German Campaign.....Slaughterhouse!

[AlexUK]

I managed to get into the first group of houses, but pushing further just ate up more men and time needed to outmanoeuvre the enemy...

The lethality of enemy firepower (even from a lone individual in a building) was sufficient to send an assault squad reeling.

Just getting into positions to lay down suppressing fire was a hell of a task.

Once there they either had insufficient cover or the buildings offered little in the way of shelter and they themselves were in many cases suppressed and/or routed due to very poor morale and experience.

For me the amount of time I put into mission 3 I doubt I will revisit it as it just wasn't fun... I understand the whole 'give hardcore guys a challenge' but I fail to see how anyone could win this scenario without many, many restarts and even then that is a massive if.

I tried each and every avenue and minimised my exposure as best as could be, but the fact remained that in order to get into a position to lay suppressing fire, you are in turn able to be hit by return fire...

Given the poor quality of troops at hand, the US para's usually have a 90-10 advantage of counter-suppressing your fire given they are of a much higher quality...

I don't know if any patches have been released recently that vastly improved the effectiveness of certain weapons, maybe those that were able to win in this scenario had it on an easier setting...

Yes, i eventually got into the buildings too, but only after using all my mortars, most of my ammo, losing a platoon commander and several squads had taken casualties. Also, and importantly, I was almost out of time - if mission time had been longer and with more ammo resupply it could perhaps be do-able, but still don't think so - I think the only way the Germans can win is at long range, but the next set of buildings would be a murderous short range fight I think.

On a positive note, I do like the idea of fighting with weaker troops, and it is an intriguing scenario.

[womble]

I'm on to mission 3 now, just setting up, and I've got a 4th Platoon that doesn't appear to be commandable by the Company HQ. Doesn't highlight when I double click 2Coy Actual, doesn't show any C2 icons when in the adjacent AS... I'm not saying it's enough of a SNAFU to make the scenario impossible, but it's not going to help, given the quality of the troops.

[AlexUK]

I'm on to mission 3 now, just setting up, and I've got a 4th Platoon that doesn't appear to be commandable by the Company HQ. Doesn't highlight when I double click 2Coy Actual, doesn't show any C2 icons when in the adjacent AS... I'm not saying it's enough of a SNAFU to make the scenario impossible, but it's not going to help, given the quality of the troops.

A word of advice - set your expectations low

Would be interested to know how you got on though - perhaps we could set up a self-help group to get through the PTSD.

[womble]

A word of advice - set your expectations low

I'd kinda gathered that from the previous posts...

Would be interested to know how you got on though - perhaps we could set up a self-help group to get through the PTSD.

I think I'm doing okay for now. 8 minutes in, and I've "found" a bunch of the defenders of the "Forest Edge", and gotten MG42s into positions to suppress them (successfully so far) at about 100m or less range, for "acceptable" losses (half a dozen scattered across all 4 platoons so far). I need to work out if there are a) any other elements to get the lead hose playing on, and if there are elements further back who can intervene in a meaningful fashion. Then I can go in to the first objective.

They're really squirrelly though, those KM. Even in good C2; already there are "brittle" troops (who've been Shaken or Paniced), though no team or squad has taken more than one casualty.

[AlexUK]

How are you getting on womble?

We'll done for getting the MGs in close - I'll have to try that if I have another go

[womble]

I chucked in the towel and have begun a restart.

You have 4 platoons, each with 2 MG42, plus the two tripod-mounted ones and the LMG team. I'd rolled back the concealment to expose 4 teams of Amis, but only having 2 MG42 on each target wasn't suppressing them consistently enough to make any approach by the assault teams viable, and I'd fluffed the transition from "scouting" to "fighting", so decided to start again, as an exercise in trying to improve that changeover.

And I've not had time to spare to get the scenario properly restarted.

[AlexUK]

Good luck on the next try. One thing I was trying was to work the angles on the first set of buildings, aiming to identify ones that can be taken on their own.

I'm guessing allied surrender is the only way to realistically win this?

[womble]

Good luck on the next try. One thing I was trying was to work the angles on the first set of buildings, aiming to identify ones that can be taken on their own.

