Philipp
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Posts posted by Philipp
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I'm back to report how the 4th and 5th battle went. Both very good fights, great maps and very good AI plans, so good in fact that I lost the 5th battle... Thanks for the hours of fun again!
The 4th battle felt like three separate battles, pushing the three platoons each up their lane. I lost one of my drones in the first turn because I had forgotten that some of them can be shot down by missiles... arg. On the right flank I tried a nice right flanking maneuver but got caught out in the open by an armored counterattack. But when the tanks showed up I thought this is going to be be easy, until two of them lost their gun to 30mm shots. But the Tunguska saved the day, taking out a mean grenade launcher that stopped my troops in the center for quite a while. On the left I did not need tanks, the Javs cleared the tanks, than the Humvees and the infantry cleared the rest. The enemy surrendered befor I got to charging onto the center and right objective.
The 5th battle started bad, went OK for a while and ended in disaster. I misjudged where the forward enemy positions were, so one of my BTRs ran straight into an ambush and everybody except for one private did right away. After that I was more careful, the first village was lightly defended but I still lost vehicles to 30mm cannon equipped BTRs hidden way in bushes and trees. I had the second village half cleared when the counterattack came and my troops were simply overrun. My tanks got caught in crossfire the Airforce took to long to show up and when they did they shot one of the many already burning wrecks. I think I only took out 3 of the many, many tanks. I could have cease-fired to preserve to get away with win before they took the second town, but I thought that was cheap... I will not play this again, I don't think it is an easy win with better tactics, I can only guess that it is meant to be really hard. So I will go with this result and see where it takes me.
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Thanks a lot, great news. I used one when making CMBS maps and was quite disappointed when I realized there isn't one for CMFI. Thanks again.
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Thanks for the feedback. Always happy to hear that sombody enjoyed the scenarios I came up with.
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Just finished the 3rd mission (WEGO on Iron) and again I have to say I liked it a lot. The AI put up a good fight and I ended up with a Major Victory, it was really close even if the end result did not look like it.
The LRS platoon scouted ahead and ran into the first enemies across the river and between the houses to their front. They took them out with ease but the enemy hit back with a murderous artillery salvo that took out all of the LRS platoon except for the HQ and the FO. Fortunately that was when the Cav arrived. In the north 1st platoon advanced up the hill and ran into a shootout that cost them 4 of their dismounts. That made them cautious and they advanced very slowly after that. In the south 2nd platoon swiftly eliminated several enemy contacts until suddenly 3 BMP3s charged out of the woods near the town. Within 3 minutes there were burning Humvees and BMPs everywhere. Last man standing was one of the BMP3s that withdrew into the river. 2nd platoon was badly beaten up, only the HQ Humvee was still driving. The lieutenant grabbed the Javelin and jumped into the bushes ready to kill the last BMP but that stayed out of sight. The remnants of 2nd platoon fell back, ready to extract. In the north 1st platoon had taken overwatch position and called int artillery to soften up some troops they had spotted in the strip of trees between the fields west of the crash site. The ATGM Humvee got into position to protect against a counter attack from the road in the east and a Javelin team got onto the balcony on the top most house. They would play a very important role later. Meanwhile the JTAC called in an airstrike on the village hoping that the plane would spot the BMP in the river and bomb it away. But it came differently, several bombs came down over the next couple minutes, only after a while did I realize that these bombs took out T72s that had arrived in the village! I had just checked out hideout delta when I realized that my two Humvees are just 100m away from a Russian tank that started to move. A drone identified at least 3 enemy tanks (2 had been taken out by bombs), more than I thought I could take. So 1st platoon abandoned the idea to check out hideout Alpha and Charlie and instead retreated as fast as possible. The ATGM Humvee tried to sneak up on the T72s but as it had just fired a missile the gunner was taken out by a sniper and the missile hit the ground. Seconds later the tank blasted the Humvee away. 1st platoon had to get out of there. They raced up the