Marines Campaign

[Beardo1976]

Hey guys,

I'm a couple of missions into the Marines campaign and have a question.

I am currently playing the mountain pass mission where I need to take the top of a steep hill (Hill 765). I did so with about 27 minutes left to spare so I headed down the backside to attack the small town at the edge of the map (also marked as a victory zone). After taking the town and the time expiring, the mission did not end. I am currently in "red time" and cannot get the mission to complete. Does anyone have any idea what may be causing this? This is the first time I have not completed a mission and was able to take the hill and village with very light casualties. I'd really hate to have to play the whole thing over again! Help!

Jason

[slug88]

Going into "over time" is purely random, it has nothing to do with the state of the mission. In other words, it's not that you did anything wrong, or that there's a problem with the game, it's just that you were lucky enough to be granted some extra time to complete the mission. If you are satisfied with the current state of the mission, just click Cease Fire. Along with waiting for the time to run out, enacting a Cease Fire is a standard way of ending a mission.

[Beardo1976]

Perfect, thanks! I'm on to the next mission!

[Beardo1976]

So I was playing the Marines campaign last night, I believe it was the SNAFU mission (not sure on the name), where the Marines had to rush across the board and save a US Army Scout group from ambush. I had an FO calling down artillery, A-10's, Apaches and Little Birds and he literally saved the day for the US Army troops. 8 vehicle kills and another 20-30 enemy troops killed before the game was over (all from this two man unit). Each turn the sounds of artillery raining down, jets and helicopters zooming overhead and the constant radio chatter was VERY intense. A very cool "WOW" kinda moment.

Great job on the missions in the campaign, I'm having a blast with it!

[Alan8325]

And with the Brits module the maximum time for scenarios is going to be extended to 4 hours. That should make for some pretty long, marathon-like battles that test your ability to conserve ammo. I'll bet it increases the calls for side-arms, melee combat, and/or the ability to use captured enemy weapons.

[slug88]

And with the Brits module the maximum time for scenarios is going to be extended to 4 hours. That should make for some pretty long, marathon-like battles that test your ability to conserve ammo. I'll bet it increases the calls for side-arms, melee combat, and/or the ability to use captured enemy weapons.

And then the BFC team will remember why they set it to 2 hours in the first place .

[dan/california]

No, it will increase the calls for a full logistics simulation. However, you can set up the ammo carriers of your choosing as reinforcements now as I understand it. It would be nice if you could add more ammo in place of soldiers but it still works.

BFC could add an ammo truck to the TO&E. Maybe... Please?

[Alan8325]

No, it will increase the calls for a full logistics simulation. However, you can set up the ammo carriers of your choosing as reinforcements now as I understand it. It would be nice if you could add more ammo in place of soldiers but it still works.

BFC could add an ammo truck to the TO&E. Maybe... Please?

The Marine MTVRs already seem to carry tons of ammo. I'm actually surprised that, assuming they are rendered at full scale in the game, they can carry as many Marines as they do AND all that ammo realistically. Since the Marines inside are depicted graphically, it definitely looks like there is no more room inside for anything else.

[General Jack Ripper]

The MTVR works fine as an ammo truck. I even set up a drill where I detach the anti-tank team from the squad, load them up with ammo, and send them back to the squad to pass it out.

One thing that would be nice however, is the ability to 'aquire' ammo when deploying troops in the editor.

[Chainsaw]

A huge problem is that we cant reload vehicles... we can fill upp our dismounts with so much ammo their *******s hits the ground when they walk, but we cant fill upp our vehicles...

In a 4 hours scenario there is plenty of time to do a combat resupply of the tanks, IFVs and humwes. My vehicles often runs out of ammo and if the scenario will be 4 hours long there is a big chance resupply would have been scheduled.

a nice solution would be some HEMMT truck that you drive upp to, a "aquire" box shows up and you choose what you want, then the tank gets a paus icon or something showing how long time it will take. ofcourse you can abort it anytime (situation depending) and then you only got what you had time to grabb.

But I guess its to late for CMSF to have that, Maybe the modern temperate will have it thoe?

Steelbeasts pro has the refuel/rearm feature and its a wonder in long battles!

