Combatintman

@Macisle - no worries at all. My bad on the reinforcements - it is clear, I can't work out why I didn't see the annotations the first time. Otherwise, like everything to do with mission design, we all have our own styles and I understand the thinking behind how you've structured the brief. Good luck with the rest of it.

Final test nearly complete .... AI plan works so there is nothing that I need to change. VPs are there or thereabouts too so nicely on track with this - I should have this out of the door before ANZAC Day.

Every day's a school day ... I wanted to do this in my Neptune Spear mission but never thought that a 'Setup' placement in an AI plan would facilitate this.

Whether it is a campaign or a scenario, you're still up against: a. The (realistically) uncertain game mechanics of detecting them. b. The unappealing nature to many players of CIED drills. Believe you me I've mentally tossed this idea around in a couple of my Afghan scenarios (and experimented with adding such elements to the scenarios) to add realism but the balance between playability/fun and the mechanics of doing it well are in my view not achievable in CMSF.

Nope - but it is an interesting concept which, from my understanding of how the mechanics of objectives function, should work. Whether it is viable as a scenario/campaign concept is another matter and, based on the numerous threads about mines and how hard they are to detect, my impression is that it would be difficult to execute in a manner that would drive people to play said scenario/campaign.

As an update - I am now back from my travels and back in the editor. Today is the first pass at the scenario with VPs added, so if it goes well I should be in a position to write the briefing, conduct a final test and push it out of the door.

FWIW – some observations on the briefing. Use Platoon/Pl or PLT vice PN (which is not a recognised abbreviation) Sections 1-3 etc – would normally be written as 1-3 Sections or 1 Sect, 2 Section etc. ‘Defender’ – should be ‘defender’. While you have an arrow linking the LH and RH maps, it is difficult to see the relationship between LH map and RH map and they are not oriented the same way. Important Rail link – where is it? Also talk of the Northern Rail Bank which has been fortified with heavy weapons … where is the Northern Rail Bank and whose heavy weapons? Reinforcements – from which direction(s)? Air support …. Likely strength? Med Howitzers A and B are meaningless terms (say what they are eg 4 x 105mm) Likewise ‘Hvy Howitzers’ (say what they are eg 4 x 170mm) The briefing states that you are in command of the vanguard reinforcement group … but don’t state what that comprises. From my perspective it is always helpful to clearly state somewhere what the friendly force is. Simple wording observation ‘in the town of Radzy’ could be replaced by ‘in Radzy’. Otherwise nice work on the graphics – you have made a good attempt to add to the immersive feel.

It would be doubtful because ECM does not work that way - it won't give you an indication of the presence of a device, it simply blocks/disrupts the signal between the triggering mechanism and the initiator. Again I can't go into huge amounts of detail but in essence it works on one of two principles. It either permanently sends out a blocking signal across a set frequency range or scans frequencies and sends out a blocking/disruption signal when one is detected across a certain range. It will not detect mines, victim operated (eg pressure plate IEDs) or command pull devices. This is why CIED measures comprise a number of techniques (eg ECM, mine detectors, CIED TTPs and intelligence).

ECM does exist in game (page 206 of the manual shows you the icon) - however you raise an interesting point about the relationship between (in-game) RCIEDs and Cell IEDs and ECM equipped vehicles. I had always worked on the assumption that ECM equipped vehicles would cause some sort of adverse modifier to the 10% device failure rates as stated on page 105 but there is nothing written anywhere in CMSF documentation to indicate that this is the case. I suspect it is the case but have never tested it (and am not going to) - I'm sure someone will (or probably has already) ...

