hattori

Nice! I look forward to this one too! A huge map, very ambitious.

I had thought about hitting the west and wheeling around behind to the north, but I believed the entire route north of the river from west to east was too exposed to the town. I was also concerned about time because city attacks frankly take me forever. I also at the time was thinking the scenario designers might give the Ukrainians reinforcements, and didn't want those reinforcements showing up on like minute 40 directly on my flank or rear.

Because of javelins (yes, I know Ukraine doesn't have them), I've come to look at Russian APCs as tin coffin death traps. I also cry a little on the inside each time one of my pixeltruppen bites the dust. This probably has a big impact on my strategies. Also looking back I realized perhaps I made an assumption I shouldn't have, that all Ukrainian forces were on their side of the river. I didn't see any way to easily get into the city without my vehicles getting wiped out, so I actually decided to pound the living crap out of the city before trying anything. I had all my initial forces in the south east corner as a giant fire base. I hit the southern tip of the city with all my artillery, and slowly set up everything I had in the south east woods, and then opened up on every building I could see. I figured that southern city tip was like a salient, and I could add my reserves later to hammer that section of the city from at least 2 sides. Then I split up my recon squad into half sections, and had them work their way down the highway towards the town. Since I hate losing my pixeltruppen, I was looking to get them as close as possible with no fire or deaths, and hopefully they would spot the enemy for me on the way ... if you work your way down the west side of the E50, there is also a river crossing immediately to the left of the bridge you can use for troops. I was actually able to get them over the river and really close to the town before they ever received any fire (but to be fair, I had everything hose down the town, everyone doing support fire had loaded up on extra ammo ahead of time). Once you start demoing buildings, it actually also starts to work like a smoke screen I find, and really starts to limit how much the defense can help each other. I was actually of the opinion I thought the entire country side to the west was a distraction -- no objectives to capture, and if the enemy wanted to counter attack through there, perfect! As the french said in ww1, 'the more germans on the left flank, the better' (maybe not the best example). I'd rather fight a meeting engagement with my reserves that were showing up in 10 minutes than attack his dug in defenses. Plus by that time if the computer had tried that, I hoped to be partially lodged in the city, and that would give him grief counter attacking that. I tell you though, I agree, that ATGM on the roof of that building was a brave, brave team. Also knocked out an APC while under heavy fire. I just hope no civilians were in the town at the time, and man ... they are not going to be happy when they come back.

This isn't isolated to this game. Last night I had a T72 in BS in a small group of trees try to open fire on building with it's main gun. It cycled between aim-firing-aim-firing the entire turn, not one shell was fired. I moved the tank up a meter or two next turn and plastered the building. (I've also seen some crazy pathing logic if you put too far of a distance between movement waypoints) I would agree that there seems to be slightly different logic from when you look if an area has line of sight ahead of time, and from when the vehicle is actually there trying to fire.

Those guys are ridiculous.

lol, that list alone will last quite some time, thank you

I've also started to become a little more interested in ww1 eastern front warfare because it was not as static as out west, so thanks for the book recommendation, I will definitely keep it in mind. Did you have any other ww2 eastern front book favourites that come to mind as well? Fluent in 3 languages is pretty crazy, and I bet you know some french on top of that. I struggled learning one foreign language, and all I can do with it now is order my food whenever I'm in Montreal.

@TheForwardObserver Thanks for the laugh Actually, I'm still chuckling. I have always admired the Russian army's ability to improvise original engineering solutions. I was curious what size of country it would take to maintain a standing army the size of DPR/LPRs if they didn't have Russia's help, to kinda get a handle on the scale of financial aid. Like from an economics perspective, DPR/LPR can't be making much money, and they must have no foreign currency by now. Their industry is coal mining and heavy industry, and I believe a lot of this has been damaged or shut down. Not only do they have the constant military expenditures of salary, ammo, fuel, rations, etc, but they also have to pay for things for the 2 million people that live there, like teachers, police, firefighters, staff and maintenance of infrastructure like water and sewage, electricity, natural gas, and the million other government expenses we never notice. So if DPR/LPR has a military of about 50k people, here are other countries that can afford a military about that size: Kuwait, Netherlands, Tunisia, Estonia, and Oman (but I think these last two are getting big help from others as well). Man, Russia is spending a lot of money on this, I bet they'll be happy once oil starts going back up.

