Assault on the Moon

[legarcon2002]

Could somebody offer basic tactic suggestions for the invasion assaultside ? I do not want a comprehensive guide on achieving total victory, but rather several helpful suggestions to get a chance of victory.

[Slappy]

Stay in the boats.

[Sanok]

Originally posted by legarcon2002:

Could somebody offer basic tactic suggestions for the invasion assaultside ? I do not want a comprehensive guide on achieving total victory, but rather several helpful suggestions to get a chance of victory.

I just tried this scenario a few days ago. The first thing you need to do, is use the scenario editor and give yourself more turns. It's really hard to win otherwise.

After that, I just kept advancing the troops as best as I could. Pay close attention to their morale, moving them very short distances if necessary.

The MG bunkers and not having mortars in the initial assault force is a big pain. The only real thing I can say, is just keep advancing. Eventually, you'll overrun the defensive positions. You'll take huge casualties, but it can be taken.

[General Bolt]

Its a great battle.

Look for the JasonC thesis on how to advance on a MG line.

The really short version.

1.Set up a fire base.

2.Use Advance command (40 M surges) to slowly move at the enemy.

3.Rest the tiring/low morale squads while the others move. The enemy MGs will shift target to the moving units allowing the other units to recover.

[Dschugaschwili]

Concentrate your forces on one flank and ignore the other side of the map. And don't slow down too much. It's very easy to run out of time in this scenario.

Dschugaschwili

[YankeeDog]

*** SPOILERS -- ASSAULT ON MOON SCENARIO -- ***

IIRC, I won a decent, but less-than-spectacular victory against the AI on this one on my inital try for this one.

It was a while ago I played it, but IIRC the key to winning it within the time alloted was a combination of concentration of force, the willingness to accept casualties, and artful use of pre-planned artillery barrage.

IIRC, you get a couple of pretty powerful spotters (122mm maybe?). Don't even try to use them for called fire - between the short LOS of the Fog and the time constraints, you'll either get them killed, or you'll run out of time before the barrage comes in (or both!). Since the fog limits LOS so much, you can use the spotters to blast a path through the German defenses and not worry so much about interdictive fire from other areas of the map interfering with your movement up the approach route you've just blasted.

Again going off memory I think I sent my first wave of units in a broad wave more or less along the length of the beach. I also plotted my pre-planned artillery barrages towards the end of the shallow defile running up the center towards the brush on the far (German) side of the map. IOW, I planned to move up the center all along; my broad recon screen was intended simply to confuse the AI as to where my main effort was -- much like many human players, the AI tends to react very strongly to first contact.

Anyway, to the best of my recollection, my recon screen encountered forward German OPs just about where I expected to find them, and I didn't have too much trouble overwhelming them -- basically, a German OP would open fire on the unit closest to it, pinning it and causing a couple of casualties, but since the OPs lacked any kind of mutual support (owing partly to the short LOS of the fog), I could maneuver my other screen units to catch the OPs in a cross-fire, eliminating them without too much cost -- small arms fire is dramatically more effective in CM if you can vector fire from bases separated by 90 degrees or more. About the time I finished cleaning up the OPs (about turn 5, I think), my Arty fell along my planned center approach, and I rushed my main body up the defile as soon the arty was done. I don't think my arty actually caught much of anything, but it did allow me to confidently move quickly up the defile since I figured pretty much anything short of concrete bunkers along the route would be dead or broken (or both!!). It also had the nice side benefit of providing me with plenty of shell holes to take cover in. This turned out to be very important since good cover coming up from the beach is hard to come by.

Anyway, IIRC the AI got kind of over-aggressive (a common AI problem) and moved what mobile forces it had against both my initial recon attacks on the OPs, and also against my main body once it showed itself. As a result, I was able to destroy much of the German force in detail while they were out of their defensive postions. It also made the immobile elements of the German defense more vulnerable, since once I dealt with the mobile counterattack it was relatively easy for me to outflank them. I think I won mostly on casualty ratio, though, since the AI counterattack, while costly, did slow me down enough that I didn't have time to completely clear and control the VLs.