Ok … here’s how to approach this then … Extract the important stuff from the ‘Enemy Paragraph’ … ‘Yesterday a HMMWV was destroyed by an IED as it transited a track leading to the MULLAH FAYYAD Highway. Identified firing points in AO ROCKY and the site of the IED incident have been marked by the S2 on the Tactical Map’. ‘…from isolated small arms engagements to more sophisticated complex attacks involving the use of a combination of IEDs, indirect fires and small arm/RPG engagements. There is likely to be a 360 degree threat and insurgents will likely attempt to isolate maneuver elements using aggressive flanking maneuver’. Extract the important stuff from the ‘Mission Paragraph’ (which in essence is all of it) Mission: Team Bravo 4-31 Inf attacks along the MULLAH FAYYAD Highway to seize BP T148 NLT 0830hrs to control AO ROCKY. Tasks: 1. Secure PB RUSHDI MULLAH (Occupy 100 VPs). 2. Seize BP T148 (Occupy 200 VPs). 3. Clear the MULLAH FAYYAD Highway to LOE CRAMPON NORTH, CENTER & SOUTH (Touch 100 VPs). 4. Escort the Logistics convoy. When you do your analysis of the ground and your mission analysis having plugged in the other bits and pieces of information, it quickly becomes clear that to achieve the mission, you have to clear and cross the canal at the SE Crossing Point (this is what is termed by the military as an implied task). It should also be obvious that it is reasonable to assume that the enemy is likely to make this difficult. In the current operating environment you need to always work on the assumption that there will be people watching your base locations and key terrain/vital ground (or decisive terrain as it is known in some militaries). From there it is not too much of a leap of faith to assume that there will be some form of direct fire element covering it and possibly indirect fire available to fire on it. Working from those assumptions it is a case of looking at the ground in detail and templating. You will see in the image below that I have boxed off in red some areas where enemy elements could be located to cover that crossing. Once you’ve done that it is a case of allocating resources to counter these elements and a scheme of manoeuvre. Because IEDs are challenging to defend against, it is worth understanding their in-game characteristics (page 105 of your manual refers). While I won’t go into huge amounts of detail regarding IED defeat TTPs, in relation to the game (and real life to an extent), if you can defeat the trigger man you defeat the device. There are numerous ways of doing this but in simple terms they boil down to: Kill the trigger man. Deny the trigger man observation of the device. Employ technical means such as ECM. In this scenario, you lack ECM at the start of the mission (and it has no effect on wire IEDs) so your plan needs to do one of the first two or a combination of the first two. I rarely use smoke in missions and I didn’t employ it in my testing for this one, but what I can assure you is that if you focus on getting eyes on the red boxed areas in the schematic, you are likely to be able to defeat enemy attempts to interfere with the crossing. You should also work out that realistically you don’t have the resources to be able to cover all of them so this is the point where you decide how much risk you are prepared to accept and in my case, I focused on the closest areas for areas to look and shoot while simply using ‘Fast’ moves of split squads across the canal. Once across the canal, the tactical decisions are essentially: Sort out BP T148 first. RV with the convoy first at LOE CRAMPON SOUTH & CENTER. Do both of the above. In an ideal world you would do both of the above but the problem now becomes one of time and distance analysis and how much risk you are prepared to accept because it should quickly become obvious that it would be challenging to clear the compounds at BP T148 and meet up with the convoy. My analysis always led me to the belief that the best COA was to focus on the convoy (accepting that I could not get troops to LOE CRAMPON NORTH until after I had sorted out the compounds at BP T148 but could at least get eyes on and fire on likely enemy positions North of the highway. So my scheme of manoeuvre up until the arrival of the convoy looked like the schematic below. Once the convoy arrives, you then have more than enough resources to tackle the BP T148 compounds and positions likely to overwatch it. Importantly, the HMMWVs bring you considerable firepower in terms of GPMGs, .50 cals, MK19s and TOWs which allow you the luxury of standing off and suppressing. Simple as that really …

@ErwinGetting into the compound on the corner is tricky - I don't think I ever managed it without suffering casualties - unfortunately war is like that sometimes. You got all of the VPs on offer for ammunition consumption so the difference between lower levels of victory and a Total Victory will be down to the respective casualty counts. I can assure you that you do not have to chase all over the map to hunt people down to inflict sufficient enemy casualties to get the points. All that is required is a measured tactical approach. I am confused by your description of 'capturing the final VL' - If you mean PB Rushdi Mullah, it shouldn't need capturing because you should have kept a security element there. To that end I would be interested to see your VP breakdown and casualties as well as your scheme of manoeuvre.

