The Road to Dinas - Red v Red Campaign

[Paper Tiger]

Finally, after literally hundreds of hours of hard work (again!), the 'Road to Dinas' campaign is available for downloading in two flavours.

For those who wish to play a fully dynamic campaign where the results of each mission have a strong influence on the events in the following missions, the full campaign is available at the Repository in the Marines sub folder.

Recognising that most of you would rather play a linear version, a much smaller download is also available at the Repository and will be available at CMMODS later this weekend. In the linear version, you must get a victory in each mission before you can progress to the next one.

Please note, this is a RED v RED campaign and so will not be to everyone's taste. Further, you will require the MARINES module before you can play it. In this 15 mission campaign set during the same fictional Syrian civil war that was the backdrop for my 'Hasrabit' campaign, you will command two Battalion Groups of Rebel forces through 24 hours of action as they attempt to overwhelm forces loyal to the regime. However, unlike 'Hasrabit', you will generally have the inferior equipment, especially when you come up against you main opponent, the 3rd Armour Division.

Important Note

There are NO T-90s or BMP-3s in this campaign. If there were, the enemy would have them and not you. However, there are Airborne Units (Enemy side only guys) and some cool (!) new BRDM-2 AT-5 ATGM vehicles (Hey, I LIKE them:D) from the MARINES module. So what DO you get?

Your Core Forces

You command what amounts to an entire Syrian Mech Infantry Regiment divided into two Battalion Groups, imaginatively named A and B. Group A's Mech Infantry Company rides the BTR-60PB and their attached Tank Company is equipped with the T-72M from the bottom end of the Regular tank unit's roster. Their mission will be to drive straight along the main road to Dinas.

Group B's Mech Infantry Company rides the superior BMP-1P and their attached Tank Company is equipped with the T-62MV. Their mission will be to go around the flanks of the defenders and attack Dinas from the rear.

Further, there are two other Tank Companies, both equipped with the T-55MV, the best tanks and crews in your force. They will only be released to you when you make contact with forces of the 3rd later in the day.

There are a number of Regimental assets that you will be able to use:

a full company of Crack Engineers,

a reduced plaoon of BRDM-2 AT-5 ATGM vehicles,

a section of BM-21 Heavy Rocket Artillery.

The latter will most often be available to you when you are attacking villages or towns.

As explained in the campaign briefing, during some of the early morning missions, you will also be able to call on some helicopters for support. Once again, these are core forces so after their ammo is expended, these assets are lost for the duration of the campaign.

Artillery Management

If you go crazy and use all the artillery assets assigned to you in a single mission, at first you'll be complaining to me that it's just too easy. And then, a few missions further into the campaign and you'll be complaining that it's now too tough... "Hey PT , what happened to all my arillery support? I NEED it!" It's certainly true that a generous amount of artillery in the first mission will practically hand you the win before the real shooting starts but you'll pay for that easy victory later. So you'll have to plan your artillery missions a bit more thoughtfully. You have a lot but it will soon run out if you go crazy with it. By all means USE it but perhaps you could try using tighter artillery zones and use one tube instead of two?

Campaign Structure

There are three distinct phases in the campaign:

Phase 1 which sees both Battalion Groups move to seize their morning objectives: Group A, the large hill designated 'Sagger Point' and for Group B, the military airbase at Sulit.

Depending on your success in Phase 1, your forces will receive fresh supplies before embarking on Phase 2 of their mission, the battles for the bridges over the river Tumah. It is in this phase when you will first encounter the forces of the 3rd Armoured Division.

Finally, in Phase 3, what remains of your core forces will conduct an assault on the town of Dinas itself in the early hours of the morning, Group B from the north, Group A from the south.

In the early stages of the campaign, you will mostly be facing quaking and confused conscript or green troops and tanks as they are thrown into the fray of battle by their commanders in a desperate attempt to delay your advance. However, as the campaign progresses, you will eventually come into contact with the forces of the 3rd Armoured Division, an Elite formation that is equipped with tanks and crews that are superior to your own.

