Rinaldi

From an AAR I've been making of 'Cut off at Kovering What if' that has been quite literally months in the making - I have been far too busy to put the finishing touches. As frustrating as my inability to get back to Canada for x-mas is this year I am (secretly) looking forward to the free time to put a ribbon on this one. 
https://i.imgur.com/DmS3l8c.mp4


Scenario is initially a frustrating bit of rompo pallo for the Allied attacker, too little frontage, too little cover and too many men. Once you get stuck in though I find the Germans begin to unravel swiftly. 

Jesus....mate, I can give it a go in French and Italian if that'll help some.

Yes all officers are useless and the Specialist can run the Army, if only someone gave him the chance 🙄

Y I K E S.
I'm not exactly sure you know what that acronym means. XOs are usually tasked with dealing with casualty clearance and policing up straggling units. Also, how is an Executive Officer going to exert command or aid his CO if he is 'safe in the rear.' "Hey Joe, can you take x platoon (+) and help ease burden of command?" "Tosh sah, I'll be sitting here waiting in the wings in case you buy the farm."
For someone who wants to use real standard operating procedures, you show a remarkable aversion to them. 

It's been a while since I've played such a large PBEM or even one with so many vehicles, here's a little vignette AAR from my recently concluded match with @gardar15. 

Read it here: https://rinaldiaars.blogspot.com/2020/05/equilibrium-black-sea-vignette-aar.html

Some whiny SOBs on these forums with huge, unjustified, victim complexes. 

Obligatory question for when this happens:  have you decided whether to issue Steam keys to current customers to let them transition over to that platform?  
In case anyone hasn't used Steam and is wondering why - the quality of life improvement from never having to worry about installer .exes and getting automatic patching is something you'll never want to come back from.  

Damn, it's tough out there brother.

Unbuttoned.

As one of the 'voices' for that module and a serving soldier (not officer) in the army portrayed at the time perhaps it isn't such a good point after all.

I can only imagine the cancer that would result from being able to mod under the hood things. Hard pass. 

After Action Report UK Armoured Assault
This is one of George MC's excellent scenarios, originally made for SF1.
Summary
A battlegroup of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards in their Challengers, supported by mech infantry and engineers, with arty and air support, attack Syrian positions.

Challenger on overwatch
AAR:
Firstly, one of the nice touches is you have recon in position when the game starts. It is a minor gripe of mine that you often go into battles blind, and have to expose a few hapless soldiers to incoming, to find out where the enemy is: Reconnaisance by Taking Fire. I don't like it or think it is realistic.
It's a fairly big battlefield. I decided on a quite conservative plan, given that I seemed to have plenty of time (2 game hours) to achieve the objectives. Basically I was going to hide in the deployment zone and take the first enemy position which is in a dip then move forward and see what revealed itself. I pushed some Challys into overwatch. Two were promptly hit by ATGMs – both survived, one with its 120mm knocked out, the other with its commander dead.
I pulled back immediately and dialled in my artillery and the Harriers that were on station.
I spent 20 minutes pounding enemy positions with 81mm, 155 mm and one of the Harriers (keeping the other in reserve, which proved to be a wise move). So I destroyed all of the AT threats I could find.

A recent portrait of Syrian ATGM team No. 2
Digression – We are fighting with the Jocks here, and the infantry brigaded with the RSDG maybe should be the Black Watch, so we have two units that fought together at Waterloo. Not having Scottish accents irked me (it's some form of orcish, I believe 🤣) I couldn't get HQS sound mod and George MC's and Mord's Cuss mod* to work together – they seem incompatible, so I wasn't entirely happy, as it didn't seem right to have legendary Scottish units speaking rather plummy English.
(*further investigation by @George MC , it seems that the Cuss mod won't work with SF2. I might be wrong about the Black Watch – George checked when he wrote the scenario and the Orbat should be correct for the right time in an imaginary war.)
(Politics Alert! British rankers traditionally come from the poorest parts of the country – Wales, Scotland, the North/Midlands of England, Cockneys (East End of London), and Ireland. It is probably nitpicking, but it would be good to hear more of these sort of authentic voices in BF games. /Rant over.)
The first advance
My forces moved forward. The infantry took the first dug-in position directly to the front, backed up by Challys and Warriors. I sent forces to the right to take a good position for the Javelin team. I didn't bother flanking to the left.
After I'd bounded forward I consolidated then moved on to the next set of objectives, using light bombardments of 155mm to mash anything that seemed to be well hardened. I was taking hardly any casualties. Identified enemy tanks didn't last long, either hit by the Harrier or Challenger gunfire.
One of the Static Tanks was still functioning, having been under an intense artillery barrage, and been struck by 2 x 155mm rounds and a 66mm to the back of the turret. I didn't find that believable, even if the crew had survived, I think they would have abandoned the tank. /End Rant 2.
 

