Steel Beasts ProPE 3 - IFVs Supporting Infantry, and Vice Versa

Steel Beasts ProPE 3 has been updated to version 3.011. The full list of changes is still being written. I've noticed a nice improvement in graphics (they look sharper and with a more realistic lighting, but it could be just placebo).

I have quite a backlog of Steel Beasts ProPE scenarios to play. This one is a pretty simple, fictional cold war-ish type of scenario. A mechanized infantry platoon is moving to contact. A meeting engagement is developing and my task is to secure a small German village. Enemy reconnaissance or the lead elements of a forward detachment are likely.

I decide to conduct a reconnaissance of the village with just one of the Bradley IFVs. I order the infantry to dismount and move into a patch of woods that will conceal our approach.

Our 800 meters stroll through the woods is slow. The snow slows down the infantry and the trees are quite an obstacle for my Bradley.  We are moving too close to the dismounts (they should move a bit away and forward from our position). But with the obstacles to movement and line of sight, coordination is easily lost.

We soon get into contact with enemy infantry patrols. The look like red ghosts moving through the woods. 

We engage the enemy infantry with a combination of HE shells and plain old coaxial MG. The trunks of the trees get on the way of our fire, most of the times.

The disorientation, the eagerness to improve our LOS by moving forwar take a toll in our tactical checkbook.  We end up too close to the enemy infantry. But the firepower of our IFV is overwhelming and we end up destroying the entire enemy patrol by ourselves.

The infantry continues to the edge of the woods and calls out contact with enemy vehicles. We carefully maneuver to get a clear line of sight, which proves to be quite difficult. My range finder is acting up (is it because of the foliage is scattering our laser beam?).  

We end up engaged in a firefight with enemy BMP-2s defending the village. I should have planned this a lot better (find a hull down position, for starters), but in the search for good LOS I ended up entangled with enemy rounds flying all around me. We were lucky that our gunnery was way better than the one of the enemy.

The village is in plain sight now. Enemy infantry can be seen within the buildings.

I destroyed two enemy BMP-2s. A third enemy vehicle proved too tough to destroy and fired an unlucky shot that landed straight in our "doghouse". The range finder and the thermals gone, I pull back the blind Bradley to the full concealment of the woods.

The rest of the platoon is called up and they advance alongside a road leading directly into the village. With the situation almost completely developed by the above mentioned reconnaissance, it is easy for them to locate and acquire the remaining enemy vehicles.

The village is located in a slight depression and surrounded by hills. Those hills were thoroughly scanned, but in the end we only found out an enemy missile team  when it fired upon us. They were engaged with HE rounds. It was very difficult to asses if we killed them, but they stopped firing.

Clearing the village was to be carried out by our infantry. But we prepped the area with HE shells before letting our boys into that.

Buildings catching up fire, flushing the enemy infantry out of them. Quick MG kills, even from this distance (800 meters).

A panoramic view of the fight. The enemy vehicles destroyed and the village in the background. The hill from which we were shot a missile is shown in the far distance, to the left of the vehicle.

The village, on fire. The infantry is ready to move up.

Infantry moving into the village under the close watch of the IFVs.

Cheers,