FNG Guide? Need Input

[grunt_GI]

Well, after reading several posts, I decided to put together a compilation of FNG files.

I have collected and edited some of the tactic discussions from the forums and put them together in a Word Doc.

However, I don't have anywhere to host it.

I also collected the PDFs of scenario design put together by gibsonM

So, is there any way to host this doc and let people add to it. Some of these posts were pretty old and a some of the "tactics" seemed more to be bug workarounds rather than real how-to guides.

Here is a sample of what I have so far, I have tried to give credit to the original authors:

ToadMan

BASIC FAQs

Q) How can I quickly select units/multiple units?

A) The options include

i) Left click on a single unit

ii) Shift Left-Click to drag a box around multiple units

iii) Shift Left-Click on each individual unit in turn

iv) Double left click on a HQ unit (this will select all units subordinate to the HQ)

v) In the HQ unit Information box, you can click to select a subordinate unit (this will jump the camera to that unit)

vi) Use the '+' and '-' keys to cycle through units

Q) How can I quickly select the relevant order tab?

A) You can cycle through the selected orders tab (Movement, Combat, Special and Admin) with the 'T' and 'Y' keys.

Q) How can I make my units move somewhere and hide, or change facing etc?

A) Place a movement command as normal. Once it is placed, left click on the waypoint of interest. Now, with the waypoint selected, choose the relevant command (hide, adjust facing, pop smoke etc) and the unit will execute that command on arrival.

Q) How can I make an APC move somewhere and then have the squad dismount (and move on foot)

A) Give the APC an appropriate move order. Then either select the APC waypoint and choose the dismount command (will have the squad dismount and take up defensive positions around the APC), or choose the squad that is riding in the APC and give them a move order (e.g. QUICK to a buidling). Once the APC reaches the waypoint, the troops will dismount (and move) as ordered.

Q) Can I edit a path and or waypoint?

A) You can select an existing movement waypoint and change it's type. For example, if you have a QUICK move specified, you can select the QUICK waypoint and then click a different movement type (e.g. "NORMAL") and the movement type will change.

If you wish to change the waypoint position, then the waypoints will need to be deleted and recreated.

Q) How is the Blast Function used?

A) Firstly, there appear to be some bugs with the Blast function which limits its usefulness at the moment. However, this is how you can try it out now even though it is of limited practical use :

i) Make sure your selected unit has more than 4 satchel/explosive charges (see the manual for the icon and see below for why 4 are needed as a minimum)

ii) Move them close to the wall you wish to blast (not all walls can be blasted)

iii) Place a Blast movement order in to the building you wish to blast and choose a floor as per the usual building entry procedure.

iv) Your units will go prone, wait a few seconds and the wall will be blasted.

Having made a hole (or possibly not, see below) your units will stand up and move to the blast waypoint (inside the building).

Q) My units won't fire Javelins at bunkers or other targets?

A) For an infantry unit to fire it's Javelins a few steps are required :

i) While they are inside an APC, go to the Special Orders Tab and choose the Acquire function.

ii) A pop-up list appears, from this list choose the Javelin Launcher Unit

iii) Now YOU MUST aquire again just as for step (i)

iv) From the pop-up window choose the Javelin Ordnance (Javelin T-HEAT rounds in 1, 2 or possibly 3 missile quantities).

v) Deploy your troops and consider giving them a Hide command to stop them firing their Javelins before you're ready/have selected a target.

vi) Give the Javelin Unit an Area fire command on the appropriate target and wait.

Notes :

The infantry and Javelins are not always 100% accurate. Javelins may miss short or long (possibly even flying off the battlefield map). It's possible, particularly in RT gameplay mode, to miss the Javelin flight path and assume it has not been fired.

Q) Why won't my tanks and/or IFV/MGS etc fire their last few explosive rounds at my designated target?

A) It appears that the AI makes a judgement call when they get to a low ammo state and will not use heavy ordanance on targets they feel are not sufficiently threatening. For example, an M1A1 will not fire it's final few rounds into an area targetted building.

That is the rationalisation of it, it could be a bug...

Q) I have some wounded soldiers - can I heal them?

