RecceDG

I'd love an event log - after the fact. The ability to record and play the whole game from start to finish as a movie, with both sides clearly visible, and with an event log (a la Steel Beasts Pro) would be an invaluable AAR tool. CM1 had something similar. I miss it. DG

In RL they wouldn't be anywhere on the map at this scale. It's a question of convenience (get a full combat team all laid out with a single click, vice having to assemble one by carving it out of a battle group) and getting the proper command relationships from the get-go. I imagine the internal representation of the ORBAT is a fairly straightforward file or data structure; it's not like this takes much work to implement. Why force scenario designers to carve one out of a higher formation and deal with incorrect command relationships and spurious units when they don't have to? Au contraire. "Perfect" is easily doable by adding the SCT to the list of allowable ORBATS. Problem solved. Why argue against it? We did. Ah, you see, that's the hangup here - that word static. The ORBATs in CM-SF need not represent static, administrative groupings, because at the end of the day, what is their purpose? To provide scenario designers with the tools to build scenarios. They are not there to teach ORBATs as a function of doctrine, nor are they there to serve as an ORBAT reference. Instead, they provide commonly-used FUNCTIONAL groupings in order to make it easy for a scenario designer to grab the units he needs all at once, and (because it is the only way to get them using the current editor program) with all the proper command elements in place. And as a FUNCTIONAL grouping, the SQT is both actual doctrine (it is what we teach at the Tactics school) and realistic (we have deployed these in actual fights in recent history) Just because you'll never be able to visit the "First Canadian Combat Team orderly room" doesn't mean it is any less valid as an ORBAT selection in CM-SF. Indeed, why not? All those are legitimate functional groupings, and therefore legitimate potential CM-SF ORBATs. Why not have them set up as built in ORBATS; after all, there's no way to get the command relationships right any other way. Uhh... I'm not advocating that the BG be eliminated; only that the SQT be added. I can't see how adding something reduces flexibility. And to date, no deployed BG (since Korea at least) has ever fought as a BG. BG subunits are used as lines of operation, either entire or functionally grouped into combat teams based on the current mission. Depends on what you mean by "Assault Troops". In the Germany days, Assault Troops were Pioneers, no question. They got all the gucci demo training, the chainsaw course, built abitis and other obstacles, and in most ways served as Recce-flavoured pioneers. Later though, as the Pioneer-style tasks (and more importantly, courses) started bleeding down and the experience started leeching out of the Sqn, Assault Troop started to be a great place to put young guys who had CAP but not DP1. They couldn't drive an AFV or gun or whatever, but they could do a section attack, and they could man an OP. When you are doing advance to contact, the key concept is "piquet and bypass". But as the Troop has to drop a Patrol each time a contact is piqueted, pretty soon you lose the ability to move forward because everybody is tied up piqueting. Assault Troop gives the squadron commander the ability to either take out a contact on his own, or to assume a piquet (it only takes two dudes and a radio to man a short term OP) with a reserve force and free up that badly needed Coyote patrol. If we were to go into Syria in 2008, we'd need to pull in a bunch of manpower in a hurry. Armoured Reservists rarely get cross-trained on Coyote, and the School can only handle so many courses. It is entirely within the realm of likelihood that the Corps would have access to a ton of guys trained as soldiers (CAP) or troopers (DP1-DP2 but not on Coyote) that would not be eligible for employment in a Coyote troop. The natural place for these guys would be to re-form the assault troops. They wouldn't be "proper" assault troopers because they categorically would not be pioneers, but they could serve as the next link in a contact handover - and in a high-intensity fight, that is a badly needed capability. But also as I stated earlier, I would not to choose to die on my sword on this argument. Getting the proper tank squadron ORBAT and getting the dismount(s) for the cars in the recce troops are WAY higher priority. And how would a theoretical Syria be any different? We do it if - and when - we have to. We don't want to do it. Given our druthers, we'd NEVER do it . But circumstances routinely FORCE us to do it. Why pretend otherwise? On Day 1, you're right. But what if the Duch Mech Infantry got mauled and were reconstituting? Or they are on flank guard and temporarily don't need their engineers? Or a session of OPP has determined a serious operation requirement for those engineers on thismission, and with a general lack of engineers in theatre, mission success requires the temporary re-tasking of the Dutch engineers elsewhere? Yeah, the Dutch staff would raise hell, but ultimately the higher ranked staff wins. Operational necessity makes strange bedfellows. Yes, this would be unusual, not "normal" (although I can find plenty of examples in WW2 Free Poles anyone) If I were the admissions judge at Battlefront for which scenarios are considered "canon", I'd be very wary of mixed-nationality scenarios and I'd expect there to be some pretty solid justification going on before I'd consider the scenario "valid". But why limit the player's options? It is, after all, HIS game. DG

Yeah, I'm going to have to revamp the scoring so that blue cannot win unless the objectives are taken. The mission requires you to take the objectives, so it shouldn't be possible for Blue to win unless he actually occupies the objectives. The fact that the ground on the Blue edge of the map dominates the ground on the Red edge is also an issue that I'll have to fix with some map tweaks. Given that this scenario represents the opening move in an invasion in a backwater corner, it should be "easy" for Blue. Red "wins" by inflicting casualties on the attacking force. This mission is intended to be the first in a series; an alternate Canadian campaign. Once individual scenarios are hammered out, I will string them together into a "real" campaign (and losses taken in this mission will hurt later). Thanks for the feedback; you confirmed a couple of suspicions. Revised version forthcoming. DG