hill but especially the team from Delta was in trouble. They dropped off their Jav team and raced like crazy up the hill. Too late, one of the two Humvees was nailed by a tank gun but just as the second one was targeted a Jav from the team on the balcony of the top most house hit the tank. But there were two more follwing it and the Jav team that had just been dropped off was to close to use its weapon, they ran. The second tank broke through the trees and got also hit by the team on the balcony. But that team now was out of Javs... and 1st platoon had only extracted about half its men into the safety of the woods. The third tank moved up and started firing its machine gun when suddenly the Airforce said Hi! A bomb struck it and it disappeared in a fireball. 1st platoon took a deep breath and evaluated the situation. The drone showed that all tanks and even that last BMP3 were burning wrecks. The two Airforce planes had blown plenty of giant craters into the earth around the small town. So 1st platoon did what the Cav does with only 8 mins on the clock, they got on their horses and charged, hoping to still find War Angel alive somewhere in all this mess. As they charged down the hill with blazing guns the Russians had enough. The surrendered. Pew, half way through the battle I though I had already lost and I only tried to get my men out there alive. But the Javs and the Airforce saved the day. Got to go and hand out plenty of medals, man those pixeltruppen fought hard today...
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Finished the second mission and I liked it even better than the first. This is Combat Mission exactly as I like it. Infantry forces, not too large and intelligent missions that require you to move around and adapt to the changing battlefield. Thank you so much for this, Imperial Grunt.
The poor Ukrainians at Steel got overrun by tanks. They took out two BTRs, one tank got stopped by a mine, but the ATG was mostly useless. One of my BTRs managed to withdraw. Iron was hit badly by artillery but the enemies mobile advance on my right was stopped in its tracks by a BTR covering that flank taking out 3 or 4 enemy APCs. But the tanks advanced up to the last tree line before the hill. Then Alpha Coy came in, one platoon set up to take out the tanks on the crossroad near Steel, the other platoon with the CO went to relieve Iron. With Javelins and Apaches one tank after the other got toasted and just as the infantry approached Steel through the woods the enemy surrendered. Total Victory, 500 to 50. Alpha Coy had very few casualties, but one of the Javelin teams was taken out. Let's hope I won't need them later on...
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I only played through the first mission so far but I liked it a lot and want to say: Thank you very much for the effort you have put into this.
My first mission ended with a draw, but I got lucky, because there were no enemy troops in the comm station (although I had not been there at all) and so the Russians did not get the point for that. The final result was 2500 to 2145. The ambush and the attack on Nightmare went pretty well, minimal casualties and lots or burning Tigrs. On top of the convoy a patrol also ran into my ambush from the other side and got slaughtered. To support the attack on Nightmare I called in the vehicles, especially the 50cal trucks, that helped a lot but one of them got ambushed by an enemy infantry squad in the woods next to a road and blew up. That made me really careful about moving around too carelessly. When moving towards the checkpoint at the two bridges one of my squads got pinned by an MG positioned near the highway and I lost three man. It took me a while to get troops into position to take them out and the clock was ticking. On top of that a patrol ran into my squads and took two men out with an automatic grenade launcher. I decided my men were not fit enough to go for the other objectives, instead I went for the checkpoints and sent my XO to call in artillery on the SAM site. That artillery strike worked very well and took out the SAM. When clearing the way for my retreat I took two more casualties from Russians in the woods. But everybody left with 5 mins on the clock, so I probably was too cautious. Considering that the SAM Site was shot up pretty well, I probably should have sent one squad there to touch it. But the lives of my men were more important to me than some secondary objective that the general wants checked off his list :-).
Edited to mark the spoiler correctly.
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Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like the timing is OK now.
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I added 5 minutes to the red reinforcement schedule and updated the file here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9849673/Raid%20on%20the%20Pump.zip
This should make it a bit easier. I will also submit it to the repository now.
