The Hasrabit Campaign

[gmfrank]

Paper Tiger

SPOILERS!

Knocked out "Buying the Farm" over the weekend. Excellent Scenario! I won a major victory in control of all objectives by the time limit. One of my SF companies holding the farm (which I reduced to ruble with my T-55s during the initial attack) was absolutely mauled by that sneaky counterattack though! Hoping to fire up breakout later today!

[ChrisND]

Just played Breakout. I think the Rebels should have less tanks. The helo has been worthless for me (landing hits on the other side of the map after 10 minutes of prep), and the ATGMs get nailed during setup or after one shot by eagle-eyed T-72s. My last resort was to attack tanks across nearly open ground... you can guess the results. It was a pretty exasperating experience.

[ May 05, 2008, 07:29 PM: Message edited by: Normal Dude ]

[the Fighting Seabee]

My tanks were hit within 1 minute of arrival. I needed those, got my butt kicked.

[Paper Tiger]

gmfrank

glad to hear you enjoyed it. The farm mission was always one of my favourites to play because you have to really work for that victory. I'll probably release it as a stand-alone scenario sometime soon.

Normal Dude

Wow, sounds awful. I'm not sure how you're doing the tank hunting with your ATGM teams. I usually find that's one of the exciting things in this mission. I usually move them quite slowly using Hunt and Hide commands. Once you've got the tanks, you can get on with the rest of the mission. And yes, the helicopter isn't really useful against the armour. But sometimes you get lucky.

As for the number of tanks, well, I balanced this one by playtesting it many times. Occassionally, depending on the positions they take up during their attack, the Red tanks are able to spot you really quickly and other times they don't and you pick 'em all off without a loss. When you play it just once, the mission might seem quite unbalanced. But as long as you have the equivalent of one full Special Forces company, you can win it even if the ATGMs fail to get all the tanks. It's just very difficult and probably not so much fun to play.

BTW, where do you find the time to design your own campaign and play somebody elses?

the Fighting Seabea

Are you talking about 'Saudara Part 1- Rearguard action'? If yes, I'm sorry but I didn't pick up that one of the Red ATGM teams starts with LoS to the reinforcements arrival zone. Every time I playtested that mission, I'd always activated that sucker long before the reinforcements arrived. When Bodkin reported it, I loaded it up and gave it a run through in my usual fashion and of course, there was no fire when the reinforcements arrived. Then I figured that it was something I was doing. So I loaded it up again and just sat and watched the clock. Sure enough, when the reinforcements arrived, they got wasted. So that's my fault. It wasn't intended to be like that.

That's one of the problems with playtesting your missions by yourself. I always play that one quite aggressively by moving into the orchards as quickly as possible. So that ATGM team was spotted and eliminated every time. Therefore that problem was never spotted.

[Peach Operations]

SPOILER, etc...

Played Saudara pt 2, and there's a problem -- my FO can't call in the airstrike. The words "DENIED" show up over the plane. Said FO can still call in mortars, but not the strike..

Wasn't necessary, anyway -- tanks on the hills are good enough for dealing with rebel positions in the town, once said rebels reveal themselves. I didn't have to seize anything but the cemetary hill -- the rebels surrendered before my troops actually got into town. It might be tougher if the rebel BMPs were on hills overlooking the town -- currently my tanks could just work their way around the outside after clearing the cemetary hill, killing BMPs one by one. At some points I had to demolish walls so my tanks could see the BMPs, of course, but that's not too difficult.

Oddly enough, the rebel ATGM doesn't appear to be on the hill you're told to clear of ATGMs.. And the suggested ATGM position given for your troops can't see the road heading into Saudara (as far as I can tell, anyway). I'm guessing that this is intended, but I thought I'd mention it, just in case.

[gmfrank]

Peach

I had that issue too during one mission. Took me a second to realize that the actual FO was KO'ed in an earlier mission. All I had left in my FO unit was the radioman and soldier!

[Paper Tiger]

You'll find that your platoon and company commanders are your spotters for aircraft. The artillery FO can only spot for artillery. When I first started work on this campaign, it was possible for any unit, even a sniper, to call in air support but NOT the FO. I pointed this out in the main forum and they must have changed it as now it's only commanders that can call it in.

