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Rotareneg

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  • 2 weeks later...

I created a map from the  Steelbeasts map and had it printed at UPS store, then wrote rules to facilitate a MAPEX/Kreiegsspiel. I then made counters of various types and put them on magnets (using other magnets as markers. The counters maps and charts all hang n a magnetic board. I then assigned one player to be the OPFOR division commander (4th Motorisierte Schutzen Division and the other four to command positions in a squadron of the 11th ACR. 

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This resulted in one DCS A10 Mission Prior to our get together. (which attrited one battalion from the 4th)  and another during the weeklong get together which attrited most of another (see a snippet below):

 As we gamed out things on the mapboard if we saw an interesting situation that woudl be ported to Steelbeasts  or Arma.. I had developed a base Mission in SB so it was easy to quickly gen up missions. We conducted Train up mission prior to get together as most of the guys only play SB once a year for a few months. We use our Discord channel for planning and AARs (Separate channels (private) for OPFOR and Blufor plus one general channel. At the beginning of our con I held one training mission in breaching ops (about two companies) using Opfor units so the player could get familiarization in OPFOR unit capabilities plus how to conduct engineering and breaching operations. The OPFOR commander secretly planned to use this mission as the results of one battle.

 

We held about four mapex sessions and  two further SB Battles (typically 7 players but am getting ready to expand to 9) at our get together. Subsequently with everyone home, we held the battle posted above, and have another big one which will cover a  regiment trying to force its way through the constrictive terrain between Hunfeld and Fulda that is occurring simultaneously to the battle above.

 

In addition we play lots of Arma.  In one situation early in the campaign a  German territorial mounted Milan platoon had to evade an huge enemy force and was subsequently bypassed. We thought to ourselves "hey I wonder how those guys would ever make it back to friendly lines with a massive assault underway against Fulda.?" So a built this mission in Arma using the Global Mobilization DLC (Germany) and late one night, we conducted a four hour mission using two Milan and two gun jeeps. (I haven't posted that vid yet)  I GM'd this mission using the Excellent Zeus tools to keep things goin. We had 12 players participating and we had great fun. The OPFOR player has a Airmobile company in his arsenals so I anticipate some sort of Bridge seizure mission played out in Arma in our near future.

 

DCS is releasing the Ah-64 Longbow (complete with multicrew) in early December and I anticipate that we will be getting trained up on this and using it in fights subsequent to Fulda.

 

In the OPFOR discord channel there is a little bit of roleplay going on. Many Nato vs Warsaw pact wargames have some sort of rule in there about a possible Warsaw Pact revolt. IN this alternate Campaign scenario, the 8th GTA has used the 4 MRD as the lead unit to bear the brut of the initial assault, one could spin it that the Russians get the double benefit of using an excellent unit to make the first crack in the lines while also keeping busy anyone who could cause dissent or trouble. So I have two of the three OPFOR players in the channel secretly working to convince the 4MRD command of this plot by the Russians to conveniently destroy his beloved division. Maybe it will lead to a revolt in which case I can add the remnants of the 4th MRD  to the remnants of the 11th ACR for post seizure of Fulda. We'll see.

 

Anyway, we are having great fun, and everyone can sense they are involved in a  singular gaming experience. I am also growing new SB Players out of this expanding from our three SB buddies to seven and getting ready to go to nine (including my wife.) Steelbeasts takes a little more learning than say an FPS so growing new players takes a little longer.

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  • 1 month later...
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Maybe you did it after the video, but (for other readers here) you should make it a habit to go through the events in the mission capture (even if the Personal Edition doesn't capture all gunnery related sub events like the classroom version does) for your personal After Action Review. And you also have the video, where you can probably identify the cases where you shot with a bad range.

One observation, I saw some most engagements with a wiggling reticule, which is usually a sign of highly variable moving averages of the turret traverse rate, with the resulting (potential) reduction of hit likelihood.

The recommended procedure (as far as I understand it, was never an M1 gunner after all) is to dump the lead at the beginning of the engagement, catch up to the moving target, track it for a sec, then lase, and fire.

 

On the plus side, you still have all the relevant skills as far as ammo indexing is concerned, typically the most frequent mistake of new users of the M1.

Another recommendation would be to set the thermals to 3X and the day sight to 10x, and then switch to the daysight for the actual lase and shoot part. Usually this gives you a better view, and also a visual confirmation of your target in addition to the thermal signature.

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The key to success in the Instant Action is to plan for some changes in the battle positions (not too far, but still, a bit is possible). If you stay in the same place, breaking the line of sight with the berm drill isn't going to help much as the enemy will keep observing the last known position, so you have to throw them off). This is best done in the planning phase with setting up interconnected battlepositions so that you just have to hit "c" to let the driver C ontinue to the next waypoint.

The tactically vital part is to prevent units from getting across the river in front of your ridge line. Shoot units as they are ON the red bridge so they block passage for following traffic, and shoot all bridgelayers that come later.

With damaged stabilization, you still have emergency mode, you don't have to switch to manual right away.

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3 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

Maybe you did it after the video, but (for other readers here) you should make it a habit to go through the events in the mission capture (even if the Personal Edition doesn't capture all gunnery related sub events like the classroom version does). And you also have the video, where you can probably identify the cases where you shot with a bad range.

One observation, I saw some most engagements with a wiggling reticule, which is usually a sign of highly variable moving averages of the turret traverse rate, with the resulting (potential) reduction of hit likelihood.

The recommended procedure (as far as I understand it, was never an M1 gunner after all) is to dump the lead at the beginning of the engagement, catch up to the moving target, track it for a sec, then lase, and fire.

 

On the plus side, you still have all the relevant skills as far as ammo indexing is concerned, typically the most frequent mistake of new users of the M1.

Another recommendation would be to set the thermals to 3X and the day sight to 10x, and then switch to the daysight for the actual lase and shoot part. Usually this gives you a better view, and also a visual confirmation of your target in addition to the thermal signature.

Wow, thanks for the quick analysis! I keep forgetting to dump my lead half the time because I'm using a joystick with a button to 'press' instead of releasing the GPCH for a split second to dump it, it is definitely user error on my part.  Still trying to get the rhythm of gunnery procedures within the sim.  I'm impressed with both the A1 and SEP variants, The AI SEP TC never designated for me, is this typical or just how the cookie crumbled on those engagements?  

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1 minute ago, Ssnake said:

The key to success in the Instant Action is to plan for some changes in the battle positions (not too far, but still, a bit is possible). If you stay in the same place, breaking the line of sight with the berm drill isn't going to help much as the enemy will keep observing the last known position, so you have to throw them off). This is best done in the planning phase with setting up interconnected battlepositions so that you just have to hit "c" to let the driver C ontinue to the next waypoint.

The tactically vital part is to prevent units from getting across the river in front of your ridge line. Shoot units as they are ON the red bridge so they block passage for following traffic, and shoot all bridgelayers that come later.

With damaged stabilization, you still have emergency mode, you don't have to switch to manual right away.

Yeah, I'm still a rookie, I didn't know the key command to to to emergency and didn't know if the aux pump an needing 1500PSI was simulated so i just jumped to the GAS.  I did not know about the moving BP command, that is very helpful.  I was treating it like UCOFT. Going to practice a bit more now 

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2 hours ago, Mirzayev said:

Gotta be a bit less aggressive with the traverse of the turret. Takes some getting used to. 

 

I recommend physically saying "Track, Lase, Blaze" during an engagement to help slow down during gunnery. 

 

 

Thanks, that's some good advice, the turret is a bit more touchy than the tank's plus I think I got in the UCOFT mindset.  Working on it though.

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