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Great news on a Saturday morning! Now I have no excuses to shy away from playing H2H.
Small Quick Battle anyone? PM me!
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My understanding is that the BW wanted to replace the cold war G3 with a "peace weapon", so the spec focussed on light weight and other features than combat performance.
Now times (and missions) are different but of course nobody in German politics wants to admit to this...
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Thanks Takoda, no rush, there will always be a next weekend!
Thanks George MC. I play WEGO and kind of assumed that time limits would work OK for RT since technically you can do more in RT in the same time since you have more possibilities to give orders. I probably should try RT to see myself how that goes.
The whole idea of the scenario is that you have to be quick and not take your time. It should be 40 minutes, unless I messed something up. I enjoy playing CM "against the clock", I know that some people don't, those will probably not like this scenario. That said, the time frame might be a bit tight, I'll see what others have to say.
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I finished designing my second scenario.
The setting is that a US infantry platoon+ assaults a Russian mortar battery and battalion HQ at a gas station outside Cherkasy. The challenge for the player is to quickly cause a lot of damage to the Russian target formations and then retreat before he is overrun by the Russian reinforcements.
The map is semi-fictional. It is inspired by a real world location but I changed the scale and some other things.
Blue vs. AI only, H2H might work but I have not tried it.
You can download it here for now (I will see if I get some feedback and eventually also put it on the repository):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9849673/Raid%20on%20the%20Pump.zip
Please tell me what you think, good and bad, and let me know if you find any problems (spelling mistakes, briefing issues, map oddities, scoring bugs etc.).
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Sorry you had such a bad time with this scenario. Unfortunately I am not set up to record a video of me playing this mission but what you can try is playing this from the Russian side and watch th Blue AI plan. Following the same plan the AI uses with better timing should be reasonably good.
I really should have included a Tac Map, I'll see if I will make one and update the scenario.
Regarding high losses in search and rescues, read up on what happened when they tried recover Bat21 in Vietnam... It is possible to win this battle pretty well even taking some casulties. The scoring is all about keeping the vehicles alive. If you had finished one of your playthroughs instead of quiting you might have won!
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I am designing a scenario where US infantry attacks a Russian battalions mortar position (2B11 or 2B14) and would like to hear if anybody knows how such a position with 2 sections of 3 mortars each would look like.
Specifically, are they set up in a line? A triangle? Does it even matter? What should the spacing be?
Should they be set up in trenches or foxholes to improve protection? What would be the layout of the trenches?
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Now also available on the repository:
http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=3514
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But you quoted the menual there yourself confiming what I said earlier! Green is the right rating for reserve troops without combat experience. Thats what I want for the green unit in this battle. The other units are regular or veteran were you can think of regulars as replacements for previous combat losses.
Anyway, if you dont like to play with green and regular units, change them to veteran in the editor. In my testing the ratings worked well as they are.
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John,
I did not want to imply that the National Guard does not have great skills and there certainly are individuals or whole units whose skills surpass those of regular units. But the NG is a reserve military force which by definition means it is not comprised of full time soldiers. Relative to professional soldiers, in the CM skill rating which only applies to skills used in CM, meaning shooting and coolness under fire, it is reasonable to assume that most NG units rate below regular units. Otherwise, why have regular units in the first place?
I understand that in the last decade the NG was used extensively in foreign deployments, so if a scenario designer decides to make a NG unit elite because it has served 1 year every 5 years (which is what the theory says, I think it is actually quite different in reality) he is absolute free to do so.
Apart from all that, it sometimes makes for a much better game to command a few units that are not uber-soldiers but have to be used carefully, no matter what the story explanation for that is.
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Thanks for giving it a try. Making the map was surprisingly easy, I first wanted to use a QB map but could not find one that suited my needs.
