Poking the Bear, how?

[badllama]

Ok how  do you do this mission? I've been stuck on it for weeks the ammount of Rusion Forces just overwelms me not matter what I try I always end up getting battered :-(

 

Seems the yanks are missing about 20 -30 Tanks to make things even lol (I'm playing US) BTW

Edited May 25, 2015 by badllama

[sburke]

Lol yeah this is one you have to understand before tackling. You absolutely can not go toe to toe. The point of this scenario was to teach folks how to use the various units, UAVs, precision strikes etc. you can get a total victory, but you have to play it smart and you have to keep your assists involved. Your first goal is to kill the Tunguskas. Get your grey eagle up and hunting first. There are a couple javelin positions in the slopes to your left and right of entry point. They can be difficult to locate initially as it isn't till the Russians are moving that you'll really find the best locations. Your vehicles for the most part are gonna park. Grab all the at weapons you can and disperse them, I have had Hummv drivers grabbing AT 4s. The more the merrier. If the Russians attempt to drive you off with a tank sweep you will want to hammer them with volume.

The Bradley's and tow armed Strykers can get some kills but it can be tough getting a good shooting location. If they get spotted by a tank they are dead. I usually tried to position them on the slope to the right to hit the. Russian armor as it left the valley toward the construction site. You get some rear angle shots there.

I have even gotten a kill with the tow hummvee when the Russians pulled their sweep.

Your main killers though are your arty and air assets. Pay attention to your FOs and how long it takes them to call for fire. You don't want to be waiting 15 minutes for a precision strike. Once you get those Tunguskas get your apaches up and your other air assets.

[Sublime]

i used the slopes to the right of the setup for sniper teams and FOs. precosion 3 rnd arty strikes for AAA assets. once you sure you.ve gotten most of them start havjng jtacs and other FOS calling in masses of all your air support on the path the Russian armor is moving which is across the river on ykur right to the left and opposite map edge. try tl cover this whole route with heavy air attacks set on the largest diameter areas possible. also once the precision strikes are done i also called down heavy airburst and general atrillery area strkmes on the russian route this damages tank subsystems and kills softer skinned vehicles and the odd infantry. i attempted to get my MGS in the fight. disaster. same with TOW humvees though they got a couole kills at least initially. the big slope on your right is also perfect for javelins. javelins and precision arty should be prioritized against tunguskas first. then let em rip on enemy armor.

[badllama]

Cheers guys been watching Krause Youtube as well. Thanks for the help :-)

[Hash_Slinging_Slasher]

this mission has me stuck as well. My problem is my helo's and drones seem to get shot down quite a bit, even though i took out 3 tunguska's, and a few of the infrared aa. The t-90's i spot and send a helo, tend to scoot pretty fast out of the helo's area of fire. Also when i head to the left to establish an op sometimes i will get sniped by a t-90, i can stand to lose a humvee but when its my colt or my bradley its a huge loss.

[Sublime]

i lost my colt almost immediately. dkdnt stop major victory for me. a hint. theres s lot more than a few tunguskas

[Hash_Slinging_Slasher]

i lost my colt almost immediately. dkdnt stop major victory for me. a hint. theres s lot more than a few tunguskas

That's good to know, I'm still plugging ahead without a Bradley on the right. So when you see those missles streaking up those are tungguska's not those infrared pieces (the name slips my mind right now I believe it has a 300 in the title)?

[Sublime]

s300s. no not in game. those streaks could be strelas (tunguskas w.o the cannon more or less) iglas. or igla-s which is like a russian stinger. obversely it could be american stinger missiles you see.

[kraze]

One of the best scenarios in CM games definitely. Because it's so different from your usual "taking objectives" stuff.

 

It's managable as long as you keep killing what you find with recon and drones on the other side of the valley using precision strikes and ATGMs, while smartly choosing ambush positions to cover your scouts from the incoming counter-attack (which you are warned of in the briefing). It's tough, sure. But it's the right kind of tough as long as you think and proceed with care. If anything another good thing about the scenario is that it teaches you to truly keep your troops safe. Which comes very handy in the next scenario which is even more anti-US-steamrolls-everything (and which I enjoyed a lot as well)

Edited May 26, 2015 by kraze

[Abdolmartin]

Yeah, this scenario is definitely one of the best in CMBS. But after playing it, I noticed that a certain "wish" had developed in me, regarding planes in the game.

