|
One thing that I did to make the start of that mission easier was running up, punching the friendly commissars with the flare guns in your trench line, and then stealing their flare guns and ammunition for the guns. You don't have to worry about as much light if you do that to them. The rest was just crawling around and setting people on fire.
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 07:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 22, 2024 16:06 |
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:It is the Spring of 1945. The Red Army has liberated wait what? Nineteen forty five? Welcome to Men of Half a War, where the years of 1943 and 1944 don't exist. Nothing interesting happened in those years anyhow, clearly!
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 10:21
|
|
|
So, what exactly do you get for fulfilling the optional objectives? Reinforcements for next missions, different cutscenes, or only Imaginary Commie Points? 
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 14:19
|
|
|
Pierzak posted:So, what exactly do you get for fulfilling the optional objectives? Reinforcements for next missions, different cutscenes, or only Imaginary Commie Points? This mission directly connects to the next mission, which takes place on the same map. Basically the units you fail to destroy here will be around and making your life hell in the assault phase, uncleared mines will be still present, and if the radio isn't down the Germans get an reinforcement wave, IIRC. While the Russian campaign does timeskip here, the US and German campaigns generally cover the period between 42 and 45. There is also a couple of bonus scenarios that probably reasonably take place in the intervening period. Fangz fucked around with this message at 14:38 on May 20, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 14:30
|
|
|
 Seelow Heights, April 16th, 1945  The camera pans over our front trenches.  We have a lot of trenches.  A loooot of trenches.  Viktor observes the enemy defenses.  The disembodied voice comes in right on schedule. We are attacking with the entire front.  We need to knock the enemy out of the areas to the east and west of the road.  Then we proceed to their main base and destroy it.  We can use those new guns we saw!  Here's one, shooting fairy dust at the enemy.  Lazar Savin: We can support you with artillery and clear the Fritz' trenches. I just don't want to hit our own guys...  Lazar Savin: Use those smoke grenades for marking artillery targets.  We start with only a handful of infantry, but two new vehicles, a T-34-85 and a Lend-Lease M3 halftrack. We can call in a ZSU-37 (for no reason, really, there are no enemy aircraft), a ZiS-3 in a truck (but we're attacking, and a towed gun is too slow), more halftracks or machinegunners, submachinegunners, and snipers. Keep that tank! It will have to last you a while. Oh, and look at the points you get. That's a ton of points. They really wanted us to play with all our toys this mission.  The Germans don't waste any time and counterattack before you can even move out.  With tanks, even! Hm, an Ausf G is pretty ancient at this point. Weird that we don't see upgraded PzIVs.  Mstislav Karpov: We penetrated their defense on the left! Way to go! Our AI teammates are advancing pretty rapidly. By the time I remember that I have artillery support, I have nothing to shoot at. It's thrown like a regular grenade, and then artillery shells come down on the location for a while. Nothing too extraordinary.  Oh man, that's some heavy poo poo happening in the center.  The map is only a small portion of what we had available to us during the scout mission. It will move up as we complete our objectives.  Gleb Popov: We knocked the Germans out of the right flank! Prepare to defend! We never get to defend, as the map moves up to the next stage, and we have more defenses to clear out.  Georgiy Prokhorov: The central fortifications are ours! Not one step back! Objective complete: push the enemy out of the trenches.  Lazar Savin: An urgent message from HQ! We are authorized to use bomb strikes. This is why I'm not going to be using artillery. A bomb hit is just so much more awesome.  Objective added: destroy enemy forces on the right flank. Georgiy Prokhorov: They have rocket artillery! There, on the mountain, we can't just walk up to it. Don't worry, you donkey, we'll find a solution for you!  There's the thing that's bugging us. I wonder how we will take it out!  Uh. What? Hold on, I think there was something in the manual about how to fix this.  Just stay riiiiiight there, I'll figure it out.  There, that fixed it up.  Objective complete: destroy the rocket artillery.  Objective complete: deliver and air strike. That was an objective? Best objective ever! Also here's a better view of a T-34 mod. 1942, since we didn't see it close up in the last mission. Instead of doing a lazy turret swap, they changed the hull and gas tanks to their proper late configurations. Good for them.  Reinforcements are coming up to the right flank! Let's see how this "Hetzer" does in combat.  Not exceptionally well.  Objective completed: destroy enemy forces on the right flank. I tried to call in a minesweeper and more tanks, but they never showed up. Looks like they got stuck on each other over here. I had to go and free them up manually.  Ooh, a King Tiger! I wonder how well it's going to handle my air strike.  Not well.  This Panther just destroyed an allied SU-76 while looking the wrong way!  The Panther is a tough nut for our T-34-85 to crack. We have to flank it.  Lazar Savin: The Germans are counterattacking! Hold your positions! I already figured that out, thanks.  