I'm guessing allied surrender is the only way to realistically win this?

My guess would be that allied surrender is near impossible to attain, if every other building has an Ami Para team in it, like the first row do. You just don't have enough bullets to keep enough heads down for long enough, nor grenades to winkle them out (assuming they're as tough as the Brit paras in the first scenario). And my bet is that the defenders won't be set up in the "Barn" type buildings; that would be too easy. They'll all be in the modular buildings that give you good cover.

Haven't yet figured out how to employ the mortars. Once I do, they should help, some, if they're anywhere near as useful as Brixias (which is the Italians' best infantry weapon system, IMO).

[JoMac]

I don't know if any patches have been released recently that vastly improved the effectiveness of certain weapons, maybe those that were able to win in this scenario had it on an easier setting...

Actually, It's already tough in the 1.0 Game Engine, but with the newest 2.0 ( patched to v2.12 ) the increased Lethality of Small Arms in general ( especially Automatic Fire ) has really made it difficult to even breath without loosing half your squad in one minute of Combat.

Joe

[Ithikial_AU]

Actually, It's already tough in the 1.0 Game Engine, but with the newest 2.0 ( patched to v2.12 ) the increased Lethality of Small Arms in general ( especially Automatic Fire ) has really made it difficult to even breath without loosing half your squad in one minute of Combat.

Joe

Haven't got to this campaign yet but looking forward to it. At the moment, I'd say automatic fire at close range is about right, but seeing half squads go down at long range is just heart breaking. Also got to really scratch your head when you see a line of guys fall over from an MP40 burst from over 100 meters away. Impact is compounded on campaigns because you don't know if you'll get replenishment before the next battles. Begs the questions if you should really keep fighting or just restart the current battle. Sort of defeats the intended spirit of a campaign to begin with. Just my personal thoughts.

I'm waiting to see what effect the ROF changes in v3.0 have in store for us.

[JoMac]

Haven't got to this campaign yet but looking forward to it. At the moment, I'd say automatic fire at close range is about right, but seeing half squads go down at long range is just heart breaking. Also got to really scratch your head when you see a line of guys fall over from an MP40 burst from over 100 meters away. Impact is compounded on campaigns because you don't know if you'll get replenishment before the next battles. Begs the questions if you should really keep fighting or just restart the current battle. Sort of defeats the intended spirit of a campaign to begin with. Just my personal thoughts.

I'm waiting to see what effect the ROF changes in v3.0 have in store for us.

Yes, loosing half your squad in a turn due to short range auto fire by troops overrunning your position is one thing.

However, in a standing firefight over time at moderate ranges ( and in good cover ) is where the problem stands...The MP-40 situation is a perfect example.

I'm hoping a future patch or the v3.0 Engine would decrease the overall Ammo expenditure and or accuracy due to range.

As a 'Work Around' I'm in the process of playtesting the idea of using the Game Editor and changing ( lowering ) the Moral or Motivation stats of troops...In theory, this should make troops cower and move less often, and thus reduce the exchange of fire over the course of the battle. This would bring the Casualty count down to more acceptable levels.

On average and in a heavy firefight, you should loose around 2-3 men per squad at battles end...As it stands now, you're lucky to have 2-3 men left out of your squad.

And you wonder why your battered troops don't carry over in a Campaign ( you always have different troop dispositions each battle )...Because, you don't have any troops left to carry on the next battle.

[Baneman]

...

I'm hoping a future patch or the v3.0 Engine would decrease the overall Ammo expenditure and or accuracy due to range.

....

I certainly hope the accuracy of SMG's is looked at again/more.

I was amazed at the number of men I lost to Stens at 200m !

[womble]

I managed a Total Victory on my first try. Careful approach, spreading the men so they are not in easily frightened stacks and then expending liberal amounts of ammo area firing any known and suspected enemy position.

Lost 31 KIA 46 WIA.

but its doable, like in school of hard knocks you need to push through hvy casualties to make it work, accept the casualties and go on and suddenly the map opens up as the hardest part for me was to get into the houses, they kept sweeping my guys through the underbrush and woods a long time and till i got into the houses.

