Marking Mines?

[Ch53dVet]

One of the strange things I noticed in my sandbox experiments while trying to effectively create a quick and safe passageway through a mine field with the use of heavy ordinance.

It kind of cheapens my expectations of not knowing if the target was hit or missed until after the smoke cleared.

But, when using arty on a (marked) mine field and if the current salvo of incoming shells are computed to be 100% on target to destroy the marked mine field, the yellow flag of the marked mine field will turn green, a second or two after the salvo is fired, ruining my expectation of viewing a random hit or miss.

Now..., here's the real kicker,

If the salvo is 30 to 45 seconds away before target impact and the turn ends in less than 30 seconds before the first shells arrive, you've just been given a visual glimpse of the targets future. With this knowledge (exploit, if you will) you've been handed the ability to prematurely cease fire your artillery and save unnecessary rounds from being wasted on an already, soon to be, destroyed target. So..., with this knowledge in hand, after, the turn officially ends, you cease fire your artillery battery, then, you start the next turn, you rejoice as you watch your premonition come true. First, you hear the cease fire order go through the commo link, Secondly, the salvo, held in limbo, gets released and destroys the target, nothing else happens and the turn ends.

Now..., if your visual premonition hadn't appeared, You would've started the next turn, watched the target get destroyed, then wait for the turn to end so you can cease fire the battery, however, with 30 seconds left in the turn, the veteran crew, speedily, reload all 6 155mm tubes, in record time, with their, dwindling, limited supply of HE ammo, the impressed battery commander boldly issues the fire command (LOOSE) and all six guns roar to life with just 10 seconds left in the game turn. Ten seconds later the turn ends, during the suspension of time, you issue the cease fire command that immediately goes active up and over the commo link as soon as you unsuspended the halting of time, you hear the order repeated and the battery stands down, then you watch your wasted salvo hit or miss the already destroyed target or, worse, you watch in horror as some of the errant shrapnel strikes your troops 100 meters away from the target area.

Also, the same thing happens if your using Airpower to strike a marked mine field

When using Airpower (F-16 fighter bomber) when the pilot says he is in the "pop", or, he's "30 second to release" and the turn is about to end before the expected release, the target marked mines yellow flag will turn green, indicating the future bomb will destroy the target. Do to the lack of time I didn't get a chance to see if aborting the airstrike prior to starting the next turn would revert the flag to yellow because the bomb didn't have time to release prior to the turn ending, or, if the flag would stay green, thus, giving me a cleared mine field w/o dropping a bomb, thus, giving me an extra bomb to hit another target. When I get the extra time I'll follow up on it to see if this could be an exploit or a bug allowing an exploit.

[Mastiff]

7 hours ago, Combatintman said:

As a very good friend of mine who I went on my first tour to Afghanistan with said in reply to the question posed by a group of ladies we met in a pub in London while doing some of our pre-deployment briefings 'Afghanistan - wow! What will you be doing there?':

'Mostly sitting'

As it turned out he was right so I'm not sure all of the RL stuff is that interesting.

Although going back to the mine strike episode, that was about an hour after we crossed the border.  Prior to crossing the lane, we got issued a set of verbal orders regarding going through the lane and after that, mounted up and prepared to move. The vehicle two behind mine popped off its smoke dischargers as we were mounting up and the net came alive with 'who did that'. Needless to say it was operator error and nobody had reloads for them. Luckily it wasn't a fatal mistake for any of us.

Again, it goes back to player expectation - as veterans, we both know that soldiers do dumb sh1t.

mostly sitting is to true!! lol, 99% sitting, pissing, *******, and sleeping... 1% actual Combat...

 

Wilcox's pass, I tried to slow crawl a known mine field or choke point and still lost engineers!! 

Edited December 10, 2018 by 71st_Mastiff

[Combatintman]

8 minutes ago, 71st_Mastiff said:

mostly sitting is to true!! lol, 99% sitting, pissing, *******, and sleeping... 1% actual Combat...

 

Wilcox's pass, I tried to slow crawl a known mine field or choke point and still lost engineers!! 

My 2nd and 3rd Afghanistan tours were slightly cheekier but again, the time was spent mostly sitting.

I feel your pain with The Passage at Wilcox, although the last time I played it, I was lucky not to stumble on any mines. As previously mentioned - I've always experienced a mixed bag of outcomes with engineers and minefields.

