Helicopters in FPC

[CapnDarwin]

ORIGINAL: MTTODD

HI,

Thanks for getting back, sorry for asking all these questions!

But reading this thread still leaves a few questions that would be great if they were answered:

1) I understand that ATGMS would cause havoc on tanks (hitting the top & side armour etc), but would the same be true with unguided rockets ?
The test that TAZAK ran still show destructive results with Hinds using only rockets, is that to be expected with 57mm rockets on modern armour ?

2) Some users mentioned NATO AD not firing at all in an engagement, why would that be ?

Many thanks.

1). ATGMs are clear tank killers. Rockets can do a number on soft targets and depending on type and amount they can hurt tanks as well. Probably not getting hard kills, but doing enough damage to render the tank combat ineffective.

2). No LOS is a big one. Got to be able to see what you are shooting at. There was a bug a number of version back that was causing a weird sighting bug with radars. All is good now. If you are not shooting , odds are you can't see it.

[CapnDarwin]

ORIGINAL: LuckyJim1010

I don't see what difference playing on makes. The Hinds had not appeared until after the Carry On button was pressed. They didn't need to go back and and replen.

Plus it may be the tutorial but given the Brits lack of AD I think that scenario is pretty much a standard setup

So 12 - 14 unharmed Warrior AFVs' with what, 100 ground troops, a Javelin section, and 9 Challengers with no ground unit distraction sat there and got walloped by a section of Hinds at ranges from less than 500 m out to 2 kms. And the whole turn the Javelins were 1 hex away.

I'll move on to a 'real' scenario and see what happens but I have to say, something don't feel right.

I did the tutorial and it is a smashup. Formations are loose and there are a lot of added units to show features. As for the Hinds, you got lucky if they did not show before the sudden death kick in. That's why I send went back. Usually you get hit by them as you engage for the city. Next issue is the helos. They only know there is an objective to take so they will hunt in the area for enemies. They have no visible threats (IE no radar painting them). They will head in to the objective. Once they spot targets, they fire. If they take fire/losses they may scoot away. Barring that, they will unload and then leave. Now one good thing about all this, was I looked at the British data and found a couple errors in the sensors listing for some units. Warriors being one of them. They should have a thermal sight, but got miscoded as a jammer instead (not in the right place for that to work either). I just fixed that. That will help with their targeting and spotting a bunch.
The only credible threat are the Javelins. Once they shoot. Ground troops are non-issue at any number, unless AD weapons are being fired. Tanks and APCs are a slight threat with MG and autocannon fire.

[MTTODD]

Yes I agree with what you about rockets not getting hard kills, but that was not what the TAZAK'S test data showed :


Rkt armed HIND-P vs MGs only armed M1A1 (in woods)
Test 1
4 HIND-P KO’d – 3 fallen, 1 destroyed
1 M1A1 KO'd - 1 destroyed
Test 2
4 HIND-P KO’d – 1 fallen, 3 destroyed
9 M1A1 KO’d – 5 fallen, 4 destroyed
Test 3
4 HIND-P KO’d – 3 fallen, 1 destroyed
8 M1A1 KO’d – 2 fallen, 6 destroyed
Test 4
4 HIND-P KO’d – 2 fallen, 2 destroyed
2 M1A1 KO’d – 2 fallen, 0 destroyed
Test 5
2 HIND-P KO’d – 1 fallen, 1 destroyed
10 M1A1 KO’d – 6 fallen, 4 destroyed


Rkt armed HIND-P vs MGs only armed M1A1 (in clear hex)
Test 1
4 HIND-P KO’d – 3 fallen, 1 destroyed
3 M1A1 KO’d – 2 fallen, 1 destroyed
Test 2
4 HIND-P KO’d – 4 fallen, 0 destroyed
7 M1A1 KO’d – 3 fallen, 4 destroyed
Test 3
4 HIND-P KO’d – 3 fallen, 1 destroyed
4 M1A1 KO’d – 1 fallen, 3 destroyed
Test 4
0 HIND-P KO’d – 0 fallen, 0 destroyed
10 M1A1 KO’d – 7 fallen, 3 destroyed
Test 5
3 HIND-P KO’d – 1 fallen, 2 destroyed
8 M1A1 KO’d – 5 fallen, 3 destroyed

[CapnDarwin]

The Mi-24P is carrying 80mm S-8 anti-armor rockets with a 29 HEAT value warhead. Not very accurate, but enough to punch through the top of a tank.