I have a question: how do you keep such bad troops going forward into fire with that level of casualties? I'd hardly lost any and yet any team that got hit went uncontrolled, and there doesn't seem to be enough firepower in the whole company to keep enough devils cowering to not be in a constant cycle of "recovering from Shaken"-getting shot and Shaken again.

I'm about to give it another go, but this is a learning exercise in futility, not a scenario that I'm expecting to win.

[AlexUK]

I have a question: how do you keep such bad troops going forward into fire with that level of casualties? I'd hardly lost any and yet any team that got hit went uncontrolled, and there doesn't seem to be enough firepower in the whole company to keep enough devils cowering to not be in a constant cycle of "recovering from Shaken"-getting shot and Shaken again.

I'm about to give it another go, but this is a learning exercise in futility, not a scenario that I'm expecting to win.

I might have another go myself, I haven't let a scenario beat me yet, but it have a bad feeling this might be this one.....

There is a lot of ammo available, and the lack of HE should allow the troops to recover any MGs that are lost. I think the secret is the angles - isolate and destroy each enemy section. Not entirely clear on morale effect, but if the HQ units could be taken out that may affect morale/suppression of the rest. Hats off to anyone who does this first play through though!

Together we'll beat it! :mad:

[womble]

There is a lot of ammo available...

I wouldn't say "a lot". You're not starved of ammo, but you only have a standard load and suppressing troops in the hard cover that first row have takes "a lot" of bullets.

...the lack of HE should allow the troops to recover any MGs that are lost.

Yeah. I don't think you'll run out of MGs before you run out of teams willing to sit still and use them.

I think the secret is the angles - isolate...

On the evidence so far, I'm not sure that's really possible. It seems to me that to get enough guns pointing at a section to destroy it in the good cover it has, your shooters will come under (accurate, lethal) fire from at least one other section, which will then have to be suppressed. You have enough guns to expand your "fighting front" a couple of times, each time drawing fire from a new enemy element.

... and destroy each enemy section...

And destroying such dug-in, and presumably well motivated and highly experienced troops in the good cover they have will take more than just bullets. I think that "more" has to be mortars for the first row; you just can't generate enough suppression on enough defenders to make an assault with grenades feasible.

At least, that's the approach I'm going for this time through.

Not entirely clear on morale effect, but if the HQ units could be taken out that may affect morale/suppression of the rest.

Aye, it should. I haven't got a location on the HQ so far, though, to target it.

Hats off to anyone who does this first play through though!

Indeed. Some "secrets of my success" sharing would be greatly appreciated.

Together we'll beat it! :mad:

[AlexUK]

Ok, here are some more thoughts on angles/placement. The setup area to the far right has several locations with line of sight to one building only - I placed MGs there to provide long range suppression (us forces are lethal close/medium range but not so strong at longer range). There are avenues of approach through the woods that allow teams to then move into position a couple of turns later to provide medium range suppressing fire, then you can get your assault squads to move in.

I haven't used smoke as yet but that could also cut the angles down and provide protection.

Also - angles can be used in the sense of one building providing cover for a further away building.

In the same way, some buildings have blank walls.

Regarding mortars, I have found they are pretty much useless against the sturdy buildings but can take down the barns quite effectively. As there do not appear to be any troops outside of the buildings, this is how I intend to employ them.

[womble]

Ok, here are some more thoughts on angles/placement. The setup area to the far right has several locations with line of sight to one building only - I placed MGs there to provide long range suppression (us forces are lethal close/medium range but not so strong at longer range). There are avenues of approach through the woods that allow teams to then move into position a couple of turns later to provide medium range suppressing fire, then you can get your assault squads to move in.

