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If you are on the German side and reading this, then please leave, eh? Welcome to a special edition goon versus goon quick battle! The objectives for this mission are simple: find out if I can handle running a participatory LP and hold a French Town against some Kraut bastards. Every goon who is currently signed up for this game has participated in this format at least once before, so I'll skip any instructional introduction to Combat Mission and its peculiarities. You should all know the drill by now. The idea is to have a short but sweet skirmish to fill the gap between several larger campaigns currently in the works. The Town  *Note, this version cuts off a bit of the terrain around all the edges.  Welcome to Med_TownQB_009! Please feel free to name it whatever you want, the locals won't mind. The only objective is to hold the green zone against the Germans, who will be coming in from the bottom right/north-west corner of the map.  A view towards the German spawn. Let me know about any/all additional views you would like. The map is relatively small, dominated by the town on one side and the forest on the other. The only significant change in elevation is a slight depression along the road leading into the town.  Looking towards the German deployment zone with trees off to highlight the elevation. Your Forces        You will collectively be in command of a platoon of the 1st Canadian Airborne Battalion. These men are well trained, motivated, and fit to fight. Almost all of them are equipped with Sten guns, and can put a respectable amount of firepower downrange. In close quarters, they're deadly. Each squad can be split into three teams, which correlate to the three columns you see when the squad is selected. Another interesting note is that all of your paratrooper sections have satchel charges and can utilize the blast command. All told you have: 1 HQ Team (4 men) 1 Scout Team (3 men) 1 Sniper Team (2 men) 1 Machine-gun Detachment (4 men) 3 Airborne Sections (10 men each) For a total strength of 43. You were incredibly lucky to not lose anyone in drops! This is, however, all you get, use them wisely. You haven't had much time to prepare, so your defenses consist of 10 hastily dug foxholes. It's up to you to organize yourselves however you see fit. Let me know and please post your orders in a legible format. I highly encourage all players to include a map with their orders for maximum clarity.  This is the first time I've attempted anything like this, so please give me your feedback! Help me help you, it's no fun to be crippled by a lack of information. Generation Internet fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 09:03
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Who gets which units? I'm happy to take an line infantry part.
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Mar 1, 2015 09:59
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Comstar posted:Who gets which units? I'm happy to take an line infantry part. That's up to you guys to decide, you'll have until Tuesday or Wednesday to hash out your order of battle and strategy, unless you feel you need more/less time.
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Mar 1, 2015 10:38
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We could divide it something like: Platoon Commander - HQ + Scout Team Special Weapon Commander- Machinegun + Sniper Team Section Commanders x3 - 1 Section Each
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Mar 1, 2015 20:56
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Flippycunt posted:We could divide it something like: We should definitely have one player per infantry section. This looks like as good a way as any to divide the rest among the remaining two players. We should set up a google doc for unit signups. I can do this later tonight if nobody else gets to it before then.
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Mar 2, 2015 00:15
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Okay, I've completed my first flirtation with video production to give you a short preview of your force after some Germans pointed out that my screenshots got compressed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS43QbP1dps It might still be too dark but I think my voice is at a reasonable level compared to the game audio. Feedback is much appreciated!
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Mar 2, 2015 00:54
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I'll take an infantry section. Initial strategy thoughts: I assume they'll have some sort of advantage as the attackers. Maybe some extra heavy weapons or something. In general I'd like to set up some ambushes using hide and target arc commands. We have a shitload of SMGs, so waiting for them to get close and opening up on them can wipe out whole teams at once. The most likely attack route is from West and Northwest, since the band of thick forest tiles on that side of the town restrict LOS. Every other direction is very exposed. What's interesting is that our deployment zone actually extends over part of that treeline. We can put an initial line of defense there to make an ambush. That could surprise them if they don't know our deployment zone extends that far west. Our foxholes would go on that line since they're redundant inside the town. Then we would pull back to the town and repeat. Our scout team and maybe the HMG would watch the northwest direction in case they decide to attack across the more open ground. 