I love those guys! DG

Now it's time for 1.32 with revised and corrected Canadian ORBATs. DG

Because the enemy gets a vote. One of the defining characteristics of Western warfare since 1990 or so is that while individual units have just unbelievable firepower, protection, and mobility, the forces deployed to fight are orders of magnitude smaller than they should be - because they are too expensive to deploy en masse. Nobody can afford to field the kinds of corps-level formations that were stock in trade in WW2. There isn't the industrial capacity, nor the ready manpower, nor the transport, nor the raw cash to stand up and deploy forces of that size that quickly. So when it comes to applying troops to tasks, you go with what is on hand. Ideally you go with missions that are all one nation, and the "first line" missions usually are (unless one nation has a specific capability that others lack - ie tanks in Kandahar means Canadians, where helicopter gunships are Yanks - a Griffon with a door gunner isn't a "gunship", really) But if something else comes up (because the enemy has his own plans and they rarely dovetail with yours) and you have to start employing reserve troops (not "reservists" per sae, but national troops not yet assigned to a mission) you quickly start looking at mixed national mission elements. And things get even crazier once you start mixing the squirrels in. RC(S)'s FP unit was Dutch. TFK was mostly Canadian, but the FP element at KAF was Romanian and British. TFK also had an American battalion attached OPCOM. There were also some French units running around - and that was just ISAF. We also had American OEF units running around under a completely different chain of command and ROEs - and that's just the high points. And just in 2008; Kandahar Province looks completely different now in 2010 with way more Americans and God knows who else. Language was - mostly - not an issue. The radios and crypto are standardized across NATO (or you borrow equipment from nations you need to talk to) Everybody speaks enough English to make it work, or they put their English speakers on the radios. Yeah, it is a colossal pain in the ass, but that is coalition warfare for you. There is this grognard tendency to assume that ORBATs are like the layout of a chessboard at the start of a match. Everybody gets 8 pawns, 2 rooks, 2 knights, etc etc and they start out in perfect formation - and every game of chess is laid out like every other, so if the pieces on a chessboard constitute a "battalion", every battalion has the same pieces in the same formation. No way, no how does that match reality. Instead, everybody moves mountains to get whatever they can to the party, and once all the moving parts are on the ground, they get tactically grouped in whatever way makes the most sense. And next week, when the mission changes and after losses, breakdowns, and HLTA come into play, the groupings will be reshuffled to match the new mission. And other stuff can come into play too. I'll give you an example - the primary recce element since the invention of internal combustion has been the 2-car patrol. The size of the troop (the next level up) has varied from 5 to 12 cars depending on a number of historical circumstances, but the patrol has always been 2 cars. Until Afghanistan. A theatre order came out stating that the minimum tactical element had to consist of 3 "A" vehicles - this because the primary threat was IED, and an IED that knocked out a single vehicle left a 2-vehicle patrol all alone. This was considered OK in a cold war scenario where there was a definite "this side towards enemy" threat direction, but in the Afghan "perpetually surrounded" situation that risk was decided to be too large. So the recce patrol became three cars, and the troop became six. There is ZERO doctrine for this. All the TTPs for moving and fighting a 3-car patrol had to be invented on the fly by the people actually executing it. This is sub-optimal. But the enemy had his vote, and we had to change tactics to accommodate the actual tactical situation. At the end of the day, ORBATs and doctrine are just tools in the toolbox - you don't use a screwdriver to pound in nails; neither do you insist on rigid adherence to a theoretical ideal doctrine if it doesn't provide maximum advantage on the ground against the very real enemy. ...all of which sounds like I'm arguing against myself, given that the opening salvo in this thread was that the game units don't match doctrine. The point I'm trying to make here is that it is good that the scenario editor contains pre-baked units with the correct theoretical structure and command relationships for that nation and arm type, and that they can be simply added to a scenario by choosing the basic formation building block. The more of these there are, the more likely it is going to be that a scenario written by someone who does not understand how to structure forces will be "correct", and the easier it is for someone who does understand how to deploy them to build a common unit. I really want to see a Canadian armoured squadron have all 19 of its tanks by default. I want to see a Coyote Recce troop have its dismounts, and I want those dismounts to have a much higher than normal spot percentage. I want to be able to click on "Canadian Square Combat Team" and get a unit with a tank squadron, an infantry coy, a FOO, and some engineers - with the proper command structure - all at once, so I don't have to chisel one out of a battle group formation. But I also want the flexibility to be able to play around with ORBATs with more granularity, either to reflect oddball conditions (for either play challenge or historical reasons) or to play "what if" scenarios. Well is this ever going to make it back into Shock Force? Shock Force, as it sits right now, is very nearly a replacement for JANUS/JCATS (as far as individual training goes) I use it to keep my tactical skills sharp, and to game out ideas and scenarios. I feel that it has helped me professionally. There are a number of things that aren't quite there yet: artillery sucks; the fire effects are bang on but the allocation of fire and the control of missions and ammo are just out to lunch. There isn't a good way to show LOS from a unit at a glance. Targets (both area and enemy) need to be able to be assigned even if the target is out of LOS, so that a unit will start engaging once it has moved into a position where it has LOS (11B this is 11. When you come over the hill directly to your front, you will see a a lone building 400 metres out next to a copse of small trees. There are enemy infantry on the second floor - engage them) and there needs to be a movement command that is "move along this path until you are hull down to the current target". I'd also like a way to define formations and have units move and turn in formation. Enemy AI needs some more options, and there are scenario design tools I'd like to see too. But overall, it is getting very, very close. I'd hate to see that abandoned. DG

