CPX Jan 4 15.00 GMT

[James Sterrett]

It's been way too long since I ran a CPX. Tomorrow just opened up; so I'm running one.

Start-time is 15.00 GMT (10:00AM Eastern); teams will be issued orders at that time and will have 20 minutes to give their initial orders. Teams will be the ever-popular Red and Blue.

I haven't chosen the map yet or, in fact, generated the scenario. So no further details are yet furthcoming! 8)

IRC Server: schlepper.hanse.de, port 7024, primary channel #tacops

Fallback server: www.combatmission.com port 7023

[pkpowers]

Hey James ; can anyone join this Tacops Saturday game? I'm interested to see how the CPX works>

thanks , Phil K. Powers

[James Sterrett]

Anybody can join, yes.

Actually, I'd think it would be pretty rude of me to post the announcement publically if I planned to allow only a pre-selected few to play.

[James Sterrett]

It dawned on me I ought to clarify one thing: the scenario will work better is the players are fairly stable; players popping in and out like popcorn won't be such a good thing.

Thus, if you're likely to be playing only briefly, think about coming by and joining as an observer instead. You'll still see what's going on, but you won't be in command of any units.

[pkpowers]

I'll be able to play for 3 or 4 hours at least. I'm not on ICQ , will you post the IP address here or email me?

pkpowers@cox.net

[James Sterrett]

I'l hand out the IP over IRC.

Note that ICQ is *not* IRC.

You'll need a client program for IRC. For PCs, try mIRC: http://www.mirc.co.uk/

For Macs, search for IRCLE.

When the installation finishes setup and asks you where to log into, tell it

schlepper.hanse.de and port 7024

When you're signed into the server, join the channel "#tacops"

[James Sterrett]

It's over!

A replay file can be downloaded:

"030104 CPX Autosaves.zip" now available from ftp://TacOps4:isuport@ftp.combatmission.com

Orders for Red:

Your battalion is to prevent Blue forces from exiting the WEST edge of the map.

Enemy forces are standard US Army units with M-1 and M-2s; the enemy forward edge is thought to be 24 Easting as of 0700.

You have no airpower, but you do have one offmap rocket artllery unit with 2 shots of ICM. There is no resupply available.

Orders for Blue:

Your battalions are to exit at least a company of troops off the WEST edge of the map, north of the river.

Enemy forces are primarily BTR mech infantry and T-55 tanks. the enemy forward edge is

thought to be at 21 Easting.

You have no airpower, offmap artillery, or resupply.

----------

Blue tried a feint in the north and a charge in the south; the charge in the south got bunched up crossing a swamp and shredded by arty, plus sniping from various Red defenders.

When Blue concluded it had no hope left, Red was awarded a win, Blue was awarded reinforcements, and the game continued until a number of payers had to go home.

[ January 04, 2003, 07:19 PM: Message edited by: James Sterrett ]

[pkpowers]

Thanks for hosting that game James ; I'd have to say that anyone who owns or played Tacops hasn't enjoyed it enough yet until they play in a CPX, it was very exciting.

[Del Shand]

I have tried the replay and it's asking to load a map. What map was used?

[Goran]

Map 575.

I had most of the Red infantry units.

I think Blue had a basically sound plan; feint north, hit south. Problem for them was, we never felt really threatened by the northern feint, especially as they had problems getting their northern force over the river. Thus, we never moved any forces north to help defend that part.

Second, our forward observers down south spotted parts of their attack force moving southwards, so we did have a hunch something was going down there.

Third, I think they bunched up too much in the initial phase of the big southern assault, thus becoming a too-ripe target for our artillery.

Fourth, we may have had a spot of luck on our side. We managed -- though we were getting mighty thin on the ground towards the end...

A fun "come-as-you-are" CPX. Thanks to James and everyone involved!

(BTW, pkpowers is absolutely right!)

[JHHood]

At what turn in the saved files was the official battle declared over?

[Goran]

07.53 would be the last turn of the first part, I guess. That's when Blue lost their last bridging tank, and since they thus couldn't complete their mission of crossing the river, their CO considered it a defeat. (You'll notice the additional units around 20/01 starting with the 07.54 turn.)

[James Sterrett]

Blue Commander's AAR, by Steve Osmanski, originally posted on the mailing list:

-------

I was the Blue overall commander for Saturday's CPX.

Blue was given:

3 companies of M1s

2 companies of M2 infantry

2 scout platoons of M3

1 platoon of M901 TOW

3 batteries of 155mm

1 platoon of engineers

2 MICLIC

3 combat engineer vehicles

3 M60 AVLB bridging vehicles

1 Vulcan ADA

Our mission was to cross the entire map and exit at least a company of troops off the west edge =north= of the river. With all the bridges destroyed the bridging vehicles were our mission-essential assets.