[Sabre21]

ORIGINAL: medck

The Apaches seem to be rather less vulnerable and more powerful than reality. There was the rather major debacle in Gulf War 2 and a series of concerns in the Kosovo War,etc:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... opper.html

The level of damage inflicted the the iraqi RG on that Apache unit would suggest the WP/USSR would dish out rather more.

Well it's about time for me to put in my 2 cents worth again, it has been awhile.

The article above is a pretty bonehead one. The author really doesn't know the entire story. When it comes to the battle he is referring to in Iraq, some of the aircraft suffered battle damage but no where to the extent he suggests. As for the aircraft that was "shot down", not even, the crew ran out of gas. The aircraft wasn't even damaged. The 2 dummies deserved to be caught for running out IMO.

Jump forward to Kosovo, I remember that very well too. Yes, there were 2 training crashes resulting in fatalities, but then again, when I was in Germany out flying in my Cobra one night, there were 2 apache crashes then resulting in 4 fatalities too. It just happened to be a nasty night. While I used Anvis at night, the early models of the Apache's NVS (thermals) can't see wires and that's what got both of them.

It is unfortunate that in peacetime shortcuts to save money are taken, and one way it was done was to reduce flight hours for training. The aircraft itself was hard to maintain and pretty expensive to fly, so those pilots had far fewer hours than we did in our cobra's.

When they got deployed to Kosovo, they didn't have any train-up time and were thrown into an unfamiliar mountainous area. It's no wonder they had 2 crashes, I knew one of the pilots that died. The command got gun shy after losing 2 in training, considering at the time the Apache was developing the Longbow variant and the Comanche was also being developed. Even though the two weren't supposed to be in competition, they really were. So losing many apaches could have had a huge impact on future development. FYI, I spent 8 years on the Comanche program when the plug was pulled on it. Politics caused it's demise and I suspect politics played a role in holding the apaches back in Kosovo.


I also want to add some about Soviet Hinds. They were pretty well armed and armored as you all know, but they were pretty heavy and couldn't really hover too well and were not nearly as maneuverable as a cobra. I had no fear what so ever about air to air encounters with them, the 20mm cannon on my cobra would make mincemeat of them. I couldn't out race them for they were faster than me, but I could fly circles around them. On a side note, their pilots got even less flight time than our Apache guys.

There were 5 Soviet armies in the former E Germany each with a regiment of 40 Hind-e's with a few f models thrown in. Their maintenance record was pretty atrocious and rarely got to 75%, typically it was 50%. But let's say they managed to put all the Hinds into the air, that's 200 for all of Germany. Add in the few the E Germans had (Hind-d's) and maybe an extra regiment or 2 from the motherland. So at full strength we might have seen 300 Hind to cover the entire front.

US forces in Germany on the other hand had 350 to 400 apaches in country in 1988 along with around 80 cobras. That doesn't include the Reforger units that would have added at least another 400 apaches and another hundred or so cobras. Add in the Brits, W Germans, French, Dutch, Belgium, and Danish helo units and Nato would have out numbered the Warsaw Pact about 3 to 1 in helos.

What was a bigger concern to me than their helo's was the 2S6 ADA vehicle, probably the best ADA of it's type. The SA-19 is a nasty missile that can lock onto the Doppler effect created by a rotor system even if the helo is tucked in below the treeline. I've seen what that missile can do. But the US in 1988-90 wasn't defensless, there were more stinger teams on the battlefield than you could imagine, they were everywhere. The armored units were deploying Linebacker, a Bradley modified with stingers mounted on the turret and a 25mm modified for AA engagements. I don't know how prevalent they were, but we had them in the 3rd ID during the Reforger 88 exercise.

Well I need to go get my dinner before it burns, nice chatting with all of you again.

Andy/Sabre21

[CapnDarwin]

Andy, thanks for jumping in with the clearer first hand info. I hope your holidays are going well.

[David Clark]

I wouldn't get too worked up about outputs from the tactical resolution engine - as a minimum, I'd suggest everyone do the obvious:

- Play either solitaire with no AI, or hotseat.
- Turn off limited orders.
- Edit the scenarios to remove forces handled poorly by the game engine.
- Edit the database as required to meet your own political or emotional needs.