I specifically tested for a rush on the objective. It should not be possible to be off the map in less than 5 minutes which is when the reinforcements with the APC arrive and normally you should have to at least fight your way back, so there should have been some near misses from RPGs and ATGMs. So you probably just were lucky. But one never knows how it plays out. I think it is perfectly fine if some players get through it really quick with a bit of luck. Note that the briefing states that you should reduce the enemy force, in fact in order to get a total victory I think you have to destroy quite a few enemy troops.
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Glad you liked it Wiggum15! Oh, that typo annoys me...
You might think that all US troops should be rated regular or better, but I disagree. Your average infantry might be well trained and thus should be considered at least regular, if not veteran. But that does not hold true for second and third line troops such as National Guard or logistics personnel let alone replacements after 3 months of intense fighting.
The only green US unit is the truck. I envisioned this to be a supply truck and his crew who were in the FOB when the call came in and just grabbed to come along since they were well armed with that 50cal. Poor guys got thrown into quite a fight, seems like in your case the gunner even took out an APC, that's quite a feat for a National Guard reserve corporal from Witchita!
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Show me the soldiers who never freeze in place and always make perfect decisions about where to find the best cover.
You can complain about bugs or bad AI. Or you can just take as what it simulates.
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I think the fact that in CM humvees who took a casualty DO NOT complete their order but instead do something human (i.e. stupid like full reverse) sets it apart from the zerg-rush crowd of other games.
I love the CM games for how they simulate the chaos of combat and the feeling of having influence but not quite beeing in control. Sure, some chaos could be bug and there sure are some, but I usually don't see bugs, I see things that went terribly bad, sometimes without obvious reason.
But wait, thats what grandpa said what war is like!!!
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I finished my first scenario and would like to share it with you.
A small US combat patrol tries to recover a downed Air Force pilot that came down near a Russian OP. Best played Blue vs. AI.
Tiny battle in a wooded area. 30 min. +< 10min. 4 AI plans for Red and 1 for Blue. Playing Red vs. AI might be fun, depending on how good a day the AI has, it might also completely mess it up since the job that the Blue player has to do is not something the AI is good at and also hits some limitations (e.g. AI can't remount vehicles). Playing H2H might work, but I did not test it. The forces and victory conditions are quite fair I think.
I wanted something similar to the outstanding "An August Morning" in the sense that the map and the forces are tiny but Blue has to cross the map to touch an objective and then retreat. To spice things up I throw in vehicles!
Since the repository does not seem to get updated (I submitted sometime early this week), here a dropbox link for now:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9849673/Airman%20Down.zip
Please criticize, I want to improve my scenario making skills.
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You can work around the elevation bug by setting an elevation on the left border of the map.
But patches are always welcome of course.
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I play WEGO on Iron and the AI is a nice chellange in most battles. I typically win with plenty of total and major, for the American campaign I had only total and major victories for example. Oh, and I never reload or play the same battle twice except for small battles with plenty of variety. And I don't care too much about winning either, a good battle for me is one were what happened was believable and dramatic.
If that is the case or not depends very much on the scenario though. In the WW2 games I almost only played PaperTigers campaigns since I just loved the difficulty level and the immersion. I probably also learned a lot from that because some of them are very clever designed and unforgiving.
In BS the quality of the campaigns and battles seems very high and the scale less daunting than in RT. Hardly played that game because battles with more than a company and gigantic maps are not my thing so much.
But I digress. Bottom line is I think that beating the AI in most scearios in BS is doable, with some practice. The AI is only as good as the scenario designer and some scenarios are meant to be hard. And some scenarios are decided by some lucky ATGM hit, which is also fine by me as long as the fight is believable and dramatic.
Something seems to be happening here, dudes.
in Combat Mission Final Blitzkrieg
Posted
The Mac crossplatform feature is just great! I am in exactly the position you describe, Mac laptop, PC for gaming, and whenever I was out of the house I had to make do with SF and Normandy.
Very much appreciated, looking foward to playing with the improved infantry movement.
Happy holidays to you all.