Is CMSF worth buying?

[General Jack Ripper]

If you want my advice for quick battles: you're better off using the scenario editor to pick the forces for each side.

Open up the quick battle map in the editor, pick the forces, then save it as a scenario and play it.

[Combatintman]

Hi cns180784 - lot of questions there mate ... here goes...

Funnily enough my Op MININISE mission is partially inspired by the Ross Kemp programme you refer to. No I'm not a Royal Marine, I was in the Army attached to 3 Commando Brigade, I am now in the Australian Army having transferred after completing my full service in the British Army.

TIC does indeed stand for Troops in Contact and at the time we could expect 20-25 TICs a day.

PPIED stands for Pressure Plate IED - more commonly known these days as a VOIED (Victim Operated IED).

CWIED is Command Wire IED

RCIED is Remote Controlled IED

An NAI is a Named Area of Interest and a TAI is a Target Area of Interest. In simple terms a NAI is where you look to confirm or deny an enemy course of action while a TAI is where you want to have an effect on the enemy. For more information on military planning and more detail on NAIs and TAIs I recommend (self-promotion again) my thread in CMRT here ...

With regard to C2 for the snipers - I'm no expert as to how detrimental it is in CMSF to have them distant from the HQ but remember that modern comms among first world military powers are pretty good. The presence of the Coy 2IC in FOB Alma will also mitigate C2 issues I'm sure.

I can't remember my intent with the Engineers, my gut feeling would be to take the Troop HQ outside the wire with the Assault Group.

With regard to Observers/Fire Controllers the CMSF system is as you describe - MFCs are optimised for mortars, FOOs are optimised for artillery and JTACs are optimised for fixed and rotary wing. In reality artillery and air/aviation was directed by an FST (Fire Support Team) which was optimised for both but this grouping is not in the CMSF TO&E as a discrete force pick. I'm not going to complain about that because I did the TO&Es for the British Forces Module.

Regards

[cns180784]

1 hour ago, Combatintman said:

Hi cns180784 - lot of questions there mate ... here goes...

Funnily enough my Op MININISE mission is partially inspired by the Ross Kemp programme you refer to. No I'm not a Royal Marine, I was in the Army attached to 3 Commando Brigade, I am now in the Australian Army having transferred after completing my full service in the British Army.

TIC does indeed stand for Troops in Contact and at the time we could expect 20-25 TICs a day.

PPIED stands for Pressure Plate IED - more commonly known these days as a VOIED (Victim Operated IED).

CWIED is Command Wire IED

RCIED is Remote Controlled IED

An NAI is a Named Area of Interest and a TAI is a Target Area of Interest. In simple terms a NAI is where you look to confirm or deny an enemy course of action while a TAI is where you want to have an effect on the enemy. For more information on military planning and more detail on NAIs and TAIs I recommend (self-promotion again) my thread in CMRT here ...

With regard to C2 for the snipers - I'm no expert as to how detrimental it is in CMSF to have them distant from the HQ but remember that modern comms among first world military powers are pretty good. The presence of the Coy 2IC in FOB Alma will also mitigate C2 issues I'm sure.

I can't remember my intent with the Engineers, my gut feeling would be to take the Troop HQ outside the wire with the Assault Group.

With regard to Observers/Fire Controllers the CMSF system is as you describe - MFCs are optimised for mortars, FOOs are optimised for artillery and JTACs are optimised for fixed and rotary wing. In reality artillery and air/aviation was directed by an FST (Fire Support Team) which was optimised for both but this grouping is not in the CMSF TO&E as a discrete force pick. I'm not going to complain about that because I did the TO&Es for the British Forces Module.

Regards

Thanks for explaining those and i'll have a read of that planning tutorial you posted. So on the map in the briefing where you have the TIC's- is this where we can most likely expect contact? like are these good ambush points that the Taliban will most likely use?

I have added 2 Team- Troop Recce, part of 9 Fd Sqd RE to the assault group and i plan to have 9 Fd Sqn RE to lead the assault group. I thought this would be a good idea as they can mark mines, so can find the IED's but is this necessary? seeing as they're marked on the map and i can for example, clearly see the PPIED's located right at the start of the green zone at various points. Maybe i should have these to the rear of the group as they'll be needed to be brought up to blast through the target compounds. Decisions decisions.

[Combatintman]

Your instincts are correct ... can't say more than that without posting spoilers.

[cns180784]

I was just looking up the differences between CWIED's and RCIED's...am i right in that they're both remotely detonated by an insurgent that has LOS to the IED, which triggers it once enemy troops are within its proximity? the only difference i can make out is that a CWIED will have a wire running from the IED to the insurgent, where a RCIED has no wire and is triggered by a mobile phone or similar remote device.

Edited April 30, 2016 by cns180784

[Combatintman]

7 hours ago, cns180784 said:

I was just looking up the differences between CWIED's and RCIED's...am i right in that they're both remotely detonated by an insurgent that has LOS to the IED, which triggers it once enemy troops are within its proximity? the only difference i can make out is that a CWIED will have a wire running from the IED to the insurgent, where a RCIED has no wire and is triggered by a mobile phone or similar remote device.

Essentially that is correct. The key points are that RCIEDs can be defeated by ECM and both can be defeated by killing the trigger man.