No it wouldn't - I've seen this kind of thing happen live. And not just in "low" (it's hard to call a full combat team offensive operation "low") intensity ops, but also in Cold War operations like Germany. It was routine - ROUTINE - to have operations with multiple NATO members mixed together at the scale simulated in CM-SF. And usually because the Op required a force mix that no one nation could generate on its own. One country provides the infantry, one the tanks, and one the recce? Sure! As soon as you have multi-national operations you have the potential for subunits to be attached/detached to other commands based on operational need. And once forces leave the gate... man, ANYTHING can happen. Especially once a fight breaks out. Troops have this way of marching towards the sound of the guns and a fight has a way of drawing out who is in your AOR. A scenario in which a German platoon is relieved by a Yank company (or vice versa) is completely legitimate. But besides the point... why attempt to enforce "purity" at the ORBAT level? If a customer wants to play a "what if?" scenario using an unlikely combination of units, why stop him? "Unlikely" can be both fun and instructive. Ack the "simulation" aspect; got it. Certainly this makes tons of sense at the weapon platform capability level. An M16 destroying a tank has no value whatsoever. The performance of the equipment and soldiers should be simulated as accurately as possible, no question. But the responsibility for enforcing "realistic" force mixes and ORBATs is a scenario designer responsibility, not the responsibility of the game engine. If you want to police realism, do it by auditing the scenarios and only publish or "bless" the ones that meet requirements. Lord knows this isn't happening now, given the fact that most scenarios I've encountered underestimate the force requirements for urban operations by a factor of ten or more. One company with 7 objectives in a 4 square km of city? Not bloody likely.... Well, that's a discussion about functional vs administrative grouping. Yes, a combat team is a functional grouping (and by design) Nowhere will you find a unit patch or cap badge reflecting the "First Canadian Combat Team" (or whatever) The individual components (being the armoured sqn, the infantry coy, and the various odds and sods from the supporting arms) are pulled from whatever formations happen to be handy at the time. Each one of those formations - the RCD, the RCR, the PPCLI etc - are administrative groupings. They CAN be functional groupings as well (as unlikely as it would ever be to see A, B, C, and D sqns RCD on the start line as a full-up armoured regiment ever again, it is technically possible) but for the most part, the Regimental/Battalion formations exist to force-generate Sqn and Coy sized units to operate in a combat team context. CM-SF is all about functional groupings, not administrative groupings. That makes a square combat team not just a legitimate CM-SF ORBAT element, but arguably the primary one. Plus, when a combat team is formed, there is a definite command relationship between all the moving parts and the combat team commander. Assuming the Inf Coy has the combat team command, double-clicking his icon should select the whole combat team, because they all report to him. They do it through the subunit chains of command, and that relationship is not permanent, (it ends once the mission is over and the consistent subunits revert back to their administrative groupings) but for the duration of the mission, he's the dude. And given that it it impossible to assign command relationships within the scenario editor, the only way to do that is to provide a "square combat team" unit/orbat within CM-SF. Strictly speaking, there should be two of them - one of "square combat team - infantry lead" and "square combat team - armour lead" (And if you have to pick one... God and the Corps forgive me - pick the "Infantry Lead" version, as that is the default ATOC standard) The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. Sure we do - did it all the time in WW2, practiced it constantly in Germany during the Cold War years, and we have done combat team ops in Afghanistan. See above ref. functional vs admin groupings and CM-SF. Were we to cross the border into Syria, the forces assigned to the initial assault would assuredly be assigned into combat teams. For follow-on missions, the combat team would be the start-state and then there'd be task-tailoring going on based on the nature of the mission and the forces available. You'd see combat team plus ops, combat team minus ops, "half team" ops, ops with more armour and less infantry, and vice versa. Don't get me wrong - I'm not arguing that the combat team be the ONLY building block allowed. But it makes a great - and realistic - default option. Very analogous. The assault trooper training was less formal than the Pioneers, and it wasn't necessary for an assault troop to get full-on pioneer certification (you can make an assault troops out of soldiers trained to CAP but not DP1 - although ideally they'd have all the gucci courses) There is a movement to replace the assault troops within the Corps. Courses have been run recently.... One can make the argument that, were we looking at a major high-intensity operation like Syria, that there'd be a rush to reinstate the assault troops into the recce sqn. Finding the manpower for it is an issue... but that's an issue with everything in the CM-SF universe. The inclusion of the assault troop in the recce sqn isn't a sword I'd be willing to die on - if it doesn't make it into the game, no harm no foul. That's why it got the asterisk. DG

