Milk Run has me ducking for cover...Any advice..

[Falconander]

Hey,

I am not going to moan and groan and say how unfair the game is, because we all know this is not meant to be a walk in the park. Here I am on Milk Run though and I being bombarded like freaking crazy. I 'had' lots of troops left over from previous missions and decided to park the vehicles and exit the crews to do the infantry screen. Needless to say, their artillery came down. I would scatter and it would rain down again. This went on for over an hour. I looked up and saw that I had 29 minutes left and was still cat and mousing with the artillery. This stuff poured down at times with at least 60 rounds raining down 6-10 at a time.

I mean this looked like the finall finale at a fireworks show the only problem was that it never stopped. So after seeing my time depleted and my forces cut to 30% strength and half of them cowering, I decided to just storm down to the lower bridge and through the village emerging on their flank and essentially taking the battle to them.

The question is, should I have done this from the start? I am going to try again and this time keep everyone in vehicles and try and take them by force. It looks like one of those scenarios that you don't have the luxury of sitting still. I tried to hide my stuff in trees, in back of buildings, on lower floors, in ditches but I tell you even though 1/2 of their stuff missed while I smiled that things were looking better, the other 1/2 was brutal.

I have a lot to move around as well so I am almost tempted to do WEGO but I have a feeling that it would take FOREVER and just like the RT aspect.

As a side note, the fixed wing support was awesome and even though my tubes were dry, i had managed to get some shots off so Armor was not a real threat nor Anti-tank, nor infantry. I just could not effectively deal with that artillery.

Enough said... any pointers to lessen their punch or scoot my men through the fire?

[Atago]

I had the same problem. One thing I did was to use my Humvee's to act as decoys and bring in artillery. After a few enemy spotting rounds I'd scoot them off a ways and repeat. The Syrians seem to really hate Hummers!

One other thing I have done is try to figure out where the spotter may be, and give him something else to think about. Doesn't always work, but sometimes it seems to help.

In Milk Run I believe I just kept my infantry in their vehicles and scooted the vehicles around when spotting rounds started falling. That way when they fire for effect there is nothing there.

I have not found a good answer to enemy artillery other than keeping on the move - sometimes running squads quickly a few hundred yards to get out from under where the fire for effect will fall. My main problem is when I've got enemy ATGM's or RPG's endangering my armor and artillery endangering my infantry. I've not found a good answer for that situation yet.

[Falconander]

Atago,

Thanks for the input. I had read some of your previous posts about painting the bullseye on your hummers and driving them around. One of the problems that I am running into is that they don't seem to run out of ammo. So naturally I am dashing people franticaly around trying to avoid the incoming fire.

I think some places have a TRP coded into them so any spot that would naturally look good is probably a death trap. So actually, it is quit intense as I am second guessing myself a lot, which is death itself in this mission.

My next go around I am going to keep the infantry in the vehicles and take a change with that. I'll take your advice about trying to 'occupy' the FOs. Course, anyone cal call in Arty but at least get to those with the best fields of view.

I found that if you gain superiority of firepower, the ATGMs are not as bad as a problem. I usually try and have 2-3 vehicles in a position with optimally 2-3 spots that they have view from. So if they see enemy armor they can engage and hopefully as one reloads the other is cooking off a round. As soon as you realize you have gained superiority (No one is dying:)) I bring up the flank or a second line forward.

This all works well in absence of a HUGE amount of artillery on their side. So the creeping line approach needs to be discarded partially on this mission.

What I have noticed that soon as you are across the lowest bridge, the battle gets easier. The farthest treeline still has some fellas hanging out but for the most part you can sweep from the bridge/village across the road.

There might be some armor left over depending on your airstrikes. So I bring up my AT guys to the high ridge at this point.

I have been using the hummers as well to either directly engage or driving up close and dismounting the small squad to root out the baddies. See there is more you can do with a hummer than watch it burn;)

[Atago]

Once more, keep in mind I am probably no one to be giving advice - I am still learning this blasted addicting $*$&@ game!

I am not certain of this, but I have seen that when you are playing the Syrians side in a battle that only the spotters can typically call in artillery. Even leaders (flags) can't, though I am not sure this is always the case. So that means that the spotter cannot see everywhere. If he does see you and calls in artillery you may be able to figure out where he's at. I did this with some success in Pooh (yes, I cheated later to see where the bastards were hiding - there were 3 of them).

I don't know why the Syrians hate the humvees so much, and I think it's gamey to use them the way I do - but hey, gotta keep my boys from the grinder somehow!

In observing how the A.I. calls down artillery - it doesn't seem to call in area fire too often (though it's not always easy to tell). Just making sure no one is where they were when the spotting round started seems to work fairly well (make sure no one is in the same place someone else started either - found out the hard way to be careful of that).

