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Problems with Ash Shammas mission


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I'm having problems with the Ash Shammas mission (2nd mission in the campaign if you get a total victory in the 1st one). I'm doing everything I can to pin the enemy down in the buildings before I enter, but my men refuse to continue into the room while it is being shot at, so I have to tell my men to cease fire, and my men go in and get mown down. I've been using assault under cover of smoke with at least 2 MGs/Strykers firing suppressive fire into the target building. I have no problems with some buildings. I lost an entire platoon, with the exception of my MG teams and my HQ element, taking the first HQ building because my men kept deleting their own waypoints somehow and seemed to refuse to shoot enemies they saw even though they were on "Hunt". I seemed to get pretty good results cancelling all movement and specifically ordering them to target the enemy unit as soon as they see him (leading a whole battalion, but I'm doing the micromanagment of a fireteam leader). I took the barracks with no casualties, I believe, after a prep artillery barrage from the 81mm mortars and complete suppressive fire from the strykers and MG's in the other platoon I sent in. Then I POUNDED the large half destroyed complex and the circular building complex that are next to the Special Forces HQ, each with a full barrage from 120mm's. I bypassed them both, and the 2 platoons that I sent in to storm the SF HQ didn't seem to take any fire from them. I had 3/4 of the Strykers in the battallion blowing the living crap out of the SF building, including MGS mainguns and apaches, but not a single hole was blown in the wall, and several enemies were still alive inside. I was able to micromanage my squads and clear the first half of the SF HQ with maybe 1-2 casualties. Then, I went to clear the other half, which was not in view of my Strykers, and lost 1 1/2 to 2 squads trying to take out 1 squad of the Syrian guys while I had them surrounded from multiple angles and firing suppressive fire. I tried to move a Stryker up close around the corner to get some fire in, and an RPG managed to get a shot off from the building, despite suppressive fire from 2-3 squads, as soon as it came around. I also tried to send an MGS around wide, close to the circular building, and despite a large artillery barrage and having a sniper who was supposedly watching those exact buildings, another RPG got off and took out my MGS.

Anyway, I eventually muscled my way through. I saw in the briefing that they wanted me to try to search the SF HQ for intel before I destroy it. I moved my squads all over the building, including an HQ element incase they needed an officer to do it. Never got a notification that I had searched/taken it, so I eventually gave up and decided to try to destroy it. Suddenly I realized that I had nothing to destroy the building with. The MGS's would be hard pressed to have destroyed it, considering the actual building is not visible because it is surrounded by the other buildings in the complex. I probably could've dumped all of the fire support I had on the SF HQ, and I still doubt it would've destroyed it, since the barrages I did on other buildings seem to have done absolutely nothing to the buildings, and I doubt they intended me to use 90% of my fire support just to complete one objective. So how in the world am I supposed to destroy the SF HQ?

Sorry for the long post, I wanted to go into detail of what I was doing to eliminate those "did you send your men in 'Hunt/Assault' Mode" questions. Anway, what am I doing wrong? I shouldn't lose a platoon of men trying to take a few small buildings and one lightly defended complex. Also, why is my artillery and air support doing virtually nothing against the enemies inside buildings? Is this a bug? I've seen an artillery strike from 60mm mortars, and those would've been plenty to take out the men hiding in the two sets of buildings that I pounded with 120mm mortars to no avail.

[ May 19, 2008, 09:17 AM: Message edited by: Crispy129 ]

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honestly i didnt managed to destroy the SF building in 1.08. thats pretty hard since the houses got more robust vs. blasts. befor 1.05 or so you could bring down little 1 story houses with one minute of 30mm autocannon. was a bit too much.

however point is i never tried it in 1.08 as you have to aim for a enemy surrender. you simply squish all opposition or a big part of it and you have a sure win, no matter what you lost.

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I'm not worried about winning. It's not too hard to win on the US side. The trick is winning without many casualties. I was trying to bypass the half destroyed apartment complex looking building and the circular complex because they weren't part of the mission, and I'd already lost a lot (in my opinion) of men trying to clear out other buildings, so I wanted to avoid trying to clear out buildings I didn't need to clear. I also assumed that blowing the crap out of the buildings with artillery would tear up the people in the buildings and the sniper with a perfect LOS on them would be able to see any threats in the windows, but apparently they were made of 10 ft thick reinforced concrete or something and my sniper was unable to notice a squad of Haji's pointing a large RPG at one of my MGS in the small area I told him to watch. Anyway, how did you all go about doing this mission without taking an inordinate amount of casualties?