[RexSaur]

So what to do in the first mission of TF thunder if there is no safe way to remove those mines at the choke point? Just send the strykers through and hope the best?

[Sandokan]

I think that, with a bit of luck, the mission can be completed successfully crossing the berm with the infantry only without vehicles. The difference of firepower is huge.

 

[melm]

According to my experience, the best way for TF Thunder Mission one is driving these strykers one after one through the very edge of the entrance, I mean very. Remember to use plenty of waypoints to give your vehicle no chance to deviate from the desired route. I make most of my strykers through but one which made a weird left turn to the minefield. 

Or perhaps mines can be cleared by the given 155 arty. I didn't try that though.

Edited December 11, 2018 by melm
misquote

[tpr]

On 12/9/2018 at 4:31 PM, db_zero said:

I managed to get all my vechicles through. Used methods described to find minefields then move vechicles through single file adjacent the berm past the marked minefield using the move command in short increments to make sure they stayed on course.

I did something similar and and while a Abrams got struck I was able to navigate most vehicles trough a single gap via slow command. I contributed this success somewhat to engineers being able marking the mines thus lowering the danger especially for slowly moving vehicles. Looks like I was wrong, as I read now that marked mines have no effect on vehicles

Also good that we have confirmation that mines are only detected when units are in the the same tile.

Two questions:

1)  Is it correct that the ingame Stryker ESV is in no way different from a standard Stryker ICV as its special capabilities are not modelled in CMSF2?

2) Given the example there is a minefield with no gaps and you see yourself forced to pass it with vehicles. Beside the option to blast at a single tile at best with 150mm artillery (which according to the tests done here is not a safe option either), is there any other alternative other than taking an heavy armored vehicle, move slowly, and take the risk?

Edited December 19, 2018 by Captain Reyes

[Howler]

1 hour ago, Captain Reyes said:

2) Given the example there is a minefield with no gaps and you see yourself forced to pass it with vehicles. Beside the option to blast at a single tile at best with 150mm artillery (which according to the tests done here is not a safe option either), is there any other alternative other than taking an heavy armored vehicle, move slowly, and take the risk?

The opportunity hasn't arisen yet in this title but, you used to be able to BLAST demo charges to clear mines. I'd love to see a test video on this point from a certain captain...

[tpr]

13 minutes ago, Howler said:

The opportunity hasn't arisen yet in this title but, you used to be able to BLAST demo charges to clear mines. I'd love to see a test video on this point from a certain captain...

Blast, not a bad idea, never thought about that one...

[George MC]

15 minutes ago, Howler said:

The opportunity hasn't arisen yet in this title but, you used to be able to BLAST demo charges to clear mines. I'd love to see a test video on this point from a certain captain...

I'm working on a WWII scenario that involves a recce unit IDing and clearing various obstacles. I can confirm that you cannot blast a minefield BUT if you place a wire obstacle on the same tile as mines your engineers can blast the obstacle and that does have some effect on the minefield. BUT there is still a risk when driving vehicles through it of setting off a mine. As I found out after driving several Panthers and some SPW over and through the resulting crater. Fourth SPW fully laden with a squad going through went 'BOOM!' 

Edited December 19, 2018 by George MC

[George MC]

On 12/10/2018 at 12:49 AM, 71st_Mastiff said:

Wilcox's pass, I tried to slow crawl a known mine field or choke point and still lost engineers!! 

1

I might have been a bit of bastard with this and there is...possible spoiler alert:

A radio IED placed next to the mine obstacles with a triggerman hidden - if you don't find and neutralise him things can go really splody really quick!

Spoiler END

[Howler]

14 minutes ago, George MC said:

I'm working on a WWII scenario that involves a recce unit IDing and clearing various obstacles. I can confirm that you cannot blast a minefield BUT if you place a wire obstacle on the same tile as mines your engineers can blast the obstacle and that does have some effect on the minefield. BUT there is still a risk when driving vehicles through it of setting off a mine. As I found out after driving several Panthers and some SPW over and through the resulting crater. Fourth SPW fully laden with a squad going through went 'BOOM!' 

@George MC, that's exactly the situation describing my last use of BLAST. Thanks for jogging my memory. I stand corrected. An obstacle is required in order to BLAST.

