Updated Scenario - Punitive Expedition

[Pandur]

Few words to the scenario;

its RED vs RED fictional scenario, a mix of Mech infantry supported by syrian SF are raiding an uncon held town, or better said got some bussines there.

it is medium size, time limit is 60 minutes(+5 random), wich is pretty much time for the tasks, still this should be a fast operation.

its meant to be played BLUE vs. the AI only.

EDIT:

Changes;

-destroy objective works now properly(thx to BFC for that).

-force balance and scoreing tweaked to make it slightly easier.

-added more foliage and some more flavour objects into the map.

Download at;

www.CMMODS.com

the preview picture here is from the old version, its slightly different now but not much so i keep the old one.

[ December 26, 2007, 09:43 PM: Message edited by: Pandur ]

[Law&Order]

very tough one for me, I took it slow and used the tank alot still major defeat in the end (thanks to scoring). Ill give it another try later.

[Pandur]

ok without giving away spoilers; its important here to crack open the town from a place where the uncons cant utilize there superiour position to the fullest.

the opposition acually is far from many guys, when i remember right their even less than the player starts with, but these are in this town and cover themselfs from different parts of town, and you not

about the scoring, thats one thing i totaly have no expirience so far. but i tried to balance it in a way that when both sides accomplish "totaly" their missions, RED won, as the punitive expedition shouldnt take a serious beating.

on the other side, its nearly impossible for the uncons to acomplish all their goals to the fullest wich makes it ballanced again.

only drawback, the broken destroy objective. i have to figure if its the game or me...but i guess its the game, as i cant do more than paint the area/building, allocate points and a name and than destroy it

[Thomm]

Yes, not being awarded any points for the destruction of the city hall lead to a minor defeat for me, even though I got the weapons cache also loosing 6 KIA, 18 WIA and 2 vehicles. Not the desired outcome.

Until the final score, the mission was very enjoyable! The map was particularly beautiful!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Pandur]

can you recall the final scores more or less!? id be interessted in the points.

Until the final score, the mission was very enjoyable!

iam also a bit let down that the destroy thingy doesnt work. bad thing is that RED allways gets the points for preserving the city hall, wich isnt the case mostly.

but iam glad that the rest pleased you!

The map was particularly beautiful!

many thanks! did you have any performance problems!?

[Thomm]

No, I am sorry, I do not remember the specifics. But I think Red got over 200o points while blue got over 1000 points (500 for cache, 500 for objective 3?, 0 for city hall), red did not get points for SF (I held them back), but got points for my casualties. That is all I remember.

I did not have any performance problems! And I have only business laptop grafics (somewhere around GForce 7300/Go performance).

The only technical thing I did not like was the 'Hunt to die' behavior of the Syrian squads and the painful exiting sequence from the BTRs(?), which took forever and had a huge terrain footprint!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Pandur]

hehe, i had to look up what objective 3 is, i couldnt remember that i named a objective like that.

its the weapons cache wich needs to be preserved so you can search it. problem was that its also the touch objective, and the names of both objectives overlaped. so i deleted the name of the preserve objective, wich than get automatily named objective 3 by the game in the score screen.

[molotov_billy]

This seems like a really high quality scenario, but fighting around large terrain changes seems to really bring out the nasty LOS/LOF issues in CMSF. With 1.04, I've noticed so many situations where an enemy can fire at me, but I cannot fire back. I can sometimes "target" them, but my guys do the stupid nonsense where they toggle between "aiming" and "spotting" ("aiming" and "elevating" if it's vehicle), and never fire a shot. Excruciatingly frustrating.

[Ricochet67]

This was one of the few times I've played with the Syrians. It was fairly challenging and I tried hard to use proper infantry tactics. I suffered a Tactical Defeat with a score of 1500 vs 3031. The Syrian Army had 69 OK, 12 KIA and 20 WIA. Uncons had 19 OK, 19 KIA, 24 WIA and 15 missing with 3 other vehicles lost.

City hall was demolished and the weapons cache investigated so, with 15 minutes to spare, I pushed into the eastern end of town and cleared a few houses.

For a change, I managed to keep all my armoured vehicles operational. The BTRs were particularly useful suppressing the insurgents at med-long range while the infantry closed and killed them. I agree with Thomm's comment that the entry/exit process for the BTRs is painful compared to the ease with which US forces dis/embark from Strykers and Bradleys.

I only experienced a couple minor LOS/LOF issues with uncons in adjacent but lower buildings being seen but unable to be fired upon. Also a slight hiccup with an assault order resulting in the squad running back and forth to and from a hillside residence. That was fixed by issuing a quick movement.

I enjoyed the scenario but would like to see the scoring addressed. Though I'll admit to disobeying orders and hanging around well after accomplishing the objectives. Perhaps the defeat is a suitable penalty for my pigheadedness.

***SPOILERS***

Rather than follow the road north and east into the village, I went cross-country south of the mountains. Negotiated the way up the eastern face of the mountain and deployed all the infantry above the village. The T-72 fired upon the city hall while the BTRs were divided with half supporting the troops up top and the remainder providing long range support on the eastern road. The eastern BTRs didn't accomplish much except destroy a single technical. Only towards the end of the mission did they approach the village to provide fire support for SF squads occupying the eastern buildings.

