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istari6 -> Puzzled (perhaps a little frustrated) by this game. (10/20/2014 12:20:13 AM)
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First, let me compliment the designers. I can see there's a great game here, and I'm solidly in the core demographic. Grew up in the late Cold War, played MBT, TacAir and Chadwick's Assault back in the day, etc.
As a new player, what has me puzzled (and a little frustrated) are the victory conditions for the scenarios. I've now played through several scenarios and feel I have a handle on the basic mechanics. I'm playing through the scenarios sequentially along with the timeline, eager to see how the war develops.
However, I just finished "Third Herd", and was left with 58% and a "Contested Battle". This has me scratching my head, and feels very deflating after playing for 3-4 hours.
At the end of the game, 1st Brigade/3rd Armored had completely annihilated the opposing Soviets. I had 177 runners from starting 254. The Soviet MRR had 9 left of 397, of which 6 were off-screen Fighter-Bombers refueling at the VVS airfields. The US held the entire battlefield except for one 1000 VP location in the rear (which had an entire company of Bradleys closing on it unopposed when time ran out).
So the 3rd Herd, operating with almost no intelligence of what was coming at us, inflicted a 5:1 kill ratio overall in a Meeting Engagement. In high-value assets, we lost 39 M1/M2 versus 141 T-80BV/BMP-2, and 2 AH-64A vs 12 Mi-24 Hinds. However, only 2 of those M1/M2s were destroyed, all the rest were "fallen out".
These losses are higher than I would have liked, but almost half (19) of those M1/M2 losses were from CAS strikes from the MiG-27s and Su-24s that were an unpleasant surprise. Note that 3rd Herd has NO air defenses in this scenario. Another 9 were from Soviet 2S7 artillery strikes - note that 3rd Herd never gets anything stronger than M106 mortars, greatly limiting ability to counterbattery.
Given these kill ratios and possession of the battlefield, how is this a Contested Battle? I was proud of my little "digital warriors" despite the nasty surprise of the fighter-bomber strikes and the failure of DIVARTY to show up and help deal with the 2S7 batteries. We fought it just with mortars, DF and AH/OH, and did pretty well :).
Perhaps these victory conditions are set assuming that players play these scenarios multiple times? That they're "puzzle missions" like some RTS games? Now that I know that there will be WP fighter-bombers, that the Soviet MRR is weaker than my own Brigade (no T-80Us like I faced in Blackhorse), and that my own M109s will never show, I'd fight it differently a 2nd time - dispersing my armor more and attacking into the rear more aggressively. But that's with 20/20 hindsight. I like to try to play these scenarios as written - with limited intelligence and trying to do the best I can, rather than playing over and over with knowledge beyond the briefing.
Was 3rd Herd an anomaly? Or is the bar for NATO victory set so high that need Desert Storm like exchange ratios to get even a basic victory?
Chris
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