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Mar 2, 2015 04:50
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I know this is a little repetitive given how many games everyone has played, but for the purposes of your planning, the first turn will run until contact with the enemy (this will include sound contacts so you can react, and given the size of the map may happen quickly). This is so we avoid the first few order phases consisting of nothing but 'keep moving that way '. After that we'll move to 1 minute turns every 24 or 48 hours depending on how fast teams can process their orders. We have small teams with a relatively small number of units, so I'm hopeful we can keep things moving at a decent pace, but we can reasonably allow for people's busy schedules and disparate time-zones. The first turn will run 48-72 hours from this post, unless people really need more time to prepare.
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Mar 2, 2015 06:55
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 Unit signups created, please mark your name down for a unit, and bookmark this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11SSC8hzQgNhg_Gpt8cS7BJTXP_6hfy31bC64ABdVJr0/edit?usp=sharingWho wants to take platoon HQ command? I would be down, but I'll be headed up into the mountains this Thursday-Sunday, and I doubt I'll have more than sporadic Internet access. Generation Internet posted:Okay, I've completed my first flirtation with video production to give you a short preview of your force after some Germans pointed out that my screenshots got compressed. The video looks a little dark. What time of day is the attack going to take place? Last time around, there had been some talk of sharing the turn file and side password with the thread, so that those with the game could watch independently. Since this is a smaller game, it might not help that much. On the other hand, it might be a good time to try it out. Thoughts? Fray posted:I'll take an infantry section. An alternative approach might be to place our main defenses a ways inside the town. We could leave the MG in a building covering the right flank, put the scout and sniper in the bush line (sniper covering left flank, scout in the middle). Ideally, we'd find places for infantry ambushes where they're forced to advance in the open. Unfortunately, it looks like most or all of the buildings have doors on two or more sides, so it won't be possible to deny them the cover of buildings for the most part. That said, I'd probably take Stens vs MG-42s in buildings at 50 meters over stens vs MG-42s in the open at 300 meters. abelian fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Mar 2, 2015 |
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Mar 2, 2015 07:08
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abelian posted:The video looks a little dark. What time of day is the attack going to take place? The battle is taking place at dawn, but I recorded the video with the artificially bright night graphics on and lightened it a bit later on YouTube. The issue is that Fraps is recording the video way darker than it looks on my screen, which is apparently a widespread problem yet one I haven't found a definitive answer for. I will try to fix that for the next videos. As far as I'm concerned this is the best place to experiment with new concepts for Combat Mission LP's since we're in between campaigns. I have no problem with sharing the save so long as everyone promises to not actually run turns, especially since I started it as a two-person hot-seat game. I'll pass the idea on to the Germans and if they agree I'll start posting saves.
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Mar 2, 2015 07:14
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Ok, thanks for the info. As far as the brightness, it sounds like a gamma issue. Do you have any ATI/nvidia control panel customizations that could be causing fraps to use the wrong gamma? Are you encoding the fraps videos in some other format, before uploading to youtube, that is using the wrong colorspace?Generation Internet posted:I have no problem with sharing the save so long as everyone promises to not actually run turns, especially since I started it as a two-person hot-seat game. I'll pass the idea on to the Germans and if they agree I'll start posting saves. As long as you do a PBEM (with yourself), shouldn't it be impossible for us to run the turns without knowledge of the other side's password, or direct collaboration with one of the other side's players?
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Mar 2, 2015 07:31
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I'll command 2nd section. I think we're probably going to have to stick to the urban areas if we want to survive. Assuming we're going up against Fallschirmjäger, here is what we can expect: quote:Platoon HQ (1 Officer, 8 men) Guessing probably something like two platoons worth of men, so 70-80 Germans, with something like 12 machineguns. Plus, if we plant foxholes out in the forest then as soon as we leave them the Germans will occupy them and we'll be gifting them some nice cover to use as a springboard for their assault. I've also seen combat mission infantry throw satchels into buildings like grenades and demolish an entire floor of enemies, its pretty sweet, so I guess we have that at least.