Sounds like Saudara Part 2 is too easy then. When I playtested it I assumed about 50% core force casualties and not a lot of ammo left. Thus I gave the player the airstrike to even things out a bit. The core force tanks are the wild card. If you lose none in the earlier missions, and it can happen, it makes the later missions very easy. But sometimes you can lose 4-6 of your tanks and it's possible that somebody will have 1 or even no tanks in this one.

I'm waiting for a few folks to finish the whole thing before I make up the final version that will probably only ever be played by me again. If somebody else cruises through this mission, I'll definitely toughen it up for v3.

[Peach Operations]

I had three tanks for Saudara part 2, if that helps.

[Paper Tiger]

Thanks for that. So, three tanks with a full complement of ammo are too much then. There was originally a full company of armour in the Red OB and another platoon of AT-3s but I really wanted people to finish the campaign without too much difficulty rather than have to start from the beginning again. However, I've already made a couple of minor changes to the first two RG Missions for v3 which will probably make them a bit more difficult to get through with your tank force unscathed.

I'm looking forward to hearing how you fare in the final mission though.

[Peach Operations]

Since you asked.. (SPOILER as usual)

I'm looking forward to hearing how you fare in the final mission though.

I finally got around to it.. huge loss. I barely had any SF left. A Co could've been consolidated into a reinforced platoon, if the game allowed reorganizing. It's amazing what a few crack-quality troops can do, though, against an enemy piling his troops through narrow streets. I set up two positions -- one one the edge of Hasrabit market, and the other in the middle / rear of Hasrabit Central. The former devoured forces marching directly on it, the latter messed up rebel troops trying to outflank it (the notion of trying to fix my central sector troops is foreign to the brain-dead AI, but you knew that ). I did need to use reinforcements to stop the (first) flanking maneuver, though.

The big problem came when trying to deliver the volume of suppressing fire needed to conduct counterattacks -- combined with a few stupid mistakes, my troops were out of steam by the time the second rebel wave arrived. The rebels then shredded what I had left in Hasrabit Central and grabbed a foothold in South. I still held parts of Hasrabit South (including market and hospital) at the end, but that was it.

I imagine this might have been easier if I had some reservist forces (beyond the engineers), or some helicopters, or more of my SF left. I'm not sure if there's a way to beat the scenario in the state my forces were in. I could handle my troops better, but each block retaken has its costs, and I just didn't have many troops to spare. That said, the above is a result of the previous battles, not anything inherent in scenario.

[Paper Tiger]

Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like your cores were just too badly beaten up in the earlier missions. I did playtest that one a few times and usually managed to get a win but it was always HARD. I had thought of including the Reserve tanks from Breakout as part of the OB for Hasrabit. After all, what happened to them after Breakout? A bit like what happened to Behrooz (!) in season 4 of 24.

I'll wait and see how others fair with it and it's likely that I'll make those tanks cores for v3 when it finally happens. But it's a bit late for you. Sorry about that.

[handihoc]

Just played the first two scenarios, so here's my feedback.

******SPOILERS!!!!********

Opening battle: very nice 'taster' for what's to come. Not difficult to win, but atmospheric - I like the night setting - and it serves to 'educate' players like me who may not be very familiar with using Syrian troops and weaponry.

Strong Stand. A total blast! Loved it. Had a very hard time of it, though. I started off doing really well, my Specials pretty much hunkered down and waited for the attack, then severely blunted it. Then I made the mistake, as soon as reinforcements arrived, of pushing forward somewhat overconfidently. Died painfully and had to restart. Quite a lesson learned there!

Next time around I was impressed that the AI didn't follow precisely the same attack plan as previously. In fact, it slightly wrongfooted me, as I'd deployed pretty much in anticipation of fighting the exact same battle again. Nice one!

I was more cautious with my main advance this time, but still got punished severely. Biggest problem is those Syrian reserves shooting the crud out of each other. This is an acceptable and enjoyable part of the game, but (I know this has been discussed elsewhere) it does need to be moderated somewhat. My crazy troopers were quite literally their own worst enemy, and persistently shot each other up even at close quarters. I lost a lot of men to FF, and a little too much micro-management was needed.

