Question about the tactical exercise from Battles for Greece

[vladn]

Is there a way to dismount motorized infantry in order to advance to the objective surrounded by broken terrain in scenario "Tactical Exercise Brigade Day Attack"?
Playing as the Allies, the best I could achieve yet was a stalemate.
Thanks,
Vlad

[dazkaz15]

No there is not unfortunately.

This in my opinion is the worst thought out scenario that I have played so far in the pack.

The best work around is to edit the Rangers Bn in the scenario maker to make them foot infantry.
They will of course lose their mobility, and be more fatigued when they reach their objective, after the long yomp down the main highway, but at least it will be more realistic, and you will stand a more realistic chance of winning.

One of the biggest culprits that makes this scenario so lame is the code Dave had to put into the objectives, to stop them continuously flipping from one side to another, where the invisible inner circle of the objective, (about 300m) has to be completely clear of enemy in order for the force ratio of 10:1 to work.
In this scenario of course you have no unit capable of getting within 300m of the objective centre [:-]

[dazkaz15]

I just played this through again to see if I missed something last time I played this.

The scenario briefing says:
This is a simple scenario designed to practise the player in conducting a simple combined-arms attack at the Brigade level.

I say:
This is a futile scenario designed to baffle the player in conducting an all motorised movement attack at Brigade level, against an enemy, on an objective that is unreachable by any unit in your force. [8|]

[vladn]

Thanks for the confirmation, I initially thought that I'm missing some gameplay commands not documented in the Battles from the Bulge tutorial.
I found in the meantime two avenues of approach with 1% Motorized movement rating, I used them to push the Rangers in the South and the Royal Engineers plus Portees in the North.
The tanks were sited on the far bank of the river to the West of the objective, while the AA unit was located to the South-East, with enough field of view to fire occasionaly at the defenders.
The 25-pounder batteries were firing around the clock to suppress the defenders, with the tanks intervening from time to time.
Around 20:00 the objective was taken, the AI managed to sneak one remaining unit (3.141) nearby before the end of the scenario, but it was not enough to prevent my "Marginal Victory".

[dazkaz15]

Yeah I managed to get this result after the third run through, but I still maintain its a badly designed scenario.
It should either wait for dismounted ops, in Command Ops version X or start with them dismounted but at a closer position.
Half way down the highway for example.

[vladn]

A decisive victory at 17:25, that's impressive!
Was this with the default scenario, or with the Rangers modified as non-mechanized infantry?
I didn't feel like learning much during this scenario, as opposed to the BftB tutorial: I committed all my forces and surrounded the objective to pummel the defenders, knowing they don't have other units to counter-attack.
Maybe adding some German armor in the mix as reinforcements would also help balancing the scenario?

[dazkaz15]

Yeah this is with the default scenario forces.
The secret is to deploy the armour back from the steep sides of the hill, on slightly higher ground, where they have better line of sight onto the upper slopes of the objective, and set them to max agro.
The artillery you need to keep firing round the clock as you already mentioned, then just keep trying to get the infantry, and engineer Coy's as close a possible paying particular attention to the northern end of the objective.

[Phoenix100]

I modded it (and the night attack variant) ages ago and posted the mod so you can play it with foot troops. It will be in the Mods section if you look. There's some German armour added too,as reinforcements, iirc, - just what you asked for!


Here is the thread: tm.asp?m=3371921&mpage=1&key=brigade%2C ... ack�

[dazkaz15]

Thanks Peter.

I had forgotten you had done this.
I never played your version, I'm embarrassed to say.
I played the main version the once, and wasn't very impressed, so moved onto something else.

I'm probably over reacting but this scenario particularly annoys me.
It annoys me because I am very passionate about this amazing game, and most scenarios in it are incredible well designed, and made.

This one is particularly nasty because its designed as a small tutorial battle, aimed at people new to the pack, and possibly the game as a whole, and it fails at this miserably.
Any new player would be understandably baffled by this inability to close on the objective, and after getting frustrated trying, may shelf the game for good, and give it bad reviews to friends or press, that the game as a whole doesn't deserve.

All this is because of what was probably just an oversight, when selecting the infantry Bn to be involved in the main assault, and is incredibly easy to fix.

[vladn]

Thanks, I'll give it a try.
The addition of German armor should give those 2-pdrs a run for their money.
Would this COTA scenario work with the latest BftB patch and Battles for Greece data pack?

On a related note, do you know if the mismatched signature on the AAR window is caused by a scenario editing error, or is it a main game bug?
Right now it displays Omar Bradley's signature, when it should be Archibald Wavell's.

[Phoenix100]

I think adapted as I have adapted it (very small amount of tinkering in scenmaker) it's quite a nice scenario, Daz, and a fairly gentle intro, as a kind of tutorial mission. As it shipped, I couldn't agree with you more, it's daft and shouldn't be left in there like that for all the reasons you mention. I wonder why they didn't take the opportunity to fix it when doing the latest update, for example. As you say, probs they forgot.

It should still work with the latest update, vladn - it does for me, because the map used has been converted in the Greek data pack. But if it doesn't work then just open the santaporon map in mapmaker and, once it's loaded, save over it using save as and selecting 'santaporon'. Then it will be fine, I think. As I say, mine works fine.

Hadn't noticed the signature thing. That would be a scenario bug, I believe. I checked out my amended scenario and it gives a bad path to the sig file, I think. The Wavell sig file is in there and so I assume it's easily fixable in scenmaker, though I haven't done it. You find it under the 'briefing' sub-tab, under the main 'SIDE' tab in the top bar. Select the allies first (click on the 'allies' icon under the main unit tab in the sidebar)so you open up the 'SIDE' tab as allies, then you'll see the bad path to the Wavell sig. The sig file isn't in the default folder, I think, but the folder above it.