Hm, there are a lot of guys up here.  Bombs! Bombs solve all problems.  My tanks storm up yet another level on the heights.  Hey, a Hummel I missed. My Il-2 will make short work of it.  Aleksandr Leonov: We took positions on the road where reinforcements are coming from! While we are here, not a single tank will come through!  Another new vehicle, but not a particularly impressive one. It's like a PzIII, but on wheels, I guess. Nothing too threatening.  The mines we scouted out show up for us, but apparently not for the AI.  Objective added: destroy the enemy forces defending the base. Ah, here's the top of the mountain.  Viktor Savin: Forward! Let them know what Soviet tanks are like!  Here is a better view of the base. Looks like my explosives went off on time! There are scorch marks where the Tiger, Panther, PzIV and Hetzer stood. They are all replaced with a brand new King Tiger though.  Not for long.  We get a new reinforcements option, a KV-85. It's essentially a T-34-85 with more armour and one less crewman. I don't know if it was supposed to tip the scales or anything, but here it is.  Oh yeah, and here's what a ZSU looks like.  Objective complete: destroy enemy forces defending the base.  Mission complete. The objective was completed. The assault on Berlin continues. Another victory. An important one! Soviet forces paid a high price for breaking through the Seelow line, but due to their courage, the most combat capable German forces were caught in an encirclement, and were unable to help the Berlin garrison. Soviet tank corps, bypassing pockets of resistance, headed for the capital of the Third Reich. Several days later, battles raged on the streets of Berlin, heralding the inevitable collapse of Hitler's Germany. Enemies destroyed: 574 men, 48 vehicles. Allied losses: 385 men, 35 vehicles.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:10
|
|
|
... Huh. I didn't recall airstrikes were that effective in this battle.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:28
|
|
|
So no Stalingrad, no Kursk, no Bagration, no Vistula-Oder, no Balkan campaign, just straight from Sevastopol to Berlin? That's some pretty serious bullshit.
|
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2014 02:11
|
|
|
Yeah, my jaw dropped when I heard "1945". I mean, I can see the contrast between Sevastopol and Seelow Heights, where now you're the one attacking with infinite tank hordes and wrecking them from the air, but skipping over two entire years isn't really worth it.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2014 02:16
|
|
|
A campaign can only be so long; especially given there are three of them in the game. I'm not going to fault them for skipping around.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2014 03:06
|
|
|
 A t-34 with a 57mm gun. I never heard of such a thing; wikipedia says a "very small number" of those existed.I wonder if the creators of this game are just trying to show off their bizarrely specific encyclopedic knowledge of ww2 AFV's. Or maybe there really was a T-34-57 present at the battle for the Seelow Heights, curled up like an asp ready to strike. Not that a burger eating American like me would understand the whims and wiles of Russian gaming studios.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2014 03:21
|
|
|
Rexim posted:
There's a lot of cool and interesting stuff from the war but not all of it was either widely used or well known. Goliath tracked mines are an easy one but things like the Minenraumer III or the Krummlauf attachment are sometimes so cool or neat that you feel compelled to talk about it or include it in stuff.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2014 03:45
|
|
|
I think that mission is actually better if you finish the stealth night-time portion of it at the first opportunity (when clearing the mines on the road). It makes the second half of it into a heroic slog with thousands of dead on both sides which is honestly much more fun than all this saving and reloading and waiting for patrols to pass while you wrestle with the janky-as-gently caress stealth mechanics.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2014 15:32
|
|
|
Historical Notes: Mission 7 Berlin Offensive Operation The game has its dates right, the beginning of the end for Germany was April 16th, with the First Belorussian Front pushing over Seelow Heights and reaching Berlin by April 20th. Of course, it's a little scaled down, we don't get out 270 guns per kilometer of front line or floodlights, but hey, it's a video game. A summary of the offensive can be read here. D-1 howitzer  In order to provide the Red Army with a light, yet powerful, 152 mm cannon, famous artillery engineer F.F. Petrov combined the mount from the lighter 122 mm M-30 howitzer and the barrel of the M-10 howitzer (the tank version of which was installed in a KV-2). In order to work on the lighter mount, the gun was equipped with a double baffle muzzle brake. An experimental SPG was equipped with a modification of the gun, but due to the existence of SU/ISU-152 SPGs at that point, which already carried the more versatile (if heavier) ML-20 gun-howitzer, the project didn't go anywhere. The gun turned out to be a very effective design, and remained in production until 1949, and in service with several nations until today. T-34-57  The T-34's 76 mm gun was powerful enough to deal with any armoured threat in 1941, but news of super-heavy tanks designed by potential Western aggressors floated around in the Red Army. It was decided that T-34 tanks will be equipped with a modification of the ZiS-2 57 mm anti-tank gun. Despite the lower caliber, the shell was propelled much faster, resulting in greater penetration. Since the shell was smaller, it could fit less explosives, and the 57 mm HE shell was quite pitiful. 