Halmbarte

That's what militaries do and that's why they shouldn't be used when you're not trying to kill people and blow stuff up. 155mm tube artillery is not a good way to build infrastructure or manage a election. H

I always try to assume that the enemy will arty the most obvious places for me to set up, so I avoid putting troops there that are unprotected. Capabilities not intentions and all that. If I absolutely need eyes on I'll use a scout team so I'm only risking 2 guys instead of a entire fire team. I'll also keep infantry in their tracks to protect them from fragments but keep them close to where I want them. I did lose a squad that way playing a scenario when a rocket from the opening barrage hit the roof of their M113 and wiped out the squad and crew. H

Or at least scraping foxholes and prepping vehicle hides… But we take what we get. H

If I’m on defense with no indicators a attack is imminent it just seems gamey that right now is the time to start up the artillery because the scenario has started. The troops might have been in position from hours to days before the game starts. H

Sometimes the defenders do identify the assembly areas that the attacker is using and attack them with artillery or air. Generally when I’m playing defense I don’t preplan artillery or air strikes for the first turn as it seems awfully gamey to me unless there are specific circumstances. H

Post WWII attempts at foreign occupation fail, with a few exceptions. My belief is this is because of two major factors: 1) The proliferation of cheap, reliable, small arms and, to a lesser extent, AT weapons. 2) The proliferation of the user manual for guerrilla warfare, Mao's writings. Post WWII any group that wants to resist an occupying power has the means and know how to bleed the occupiers dry. The occupying power gets tired of the constant drain on resources and eventually gives up and goes home. This process has been repeated multiple times since the end of WWII. The only exception I can think of to this is the Chinese occupation of Tibet. I don't see a NATO occupation of Syria going much differently than Indonesia, the various African colonies, Afghanistan (OG or Afghan II Electric Boogaloo) or Iraq. The best you can hope for is: 1) capture and/or kill the people responsible for the attack, 2) hand the country over to a representative government, and 3) GTFO. Oh, yeah, and provide aid to repair/replace all the infrastructure that you wrecked doing item #1. H

I just finished playing Sgt Squarehead's excellent Ashsh al-Dababir AKA the Hornets Nest scenario this morning. Up until now I've avoided scenarios that featured urban combat as I suck at it and I get a bunch of crunchies killed and lose supporting armor like crazy. I've read various write up on the forums and watched Youtube videos but it just never clicked. Then I read this post: which had domfluff's excellent advice for using the camera at level 1 to spot buildings that are potential have the potential to be covering your moving troops. Also in that thread was a link to this short write up about street fighting : https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/call/call_01-9_karagosian.htm which has this quote and then talks about the need for suppressing or obscuring buildings that have line of sight to when I need to move my troops in the open. And then it all just clicked. In the city fighting in the Hornets nest I only lost a few troopers fighting in buildings or crossing over to buildings after applying these 2 key principals: 1) Don't move in the open 2) Smoke or suppress buildings that have LOS when you do have to move in the open And of my losses were in the 1st few turns where I was in a firefight to get fire superiority of the rooftops. I wanted to be able to move around on the roofs to avoid moving in the streets and to be able to clear buildings from the top down whenever possible. Another learning is that even with target light the troops will burn though a lot of ammo surpassing just the buildings that have LOS. Big thanks to Sgt Squarehead for getting me going again after a bug kept crashing the game at 30 minutes remaining. I want to play thru the scenario again, this time using Syrian forces and in particular the BMP3. ISIS has their own VBIEDs but so do the Syrians with the BMP3. I imagine encouraging the troops do debus when under fire is never a problem when they are riding in a BMP3. Keeping the troops mounted and within a 100m might be a problem... H

@Sgt.SquareheadYeah, your saved filed got me to 29 minutes left. Didn't see the incoming IED before it popped. Well, so much for that squad... Thanks a bunch for the help. H