The poor bloody infantry had a number of casualties early on while establishing a foothold above the village. Once I was able to occupy some of the houses highest on the mountain, it was just a matter of suppressing the uncons and advancing down towards the cache. I was fairly careful and only lost a handful of grunts from this point on.

[Pandur]

wow, thanks for trieing my scenario!

at first i have to apologize to every one who had an succesfull operation but suffered a defeat by the not working destroy/preserve objectives wich gives 500 to RED and not 500 to BLUE when its done.

i REALLY like to adress this matter but currently i just dont know how. i mean when i do a mission i mostly come up with an idea, if its bad i wait for the next one, if this is good i start to refine it and build the fiting landscape in my head and than when its more or less finished in my head, i "copy" all into the editor.

so unfortunately iam absolutely unflexible when it comes to changeing things. when the idea is totaly in its endstage i cant just change things

i dont know how i currently should include the city hall as an objective you dont need to physicaly reach other than with shells. i dont want to take it out, as the whole lower part of the town would be useless...in fact the city hall destroy objective is the thing wich gives this scenario, at least to a big part, its name.

somehow i hope BFC will fix the objectives, other than that i dont see a way to do it currently better.

but fighting around large terrain changes seems to really bring out the nasty LOS/LOF issues in CMSF. With 1.04, I've noticed so many situations where an enemy can fire at me, but I cannot fire back. I can sometimes "target" them, but my guys do the stupid nonsense where they toggle between "aiming" and "spotting" ("aiming" and "elevating" if it's vehicle), and never fire a shot. Excruciatingly frustrating.

yes i had that too quiet often in the current stage of the game its unfortunately not possible to not see such things(well at least for the WEGOers like me, wich can watch stuff over and over), especially with the map i designed, wich features many small and some medium houses with noticable elevation changes.

but thats a thing iam positive about, as the scenario just should get better in this regard, over time.

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************SPOILERS***************

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yes, the aproach from the east is a good one. its also one of my favourite ones, but i choose to bring in SF directly from the south on top of the hill. there "is" a way, i also found it acuall with playing it the 2nd time, its not "intended" to be here. later i camoflaged it a bit with trees

vehicled dont fit through there well but the SF squad can dismount just befor the steep part.

all in all i really tried to do a scenario where you can choose between some fundemental different aproches, not just if you stack it left, righ or mid, while keeping the size to medium.

for everyone wich is interessted, and also for people wich have expirience with the scoring, i will list the objectives and their points here, now.

so make things clear about scoring for the people with allready played it and read the spoilers.

BLUE objectives;

"enemy casualties" 45% threshold=500 points

"destroy city hall"=500 points (unfortunately not working)

"Preserve weapon cache"=500 points (its not named as it would overlap with the weapons cache touch objective, in the scoring screen its caled objective 3)

"search weapons cache"=500 points (this allways worked so far )

RED objective;

"enemy casualtys" threshold 20% = 2000 points

"preserve city hall" = 500 points (unfortunately they allways get the 500 also if you destroy the city hall)

"unit objective" "kill SF soldiers" 2500points

as you can see by the points, i tried to balance it so that when blue does its job but gets beaten up(especially the SF guys are costy, as these are less and woth more than the others combined) red still won.

now if red wont get "allways" 500 points for their preserve objective and blue "could" score their 500 for the city hall, a win is really possible if you dont loose to much force.

again i have to apologize for the non pefrect scoring in my first mission. i will surely try to revisite this and especially hope on BFC to get the objectives working.

[Ricochet67]

Thanks for the info on mission objectives, Pandur. Clearly the Syrians need to get in, accomplish the mission and withdraw in good order. Force preservation is the key. Losing more than 20% of my regular force handed the uncons victory.

In the words of Gold Five: "Stay on target".

[average]

Pandur,

Played it through. I repeat the previous comments about not getting point for destroying town hall.

In terms of the victory conditions, I had a minor victory. 1500 points to 1134 In doing that I accompolished all my objectives, suffered casualties amongst my special forces units but otherwise accompolished all my objectives (other than the uncons getting points for town hall that was levelled by the T-72).

I liked the scenario all up, although I'd think it would be more plausible if it was republican guard and/or SF conducting the raid, rather than low quality regular mech infantry and a single plt of SF.

[average]

Just so you know, I had a play in the editor and added some 122mm tubes (i just like blowing stuff up).

Point fire mission with 122mm medium rate, medium duration, general ammo will destroy the town square building and have it show up as destroyed in the victory conditions.

[Pandur]

I liked the scenario all up, although I'd think it would be more plausible if it was republican guard and/or SF conducting the raid, rather than low quality regular mech infantry and a single plt of SF.

hm, iam sometimes somewhat stuck in "old" traditions

i intended the low quality mech´s, at least partly, as "peasents" or first row crowd.

you let em take the "nessesary" beaing as they are cheap while tireing) and softening up the enemy in question and use em to keep SF from engageing in unnessesary engagements and to help bringing SF to the place of action without much enemy interference. all that they can acomplish with full agression as they are cheap.

well i guess i should lower the value of these a bit when i think about it.