That's what I remember, but I could be confusing particulars with another scenario. I probably have the final game file saved at home if you want more details. I think one thing of note is that I did *not* use my pre-planned arty on the VLs themselves. From the way I read the map, the VLs were too far away for me to reliably plan my infantry movement so that my men would arrive at the VL soon after my Arty (critical if the Arty is going to do any good). This is why I instead chose to use my arty to speed my approach march. My plan was then to use my (likely) superior numbers to overwhelm enemy resistance at the VLs with plain old, down and dirty infantry assault. This second part of my plan didn't exactly happen as I anticipated, but I do think my overall plan was solid.

Cheers,

YD

[Kingfish]

Kurtz got out of the boat

[Slappy]

My point exactly. I'd rather be in the boat with the saucier.

[Beeper]

*** SPOILER AHEAD ***

This was the first scenario I ever played when I first got CMBB. As I was used to the infantry's invulnerability to enemy fire from CMBO I advanced almost all my troops through the small valley and stormed out in the open hoping that at least some would get across and exit the map.

I shouldn't have done that.

After a turn or two of mad advancing, assaulting and even some human waving (err...?!) artillery started to rain down. I don't remember the exact figure but I think i suffered about 150 casualties and the rest just gave up and fled back to the boats.

It was horrible. I've never played that scenario again but i guess I've got to try it out sometime soon. Can't let the AI slap me around, can I?

[ April 21, 2004, 08:37 AM: Message edited by: Beeper ]

[legarcon2002]

Dear Fellow Gamers - A sincere thank you for taking the time to explain strategy to this newbie.

[Andreas]

Thanks all for the feedback on this one. Always interesting to see how it played out - something as a designer I can never quite enjoy as much myself, obviously.

[sportscliche]

I realize this thread has been dormant for a long time, but I wanted to chime in about the `Assault on Moon' scenario. Couldn't find it discussed on the scenarios board. Spoilers follow.

I am new to CM, playing about 6 weeks against the AI. I have won a half dozen scenarios prior to Assault on Moon, which I have found to be extraordinarily difficult.

My approach, after about six prior attempts went down in flames:

I set up a diversionary probe on the left and let them engage the Germans first. I had an artillery barrage timed moments after the probe engagement to hit on the right with smoke and shells. I snuck in the infantry under the smoke and then assaulted there with the balance of my forces, including troops from the boats. I had complete control of the right side pine forest by turn 13. Although I took casualties, none of my units were eliminated. This provided the path to move off the reinforcements. The reinforcements were queued up to move when the forest was clear and I got all of the first wave off the board by turn 18. The second wave reinforcements arrive later at the far left-hand beach; taking a direct path march to the upper right got about 80% of them off by turn 20, some with mere seconds to spare. All of them were required to run in the last two turns or nobody would have made it. I had two infantry units still on the green stripe as the clock expired and couldn't count them.

For this I got a minor victory. It was the first time I achieved anything better than a tactical defeat and everything had to go just about perfectly. Unlike other scenarios, this one ends abruptly at turn 20, even if the outcome is still in some doubt. Is one expected to eliminate every German without loss and escape every reinforcement here? I feel I must be missing something important or else accept that this scenario is tilted strongly to the Axis side.

[Bannon DC]

This too was one of the first CMBB scenarios I ever played. I have not played it since, so therefore my thoughts are from fuzzy memory.

Great thread to resurrect. Sportscliche, I believe your tactics sound good. This one is tilted a bit by time. You have to set your mind to blazing through the enemy by shock and firepower. Caution will lose this one, but your wouldn't know all this unless you had played it before.

I think you need to put all your eggs in one basket and pick a flank and go all out. Think commando raid to get in the right mindset. Use the artillery for pre-planned bombardment and delay using the "Q" key to workover the area a few turns before the infantry hits it. If I recall correctly which is "ify", only the second wave had to exit for points. Use the first wave to attack and hold the door open. Don't go hunting down the rest of the Germans.

Since the artillery is pre-planned you have to know the duration of the barrage which would be critical information to include in the brief. Allow three to five minutes. You can monitor it and advance your infantry accordingly. Avoid friendly infantry casualties because they could come by the squad as well as by the man with this heavy artillery.

