Jim D Burns -> RE: Fuger’s Ostliche Wut 43-44 campaign (2/15/2007 4:11:56 AM)
|
Op 1 day 1 The battle opens to a heavy bombardment. Based on the random fall patterns I cannot tell if it is friendly or enemy fire. Shells are landing all over the place, I’m hoping a direct hit doesn’t wipe out the entire brick building by collapsing it onto my troops. I read something about bombardments in the briefing but didn’t give any thought to it when doing my deployments. I hope I don’t pay a huge price for my oversight. I also have my recon team sitting out in the open near the bridge where they took full control of the objective flag, I’ve ordered them to sprint for cover ASAP. [img=http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/4158/op1day1screen1aw4.th.jpg] Looks like the Russians got caught in the open too. [:D] [img=http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/3273/op1day1screen2qg2.th.jpg] Well it’s over a minute and a half into the scenario and shells are still falling all over the place. I was alerted to something perhaps I should not know and jumped when I saw an AT gun was damaged, for a second I thought it was mine. As you see in the below screenshot, the message area shows the report that a 76.2mm AT gun was damaged. The thing is it wasn’t my AT gun and no one had any possible line of sight to that gun (I found a little dead guy near the bottom of the map so I assume that’s where the gun is). This message should not be displayed to the player unless someone has a line of sight to the gun. [img=http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/6379/op1day1screen3sf0.th.jpg] The bombardment appears to be over and as far as I can tell it looks like the Russians lost a total of 8 men. Several shells landed close to my guys but no one got hurt. A Russian squad appeared on the ridgeline SE of the brick building and I gave my sniper (Binder is his name) defend orders and he got a kill with his first shot. WOOT! [sm=Evil-210.gif] Great start for my sniper, I LOVE these units. I’ll let him take one or two shots more and then switch him back to ambush before he gets spotted. On a gloomier note, I’ve spotted at least 3 enemy tanks to the east. None were identified yet but it appears 1 is a KV, 1 a T-34 and the last possibly a US made Stuart. The only tank my AT gun has any chance at all with is the Stuart, and I’m not sure I’ve seen all the enemy tanks yet, moan… [img=http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/3967/op1day1screen4ca3.th.jpg] Six and a half minutes left and the Russian attack begins in earnest. As I feared Russian troops appeared at the brick building before any armor, but the defending squads managed to kill 1 man and force the rest to pull back east behind the ridge line for now. Now 2 tanks are advancing towards my positions. The Stuart is advancing strait towards the brick building from the east, but all the trees in the area makes a shot almost impossible until it’s almost on top of me. I’ve turned the AT gun towards the Stuart, but now the T-34 is coming down the street to the NE and to make matters worse, it’s a flamethrower tank. Why oh why did I bunch my troops up? If that tank gets within flamethrower distance this day’s battle is over, he’ll roast all my men in either defense position with one shot. [img=http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/8701/op1day1screen5oa2.th.jpg] And the Stuart goes BOOM! [sm=00000959.gif] Now if I can only spin my gun before the T-34 gets its sights on me. [img=http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/1659/op1day1screen6tv3.th.jpg] Well eleven AT rounds slamming into the tank later and I’ve managed to damage the OT-34, but it’s finally managed to get its front hull pointed in my direction so things don’t look good. It’s fired several main gun rounds already and suppressed, pinned, incapacitated or broken most of my defending Lt. Inf team and the Russian troops have now moved back over the ridge line and are making their assault. Things look bad for my southern defense group. Also my sniper is under heavy mortar fire and has been wounded. I’ve given him orders to sneak NW to the trench line further back, hopefully the enemy will lose track of him for the rest of this battle and I’ll be able to save him. He has 3 and possibly more kills this fight and I’d hate to lose him now. I’ve contemplated charging down the hill with the Lt. Inf team closest to the OT-34, but the KV is still to the east somewhere, not to mention that hidden heavy mortar. No sense losing a team when I’m already so far behind the ratio in force strength already. With only 1 green crewman left I’m hoping the OT-34 bails out or something before it finishes my guys off in the brick building. [img=http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/7008/op1day1screen7mw3.th.jpg] Seconds later the OT-34 goes BOOM! [sm=00000959.gif] Now the KV is all I have left to worry about, not to mention all the Russian troops. [img=http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/4232/op1day1screen8lr8.th.jpg] With the OT-34 threat removed, the crew of the 5cm AT gun picks up their rifles and manages to repulse/kill the closest assaulting Russian troops. Hopefully this will buy enough time for my Lt. Inf team to recover from the ravages of the OT-34 in time to continue the defense. [img=http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/4664/op1day1screen9bc0.th.jpg] About 3 minutes left to go and the KV tank finally starts its assault. I’ve shown the fire lane for the AT gun in the below screenshot, I wonder if a 5cm gun can even hurt the side armor of a KV at 100 meters? I doubt it. The remaining Russian troops assaulting the brick building surrendered once I ordered the Lt. Inf team nearest the OT-34 to open fire from across the road (I’ve since placed it back on ambush). I’m a little disappointed there weren’t more Russian soldiers. From what I can tell there was a recon team (3 men), a MMG team, an ATR team and perhaps a 7-8 man Inf team and that was it. I haven’t seen any other infantry, I wonder if the AI spent all its money on the armor and that AT gun that was damaged early on? I’ve taken a gamble and ordered commander Burns (that’s me [;)] ) to move south out of the brick building to take the ridge line objective flag of arête nue. Hope I don’t get mowed down by a hidden ambush. [img=http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/209/op1day1screen10nx0.th.jpg] The KV moved within range of my Inf teams at the north objective and they begin to assault it and immobilize it right away. As the screenshot shows by the black ring, my AT gun has no hope of harming the tank, even though it was a full on side shot just a few seconds before this screenshot, the ring was still black then. Guess my Inf teams will have to go it alone. [img=http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/963/op1day1screen11mn3.th.jpg] Shortly after that last screenshot the AI offered a truce and I decided to accept. I probably could have taken out the KV and captured the arte nue objective but since I’ve seen some weakness in the AI this first battle I decided not to take advantage of the situation. Had the AI even had 1 more Inf team to assault the brick building, I believe its attack would have carried the position. My guess is it could have had 2 or 3 more teams had it simply not bought the AT gun that got damaged (they usually cost about 30-40 points). Had that been the case this battle would have been a lot more challenging. As it is the pathing problems with AI tanks lead the KV to remain out of the critical part of the battle (it was doing circles in the buildings in the NE part of town) and allowed my AT gun to survive long enough to pump 12 shots into the OT-34 which finally killed it. Had the KV been around I bet the brick building would have collapsed shortly after the AT gun exposed itself and the flamethrower tank would have then easily mopped up my remaining infantry. Here’s the battle end screen, according to it I gained control of the ridge line even though my commander hadn’t reached it yet. Guess it was a force ratio thing or something that caused it to no longer be a contested flag. [img=http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/2022/op1day1screen12qo2.th.jpg] The casualty ratios (totals of 26-4) are astounding. Even if you take away the 8 Russians that fell to the preparatory barrage, it’s still 18-4. Guess the AI isn’t as new and improved as I had hoped for. But then again I think the real problem with this battle was the choices the AI made regarding force structure. 2 or 3 more large infantry teams would have probably made things dramatically different. So I’ll reserve my final judgment on the AI for now, but I’m skeptical at this point. Jim
|
|
|
|