Well, I have some *ahem* serious objections to the current Canadian campaign, some of which is ORBAT-related, but most of it has to do with completely unrealistic objectives for the force provided. It is (at least to the point where I am) very urban operations heavy, and the urban areas are just way too large for the forces assigned to it. Urban ops suck up troops. A single compound is a company objective, really (platoon in a pinch) and you need substantial reserves. Fighting your way across dozens of city blocks with a platoon just isn't how it is done. But anyway... That campaign ORBAT is more-or-less equal to a typical Afghan ROTO BG, which is based on a mech infantry battalion, a tank squadron, and a recce squadron, plus engineers and guns. The "light" Coy is (I'm pretty sure) either old doctrine no longer in play or (more likely) typical of a battalion laydown in Canada where enough pers are either recovering, on leave, or on course that 3 full Coys cannot be manned. Plus a bunch of vehicles are either in theatre, broken, or otherwise tasked so one Coy is called a "light" coy. I doubt very much we'd deploy a BG with any less than three full LAV Coys. The TUA troop - it's a "troop" now that the Armoured Corps owns them, but there's no doctrine on their employment yet - OK. Sure. Why not? The battalion has an integral infantry recce platoon and an infantry sniper platoon too. Tanks NEVER EVER EVER break up into support subunits. Well... almost never. The Sqn is supposed to remain concentrated for maximum firepower and shock effect. In a counterinsurgency where the anti-armour threat is far lower... that principle of armour is broken all the time. In a conventional fight though, the squadron would fight as a unit. Penny-packeting tanks is a great way to lose them, especially if they encounter a properly concentrated enemy tank unit. (Hm... maybe that's a scenario - Syrian tank Coy vs Canadian tank troop, see what happens) Anyway, consider the bare minimum single line of operation to be a combat team - tank sqn plus infantry coy plus engineer, gun, and recce support. As for the guns themselves... an M777 battery throws out a huge amount of firepower. It's not about the number of tubes, it is about the ammo stockpile. CM arty has WAY too few rounds per gun. I'm not going to talk about the squirrels. DG

Nobody has tried this yet? DG

Here's one thing I don't really understand - why are the ORBAT definitions hard-coded, instead of being an XML file (or whatever) that could be user-modified? Or allow more flexibility/granularity in how the units are purchased and allocated? ORBATs are rarely what the book says, and sometimes scenarios call for oddball force mixes and command relationships. The scenario design tool should allow ORBATs to be hand-tuned to fit the needs of the scenario without the program forcing a specific force structure. You can't do (for example) multi-national forces with one force OPCON or OPCOM to another nation, yet that could easily happen (and does happen) There's a reason why NATO countries have interoperable radios and crypto.... It's just weird that the game is so dependent on these hardcoded relationships. DG

You're not the first person to share this frustration. It makes us supremely flexible and confounds our enemies, but goddamn try and teach this ****. There's a difference between a TANK Battle Captain and a RECCE Battle Captain. The RECCE BC stays with one of the CPs (there are two of them, on paper - they leapfrog or "step up" down the trace) and controls the battle from there. He's the voice on the radio flogging the troop leaders and acting as the information conduit back higher. He should never ever ever be on the map in a CM-SF game, unless the scenario is a Sqn CP being overrun. A TANK Battle Captain has his own tank and is part of the squadron's battle formation. He typically commands the firebase and can command half the Sqn if it makes tactical sense to divide the Sqn into two half-squadrons. So imagine a square combat team. Tanks lead in Sqn box, Tps in line (ie each tank in a Tp is next to each other, and 1 and 2 Tp are line abrest and 3 and 4 are behind 1 and 2 - like two ranks of tanks with an 8-tank frontage. The OC and Dozer are with 1 and 2, the BC is with 3 and 4. The LAVs are back in an assembly area one or two bounds back. The Sqn can roll as a box, or it can leapfrog half-sqns, with 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 alternating overwatch. Let's say 1 & 2 make contact. They find fire positions near the point of contact, and the BC moves up to join them - that becomes the firebase. The OC and dozer fall back off the firebase position, collect up the rest of the Sqn, call the LAVs forward, and come up with a quick attack plan (typically left flanking, right flanking, or frontal) A start line is chosen, the OC's tanks (in this case, OC + dozer + 3 & 4 tps) shake out on the start line, the LAVs shake out behind them, and the attack goes in. All the while the firebase has been suppressing the contact (and the FOO usually joins the firebase because that spot has eyes on) This happens very quickly and, done right, is near unstoppable. That's the ATOC solution. Reality rarely plays out quite so neatly, and sometimes ground may dictate other choices (eg the OC might command the firebase and the BC the assault, the firebase might be only a single Tp with 2 Tps on the assault and one providing intimate support, there might be a minefield breach in which case each Tp gives up its plow tank to form a breaching team, yadda yadda) Like I said, flexibility is key. Unlike Americans, Canadian doctrine is more a suggestion than Holy Writ. Bottom line though: 1. Armd Sqn for game purposes: 1 Tp (4 tanks) 2 Tp (4 tanks) 3 Tp (4 tanks) 4 Tp (4 tanks) OC's Tac (2 tanks) BC (1 tank) for a total of 19 tanks. 2. Recce Tp for game purposes: Tp Ldr (2 cars + 2 dismount teams) A Ptl (2 cars + 2 dismount teams) C Ptl (2 cars + 2 dismount teams) E Ptl (2 cars + 2 dismount teams) "car" means Coyote or GWagon C6, but NOT MIXED! 3. Recce Sqn for game purposes: OC's Tac (LAVIII) LO (Coyote) *not super necessary 1 Tp 2 Tp 3 Tp Assault Tp (4 x M113 or Bison with a section of pioneers in it)* kicking it old school. DG