Edited December 19, 2018 by Howler

[tpr]

I´ve made some test videos but when you followed this thread you won´t learn anything new from watching it. The ESV appears still to come with nothing special as mentioned in the original CMSF manual, blast command for mine clearance can be issued only when there is some obstacle on the tile, marked mine tiles change basically nothing for vehicles. Tried to interfere with MBT and Shilka fire but looks like nothing.  So to sum it up mine fields always stay dangerous. Did one of you got it´s MBT completely destroyed by a AT mine in CMSF2?

 

Off topic: Pretty new to this YT stuff but when uploading to Youtube you can see a comment counter for your videos. Apparently somebody tried yesterday to post 5 comments in rapid succession but the comments never appeared anywhere not even in the SPAM folder. I once read an article where the author claimed that Youtube is excercising "shadow-banning" on disprespectful and insultive users which means although they still can comment like usual nobody can see the shadow-banned user´s comments. They also still see other comments as usual so most of them not even notice that they´re banned in this special way. Wonders me if this was a thing here.

Edited December 19, 2018 by Captain Reyes

[Sgt.Squarehead]

@Captain Reyes  Have you tested to see if VBIED detonations or chain IED detonations can clear minefields? 

 

 

[tpr]

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Excellent! 

I'm off to the editor for further experiments.....I feel a UR-77 strike coming on:

Boom! 

PS - Notice the T-72 blowing smoke from its exhaust to cover the UR-77's approach.....We really need that feature for Soviet/Russian (& a few other) tanks! 

Edited December 19, 2018 by Sgt.Squarehead

[tpr]

Didn´t know that something like this exists. This is probably the craziest military vehicle I have seen in a long time.

Edited December 19, 2018 by Captain Reyes

[DerKommissar]

On 12/7/2018 at 10:09 PM, MOS:96B2P said:

This is my SOP: 

First I split my engineers into two fire teams. Then I have one engineer team Slow (crawl) through an area where I think there are mines.  This generally works well and the red mine signs will appear.  Then I have the second team follow behind the first (also on Slow) and Mark the mines causing the signs to change from red to off white / yellow. 

The downside is if I'm wrong about the location I can end up with exhausted engineers.  

MINE, as well. xD

So it appears demining is an exhausting task and takes a long time. WHERE'S THE REALISM?

The enemy is happy when you try to do this, with mgs, snipers and FOs likely watching over. Air-burst artillery can leisurely zero in, while your sappers are taking their time, on their bellies.

Honestly, at this point in my Combat Mission career. If I detect mines -- and detecting mines usually costs an arm and a leg. I just bugger off, and find a different way in.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

We need my little friend:

[MOS:96B2P]

20 minutes ago, DerKommissar said:

MINE, as well. xD

So it appears demining is an exhausting task and takes a long time. WHERE'S THE REALISM?

I think the below thread may explain why we are having more problems with detecting minefields.   One type of minefield in particular.  The IED minefield. 

 

 

[DerKommissar]

2 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:

I think the below thread may explain why we are having more problems with detecting minefields.   One type of minefield in particular.  The IED minefield. 

 

 

I didn't even know these IED minefields existed. If ordinary minefields and IEDs weren't bad enough! 7 minutes is a long time -- 30 minutes is an eternity. Even without these illusive IED minefields, the thoroughness to time exchange is pretty bad.  You really can't afford to do proper minesweeping operations in the timespan of a CM game.

You really have to pick 'n' choose where you send your valuable engineers. I usually only deploy them at obvious choke-points or previously "discovered" mines. It so happens that mines are rarely deployed without some sort of overwatch.

Maneuver/flanking has to be my #1 solution to minefields. I've never been in a situation where all my approaches were mined. Usually 1, atmost 2.

3 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

We need my little friend:

Yeah, I've been wanting these toys for a while. They seem like the perfect solution. MBTs are tough and fast -- made for breaching through enemy strongpoints.

I'd also love line charges. Looks like they smash through barricades, rubble and buildings with utmost excellence.

Edited December 19, 2018 by DerKommissar

[George MC]

Also to add - mines (of any flavour) or barbed wire do not work/count as DESTROY or SPOT unit objectives. What I tend to do is have the area they are placed on marked as a TERRAIN OBJ 'not known' to the player or "known' if you defo want the player to go check if there are mines at that spot.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Cheers George, you've saved me some experimentation there.