10 (or 11, I'm not sure if one is a duplicate) of these vehicles were built on a trial basis. The plan was to build a large number of T-34M tanks with 57 mm guns, the majority of which would carry a flamethrower, but the T-34M never got off the ground due to the war starting. The enemy's super-heavy tanks failed to materialize, and the project was forgotten. In 1943, Tigers showed up on the Eastern Front (okay, 1942, but their success was so limited that the Red Army literally did not notice them), which were a tough nut for the F-34 to crack. The Red Army suddenly remembered that they had a higher penetration gun for the T-34, but by the time four prototypes were built, work on a T-34 with a higher velocity 76 mm gun and an 85 mm gun already began. The project was cancelled. It is very unlikely that a T-34-57 would be at Seelow Heights. Read more about the T-34-57 and 57 mm guns here. T-34-85  In 1942, when German guns grew enough to knock out T-34s without much effort, two projects started to design a "medium tank with heavy armour" that could resist the guns better: the KV-13 and T-43. While the designers were at it, they tackled some other issues. For one, the classic T-34 had a two-man turret. The commander doubled as a gunner, meaning he was distracted from actually commanding (which is harder than it looks). The T-43 featured an enlarged turret, where the commander sat behind the gunner, and the loader had twice as much space as the other two, making his job much easier. The T-43 project lived long enough to see the decline of the F-34's usefulness against heavy enemy armour, so a bigger gun was put in the turret, the 85 mm D-5. At the same time, the S-53 gun was developed to fit into the regular T-34, and, as a result, turned out to be more compact. The T-43 project died, but its turret was considered pretty good, so it was armed with a S-53 gun (T-34-85 mod. 1943s still came out with D-5 guns) and plopped on the T-34. Add some other minor improvements, and you have a T-34-85. Much like the original T-34, the T-34-85 is still in service in some countries. Armoured breastplates  Unlike in popular culture, the Red Army cared about the lives of its men. Along with steel helmets, various steel breastplates were developed. While they weren't exactly mythril, they would still protect the wearer's vital organs from shrapnel and pistol rounds. These breastplates were largely used by sappers and urban assault squads, but could also be issued to scouts, tank riders, and general infantry. Reviews were very positive: soldiers wearing these plates were much more courageous and motivated to attack. Read about the various types of Soviet breastplates and their uses here. Hummel  The Hummel (bumblebee) vehicle is powerful 150 mm howitzer on a custom chassis made from PzIV and PzIII components. Due to the size of the gun it carried it fit only 15 rounds of ammunition, so it had to either be followed by an ammunition carrier or not stray too far from its base. The Hummel was also equipped with an 88 mm PaK 43 gun and used as a tank destroyer under the name Nashorn (rhinoceros). sFH 18  The Heavy Field Howitzer model 1918 is the same 150 mm gun as in the Hummel. As the name implies, it was a quite old design, but Germany wasn't exactly swimming in heavy guns. Soviet corps-level guns of a similar caliber outranged this gun, and could therefore destroy sFH 18 batteries from a safe distance. After the war, some guns were purchased by other countries. An interesting Czech conversion bored out the gun to be compatible with Soviet 152 mm shells. Jagdpanzer 38(t)  Commonly called Hetzer (even though Hetzer refers to a different vehicle), the Jagdpanzer 38(t) was a Czech light tank destroyer project, produced for Germany, and perhaps the only late-war design to not be certifiably insane. Using a copy of a Soviet gun mounting method, the light Pz38(t) tank chassis could carry a long 75 mm gun, making it as effective as a PzIV tank at anti-tank work, at a much lower cost. However, the small size of the tank impacted crew ergonomics and observation. For instance, it was impossible to look to the right without sticking your head out of the vehicle. Nevertheless, the vehicle continued service with Switzerland until 1970. Read more about this vehicle here. Tiger  When Germany invaded the USSR and saw the Red Army's newest tanks, German tankers got "mad jelly" (a highly technical term!) and demanded better ones. A previously frozen heavy tank program (there was no room for slow heavy tanks in Fast Heinz' Panzerwaffe) was restarted. The hull was enlarged and expanded, and the turret was equipped with the only gun that was capable of reliably defeating Soviet armour, the FlaK 36 (KwK 36). The tank was equipped with a mighty 100 mm of armour in the front (don't be fooled by claims that it was the thickest armoured, the Churchill had 101 mm), a tough cookie for any tank gun of the era. Tiger tanks were not assigned to regular formations, but organized into special heavy tank battalions. Lots of ink has been spilled arguing about if the Tiger is the bestest tank ever, but people claiming that it's somehow exceptional tend to compare it to vehicles half its weight. I can write an essay (or rather, copy in an essay that I have already written) about how the service of the Tiger was generally unimpressive, but suffice it to say that compared to an IS or Pershing tank, the Tiger was woefully obsolete, leading to its removal from production in 1944. The large kill figures in Tiger battalion combat diaries appear to exist only