I think it's useful to remember the ideological basis of the game, before raising comparisons to real-world experience. Red Storm is explicitly NOT a military-grade or realistic simulation; it's an entertainment software product specifically designed as a Russian Power Fantasy. The scenarios and equipment databases are specified to resolve every possible ambiguity as much as possible in the favour of the Soviets, and the overarching setting is basically 30-foot-tall Russian Supermen vs prostrate American victims. I definitely see the virtue in the approach taken by the game designers; Measuring Military Power by Epstein assumes a similarly extreme worst/best case scenario, although in that case it's more as an epidemiological hedge than what's seen here. Comparisons to the real world are neither appropriate nor ultimately helpful; if you're using the default database, you really deserve what you're getting. Either way, this is still the most entertaining video game I've bought in the last year; as long as your expectations are realistic, you'll definitely get excellent value for your money.

[Jakerson]

Well I never had any serious problems against helicopters not even on those scenarios where red side has lots of them and NATO side has few ADA units. I use what I have trying to get those hinds in cross fire of my ADA units. After there are only couple hinds left I start my assault. Yes some of my troops die but that is war. Couple hinds don’t have ammo to stop concentrated assault until it reaches the point where those hinds can be deal with just machine gun fire.

I think those scenarios where red side has lots of helicopters and NATO has few ADA units are purposely designed that way to make them more challenging.

In world war 2 people used wooden logs and Molotov cocktails or even suicide attacks with carrying artillery rounds to stop tanks when they had no any anti tank weapons or tanks and enemy had thousands of tanks. They did not give up just because enemy had thousands of tanks and they had no anti tank weapons or tanks.

War if not fair thing. If you have only 2 ADA units and enemy have 100 helicopters you don’t give up you do your best what you have. It could be worse some people don’t have even those 2 modern ADA units or any ADA at all and they need to destroy helicopters with even less than that and some of those people don’t give up even when they have only one shotgun to stop those 100 helicopters. It could be always worse.

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: Jakerson

I think those scenarios where red side has lots of helicopters and NATO has few ADA units are purposely designed that way to make them more challenging.

Every scenario has a balance of forces that were set to a 'reality' of sort on the battlefield. The most prevalent issue for them is chaos. In chaos situations, things happen. Or don't happen.

Every single scenario is set to highlight some form of the modern battlefield and give you guys the best possible exposure to the game engine. To show you what the game engine is capable of and then to have you push those boundaries yourselves with your own designs. I knew from the beginning that I would never be able to create every single combat situation imaginable to man.

But together we can cover most of them.[:D]

One issue that I looked into deeply was the Stinger. Why are there not more stingers in the game? Because, the US had sent a high percentage of it's stockpile to Afghanistan to shoot down Soviet helicopters there. If a shooting war had started in 1989 there could well have been a shortage for our own troops. Just as the number of LAW's, MG and rifle ammo would have been restricted if the Cold War had gone Hot in 1968. Those are some of my rationale behind why you get or don't get certain things for particular sides.

Good Hunting.

MR

[CapnDarwin]

@David Clark, I'm sorry, where is this belief of a Soviet power fantasy coming from? We do our best to model up the best data and information we can find. There are no cheats or biased results. Now if you can show us data or information the shows that a platform is overstated for the Soviet's or understated for NATO, please do. We can review it and make changes as required. I not sure what you would consider a "serious" cold war simulation.

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: David Clark

I wouldn't get too worked up about outputs from the tactical resolution engine - as a minimum, I'd suggest everyone do the obvious:

- Play either solitaire with no AI, or hotseat.
- Turn off limited orders.
- Edit the scenarios to remove forces handled poorly by the game engine.
- Edit the database as required to meet your own political or emotional needs.

I think it's useful to remember the ideological basis of the game, before raising comparisons to real-world experience. Red Storm is explicitly NOT a military-grade or realistic simulation; it's an entertainment software product specifically designed as a Russian Power Fantasy. The scenarios and equipment databases are specified to resolve every possible ambiguity as much as possible in the favour of the Soviets, and the overarching setting is basically 30-foot-tall Russian Supermen vs prostrate American victims. I definitely see the virtue in the approach taken by the game designers; Measuring Military Power by Epstein assumes a similarly extreme worst/best case scenario, although in that case it's more as an epidemiological hedge than what's seen here. Comparisons to the real world are neither appropriate nor ultimately helpful; if you're using the default database, you really deserve what you're getting. Either way, this is still the most entertaining video game I've bought in the last year; as long as your expectations are realistic, you'll definitely get excellent value for your money.

The Orders of Battle are taken from official sources for all nations involved. The equipment stats are taken from a myriad of sources to get as close to what may have been their actual performance. Long hours were spent on deployment locations and movement rates to create the scenarios. What you got is, as close as we could come to, what we thought would have possibly happened given the overall story line of the basic premise for an attack.