That would be great! I'm really liking this scenario and wanted to finish it to the end. I didn't figure out I should have looted the vehicles during setup so there has been some frantic driving around to resupply with rifle and MG ammo. Suppressive fire burns thru ammo pretty fast. H

Mine seem to be crewed from the Moscow Institute for the Blind. I guess there are no deferments to doing your conscript 2 year service. Maybe if they issued the ATGM vehicles with seeing eye dogs... H

If you really want a challenge swap out the later models of US tanks with the older units and replace the M901s w/M150s in the scenario editor. Match them with age appropriate Sov kit, of course, like the T64 early model and BMP1 instead of BMP2. H

Performance was fine with no noticeable lag, although the CPU would max out from time to time. H

System specs Hardware Overview: Model Name: MacBook Pro Model Identifier: MacBookPro11,3 Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Core i7 Processor Speed: 2.6 GHz Number of Processors: 1 Total Number of Cores: 4 L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB L3 Cache: 6 MB Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled Memory: 16 GB System Firmware Version: 431.140.6.0.0 SMC Version (system): 2.19f12 NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M: Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M Type: GPU Bus: PCIe PCIe Lane Width: x8 VRAM (Total): 2 GB Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de) Device ID: 0x0fe9 Revision ID: 0x00a2 ROM Revision: 3776 Automatic Graphics Switching: Supported gMux Version: 4.0.8 [3.2.8] Metal Family: Supported, Metal GPUFamily macOS 1 H

Another application would be the ability to get ATGMs up on the roofs in urban combat. Nothing get 'get stuffed' to a sniper like popping them with a heavy ATGM. Well, ok, maybe using a main gun round from a tank to take out one sniper does... H

I think I collected them all. H

Having a problem with the Ashsh al-Dababir AKA the Hornet's nest scenario. Things are actually going pretty good and I'm actually enjoying urban combat for the 1st time but each time I get to turn 30 and hit the red button to issue orders that whole game crashes. I've tried multiple times and have the same result, even after a computer restart. I'm on SF2 2.04. Has anyone else seen this? Link to save game immediately before it crashes: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zcwbp7hs78e7plq/Ashsh al-Dababir (The Hornets' Nest) 31.bts?dl=0 H

I’m hopeful but doubtful. The Milan and Sagger should be able to be dismounted from their IFVs but they never have been. The Germans in Shock Force get shortchanged on their long range AT fire power because of this. H

They may have got it exactly right in the video. The earlier BTRs didn't have the side doors. https://thesovietarmourblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/btr-80.html H

Keep moving till you receive fire AKA the PMD method has the advantages that it's simple, it maintains tempo, and it works if you know that you have another echelon behind you to capitalize on your success. Germany is a big place and they can't cover every approach in strength. A fast recon that maintains the advance and finds the gaps by surviving pulls the following echelons behind it. Playing as the Americans with Cav troops in '79 it's completely different. Tanks cover, M113s bound forward to cover, recon troops dismount and probe forwards. It's a method that causes less casualties and the inferior American tanks can't take 'surprises' like a T64 can. H

That was kinda a point of the video. Using western tactics the dismounts should have got out earlier and did a foot recon. But that costs time and momentum. The Soviet technique is more to dismount only when you'd take excessive casualties if you stayed mounted or if the place you need to get to isn't accessible by vehicle, like the other side of the minefield in the video. H

Being in a BTR that's being shot at is wrong. That armor will keep out toddlers with pointy sticks and that's about it. If I were being shot at in a BTR jumping from the frying pan full of ammo and fuel to the fire of being unprotected from bullets doesn't sound so bad. H

The view altitude also seems to have an effect on the lag. H

I've seen the same behavior myself. H

They didn't need to steal the blueprints, the Soviet received an unexploded Sidewinder in a plane after a dogfight between China & Taiwan. H

If anything the overpressure of firing some AT weapons indoors is under represented. It's hard to guide a missile when your eardrums are running out of your head and your sinus cavities are blown out. H