For those of you who choose to play the dynamic campaign, you will find that the enemy will react to your successes. You may find yourself confronting a superior OrBat or being on the receiving end of enemy air power in a later mission. This is because the most threatened sections of the front will receive the better forces from the enemy High Command. While success is always rewarded, you may find that the less-than-optimal path to the finale is the easier of the two journeys. So don't be surprised if you read in a thread here that someone only faced conscripts in mission 10 while you fought Special Forces or you got hammered by an air strike but they didn't. It just means that they failed to win one of the earlier missions while you won it. Following the optimal path to the finale will give you a much better chance to repair vehicles and equipment damaged during each mission. Failing one or more missions in a single Phase will give you a much reduced chance of repairs in the following missions until you get yourself back on the winning track.

Victory Conditions

I have tried to be consistent with the scenario victory parameters throughout the campaign. I have striven to allow the human player to choose his own path to victory within a single mission. You will rarely be tasked with controlling every VP location on the board. Instead, you will find that you have to control at least one of them exclusively and contest control of the others with the AI when the mission ends. This will give you some flexibility in how you approach each mission.

In a campaign, winning individual missions while taking high casualties is already punished by you having to fight later battles with a significantly reduced force. If you are consistently winning each mission and earning the Friendly Force Preservation bonus, then you're doing well. If the AI is earning the Enemy Casualty bonus, then things are not going so well for you. In a few missions it will not be possible for you to win without taking heavy casualties. Don't fret when this happens as the core units following missions have been designed and playtested to take account of this.

Determining Victory

When you play each mission, the campaign script will determine that you won the mission if you managed to get a 'Minor Victory' or better. A 'Draw' or any loss in ANY mission will be treated as a loss by the campaign script. Losing a combination of earlier missions in the campaign will also result in the campaign terminating. When there is a possiblity of this happening you will be informed of it in your briefing.

Since it's a long campaign and your core forces will see action at least TWICE in the course of playing it, you may be worried about taking casualties. As a general rule of thumb, in Phase 1 missions, if you are earning your Friendly Force Preservation bonus, then you're doing really well so don't worry. You can afford to get wins without earning this bonus occassionally as well so don't panic if you dont get it.

Mission List

Phase 1

1 Petani - Shock and Awe

2 Hit and Run

3 Orchard Road

4 Sabatani

5 Suib

6 Sulit Airfield

7 Depot mission (resupply only)

8 SAM Hill

9 Sagger Point

10 Depot mission (resupply only)

Phase 2

11 Road to Amarah

12 Where Farmers Dare

13 Tumah Crossing or Jameela*

14 Jameela or Tumah Crossing*

15 The Lakes*

Phase 3

16 Perdition's Flames

17 Dinas - The Agony of Doom.

* denotes that a failure to win this mission will result in the campaign terminating in the DYNAMIC version only

Phew. That's all. Enjoy...PT:D

[Pandur]

sounds exellent. i download it now and start the first battle, its 0630 here and iam "still" awake, but well, they enemy doesnt sleep too

i didnt played your Perdition campain after hasrabit and i got a question wich isnt a real spoiler so you should be able to answer it i guess without spoiler warnign.

is it like in Hasrabit where one sometimes "needs" his force shot up partly pretty bad becouse...

1st) the mission is meant to be that hard and,

2nd) if you save/load yourself through it, will result in an unpratically high amount of units in the last few missions and thats why these missions are meant to reduce your force considerable!?

just so i know what iam up to.

thanks,

[bodkin]

Bah! I tried to download but kept getting a message saying "550 CWD failed The road to Dinas (linear). 172.rar file not found" or something. Then it said I've downloaded the file too many times today! I really hope the Cmmods version goes up soon.