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Mar 2, 2015 07:41
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abelian posted:Ok, thanks for the info. As far as the brightness, it sounds like a gamma issue. Do you have any ATI/nvidia control panel customizations that could be causing fraps to use the wrong gamma? Are you encoding the fraps videos in some other format, before uploading to youtube, that is using the wrong colorspace? Something is definitely changing my gamma somewhere along the line, but I don't know where it is. I played around with my nvidia control panel earlier but couldn't find anything. The process I've used is recording raw video with Fraps, which produces a massive avi file that is darker that what I've been seeing. Then I render it to a much smaller mp4 and upload to YouTube, but neither of those processes seriously affect the brightness. The only problem is that I didn't start the game as a PBEM and I didn't set a password for either side, for my own ease of use. In the hotseat game-mode the perspective just flips to the other team as soon as you hit end turn. Without a password, this means I just have to press end turn then enter and I'm commanding the other team.
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Mar 2, 2015 07:51
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I've signed up for 1st Section. I have a idea. We set all 3 sections on one side of the village (inside it), the HMG and Sniper on the other and the HQ in the middle. We then use all 3 sections as a group, rather than spreading them around in an equal-distance defence. We'd let the enemy into the village and then counter attack from the flank of their advance. The HMG or sniper could be on the outside looking in, away from the direction of their advance.
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Mar 2, 2015 09:18
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Generation Internet posted:Something is definitely changing my gamma somewhere along the line, but I don't know where it is. I played around with my nvidia control panel earlier but couldn't find anything. The process I've used is recording raw video with Fraps, which produces a massive avi file that is darker that what I've been seeing. Then I render it to a much smaller mp4 and upload to YouTube, but neither of those processes seriously affect the brightness. If you have a Nvidia card, see if it supports Shadowplay (600 series and newer, I think). It's a very easy to use capture software that has almost no performance impact, and at least for me the capture quality was always excellent.
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Mar 2, 2015 12:56
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Having access to the save would be nice, since being able to go into the game and check for lines of sight is a huge resource that also makes the job easier for you. I understand your concern about people cheating by playing ahead, though-would it be possible for you to restart the game as a passworded game, since technically it hasn't started yet?
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Mar 2, 2015 17:17
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Perestroika posted:If you have a Nvidia card, see if it supports Shadowplay (600 series and newer, I think). It's a very easy to use capture software that has almost no performance impact, and at least for me the capture quality was always excellent. I'm going to try this next, I've spent all morning adjusting colour settings in the Nvidia and Intel control panels to no avail. Worst comes to worst I'll just try to fix it with some video editing. e: Shadowplay is out, it only supports desktop drivers and I'm doing everything on my crappy old laptop. Acebuckeye13 posted:Having access to the save would be nice, since being able to go into the game and check for lines of sight is a huge resource that also makes the job easier for you. I understand your concern about people cheating by playing ahead, though-would it be possible for you to restart the game as a passworded game, since technically it hasn't started yet? I could re-start it, but my only concern, and this is tiny, is that it would re-randomize the weapons every unit starts with. I think I'm going to keep the current game we have now going, and just share the save I have if people want it. I trust everyone here not to cheat, since we've all done this before and that would completely defeat the purpose of the game. Generation Internet fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Mar 2, 2015 |
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Mar 2, 2015 18:39
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Maybe also try OBS? It's not as fast as fraps, and its video quality is poorer, but you can improve this some by changing the settings. It does some compression in real time, so it might impact performance. It doesn't slow down the game on my desktop i7, but who knows how well it will perform on a laptop.
