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Jackals = Junk


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I am playing Bardosy's tanatalising campaign, Warrior in the Sands, and it has brought me back to a question that has been bugging me for months. How can one use Jackals effectively in the game?

In CMx1 the idea of using an unarmoured vehicle to push forward wa castigated as a "gamey jeep rush". I have seen posts on these forums that suggests the same tactic is reconaissance. Nonetheless, in the real world it doesn't happen, troopers don't commit suicide.

So I would be grateful if those more experienced in the game could explain how to use these vehicles. Any offers?

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In all likelihood you're not going to find them particularly useful or survivable. Remember, this is a game called Combat Mission, not Recon Mission. This puts them to a role that is only secondary or tertiary for their equipment and training.

Unarmoured vehicles can be useful for reconnaissance purposes due to their speed and nimbleness, and if you meet enemies you can run away faster than eg. a BRDM-2 can follow. But in a firefight one guy with a Dragunov could slaughter you. When supporting infantry, I would keep them covered until the infantry has identified all threats and then use them from a long range (>800m) to pin the enemy down. Or dismount and use them as a support weapon team. Just remember that if your victory relies on them, you're already screwed.

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Many of the vehicles like the AAVPs, trucks, jackals, etc have primarily non-combat roles. However, they of course can end up in combat and you have to use them to their strengths.

Keep the jackals at long range and use them to put down high volumes of suppressive fire to support dismounted recon or other elements. I've had plenty of success with them in this role, dismounts spot contacts and I plaster the enemy with area fire from the jackals to allow freedom of maneuver for those elements. When kept out of the enemies' effective range the jackals make an excellent fire-support element. 4 or 5 jackals laying down fire at 700m or even 1km is something to be reckoned with.

Obviously their primary roles are mobility and carrying extra gear for the dismounts. You should not however do recon from the vehicle, it's too easily spotted at the ranges necessary to reliably spot infantry. It gets the dismounts to where they need to be to start sneaking forward/setting up an OP and other jackals provide support by fire.

Recon is generally not about driving towards the enemy till you get shot.

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In real life, vehicle recon is driving about looking for the enemy moving about himself. IN CM a defender can just stay put and the recce vehicles aren't going to stay put for a few hours to bore him out.

The weapons on a Jackal are good for ranges greater than 800m, which is a good deal further than most enemy can reach.

Designer like to include them, IMHO, because:

A) they look cool

B) they're really hard to use well.

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Recon is generally not about driving towards the enemy till you get shot.

I like that one.:)

I find on bigger maps Jackals are good for maneuvering and for getting to certain areas quickly with the deployable weapons, you can dismount the team, then later mount them back up and then move to set up the heavy gear in a different location without wasting much time. If the contact you come across is light and there's not many enemy and its out of range for a rifle, you could use the jackals heavy guns to suppress or kill them,those 2 MGs firing on the one location can potentially make the wall cave in or it can push the enemy back to another location.Just be cautious of an enemy sniper or enemy MG,if they are present and you blink,chances are you lost the crew in the Jackals already.

In close fighting situations, anything I'd say within 300 meters mark, can make the jackal more a danger to itself then to the enemy.Park it and use the men's capabilities to find cover and shoot back.

In close quarters simply put, they will get killed quickly,I think that's one fact we all found out one way or another.A hail of bullets ricocheting around in that thing is not healthy for anyone in it so use them stealthily as can be.:D

The way I see it, in missions with big maps, I find the jackals useful and fun to use.In missions with small maps, the Jackals become frustrating to put to proper use and are best left parked in a safe area, possibly under guard.Mission wise I would encourage mission makers to include jackals on big nature terrain type maps.

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I use them as quickly relocatable support weapons, particularly the ones where the main weapon can be dismounted as an MMG or GMG.

But...

they do suffer from being extremely visible and even more vulnerable. Vulnerable to the point that I wonder if it is a bug, or at least an unintended failure of realism. In "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" there are lots of WMMIKs and WMIKs, and a lot of Syrian HMGs on rooftops at range. Infantry advancing through pretty open terrain (1 bush per 16m x 16m patch, forward slope so no cover from that; easy spotting terrain basically) can do so without trouble; they will draw fire, but I managed to advance a whole company through 100-200m of this exposed terrain, about 2 units at a time. I might have lost 1-2 men doing this, whilst taking fire consistently. Park a jackal in sight of the HMGs another 300m further back an it will typically be hit on the first or second burst, and the standing gunner will almost always be a casualty. In one play through, I lost some 4 or 5 gunners in this manner (I soon learned not to...).

Net effect: the gunner in a jackal at 600+m distance is much, much more exposed to HMG fire than an entire infantry platoon ('quick' moving) at half that distance.

I suspect that the infantry are getting a 'cover' bonus that reduces their effective size as targets, while the gunner is in fact just a standing up human with no extra protection.

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  • 2 weeks later...