I also enjoyed that ATGM on that roof lol. Very brave team up there.

For websites -- I find there is often a lot of good info by some really knowledgeable people over at http://forum.axishistory.com/ I know people request OOBs over there too, and went for a look. Someone had posted the entire Soviet OOB as of June 1, 1944, so I just lifted the relevant armies. As for books, I really only have one for this area and time that goes into any sort of deeper detail -- "Between Giants - The Battle or The Baltics in World War 2' by Prit Buttar, but I doubt you will find what you want in there. I'm a big Glantz fan, so if I'm going to read a modern book on the Eastern Front these days, I do usually want to see his name in the bibliography somewhere. I'm in awe you can read German source material.

Okay, I do have a book or two about the fighting in this area, here are the few references to Soviet units GD fought around that time frame. Unfortunately, no mention of Jokubavas, You are correct, GD did fight 5th Guards Tank Army. On October 8, Kampfgruppe von Breese was trying to dig in when 5th Guards Tank ran into them along the Minija, and around Kretinga and Salanti. The kampfgruppe suffered heavy losses and fell back to Kretinga. Apparently they had fun crossing the entire battle group over a bridge that was over a railway that had a burning train on it, while under aerial attack. Ammo and fuel trucks included. Sounds like good times. I have no record of Kampfgruppe Schwarzrock for this day, or for the the kampfgruppe built around the recon battalion. On October 9, 5th Guards Tank apparently ran out of fuel, and 3rd Air Army ended up flying them out supplies to keep the spearheads going. On October 10, 29th Tank Corps (of 5th Guards Tank Army) managed to take Kretinga, with a pincer attack from north and south. This is a little fuzzier. It seems 3rd Guards Tank Corps bypassed Vieksniai, but a counter attack by a group of panthers and a company of panzergrenadiers managed to hold them up for a bit, but all in all GD retreated back through Plikiai and towards Klaipeda through the day. (Vieksniai is 100km from Kretinga which is really making me wonder if this story is actually about GD) Eventually it was 31 Tank Brigade (from 29 Tank Corps) that severed the link between 16th and 18th Armies when it reached the coastline. Okay, I'll stop being lazy and google map this. There we go. Jokubavas is south east of Kretinga. If 29 Tank Corps hit Kretinga the next day from the north and south, it must be them. So that means you have these formations to work with, and this is as far as I personally can go: 1st Baltic Front, 5th Guards Tank Army, 29th Tank Corps: Tank Brigades: 25, 31, and 32 Motorized Rifle Brigades: 53 Self-propelled Gun Regiment: 1223 and 1446 Antitank Artillery Regiment: 108 Misc support: 75 Motorcycle Battalion, 271 Mortar Regiment, 409 Guards Mortar Battalion (Katyusha).