[cns180784]

Hi Combatintman, so far in the mission "Into the Green" i have taken 5 casualties, havent yet reached the first target compound and have 2:01:50 left. Clearing out irrigation ditches where there are two NAI's with a number or Taliban firing points. How does that sound so far? i'd say i'm moving at a slow pace to try and keep casualties to a minimum. Advancing slowly to contact then using suppresive fire and mortar/105 fire missions to clear firing points.

[Combatintman]

12 hours ago, cns180784 said:

Hi Combatintman, so far in the mission "Into the Green" i have taken 5 casualties, havent yet reached the first target compound and have 2:01:50 left. Clearing out irrigation ditches where there are two NAI's with a number or Taliban firing points. How does that sound so far? i'd say i'm moving at a slow pace to try and keep casualties to a minimum. Advancing slowly to contact then using suppresive fire and mortar/105 fire missions to clear firing points.

That is pretty much the way to do it - slow and sure and whack identified enemies with long range firepower where and when you can. The trick with this mission is not to pick fights you don't have to - so going full barrel at NAI's is possibly something that you should reconsider. Look for enemy there for sure but you don't physically need to send troops to them to clear them out. My guess is that your casualties so far are pretty high - you can still win this one but you can't afford many more casualties.

[cns180784]

I've had 10 now and i counted that i start with 250 men including those that stay at FOB Alma and CP Jundi. In the briefing it states to keep casualties at a minimum with (5%) so i'm guessing i have to keep casualties below that amount. 5% of 250 is 12.5, so i guess if i take another 2 casualties then its a failure- or i've failed at that objective at least. Its too hard i'm finding to keep casualties so low. The casualties have occurred when i thought an enemy fire point was sufficiently suppressed or neutralized then i move a section or squad (for ANA) and i get a guy whacked by an AK round. One particular occasion was i was moving my ANA Platoon through an irrigation ditch which was quite close to another ditch where Taliban firing points had been ID'd and i had mortars with linear fire airburst over them and thought that had to do it, and even though there was relative cover of the irrigation ditch, one Taliban that survived the mortar hammering opened up from his ditch and shot one soldier from one squad, and two from the other, killing one.

Thought i'd point out too that only 1 of the 10 casualties have been from the assault group- the rest being the support group, mainly the ANA. If i was to replay this scenario i'd split the ATK section and have one detachment (one WMIK) with the support group to give them some proper fire support. They're a small group compared to the assault with a poorly trained ANA Platoon.

Does it matter if only 1 of my 10 casualties have been actually killed? the other 9 were badly wounded but got buddy aid so were treated and (presumably, i guess abstractly) airlifted back to the hospital at Camp Bastion.

[Combatintman]

The thing to remember about the ANA over and above their relatively poor soft factors is that they lack body armour making them more prone to casualties. As this discussion is more about this particular mission why not check out the dedicated thread. It contains some spoilers but it may help you ...

The bottom line is that this mission is not easy and was one of the reasons that development time was fairly long because I wanted this mission to have a very fine line between defeat and victory. Your descriptions and questions so far indicate to me that you might be better off stopping where you are, having a think about what is going wrong and restarting the mission with new tactics. Good luck with your endeavours!!

 

[cns180784]

Thanks it is a really good mission, i like how the forces are setup and the detailed briefing and maps. I'll carry on with this and see how i go. The support group's advance has been the slowest, mainly due to a load of Taliban seen flanking, coming from the North West. Theres' actually a group of Taliban numbering up to about 20-25 spotted moving towards FOB Alma. They briefly got fired on by PKM's at Jundi but they carried on through it. I considered moving my OMLT to ambush them, but my forces at the FOB will be able to cut them down when they're exposed on the open desert surrounding the FOB.

[cns180784]

One thing that bugs me about CMSF is not knowing the exact amount of ammo troops have. For example if you click on an infantry section there will be a graph representing how much ammo of each type the section has left (from left to right: small arms, MG, rifle grenades, hand grenades) it would be much better if it just displayed an exact figure for how much ammo they have left.

Also what bugs me is the ammo icons for arty and air support. I've gathered from looking at my mortars and light guns that one ammo icon represents armour penetrating ammo used for destroying armour or buildings, and the other being for airburst anti-infantry. I've gathered which one is which by having only used airburst rounds from the mortars and seen its relevant graph now being very low, but it would be helpful if i knew exactly what each one is and better still knowing the exact amount of rounds each have left.

What i actually find even more annoying though is for air support. The two Harriers i have, have two ammo columns (or graphs as i've been saying, though columns is probably a better description) and i have read in the manual that there are four types of munitions air assets can be loaded out with, but it doesnt state which type of munitions is in which column on the air asset support panel, same in the columns for arty. So for these Harriers, i have no idea what type of weapons they have. Its especially frustrating as i'm a player of Falcon BMS and CMANO with a keen interest in air warfare so i have good knowledge of A-G weapons so if i knew exactly what my air assets have, i would love the game even more. In this scenario dealing pretty much with just infantry it would be nice to know that the Harriers have something like CBU-52 or CBU-87 CEM or even better AGM-154A JSOW, though not sure if Harriers can be loaded with JSOW's but these would decimate the Taliban.

[Erwin]

The new versions of the CM2 engine have that numerical info.  But, we'll have to wait for BF to make CMSF2 before we see that.  Be sure to ask BF when that might happen.