Yeah, I definitely caught a whiff of the GMR in the game ORBAT. Sadly, that bit of doctrine was never fully realized and was subsequently overtaken by events. And to be honest, there's more than a little bit of the "good idea fairy" in that document. The lack of the square combat team is a little more surprising. The SCT is the cornerstone of ATOC and (shocking!) the Combat Team Commander's course, both run under the auspices of the Tactics School in CTC. The Tactics School owns everything combined arms. Having read the other thread, I'm not going to stick my nose into the infantry stuff. I know what G Coy deployed with on ROTO 6 (2 LAV III Pl, 1 RG31 Pl) but that's hardly the template by which to base everything on. (And I thought the Carl G was carried in the Pl weapon's section with the C6... whatever. Not My Lane) But Armour, that I know, and it is currently not exactly right. I'll do up a slide sometime in the next little while and show the changes graphically. DG

The one feature I would kill for is the ability to click on a unit and see its LOS. Shade areas with no LOS, or color the grid red/yellow/green, or WHATEVER - just let me know what the unit can see without having to click "target" and drag the pointer around. DG

I bought the NATO module and I was delighted to see the inclusion of Canadian units into the game. That delight has been somewhat tempered by the odd ORBATs (TO&E for Americans) of some of the units. This isn't strictly surprising - one of the nice things about Canadian doctrinal standards is that there's so many to choose from, and almost none of them actually match the reality on the ground. Some of the ORBATs have clearly been taken from publications (like the Ground Manoeuvre Reconnaissance Manual) where the ORBAT contained within was never actually adopted. Others... well, I can't say where the information was sourced, but it ain't right. I wish there was some way to edit ORBATs/TO&E in-game, but int he meantime, here are some suggested corrections: 1. Tank Squadron: This is missing the dozer tank and the Battle Captain. The BC is effectively the Squadron XO (the actual command relationship is a little more complex, but because the A1, A2, and B echelons aren't being modeled in game, we can call him the XO) The dozer tank is the OC's "wingman". So the SHQ element should be OC, BC (XO), Dozer. OC and BC should be Leo2, Dozer should be Leo2 or Leo1C2. BC gets "XO" command capabilities (if the OC is killed he assumes command of the Sqn) the dozer tank reports to the OC. Strictly speaking, all the Charlie tanks in the Sqn (currently all Leo1C2) should have mine plows on them, but given that minefield breaching isn't supported in-game that's not really a big deal. Ranks - the Sqn OC is a Major, the BC/XO is a Captain, Troop Leaders or Lt or Captains 2. Recce Sqn: Armoured Recce Sqns have a similar layout to the Infantry Recce units, and according to the GMR they are identical. That isn't the case on the ground - Armoured Recce doesn't have snipers. Plus all the Coyote-based units lack the ability to dismount the GIB (Guy In Back, AKA the "observer" or "trunk monkey") So changes: a. To each Coyote, add a dismount-able passenger "Recce Team" consisting of one or two (one is more correct but two may make more sense from a game perspective) soldiers armed with C7 or C8. b. Each Coyote operates as part of a two-car Patrol (this is currently properly replicated, much to my surprise and delight) but this includes the Troop Leader as well - he gets a wingman car too. So a Troop is 8 Coyotes, each with a dismount team. The G Coyote reports to the Tp Ldr, as does A, C, and E. B reports to A, D reports to C, and F reports to E. Tp Ldr is a Lt or Capt, A is a Warrant Officer, C and E are Sgts, B, D, F, and G are Master Corporals. Each dismount team is a Cpl. c. All Recce units, but particularly the dismounts, should get a spotting bonus, to reflect the increased training on spotting and observation. In particular, it is common for a two-car patrol to have an Observation Post task where the vehicles are parked in a hidden location and the observers man a dismounted OP a short distance away. d. Each patrol (save the Tp Ldr's) is supposed to have one Coyote equipped with the sensor package (a doppler radar, an thermal camera, and a TV camera) that can either be raised on a mast or deployed on a tripod. If the intent is not to simulate this in game, it can be replicated by further increasing the spot percent of the dismounts e. The "light recce Sqn" is exactly the same as the Coyote Sqn, but equipped with GWagon C6. Happlily, the GWagon troops already have the dismount teams, the sole change is to ensure that the G callsign is a GWagon C6, isn't a sniper, and reports to the Tp Ldr f. The Sqn has 3 Troops, plus the OC. Unlike the Tank Sqn, the BC in a Recce Sqn doesn't have a Coyote or GWagon and he wouldn't be on-map; he is with the CP and is a few bounds back. 3. The basic Canadian building-block conventional warfare unit is an ad-hoc grouping called a "square combat team". These are assembled out of larger Battle Groups (themselves ad-hoc groupings), and are not permanent assignments. They are, however, PERFECT for CM-SF as they get you a nice combined-arms manouvre unit that is doctrinally correct. This looks like: a. A Tank Sqn, b. A Mech Infantry Coy, c. An artillery FOO party, plus guns in support, and d. An engineer Field Section (platoon) The commander of the Combat Team can either be the Tank OC or the Infantry Coy OC. Who is in charge depends on the mission and the personalities involved, but for game purposes it is best if the Coy OC is the ultimate commander. A Combat Team would normally be operating hand-in-glove with a Recce unit - either a Patrol or a full Troop. There would not necessarily be a command relationship between the Recce and the Cbt Tm, but the Recce would be working in support, so it would be OK to fudge the command relationship for game purposes and add a Recce Tp (8 x Coyote) to the Combat Team That's enough for now... there's some Weird Harolds on the Infantry and Engineer units as well, but I'm less authoritative on them so I don't want to get too far out of my lane there. DG