in the imagination of its authors, as the losses inflicted on the enemy tend to overestimate reality by orders of magnitude. Read more about the Tiger's design and service here. However, the Tiger's service was just uninteresting, as opposed to its successors, such as... Panther  While the Tiger was a breakthrough tank to surpass the KV, the Panther was a medium tank to surpass the T-34. However, the design ballooned from 30 tons to 46 (compared to the Tiger's from 45 tons to 60). The competition for the Panther contract was nearly won by a Daimler-Benz prototype that almost straight up copied the T-34, but the MAN vehicle ended up winning due to the impossibility of producing several components en masse and the general shape that could be confused for a Soviet tank and lead to friendly fire. Despite being a 45 ton vehicle, the Germans classified it as a medium tank due to the gun's 75 mm caliber. Even though it did not increase compared to the PzIV, the barrel extended to 70 calibers in length, and the propellant increased to fire a shell at 1000 meters per second. The gun also featured a compressed air tank to clear out gases from the barrel after firing, making breathing in the turret a much more pleasant experience. The front armour of the tank was an impressive sloped 85 mm, making it invincible to any Soviet gun short of the 122 mm on the IS-2, but its side armour was only 40 mm thick, making it vulnerable to everything starting from anti-tank rifles. The Panther was plagued with design and production problems from the start. The turret traverse mechanism could not even hold the turret in place, let alone rotate it, on an incline. The engine was prone to leaking oil on the watertight engine compartment and catching fire, as well as very prone to wear. Decreasing its power allowed the tank to work a little longer, but then the final drive became a problem, whose gears would break after an average of 150 kilometers. All this was compounded by the quality of German armour taking a nose-dive towards the end of the war, resulting in a tank that wasn't much good at all. Out of the German "big cats", it was the only one that saw (brief) post-war service with the French army, probably because it wasn't nearly as much as a drain on Germany's dwindling resources as... Tiger II  Also known as Tiger B or King Tiger, the Tiger II was more of a modernized Panther. It also had angled armour (with an upper glacis that was a whole 180 mm thick), an 88 mm gun that shot its shells at 1000 m/s, and all of the Panther's mechanical problems, compounded by its much greater weight. Its front armour and gun were about evenly classed with the IS-2 (although the IS-2 had a much better HE shell) but that came at the cost of a 70-ton vehicle. Tiger II tanks replaced Tiger tanks in heavy tank battalions. Read more about the Tiger II here. SU-76  The history of the SU-76 reaches all the way back to the first days of the war, when the T-26 was out of production, the T-50 was a flop, and the Red Army was left without any light infantry support tanks in production. Soviet engineer Astrov designed a dead-simple T-60 tank that could be produced at automotive factories, based on a simplified T-40 design. The tank was equipped with a 20 mm automatic cannon (some had a 12.7 mm machinegun) and a 7.62 mm machinegun. This was an interim solution, and in 1942 the T-60 was already replaced with a (slightly) better armoured and (much) better armed T-70. The T-70's high explosive shell was adequate when supporting infantry against a lightly dug-in foe, but any kind of serious fortifications were problematic. The solution was the SU-76: a ZiS-3 gun on a lenghtened T-70 chassis. The SU-76's designer, Ginzburg, took a few shortcuts and reused a few too many components, as a result of which, the early SU-76 was hideously unreliable (an average range of ~300 kilometers). Instead of trying to fix his design, Ginzburg played the blame game, and ended up being fired and sent to the front as the deputy commander of the 32nd Tank Brigade's technical unit, where he was killed in battle. The SU-76 was redesigned under the index SU-76M (although in documents, it is almost always SU-76), achieved ten times the reliability, and remained in production until the end of the war, and continued fighting in the Korean War. The versatile platform was also used for an AA gun (ZSU-37) and a light SPG (SU-122A). Raketenwerfer 56 The Raketenwerfer consisted of six box-like cells on top of a 50 mm PaK 38 gun carriage. The weapon could fire six 300 mm rockets (with a whopping 45 kilograms of explosive filler) in a burst, but at a relatively short range. The clouds of dust kicked up by the rockets meant that it was very vulnerable to counterbattery fire.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2014 18:39
|
|
|
I think I like these posts even more than the ones about the actual game.  I've been checking your links with extra information, and holy poo poo it must be terrible to deal with so many wehraboos every time you want to talk about German equipment.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 00:10
|
|
|
World War 2 is definitely one of those times when there's so much information it almost wraps around to being too little again, just because so many people have these romanticized versions of everything.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 00:36
|
|
|
The Sandman posted:So no Stalingrad, no Kursk, no Bagration, no Vistula-Oder, no Balkan campaign, just straight from Sevastopol to Berlin? Agreed; I was following this LP solely so I could gawk at the Stalingrad level  Never knew about the steel breastplates though- that poo poo is cool!