I also had a nasty surprise when one of my tank shells hit a tree and wiped out a squad and half of friendlies hiding nearby! I'll be a lot more careful in future.

Extremely hard final battle to take the Peach Orchard. Again, I was very impressed at the AI's abilities and at the positioning and response of enemy forces.

A couple of little niggles: I finished with seven minutes to spare but had to wait for final countdown plus a couple more minutes before the game ended. There were very few enemy troops left alive, and none were in the green zones, so it should have finished earlier. And although I got a Total Victory, I wasn't credited for taking The Farm, presumably because, although I'd occupied it earlier, I didn't leave anyone in it when I advanced (?).

Fantastic fun, and my first real experience of Red v Red. It has a very different feel without US troops. Not better, not worse, but more balanced and in certain ways more unpredictable. Looking forward to continuing before the Marines arrive.

[Paper Tiger]

handihoc

glad you're enjoying it. I suspect you'll have enough time to finish it before the Marines module arrives.

If you enjoyed the first two missions, you'll probably really enjoy what's coming very soon. The Red on Red experience is a very different one for so many reasons. The most important is that you can create quite exciting conventional battles in the open and give the human player full access to artillery and air support without overwhelming the poor AI. I have also tried to give each mission it's own particular flavour and allow the player a great deal of flexibilty in how he will approach the mission.

Regarding your niggles, the first is due to the enemy still having enough of it's force intact to prevent it's surrender. BTW, were those enemy units vehicles? I noticed that the BTRs run away quite often from the green zones and hide at the back of the board. Other than that, if you've cleared out the green zones, there really shouldn't be much left and they usually surrender before time runs out.

With regards to the second, yup, it's an occupy victory location. Even that crummy Reserve FO will get you the points as long as there aren't any enemy forces in that zone either. Touch is just too easy to do.

The Republican Guards are up next. They play VERY differently from the Special Forces missions. I'll look forward to hearing how you got on with them.

[ChrisND]

Campaign Complete!

A very enjoyable and challenging campaign. I was usually reluctant to play as the Syrians before this campaign, but I am now convinced they can be a lot of fun.

Lessons learned:

T-72 TURMS, when not up against Abrams, kick ass.

Conscript/green troops are pretty much only good as speed bumps.

Russian tanks are great vs. infantry.

AT-14s rock.

[ May 16, 2008, 04:32 AM: Message edited by: Normal Dude ]

[Paper Tiger]

Normal Dude

hey, good for you. I love those casualty figures. I'm glad that somebody else has successfully completed it. Since I made it, I feel my success doesn't count as I know which units to 'husband' and which ones are more expendable, and I also know exactly what the AI has and doesn't have in each mission. Even then, it was still a challenge, especially the finale, 'Hasrabit'. I guess I got the difficulty just about right then.

I have to confess that when I realised that I couldn't do the kind of campaign I wanted to with US v Syria, I was a bit despondent about having to play as the Syrians. But once I really got started on the campaign, I soon found that the Red side can be good fun too. They also have a good variety of interesting gear, those grenade launchers for one are cool. And, as you pointed out, the T-72 TURMS is the king of the battlefield. 'The Guards Counterattack' mission was called 'Three Kings' before I made the final version because just three of them could take the entire Rebel OB apart in the mission. No need for any infantry, artillery etc, just three tanks. I'm really looking forward to seeing the T-90 shine in this context sometime soon. I have another Red v Red campaign in the works just now and I would like to put in a platoon of T-90s.

The Reserves are barely workable even against other Red troops but I have to confess, I love the OLD tanks. As long as you keep them out of RPG range, they are lethal against infantry in buildings. The T-62MV is my current favourite for MOUT. I have developed my own style of playing the game with these tanks. If I can use these effectively, the M1A1 will be a pussycat to handle.

The AT-14 is lethal in this campaign. It is also incredibly effective against infantry, both when they are targetted and as collateral damage if they're close to a vehicle that gets hit.