The easiest and fastest way to acquire targets for a plane/chopper (but not necessarily the most helpful in terms of IDing the target), is to use their radar. The radar usually has a fast acquisition time and can cover a large area, which means that planes should be able to "see" more than the 700m radius they get in the game. Now, I do understand that the information is not necessarily easy to pass on to the ground commander (e.g. transferring FLIR imagery requires ROVER, etc.), but for the plane itself, it is more or less necessary for their situational awareness, and that, most of all, relates to threats. Right now, as it is, planes do not prioritise air defence threats, and it leads to them being shot down too much. An F-16 with its FLIR and RADAR and Mavericks is more than capable of detecting the Tunguska (let alone the fact that they could carry HARMs for self-defence) and killing it, but they don't do that, and they get shot down unnecessarily.

Therefore, I think planes should have some autonomy to detect targets outside their assigned attack area, and to engage them if they are considered high threat. Because I think it's more realistic than the current "completely obedient" planes which don't even look anywhere else.

[nsKb]

Yeah, this scenario is definitely one of the best in CMBS. But after playing it, I noticed that a certain "wish" had developed in me, regarding planes in the game.

The easiest and fastest way to acquire targets for a plane/chopper (but not necessarily the most helpful in terms of IDing the target), is to use their radar. The radar usually has a fast acquisition time and can cover a large area, which means that planes should be able to "see" more than the 700m radius they get in the game. Now, I do understand that the information is not necessarily easy to pass on to the ground commander (e.g. transferring FLIR imagery requires ROVER, etc.), but for the plane itself, it is more or less necessary for their situational awareness, and that, most of all, relates to threats. Right now, as it is, planes do not prioritise air defence threats, and it leads to them being shot down too much. An F-16 with its FLIR and RADAR and Mavericks is more than capable of detecting the Tunguska (let alone the fact that they could carry HARMs for self-defence) and killing it, but they don't do that, and they get shot down unnecessarily.

Therefore, I think planes should have some autonomy to detect targets outside their assigned attack area, and to engage them if they are considered high threat. Because I think it's more realistic than the current "completely obedient" planes which don't even look anywhere else.

 

Your post touches on some important things. As nice as CMBS is for ground combat the current way CAS is done is very unrealistic, there was a big discussion on this a while ago.

 

Apaches in CMBS tend to operate as if it were a COIN environment, they circle and shoot. As far as I can tell what they should be doing is flying on the friendly side of the FLOT while terrain masking and firing Hellfires from behind terrain or using popup attacks, this makes much more sense to me. The mast mounted Ka band radar would be used to find targets (moving targets would be very obvious using such a system). The AGM-114L is fire and forget since it has a MMW radar and can be fired in either LOBL or LOAL modes which means that it can either be fired behind terrain using the mast mounted radar or in a popup attack using the IR sight.  Since the AGM-114L has an 8 km range it would outrange MANPADS.

 

The Tunguska has almost no capability to search for air targets while it's radar is off. The mast mounted radars on Apaches are equipped with radar frequency interferometers which would mean that in almost all cases the Apache would detect and locate the Tunguska before the Tunguska located the Apache.

 

Apaches equipped with the Ground Fire Acquisition system would detect missiles launches and ground fire and alert the crew to which direction the fire came from allowing them to bring their sensors onto the area. Apaches also have DIRCM and flares which spoof and seduce MANPADS.

 

Pretty much the same stuff applies to fixed wing aircraft, except they can fly at an altitude that makes them immune to short range air defenses and in pretty much every case the fixed wing would attack from a stand off distance outside the range of MANPANDS and SHORADS. I know that the story handwaves this away by saying a strong S-300 presence prevents high altitude flight but that isn't really realistic either since you wouldn't have much CAS available when SEAD still has to be done and after a few weeks most of the S-300 batteries would be destroyed.

Edited May 29, 2015 by nsKb

[Nerdwing]

Yeah, the AH-64E especially in this should be a god damn beast.  Its doing what the Longbow was designed for, and then some!

 

But due to aircraft mechanics, I dont think its possible to have them just hover far back and rain down taxpayer dollars. Its unfortunate, but oh well!