[Pandur]

Bah! I tried to download but kept getting a message saying.....172.rar file not found".....

what you thought, i downloaded it first, i got it now and noone else *evil*

[stoex]

Sounds absolutely awesome, PT!

Downloading now...still on my v1.11 attempt at Hasrabit, so I think I will finish that first to get in the spirit.

Nah heck, I'll look at mission 1 of Dimas right now *slobber, drool*....

Thanks again for a s***load of work which I'm certain has resulted in an excellent campaign!

[handihoc]

Time to cancel all social engagements!

Thanks PT. Gonna download now, if I can, and will start very soon. Just got a couple of single scenarios I want to play out first.

Greatly looking forward to this!

[Mikkey]

Thanks PT, nice start of weekend!

[gmfrank]

Yessssssssss I've been waiting for this for a while!

[kipanderson]

PT,

Looks superb… greatly looking forward to it..

If it is anything like Hill 143, the only one of your scenarios I have played… it will be very tough… but stunningly high quality in every way….

Thanks,

All the best,

Kip.

[Gpig]

Looks amazing. Can't wait to play it.

Thanks for your contributions PT.

Gpig

[Delta228]

YAY.....thats all i have to say

[CogNative]

"Finally, after literally hundreds of hours of hard work (again!), the 'Road to Dinas' campaign is available for downloading in two flavours."

Your "Mission List" alone is daunting.

I look forward tot the many hours of intense entertainment.

Thank you Paper Tiger.

[cmfan]

I'm going to download these right now. I can't wait to play them!

[Paper Tiger]

Hi Pandur

is it like in Hasrabit where one sometimes "needs" his force shot up partly pretty bad becouse...

1st) the mission is meant to be that hard and,

2nd) if you save/load yourself through it, will result in an unpratically high amount of units in the last few missions and thats why these missions are meant to reduce your force considerable!?

Yes, and yes... although I have played the final mission with Blue's full OB present. It plays like a dog but it DOES play. It would be more realistic to think between 35-50% force reducton through casualties. If you're lucky enough to get through the entire thing with nearly your full OB, well, just play it in WEGo and you probably won't have any problems handling nearly a full battalion in the finale.:eek:

Look forward to getting some feedback from you guys REAL soon... Hope you enjoy it.

cheers

PT

[handihoc]

Well, I've started the first and got one side of my ass kicked in the opening minutes. Shouldn't've assumed that because they're low quality defenders they would be ineffective!

Superb map, PT, and the battle's shaping up to be quite a toughie, with lots going on and some very tricky streetfighting required.

[Panzerfest]

WooHoo! Thanks again PT, looks great!

[Dietrich]

Awesome! Thanks very much, Paper Tiger. I dig Red-vs-Red scenarios, since I don't have to worry as much about getting owned by the AI since it doesn't have just-plain-better equipment than me.

[bodkin]

I'm trying to download the linear campaign file using Firefox 2.0 and Download Express with XP SP3, but everytime it gets to about 18mb it says can't find file and I have to reload the download from scratch with the same results. I'm not using any proxies or anything, has anyone else had this problem with this file? Other files from the Repository I've downloaded ok but for some reason this one is causing me major frustration.

[afreu]

Thanks a lot PT! I'm currently at Suib, liked very much what I've played so far.

[handihoc]

Just finished Mission 1: Petani.

Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!

Love the map, particularly the layout of the village/town. All those narrow streets and tricky alleyways, complexes of houses, courtyards, little squares etc. Very real feeling, and very atmospheric, especially with the pre-dawn light. It's the first time I've ever noticed traffic lights, too!

And those enemy conscripts put up a hell of a fight! I eventually got a surrender and Total Victory, with 5 men dead, 12 wounded, but that was with the help of several saves and restarts, so realistically it was a very tough fight with some extremely nasty and effective surprises.

I think you've excelled yourself here, PT. If this opener is a reliable indicator of what's to come . . . Wow!