[YankeeDog]

Vehicle resupply just isn't that simple and is going to take a lot of coding to get into the game in any realistic manner. For starters, some vehicle weapons systems are a lot harder to resupply than others. Dropping a few more .50 cal ammo boxes into a Stryker, no big deal. But loading an M1's 120mm lockers is a whole different animal. Those buggers are heavy. Realistically, vehicle ammo resupply of anything other than small stuff should be something that's limited very safe areas. You don't open up the hatches on an M1 and start tossing 120mm rounds around unless you're pretty certain there's no chance of incoming fire.

And then, if you're going to do ammo, for a 4-hour scenario, you really should consider fuel resupply as well; M1s especially burn through fuel like crazy, and the turbine engine design means they still burn a lot of fuel when they're not moving. So unless the tanks are starting with their tanks topped off, the fuel gauge might well be getting down to "E" before the 4-hour mark.

I actually think the best option for vehicle resupply (ammo or fuel) would be something like giving the scenario designer the OPTION of setting a condition where, if a vehicle is driven off the friendly edge of the map, it will reappear 15-20 minutes later, resupplied. Sometimes, it might be realistic to allow resupply on-map, but more often I think this is going lead to unrealistic and gamey situations. I would rather BFC err on the conservative side here.

And then there are soldier stamina issues. In hot environments like Syria, to do a 4-hour scenario right, the game really needs to be able model the cumulative effects of sitting around in the heat in full battle kit for that long -- even units that haven't engaged in fighting much at all should probably start to see a degradation of their fitness after a couple of hours without rest. You should also probably model water supply in a 4-hour scenario - it takes more than bullets to keep soldiers in the fight for that long.

And what about defensive positions? As long as the ground isn't too hard, a couple of hours is enough time to dig foxhole. So realistically, if the defending player can stall the attacker along a forward line for long enough, he should be able to tell his second line of defense to dig in, and better prepare.

Finally, there are grand tactical considerations. If a Blue force really gets bogged down in a protracted firefight, decisions are probably going to be made at higher levels to bring more assets in -- a couple of hours is plenty of time for an F/A-18 sitting on a carrier off the coast to be armed and fueled, launched, and then arrive on station. True, scenario designers can partially account for this using reinforcement timing, but ideally this stuff should be linked to what is going on on the battlefield, and not set to arbitrary time conditions. That is, the Blue player should have to "earn" the F/A-18 with a 2000-lb. bomb by scouting and discovering that the reinforced concrete building is full of well-entrenched enemy. Once he discovers the target, the support request goes in, and the plane shows up some interval of time later. On the other side of the spectrum, helicopters and aircraft "on station" at the start of an assault might not be available 4 hours later, regardless of whether they've actually dropped any ordnance -- they might need to pull back to base or meet a KC-135 to refuel.

I could go on... for example, there's a host of issues that should be considered regarding the availability of artillery in an engagement that long.

I think it's nice that BFC has listened to customer requests, and agreed to increase the time limit. If there are a significant number of players out there that want this feature, then I don't see any reason why they shouldn't have it. But I think we should be realistic about how likely we are to see additional game features supporting such long engagements. BFC has a very long wish list for additions and improvements to the game already, and I really don't think modeling stuff like vehicle ammo resupply and refueling is very high on their list.

Personally, I doubt I'll play many 4-hour scenarios, if any. There's plenty of challenge and tactical variety for me in scenarios where the designers set objectives that could realistically be attained in 1.5 hours or less. I'd rather enjoy a well-designed and modeled fight for a single hill or city block, than play a protracted and less than ideally modeled fight to take over an entire ridgeline, or town.

Cheers,

YD

[Pandur]

iam happy with the 240 turns maximum in the comming patch and i think there wont be any problem with ammo, other then for the lowest grade syrians.

any mission now, no matter how long, got plenty of ammo to burn through, and if the missions get longer the amount of force will rise too in most of these missions, so you have even more vehicles stuffed with ammo.

i got a scenario wich takes longer then 2 houers to compleat if you rush it, means its no good to play since its release. it is red on red, the bmp-1´s dont have 3k to 4k ammo but just 1,5k to 2k and its still more then sufficient.

thing is, if you dont lose all youre transports in the first 30 turns you have more then enough.

key is to keep youre ammo "alive" or give "all" to the troops wich isnt too good.