Wow. This is a tricky one, I'll give it a shot. I'd love to know the people who can answer this and get their book collection. If no one is able to give you the exact info, I guess you can lean on this: I believe you are referring to the Battle of Memel. This would have been the 1st Baltic Front under Bagramyan. Under that would have been the 5th Guards Tank Army (Vasily Volsky), 33rd Army, 43rd Army, 51st Army, 4th Shock Army, and 6th Guards Army. As for specific OOB, the best I can do is from July 1, 1944. I don't know if this will be much help, but it is the best I can do: July 1, 1944 5th Guards Tank Army - Colonel-General Pavel Rotmistrov (obvious not the commander come October) 678 Howitzer Artillery Regiment, 689 Antitank Artillery Regiment, 76 Guards Mortar Regiment (rocket launchers), 6 Antiaircraft Artillery Division (146, 366, 516, 1062 Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment) 3 Guards Tank Corps (3, 18 и 19 Guards Tank Brigade, 2 Guards Motorised Rifle Brigade, 376 Guards Heavy? Self-propelled Gun Regiment, 1436, 1496 Self-propelled Gun Regiment, 10 Guards Motorcycle Battalion, 749 Separate Antitank Artillery Battalion, 266 Mortar Regiment, 324 Guards Mortar Battalion (rocket launchers), 1701 Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment), 29 Tank Corps (25, 31, 32 Tank Brigade, 53 Motorised Rifle Brigade, 1223, 1446 Self-propelled Gun Regiment, 108 Antitank Artillery Regiment, 75 Motorcycle Battalion, 271 Mortar Regiment, 409 Guards Mortar Battalion (rocket launchers)), 14 Guards Separate Tank Regiment, 1 Guards Motorcycle Regiment 994 Night Bomber Aircraft Regiment 377 Separate Engineer Battalion 33rd Army General Lieutenant V.D. Kryuchenkin 62 Rifle Corps (49, 70, 157, 222, 344 Rifle Division) 142 Gun Artillery Brigade, 873 Antitank Artillery Regiment, 538 Mortar Regiment, 1266 Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment 1197 Self-propelled Gun Regiment – 34 Engineer-Sapper Brigade 17 Separate Flamethrower Battalion 49th Army - Colonel-General, Grishin Ivan Tikhonovich 69 Rifle Corps (42, 153 Rifle Division), 70 Rifle Corps (64, 199 Rifle Division), 81 Rifle Corps (32, 95 Rifle Division), 290, 369 Rifle Division 143 Gun Artillery Brigade, 41 Guards, 517, 557 Corps Gun Artillery Regiment, 55 Guards, 49, 56, 81, 331, 472, 1231 Howitzer Artillery Regiment, 5, 27 Antitank Artillery Brigade, 593 Antitank Artillery Regiment, 540, 544 Mortar Regiment, 89 и 100 Guards Mortar Regiment (rocket launchers), 47 Antiaircraft Artillery Division (1585, 1586, 1591, 1592 Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment), 49 Antiaircraft Artillery Division (1265, 1271, 1272, 2012 Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment), 1273, 1479 Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment 23 и 42 Guards Tank Brigade, 233 Separate Tank Regiment, 1196, 1434, 1444, 1902 Self-propelled Gun Regiment, 334 и 342 Guards Heavy? Self-propelled Gun Regiment, 1 Separate Armored Train Battalion 11 Engineer-Sapper Brigade, 345 Separate Engineer Battalion, 9 Pontoon-bridge Battalion, 87 Pontoon-bridge Battalion (8 Pontoon-bridge Brigade?), 122 Pontoon-bridge Battalion 43rd Army - General Lieutenant A. P. Belaborodov 1 Rifle Corps (179, 306, 357 Rifle Division), 60 Rifle Corps (235, 334 Rifle Division), 92 Rifle Corps (145, 156, 204 Rifle Division); 28 Guards. Gun