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Mar 2, 2015 20:45
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abelian posted:I agree that that's the most likely avenue of approach. On the other hand, those woods are not thick enough to completely conceal their approach. The far line of bushes has more or less intermittent line of sight with the first ambush line you have marked. In fact, some locations along that line have direct LOS into their spawn area! German squads will probably all come with long range automatic weapons like MG-42s or FG-42s. Our Stens won't be able to go toe-to-toe with them in a long range fight. If we do decide to defend outside the town, we should use as many foxholes as possible in order to have some decent cover. If we do opt for a more aggressive initial deployment, then it might make sense to have the MG in a position to cover the infantry's retreat into the town. Also, we need a wacky map names theme.
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Mar 2, 2015 20:46
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abelian posted:Maybe also try OBS? I was all ready to post a testing video I did of messing around with the brightness, but at the last minute I realized it also happened to be of the German spawn. Here's one more appropriate for this thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7sYK95ISZA
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Mar 2, 2015 21:16
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You now have 48 hours to finish your deployment and planning
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Mar 3, 2015 03:53
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Fray posted:Well, I'm not suggesting we get into a long range fight. We would Hide our units and engage once they come within SMG range, optimally within 100m. The goal would be to quickly gently caress up their advance units with massive firepower, then pull back rather than fight it out. Putting the HMG on a second floor to cover the retreat would help, we should try to find a position that can cover both the west and the road approach. Ok, good point. Of course, their most dangerous course of action in that case would be to probe our defenses with scouts, with their MGs hanging back to cover. I think that our best use of the foxholes will be in town, behind the cover of buildings, waiting in ambush down longish roadways that they'll have to cross in order to gain the town center. That way, we can minimize the covered frontage that they'll be able to put on our defenders. I'm sure that sounds confusing, so I'll try to send out some illustrations of what I mean. If nobody else gets around to it, I'll try to fill out the map with a few names appropriate to the theme of The True North Strong and Free.
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Mar 3, 2015 05:31
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As no one's posted a map, here's my idea. I have not looked at the video, so I have little idea of sight lines, but we have so few units anyway and ohgodthisisaterribleidea. Someone please make a better plan.  The 3 squads are on the left, and will engage from the flank hostile units coming straight at the objective. They will all attack enemy units who come in to the village and be ready to advance or assault the enemy once he is close in and inside the village itself. HQ is behind the scout in the centre of the objective, hiding. HMG is facing towards the HQ (and will flank fire enemy infantry going to the objective) and the sniper is behind him, facing towards the enemy advance coming on the right.
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Mar 3, 2015 12:02
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Comstar posted:As no one's posted a map, here's my idea. I have not looked at the video, so I have little idea of sight lines, but we have so few units anyway and ohgodthisisaterribleidea. Someone please make a better plan. I'd like to see a map from abelian to clarify the idea of putting on foxholes behind buildings. Defending inside the town sounds kind of tricky since subtle things like door and window locations are pretty important to urban fighting. We definitely need to pick an overall commander. I'm willing to if no one else steps up. Whoever it is, we need someone to make a final decision on overall strategy by tonight so we can move on to issuing first turn orders.
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Mar 3, 2015 19:14
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Fray posted:Eh, I don't really like that. It disperses us really badly, it separates our SMG sections from their HQ, and it only works if the enemy does what we want them to. I was going to post maps and screenshots, but I fell asleep and now it's tomorrow and I'm at work :-/ Fray, if you want to step up, that would be awesome. I'd be happy to do it otherwise, but with work and traveling, I don't think I could do the role justice. I can however try to provide in-game intel for you and advise as my time allows and as needed. GI, do you think we could get an extra 24 hours? Our initial setup is really important, and so far we haven't been very organized.
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Mar 3, 2015 20:05
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abelian posted:GI, do you think we could get an extra 24 hours? Our initial setup is really important, and so far we haven't been very organized. I'd still prefer to get the ball rolling tomorrow, but if you guys still aren't ready by then you can have an extension.
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Mar 3, 2015 20:19
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Fray, you've also got my vote. Just don't let it go to your head! As to initial deployment, I think that what we should try to do is split up at least a few squads into teams, and have pickets set out at the edge of our deployment. That way we can give the Germans a minor speed-bump, while getting a much clearer portrait of their deployment than they could possibly get of ours. That'll also give us time to get the HMG set up along their main axis of advance, and adjust other defenses as needed.
