TacNuggets #3: If insurgents cross the street and there is no Marine aiming at them, is the town already lost?

I was a believer that defeat in tactical combat is always due to the cumulative effect of several small, apparently irrelevant failures ...

The game: Combat Mission Shock Force-US Marines Module
The Scenario: Circle the Wagons, by George McEwan
SITREP: A two tank section is bogged down in the middle of an insurgent-controlled town. One platoon of US Marines is on site and will protect the tanks until reinforcements arrive.

The star symbol is the position where the tank section is stranded. I moved one Plt. of Marines forward and I am trying to position them inside buildings, in a wide arch (blue line) located forward from the tank. A long time ago I played this scenario and deployed the Marines in an arch behind the tank section (dotted blue line). This was a mistake; infantry-tank cooperation in these situations needs the infantry ahead of the tank. For the most part, the Marines near the tanks are doing a great job. Now another Plt. has arrived (blue icons in the far background). Just in time, the insurgents are getting really nasty.

The plan is to have the reinforcement Plt to move into the town and move downtown in an axis perpendicular to the position of the Marines near the tanks.

The reinforcement Plt. moves its AAVs through the open using standard bounding overwatch technique. Lots of suppressive fire, these AAVs are surely thin skinned and I don't want to loose any of them to a lucky RPG shot. As planned the AAVs stop short of the town and the Marines disembark under the cover of smoke. The Marines occupy a narrow ditch and orient towards the town. After a few minutes, they move forward to take a foothold on the town. More suppressive fire. Things are going well, but an insurgent team appears on the left flank and draws the attention of everybody. 

In the foreground, an AAV and a two Marine fire teams take aim at an insurgent team that suddenly appeared on the left flank. Another Marine fire team moves forward into the town. In the far background, a mob of insurgents crosses the street towards the immobile tank section. A full Marine squad is in a building at mid-distance between the AAV and the insurgents, but they don't have an angle to shoot at them.

I counted the insurgents that crossed the street to feed the carnage downtown. 25 of them. If this AAV would have been aiming in the right direction, this battle would have ended in an early victory.

Cheers,

LOMAC Flaming Cliffs 2.0: Close Air Support (Part 4)

This is a continuation from this entry.

We have been cleared hot. This time the JTAC gave us free reign on what ordnance to use, but it is common practice in Type 1 CAS for the JTAC to choose which type of weapon the attack aircraft should use.

I haven't mentioned yet, but there is an SA-11 some 20 km from our target. By the way, I don't know what happened since the latest patch, but the SA-11 is not giving us such a hard time. We keep it real, though, and try to fly low as much as we can.

For our attack run, I used (more or less) the tactics explained by SimHQ's Andy Bush (former A-10 pilot) in this excellent article. We approach low and at the pull up point climb for the final bomb run.

Attention: during the pull up don't let your airspeed to go below 240 knots! In this case, we could only climb to 1,200 ft. My wingman is reporting enemy armor. Just super. Note the RWR; an SA-11 is tracking us.

There is not much diving when you come in from 1,200 ft, so our bomb run goes on from a shallow -20 degrees dive. The target mentioned by the JTAC is the house below the left -20 degree mark in the HUD, but his laser appears to be pointing at a bunch of trees nearby.

The JTAC reports bombs on target, but the house is still standing.

As specified by the JTAC, we exit east towards the CP.

As in real life, from the air we couldn't really figure out if our bombing run was effective or not. We have been tasked with bombing infantry; they are almost invisible from the air. We have to rely in our JTAC for that ... and he bugged out from his position. What's going on down there?

A recording of the mission allows to see all those things we missed because we were busy flying, bombing and staying alive. Below is a sneak peak of what was going on below our wings.

There was enemy infantry around that house. The JTAC may have moved his laser a bit from it ... whatever ... the bombs fell close enough to the enemy position.

During the debriefing, I was informed that our bomb run killed 8 enemy infantry.

Our infantry was relatively close to our target. They started pulling out to the south as soon as we were cleared hot. A smoke column and two aircraft in the far background can be barely seen. That's us.

These infantrymen better hurry up across the river. Enemy armor is approaching the town!

Cheers,

Great Blog About the A-10 Warthog

Hogs of War, a blog by Gillers, is a great resource on all things A-10: flight simulations, news, books and other goodies. Hogs of War has referenced this blog a couple of times (thanks Gillers! :) ).

