Trouble with West Front Bootcamp 1

[promethean]

So, just purchased and loving it! However...

I've played a few misc. scenarios with mild to moderate success, but the bootcamp 1 scenario for the West front is giving me problem.

I'm playing as Allies without any advantage to either side, with indirect map fire on. Even just focusing on one objective first, hammering it with artillery every turn, multiple shots from the different rifle groups and the .30 cal MG, from different directions in 180 degrees, and I'm barely doing anything to the German unit. If I'm extremely lucky, I disrupt it once through the scenario, and it recovers on its turn. I can't get it to retreat, and even Assaulting from opposite directions with two rifle groups, Lt Kelly with one of them, I'm getting no results, no SP loss, no Disruption, no retreat.

What am I doing wrong?

Yes, I know I can change the difficulty, and giving myself a 50% advantage pushes the scenario to very easy, but I want to figure out why I can't do this on normal.

Thanks for your help!

[wings7]

Jason [&o] I'm sure will be onboard to give you a good answer.

[promethean]

Okay, now this is getting frustrating: I gave bootcamp 2 a shot, and was having problems similar to those I describe above for bootcamp 1. So, I figure instead of Allies, I'll give Axis a shot with FOW completely off so I can see the tactics used by the AI and find out what I'm doing wrong here.

The thing is, AI playing Allies is doing pretty much exactly what I was doing, only getting much better results: My Axis MG Platoons are getting forced into a retreat from Allied Rifle platoon fire coming from full distance, even though my MG platoons are at full morale and not disrupted. When I fire on the Allied Rifle Platoons, I'm only about 1/2 as effective in terms of frequency of SP loss and disruption as when I played as the Allies.

I really don't understand this.[&:]

[Wolfie1]

Do you have the "Extreme assault " option turned on?

[promethean]

I think I may have during one of my play-throughs, but I'm not sure if it was when I'd given myself the advantage or not.

What does this option do? I couldn't find any reference to it in the manual.

[cpdeyoung]

As I remember the tutorials are a pretty good tool for learning to get assault into the mix. Use fire and movement to get in assault range, try to get a disruption on the target force, and then assault to force them out of the territory you need to take. The fear of being overrun is potent, and it takes a lot to pop a unit out of their hole.

Chuck

[promethean]

I went through the tutorial scenario following the manual w/o issue, finishing the first time with a close defeat and second with nearly a major victory.

My difficulty with the bootcamp scenarios is something else-- I'm frequently disrupted the first time the enemy gets opportunity fire on me, and it's nearly impossible to avoid since they don't move, meaning they have full AP for opportunity fire. I try to circle around with multiple units to mitigate disruption of any single unit and ensure I'm not taking fire from multiple Axis units. This helps for the single turn, but failing to disrupt the Axis in multiple subsequent turns just means most of my own units get disrupted.

With only the handful of turns, I can't think of maneuver I haven't tried that I would have time for. Double-timing helps a little here, but at the cost of losing a turn of full effectiveness is ends up being about a wash. Reinforcements would help a little, but as the Allies in Bootcamp 2, I never got them, while the AI got them by the end of turn 5 when I had the AI play as Allies. (I ended up eeking out a minor victory playing as the Axis, but the reinforcements and rate at which the AI seemed to be able to disrupt me make me wonder: Does the AI play by the same rules, or are the formulas/stats slightly weighted in favor of the AI?)

Regarding mortars, in 3 play throughs mortaring the same Axis unit as often as possible I managed to disrupt only once: I don't know much about such mobile artillery units-- was this realistic? Wouldn't getting shelled be fairly disruptive, even absent casualties, or is that feeling just my newbie-ness?

Anyway, would it be possible for one of the experienced JTCS players here to record their own run-through of one of the 1st or 2nd West-front bootcamps? I could use that to analyse my own tactical failings, since that is what I assume the problem to be-- something I'm missing.

[promethean]

Using extreme caution and more frequent use of the double-time option, along with finally getting the reinforcements (Possible I missed the message in previous attempts) I managed to achieve a minor victory. Strange that I'm finding these so much more difficult than other higher level scenarios.

[Jason Petho]

Good job on the minor victory.

East Front has a large number of bootcamp type scenarios that help describe a lot of the new features with MCS.

There is also a Bootcamp document found in the Manuals folder called "MCS_Bootcamp_EF_WF.doc" that would recommend giving a read.

Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

Jason Petho