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Mar 3, 2015 20:35
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Generation, what's the clock for this mission? 30 mins? I think the most important aspect of our deployment is finding a spot for the HMG that gives it a wide view of the surrounding fields where it won't need to be redeployed much. This will be our primary killing/suppression tool and we should anchor the rest of our defense around that.
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Mar 3, 2015 21:33
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There's 45 minutes on the clock, which should be more than enough for the mission to be resolved via combat.
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Mar 3, 2015 22:50
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Edit: ah nvm, think I found it in the HQ company. abelian fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Mar 4, 2015 |
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Mar 4, 2015 05:28
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abelian posted:
Specifically, I got them from the 'specialist teams' section. Here's a picture of exactly what your OOB looked like when I created it.  Attaching them to the platoon manually like that also has the benefit of linking their C2 to the platoon HQ.
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Mar 4, 2015 06:22
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Fray, you've also got my vote. Just don't let it go to your head!  Okay, so if there are no objections I'm going to assume command. I've reassigned myself to command the platoon HQ and scout team. Ace and Perestroika please put your unit selections into the speadsheet: https://docs.google.com/a/utexas.edu/spreadsheets/d/11SSC8hzQgNhg_Gpt8cS7BJTXP_6hfy31bC64ABdVJr0/edit#gid=0 I'm going to go with something akin to my original idea and Ace's post. We deploy as follows: -1st and 2nd sections are split into teams along the western edge of the deployment zone (GI please let us know how many teams we get from splitting one of our 10-man sections). All teams will have foxholes. -HQ and 3rd section are held in close reserve at the edge of town. -Scout team keeps eyes on the northwest approach. It has a foxhole. -The HMG and sniper will ideally be positioned to see both the western field and the northwest approach. Anyone who has the game, please look around for a position or building that gives LOS on both areas. If we can't cover both at once, we will have them cover the west. All units begin the game Hidden. We stay silent while we determine the German strength and axis of advance. Since the western field seems most likely, we put two sections in the treeline there. We stay hidden until the German advance units come close, give them a massive burst of SMG fire, then retreat to the town to rinse and repeat. The sniper and HMG provide overwatch for this. Once we are in the town, our SMG teams hide again. We find a new overwatch position for the sniper and HMG deeper in the town. We try to use them to herd the Germans towards our hidden SMGs so we can mow them down again at close range. If the Germans choose to advance along the road instead, we should have time to redeploy. One option is to send 1st and 2nd north through the woods to catch them in the flank. I'm thinking about what to do with the leftover foxholes. Abelian mentioned putting them behind buildings in the town. I'm amenable to that if he wants to suggest some positions. Another idea I had is to put some decoy holes somewhere outside the town so that the Germans think that's where we are. Hopefully it would throw them off and cause them to stumble right into our real position with nasty results. 
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Mar 4, 2015 06:32
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Fray posted:-1st and 2nd sections are split into teams along the western edge of the deployment zone (GI please let us know how many teams we get from splitting one of our 10-man sections). All teams will have foxholes. 3 teams: A team with 3 Sten guns and the squad marksman B team with 3 Sten guns (Exception: 3rd section has 1 Lee-Enfield, 1 Sten, and the platoon PIAT) C team with 1 Lee-Enfield, the squad Bren gun, and 1 2-inch mortar.
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Mar 4, 2015 06:40
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Generation Internet posted:Specifically, I got them from the 'specialist teams' section. Here's a picture of exactly what your OOB looked like when I created it. Weird, I have different options from you:  Not that it really matters very much since I can just use the Bren team, but the Vickers icon is kinda nice for screenshot purposes. What version of the game engine are you using? Do you have the Market Garden module?