Along with that simply remember that Hitler too was downplaying Soviet combat capabilities.

Play the game however you like or change it if you want. We created it so you can do either.

Good Hunting.

MR

[LuckyJim1010]

I think it would be interesting to give MBT's the ability to engage Helicopters with main guns just to what diference it would make.
But I apprciate that transales into a lot of code changes.
As to the 'Superman Soviet', I am not sure where that comes from.
If I had quit the scenario when the game had told me to I would have decimated Ivans forces for the loss of 2 or 3 tanks.
Plus the heavy arty had 2 TOT's on the PBI of the Red Army just outside Nordheim, I actually wept at the Humanity of it all [:)]

[Deathtreader]

Hi,

Correcting the Warrior's stats implies there will be a version 2.09, correct?

Rob.

[CapnDarwin]

Rob,

We will discuss a 2.09 at some point this week in a Dev call. We will need to see what, if anything else needs dealt with too. The next problem is dealing with the fact we are cutting over to working the 2.1 branch of code and back stepping into the 2.0x may be tricky as well. As soon as we know more I'll pass along the info.

[Lowlaner2012]

Hi there Capn Darwin, hope you had a good Xmas and will hae a good new year

Surely the Warrior sensor mistake can be fixed with a Hotfix at some point...

[CapnDarwin]

True, it could be a hot fix only depending on the need to fix other things. It does force a data rebuild on the scenarios. We will know more once we come out of the holidays.

[Lowlaner2012]

Thanks for getting back to me, I have not noticed any other problems... although I am not th most observant of people

I played the first mission of the American campaign last night and had a blast....

[delete1]

+1 Capn Darwin! Thats probably his NATO hurt ego speaking out loud. I would not take him too seriously. As Mad Russian have already said, Clark can mod his user data file so he can have "his version" of whats a serious cold war simulation is supposed to be. Perhaps a Rambo game version for his liking! One NATO rifle man wiping out the entire red army…:)!
This game is absolutely great. You guys have done an outstanding job! I like how you simulate the differences (doctrine and equipments) from all the nations involved. Nice to see and feel that each side has its weaknesses and strengths. Using the right tactics, you can blast the opponent with either NATO or the Pact. I am now playing more and more with the Soviet side. Very tough! You are always in the advance, more exposed, facing the enemy well sealed in the defense. You have to plan way ahead, try to position your troops the best way you can and even thou be prepared to take heavy losses in the process! Not an easy task! I think I am turning into a NATO specialist killer! Hehehe…
Looking forward 2.1 version. Have a nice 2015 you all! Lots of success and accomplishments!

[Mad Russian]

Daniel, welcome to the series!!

Thanks for the kind words, we appreciate when all of you share your gaming experiences with us.

I play a lot from the Soviet side because I feel they are the hardest to get right. There is a misconception that the Soviets usually win but it's been our experience that the opposite is true. That NATO will win more often with the same level of game play on both sides of the tank barrel. So, I work at getting the Soviet mix where they at least have a chance to win.

For those that think the Soviets are supermen I would suggest they try playing them in the scenarios as well. [8D]

Good Hunting.

MR

[delete1]

Thank you for your welcome Mad Russian! The level of support and attention you guys offer to your customers is superb. Should be a reference in the market!

Have a couple of friends that will be joining the series soon.

Really enjoying the game! Hard as hell, indeed, with the soviets! I also feel that is harder to get it right with them. For me the path for proficiency in this game would be: Tutorial, NATO scenarios and for the real and final test...the Warsaw Pact scenarios! So exposed. Mines everywhere...those pesky thermal sensors from NATO dogs!! Have to get close, have to get close...undetected, undetected...my God! hehehe...and the rain...always at the most critical situations that annoying rain appears and my beloved Frogfoot cant take off to crush that dammit Challenger that is killing me!!!...oh boy! I can tell you...I do have a huge respect now for the Soviet commanders. Besides all that...failure is not an option Comrade! Holly Jesus....

I get myself imagining all this in real life. Games like this increases even more my admiration and respect for all involved in the military. Independently of the country.

Mad Russian, how odd would be to play NATO scenarios with the Soviet side? Is it somehow playable, or should I avoid it? Just wondering...I will look for some custom made soviet ones and try in the future to build some on my own. The problem with the second option is that I have a very superficial knowledge at military units and formations. I looked at the game list units and got really overwhelmed! Will try to learn with time. Still have lot to learn with the scenarios in game...that will keep me busy for a while!

Anyway, great game, hope you guys have the resources to expand this game for years to come!