Yes, and no. I suppose it all depends on what the goal is. If you want to have a "realistic" campaign based on historical "real" units, or if you are willing to bend reality slightly and go with something a little more theoretical. I mean... if you go full-bore real, you could check to see which units were deployed to Afghanistan at the time and where the force generation / rotation cycle was at the time and "send" someone who wasn't already in Afghanistan. But then, full-bore realism would preclude ANY Canadian armour in theatre, because ALL the Leo2s and C2s were in Afghanistan. But then, you also have to consider the political potential and how things would have changed given the fictitious run-up to war in Syria. It is entirely reasonable (for example) for a Canadian government that knew it was going to be committed to a conventional fight in Syria to have doubled the order of Leo2s so as to be able to supply the Syria force. Real-time 2008 we wouldn't be able to field both, but maybe alternate-universe 2008 we would have. That at least is reasonable; it just requires the equipment to be purchased. But expanding the manpower up to the point where we could have fielded the ORBAT you first proposed.... HIGHLY improbable, even given an alternate universe approach. You can buy tanks off the shelf. Trained soldiers have to be built, and it takes a lot of time and capacity in the training system. In a perfect world, a world in which I was CDS, you'd see four fully populated CMBGs. I'd bring back the 8CH and the Black Watch as Reg Force units, and each Reg Force armoured regiment would be fully equipped with three tank squadrons and a recce squadron. I'd equip Reserve recce regiments with Coyote, and Reserve tank units with Leo1 or a cost-reduced Leo2 (like an A3 vice A6+) Lots of stuff would be different. But it is the Canadian way to deploy smaller units and use quality of training and pure stubbornness to punch way above our weight given the numbers. DG

The Canadian contingent - especially if this is supposed to be concurrent with Afghanistan - is way too large. The op tempo for Afghanistan sustaining a 2500 pers battle group, plus TFK HQ, plus the KPRT, plus the NSE is already stretching things far too thin, never mind putting a full armoured regiment and a full infantry regiment (and from the same brigade!) into Syria. A more realistic deployment would be a mech infantry heavy battlegroup based around a single battalion, plus a tank squadron, an armoured recce squadron, and an engineer squadron. If the political will was there, we might deploy additional units based around composite Reserve units (no Reserve unit can deploy fully manned, but a bunch of them can form a single unit) So add a Coy of light infantry in RG-31/Nyala and a Sqn of Armoured Recce in TLAV (not in game, a souped-up M113 with a Grizzly turret on it) or (God help us) GWagon C6. Call it 3 troops of recce and an assault troop in M113 or Bison And MAYBE another tank Sqn could get cobbled together... it would play hell with the rotation sequence but maybe it'd work. If you want to keep it centered on 1 CBG, it might look like this: 1 Can BGp - 1 Btn (+) PPCLI -- A Coy PPCLI (LAV III) -- B Coy PPCLI (LAV III) -- C Coy PPCLI (LAV III) -- D Coy Composite Reserve (RG-31) - 1 Composite Armoured Regiment -- RHQ LdSH (RC) -- A Sqn LdSH (RC) (Tank) -- B Sqn 12RBC (Tank) -- C Sqn RCD (Coyote Recce) -- D Sqn Composite Recce (GWagon) 1 CER Field Squadron 1 RCHA Field Battery That gets you two square combat teams with recce, engineers, and guns in support, plus a FOB defense force and some reserve depth in infantry and recce (gotta cover off HLTA after all) That's still a pretty respectable combat force and WAY more realistic. DG

If you want to try a - mostly - doctrinally correct square combat team operation, here you go: http://farnorthracing.com/NATO_DG1.zip This has some decent playtesting done to it and is pretty good. Red AI has a couple of options and sloppy tactics will hurt you. Scoring is in place but the point values aren't tweaked yet to accurately reflect mission success or failure. Feedback welcome on that. All comments welcome. Enjoy! DG

I would like to request two "simple" features be added to the game engine: 1. An "LOS" command that toggles the painting of every terrain square I can't see black. Click a unit and it is from that unit's perspective. No unit selected is the global LOS. 2. A "Elevation" command that toggles the display of the wireframe outline of the underlying terrain grid on the map. DG

Might as well add in the RG-31 and the Bison as well. If you have: LAV III Coyote Leopard II Leopard 1 C2 RG-31 Bison (Amb and EOD) T-LAV (M113 with bigger motor, rubber tracks, and the old Grizzly turret) T-LAV Engineer (RWS instead of turret) T-LAV Fitter Leo 1 ARV AHSVS AHVSV Wrecker AROC Then you can do a Canadian Afghan mission/campaign and have access to everything. Priority would be LAV III, RG-31, Coyote, Bison, Leo 2, Leo C2 DG