A) This is done automatically by the game, but the squad must be in good order and remain near the casualty. You'll see that one of the infantry will attend to the casualty. More testing is needed to determine if this will return the casualty to fit status or in any other way affects the battle outcome.

Q) How can I set up an ambush?

A) Move your squads into suitable ambush positions and have them Hide. Once the enemy is in the "killzone" unhide your troops and if appropriate provide suitable targetting commands.

NOTE : If you provide a combat order to a unit that is currently Hiding, it will stop hiding and open fire.I have not tested enough to determine how to set up an ambush in WEGO mode - it may not be possible at this stage

ASSAULTING BUILDINGS

metalbrew

I usually dismount outside of RPG range, in the game this seems like roughly 150m. I attempt to align my assault on the building to lessen crossfires from the enemy. Then using 'assault' or 'quick' move towards the building with infantry while the Stryker provides overwatch. The Mk19 equipped Strykers (40mm automatic grenade launcher) are just awesome for infantry overwatch, they easily suppress enemy infantry as long as you've picked a reasonable approach (stay out of crossfires).

If you find a particular building makes your life tough, drop it using a Javelin team. Obviously, if the enemy is inside they die quickly. For instance, I found the final tutorial mission really easy once I dropped the tall center building. With this building gone I flanked left with infantry while the Strykers tore the remaining defenders to ribbons now that the center building was gone and they had long lines of sight.

Normal Dude

There's no easy way to take building without risking casualties.. unless you can just drop the building.

If you can estabilish a base of fire with strykers and other elements. Once enemy return fire has decreased from the target building (and others for that matter), move them into a corner of the building preferably far away from your suppressive fires and masked from fire lanes. If you can't move in a hidden area pop smoke from the vehicles. Once you have a foothold in the building, move forward SLOWLY, and "lift and shift" your supressive fires as they move along the building. Ideally, the occupants will have no recovery time from when the suppressive fires shift to when the assault element engages.

Better to just level any pesky buildings (if you are allowed to) that out of the way and have good lanes of on your target building.

Key things: LOTS of suppressive fire, take plenty of time, use smoke and hidden routes.

Cpl Steiner

The way I did it in the end was to use small teams to draw fire. I started with a squad split into two teams, each mounted in a separate Stryker. The Strykers then pulled up at the PL and disembarked one team of 4 men. They were ordered to sprint for the first building using a "Fast" movement order. Sure enough, the enemy opened up on them and they all went down (sorry guys). Having revealed a few enemy positions I hosed them down with the Mk19 and the MGs. The Stryker with the other team then popped smoke and this team did the same, legging it for the first building through the smoke. A good point to mention here is that smoke drifts on the wind in CM:SF, so if you attack up-wind, it helps a lot! The second team were more fortunate than the first, and only lost a single man. Any newly revealed enemy positions were then hit hard again, before I repeated the process for the remaining squads (this time unsplit). I think I also had the platoon HQ grab a Javelin and blow the top floor off of a building where enemy had fired from. By this time I had the whole platoon occupying the first and second floors of the first building. They had noticed enemy fire coming from a building to their right, so they hosed that down for a minute and then popped smoke through the windows before "Quick" moving into the next building towards the objectives. This went very well and I don't think a single man went down. Once in the second building they had a clear view of the objectives and just hammered them until the "Total Victory" screen appeared.

Phillip Culliton

The tricks:

1) (As Chad said:) Suppress, suppress, suppress. Time and ammo are on your side. Use them. I found that the positions I spent the most time suppressing were the positions with the most dead / wounded enemy inside when I cleared them (go figure).

2) Split your teams. The Assault command works well in particular situations, but when things get complicated it helps to micro your guns-n-assaulters a bit. Explicitly position your support teams and sit on the Hide / Smoke buttons for your assault teams. Multiple support teams seem to multiply the effectiveness of a particular assault.

3) Strykers are scary. Use four of them at once to pound the most likely enemy positions around an assault.

And that's how I got into / cleared buildings.

A caveat: I'm usually very bad at tactical wargames in general (CMBO, Steel Panthers, etc). Either my casualty counts are very high or I concentrate too much on force protection and never reach the objectives. However, this worked for me.