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Use better tactics. Your advantage is in long-range fire. There is a reason the US has spent so much money on firesupport. When you think you have a building suppressed, supress it twice more.

Even if you only lose one man per building you will rapidly run out of combat power if you have to clear a large complex. Sending guys in to clear a building should be the last resort, and then only for buildings you really need cleared.

One thing to remember is that the buildings are not just open boxes. Although you can't see them they are devided into rooms that affect spotting both inside and out. They are also quite stoutly constructed. Unlike most buildings here in the US, buildings in the Middle East tend to be constructed of brick and masonary both in external and internal walls and so offer quite a bit of protection for those inside.

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i also talked about it in the other thread, for me this is "conflicting!?"(LEO gave me more possiblities ;) )

when i want to kill someone on long range i dont want to supress him in the "absolute" sense, like with vehicle area fire. i dont shoot there but present nice targets, for as short as possible ofcourse, to make em shoot, in order for my guys to see em end shoot em with long range precision. that works fabolous for me.

on the other hand when i area fire all enemy positions i can cover the ground up to there but i still need to go in there to get em out. and thats not so easy on casualties than like shooting them on long range. logical!?

so i just use area fire if i really dont like they guys on the other side, a RPG29 in a uncomftable house or SPG´s or the like. the others can happilie shoot away on me, not knowing that my units(verry soon for blue side, and some time for red side) will see and anihilate them after they fired a few shots. that goes until they all enemies do the "cowering", than it gets quiet again and you can move or wait and after one or two rounds you initiate the same again.

get a enemy unit to shoot, others see it, shoot themselfs, draw fire again by fireing and so seeing more again...and so on.

i hope someone understands what i mean...

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I realize my advantage in long range fire. I also realize that clearing unnecessary buildings is bad. This is why I chose to blow the hell out of the large circular complex and the half destroyed complex near the SF HQ instead of storming them. I also really do not like 95% of the units indoors, because most of the Syrian squads have at least one RPG guy, who often has an RPG 29 that is capable of taking down vehicles, so I try to avoid letting them get a shot off, and when they do I quickly kill/suppress them. Also, when I do a lot of suppressive fire (enough to get the enemy to not shoot) on buildings, my infantry freak out and delete their waypoints, so doubling up on suppressive fire is not likely to help. You can give me whatever BS you want about Middle Eastern construction being more solid, but a tiny one story building is not going to withstand a 120mm mortar round, much less a barrage of them. A small, half destroyed office complex with no roof is also not going to provide perfect cover against a 120mm mortar barrage. Many modern Middle Eastern buildings, like office buildings and barracks you would see at a Syrian airbase (where the mission takes place), are made of the same stuff as buildings in the US. The Special Forces HQ is also an office building.

I was mainly wondering if there was some certain way I had to "gather intel" at the HQ building and blow it up. The complex took a serious beating and didn't have have a hole in it, so it was looking like it would take every bit of my support assets to take it down, which didn't seem too reasonable. I was also wondering what was going on with clearing some of the buildings because I seemed to have some AI problems and lost a freaking platoon trying to clear out a couple of buildings. I used Assault + smoke and/or suppressive fire to cross any open area and get into the ground floor (little to no casualties during that part) and then Hunt all the way up to the top floor and repeat the process on adjacent buildings (during this part my men would delete waypoints, keep walking with enemies right in front of them, or get shot through the floor by enemies 2 floors above them). It helped to micromanage them to death, cancelling all movement and directly telling them to target the enemies, but even then, when clearing the SF HQ, they spazzed out and just didn't shoot or kept deleting waypoints.

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i guess i will stick to that thread now, instead of posting in both about the same.

I realize my advantage in long range fire. I also realize that clearing unnecessary buildings is bad. This is why I chose to blow the hell out of the large circular complex and the half destroyed complex near the SF HQ instead of storming them.
in the way i play the game, clearing unnessersary buildings isnt allways bad. if i have mucho support and large caliber HE or HEAT i do it the same way as you, i didnt set foot into this large and pretty destroyed building complex. but i also didnt caled down support "somewhere" onto the building. i called down support after i knew in wich part of hte building, and in wich floor they are. than i hit it with mucho fire power and all was done. the few guys remaining arent interessting than.

if you call down mortars from above and its a 5 storry house and the enemy is in the lower storys, it wont do as much if anything as if they where below the roof or on the roof, obviously.

however, if one fails at that one finds himself with some enemys in his back in a uncompftable place. thats why i often go in and clear this areas out too. to make sure there isnt something left wich would bug me later.

about hunt;

i dont know if area fire from own vehicles cancels hunt.

the only thing i can think about right now is that they see something somewhere on the map and cancel it becouse of that. if your man have a good view of the area, they often see some stuff far away you already forgott about or dont see currently, while in the area you are watching nothing happens and it looks like they messed up. that happens to me quiet often.

about the effectiveness of large calibe blasts, i responed to that in the other thread. its about abstraction of what you see.

if a building is really shot up for the engine, you might just see a damaged roof or wall.

same abstraction counts for the effects on troops, in different "abstracted" rooms, inside.

