A pathetic request for help

[WhiteOwl]

Hi,

Apparently I'm crap at this game Can anyone offer help as to how to succeed in the first boot camp mission?

Cheers

[koiosworks]

Smoke is your best friend!

Use it before advancing on the objective

[Erik Rutins]

Hi WhiteOwl,

Don't worry, that's actually one of the toughest Boot Camp scenarios to get the hang of. Did you read the suggestions in the briefing?

You need to make careful use of smoke, putting it in the right places and rushing your infantry forward under its cover. If you have more infantry in the church area than the enemy, you will flip control of the objective and win. It doesn't require you to eliminate all the enemy unit, just to capture the church by getting enough squads to survive to make it there.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

Also, are you playing on the "Easy" level if it's giving you trouble?

[Erik Rutins]

Another suggestion is that if you don't start out in communication with the Mortars, make sure you wait until you can call on their smoke capabilities before you rush out as your own smoke grenades are somewhat limited. Give them time to drop their smoke, then let it build up for a turn or two, then rush.

Use an Open Sheaf for the mortar CBE coverage to maximize the size of the smoke screen. Once you've been shot at a few times, you should know where the main enemy positions are so that you can place the smoke to screen your Rush path from their sight.

Hope that helps.

[Erik Rutins]

Finally, keep in mind you have 12 turns and better firepower - you can take out a fair number of those Soviet squads if you need to. If things get too hot, stop moving over the open ground and hunker down in Engage or Defend orders to clear away the closest threats.

[WhiteOwl]

Thanks for the help. Was finally able to get through to the next scenario. However, here I ran into a problem I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on.

For three turns that my commander had radio contact and I was in a good position to request arty, the spot indirect command worked, but the mortar and artillery were grayed out. Now I had not been able to get them to fire for the entire scenario, so this is not down to cooling. Also, hovering over the type (mortar, arty) showed no numbers in the pop-up.

Did I miss something in the manual?

Otherwise, really enjoying this so far, and just in time for the weekend too... Good job!

Cheers

[Prince of Eckmühl]

WO,

The biggest problem that I had when I started playing Operation Winter Storm was that I trying to play Combat Mission. And on no level is that an exaggeration. I couldn't for the life of me understand why my units wouldn't "behave."

With that thought in mind, my soundest advice to anyone who's interested in playing this Kharkov game is to read the manual, take some time to digest it, and forget any preconceptions that you brought to the table based on experience with the older game.

PoE (aka ivanmoe)

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: WhiteOwl
For three turns that my commander had radio contact and I was in a good position to request arty, the spot indirect command worked, but the mortar and artillery were grayed out. Now I had not been able to get them to fire for the entire scenario, so this is not down to cooling. Also, hovering over the type (mortar, arty) showed no numbers in the pop-up.

Hm, that doesn't sound right or ring any bells. Are you sure you had the HQ squad selected and that the green radio contact icon was on? I'll play through again to that scenario and see if I have any issues.

Regards,

- Erik

[WhiteOwl]

Quite sure about it, was checking each turn to see if I had radio contact and as soon as I saw the icon go green, tried to get some arty going, but ran into the same problem. Still replaying this scenario (as I said earlier, I am crap at this game:)), and the last time around, had no trouble bringing arty down, not that it did me any good

[Stridor]

WhiteOwl,

Try clicking "off" the commander and then clicking back "on" to the commander and see if that helps. I have sometimes found that if a unit is selected before the turn sim phase (and is obviously selected after it) then when you go to give orders to it during the new phase it can sometimes get confused. By clicking off then on you reset the select system.

Just a general remark about Boot Camp.

In PCOWS people complained that infantry was useless. In boot camp I wanted to show you how effective infantry can be if it is used correctly. The 6 battles of Boot Camp are arranged to teach 6 important lessons on infantry use. As such they are each a little (single) tactical puzzle. The idea is to get you to think outside the box a little WRT using infantry. Hard initially, then easy once you figure out the lesson.

BC also helps teach you about the timing of things. Like the timing and use of smoke and arty. What you learn in BC will help you a great deal in the campaigns which are to follow. So don't give up hope. Read the tips at the start of each scenario if you get really stuck. Another hard lesson that BC teaches you is that sometimes you have to sacrifice some your men to get a job done (to save the rest of your men).

[WhiteOwl]

Thanks Stridor, that did the trick. Also the tips for deployment in the 2nd scenario are spot on, went from a marginal loss to a legendary victory. Even though there were at any point in time 2-3 squads shooting at my cmdr, he didn't get surpressed once, guess those bell towers provide lots of cover.

Cheers

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: WhiteOwl
Thanks Stridor, that did the trick. Also the tips for deployment in the 2nd scenario are spot on, went from a marginal loss to a legendary victory. Even though there were at any point in time 2-3 squads shooting at my cmdr, he didn't get surpressed once, guess those bell towers provide lots of cover.

Yes, that's hard cover in those stone buildings, -2 to their firepower which depending on the range they were shooting from could have made their chance of suppressing you extremely low.

Glad to hear you got a Legendary Victory!

[WhiteOwl]

Thanks Erik. I think it might be worth adding this to a FAQ or something like that, it seems the command menu does not refresh itself (at least as far as artillery is concerned) until you click away and back to the commander unit.

Cheers

[Tomus]

I found the first boot camp mission absolutely murder....I got to the fence and then we generally got hosed.[:D]

[Grell]

Why are all these people having trouble in Boot Camp of all places. Boot Camp should be a way of getting to know the game easily. Now we have these crazy hard missions in Boot Camp. That could be a no go for me if that is the case.

Regards,

Grell

[Erik Rutins]

The Tutorial mission is the easy introduction to the game. Boot Camp tries to teach game tactics, which means there can be some hard lessons. It just takes practice to overcome them and once you do, you have much better mastery over the rest of the game. I would also advise everyone to play Boot Camp on Easy and read the suggestions above.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Tomus
I found the first boot camp mission absolutely murder....I got to the fence and then we generally got hosed.[:D]

Tomus, did you try the suggestions above? I know it can be hard at first until you get the hang of it, but these are lessons worth learning. I can complete this mission now 100% of the time with 1 or 0 squads lost. Practice will make perfect.

[Tomus]

ORIGINAL: Grell

Why are all these people having trouble in Boot Camp of all places. Boot Camp should be a way of getting to know the game easily. Now we have these crazy hard missions in Boot Camp. That could be a no go for me if that is the case.

Regards,

Grell

Its not that at all. It is about the only training element to a game that actually teaches you strategies and tactics in play. Most training missions are simply a collection of press this do that...This one is different and is breath of fresh tbh.

[Grell]

Thanks for the info Tomus.

Regards,

Grell