Anyway, thanks for posting your thoughts. I know you must be very busy preparing your own much anticipated campaign. As long as it runs with acceptable fps, I for one will definitely give it a go.

[ChrisND]

Originally posted by Paper Tiger:

Normal Dude

hey, good for you. I love those casualty figures. I'm glad that somebody else has successfully completed it. Since I made it, I feel my success doesn't count as I know which units to 'husband' and which ones are more expendable, and I also know exactly what the AI has and doesn't have in each mission. Even then, it was still a challenge, especially the finale, 'Hasrabit'. I guess I got the difficulty just about right then.

I have to confess that when I realised that I couldn't do the kind of campaign I wanted to with US v Syria, I was a bit despondent about having to play as the Syrians. But once I really got started on the campaign, I soon found that the Red side can be good fun too. They also have a good variety of interesting gear, those grenade launchers for one are cool. And, as you pointed out, the T-72 TURMS is the king of the battlefield. 'The Guards Counterattack' mission was called 'Three Kings' before I made the final version because just three of them could take the entire Rebel OB apart in the mission. No need for any infantry, artillery etc, just three tanks. I'm really looking forward to seeing the T-90 shine in this context sometime soon. I have another Red v Red campaign in the works just now and I would like to put in a platoon of T-90s.

The Reserves are barely workable even against other Red troops but I have to confess, I love the OLD tanks. As long as you keep them out of RPG range, they are lethal against infantry in buildings. The T-62MV is my current favourite for MOUT. I have developed my own style of playing the game with these tanks. If I can use these effectively, the M1A1 will be a pussycat to handle.

The AT-14 is lethal in this campaign. It is also incredibly effective against infantry, both when they are targetted and as collateral damage if they're close to a vehicle that gets hit.

Anyway, thanks for posting your thoughts. I know you must be very busy preparing your own much anticipated campaign. As long as it runs with acceptable fps, I for one will definitely give it a go.

I really enjoyed playing with the old Soviet tanks, because you could not take it for granted that their frontal armor would hold up. My core units actually took few casualties, so the last Hasrabit mission was fairly easy for me. Although I can see how challenging it would be if I had taken more casualties. I also perfected the infantry AT rocket ambush thanks to this campaign. That Javelin sure does spoil you.

The Panther campaign is progressing, albeit slowly. A few missions may be problematic FPS wise, but I included instructions on how to increase frame rate, and, failing that, the player is allowed to skip the mission. So if you find two of the missions unplayable, you can still play the campaign.

I also just got struck with a great campaign idea. An M1 Tank Platoon campaign! Based on the old DOS game that I used to absolutely love.

[handihoc]

I completed Counterattack, but it took me three attempts to get a total victory. Initially, as with Strong Stand, I advanced a little too eagerly and paid a heavy price.

******SPOILER!!******

Even with the win, I lost half a dozen vehicles, though my tanks survived. I also lost a lot of inf - which I'm now discovering impacts severely on the next mission, Hill 142.

In this mission my FO is reduced to one man, and all artillery is denied. And when A Company arrive, their inf squads are badly depleted - one of them is down to a single soldier!

This is gonna be a tough one, I think. I've got my scouts nicely placed but, reading the briefing, I see they should be on Hill D. I've moved them to A. Dunno if that's gonna have a negative effect on the outcome, but they've got good visuals on the village, anyway.

It's proving tough advancing down that road. I'm wondering if another FO will arrive who can call in the artillery, as I could sorely do with that support.

Very challenging, very enjoyable, involving a lot of extremely careful movement, but I'm not confident I'm gonna be able to win this one.

btw I see you've released at least one of the battles as a single scenario. That's a great idea. I'd like to be able to replay some of these, and battles from other campaigns - particularly the ones where I've been really challenged.

[Paper Tiger]

Shame to hear about the infantry losses as they will hurt you in the next mission. I designed it so that it would be harder on your tanks but sometimes sh$t happens.

Just two words for you about the Republican Guards missions: AREA FIRE. They have lots of ammo, all the best models of the RPG-7, as well as the BMP-2 whose 30mm cannon is a much more effective weapon both against vehicles (not tanks) and infantry alike than the BMP-1's cannon (although I love it too). The T-72 TURMS is also great in the role of infantry support. So, before sending your boys into harm's way, pound the crap out of that position first, especially buildings. Don't wait for them to shoot at you first, stick a round or an RPG into each building level or suspected enemy position and your infantry casualties will drop off drastically.