Perhaps they should be called quickish battles from here on in then

According to the blurb here: http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=324&Itemid=561 Jeeps with Vickers MGs are there. I can't offer an explanation as to why you're not seeing them as I don't have the module but you may have to pick an airborne recce type formation to get them as they may not be available as a single vehicle pick..

Agreed - I rummaged around this as well because until the last couple of years the only descriptions of actions in detail for the Iraq invasion were related to Thunder Run. I can't remember the exact reason why I discarded the idea of making scenarios but I think it just ended up in the too hard basket because of a number of factors if you were trying to attempt something resembling historical fact which is generally my preference for scenario design.

@LongLeftFlank - I'm pretty sure I downloaded that one back in the day - however for this one, despite my ambivalence to mods, this one will be essential: http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=478

Well for the purposes of immersion .... the blokes are still at South Cerney (the Forward Mounting Centre in the UK) ... I have some RL stuff to deal with over the next fortnight but rest assured I am looking forward to delivering all of my planned CMSF projects this year.

In the strict sense of the word - No. In terms of game operation, civilians are abstracted and scenario designers can set the level of civilians in any given scenario. The density of civilians will affect UNCON units and how easily they can be spotted. In simple terms - if the civilian density is set to a high level then UNCONs become more difficult to spot (Page 102 of the manual refers). That said, as you point out, there are scenarios with civilian units in them where scenario designers (including myself) have taken an UNCON spy unit and labelled it as a civilian. However in game mechanic terms they are not true civilians because they have to be picked as either Red or Blue force elements which means that a Red 'civilian' will always be treated by the Blue AI as a target and vice versa.

You can't - so if your off map artillery has a range of 2km and the map is 4km from the friendly setup direction then it will only be able to target areas up to 2km (ie half way across the map). As a general rule this will affect mortars more than any other class of indirect fire asset.

The first sentence yes - I'm not saying the second sentence is wrong but it is slightly nugatory.

From your description you seem to have approached it using a similar scheme of manoeuvre to that which I used which was to ignore the village and push on to marry up with the convoy. Once the convoy arrives you should have more than enough resources to do the job. My general approach was to put short/quick indirect fire (personnel) missions onto any building with a walled roof and from there advance slowly while keeping the HMMWVs at standoff distance. As targets pop up to engage, I would just smash them with direct fire. This will get rid of most of the opposition leaving just small elements lurking in compounds needing to be dug out with close assaults.

Already explained in the context of the mission, they are terms that I have applied for the purposes of the mission. However if you are referring to the Brit TO&E then the following may be useful ... If you select any British infantry battalion in CMSF you will see elements labelled as 'Manoeuvre Support Company' which used to be known simply as 'Support Company'. This company is not that different to what in US and many other TO&Es is called Heavy Weapons Company. In the British Army of the time, Manoeuvre Support Company comprised: Reconnaissance Platoon Assault Pioneer Platoon Sniper Platoon Machine Gun Platoon Anti-Tank Platoon Mortar Platoon In normal usage most of these elements would be Task-organised to Companies within the Battlegroup depending on mission and task (the planning and TASKORG process that I have previously referred to) so it would be rare to see the company operate in its own right and with the exception of the Reconnaissance Platoon, rare to see the platoons operate in their own right. To that end, when the TO&E was put together, Steve parcelled out the various bits of Manoeuvre Support Company equally across all three rifle companies in the battalion in the spirit of replicating standard practice leaving only rump elements of the Manoeuvre Support Company as a single element.

@Erwinare you talking about the same mission? There is no convoy in this one. Here is the actual mission thread:

Page 207 of the manual refers.

Brits and Germans (including the Wiesel) are modelled in CMSF - slightly older version of the Engine and TO&Es are from around 2006 but possibly worth a look.

This is the thread ... http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=19156.0