I've started my replay, and am using that "right side first" approach. I'm only a few minutes in, and have most of my MGs in position; the tripod MGs have been firing since turn one, with plenty of rounds getting through the foliage. My mortars are just starting to range in. Before any assault teams pop out from behind the barn between the only contact I've found so far (in the right hand house), any elements in the middle houses will need to be suppressed. The problem that I think I'm going to run into is that my "lead broom" has swept the Ami paras out of their first storey perches into the ground floor, where I have to get within spitting distance to draw a bead on them... Maybe that means I can advance with impunity where I've previously been cautious, or maybe there are elements on both floors, and the upper fellows are just keeping their heads down. Getting MG42 teams into positions to fire into the ground floors of the houses is going to be another layer of challenge.

I haven't used smoke as yet but that could also cut the angles down and provide protection.

The only smoke available is squad "Pop smoke", and I can't see that having enough coverage or lasting long enough to make a difference in this first phase.

Edit: I've just popped back in to the scenario, and found that the wind is, though gentle, blowing in the KMs' faces, so hand-chucked smoke is going to be difficult to make work in the assault on the first houses...

Also - angles can be used in the sense of one building providing cover for a further away building.

Indeed. The problem comes when your advance in the building's "shadow" has to pop out into the open and become visible to a whole row; hence the need for suppression across the enemy's firing line. So far, though, with finding longer-range positions for my MGs, the enemy hasn't returned any fire. The only fire I've taken has been from a unit on the ground floor at some of my scouts. Hopefully that means they're suppressed, not just laughing up their sleeves at my ineffectual long range fire, and waiting in ambush...

Regarding mortars, I have found they are pretty much useless against the sturdy buildings but can take down the barns quite effectively. As there do not appear to be any troops outside of the buildings, this is how I intend to employ them.

I can't see the designer having put any of his troops in those deathtraps sometimes referred to as "barns"... I'm setting them to "Target Light", and reckon I should get about 15 minutes' additional suppression from HE direct impacts. Hopefully that should be enough "extra" to tip some kind of balance somewhere.

[womble]

Hooray!

After 10 minutes, the first of the American teams has turned tail from the downstairs, and is leaving the building. I'm guessing I've taken about 10 casualties so far, and I've found the/an HQ.

Whether having displaced the team is a Good Thing or not, I shall have to discover, probably the hard way. Now they'll hiding behind a building and inaccessible unless I can flank them, which seems an unlikely proposition. Maybe I can get a mortar to drop a few little presents just past the building.

One thing that borked me was that I cancelled the "Target Light" of the mortars, to save ammo, thinking that if I didn't move them and fired at the same targets when I wanted to resume firing, they wouldn't have to zero themselves in. Which was true. But because, when not firing, they tend to go prone, I had to move them an AS and redeploy the weapon so they got a fresh sighting of the target. the 1 AS displacement didn't seem to affect their "zeroing"; they both started dropping eggs in the target area from their first shot, it just delayed resumption of action by 90s (I used Slow for their movement, so as to not be taking the mick wrt moving in potential LoS of the enemy). Oh, and the RoF of the mortars at this range is more in the order of 5/min, rather than the 3/ I was expecting, so there's only 9 mins of fire in each (hence the attempted pause in firing).

[Volltreffer]

I have a question: how do you keep such bad troops going forward into fire with that level of casualties? I'd hardly lost any and yet any team that got hit went uncontrolled, and there doesn't seem to be enough firepower in the whole company to keep enough devils cowering to not be in a constant cycle of "recovering from Shaken"-getting shot and Shaken again.

I'm about to give it another go, but this is a learning exercise in futility, not a scenario that I'm expecting to win.

Now you see the utter frustration that I had with this one...

I restarted this maybe 20+ times and each time I was hit from a different position... I was happy in the end to admit a defeat in this one and move onto the next engagement...

I ended up having a total victory in the campaign as a whole, but this mission in particular I have no real desire to revisit anytime soon.

I think as mentioned by others here, with the improved lethality of small arms in recent patches, each scenario has gotten that much harder, some maybe almost impossible on certain levels of difficulty.

[womble]

Well, I'm on my 4th go through on this training exercise now, and doing a lot better. I may even have a favourable casualty ratio. But I'm fifteen minutes in, and have cleared one building, with another probably about to go (it's a barn with 5 MG42 shredding it that's sucked up half a dozen mortar shells too). And the runners from the first building have inconveniently not legged it out of the VL, either.