Hope I'm of some help. I didn't see anyone else answering so figured I'd do what I could to help out. Best of luck to you, I still haven't exactly figured out how to deal with "uncle Arty" myself.

[NewSocialistMan]

As with all things Marine, smoke is your friend.

It took me until about the third scenario to figure out that the way I use Marines needs to be entirely different from how I use Army soldiers. You can't just sit back and let the technology do the work. You don't have the logistical tail to allow you to trade artillery shells with the enemy or the mech units necessary to let ordinance do the work. You need to close into knife range and rip the other SOB's guts out with a Kabar.

Probe forward with your infantry until the enemy reveals himself. Then, go to ground, call in smoke to cut off his LOS, rush up to knife range, area fire the hell out of his position, and assault. Repeat this until you have secured the position.

In the specific case of Milk Run, this is accomplished with the judicious help of Lima Battery and the Harriers to take out the heavy armor and the M1A1's to take out light armor from the hull down positions on both of the peaks.

The elevated road in the middle of the board gives you a natural position in which to divide the map in half. Bring a decent sized fire team up to the bridge under the cover of smoke and it will let you rain down (or up) fire toward one half of the board while being fully immue to fire from the other. Just be mindful that the armor column shows up at the upper right hand corner. A harrier strike usually deals with that pretty handily, but make sure your recon folks are in place to call in the strike.

Smoke will let you cover a tremendous amount of distance quickly and once you're in knife range, you tend to kick ass in the trenches.

[SgtMuhammed]

Good advice.

Believe it or not neither this map nor Pooh were designed with any specific approach in mind. I just tried to recreate what I saw in the Google Earth and other sat photos. There are multiple ways to approach this one. Lately I have been having success pushing hard from the left but I have also pushed in the center and on the right and triumphed.

It is interesting to see that the AI arty is being so responsive. Kind of warms the cockles of my heart, maybe lower, maybe the sub-cockles.

[Falconander]

SgtMuhammed,

Normally I'd want to extract some form of vengeance against you for killing my boys in such a 'hand of God' way but after I let my emotions calm down I am left with nothing left but admiration. I have logged many years of every combat game out there and this is one of the first where I have been impressed with the Arty. Though COH is impressive (graphically) and Faces of War is also quite fun destroying buildings.... Even though I mention these, I don't remember being AFRAID to move my troops about playing these games.

I'll even give you credit for the rounds that land in the middle of a pasture with no one around. These are still enough to keep me in check and evaluating, carefully my next move.

Last attempt had me bringing a force, not on the road (I am chicken to think what dastardly fate would await such a bold strategy) but onto the ridge in the middle. After I gained superiority of fire, it was kind of fun seeing those little suckers get pounded.

Yeah, I found out by default (Pop smoke and get us the hell out of here) that smoke works pretty well. Though I did not think about concealment against arty... interesting....

Atago,

yeah, you owe some advice seeing how you have a huge thread guiding you through a scenario. It is good to see you did not hang things up on this game. After all, we have to get through this thing together.

I got sucked back into Medieval Total War lately prepping for the next game in that series. But I will be back at Milk Run soon.

I've learned to save after the Sniper probes (my only saves allowed) so that I don't have to go through the 45 minute prob over and over.

Try the humvee dismouonted 4 man recon. Not only does it save the Hummer and any ammo it has, but those boys are pretty effective at hunting out those last entrenched positions and than rooting them out.

[Atago]

Falconander -

I still have found the humvees to be one of the best targets there are. First, they are low value compared to any other vehicle. Second, the AI seems to really, REALLY hate them and often seems to give their positions away shooting at them. The Humvee is pretty fast too - I have zipped them around to draw ATGM fire at times, noting that the missiles all miss - and now I know where the lauchers are!

Pooh was a biatch. I only got through by cheating - not intentionally, but after a while I just knew where stuff was at and where to spot from. I wonder if anyone has ever gotten through that one the first time (and I'm not entirely sure I'd believe anyone that said they did anyhow!).

Smoke - it's great, but there is so few rounds with any given artillery battery or mortar. I find that like with the artillery itself, it's often limited enough that I become afraid to use it in case I find a situation later in the scenario where I really need it badly.

I look forward to getting Pooh and Milk run as stand alone scenarios (perhaps with different AI plans just to make them more interesting).

