SAR CPX, OCT 8th, 2005 - Umpire AAR

[Rattler]

This is the Umpires AAR for the TacOps CPX run on OCT 8, 2005, US customs scen USMC, map 260 (Players AARs will be posted summarily later)

UMPIRE: Matt Ohlmer (ES)

BLUE TEAM

Chaim Krause (IL), CO

Peleg Wasserman (IL) - did not turn up at STARTEX

Martin Cracauer (US)

Paul Csokay (AT)

RED TEAM

John Osborne (US), CO - had to drop out for RL reasons

Jeff Gilbert (US) - took over for John as CO

Ralf Pichocki (DE)

Bernard Cousin (FR)

Valentin Dumitriuc (RO) - could not play due to tech probs

REPLAY FILES: http://www.eventfoto.com/privat/mil/dls/cpx_replays.html top link

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AAR CONTENTS:

1. Setup

1.1 BLUE Brief

1.2 RED Brief

1.3 BLUE Plan

1.4 RED Plan

2. How It Went

2.1 STARTEX delay

2.2 Actual Game

3. Lessons Learned

a) Umpire

Players

4. Questions to the Major

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1. Setup

I had planned this CPX for a long time, the setup was simple and supposed to be especially newbie-friendly provided the newbies played RED. Accordingly, I balanced the scenario a bit in REDs favor forcewise to keep it rewarding even after heavy losses.

As it turned out only one newbie signed up (Valentin from Romania) but in the end could not play.

The scenario was placed on map 260, basically a map 1 where the central NS road is replaced by a river - I had chosen this map as I assumed all newbs would be familiar with map 1 -, and it featured two completely different missions for BLUE and RED:

- BLUE had to search and extract the crew of a downed German Tornado ERC with a TaskForce comprised of elements of the Netherlands 11th Airmobile Brigade

- RED had to secure and rig up for destruction the three bridges over the central river employing three SA 10 btys against air.

1.1. BLUE Brief

see: http://eventfoto.com/privat/mil/aars/pages/081005_bluebrief.html

The crew, unknown to BLUE, were located about 2k EAST of the middle bridge over the river, spaced 800 mtrs, and they had hidden in the woods (I had not received specific orders from them by BLUE, so the followed SOP).

I had placed a Tornado Wreck about 300m EAST of the middle bridge, both as a clue to BLUE and RED where to search for the crew.

BLUE CO never gave orders to the Tornadoe Crew, so there was no radio comms at all that could have been detected by RED (I had, with help from Paul Csoky, foreseen to run dice to determine detectiona dn pinpointing loc of the crew by RED had they communicated)

1.2 RED Brief

see: http://eventfoto.com/privat/mil/aars/pages/081005_redbrief.html

The SAM 10s in TacOps have a min range of 5000mtrs (I had assumed 4000 from tests) and so had to be trailed this distance behind the forces to provide effective cover for the bridges, one of the things RED was supposed to figure out during planning.

1.3 BLUE Plan

BLUE CO divided the zone EAST of the river into three search zones (alpha-charly) and assigned each to one of his three strike plns. CO ran the HQ, arty, support and air. Plan was to set up blocking positions against eventual enemy forces in the east of each search zone, locate crew and extract them, and not to engage enemy forces where not necessary for the mission completion.

1.4. RED Plan

RED CO divided his three coys between the players, gave the offmap arty to Valentin and kept himself as observer/reporter. At this point - as Valentin was new and with FFOW on wouldnt have seen any friendly forces to supprot with arty - I assgned three motorized FO teams (one to each coy) for liasion.

REDs plan was to rush as fast as possible to the bridges (they assumed enemy would be there before them) and take them against assumed resistance.

About 2 days to STARTEX John, the CO, had to drop out and Jeff took over, he assigned 2nd coy to valentin and himself took the arty and the FO teams but did not change the plan.

2. How It Went

2.1 STARTEX Delay

I had planned to keep STARTEX c.t. (i.e. with a delay of max 15 minutes), as I know that those delays are on of the things that annoy players most about participating in CPXes.

Hence, I had briefed the COs and players that I would start with all players present or not and that everybody had to come with the latest patch installed. Also (having implemented one of my earlier LessonsLearned from another CPX) I had called for reserves to be present at STARTEX to jooin in case players didnt turn up.

Alas, Murphy was with us as always, and problems arose right from start:

- A BLUE player never turned up, so it was decided to give his slot to a reserve (sorry, dont recall who took his slot, the reserves playing where callsigns Nimrod - probably Peter Gower, UK - and Delta99), but of cause the guy had first to dl the löatest patch and to get briefed

- On RED similar things occured, Valentin came unprepared and had first to dl the patch, and then found out he had no scenario USMC (I had told him in one of our earlier test games that - given he wanted to train US only and that he has limited disk space - he could safely delete all non-US custom scenarios.. stupid me, he deleted all except US Army...). Sending him the USMC file didnt work either (he couldnt load it for some reason), and as time was getting short I decided to replace him by another reserve present - who in turn had to dl the patch first and go through the briefing cycle.

- when a player got disconnected during orders phase, he took his units with him and I had to manually add them

As a result we got off playing about 1 hour late, not bad given the problems i think, but not what I wanted.