Heh heh. If you think these two missions are tough, wait 'till you get to 'The Barrier'. No more spoilers but... be afraid.

[Wiggum]

Is "v2" the final version or will "v3" be out soon ?

I ask because if "v3" will be out soon i will wait to this.

[Paper Tiger]

It's already done, mate. I'm just waiting for the Marines module to arrive and see what changes are made to the game and make any adjustments necessary before finally laying this one to rest. I don't want to do a v4.

The changes that have already been made to v2 are as follows:

a) Three Republican Guards missions, (Guards Counterattack, Hill 142 and Saudara Part 2) have all been made slightly more difficult.

The map for Saudara Part 1 has been altered slightly to allow the player's reinforcements to arrive out of LoS of an enemy ATGM team.

c) All the missions have had their core forces synched with the final core units file. All core units will get tired as the campaign progresses rather than some starting out tired.

d) Since Normal Dude completed the whole thing successfully, I'm not sure if this change will stand but, right now, it's possible for the player to receive some tank support in the final mission depending on how he got there.

e) I made a small change to the victory conditions in The Barrier to make it easier for players to keep the airfield open. But you'll still have to fight very hard to do this.

f) I found and corrected an error in the campaign script that didn't lead to the proper branch. However, as you really have to screw up quite badly in the campaign to find this branch, nobody has reported this problem.

g) small typos and mistakes in the briefings have been corrected.

If you haven't done so already, you can try out the new version of Hill 142 and also The Farm missions. I posted stand-alone versions of both these missions at CMMODS a couple of weeks ago. I liked the changes I made to Hill 142 so much that I introduced them to the campaign mission.

I'm already working hard on my next project and hopefully, it should be finished soon.

[gmfrank]

Pandur

I completed the campaign the other day. I didn't feel that the final mission was overly difficult with the resources given to me... and trust me a few of my core platoons had taken an absolute beating over the campaign...

Ammunition was the only tricky part, but I hazard that was your objective in the mission. Lots of supply runs back to the BTR's to fill up on ammo!

Overall good campaign, I enjoyed it immensely!

[Paper Tiger]

gmfrank

I presume you meant me?

That's good to hear. Over the weekend, I'll amend this again to remove the tanks as it sounds doable without them. I did it without tanks when I playtested it but my experience playing the campaign is obviously going to be different from you guys'.

Yes, the limited ammo was intentional. If you have a few RPG teams left with full ammo, the mission isn't that hard to beat as they're SO effective against infantry in buildings and in the open. That supply depot also provides you with a serious incentive to protect the southern part of the town.

Just out of curiosity, which was your favourite mission?

[gmfrank]

Paper Tiger... (not pandur) Let's how many times I can write something that makes no sense in this thread...

I would have to say my favorite mission was the "boys are back in town" mission.

SPOILERS

Throwing a company against my recon element supported only by two BMP's was pretty intense, especially when my only ATGM was unable to take out any of the T-62s as they rushed to cemetery hill. I only had two T-72 TURMS arriving in the mission, and had to play some serious shoot and scoot to take out the T-62s holding that hill. Then I finally enjoyed a good knock out brawl in the city supported by tons of BMP's and my T-72's on the ridges overlooking the town. It had it all for me! I did like the epic armor on armor stand in the proceeding mission (i have forgotten its name off the top of my head).

One question about that mission though... the enemy ATGM teams were hiding in the corner of the map near the largest hill where the briefing had suspected them to be. They didn't have much of a LOS/LOF on any of my units and ended up surrendering without firing a shot when I took the town. Was that intentional? Perhaps I didn't take any routes that would have open me up to a flank attack by them...

[Wiggum]

Thanks for the answer Paper Tiger !

[Paper Tiger]

gmfrank

groan... I checked it out and there was an old AI plan that I thought I'd disabled but I hadn't. Ach well, it's gone now so that's another change that can be added to the list for v3