[Chainsaw]

Pooh was a biatch. I only got through by cheating - not intentionally, but after a while I just knew where stuff was at and where to spot from. I wonder if anyone has ever gotten through that one the first time (and I'm not entirely sure I'd believe anyone that said they did anyhow!).

depends on how you look at it... I managed it on the 2nd try as on the first try the computer hanged itself (memory crash thingy) but on the first try my scouts had just entered the first houses on the right side.

so If you dont count the 1st try that crashed I actually did manage it on my first attempt, but with pretty heavy casualtysand ALLOT of them due to ****ing mines. never got arty on me thoe.

/Thomas

[Atago]

depends on how you look at it... I managed it on the 2nd try as on the first try the computer hanged itself (memory crash thingy) but on the first try my scouts had just entered the first houses on the right side.

so If you dont count the 1st try that crashed I actually did manage it on my first attempt, but with pretty heavy casualtysand ALLOT of them due to ****ing mines. never got arty on me thoe.

/Thomas

I'd love to see how you did it. I don't doubt too much that it's possible, but geez this one caused me problems and I dug up some swear words I havn't used since I was in the Navy 18 years ago!

I ran into problems with artillery when I move troops on foot. If I keep them in their "rides" then the ATGM's cream 'em. Tanks were not proof to the ATGm's either, I lost one or two to BMP-3 attack on a few occasions. I never found a balance of being able to keep mutual support between armor and troops and keep it all moving forward fast enough so as not to "find" artillery or ATGM's the hard way.

[SgtMuhammed]

Forgive me while I chuckle evilly.

[Falconander]

Grrrrrrr.... freaking wacko !

After I finish Milk Run, I am going to take one of their spotters, strap him on to the hood of my Hummer and drive him into the nearest minefield. If the mines don't get him than maybe the Arty will.....

Oh man that would be sweet.... POWs. That would solve the figuring out where minefields are. Just do the POW forward sweep.

OK.. .request 532,467 is to let us capture POWs and being able to simulate what we want with them. Cmon I know it might take 500 man hours of time to do this but think of the joy you would bring to us as we had the ability to throw people off of roofs or interrogate them.

[Chainsaw]

I'd love to see how you did it. I don't doubt too much that it's possible, but geez this one caused me problems and I dug up some swear words I havn't used since I was in the Navy 18 years ago!

I ran into problems with artillery when I move troops on foot. If I keep them in their "rides" then the ATGM's cream 'em. Tanks were not proof to the ATGm's either, I lost one or two to BMP-3 attack on a few occasions. I never found a balance of being able to keep mutual support between armor and troops and keep it all moving forward fast enough so as not to "find" artillery or ATGM's the hard way.

No savegames left of it, and the only picture I did was this one to enlighten how pissed of I was/still am on the ****ing mines

But pretty much this:

Scouts with LAV-25 up on the right flank, foot mobile recon on the left flank with HQ on the hill serving as Arty Spotter.

started clearing right flank with the recon teams.

when the AAP-7 Coy spawned they where sent to the right flank thrue the woods, keeping them of the open fields in the center.

assaulted inwards from the right flank with the company and the pioner platoon assaulted forward against the buildings on the right side, getting pretty much slaughtered in the process.

when the company in MTVR spawned they where sent same way as the AAV coy. so I pretty much tooked the town from the right flank.

the few recon that was left on the right side sidetracked along the right side and crossed the small "river" and tooked the objective there, just to get flatten by the spawning countereattack wich I stopped with humwee and MTVR .50 fire (thats how I lost all those MTVR to mines)

Pounded the center with 155mm and the ATGM house with 81mm or if it was 60mm you got?

I guess I got lucky there as on the left side my recon foot mobile teams got "eliminated" by the ATGMs, so Ive spotted the ATGMs in a early stage and could nail them with arty.

My biggest problem was to tackle the tank counterattack with my last remaining M1. and there was some pretty heavy fighting in the houses with heavy casualtys but nothing that stopped my advance really.

But boy I hate mines......

[Drusus]

Once you figure out that you have almost endless amount of firepower in the AAVs the milk run mission is rather easy. Scout with hummers or M1s to see where the enemy has AT assets. Then blast those positions with AAVs using area fire. You can shoot crazy amounts of those 40mm shells and be nowhere near out of ammo.

Advance cautiously and pound every enemy infantry position to oblivion with AAVs. You might want to have a squad or two advancing in front of the AAVs, and of course have the Javelins in over watch.

When advancing the AAVs it might be a good idea to set the area target to suspected / spotted enemy positions. Do it by advancing the way point inch-by-inch and every time checking if you have line of fire to the wanted area fire target. Do not advance too far, or you will be facing all of the defenders at the same time. This is something you want to avoid.

I have learned the hard way that infantry without over watch and preferably suppressing fire to suspected enemy positions will not get anywhere.

In this particular scenario you don't actually need to use infantry that much, as you have ridiculous amounts of 40mm shells to use.