2.2 Actual Game

Once we were underway, things rapidly started to run differently than what I had imagined: I had not anticipated the effects of FFOW, so, at turn 4/5 (the time BLUE helos got LOS to the crews) they "magically" (if in total concurrence with game engine design) appeared on their maps at spotting distances of 500 and 800 mtrs respectively despite theoretically only being visible 100 mtrs and in hiding.

Consequently BLUE deployed to extract them, and already in this early stage the planned setup for a Search-and-Rescue mission had turned into a "simple" extraction mission, something I feared might have been resolved rapidly without even contact occuring.

Via private message unbeknownst to his team I informed BLUE CO of my screw-up, he suggested I should down a 2nd plane with other force color crew, but I let it run and prepared to throw in difficulties in the style of Israeli CPXes should the mission be too easy.

In turn 6 contact evolved finally and RED took out some extraction vehicles, still, in turn 7 the first crew member (WO) had been extracted, and in turn 10 finally the pilot.

After this BLUEs only goal was to extract the forces deployed, until game end in turn 29. BLUE proceeded doing so without much coordinating forces, sending in the helos peacemeal against not smoked or not supressed enemy and so in the cause lost another 8 CH47s. At turn 28 BLUE decided to let the last stranded forces fall POW and withdrew the rest of his forces with 19% losses.

RED, on the other hand, throughout all the game showed high coordination and execllent communicative and tactical behaviour and had almost made it to bridges by turn 29. The had also in the course of the deployment discovered the min range problem with the SA 10s and decided to rear-deploy them.

In turn 16, after heavy skirmishes that they thought to be enemy SOF ambushing them they requested more support from HIGHER (which was granted in form of two additional offmap 152 btys assigned to them), but it was clear already then that they had not assessed enemy intention nor compostion correctly and so couldnt fulfill their secondary mission fo providing higher with exact intel (they even shot up the Tornado wreck in turn 25 IIRC but never got the clue this supposed, nor did they try to prevent the extraction). At ENDEX they had suffered 16% losses, but all key units were intact.

In summary I would access the CPX outcome as a draw in favor of RED: Both teams performed and succeeded in fulfilling their primary missions, but failed in other aspects. For RED, the loss of 10 blue CH47s are supposed to be a good start in producing "newsworthy losses to NATO" (if here only to Netherland forces) in anticipation of the ground offensive and in the overall scenario.

As a sidenote: In turn 16 my TacOps hung up fatally and I coulndt get it to let me host again (later turned out that my hosting port had been blocked by a net helper program that refused to quit), so we changed hosts to paul, who ran the game to the end with myself joined as observer.

3. Lessons Learned

a) Umpire

- if you want a team to search for friendly forces give the target units another force color. In the set of this CPX this would have meant to make the wreck and the crew maybe green force color, like this they would not have become visible on large distance to BLUE due to the FFOW mechanisms and a true search would have had to be performed (interestingly, I had them green until just before STARTEX but changed them to blue fearing a TacOps crash if the blue helos had had to load green troops)

- always have the briefings ready for reserves or players taking over: I had changed machines to run the CPX and had the breifings left on the other. Next CPX I will post the breifings to my webpage before STARTEX so that any reserves find an easy way to get to speed

- same goes for OOBs in excel form: When BLUE CO got disconnected a few times before STARTEX he took his units with him, i.e. BLUE was suddenly lacking forcesa dn I had to re-add them manually without a clue what I had given to them, another delay of 10 minutes.

- have a copy of the savegame file you start from: During the theoretical 30 minutes to STARTEX players were giving orders and I pulled them when they were done and then saved the file. As we had lost some units in the process of cause my start file was overwritten and the original setup not present anymore, a copy of the setup file wouldhave solved that.

- Try to hold STARTEX at all cost; despite having announced that I would start with all players present or not I decided far too late (at STARTEX) to employ reserves; they stood by to start at STARTEX -30 but I let them wait. Next CPX I will exclude players that are not present STARTEX -30

- have a channel #observers for observers: One thing that kept disrupting me a few times were observers trying to log without announcing this intent during orders exchanges or situpdates; use the channle to brief observers to expected routines (e.g. only join at umpire command)

- If your TacOps crashes, *physically* reboot your machine: I had selected restart three times but the hosting port remained blocked, only after physically shutting down the machine (i.e. switching off power) it was free again (discovered after ENDEX... )

Players

- read the briefings with time and in detail: 90% of the questions that I received from players were covered in the briefings already (e.g., "where do we start from?", "do we need a new patch when its out?" etc. one player even set up his units in enemy territory in the first orders...:->)

- come prepared: always check on the list whats the latest patch and have it and the map ready at STARTEX-30; despite having advised that 3x in the course of preparation, one player still dint turn up with the latest patch.

4. Questions to the Major

- when some players get disconnected they sometimes take their units with them (this seems to happen when umpire gets the notification that they got disconned but the player not: After then manually disconnecting the player the units were lost everytime). Any chance to avoid that?

- if BLUE helos load green units, would this put the game process at risk still?

ALL: Thanks for an interesting and fun CPX, thanks for bearing with me when Murphy hit, I could re-affirm a lot of my formerly present umpiring skills and learned a lot additionally.

Great game from my POV, hope you all saw it like that also despite the quirks.

Rattler (aka Matt Ohlmer)