[Paper Tiger]

handihoc:

I often play Petani as a stand alone mission just for fun as I love it so much. It sounds like you got a good result. My best result with the final version was 6 men killed, 7 wounded but also 1 tank lost... ouch! Those Conscripts have the worst morale settings too yet they can still put the hurt on you.

You'll probably like all the little towns and villages in the campaign if you liked the Petani layout. There are four such missions: Petani, Sabatani, Suib and Jameela. However, the Phase 1 map I'm looking forward to getting feedback on is 'Sulit Airfield'. I'm very proud of THAT one. We'll see what you guys think soon.

[afreu]

Am I going to need the forces from the Suib mission for a another mission?

Because with 27 casualties and a couple of vehicles shot up alone in this mission all three platoons are now more or less at squad strength :[

Suib's been the toughed mission yet. Managed to succeed in all previous missions with relatively few casualties. Perhaps it was the lack of potent direct fire support that made Suib such a hard nut.

I also lost my battalion command group to a lucky enemy mortar shot. Is that going to affect me later in the campaign?

Btw, I love your campaign PT! Great maps, great unit placements, great atmosphere and excellent meta campaign.

[Paper Tiger]

Because with 27 casualties and a couple of vehicles shot up alone in this mission all three platoons are now more or less at squad strength :[

Interesting! I wonder if you are doing what I was doing when I designed 'Hasrabit'. During playtesting the later missions of that campaign, I had a large number of BMP-2s with next to no soldiers. Because of their ability to resupply my troops I was too cautious about putting them in harms way in the earlier missions and as a result, would end up taking really bad infantry casualties instead.

So I changed my tactics and found that aggressively supporting my infantry with my BMP-2s resulted in substantially lower infantry casualties but, quite naturally, much higher BMP casualties.

While nowhere near as good as the Guard's BMP-2, (not to mention the BMP-3!) your BMP-1s are actually quite good at providing fire support especially if you use a few of them in concert to work on the trickier positions. I had a lot of fun playing this one listening to my helicopters screeching in and the crack of the BMP-1's cannon while advancing my infantry to fire positions on the south bank of the dry river.

To answer your original question... yes, they will see action again but the casualties have been taken into account in their next mission. Although, if your company is down to about the equivalent of one platoon, it might prove tough to beat. When playtesting this particular 'thread' of the campaign, C Company could do both Petani and Suib with less than 33% casualties and be in good shape for their next mission. However, quite a few of them would be walking...

As to losing your Battalion Command group, it'll definitely hurt the speed with which you can call in your artillery if you keep your Battalion FOS close to him. I did notice some definite C2 benefits from having the Battalion Group present too when I was playtesting Group B's final mission with 2 or more companies from the same battalion too. Otherwise, as long as you still have your Company commanders, it's no big deal.

[zmoney]

I am on the fourth battle now and just wanted to say that this is a really fun campaign. I've taken more casualties than I thought I would but have been able to force the enemy to surrender in every battle but the second. Mostly just wanted to say good job on this and its appreciated.

[handihoc]

Just completed Orchard Road. Another great map. It had a pleasing touch of Normandy, or maybe Italy, about it, especially in the early stages, taking the three yellow locations. In fact, I wondered whether that half of the map was loosely based on an early TOW Normandy map that I remember playing quite a while back (can't remember the name), as there were a few similarities?

Really good fun, advancing cautiously, engaging and taking out the enemy as I came upon them. Some very fierce firefights in places.

I got a surrender with Total Victory with nine men killed, fourteen wounded and three BTRs destroyed. I still had forty minutes to spare, so I would say it could have been a little beefier in the latter stages, given the two hours plus time limit which allows lots of time for thought and manouevre.

One question: shouldn't I have taken some enemy artillery fire? There were two enemy FO's still alive at the end who I think would've had a decent line of sight to some of my positions for quite a while. There's been no artillery fire in the three battles so far.

Anyway, on to Battle Four. Greatly enjoying this campaign!