These are the kinds of questions that should be being asked/explored with the big lull between releases. There might yet be some spotting/accuracy of fire issues still to be uncovered by a persistent observer of the game tendencies. The perception being offered by some that all is well in current upgraded version of the engine makes me feel a little nervous, despite the great job BFC has done with patches and improvements.

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As a rough rule of thumb if the enemy just has small arms Jackal should stay 5-600m back, and even then be cautious. Enough soldiers trying to hit you, one guy may get lucky. If the enemy has a squad 7.62mm mg then try 8-900m and move often so the gunner is less likely to find the range. If they've got a HMG then stay far far off, shoot-&-scoot, briefly area firing the mg's suspected location without waiting for a positive contact, redeploying after a couple bursts.

The first time I saw a pict of a Jackal I laughed - "OMG, they brought out a 4-wheeled Universal Carrier!" :D

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Oh no! My favourite unit in the game. :)

I suspect the problem with the Jackal comes from the fact that it's not designed for symmetrical warfare but rather for COIN Ops. I doubt it would see nearly as much action against Mech Infantry in real life as it does in CMSF. A further problem comes from the fact that many CMSF maps are a bit too small for them to be used to their full potential. I have played around a LOT with them in COIN Ops on large maps with good LoS and they RULE!

And they're the best models in the game too IMO... bloody brilliant!

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What is interesting, there's a H2H scenario, British Recce against Syrian recon troops; Brits have about dozen of Jackals, Syrians have 5 BMP-1 with Recon dismounts and 2 ATGMs. I've managed to pull a clear victory against the Red side even on such a small map - Syrians were not reacting fast enough.

On other maps I usually use this vehicle as an overwatch, never try to attack with it.

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I used Jackal in my missions as mobile heavy weapon platform. I found it very useful to supress possible enemy positions.

In that mission - it's for BlackCat - when your SAS units will insert into Aleppo, my beta-testers said I use it(Jackal) wrong, because it's very vulnerable in dense urban area. And probably it's true (once I saw a documentary movie - posted in this forum somewhere - about Jackals and in it the vehicle was used as long lange desert group.)

But I found it much useful as a machine gun team, because it's faster! But - of course - you have to keep it from direct enemy fire. I know, it's mean babysit and most player love to send fighting vehicles into the kill-zone.

In that urban mission, I positioned Jackals in cover of building corners and used it's HMG-s on visible building to supress the syrians.

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That was a good documentary.Talk about a bad day.There's that 'if it could go wrong it will' saying in perfect demonstration for every one to see take place on a battlefield.That's some serious stress.Seemed like a Hard fight, the guns broke down, the jackals broke down and one flipped over, the "bloody Yank rounds"seemed to be jamming and were proving hard to use while they were under fire, and above all, the tow cable pulling along another busted Jackal snaps in the middle of the open, in the middle of a firefight!And those bullets hitting the Jackal was hair raising.It showed the Taliban firing at them quite well and you could see the man and the flash's of the gun.It's a shame two Brits got hit in this Documentary,one by a bullet in the leg, the other an IED under his Jackal.Those are some mighty fine and Brave Lads out there and it was impressive how they kept cool.The one guy who got shot in the leg was flippin a bit, but hey, he got SHOT.Keep up the Good fight.

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Game-wise people should see Jackal's problems as good news. There's been this ongoing cry of 'unbalanced gameplay' since CMSF's release, usually accompanied by requests to boost the Syrian army to superman status in order to fight against massed Abrams. Well, the Brits solved your unbalanced game problem - not by making Syrians supermen but by giving Brits Jackal and FV432 to fight with! And by giving Warrior a hand-cranked turret. :D

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Game-wise people should see Jackal's problems as good news. There's been this ongoing cry of 'unbalanced gameplay' since CMSF's release, usually accompanied by requests to boost the Syrian army to superman status in order to fight against massed Abrams. Well, the Brits solved your unbalanced game problem - not by making Syrians supermen but by giving Brits Jackal and FV432 to fight with! And by giving Warrior a hand-cranked turret. :D

I have never had a problem with Warriors' turrets turning too slowly. I have had problems too numerous to count with the rediculous ammo loads the game forces upon me. The British Army is nothing if not pragmatic and ammo loads will always be mission dependant. Yet we are forced to carry dozens of AP rounds but few HE, even though the number of BMPs we can expect in a mission is zero. It would never happen in real life and I think Battlefront made the wrong call on this.

They also made the wrong call on ignoring the upgrades for Warriors and Scimitars that were already in place for the time perod of CMSF.

Most importantly of all, from my perspective, they made the decision that TCP/IP WEGO was not important. Everythng else I can forgive but not that. For now, and possibly forever, I am doomed to play against the AI. A great shame.

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I don't think that is it, as he mentions that they are already in place by CM:SF's timeframe, which puts WCSP (IOC 2012) and FRES (IOC 2015) right out.

Every other upgrade for WR is in there and the only things missing for Scimitar is the ECM (which wouldn't be used in a high intensity operation as it interferes with turret traverse and increases the silhouette) and the BGTI, which I don't think differs that much, in game terms, from E-Spire.

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