I think I botched this one in my first go. I wish I had known about the "Q" delaying key for pre-planned bombardment. Learn the hard way. :eek:

Good luck

[sportscliche]

Thanks for the input Bannon. Yep, I eventually got the whole operation exquisitely timed. I chose to open a corridor on the German right flank as the various machine gun nests on the left have proven to be impenetrable. Still, I needed to spook the AI to think I was coming in on the left, so I probed with a single platoon over there. About 12 seconds after the gunfire erupts on the left my artillery starts hitting on the right. I do this because experience shows the first contacts are invariably met with a hailstorm of well-placed German artillery fire.

I snuck my right flank assault in as close as I dared -- a few units got shaken by the proximity of the friendly hits. The smoke was key for me and is the only way I could generate any kind of attack on Germans entrenched in the forest. Russians coming up from the beach have to advance over wide open terrain that is exposed to German fire from many different angles. If you get just the right smoke -- and there's no guarantee of that -- you can move them in close enough without getting butchered. Aside from the long range artillery that gets expended in 4 turns, there are two machine guns. The rest of the Russian units are infantry.

The reinforcements arrive in two waves at different points on the beach. They are not allowed to engage the enemy. Each wave has two machine gun units which are simply too slow to make it across the board in the allotted time. You might as well camp them on the beach and forget about them.

Since I'm trying to move the reinforcements off to the upper right, it is most disadvantageous that the second wave hits the beach at the lower left. They must make a diagonal traverse across the scenario or there is no possibility of getting them off by turn 20. And the last two turns they must run to beat the clock. They must start moving in that direction immediately when they show up, whether or not the forest is secured. The traverse, unfortunately, exposes them to well hidden German artillery spotters. So after killing every German unit in the forest, the Russian infantry must move quickly back to the center to hunt for these spotters. This requires them to re-cross the open terrain after all that brutal combat in the forest. Those German units do NOT go down easily. If you decide to forgo the second wave of reinforcements and leave them on the beach -- despite removing all the first wave units -- you will be awarded a major defeat.

In summary, I came up with a method to at least score a minor victory. It required lots of trial and error that gave me good knowledge of how the AI consistently deploys. In this scenario, I feel more like I'm learning how to beat a game instead of simulating something historical.

[rlh1138]

Wow, this brings up bad memorys. Thanks for the recent posts and good tips. I'm going back and retry this one - I've been avoiding it, I think for years.

[Silvio Manuel]

Originally posted by Slappy:

My point exactly. I'd rather be in the boat with the saucier.

It was very odd to me when I realized that the same actor that plays The Chef in Apocalypse Now is the psycho neo-Nazi army/navy surplus store owner in the movie Falling Down with Michael Douglas... talk about 2 different characters!

[Andreas]

The turn length I would not choose again - it was one of the first CMBB scenarios I did (obviously), and the turn length was based on experience from CMBO, which did not translate well.

All the best

Andreas

[pavlov]

The turn length I would not choose again - it was one of the first CMBB scenarios I did (obviously), and the turn length was based on experience from CMBO, which did not translate well.

All the best

Andreas

Sure, 10 more minutes would go a long way . . . but a challenging scenerio and fun to try against such difficult constraints.

I played this once--I think it was the last of included scenarios that I finally tried. Total Defeat. Two platoons totally eliminated and about three platoons pinned. However I did manage to get a single pioneer squad into the pine woods and knocked out the MG nest there. That opened up a pathway through and I have a column marching into the pine woods on turn 20 but too late--I didn't get a single man off the board.

Now who is going to pay for my PTSD treatments? . . . Hmm, I don't remember the Red Army recruiter saying anything about mental health benefits . . .

[pavlov]

Oh, yeah, I should say that I used both spotters as prepatory barrage, choosing not to use smoke which was likely a mistake. I consentrated fire on the hard right flank where I laid the barrages, but hadn't thought to feint on the left. Things moved along pretty well, took out the front line defense with very little problem, but ran into problems at a well defended trench near the back of the map--didn't realize til the end that there were a couple of pill boxes providing covering fire from the woods. Oh yeah, I just remembered I added 25% to the Axis forces, just to make it harder on myself, hehe.