Artillery Brigade (8 Gun Artillery Division), 37 Guards. Gun Artillery Brigade, 480, 1224 Howitzer Artillery Regiment, 17 Antitank Artillery Brigade, 759 Antitank Artillery Regiment, 31 Mortar Brigade, 118 Mortar Regiment, 17 Guards. Guards Mortar Brigade (rocket launchers) (2 Guards Mortar Division (rocket launchers)), 34, 39 Guards Mortar Regiment (rocket launchers), 17 Antiaircraft Artillery Division (1267, 1276, 1279, 2014 Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment), 246, 1626 Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment; 10, 39 Guards. Tank Brigade, 105 Separate Tank Regiment, 377 Guards. Heavy Self-propelled Gun Regiment, 1203 Self-propelled Gun Regiment, 44 Separate Armored Train Battalion; 28 Engineer-Sapper Brigade; 44 Separate Flamethrower Battalion; 51st Army - Lieutenant-General Ia. G. Kreizer 1 Guards. Rifle Corps (87, 279, 347 Rifle Division), 10 Rifle Corps (91, 216, 257 Rifle Division), 63 Rifle Corps (77, 267, 417 Rifle Division); 151 Gun Artillery Brigade, 764 Antitank Artillery Regiment, 125 Mortar Regiment, 77 Guards. Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment; 275 Separate Sapper Battalion; 4th Shock Army - General-Lieutenant P. F. Malyshev 83 Rifle Corps (119, 332, 360 Rifle Division), 100 Rifle Corps (21 Guards., 28, 200 Rifle Division), 16 Rifle Division, 101 Rifle Brigade, 155 Fortified Region 138 Gun Artillery Brigade, 587 Antitank Artillery Regiment, 556 Mortar Regiment, 99 Guards Mortar Regiment (rocket launchers), 7 Separate Artillery Observation Balloon Battalion, 617 Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment (46 Antiaircraft Artillery Division), 1624, 1714 Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment, 622 Separate Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion 171 Separate Tank Battalion, 60 Separate Armored Train Battalion 2 Engineer-Sapper Brigade 6th Guards Army - General Lieutenant I. M. Chistyakov 2 Guards Rifle Corps (9, 46 Guards., 166 Rifle Division), 23 Guards Rifle Corps (51, 67, 71 Guards. Rifle Division), 103 Rifle Corps (29, 154, 270 Rifle Division); 21 Breakthrough Artillery Division (66 Light Artillery Brigade, 55 Howitzer Brigade, 94 Heavy Howitzer Artillery Brigade, 103 Super Heavy Howitzer Brigade БМ, 25 Mortar Brigade), 8 Gun Artillery Division (26, 27 Guards Gun Artillery Brigade), 4 Gun Artillery Brigade, 38 Guards Corps Artillery Regiment, 64 Howitzer Artillery Regiment, 496 Antitank Artillery Regiment, 1970 Antitank Artillery Regiment (45 Antitank Artillery Brigade), 295 Mortar Regiment, 2 Guards Mortar Division (rocket launchers) (20, 26 Guards Mortar Brigade (rocket launchers)), 22, 26 Guards Mortar Regiment (rocket launchers), 39 Antiaircraft Artillery Division (1406, 1410, 1414, 1526 Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment), 46 Antiaircraft Artillery Division (609, 618, 717 Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment), 1487 Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment; 34 Guards, 143 Tank Brigade, 2 Guards., 47, 119 Separate Tank Regiment, 333, 335 Guards. Heavy Self-propelled Gun Regiment; 10 Assault Engineer-Sapper Brigade, 29 Engineer-Sapper Brigade, 249 Separate Engineer Battalion, 91 Pontoon-bridge Battalion; 35 Separate Flamethrower Battalion, 174, 178 Separate Knapsack Flamethrower Company 12 Separate Flamethrower Battalion