Initial force allocation:

Bvark: 1 coy M1, 1 coy M2, 1 scout platoon

Pkpowers: same as Bvark

Henk: 1 coy M1, M901 platoon, all arty

Me: The Vulcan and the engineers

Given that our mission was to cover the whole map, and that we were told that Red had not been in the area long, and that the area had been heavily fought over before, I expected a meeting engagement and structured my plan accordingly.

I assigned Henk (supported by 1 MICLIC, 1 CEV, and 1 AVLB) to run a decoy attack in the north, intending for him to draw the enemy north out of our way.

The rest of our forces were assigned to make a run through the very hilly, wooded, close terrain in the far south, Bvark leading, then the engineers, then Pk. Our southern forces were intended to make a sudden break for daylight after I felt the enemy had been drawn to the north. I intended to penetrate as far west as possible, use the bridging tanks to cross the river and then exit the map.

Initially, things went as I expected: the southern forces moved into position undetected (I think) while Henk made contact in the north with some Red recce BMPs. After some trouble with the AVLB (which James dealt with) Henk crossed the river in the north and promptly got most of his tanks wiped out by some very rapid and sharp-shooting infantry ATGMs. For the rest of the battle Henk acted as our artillery commander (as he had no real forces left).

I then released the main attack. Initially we did well, although enemy MLRS and outposts did some damage. We moved into the broken hilly terrain in the south and our coordination fell apart since we couldn't see each other with FFOW active. As a result, I moved the engineers over a hill (thinking Bvark had already moved so) and Red ATGM-firing T55s wiped out the engineer M113s, although Pk's forces did destroy the enemy tanks. When the rest of the engineers (including the vital bridging tanks) were wiped out by enemy infantry and the second Red T55 company, I said we were defeated since we couldn't cross the rivers to complete the mission. Even the retaliatory destruction of the second Red T55 company by Bvark's returning forces couldn't make it possible for us to cross the rivers.

At this point I quit the game, feeling that the battle was over and I didn't really want to see how else I could screw up. James added more forces and I have no idea what happened after.

Lessons learned:

Keep the mission-essential equipment protected. The loss of the bridging tanks spelled the loss of the scenario. I should have coordinated better with Bvark to keep that equipment safe.

Decoy attacks need to survive longer so they draw more attention. I'm not sure how Henk could have done that with those heroic enemy ATGM teams facing him.

If your decoys do survive, be patient and give the enemy time to react to the feint before launching the main attack.

Loser's complaint:

I feel that missions assigned in TacOps CPXs, especially offensive missions, are often unrealistic. In this case, an single reinforced battalion was assigned to attack on a front more than 6 kilometers wide through more than 20 kilometers of possible hostile terrain against an enemy unknown in strength or location. I feel this is a mission that would more likely be assigned to a higher echelon, brigade if not division. I believe a battalion in our situation would have been ordered to conduct a movement to contact, intended to find the enemy, define his strength, and then perhaps attack if the situation warranted.

In more open desert terrain (like that at NTC) a battalion might be given a mission like ours. I don't think such orders would be given in such terrain as we faced.

The Oz

[James Sterrett]

And a bit more from Steve:

--------

Normally it has been thought that the attacker needed a 3 to 1 advantage in strength to conduct an attack. However, that's for armies that are technologically equal.

The US has trained to conduct attacks at lesser odds, even at 1 to 1, but that is with US forces expected to hold a serious technological advantage, either in direct combat (thermals vs. non-thermals, for instance, or M1s vs non-improved ATGMs) or in intelligence and recon (UAVs, satellites, air recon, helos). Note that in Saturday's battle, the Red tanks with their ATGMs actually =outranged= our M1A1Ds.

Even so, the Blue forces could have won on Saturday if we'd just coordinated better. If my engineers had followed Bvark's lead tanks to the south map edge, instead of going along the 010 northing line, we would have encountered the Red defenses with tanks and not engineer M113s.

So even though I think the mission was not realistically stated, I'm not blaming that for our defeat. The Blue defeat was caused by lack of coordination between the various Blue elements, and that was =my= fault. I should have ensured that we all knew where Bvark was going and that we all followed him.

Note that while the US has trained to win at even odds in the attack, I'm quite sure that the US tries to mass superior numbers at the point of attack, just like any other army.

[James Sterrett]

And some comments from me (the umpire)

I often find balancing attack vs defence troublesome, not least because predicting What Players Will Do is so troublesome. 8)

I've seen defences I thought were too strong crumble into dust. Defences that require careful use of a few powerful assets usually get their teeth kicked in. Sometimes defences I fear are too weak - and the recent CPX was one of them! - kick the snot out of an attack. Attack forces I expect are powerful choose the one avenue the defence has defended in force, fail to conduct recon and fall into ambushes, [the attack in the most recent CPX did both of these] or spatter themselves piecemeal across the map [which you didn't! 8) ]

Personally, I suspect that two things would have made a tremendous difference in the recent CPX:

1) If Blue kept its engineers safe it could still have crossed the river....