Point fire mission with 122mm medium rate, medium duration, general ammo will destroy the town square building and have it show up as destroyed in the victory conditions.

thats totaly odd. did the RED side get the preserve points, you recall meybe!?

i have to look into this...but it cant be that 125mm isnt enough when 122mm can do it.

[ieatnoobsforbreakfast]

Excellent scenario. I won a total victory, as the enemy surrendered. I lost 8 KIA, 12-13 WIA and one BTR. The enemy lost about 50 KIA, WIA and MIA before throwing in the towel. I took the ammo dump and the upper part of town around it, and the top story of the town hall was blown up. I put the MG platoon, two BTRs and the T72 on the hill on the right of the road. The BTR was killed by a technical, because my MGs weren't far enough and didn't see it first. The mech infantry platoon conducted recon by fire, and the tank blew up any opposition. It also served as a distraction for the special ops, whom I used to flank the enemy, and attack the ammo dump. That's where most of my the casualties were lost, in house to house fighting without the benefit of tank support. Before the special ops attack I shelled the area around the ammo dump, but it didn't do much good.

One thing you could do to make the scenario more challenging is to put a sniper or something on the top of the cliff to warn the uncons of any flanking maneuver.

[Pandur]

Excellent scenario. I won a total victory, as the enemy surrendered.

hehe, i think thats the best way to win the scenario currently with the somewhat broken objectives.

One thing you could do to make the scenario more challenging is to put a sniper or something on the top of the cliff to warn the uncons of any flanking maneuver.

i will definitely revisite the map, especially if i can find a way to get the destroy objective to work right. but i dont think it will hapen too fast as i have absolutely no clue how i should start fixing the destroy objective. if that would work flawless, i would see sense in refineing some other parts of the map/mission too.

i think about adding some "skirmishers" to red wich are to harras(sp!?) blue while on the aproach. just for 1-3 minutes and than pull back behind the crest where they came from.

wont to good to the SF guys in their "exlelently protected" vehicles.

and at last but not least, i have to ask one native engish speaker about it, was the briefing ok or are things to "bumpy" or so!? i looked it up a tousend times and removed XX typos and tried to use better formulations but its like its now, is it ok!?

[Pandur]

Bump

updated scenario for 1.05.

read changes in the first post.

[Wiggum]

Just downloaded it, i will post my opinion after i finished it.

[the Fighting Seabee]

That was tough. Might have to give it a second go.

[Wiggum]

Here is my little AAR:

</font>

• 1: I Secured the two buildings with Infantry to be sure there are no hidden RPG's or something else. A enemy MG Team was killed by the covering BTR's.</font>
• 2: I took all my Special Forces to assault the upper part of the village. A fierce firefight started and i took my first casualties. However i killed the defenders (including the SPG 9-Car) and entrench my Special Forces at the weapons cache.</font>
• 3: Now my motars started to fire and i took my Mech Infantery to establish a second front against the enemy. The motar doesent destroy the City Hall so i have to take my T72.</font>
• 4: While my other troops pounding the enemy positions i drive my tank on a good fire-position and starting to shot at the City Hall. The building collapse but wasent fully down. Before i could finish my job the time was over. There where still many enemys on the red painted areas but all well suppressed and fearful.</font>

I win the battle with only 8 WIA, no KIA or destroyed Vehicles.

Great Scenario !

I hope you will do more such excellent Red VS. Red Scenarios...

[ December 27, 2007, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: Wiggum ]

[Pandur]

wiggum, thanks for the review!

glad you liked it, and good match on your side.

you didnt gave the RED´s much to kill

"I hope you will do more such excellent Red VS. Red Scenarios..."

can your PC support "huge" missions!? i got anotherone ready to test but i cant test it myself, its not ready to be really released.

it features a full blown mech infantry battalion with BMP1´s against a more though uncon enemy, on a more extended map

grüsse

[the Fighting Seabee]

Wiggum, I used the same plan except without your step 2. I was going to go up the hill but I was expecting really heavy resistance up there. So instead I sent my forces down the road and put some infantry up on the left side of the hill. And that's where I was stopped. I couldn't get up the hill (good mg coverage) and I lost a few BTR's down by the road. In real life I probably would have had to withdraw and regroup. Next time I guess I'll just have to take the hill and work from there.

[Tuomio]

1 KIA and 9 WIA -20 minutes, enemy surrender.

Had to replay couple of times tho. The key is to unload MG:s into the forest and leapfrogging with them. Then after a while, you can just steamroll pinned down positions with concentrated BTR MG fire when AT element is wiped away.

This scenario is excelent and the lack of large calibers really forces to preserve troops to gain sufficent firebase.

[molotov_billy]

Much more enjoyable on my second playthrough without the 1.04 LOS bugs. Thanks for the scenario!

[Wiggum]

Hey Pandur,

how far are you with your redone Scenario ?