lol, this inspired me enough to play this mission last night. I won't spoiler anything, and it's extra interesting now to see how you came to different tactics.

Quick question (sorry if this is ridiculous) ... are you checking line of sight ahead of time by putting a movement waypoint on where you want to go, and then check LOS from that waypoint with target commands, or are you zooming down to ground level to see if there is LOS?

Ya, close by units will chat like they would in real life (I thought this was a nice subtle thing to code in). I'm not sure, but I also think if you have an infantry unit without a radio mounted on a an unbuttoned tank, they will use the tank's radio. Not sure on that one though.

Unfortunately, I'm not home to do some tests. Could you do the reverse? I frequently do this in Red Thunder to share info between infantry and tank units -- put my infantry commander on or next to the tank commanders vehicle (might have to open up). It won't be instant, but they will share info by talking.

I don't see a lot of talk on here about cyber warfare, but here is an interesting attack on Ukraine from last year. (if you find this interesting, I fully recommend reading up on Stuxnet, that was a ridiculously brilliant piece of hacking by the Israelis and Americans -- not criticizing, I think they were justified). I guess it's also a wake up call for our own systems. https://www.wired.com/2016/03/inside-cunning-unprecedented-hack-ukraines-power-grid/ While I will say there are some very likely ... parties who were behind this, finding the source of a hack is tricky. I am constantly worried about getting fooled about the source of an attack. Sometimes it even seems comes down to, "well this file is named Ester, and that's a historical Jewish hero" or, "this comment line has the grammar of an American". It is rather unfortunate all the information in a hack is protected so I can't verify it myself.

@panzersaurkrautwerfer First let me apologize for my tone. Totally inappropriate. Iraq is an old long standing running argument with me, I am obviously too tightly wound up about it to discuss it on a nice forum like this. I will try to refrain from mentioning it. re: Motorola's death With more reading, there seems to be a distinct lack of effort on the Russian's part to do any sort of forensic investigation on this (perhaps I'm just missing it). To Steve's point, it does seem like if Ukraine was behind things, I personally thought Russia would want to find some hard evidence to point the finger with no doubts -- like showing MH17 was shot down by ... err ... what is the right term here, pro-Russian insurgents? was I thought a pretty big publicity coup for the West's position. Or maybe it is an issue of authority, and Russia just can't ... 'legally' ... send their own investigation team (ignoring that it is always hard to believe someone who has a clear bias) into the DPR? It is definitely hard for me to find the line of what Russia can and can't / won't do in those territories.

Sigh. Okay. You will drop the fact that you were a soldier there, then I will drop that I am friends with a few Jordanians who actually live in there, and travel around the area for work in a development bank. I'm going to take a hunch they have a better handle on middle eastern islam and culture. I don't know where I said the ISIS fighters were models of Islam. I have seen a ton and heard of many more "pious" people from all religious turn around and do the most immoral things. Jews eating bacon. Christians having pre-marital sex. I imagine they are in many ways similar to our own soldiers -- who also like to have 'death to X enemy' stuff and tons of porn, and I'm sure a ton of them will claim to be good Christians. What people say and what people do are usually very different things. You're absolutely right, it is an affront that some of their leaders do that. They also have a ton of strict super pious religious imams who kinda put up with the military side doing that because they can preach where and what they want -- like spanish priests being okay with what the conquistadors got up to. Again, it's a little strange to try and apply such a broad brush to everyone. Should I assume because some t.v. evangelists are immoral con artists, all evangelist preachers are? I'm not sure where you're going. You're the first person I've ever heard that's tried to claim ISIS wasn't deeply driven by religious beliefs. Err, you mean that was what got it started. I would say that all the different countries using this as a proxy war battlefield / religious war is the real reason this is dragging out so long. I still don't know about this. I have met devout Christians who will swear up and down how religious they are, do the regular church thing, and then do completely unbiblical things. I don't think religious people see it that way, I think even if they do immoral things, they still truly believe. I do think angry people are very vulnerable to falling to charismatic leaders though, look at Trump. Oh ... you visited it before 2003? Very impressive. What did you see walking around that led you to believe it could not survive an Arab Spring? Well, I would never say white imperialist yankee man class. That would be utterly ridiculous, my own country played a roll in the invasion, even by tacit support. But I can be man enough to admit we royally screwed up and totally and completely messed over several other countries in the process and millions of lives. Sorry, we should and have to live with that. I could have been out on the streets protesting, but I wasn't. Regardless of our differences of opinion on their motivations, they've got to go.