2) Recon preceding the pell-mell rush! It does take precious minutes to get the recon out ahead and let it do its job; but you're also far better off spending the time, and taking lighter losses overall. When, at the outset of the game, you were telling your troops that there was no hurry, take your time, do it right -- I was very afraid for Red. 8)

Recon is probably the task we are collectively worst at in these CPXes - myself certainly included - and it costs us dear. Every time I fail to do it right I swear I'll do it right the next time, and then, er, I don't. 8(

http://www.battlefront.com/resources/tacops/HQ/text/CPX/cpxaars/cpxrecon.txt has the text of a discussion on recon that went through the list a few years ago (the commentary on what umpire will or won't allow is not relevant to v4 games 8) )

http://www.battlefront.com/resources/tacops/HQ/text/CPX/cpxaars/Bike%20Lake%20AAR.txt -- note, in particular, Gary Rost's comments on the recon his force didn't wind up doing (snipped out and placed below):

"During the on line US side's AAR there were two specific comments made about the recon/counter-recon efforts. First was that there was no time to do a good recon and second the organization for the recon did not work. I would like to climb onto a small soapbox and reply to those comments. 1) There was no time to do a good recon. Yes there was. Map 213 looks huge. The idea of crossing 30km in 90 minutes seems like a hard thing to do. And what I am going to say next makes no sense the first time you read it so read it again carefully. By taking time to do it right, you decrease the time it takes to accomplish the mission. If the recon unit had been given time, the ATGM fire trap would have been sprung. Scouts would have died but the scouts would have pushed the BRDMs back giving the main force room to maneuver. The crossing time for the main body was way too early. Relax, wait, your time will come. Let the scouts do their job. 2) The scout recon organization did not work. Right. Having BFVs and adding tanks and engineers, what was created was a cavalry troop. Not possible with today's battalion scouts equipped with Hummers. But the organization did not work not because of the organization but because it was not given the time to do the job."

[Hub]

The VCR replay feature is outstanding- I actually got to watch an entire CPX. Combined with the IRC transcripts, it made for some interesting viewing. I've never played in a CPX myself before, so my pardon if I'm off-base with my remarks:

That proper recon is a necessary thing has been already well discussed, but I wonder if the root cause of it not being done (along with a few other things)can be attributed to the artificial time constraints posed by the umpire (ie, the time allowed to generate unit orders)? Are these constraints applied to put stress on the players as part of the overall atmosphere, or is it to get the game done in a reasonable amount of time?

Would players not be happier if they could have a little more time (within reason) to make their decisions? Could a CPX be saved and played in segments, say three- three hour segments instead of one nine hour marathon (some will say it is hard to get the same people to commit to three sessions over one, but I see and hear that people often come and go during one session, so isn't it something of a moot point?)to make getting through one a little easier?

Or, maybe the unit count per player has to be smaller- keep the time constraints the same, but give the player less to worry about (quality over quantity). For instance, a player assigned to recon duty may only get six units, but he needs the extra time to do the extra micro-managing the situation calls for. I realise that when a "come-as you-are" CPX is started, it isn't possible to match bodies to units easily, since the umpire doesn't know who is coming to begin with.

This brings me to my last observation: are "come-as-you-are" even a good idea, for both the umpire and the players? It seems to me from reading what Blue had to say both during and after the game that it was unclear to them just what exactly they had to do, and what they were going to run into (ie, moving into a "void," avoiding contact, advance to contact, were all mentioned at one point or another). Would it not be better to use an already existing scenario (either commercial or third party) where all the parameters are laid out in advance, so that each side has the mission details and requirements firmly fixed in their minds? I would think this would ease things substantially for the umpire as well. Advertise a week ahead of time that "Scenario X" will be played, and eight players are required, or something to that effect. Either that, or the umpire (or other neutral party) must sit down and draw up two sets of mission orders, instructions and overlays, and distribute them to the two sides in advance of game day. I wouldn't mind assisting in that later aspect- unless CPX's become drastically shorter in duration, I doubt I will ever be able to participate in one, so I would be a "neutral party."

My two bits...

Hub

[ January 06, 2003, 03:21 PM: Message edited by: Hub ]

[James Sterrett]

Why time constraints?

They are there for a variety of reasons. One is to keep the pressure on the players; but it's equally important to keep the game moving.

The time-constraint angle you don't see in the replay is the orders-exchange time, which averaged about 60 seconds in this game. Thus there's a 60-second delay between the end of giving orders and the beginning or seeing the turn execute. It provides a fair degree of time for a player to ponder future maneuvers; players who have done so can typically orient very quickly to events on the screen.