Infantry and armour advancing in close co-ordination, having taken the central farm. Out of shot to the right, the engineers are about to flank  OBJ Elgin
Infantry and armour move forward and consolidate on the next enemy positions
I'd moved forward on OBJ Elgin and Keith. My leftmost troops were closing in on OBJ North Queensferry from both front and flank. One of the nice things about this scenario is you can use the terrain to move infantry forward under cover.
SPOILER COMING BELOW PICTURE

A Challenger advances, the commander is an ancestor of James T. Kirk.
Enemy armour reinforcements arrived. My Challengers in overwatch and the second Harrier dispatched them without any losses. One Chally took a 125mm hit to the added lower hull front armour pack, and survived. So that is 2 ATGMs and a 125 KE round that failed to penetrate.
Pushed the enemy out of North Queensferry, a mainly infantry assault, supported by Warriors.
 
(CM WEIRDNESS – BUT IS A SPOILER)
 
Bizarrely, when the game ended I found that there was a static tank in the middle of one of my positions that I had overlooked. In RL I can't see how this could have happened, given that one of my observer teams was in an adjacent house and my footsloggers and armour were all around. As I prepared for the assault on the final objective, South Queensferry, I saw that my forward infantry were tired, so I mustered the engineers as a 2nd assault wave, bussed them into FV432s and drove them at high speed to the E of North Queensferry. The muster area was within metres of the static tank. I guess the high speed move must have not given it time to spot, because they must have crossed its gunsights....
 
The Final Assault on South Queensferry
 
I sent my infantry and armour forward under a smokescreen over one of the bridges. I had miscalculated (again!) as there were a few enemy infantry in the vicinity of the N/S Queensferry Bridge. I thought they were suppressed/destroyed/surrendered, and I had sent a Warrior to finish them off, but I gave it Hunt orders and it stayed where it was. A brief firefight took 2 of my 3 man scout team down. The Syrians were neutralised, but it felt an unnecessary loss.
Some of my engineers were speeding to the other bridge to cross and flank. I was laying down immense amounts of small arms and MG fire on all known enemy positions.

The final assault on South Queensferry - armour, infantry and engineers attacking under covering fire. The Challenger has run out of ammo and is parked in a safeish position.
Time was running out. I was – typically – less careful about moving forward and took some more casualties, which were unnecessary. Most of the enemy troops were forced to abandon their positions and as they crossed the open streets, were gunned down in a deadly crossfire, from smallarms and vehicle MGs, and Chaingun/50 cal from Challengers a long way off.
Another digression – I've become inordinately fond of the L94A1 Chain Gun and often use it in preference to other weapons. It saves the too few, and valuable, HESH or HE rounds for when you really need them.
Results Screen
I achieved a total victory: 30 British casualties to 410 Syrian, knocked out all but two tanks for the loss of none. I lost a few Warriors and 432s. Nevertheless some of my lads should not have copped it. I'm arranging to court martial myself. Oh wait, I'm a general. That will never happen. Queenie's going to pin another medal on me.
 
Amusing moment of the game:
Road Traffic Accident – one of my 432s rearended a Warrior on the bridge, entirely due to my inept vehicle handling. You can see it in the image above. Classic. I hope I don't get a ticket.
 
Music
I think appropriate music really heightens the enjoyment of a video game. Usually I find the in-game music track palls, however good it is. So I turn it off and have YouTube open in my browser. So I can do a quick search and find something that is atmospheric and feels right for the moment, then save it as a playlist. I have game music on my computer, like the Doom era soundtrack of pumping metal, which can work, but YouTube is more convenient and you can just search again and use something different if it doesn't feel right.
For example, for fantasy games, Lord of the Rings soundtrack works brilliantly, but feels completely wrong if I am playing Shogun 2. There's lots of westernised Japanese samurai movie and anime soundtracks which really juice that game up.
 
For this CM scenario I was playing various heroic tracks, and I also interspersed this with Scottish martial bagpipe music. My boys love it!
I have also been known to play Ride of the Valkyries when the attack helos go in...
 
Conclusion
I enjoyed this game a lot. However the British side has a considerable advantage, in technology, military competence and arty/air support.
(SPOILER)
The armoured counterattack could be deadly if the T72s ganged up on the Challys – which are already zoned in by Syrian troops. But the AI can't do that, and just drove around aimlessly, getting shot.
I could have improved with better fire discipline: I wasted a lot of rounds that I should have saved for later, running out of ammo at the last stages of the game. I thought Challenger 2s had 52 rounds but the game only has 48. Could really do with those four shells.
In longer games, keeping track of ammo is very important. I blasted away with the 81 mm when more careful use would have kept some in reserve. Use more “Target Briefly” rather than using T and hitting a target with area fire for the full minute. I've been doing TB for 30 or 45 seconds so I don't shoot up something ( and forget about it) for several turns, and run short of MG ammo in a Chally (which I did!).
Finally, if there's anybody who's good with sound, perhaps contact GeorgeMC and Mord to upgrade the Cuss Mod. It might be something simple like needing reformatting? It's a mod I would like to see operational again. I could listen to it fine in my media player so there's nothing damaged.
 

I can only imagine the cancer that would result from being able to mod under the hood things. Hard pass. 