The lethality of small arms cuts both ways. You just have to take more advantage of it than the defender can. Finding places to put your HMGs where return fire is ineffective, but the MMGs' fire is well directed has been the key to this run's general level of success. That, and just not trying to use assault teams at all. They just get shot and degrade the fire teams' morale so the occasional long range plink drops a gun out of the firing rotation.

I have also discovered that there is such a thing as overkill. Having 9 MG42s firing on the same building doesn't give the occupants opportunity to run away, so you have to kill them all, which is hard in the cover they have. Some fire each turn, with 3 or 4 firing 15s bursts at the start while 4 or 3 move up a bit and fire a brief shot later in the turn seems to be a good recipe for getting the stubborn Amis to move while conserving ammo. Concentration of force is key, and your force is, effectively, IMO, confined to your MGs and the mortars.

I don't expect to have time to actually clear the VLs. Winkling out such resilient troops takes too long. I think I'm just going to have to press on and find accessible targets to kill and try and force the surrender, or at least spread widely enough to deny the Amis some VL VP.

[Volltreffer]

Which brings me to my pet hate about these campaigns....time limits and the unreasonable constraints it places on the player to achieve a goal.

If you are beaten back on an attack it would be far better to at least have the time to pull back, regroup and find an alternate route with time to plan etc... As it is, you have to push your troops into the meat grinder and then unrealistically throw the lives of your pixel-truppen away in a mad rush to beat the clock...

Having game parameters depending on game play taste is more preferable... I.E. 1 / 2 / 3 hours limits.... options to cease fire (offers & accepting). These are things I particularly like about the Graviteam games as you don't seem to be in as mad a rush to gain an objective.

[womble]

Sometimes time limits are credible. Military operations did tend to be planned to timetables and one force component being late to their objective could dislocate the operation. Obviously, sensible planners included contingencies, but that's perhaps covered by the fact that the pace of a CM battle is inherently faster than a real life engagement of the same type (doubly so when the impatience of players is taken into account). Or they're deliberately there to represent desperation. Or bad planning.

Either way up, the designer should ideally make the time limit part of the calculation of victory. If the force assigned is too weak relative to the opposition to achieve the goals it's been set by the REMFs, the VCs should reflect that.

Having a scoring system pretty much demands a time limit. If you can take your time, everything is easier. You don't need to worry about making sure your next wave is tight up behind (but not too tight) your current wave, and you don't therefore have to worry about accidental/incidental casualties from overshots or long aimed shooting. You can take your time to re-ammo if you've got resupply, and you don't need to risk bringing your supply elements forward into (potential) harm's way. You can take the time to let wobbly troops rally somewhere safe so you can keep pushing hard when you do push. Having the ability to make the game as long as you fancy makes scoring essentially irrelevant. As, indeed, does not considering the time limit when constructing your scoring schema.

A pet peeve of mine is when a designer scores "doing just about as well as could be reasonably expected considering the game conditions" (as opposed to "as expected by your notional IRL REMF superiors in the atmosphere-building briefing") as a loss. Even in the context of a campaign, where you can "still progress" with a loss. Expecting 600 points of rabble to be able to winkle out 450 points of hard-as-nails (and yes, the quality matters: force concentration can be measured in points) veterans in 40 minutes is a pretty tough ask. I don't expect to achieve a military victory (or even my briefed objectives) in every fight, because I expect to be set tasks that are beyond my forces. I do expect to get a draw when I do "OK", though. Sure, I can come to my own assessment of how well I thought I did, but that, too, makes the scoring system nugatory.

In an ideal world, there would be time-based VCs, so you could play for as long as you liked (within reason) but the longer you took to get to your assigned objectives (assuming they were reasonable in the first place), the fewer VP they'd be worth.

And designers are still working on how to make lop-sided scenarios give appropriate feedback on "performance".

[MOS:96B2P]

In an ideal world, there would be time-based VCs, so you could play for as long as you liked (within reason) but the longer you took to get to your assigned objectives (assuming they were reasonable in the first place), the fewer VP they'd be worth.