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Mar 4, 2015 06:42
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Maybe because I'm using airborne infantry only option for the Canadian force, and it looks like you're using mixed? Otherwise the only thing I can think of is the fact that you haven't selected a formation in that screenshot, but I don't think that's it. I'm running the game with the 3.0 engine upgrade and all the modules, but everything I'm using came from vanilla Normandy and not Market Garden. The Canadian Airborne Battalion didn't actually participate in Market Garden because they took almost 100% casualties fighting from D-Day to August.
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Mar 4, 2015 06:46
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I'm running version 3.11. I only selected "mixed" because I couldn't find the MG detachment option under Canadian airborne  . Maybe my install is screwed up.Fray posted:
Thanks for stepping up and providing a plan. Here is some feedback: A close range ambush in those bushes is far from assured. They are likely to spot the foxholes before they get into SMG range. That said, if we react quickly and fall back before we are decisively engaged, we might be able to make them bleed without losing too much of our own before falling back into the town. Depending on how many alternate locations we can find, I think we should consider not putting the foxholes up front, and saving them for the main defensive area. They will likely outnumber us, and they will have significantly more long range firepower (Probably 6 or more MGs to our 1). Two or three MGs firing at our Vickers will suppress it (even we're in a brick building with good cover). For that reason, we will want deny the enemy potential firing positions. We will want to engage them from locations that have limited LOS, ideally over narrow areas that they will be likely to cross. In defensive missions like this, I like to use the HMG to protect a flank, or in the rear to guard against any breakthrough. The same goes for our infantry in general. We should try to set up ambushes around areas with blind corners that they'll have to cross. Unfortunately, since most of the buildings have doorways on two or more sides, this town does not provide many of those opportunities. That's where the idea of the foxholes comes in: by positioning them to the rear of some buildings, we can create firing positions with long, narrow fields of fire that overlap in several kill zones. I'll find some locations and post pictures soon. Edit: still no pictures, however, I did annotate each building face in the town. Magenta means that the face has a door and windows. Blue means just windows. If I didn't mark the side, then it has no windows:  I didn't really do any double checking, so there are probably some mistakes. Still, it should be a big improvement over nothing at all. Edit 2: As I hope the annotated map brings out, there are lots of axes in the town down which there are very few buildings with facing windows. I added some firing positions (black circles) along axes (dashed yellow lines) that can cover a lot of terrain without offering much cover for return fire. Infantry in foxholes in these locations should be really difficult to dislodge. In a lot of cases, their flanks are exposed, so you would need to cover that by positioning nearby cover teams, or placing the Vickers overwatching that flank. 
abelian fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Mar 4, 2015 |
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Mar 4, 2015 07:44
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I don't think we should put foxholes in the woods. They're easy to spot and the Germans will grab them once we leave. How do the 2 inch mortars work? Are they kind of like knee mortars, do they need to be deployed to fire? Section 2 Orders  Ok here are my provisional orders. Split Section 2 into teams, deploy as such facing German spawn. Set target arc in yellow. Please make sure all members of the section are within the woodline. If there are foxholes, please have my team occupy them.
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Mar 4, 2015 08:47
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Maps with some place names: The same without my color coding of buildings:  GI, I know that you don't want to delay this forever, but I think having a few extra hours (so that we can discuss things Wednesday night) would really improve the game in the long run.
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Mar 4, 2015 10:17
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Pending other instructions. Section 1 orders  A and B teams will station at the forest edge, hidden, facing the direction of the likely enemy advance. C team is in the building behind them facing the large gap in the trees. They are not hidden.
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Mar 4, 2015 10:18
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abelian posted:GI, I know that you don't want to delay this forever, but I think having a few extra hours (so that we can discuss things Wednesday night) would really improve the game in the long run. No worries, I understand. Much better for you guys to be happy with your deployment than to rush it for no particular reason, and the best time for a delay is before we even start. The plan right now is to run the turn tomorrow around 9-10 PMish EST (earlier, if everyone has orders in), giving you a little over 24 more hours. Generation Internet fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Mar 4, 2015 |
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Mar 4, 2015 14:17
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