in building 64 in your game, but in my game the gunner was still there and was able to mow down half a squad because the Sarge was knocked out by an IED 2 minutes before, by pure bad luck. This is part of the chaos of battle that the game tries to repilcate.

It only worked for me when I blasted my way through the wall at the barracks (with MGS), as per the mission briefing. Then it was possible to take the barracks with surprisingly low casualties, and it provided me with a relatively secure firebase on the other side of the map, from where I could fire at lots of locations. Btw, if you have Google Earth, Ash Shammas is at 34° 22' N 40° 09' E I surely looks like it (note the open area in the west, and the angle of the road), resolution is rather low though at that place. [ August 25, 2007, 03:44 AM: Message edited by: Subcomandante ]

I finally nailed this mission, 6 dead, 28 wounded, not so bad at all. But then again it was only a draw. I had both the airport HQ and the barracks secured, and destroyed the specops hq, had people present there when the time ran out, but still this last objective was not met. It's completely rubble and nobody is left alive there. I have tried everything, but I just can't get the bugger.

The same is when none of your people has spotted a hostile unit (not even as (?), but you as a player can see the tracers and muzzle flashes, indicating where you have to direct your heavy weapons.

Bah, forget it. Too much politics. [ August 23, 2007, 09:29 AM: Message edited by: Subcomandante ]

War is more of a continuation of crime by other means.

Officially it was Panzerkampfwagen IV, abbreviated to Panzer IV. Which is how it's called in Germany now, which means they called it the same back then. Just like the Tiger or the Stuka. Or the Typ VII U-Boot. 'Mark' can be translated as 'Typ'(english 'type'), so it is a 'Panzer vom Typ IV'. Literally 'Tank of the type IV'. Another designation might have been Metallsärge - metal coffins. Begleitwagen and Zugführerwagen, heh, didn't know that. It surely sounds less dangerous than Panzerkampfwagen - Armored Fighting Vehicle. [ August 22, 2007, 11:36 AM: Message edited by: Subcomandante ]

Not to speak of the OpFor TacAI. In one mission (the one you get when you botch the airport mission), you drive through a valley with Syrian fortified positions on front and flanks. After taking out a pillbox on the left, for kicks I decided to send a recon humvee right up the hill over their trenches. Wanted to see how far it came. There was no return fire. Penetration with a humvee! I parked my hummer a few meters behind the trench and its defenders. My 2 recon dudes dismounted, went into the trench, and started killing until the ammo ran out! The Syrians didn't mind. Sadly they didn't throw hand grenades at the remaining Syrians, so they hopped into their vehicle and drove away into the night (again over the trench). I got a Bradley with fresh 5.56 up there, let 4 soldiers dismount and finish the work. They then took a couple Javs and started killing in another trench from afar, while directing devastating anti-personnel arty barrages everywhere from the elevated position. War is easy. I enlist today! Well, then again the airport mission was an unmitigated disaster...

Well, I am still at the mission, but the time limit still gets me everytime. This time I went through the front door with the 1st platoon, and through the taxiway with the second. Both met determined resistance, and both lost a Stryker in the process, even though I knew from the tries before where the rpg crews waited. I nudged a little to far into their field of fire. Both Strykers had a full squad in them. No survivors. War is hell. The obvious lesson learned, and in fact I read it on these forums before, is when you have to draw fire, don't do it with dismounts and with at least some armor for your vehicle crew. Chances are the Stryker will survive the odd rpg, and then you know where the bad guys are, can pop smoke and get out of harm's way. If your vehicle is immobilized/on fire and the crew still lives, have another unit right behind, that can pop smoke/fire to cover their pedestrian retreat. It's a risky business, but if you have no idea where the enemy lurks, what can you do? A Stryker is more easily replaceable than a squad. Maybe not on your battlemap, but in the results, I think. I very much guess that this is also the way they do it in real life. If you want to capture a position, you have no choice but to go in somehow and there is no way around placing yourself in the line of fire. Sounds obvious. You can't level everything always from a distance, or at least I hope so. This is how I understand urban combat. There are the following tactics you can use to get your cannon fodder into houses and onto roofs where they belong : 1. Cover. Operate behind buildings and vehicles as much as possible, where the least number of possible hostile positions can overwatch. 2. Smoke. Extreme amounts of smoke. 3. Cover fire. Try to position as many units as possible in a way they can shoot at suspected hostile positions/houses. Everybody has to fire at something. That's a lot of volume of fire. 4. Artillery strikes or long distance 105mm/Javelin fire to flatten the building. Where the above cannot be arranged. And especially when you already know a dangerous enemy is in there. The challenge is to coordinate it all, and being new to CM I have still my problems. That said, I too think with the mission at the airport the key is not to muscle your way through the gate but take the other entrance. Simply because it takes too much time to do it with low casualties. From the other side of the compound you have a good view on everything, especially from the tower. From up there you can theoretically blow it all up with, what, 40 Javs at your disposal? All in all? Plus 105mm, plus artillery plus airstrikes. They key is to only blow up the approaches to your objectives, while letting the buldings which cover you from enemies behind them intact. For that you need to secure them with infantry. The good thing is that in the wide areas on the map the rpg teams reveal themselves from further away, which means that they don't hit that effectively (ie they miss), and the grenade has a low trajectory with a good chance of your side grill armor intercepting it. You can effectively drive around the strong point at the entrance and attack parts of it from behind, as per mission objectives. In real life you would also bind them from the front, but here the enemy does not seem to move too much. The places I would try to flatten are the huge strong points in the middle of the map. Anyway, the trick is (combined arms imo) to indeed get your infantry out into a place where they can harm the enemy. They are fragile, but they also have lots of firepower. I would go so far and say that the majority of your firepower is in the grunts. Ever got a squad of nine people on the roof and fire at will? It surely looks like more firepower than the supporting IFV in the alley with its single .50 cal. They can do the covering fire very well, they have machine guns, a surprisingly large number of 40mm grenades they can lob over, and they can take out any tank (and anything in fact ) they see with their ATGMs. Very importantly, the squad also is another unit on the ground that can see hostiles, more eyes is better. And they have thousands of rounds of ammo, easing the load on your auto grenade launchers. Don't know about you, but I always run out of ammo with those. And they can go in and flush the suckers out in close combat, using that splendid high rise for your advantage. Lastly, when it works, dismounted infantry is fun. That airport mission is worse than Grozny.