Cheers,

p

Surviving Urban Ops #1- long post

The_Capt

But before we get into the CMSF "drills" let's start with some fundementals of urban combat, The_Capt Commandments if you will;

#1 Cover is King. I cannot stress this enough, keep your guys under cover at every opportunity. If you don't believe me set up a quick test with a squad in a building and one outside at close range..say no more than 50m. Let them go at it...the outside one will always get cut to pieces.

#2 Firepower is currency. You need to make sure you have the worst exchange rate in the world. The other team hands you a dime..you give em back $20. This is key as a big part of urban warfare is also ensuring your troops and vehicles are placed in positions that will let them fire effectively. In every situation you need to ask yourself "how can I get more guns going at X"

#3 Reckless movement equals dead. In the post on the main board I went on about this at great length. If you are moving troops up through secure lines sprint them til they puke. If you are advancing to contact, Hunt is just about the only movement you should be using. Move is not working as it should just yet so again I say "Hunt". This command will give your troops the best chance to spot an enemy and do something about it. In urban combat the side that is static and under cover will always kill the poor fella moving.

#4 Urban warfare is a deliberate operation. I know the cult of speed is very big in modern militaries and I have even seen some of this on the forum. Let me assure you that urban warfare is a slow and deliberate process. You need to maintain the initative, limit OPFOR mobility wherever possible, but at the tactical level any dream you may have of running through a town like Delta's will quickly be shattered by a determined opponent. Speed and initative are more applicable to the operational level of warfare in this context.

#5 Micromanage. Yup you heard me. Urban combat in CMSF is very complex. You are going to have to manage your troops very closely. The AI is really decent if your guys are not moving or covering a field of fire but when on the move you have to become the big brain of the operation.

The word doc has The Capt graphics on assaulting around corners.

Anyone want to contribute?

BTW if you want to read actual Lessons Learned and other interesting info go to http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/csi/RandP/CSIpubs.asp

I found this an interesting and indispensable source for my Masters classes

[gibsonm]

Mate,

Firstly, I only helped with the Scenario Designers Manual, it certainly isn’t all my work (credit where its due).

Secondly while not a conventional FAQ, you might want to include my AAR on “Armour Attacks” as it provides narrative for things like Combined Arms, Mutual Support, One foot on the Ground, etc.

I’m not saying its the only way to play that particular scenario (esp. as the enemy AI has a few plans to choose from) but wherever possible I’m approaching that as I would a “real” tactical problem.

Lastly, I’d happily host the end result and could publish updates as you brought them out. Not sure how easily it would be for others to add to though.

[YankeeDog]

This is a really good idea. The manual leaves a bit to be desired wrt how exactly to use the UI of the game to get your units to follow realistic (and successful) battle drills.

I've been working figuring out the details of some MOUT stuff, I'd be happy to contribute what I've learned once I get it all figured out an organized. Unfortunately, may be a week or two as I have a B*tch of a work schedule until April 15th (tax deadline. . .).

One whole area that I would really like to explore is tactics specific to playing on the Syrian side. I've from what I've seen so far in the couple of times I've played a Syrians, there are some major differences in how you have to approach things.

One thing that's apparent right away is that lack of split squad commands on the Syrian side really limits your tactical flexibility, especially in MOUT. But there are some interesting advantages the Syrian forces have. For one, RPG-7s are an incredibly useful squad-level asset, and especially in MOUT. Not necessarily better than the AT4 on a per-shot basis, but you usually have far more of them to toss around.

Cheers,

YD

[grunt_GI]

Good evening,

Major, sorry I forgot to read the bottom of the PDFs and give credit to George

Anyway, a couple of questions:

* If you could host it on your website that would be great. I remember the old CMBO tutorials and they were great. I printed them out somewhere but I think they have been lost to the sands of time. I put together my starting stuff in Word and then saved as a PDF..which became a 6.5mb file. The MS word doc is only 704Kb, so go figure. So I don't know if folks would prefer that or a long post...either way. I think the graphics are easier in word or PDF.

Also, I agree with you Yankee Dog, that some Syrian tactics would be good. I would love for this to be a real living Lessons Learned document somehow.

I also thought some AARs for scenarios would be good for folks that just can't seem to get through them (as I suspect I will be).

