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Against all odds: Beating the 'Blue and Grey' campaign's 1st mission on Omaha beach


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I did it. I finally did it.

Some of you might have read my posts recently about bunkers and how to take them out. Well, it was all part of my obsession with winning this virtually impossible mission.

For those of you who haven't played it, this map takes place on Omaha Beach on D-day. It's an attempt at making a "Saving Private Ryan" map, and it does so quite well.

The only problem is that even originally, it was intended to be really difficult. So all odds are stacked against the player, who starts on a flat, coverless beach under the noses of 7 concrete machinegun bunkers, plus machinegun nests, mortars, artillery, the works.

To make sure that the machineguns would pose the proper challenge, the scenario author made all crews "crack" quality and all other enemy soldiers are at least veterans. Most of the player units are green or regular troops.

The mission became incredibly difficult after later patches to the game, where machineguns were made much more powerful, since the mission setup was never changed to reflect this. The crews are still elite quality, now behind much more accurate and deadly machineguns.

So, I seriously didn't think the day could be won, but I developed an obsession with it anyway. For four days I have been thinking hard about how to crack this one, and have been doing I don't know how many attempts.

Today, I finally did it. Took the last objective and cleared out the Resistance Nests on the beach in literally the last seconds of this 2 hour mission.

However, before I boast too much, I should say that it was only possible after playing several times, to the point of memorizing pretty much all the enemy positions, and sometimes directing fire against them before spotting them.

Which I normally never do, as I consider it cheating. Still, this mission is so stacked against the player that the gloves came off :)

CMNormandy2014-04-0123-11-40-27.png

Look mommy, I washed my hands for supper!

CMNormandy2014-04-0123-12-19-68.png

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Bullet,

I believe the MG'ers in the Pillboxes & all other Defenders should be given a Green with at most a +1 for Leadership or Motivation

Give the U.S. Reg or Vet with a +1 or +2 Leadership & Motivattion.

Go in the Editor and make the appropriate RL changes, then try the game again. The game will still be tuff, but at least more winnable.

Joe

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Yeah I went back and tried to play this a while ago and hit a brick wall. Just not fun post 2.0 upgrade and MG tweaks. Would love to play through the campaign and heard good things but there's a difference between a challenge and bang your head against a brick wall difficulty level. Agree with above posts, which I didn't realise before, but fanatic rating for the MG teams is a bit... rough.

For those interested, I recently took this map and rejigged the units. Scaling up the engagement using the historical units coming ashore for a bit of fun. Grab some popcorn...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGX_...membzBeLfcjPeQ

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My troops were in really bad shape towards the end - 3 soldiers in total in the left resistance objective, around 10 in the other.. all of them completely shellshocked. But no enemy.

In the words of Popeye: I can't stand no more!

Had a lot of setbacks during the mission, and very heavy losses. Even single enemy soliders hiding in the trenches after the artiller strikes would continue to fight with fanatical determination and skill, routing whole squads and sending them through machinegun fire, having them stand up and run just as mortars came in, etc.

At one point, a single leftover enemy mortar support crew shot and killed two of my guys from around 250 metres distance, 2 shots, 2 kills, using only his regular rifle, causing my advance to grind to a complete halt.

Also, towards the very end, when I maneuvered towards the road objective, spotting rounds for my last salvo of destroyer support shells began to come in short, hitting the field where all my troops were bunched up! And each destroyer spotting round is actually 3 rounds.. that was pretty tense.

So, there you have it - 4 days of fighting this one. Medals, champagne and French girls with flowers please! ;)

CMNormandy2014-04-0123-15-20-25.png

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Yeap, before the MG Tweak you would have only lost 5 Times more casualties compared to RL, but with new MG Tweak it's more like 10 times.

But dont worry, it becomes better...With the next Game Engine 3.0, or maybe 4.0, I think CM plans on turning Combat Mission into an RTS game ( akin to 'Red Orchestra' ), but in 3rd Person Mode, where you can respawn your troops every minute once they become a casualty. You see, I knew BF had a long-term Marketing Plan to lure Young Gamers into CM...Way to Go.

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Yeap, before the MG Tweak you would have only lost 5 Times more casualties compared to RL, but with new MG Tweak it's more like 10 times...Way to Go, CM.

You'd look less ignorant if you actually read the posts.

The troops involved are overstatted because MGs were underperforming. The scenario hasn't been revised since MGs were rebalanced, so the MGs are overperforming. If you read around a bit you'd also see that the destroyer batteries that have been assigned in the scenario aren't really up to simulating the point blank fire from the two DDs that was available in real life. BFC have repeatedly expressed their disinterest in simulating beach landings, so there are no 5" direct fire assets. This is a fault with the scenario, trying to simulate something that isn't actually in the remit of the game.

Grind your axe elsewhere.

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I have no idea what all the fuss about the "new" MG code is...

srsly??? when CMBN first came out HMGs were bloody useless....

have you ever read your history??? - 1 HMG was able to pin entire companies in certain situations (not only beach landings) with people being hit every minute.....

with the latest patches the game finally got realistic enough to represent the power of automatic weapons....

and I don't know about you... but without having the numbers in my head... I doubt that only 450 soldiers died at Omaha beach....

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and I don't know about you... but without having the numbers in my head... I doubt that only 450 soldiers died at Omaha beach....

This mission deals with just a small part of the assault on Omaha Beach, which again only was a part of the total Normandy landing operation.

I fully support that MG should be fearsome weapons in the game. And I posted this thread not to boast, but rather to share my joy (and relief!) that I managed to finally beat this mission which (for me at least) was a huge challenge.

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This mission just deals with a small part of the assault on Omaha Beach, which again only was a part of the total Normandy landing operation.

I fully support that MG should be fearsome weapons in the game. And I posted this thread not to boast, but rather to share my relief that I managed to finally beat this mission which (for me at least) was a huge challenge.

I think you have the right to boast a bit ;) It's one hell of amission after all. I once got my rangers pretty much intact to the base of the cliffs on the right side but never had the energy to try and duke it out from there.

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Yeap, before the MG Tweak you would have only lost 5 Times more casualties compared to RL, but with new MG Tweak it's more like 10 times.

But dont worry, it becomes better...With the next Game Engine 3.0, or maybe 4.0, I think CM plans on turning Combat Mission into an RTS game ( akin to 'Red Orchestra' ), but in 3rd Person Mode, where you can respawn your troops every minute once they become a casualty. You see, I knew BF had a long-term Marketing Plan to lure Young Gamers into CM...Way to Go.

The new MG code/behavior is much more realistic than the way it was before. I for one is really happy they changed it to what we have today (it was the same way back in CMx1 when they moved from CMBO to CMBB).

You can’t compare a paper/report with casualties rates with what happens in the game, it’s based on the tactics that are employed and results will reflect that.

The last part of you post is just a rant with no connection to reality. If someone has unrealistic expectations its you.

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