Random subunits plucked from therein, with never the same units used in succession. There is no feel of continuity from battle to battle because there's always some bizarre new grouping on the Blue side. You might as well say the "main character" is "the British Army" We cross the border with one unit. Next mission - completely different unit. Following mission - yet another unit. So far, my losses in any given mission do not appear to have influenced follow-on missions. Eventually I got to a mission where I recognized that I'd had these guys before, but only because a squad had a yellow wounded guy in it. I certainly didn't draw the connection from the name or the tactical grouping. I have no beef per sae with stability ops taking place concurrent with offensive ops - that's the whole concept behind "3 block war", right (warfighting here, where a block east we are doing stability and a block west we are doing humanitarian aid) No, I'm talking about things like crossing the border and having the engineers - unsupported - kicking down doors of a major border installation as the first mission If you are jumping back and forth between Bdes mission to mission, you are creating that lack of continuity I was discussing earlier. It's a tactical game. Combat team to battalion, max. Why are we taking focus off a tactical "actor" to switch to a completely separate actor? The only place that works is if you have a tightly focused operation with a lot of moving parts that you can play out separately but still tie together narratively. An example is "A Bridge Too Far". That you could do in CM - each Airborne drop captures a bridge, then XXX Corps starts moving up the road, then switch back to a German counterattack on a bridge, then back to XXX corps, then another attack on a bridge with XXX Corps arriving to relieve... Can the Paras hold out? Will XXX Corps get bogged down? It's more of an ensemble cast... but you've still got identifiable "main characters" you are hanging the narrative on, not just Random Unit 4. I disagree. I maintain it is entirely possible to provide realistic troops to tasks and still provide a challenge for Blue. I'm up to the mission in a valley, 1 x recce Tp, 1 x Tank Tp, 1 x Inf Pl for a sort of micro combat team... and Red still has not had a single position properly sited. Blue ALWAYS gets ground that dominates Red's position. Red never has mutual support, interlocking arcs, defilade to produce enfilade, reverse slope... nothing. I calls em as I sees em - and it appears I'm not the only one who feels this way. DG

Canadian. But I've worked with Brits and Yanks. And it isn't "have to go back" but "want to go back" - if I am successful in getting on the next ROTO, I'll know soon. Modified slightly: 1. Blue should be at full strength in manouvre units at the start of the campaign and those manouvre units should be well tuned to the job at hand (invasion and mechanized offensive action). Artillery and air can be reduced or even eliminated as both a concession to playability and reality (guns and air are much more closely controlled these days than they were in, say, WW2) With the possible exception of smoke missions - it it possible to limit arty to just smoke? 1A. Blue is going to carry this unit through the entire offensive operations phase of the campaign - so casualties taken in Mission 1 will follow into Mission 2, 3, 4 etc. Once we transition to full spectrum ops (the Syrian army has been shattered and we're into a counterinsurgency mode) Blue units will be much smaller and the timeframe is longer so we don't care about unit continuity as much so Blue subunits can be back to full strength. 2. In early missions, Red should be set up in well defensible positions and seeking to delay and attrit with small (platoon or so) tank counterattacks. On the third (ish) mission, Red gets a large (force ratio 1:1 or higher) armoured counterattack from a flank, representing the arrival of the larger-scale Red strategic countermoves force. This is a branch-point mission. 2A. If Blue succeeds, we move to a series of missions that represents the collapse and forlorn hope missions of the Syrian army - I see at least one Blue assault on an urban centre (that will need reinforcements - although our "main character" unit will participate, we'll need more forces to take a city properly) and perhaps an attempt to capture a Red base, where Red's victory is predicated on breaking contact and escaping. Etc. 2B. If Red succeeds, we have a mission where a reinforced Red is chasing the remnants of our "main character" unit across the map, and then is rescued by a substantial American force. Follow on mission is our "main character" unit relegated to a rear area task. Second follow on mission is a similar task, but with the arrival of a substantial (and unexpected) Syrian mechanized force. Victory here moves us back to the 2A track. What we are shooting for here is "Comd JTF has lost confidence in your ability, so you get sidelined while the adults take over - then an opportunity for redemption arrives" 2C. With the Syrian army defeated, we now move into the full spectrum operations and counterinsurgency missions, where Blue will rarely be operating larger than Coy size, and armour will be fairly rare (except maybe a Coy sized cordon and search - but even that would get a Tp of tanks, max). Most missions will be Pl - Pl+ 3. Blue is very sensitive to casualties throughout, but some missions may have extra conditions on top of those - the safeguarding of a convoy, the destruction of a countermoves force, etc. DG

Exactly. So they set up a series of small-ish sacrificial static defenses on the best available terrain, with a view to inflicting whatever attrition they can and imposing delay so as to set up a large-scale tank-heavy countermove force. That countermove force is not guaranteed to be success due to the factors you have identified (powerful Blue tanks and missiles) But really, a large concentration of armoured force on a flank of a Blue force that has already been fighting a series of battles (and so is tired, worn, and perhaps less than 100% scale of equipment, pers, and ammo) is Syria's only real chance for a local conventional victory. The elephant in the room is Syria's ability to keep that force hidden until the blow lands... probably unlikely with the sky full of Pred and Reaper as it is these days. But at least it is something before the Syrian army collapses and we move to transitional ops and insurgency missions. A mission that involves an understrength force mismatched to the role it is to play is also a movie - "Rambo". That's no fun either. Which is a further argument for an integrated campaign. Blue is going to take every objective in every mission - is there anyone who thinks that Syria could outright defeat a combined NATO army? But if Red bleeds Blue in every single mission, he can generate the kind of media outrage and lack of political support that can defeat the invasion on the strategic level. DG "Sometimes, it's not about the attack - it's about the COUNTERATTACK. Sure, your combat team steamrolled that poor little platoon - but then a tank coy hit your flank while you were consolidating on the objective... how about them apples?" Sounds like a scenario? Javelin's make short work of those. Or airpower. Or Abrams, Bradelys and Challengers.