This is a good idea. It would give people more of a choice on how they fought their battle. Faster, with probably more casualties but more VP or more methodical with probably less casualties but also less victory points. The commander could consider if he was starting the first battle of a long campaign or fighting a single scenario and plan accordingly. (Sorry the quote did not show up correctly)

[womble]

Welp, I've given up on this scenario. It got to within 5 minutes of the end, and the next step was the centre of the village. At the point of clearing "Edge of Forest" (the first houses VL), I had, having taken a sneaky peek (this is a training exercise) killed more paras than I'd lost men, and was somewhat more than half way through my ammo supplies. So I thought I could press on

Turns out I was wrong. Learned a lot though. One thing I noticed about knowing where the enemy was, I was better at avoiding exposing my troops to them. I think I'm going to pretend to know there are enemy troops *everywhere* next time I'm playing a scenario blind...

So, now to hold back the tide at the bridge...

Spoilers follow.

So stop reading at the end of this paragraph if you want to hit this scenario "blind". And good luck with it. You'll need it.

Spoiler space...

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So the middle of the village has 2 plain infantry teams, a scout team and an LMG team. There are no places not in the main village block that you can fire on the left team plus its accompanying scout team. There's just no place with LOS and cover, and the infantry team is in a building (which shields the barn where the scout team are. It's only an "independent" one (so not as good cover as a modular building), but there's nothing to hide behind out on the left where you'd have to be to get LOS past the barns in front of the infantry's location. And to get to that dubious position, you have to cross the field of fire of a HMG way at the back that's also in a building, and I'm not sure which one. Going up the left isn't really practical. On the right, the backstop HMG also has FoF, and there's an LMG at the back too, which also covers that field. As well as the infantry team and LMG team in houses in the centre. Going up the right isn't practical. In the middle, all these positions are screened by barns. So you have to get into the barn before you can shoot at the village's defenders. From a barn. At point blank range. Facing para levels of autofire. With battered rabble. Going up the middle is plain flat-out suicide.

So I called it. "Tactical defeat". I'd taken the north and south Village VLs off them and cleared the "Forest Edge" VL. Two squads of paras eliminated, and the HQ. On my 4th go, with foreknowledge of some enemy positions (which I tried not to act on until I got in-game confirmation).

I got little use out of the ammo truck, because I considered it likely that if I ammoed up beforehand, the high-ammo troops would get routed and I'd lose it, and it turned out I couldn't drive it down the hill without it getting spooked by the backstop HMG, so any resupply once I was into the houses meant running all the way back up the hill. The HMG42/34s were the only ones who actually got resupply. Given another half hour, and probably another full ammo load out for all the MG42s (only lost one Gunner), you could probably get enough rolling suppression on the backstop and right-middle positions to advance down the flanks, but not given the time I had left after taking the Forest Edge.

Long term HMG suppressive area fire is very effective agains high motivation AI troops. If they can return fire, even if it will be largely ineffective, due to range, and only one firing point, they will. Which means your lead hose will kill them as they pop their heads up one by one. The teams in the middle and left house were killed having hardly been spotted; I picked those out as the redoubts of the defense, in the first go-through, and so allowed myself to continue to speculatively fire on those from the get-go in subsequent run-throughs.

[womble]

And mission 4 was a walk in the park... At least after [Awooga! Awooga! Spoiler Alert!]

Spoiler, you say?

Ar. Spoilers.

Sorry for the interruption there... At least after some lazy paratroopers reminded me about flank security by announcing their presence where I didn't think they'd be, using a demo charge to blow a hole in a fence rather than jump over it. Lazy or explosive-happy. The Amis surrendered with about 5 minutes to go, with one platoon reduced to 4 men and the other to about 50%.

I was shocked to see that small arms fire could Destroy the concrete bunker. It took a lot of bullets, and one zook round (that was earlyish on; not the killer) but it was definitely "Destroyed", not just abandoned.

My little 50mm mortar got 13 kills. More than any other weapon, including an 81mm mortar with 11.