Finally, I remember for the CMx1 games someone posted an xls file with a simple series of OOB for all the units. I really found this helpful for understanding the myriad of different German units and their weapons. Has anyone done something like this for CMSF? That would be great for scenario design.

Well, that's my two cents. I have played a couple of games with mixed results...almost scared the Sh-- out of myself when a T-72 "appeared" out of the middle of nowhere in the middle of my Bradley formation. (those pesky narrow side streets) Fortunately, my TOW gunner was little quicker on the trigger, but that was an unpleasant five seconds of combat!

[kam99]

Grunt,

Is there any progress on your FNG FAQ? Excellent idea BTW.

Regards,

kam

[Childress]

Nice overview, thanks.

Once you have a foothold in the building, move forward SLOWLY, and "lift and shift" your suppressive fires as they move along the building. Ideally, the occupants will have no recovery time from when the suppressive fires shift to when the assault element engages.

Not sure what you're going here. In CMSF, or CM1 for that matter, it's sunecessary to 'lift and shift' since friendly squads are impervious to non-HE fire from your covering units.

Unlike CM1, units don't appear capable of doing a Hide and Ambush in WEGO. Could be mistaken on this, though. haven't set up many ambushes. Also, the Fast move currently seems superfluous.

[ May 13, 2008, 10:58 AM: Message edited by: Childress ]

[Field Marshal Blücher]

Originally posted by Childress:

Fast move currently seems superfluous.

I thought this was true as well until I started poking around through the manual again and I found that Fast actually does have a use: They start moving faster than Quick. So if you need them to get the hell out of some place it's better to use Fast than Quick.

-FMB

[Childress]

Nope, quick and dirty test reveals this is not the case, FMB.

[Field Marshal Blücher]

Originally posted by Childress:

Nope, quick and dirty test reveals this is not the case, FMB.

Hmm. Interesting. Must have been a placebo effect for me then, I thought I did see a difference.

[Cpl Steiner]

I am quite surprised by the lack of difference between quick and fast for infantry. I did a test of my own in which two squads had to race each other to a finish line terrain objective. The "fast" squad got tired and reverted to "quick" after a short distance but did not reach the finish line any earlier than the "quick" squad. This is just crazy. If they got tired then they should have covered more ground than the other squad, otherwise why are they tired? I hope BFC are aware of this and are looking into it.

[Moon]

From Charles:

"OK I tweaked Fast speed when carrying heavy loads (which virtually all the US soldiers are, because their body armor is freakin' heavy)."

[Childress]

Is Charles sure that Fast needs fixing, not Quick? The speeds are identical and with Quick your guys can traverse a large map w/o fatigue which kicks in early on Fast.

[Field Marshal Blücher]

Originally posted by Moon:

From Charles:

"OK I tweaked Fast speed when carrying heavy loads (which virtually all the US soldiers are, because their body armor is freakin' heavy)."

That might explain why I've noted a difference, I've been playing Red on Red a lot lately.

EDIT: There is a difference (albeit very slight) with Red infantry. There is a also a noticeable difference with slow-moving vehicles, and a huge difference with fast-moving vehicles.

I tested with Syrian engineers, T-72M1Vs, and UAZs.

[ May 14, 2008, 10:46 AM: Message edited by: Field Marshal Blücher ]

[Childress]

Red on Fast is (very) marginally faster than Red on Quick. But the pay-off in accrued fatigue still makes Fast an irrational choice for either side.

The vehicle movement commands work fine. But they really need to be able to Hunt on slow to be useful.

(These geeky discussions are fun! )

Also, we demand that Charles make an appearance on the forum. In person. We'll be gentle.

[grunt_GI]

Howdy,

I haven't made much progress lately. I was going to read Mark's comic tutorals, but have been very busy. I have a basic document to upload if anyone wants it, but this thread has been pretty quiet lately. My ultimate ambition would be to produce something like the old tutorals that came out for CMBO, but I haven't played enough to develop my own LL yet.

Sorry

[kam99]

Grunt,

The tutorials for CMBB by Jason, were very good. I would appreciate sight of your basic document if you are willing to share it.

Regards,

kam

[grunt_GI]

Kam,

I suppose if you sent an email to cavalrycharge@cox.net I can send it to you...it's not much I'm afraid