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 09:50
|
|
|
Could you link to that essay on tiger tanks? Sounds really interesting.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 01:09
|
|
|
 Viktor and his allies took Seelow Heights, and the 1st Belorussian Front confidently pushes into Berlin.  Meanwhile, Alex has another task, deep inside enemy territory, at a base near Lake Heinersdorf.  Chasing Shadows. April 17th, 1945. Lake Heinersdorf, Germany  Still no plane!  How many documents did you say there were?  Lots. More than you can carry in person.  Finally, a plane arrives!  Our heroes watch it land at the dock.  Wherever we may be, the disembodied voice is always with us! Turns out this game has a plot! Remember those documents we found way back in the third mission? This is the German foreign intelligence center they mentioned, deep in the mountains, protected from the outside world and only accessible by airplane. This is what Alex's squad was after during the last mission, everything we discovered for Viktor was a personal favour. That base over there has a list of all German agents deployed on foreign soil, including those in the Soviet Union. That is a list that the NKVD (well, Smersh, but they aren't in this game) would be very interested in.  The plane we just saw landed here. It likely carried the documents we need.  The documents were probably brought to the base.  Careful! The area around the base is carefully patrolled.  Objective added: Find medicine for starshina Grishenko Alexei Kuznetsov: drat, they got Grishenko good. We need to look around, maybe the Fritz have some medicine. Remember that old guy in the cutscene? He got shot, apparently. We didn't see it happen, but it did. Ivan Chernov: We have to leave him here and go search. Sergei Filatov: Yes, let's do that. Let's try to not make noise, the Germans don't need to now we're here. Did you enjoy the stealth mechanics from the last mission? No? Tough, we're doing it again.  This time it's not as bad. The mission is not as long, and there aren't anywhere as many Germans.  Sergei Filatov: The base is carefully guarded. There's nothing we can do, we have to make it in. As you can probably tell, we're not going in through here.  Alexei Kuznetsov: For starters, let's check out that abandoned house. The few Fritz can't stop us.  This is the house. There are four Germans guarding it and a nondescript box.  As we're coming around, those two guards come up to the lake. They aren't going to leave no matter how long you wait, so you might as well start fighting. They won't see you, but they are scripted to start running up to you when you take out the guards at the house, so keep that in mind.  This is what we came here for. A machinegun, an axe, and, of course, medicine for that guy.  Objective complete: Find medicine for starshina Grishenko. Sergei Filatov: Excellent! Just what the wounded man needs.  The camera pans over the enemy base. Objective complete: find medicine for starshina Grishenko Aleksei Kuznetsov: It's easier to get through from this side. I see where we can make a hole in the fence. We need to deliver the medicine to Grishenko, but remember this place, we will come back later.  Ivan Chernov: Yes, let's come back to the wounded. This is where we'll be coming in. It's pretty obvious, I don't know why the game is holding our hand, but whatever.  Another German shows up, I don't know if he's scripted or not, but he's not a problem.  This is where we have to return. Grishenko isn't here, he doesn't show up until we heal him.  Gotta wait for those patrols to pass! This mission might contain less bullshit triggers, but it contains just as much waiting.  Objective added: get into the center and discover where the document archives are being kept. Stepan Grishenko: Thanks, I'm better now. At least, I won't slow you down. Let's move out to the base.  A few hours later, Grishenko is as good as new (despite his grievous wound that could not be healed with our health kits), and we can move on. By the way, everyone else in the game speaks like a proper Muscovite, but this guy has some kind of a rural accent. Diversity!  Our squad is restored to four men, but there are more patrols now that it's night, so don't go getting into an firefights all willy nilly.  There's that back entrance.  Alexei Kuznetsov: One of us must go to the base. Let's figure out who now. If there are volunteers, take the wire cutters and go! The rest will go to the plane and wait there. Oh, Alex, you card, of course we're taking you. Also, every squad member comes with his own wire cutters, so there is no need to share.  Ivan Chernov: Look, an officer has come out! He should know where documents are kept.  You can't go around behind that repairman, or the hidden guard in that building will see you. Make sure you are not seen by the guards at the entrance that are shuffling about.  You can walk along this back area here, but there are two soldiers talking, preventing you from going further. This is a safe zone, you can sit here while you watch where the officer went. You didn't lose the officer, did you?  There he is. I need to interrogate him, I suppose. There hasn't been a tutorial tooltip on how to do that, so I guess I just...click him, maybe?  Mission failed.. The officer has died. Now there is no way to find out the information about the documents... Alexei Kuznetsov was too late. By the time his recon squad reached the target, all important documents have been carried away in an unknown direction. In an effort to track them down, the squad made an effort to enter the closely guarded territory of the intelligence center. Their attempt did not end in success, as they were found and fell in an uneven battle. Enemies destroyed: 8 men, 0 vehicles Allied losses: 0 men, 0 vehicles Oops. As you can tell, only the first part of the message changes, depending on where you fail. The rest is stock.  All right, let's try again. Apparently in order to interrogate the officer, you have to follow him around until he gets into a house, and then go in after him.  While the night ended, Alex was busy tying this guy to a chair, but apparently hasn't asked any important questions yet. Namely... Where are the documents?  I don't know! They aren't here anymore! They were taken away in a plane! This German doesn't have an accent at all, unlike "ve haff veys of makink you tolk" in mission 3.  Ok, I will check it out. Take a nap here. If you were lying, I'll be back.  Objective complete: enter the territory of the base and discover where the document archive is kept. Huh, it's night again. Also, strictly speaking, we did not discover it.  Another patrol on the road we want! We can either keep dodging it and the guards at the main entrances, or go around where the other lake it.  Yeah, let's take the scenic route.  There is a Volkswagen here. Sadly, an invisible wall prevents us from reaching it, otherwise we could reach the plane in style.  I'm tired of this whole war thing. Let's just stay here, pitch a tent, relax, make some smores. It will be great!  Look at those guys across the lake! They know where it's at.  Objective complete: leave the base and regroup at the rendezvous point. Alexei Kuznetsov: The Germans managed to evacuate the documents. I think we should come after it. Let's move out to the plane. The Germans at the plane aren't going anywhere. This is another mandatory combat segment. I take a few shots from up here and then perform a skilled flanking maneuver.  The Germans are shooting at where they think I am instead of where I am actually. Dispatching the rest of them won't be an issue.  Time to get on that plane and get out of here.  The world's most oblivious guard patrols the area where we watched the plane from.  The plane starts up.  Somehow, the fact that the plane is leaving early and there are a bunch of corpses around it isn't a concern to anyone.  Off we go!  Objective complete: Capture the airplane and fly to Falster Island.  Mission Complete. Sadly, my unit was too late. Due to our units advancing over Seelow Heights, Abwehr's couriers evacuated the documents. Now, we head for Falster Island in the Baltic Sea, where the secret base of the German Navy was established. We needed to intercept the precious cargo no matter what, before it is lost forever in the waters of the Atlantic. Having captured an airplane, we flown out to the north-east, into the unknown, towards out last battle... Enemies destroyed: 13 men, 0 vehicles Allied losses: 0 men, 0 vehicles Hmm, I guess we're just hoping no one will discover that we killed a bunch of guys, knocked out an officer, stole a plane, and then radio the secret base where the plane was headed to and tell them we were coming? Well, plot is hardly ever the strong point of an RTS game. Join me next time, for the final mission of the Soviet campaign!