While it is possible to play without a time limit, the time some players will then take to tweak every turn's move to perfection approaches infinity.

Proper recon is entirely possible within a one-minute orders phase. You just have to slow down your heart rate enough to do it. [And, as mentioned elsewhere, I am as guilty as the rest on this. I have repeatedly sworn to myself I would do proper recon, and then turned right around and sacrificed recon in the interests of speed - and, as a result, had my head chopped off.]

Playing in segments over multiple days:

This looks good on paper, but works very poorly in practice. The problem is assembling the same group for a second round.... People's schedules are like an intricate gearing system. It'll only mesh for a given set of gears once in a blue moon.

Player unit sizes: In old-style CPXes, players usually commanded a battalion of companies. Players now normally command a company of platoons. If every player has a chunk of the recon, and the main force is kept back, then I believe everybody is kept engaged in the fight and nobody gets overwhelmed by detail work.

Are instant-start games better? NO! Why was this an instant-start? Because the hole in my schedule to run the game opened up on Thursday, and I threw the game together as fast as I could.

Optimally, there's about a 2 week lead time to a game. This gives plenty of time for teams to assemble, analyze the map and orders, ask questions of the umpire, decide on intial deployments, and make plans & overlays. There's no question, in my mind, but that this makes for a better game experience and better game play. If I'd had the option, it is how I would have run this one.

On another hand [don't start counting them ], I don't like to hand players set plans. However realistic it might be for forces of these sizes to be handed detailed ops orders, it takes away from the players key angles of the fight that ought to rest in their control for a good game experience: how they fight the battle needs to be up to them to as great a degree as is possibly consonant with ensuring an effective scenario [gotta make sure the two forces are likely to come into contact, for example.]

[bvark]

Hi Folks,

Thought I would lob my 2c worth in. Definitely felt a lot of time pressures, but I suspect the real thing is no less hectic

One of the problems with the 60 second 'waiting for exchange' phase was that if I was in IRC, I couldn't alt-tab back while sounds were playing - a resolution change to fit the windows side-by-side fixed that.

Something that would be really useful is a 'replay last combat phase' button, so if I was very busy trying to get artillery fires on target (and I was), I could ignore the combat phase going on in the background and come back to it.

One of the other problems was a lack of unit graphics - I tried to get my planned axis of advance posted onto the web (http://www.atdot.at/bvark-intent.bmp), but we really needed a proper overlay (possibly an easily editable & shareable one from within the game tool, but I'm not getting greedy - none of us were really all that great at grid references, and we made a number of mistakes as a result (the worst of which was the 'charge of the engineering brigade' across 010 northing ;(

Both of them together, coupled with the fact I stupidly assumed blue were attacking east from 21 easting (thus making my terrain analysis useless) and I didn't know red would have ATGMs on its T55s meant we rushed in where, as Oz pointed out, a brigade probably would have feared to tread

Still, had a good time, and hopefully I'll be around for the next blue moon where my schedule synchs up with a CPX!

[Hub]

Well, if the players claim they had fun, then who am I to say anything different?

I guess this is where we part ways on style of play- I know I would have felt too rushed to enjoy something like this...I'm not saying a player should have an hour to work out his moves, but I think 60-90 seconds is pushing it, depending on the number of units you have to control.

[ January 06, 2003, 09:45 PM: Message edited by: Hub ]

[James Sterrett]

So it's clear, most players in this game had between 4 and 8 units.

Usually in these, players are commanding one or two companies and those are broken into platoons.

So it's on the scale of 3 to 8 units.

Obviously, players are free to break things down further if they want, or keep everybody in big single markers too.

And, yes, it all comes down to taste in the end. Lemon or orange?

[Hub]

James:

OK- I see where one divergence stems from. Yes a player may have from 3 to 8 units, if they don't break them down. But, just for argument's sake, a marine rifle company mounted on AAAV's consists of 10 AAAV's, 10 rifle squads, 6 MG teams, 6 SMAW teams, and three mortar teams. That's 35 units a player may need to control, for whatever reasons he may deem necessary. I know I am currently playing a game myself where I've felt it necessary to break my units down to individual units in several instances to achieve what I want to do. If I had to do the same thing in the last CPX, I never would have been able to control them all.

You don't think that in some instances, a player, especially a player new to this type of gaming system, may be loath to break his units down, because the time limit may cause him to feel he will lose control of his troops if he does so? We both know the consequences of bunching up too much in this game.

I don't want to beat this horse to death, I just need to understand the urge to "ram it home, get it done." Again, if the majority seems happy with how things work, then I'm obviously out in left field here. I just think that the quality of the game would improve if players had a little more time (I'm talking say 3-4 minutes, no longer than that).

[ January 07, 2003, 07:38 AM: Message edited by: Hub ]