The point of hull down is that it forms a battle position. Its only one part of the formula of breaking an enemy targeting solution. The other one is time. Why should we take anything away from a 'test' that doesn't mimic a battlefield condition where a competent player repositions a tank in BP frequently? I also enjoy the casual ignoring of @Pete Wenman's results. It's okay Pete, the reasonable people see you. 

Someone here is failing to understand, that's for sure LMAO

This is by far the stupidest thing I've read on the forums in a goddamned long time. 

Oh look yet another 'hulldown is actually counter intuitive'  - this silliness is right up there with 'maps are too small'

 
Everyone. Take. A. Shot.

The point of hull down is that it forms a battle position. Its only one part of the formula of breaking an enemy targeting solution. The other one is time. Why should we take anything away from a 'test' that doesn't mimic a battlefield condition where a competent player repositions a tank in BP frequently? I also enjoy the casual ignoring of @Pete Wenman's results. It's okay Pete, the reasonable people see you. 

The point of hull down is that it forms a battle position. Its only one part of the formula of breaking an enemy targeting solution. The other one is time. Why should we take anything away from a 'test' that doesn't mimic a battlefield condition where a competent player repositions a tank in BP frequently? I also enjoy the casual ignoring of @Pete Wenman's results. It's okay Pete, the reasonable people see you. 

The point of hull down is that it forms a battle position. Its only one part of the formula of breaking an enemy targeting solution. The other one is time. Why should we take anything away from a 'test' that doesn't mimic a battlefield condition where a competent player repositions a tank in BP frequently? I also enjoy the casual ignoring of @Pete Wenman's results. It's okay Pete, the reasonable people see you. 

The point of hull down is that it forms a battle position. Its only one part of the formula of breaking an enemy targeting solution. The other one is time. Why should we take anything away from a 'test' that doesn't mimic a battlefield condition where a competent player repositions a tank in BP frequently? I also enjoy the casual ignoring of @Pete Wenman's results. It's okay Pete, the reasonable people see you. 

This test is flawed. If you leave your tank either out in the open or in a hulldown position after it has been spotted to just keep getting shot at, of course it is eventually going to take damage/be destroyed. And the turret being more vulnerable than the hull is a product of real life. BFC did not make the hull armor on the panther thicker than the turret, the actual Germans did. In the modern titles tanks tend to have turret armor that is better than the hull, because that is how most modern battle tanks are designed. 
No one, and I mean no one, in a competent military is taught to stay in one place after the shooting has started, regardless of return fire. BP engagements are mobile. Tanks will come up to the hulldown position, fire a round or two, and then reverse back into cover. Rinse and repeat. Tank fighting positions are specifically designed for this. They have a built in platform to allow the tanks to reverse into cover. This principle is so fundamental that they teach engineers who drive the bulldozers who dig the fighting positions how to do this during the intro course. If you could put an M1A2 Abrams in a hulldown position and let any WWII AT vehicle fire at it indefinitely, it would likely kill the Abrams. Law of averages wins in the end.
Hell, there are real world examples of this principle too. Iraqi tanks in Desert Storm were dug in but did not move at all, nor were their fighting positions designed to allow them to move. They were supposed to stay in place, and they died very quickly, despite being in hulldown positions, because they just sat there. 
There are plenty of AARs on this forum, some even by myself, that show hulldown being effective. But I won't belabor this post with anecdotal evidence. Point is, it doesn't matter what tank/vehicle/asset you have. If you leave it in place and expect it to survive everything thrown at it, you're going to have a bad day. 
@Pete Wenman's test concurs what I and others I play CM with/against see all the time in game. I guess the moral of the story is, if you perceive hulldown to be bad, then stay in the open. 
Edit: Ninja'd by @Rinaldi

The point of hull down is that it forms a battle position. Its only one part of the formula of breaking an enemy targeting solution. The other one is time. Why should we take anything away from a 'test' that doesn't mimic a battlefield condition where a competent player repositions a tank in BP frequently? I also enjoy the casual ignoring of @Pete Wenman's results. It's okay Pete, the reasonable people see you. 

Because I'm bored, I've played around with this.
My set up
Two Panthers firing under AI control
Two Sherman fly, under my control, as targets. One in open ground, immediately behind a strip of light wood (no trees) the second hulldown behind a 2m high berm, which again has a strip of light wood on its top.
Range just over 1500m
I've run this test 5 times so far, which is nowhere near enough for a real analysis, but I'm getting a feel for the results.
Rather than worrying about hits and locations I'm counting AP shells fired in order to destroy the target,
                      AP Shells fired to destroy target
Try                        OG                                HD
1                            3                                    6
2                            5                                    9
3                            3                                   14
4                            2                                    6
5                            4                                    8    
So it took 17 shots to kill the five Firefly in open ground, against 43 to kill the five hull down tanks.
That's an average of one open ground kill every 3.4 shots, against 8.6 shots for the hull down target, and so on these numbers it takes over twice as many shots to kill a hulldown target than one in open ground.
Works for me, but you mileage may vary
P
 

It's been a while since I've played such a large PBEM or even one with so many vehicles, here's a little vignette AAR from my recently concluded match with @gardar15. 

Read it here: https://rinaldiaars.blogspot.com/2020/05/equilibrium-black-sea-vignette-aar.html