This is the danger of taking the broad stroke of "terrorism" and applying it everywhere. There is no nuance. ISIS is not your typical "terrorist" organization. ISIS wants to be a real nation on their own. To fulfill their prophesy, the Caliphate must be re-established. The only way there can be a Caliph is if they control territory. ISIS has every intention of trying to hold onto, and keep us out of the territory they control. They set up government organizations, the run public services, they tax, they try to be a legit government to the people they control. This will sound crazy, but they might even see themselves the same way the original Americans did kicking out the British in that sense. It's not Christianity they hate (they hate all non believers), but to them, our complete lack of morals when it comes to sex, and our complete lack (to them) of family values. They see our way of life as abhorrent, literally like we are evil devils with our corrupting ways in tempting people from the true faith. Again, a little like how people here in the past viewed rock and roll as this evil corrupting influence (but more extreme). Baghdadi is the Caliph. I can see ISIS fracturing into groups under different commanders (think Alexander the Great) if he is killed, but I'm not sure there is anyone who can actually replace him. Maybe? Osama Bin Laden was a great public relations coup (as was burying the body at sea), but really, by that point he had such minimal influence it didn't matter. He had to go to such efforts to hide, he was barely able to communicate with and control the organization. I don't even know where to begin with this one. It's exactly this attitude why non-American countries are scared of America and never believe them when they say they won't invade. It's just insane how you can justify any foreign meddling to yourselves. It seriously blows my mind.

Fascinating stuff, been forced to do a lot of reading on both sides. Thank you google translate. Is there anything wrong with these statements? Sparta Battalion is one of the biggest and best units in the DPR. Motorola is considered one of the most talented leaders on the LPR/DPR side. There was an assassination attempt on Motorla with a ... car bomb? ... in June. There was another attempt on his life behind the apartment he was killed in in August. There was a coup attempt in LPR in September, but the head of DPR, Zaharchenko, send Motorola to protect the head of the LPR, Plotnitsky. Splat, he died three weeks later. I dunno man. It pains me to potentially fall for Russian propaganda, but it does *seem* more like Motorola was a useful loyal tool, and Ukraine had a lot of really good reason to get rid of him. (but who am I right? I am far from the expert here) However, if someone tried to kill him behind his apartment in August, it does kinda show his security sucked. I think we've also shown with all the bombings here and abroad a remote triggered bomb can be done by people with much less skill than a security service. That does also mean someone else lower down he pissed off could have also done it. Oh well. Maybe I'll find who did it in 25 years or something. No one is certainly going to admit to it now.

I don't know if it is any inspiration to keep posting, but I will also be reading along. Good stuff! I always appreciate the effort people put into these.

Prime suspect ...

You make some great points. I was actually thinking it might be more likely that ISIS would crack and split off into several different groups if Baghdadi went down -- but who knows. In fairness to Mohammad, he did say "Dabiq or Al-Amaq" -- don't ask me why he couldn't nail that one down. I fully agree the current political climate is more like the 80s than the 90s. This is worrisome in that a lot of political players who knew the game during the cold war are now gone. The new politicians seem very reckless, with a whole lot of 'I don't care what you think, I'm doing it anyways' on both sides.

I'm sure Russia contributed to the mess, and I'm sure the stage was set for ISIS by the power vacuum caused by the Iraq War, but I see (in simplist terms) the area's problems more as the muslim equivalent of the old European Catholic-Protestant wars. There are a lot of issues between Sunni's, Shia's, and all the other sects of Islam that have been simmering for a long time, but kept bottled up by harsh leaders for centuries. It also doesn't help when you basically have the muslin version of David Koresh or Jim Jones that controls thousands -- hundreds of thousands? ISIS actually believes they have to fight the west (I'm not sure about Baghdadi, but the low level guys seem to believe) , where they will win at first and then be slowly beaten back, and basically lure us into a 'final battle' around the Syrian town of Dabiq ... where they will lose, but the savior will come down ... and save them. And I guess presumably convert us all or something. Since Baghdadi is supposed to be this new Caliph to usher in these times, I do wonder what would happen to ISIS if the U.S. or Russia actually managed to kill him. Sorry, that is off topic, just another area of interest of mine.