1. Terrain had better favour the defender - otherwise, why is he there? Think about it - you're defending. In particular, you're Syria, defending against a grossly superior army with overwhelming firepower. But it is your turf; you know it inside and out. Why would you NOT be on ground that gives you the best possible advantage? The only reasons I can think of are: a. Meeting engagement, in which case: whoops! Make do as best you can; or b. There's something we absolutely positively have to secure and it is on a crappy piece of ground; or c. Whoever sited the defensive position is incompetent. If you are attacking 3:1 and leaving half your force behind, Red is doing it wrong. 2. Given a choice, Blue never ever ever wants to give Red an even break. The whole point is to steamroll over the enemy is as one-sided a contest as possible. OK, from a game perspective, so what? a. Sometimes an attack has to go in with less than desirable force ratios. Sometimes you do have to fight 3:2 or even 1:1 - but if so, the justification for it and the force balance must make some sort of sense. There must be a logical reason for why we are assuming this level of extra risk - and even then, there must be realistic expectations of what that force can accomplish (I'm thinking specifically of cascading objectives) b. Victory conditions need to adjust to account for the effect each side is trying to achieve. Red isn't going to hold that bit of ground in the face of a 3:1 ratio - so don't make holding it the key to Red's victory. Instead, Red's task is to inflict casualties and impose delay - and I can state with a fair amount of authority that NATO armies are VERY sensitive to casualties. Lose 6 guys in 24 hours and it's a disaster... c. Sometimes, it's not about the attack - it's about the COUNTERATTACK. Sure, your combat team steamrolled that poor little platoon - but then a tank coy hit your flank while you were consolidating on the objective... how about them apples? I don't agree. OK, so the campaign script system is really very simple. That's fine. You get a conditional branch to the follow on mission, and you get the ability to carry units forward into the following mission (with, I believe, some degree of recovery/repair) That's all that is really needed. Yeah, you don't get cut-scenes and medal ceremonies and voiceovers and whatnot - not needed. Nice from an immersion perspective, but totally not needed from a gameplay perspective. What IS needed are for the scenarios in the campaign to dovetail into a coherent story - and that is totally doable with the campaign system the game has now. I probably will, if only to serve as demonstrations for what I am talking about. As it sits now, I may be going back to Afghanistan shortly and I don't know how much time I will have to spare. DG

No, feel free to continue here. This isn't "my" thread; it is for campaign AAR in general. And my argument is that "military good sense" and "fun" are not mutually exclusive. Yes, it is possible to do a campaign that is 100% militarily realistic and as much fun as watching paint dry. Try this one - only enemy unit on the map is a huge IED. Start with a convoy escort force that finds the IED, then add a QRF force that defuses it. Completely realistic. Not much fun. It is also possible to do "fun" with no connection to military good sense at all - no examples needed. The trick is to do both - and I contend that not only is it possible, but having "good sense" in place increases fun, as there is a satisfaction bonus that comes with a job well done. Agreed - although I've thought of ways to fake it, if you start with the assumption that the minefield's location is known from the start. Make the cleared lanes "touch objectives" with high enough scores that the player must go through there in order to win. That works for Mission 1. It doesn't work for hasty breaches of tactical minefields though - the game engine needs mine plows. This is a pertinent observation on a subject (AI scripting) that I have yet to delve into in any depth. Part of my frustration involves the scenario design, but a lot of it comes from the AI itself, which is very passive. The AI needs to be able to be conditionally scripted (if THIS then THAT) as well as timed scripted (on turn X do THIS) Without this, Red is just a shooting gallery target that shoots back. I need to investigate the AI controls in more detail. Agreed. A simple rule of thumb is the 3:1 ratio attackers to defenders. If Red has a platoon, Blue gets a company. Red has a single tank, Blue gets a troop. And subsequent objectives are additive. If you have three platoon sized objectives in sequence, that isn't a company - because each objective will require a platoon to secure it and/or take a platoon's worth of losses. So the first one is OK, the second one is marginal, and the by the third one that company has shot its bolt. Three platoon size objectives is a combat team with a second coy in reserve. And OBUA? A single building is a platoon objective - a section on the inner cordon, a section breaching, and a section in reserve. DG

That's perhaps part of the problem, isn't it? There's more to a game than the engine. In fact, the engine is only half the battle. That's a bogus answer - and a cop-out. If you had a bad appendix, and went to the doctor and he removed your spleen instead, would it be reasonable to hand you a scalpel and tell you "here's the same tools - do it yourself"? Besides, blowing sunshine up the posteriors of the current scenario designers does them no favours whatsoever - it just reinforces failure. Helping them out means honest and forthright critique of their work, and a scenario designer who wants to improve won't just get their panties in a knot and throw their toys out of the pram, but rather discuss the shortfalls with the critic. DG