EDIT:

in CMx1 you could also blast someone unit right into the face and it doesnt kill em outright. the 1:1 representation is partly just for optical pleasure in that regard.

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Originally posted by Pandur:

about hunt;

i dont know if area fire from own vehicles cancels hunt.

the only thing i can think about right now is that they see something somewhere on the map and cancel it becouse of that. if your man have a good view of the area, they often see some stuff far away you already forgott about or dont see currently, while in the area you are watching nothing happens and it looks like they messed up. that happens to me quiet often.

To counteract this, use hunt with a cover arc. This way they will only stop moving when they see an enemy within their arc (or when they come under fire from anyone). Note that you can make circular arcs by holding down shift while plotting the arc.
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most of the time i do that it hurts me more than the enemy. i dont have any luck with that. either someone in the arc pops up wich shouldnt make em stop or someone out of the arc comes into play wich should actually be engaged.

also hunt leaves the team split sometimes if one team decides to go forward and one back ward after they spotted a enemy and canceled hunt.

worst thing i saw was a squad hunting on both sides of a house block. they started at its side and one team decided to go right and one left, needless to say that one side was observed by the enemy and one not. guess where i placed the hunt waypoint. right! but no, one team moves into the street on the wrong side, gets shot up, wich rattles the other part of the squad, on the other side of the block :rolleyes:

i had quiet some more similar expiriences with hunt, so i dont use it too often.

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Anyone know if it is actually possible to search for intel in the SF HQ? They need to be more descript with their OPORD's. Also, there must be some other way to destroy the SF HQ other than using all of your fire support. I would highly doubt that they'd give you a bunch of different types of fire support just so you can blow a building up. And if they did intend for you to do that, they should state in the OPORD that that is how you're supposed to destroy it. The same goes for the Mission where you are doing a zone recon south of Palmyra, where they tell you to wait with your units at CP7 for some other company to come through and conduct the assault, but the company never came, and I just did the assault myself. In these cases they really do need to make their OPORDs more detailed.

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No. What I think it means is that you can either occupy or destroy the building. You don't really get to do RPG type things like that.

Realize that the missions for the campaign were designed over several builds and by many different people. Some things which may have been intended were never implimented or things that were meant to be edited out slipped through the cracks.

Be flexible and take your own innitiative. If you can accomplish the mission then do it. If you get more troops later then consider it gravy, those are fewer casualties that will count against you.

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I have a winning strategy for this mission. I don't want to just hand it to you (you're the battalion commander afterall), but...

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don't go up the middle. Also, uh pun not intended, use smoke to get high. That's a hint for you. If you use both of these hints to your advantage and take it slow, you'll win with limited casualties.

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I'm just saying, sometimes you DO end up getting reinforcements, and other times they say you will and you don't. The one where I do a zone recon actually tells me specifically to wait with all of my men at CP7 until the assault force comes through, and it never happened. As for being able to occupy the SF HQ, I did that and got a big red X by that objective. And yes, I'm not stupid, I didn't go strolling up the middle of the street, and I did use smoke. Please, I was giving very detailed accounts of how I went about doing the mission to avoid getting obvious answers like that. Anything like "use better tactics" or an obvious answer like that is not helping. It looks like I pretty much just have to micromanage the living crap out of my men in MOUT and baby sit them through the whole building and hope that the buildings aren't magically blessed by Allah to be artillery-proof.

Crispy

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recently played it again 7 WIA 1 KIA. Arty does work. I like to go for quick missions (general ordinance) on individual buildings. Apache medium attack does some nice things as well. Javs & mgs 105mm's to finish m off. Take the High Tower with sniper mg's javs and spotters. take the barracks. advance to SF hq. cautios take the airforce building. pound the SF quarters.. give m hell. then push hard towards it. Got a total victory, both parties inside to SF HQ so both no points for that. Got the other 2 and some other conditions and gave me a total victory.

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