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 01:40
|
|
|
Monocled Falcon posted:Could you link to that essay on tiger tanks? Sounds really interesting. Since I'm not doing a historical notes for this mission (nothing new, really), here it is, updated a little bit. A colleague of mine wrote a similar piece on the Panther tank. I recommend reading both links in the first paragraph. Even though they are hosted on a forum for an internet tanks arcade game, the first is written by our own goony tank nerd Rossmum and is firmly rooted in secondary sources, and the other contains a large amount of primary sources. I planned on writing something similar for the King Tiger, but have not made it that far. Edit: updated permissions Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 17:08 on May 25, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 05:36
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:Since I'm not doing a historical notes for this mission (nothing new, really) Nobody ever talks about the Do 24  Will definitely check out those links.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 07:15
|
|
|
That Tiger essay is fantastic, thanks! It's a persistent bugbear of mine, the way we just lap up all these stories of the Invincible Nazi War Machine even when the reality was often incompetence or poor-quality production/design.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 14:22
|
|
|
Are there any games that actually model German logistical and reliability problems in the late war?
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 15:02
|
|
|
Fangz posted:Are there any games that actually model German logistical and reliability problems in the late war? All the spergtastic sims that would go for this sort of thing have a more than subtle German slant to them. This sort of things doesn't make for a pleasant or balanced game experience.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 18:52
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:All the spergtastic sims that would go for this sort of thing have a more than subtle German slant to them. This sort of things doesn't make for a pleasant or balanced game experience. Like Historically effective mines, in that regard *glares at WITP*
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2014 14:21
|
|
|
Fangz posted:Are there any games that actually model German logistical and reliability problems in the late war? IIRC, in War in the East German tanks are more likely to break down compared to Soviet Tanks. But considering the scale of the game, this is barely noticeable. (Germany also suffers because all tanks in tank division must be of same exact type and there is billion variants of different tanks)
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2014 15:58
|
|
|
Oh god, this last loving mission. It's a combat mission against a whole base with just your four stealth guys. It might be a while before the next update.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2014 04:12
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:Oh god, this last loving mission. It's a combat mission against a whole base with just your four stealth guys. It might be a while before the next update. Hit the radio room asap to get reinforcements.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2014 11:52
|
|
|
I am continually perplexed by this game's penchant for forcing you to take a tiny group to take on a massive force. However, I'm really enjoying the historical notes and Ensign Expendable's commentary! Ensign Expendable posted:Since I'm not doing a historical notes for this mission (nothing new, really), here it is, updated a little bit. Perhaps it's something wrong on my end, but when I tried to access that link it spat out a 404 error. The other links work just fine, though! Jobbo_Fett posted:Nobody ever talks about the Do 24 Being a massive plane sperg I would, but I have little to no experience with the Do 24. Sorry dude.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2014 13:41
|
|
|
Fangz posted:Hit the radio room asap to get reinforcements. I figured that much out, but it's easier said than done. Soup Inspector posted:Perhaps it's something wrong on my end, but when I tried to access that link it spat out a 404 error. Weird, try again. I replaced the public share link.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2014 17:09
|
|
|
I knew that Tiger was overhyped, but I never knew that the real deal was that different.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2014 18:30
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:Weird, try again. I replaced the public share link. It works now, thanks a lot!