In Hogs of War's  "Books & Reading" section, there are two great books listed. One is Smallwood's "Warthog: Flying the A-10 in the Gulf War". Excellent book. The other book is "A-10s Over Kosovo" which can be downloaded for free from the Air University Press website.

Keep up the good work Gillers!

Cheers,

VBS2 Lite US Army Makes it to the Front

A short video of VBS2 Lite US Army made by one of our servicemen. 

Stay safe DevilDog!

Cheers,

Steel Fury Kharkov 42

Installed and briefly messed around with it. I definitively like it. The manual was slightly better than in the demo. There is a lot to learn yet.

It does look great!

Cheers,

Fingerspitzengefühl

I am reading Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat. My grasp of naval warfare is still comparable to the one of a two year old kid, but ... Crap! This book sometimes is a trip down the deepest roots of war waging.

I came across this passage on leadership and I wanted to share it here.

"Another difference between good and bad leaders lies in what they see when they look, what they hear when they are told, and what they communicate when they speak."

Cheers,

How much is a user interface worth?

Well folks, I am enjoying Achtung Panzer Kharkov 43. So much that I've got a serious case of Graviteam virus and yesterday I decided to get Steel Fury Kharkov 42. First I downloaded the demo to check out if there was any type of graphics incompatibility issues (there was none). But the sim's interface of the demo is hell and the user's manual editor appears to be Google translate. After Achtung Panzer Kharkov 43, I was expecting some clunkiness in those two aspects of Steel Fury. Still, I was shocked with the demo's interface and manual.

I'm not a gamer that expects 100% polish in games and simulations. I don't even care about storylines, campaigns or how many missions the game has. As such, from what I saw in Steel Fury's demo, I'm going to enjoy this thing. Yet, I can't help but wonder about the impact of presentation in Graviteam's offerings. Sales lost ... developer goes under ... we are left again in the dark.

It is kind of funny that other GREAT games have wonderful interfaces, manuals and tutorials but still struggle to convince gamers about their worth. And I'm not going to give names ...

Yes! Download of Steel Fury is done. Off to climb the ultimate learning curve.

Steel Fury Kharkov 42 demo.

Cheers,

Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge - New video

There is a faint smell of release coming from Matrix Games' kitchen. :)

Dave Arjuna, head honcho of Panther Games has assembled a video about their upcoming Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge. It covers the basic theme and mechanics of the game.  This video will help the newcomer to appreciate what this game is about.

A Matrix forumite was kind enough to upload it into YouTube. The first part is embedded here. Please follow the links below for the other 3 parts.



Second Part (YouTube)
Third Part (YouTube)
Fourth Part (YouTube)

Cheers,

Where is the Hearts of Iron franchise heading?

Among other many sore spots, this blog never covered anything at the strategic level of war. As you know, I blog about what I play, and with the many work and family obligations I don't play as much as I would want. I have toyed around with some strategic-level war games, but although I think they are great playing them would demand an amount of time I can't afford.

Past Friday I received my press pack of screenshots for Hearts of Iron III Semper Fi and while browsing them I remembered the nice level of detail that the Hearts of Iron franchise packs for land warfare. I don't think any other strategy level war game models land warfare as good as the Hearts of Iron franchise does. But take that with a grain of salt because as I said, I am mostly ignorant about this genre.

The Russian front: expansive, limitless ... Like the amount of time needed to play this game? 

Nothing quiet of the Eastern Front ... Am I supposed to remember where each unit is going?

How long would it take to manually set the stance of every unit in your OOB?

In closing, Paradox appears to be taking the Hearts of Iron franchise more deep into micro-management territory. My question: is it more always better?

Cheers,

LOMAC Flaming Cliffs 2.0: Close Air Support (Part 3)

This a continuation of this previous entry.

We left the contact point and we are a few miles short of the initial point ALAMO (IP ALAMO). The chat with the JTAC continues.

Talk to me JTAC ... (laser spot is the green diamond in the HUD)

The "talk-on" is a very common part of type-1 CAS because this type requires the aircraft to have visual tally to where the JTAC wants the ordnance delivered. "Contact" is the brevity code for having visual contact and "spot" is the one for being able to receive the reflected laser signal emitted by the JTAC. I still can't see the target, but moving a few miles forward solves that issue.

I see the target now ... (laser spot is the green diamond in the HUD)

The "readback" is just to make sure that both the JTAC and the attack aircraft are on the same page. The attack aircraft reads back items 4 and 6 of the 9-line brief plus some items from the remarks given by the JTAC.

Once the readback is acknowledged by the JTAC, he clears us for the attack run.

Cheers,