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2014 20:11
|
|
|
 In late April of 1945, the Germans are all sorts of hosed, getting pushed in tighter and tighter by the Allies from every direction.  Flying Dutchman. April 18th, 1945. Island Falster. Here we are, ready to deliver a blow to...an island in the middle of nowhere. I guess there will be no Reichstag for us, our war will end far from Berlin.  Falster Island, April 18th, 1945 A searchlight lights up the sea.  Despite this being a remote base, it is heavily guarded! This won't be easy.  There are guards everywhere.  What's this, out in the distance?  Oh, just a plane landing, nothing to worry about.  The disembodied voice magically knows about the submarine in the submarine pen, and also that the documents we want are here.  The voice also knows that there is a powerful radio transmitter in this building, which we should use to contact the mainland.  We must take out the AA gun here before our reinforcements can land.  Then we get back to our plane and escape! Easy peasy.  Objective added: disable the AA gun on the shore. We must reach the communications room and contact the mainland. We also need to destroy the AA gun at the shore.  Blowing up the AA gun and getting to the radio are "optional" objectives, but good luck finishing this mission without doing them. Let's begin by getting to this AA gun right next to us. We can't go in through the front door; there are too many guys. Time for some creativity!  Did you know your men can swim? Me neither, but apparently they can! It's an extremely clumsy mechanic, but it gets the job done.  Remember the other stealth missions where the enemy was nearly blind, especially at night? Not so here! This must be the island where they put all the Aryan supermen, because they will spot you even in complete darkness, outside of their vision range.  See? Massive amounts of bullshit. Nine times out of ten, you cannot get on dry land without this fucker seeing you.  If you swim in behind the boat, you have better odds.  Objective complete: disable the AA gun on the shore. If you open fire on the enemy and kill enough of them before they can respond, you can move in close enough to throw a grenade and knock out that AA gun.  After this, you must hurry. A warning is raised, and a ton of Aryan supermen are running right at you. They will spread out through the opening area, and they will find you, so you have to run north as fast as possible to avoid running into them. By the way, from the fact that we're all stealth guys, and it's night, you might think this is a stealth mission. Wrong. This is a combat mission. Your men have fire on sight disabled by default, but they still yell out things they usually do during combat sections. Playing this like it should be a stealth mission won't get you very far.  Ok, the radio transmitter is next. Let's see if I can go around the guards here.  See this guy's vision range? See how I'm not in it?  Haha, gently caress you, the guy sees me anyway. Magic!  I raised some ruckus here, but the Germans couldn't get any armour over the hill, so I killed a bunch of them. The base is quite alerted now, but maybe I can get back and wait it out...  Thankfully we brought anti-tank grenades.  By the way, they have Flakpanzers, taking out that one AA gun won't do poo poo, but whatever floats your boat, game.  Mission failed. Your squad has died. The scouts had no information on the garrison at Falster, no idea about how many men were here, where they were posted, the patrol routes. Kuznetsov's squad had to go in blind. It is not surprising that the four courageous scouts were headed for a tragic failure. Soon after arriving at the island, they were discovered by the enemy and fully destroyed... Enemies destroyed: 36 men, 2 vehicles Allied losses: 3 men, 0 vehicles Come on game, one of my guys is still alive! I had it under control. Sigh, let's try again.  Sneaky sneaky. By the way, a sniper is up on this tower, so if you are seen, you better move around.  Well, the supermen sensed us with their super-hearing, time to shoot them all.  Many attempts later... Objective completed: reach the communications room and send coordinates for reinforcements to the mainland. Ivan Chernov: Excellent work! Our paratroopers should arrive soon.  Parachutes!  Well, there goes any pretense for this being a stealth mission. The alarm is raised!  Objective added: remove the submarine guards. Aleksei Kuznetsov: Move it! The alarm was raised, the Germans will be here any minute! Get ready to fight! When the alarm is raised, the submarine guards start running all over the place. That objective becomes "kill everyone".  Yup, they only sent a single squad to take out this top-secret German naval base. Lovely. Thankfully, this squad has bazookas! Maybe we will see them in action.  Segei Filippov: We need to take out the submarine guards, after that let's try to get inside. Every German in the base is now running at us, by the way.  Aleksei Kuznetsov: I hear tracks, a German column is approaching. We need to hold the base at any cost! Prepare to defend! There's a handy dandy AA gun on this sub! That will help even out the odds a bit.  A fuckton of Germans are here, by the way. In a game about unfair fights, this is an especially unfair one. You will run out of ammunition. Loot every corpse for ammo and med kits. Every soldier is precious, you won't get any more.  The Germans are bringing some serious firepower to this base.  Aha, got your turret! The enemy tankers climb out, we climb in, and get a handy machinegun fort.  Objective completed: kill the submarine guards. See what I mean? The last guard was hiding way over here.  Ivan Chernov: the crew has locked themselves inside the submarine! We must find a way inside. Of course they have. Nothing is easy.  Ivan Chernov: Yeah, we can't manage here without a blowtorch. Objective added: find a blow torch. Conveniently, there's one just around the corner!  Also, more tanks waiting for us. That PzIII took a point blank bazooka hit and didn't even flinch.  Objective completed: find the blowtorch. There it is! The blowtorch is classified as a cannon, and so it has to be changed from transport to "combat" position before you can move it. Like cannons, it rotates around its center, but I think something went wrong in the design, and it rotates around the center of the blowtorch, instead of the center of the combined models, leading to some fun.   Ahem. Let's get back to serious business. As soon as the blowtorch is wheeled onto this particular bit of the submarine, the other guy I had stationed there begins to cut the hatch.  He will be cutting for a while. Meanwhile, the game spawns infinite Germans at you.  What feels like a thousand German corpses later: Objective complete: get inside the submarine.  Sorry guys, I don't want to rain on your parade, but we aren't going anywhere. A problem has arrived.  This problem's name is Shwer...  ..and it blows up our plane. drat. Now the submarine is our only ticket out of here. We need to open the sub pen gates, though... Objective complete: get inside the submarine and obtain the list of spies.  Viktor Grishenko: I'm inside. The crew is scared to death. We're unwanted guests, it seems. The documents are here, waiting for us in crates.  Innokentiy Abramtsev: This is the transformer station. It's likely that it controls the dock gates.  We push a switch at the transformer station, and... Objective complete: open the dock gates. We did it! Now, to deal with that barge.  More reinforcements! We need to do this fast.  Grishenko pulls the pin on a grenade...  ...and blows up the reinforcements!  More Germans are running in, we can't hold them.  My men are firing at them, and falling back to the submarine.  Action! Excitement! Running!  The Germans figured out that the submarine is ours and are lowering their AA cannons to destroy it.  Thankfully, we have just the thing to deal with pesky boats.  Kaboom!  Our shiny new sub sails into the distance.  Moscow, May 1st, 1945 Alex is back in Moscow, in his roomy office, staring thoughtfully into the window.  The NKVD shitlord bursts into the office with two submachinegunners!  He makes some vague noncommittal statements towards our character. Is this it, are we getting taken out of the picture now that our job is done?  Alex is obviously worried.  Viktor is here to save us!  Oh, wait, no, the NKVD guy just likes bursting into people's offices with an armed escort, apparently. Alex is safe.  There appears to be a lot of interesting information contained in these documents...  And those. Better get to work!  Berlin, May 10th, 1945.  It's party time!  Dancing!  The ending cinematic randomly cuts back to scenes from earlier cutscenes. At least most of them, there's a bunch of footage that presumably got cut out.  More partying!  More flashbacks!  This guy has some sick moves.  Flashback to an exciting new camera angle of Alex running after the train.  Oh yeah, the game shows us an IS tank. We don't actually ever get to use one, but the developers assure us they've heard of it.  Another flashback to something we've definitely not seen before.   This guy's on fire.  A tank crewman waves a red banner around.  Alex and Viktor are in Berlin too! This time around, Alex brought his medals as well. I guess he doesn't wear them when in his office.  WE MADE IT  Mission complete. Have you ever been on a submarine? I haven't, before this. My squad got the job done: documents were found and delivered. The captured documents revealed a network of saboteurs in our Motherland. Agents turned up in the midst of simple workers, engineers, soldiers and commanders. Now we need to clear society of these dangerous elements. In the coming years, I won't be bored... Enemies destroyed: 210 men, 13 vehicles. Allied losses: 2 men, 2 vehicles. The game doubled up on bullshit, but I made it! Join me next time as I tackle the Allied campaign, surely devoid of bullshit mission setups, pointless micromanaging, and clumsily implemented gameplay mechanics.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2014 02:47
|
|
|
The first couple of Allied missions are probably the worst in the game. The first one especially - while you can do all these missions in co-op, I'm pretty sure Allied Mission 1 is impossible without saving and loading.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2014 03:48
|
|
|
Are there any German missions with Tigers involved?
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2014 08:04
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2014 08:50
|
|
|
John Charity Spring posted:The first couple of Allied missions are probably the worst in the game. The first one especially - while you can do all these missions in co-op, I'm pretty sure Allied Mission 1 is impossible without saving and loading. I used to think that, until I played it in co-op with this random russian pubbie. Me and another player managed to get all but one of our dudes killed... So this guy, he solos the entire level with the last remaining dude.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2014 10:40
|
|
|
quote:The game doubled up on bullshit, but I made it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJqkW_WCMXQ
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2014 12:24
|
|
|
The 88 used in uboats wasn't same model that army used and it isn't actually a FLAK gun. 
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2014 15:50
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:
 As for the bazooka hit on the Panzer 3J, it's worth noting that even though the spaced armor on it and the Panzer 4H (I don't think it's on any other tanks in the game) is supposed to protect it from shaped charges, from experience, this protection in game is unreliable at best. It does shear off rather interestingly when hit, though. Speaking of armor damage mechanics, I don't think it's ever stated in game but armor can be degraded through repeated application of high explosive rounds. This isn't a reliable tactic, however, since there aren't many circumstances where an opponent is willing to let a Sherman 105mm repeatedly slap their heavy tank in the face until it eventually falls apart. There's odd attention to detail in some places, and lack of it in others. Such as your upcoming battle against the Vichy French in German costumes
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2014 16:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 22, 2024 16:06 |
|
|
It's stated on the loading screen tips, but I don't think I've ever actually seen it in action.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2014 17:44
|
|