Russkies in Oklahoma!

[seabolt]

KraMax:

Shynaliyev got robbed. F:censored: robbed.

That Chinese mutt was all elbows and spaz. I think he had an epileptic seizure at one point. Kenny Egan will destroy him.

I'll root for Sarsekbayev. Olympic boxing is more crooked than the real thing ...

-- 30 --

[seabolt]

TURN 12

Man plans. God laughs.

I don't generally build a real specific picture of how these fights will go, but after last turn I couldn't help myself. I. Had. A. Plan.

Epoletov, of course, begged to differ. He unveiled yet another sniper on Mt Acme. (My spotting in this battle has been just criminal.) Then his turn ended with his third, and largest, wave of transports. AA fire splashed one of them, probably after its drop, but the others did just fine. The herky jerky replay and inviso-chutes make it impossible to be sure, but I was left with at least two infestastions of mechanized paratroops, one in line beginning 350 meters west of the Cinemax and descending southeast, the other in a line from 61,85 ascending northwest. Better yet, at least the northern group consisted of top-of-the-line Spetsnatz units, costing umpteen points each.

Just to put the cherry on the sundae, my Warthog's third attempt on the same damn Nona drew AA fire from two 23mm pieces. Master of logic that I am, I had assumed that no more than two pieces firing on any given turn meant two pieces total on the field.

Still, the two that fired were too far to the northeast to cover Epoletov's remaining two hexes, except that I now needed to about-face enough units to deal with the new paradrops. Which was more than a little unwieldy, given that I had invested in 110,43 with plans to keep going through said VH. I can't really condone paradropping in waves in this game, but admittedly the timing was real shrewd in this case.

Whatever my difficulties, some things had to be addressed immediately. On a map this size, foot units can be dealt with at leisure. The mechs, on the other hand, would be real grief even given a single turn to go skipping into the woods. In the south, I brought in the Apaches to fireball the three armored jeeps that I could spot. The north was a little trickier. An armored jeep already was burning. (Why? Who knows? The replay skips right past it. Either it crashed on impact or my units opfired lethally.) But a 77-pt BMD-1P was sitting there promising to raise havoc. I had an AT unit in LOS at long range, but two monster Spetsnaz units with the 800-meter thermobaric RPGs were lurking, too. Some 500 meters off I had two Ranger squads staged.

Yes, it was time for the King o' Cheese Showdown.

My first Ranger burst had no effect. The second drew opfire including the mininuke detonation of an RFT: no KIAs but 33 suppression. Rally, rally, rally. Fire, opfire: 24 suppression. Rally, rally. Fire, opfire: 13 suppression. Rally. Switch to the other unit and target the second Spetsnatz. Fire, opfire: 27 suppression. Rally, rally, to hell with this. Smoke, smoke.

Like many a heavyweight title bout, the results were completely underwhelming. Five bursts of OICW bleeding-edge gear vs 5 of the 8 RFT rounds that Epoletov paid so dearly for: No casualties, one pinned Russian unit. Jeez. Really aerodynamic rocks would have been just as effective. At least the exchange drained off 63% of his big bang capacity.

I opened up with the Carl Gustav, anyway, and bagged the BMD on the second shot. Then I spotted a nice, expensive ATGM unit sneaking up on the central town. Recon unit killed it. Then an RPG-29 team in the north, bagged by another patrol. Russkies were coming out of the woodwork to get immediately bagged and things were really going my way.

You'd think I'd have learned by now, right? The ATGM from ~5 rounds ago seemingly has LOS everywhere and bagged another M113. I ran a Fox into an RPG-29 patrol and didn't have anyone close enough to counter. Then yet another Fox found the patrol's partner the hard way, though at least this one got chewed proper for the grief.

So I ended the turn ahead on points thanks to the 142-point ATGM and the BMD, but with the Russians having drawn plenty of blood in the process and my troops re-orging on the fly like the proverbial chickens with their proverbial heads cut off. Even though the Warthog finally killed its Nona, Epoletov's artillery phase brought plenty more cluster rounds into the thick of things. That's starting to sting a little; a guy can only dance so much once the fighting pins him down. The Russian Su-34s made their 723rd disdainful passes with dry guns, just trying to eyeball the business en route to Mt Olympus. The very last action of the round was a nice little twist, as a humble Ranger SAM proved that even an EW 10 god sometimes has to pay for its hubris. Much like us all too mortal Americans ...

Oh, and Egan got robbed, too, though admittedly Zhang fought a much better fight than in the semifinal. I was a house on fire when it came to prognostication last week ...

-- 30 --

[KraMax (SPR)]

Boxing - game serious :)

[seabolt]

Boxing - game serious :)

Serious, yes.

Fair, no.

At least Sarsekbayev got his gold. But he didn't have to fight a Chinese boxer for it.

-- 30 --

[Epoletov [SPR].]

To uncomfortably Americans when it shoot at a back.
Your mechanized infantrymen an ambush with RPG did not wait.
Walk as the house, bravely! :)
One А-10 was flown away, has caught in board Inf-SAM a rocket and ten in 23-mm rounds.
I invite the remained pair "Apache" (two have come back home to patch holes) in controllable air space the Russian armies. :smoke:

You for certain hate that crew ATGM which shoots without a miss on yours APC. :boom3:

[seabolt]

It's about time you posted some smack talk! ;)

Yea, you got Russians in every nook like rats in a grain bin right now. I've got to pause and take care of some real life business.

But just you wait. I'm poking a broom in every corner this turn! ;)

-- 30 --

[seabolt]

TURN 13

As evidenced by the first Russian verbal volley since Turn 1, Epoletov's hitting a bit of a stride. He began the round by finally knocking my Warthog out of the sky. (Which was OK, in that it was out of ammo at the time, but not OK in that he killed rather than wounded it.) Then he dug his paratroops into cover after a couple of potshots. Which makes me suspect that he's waiting for something, maybe a long-hidden armored column, maybe a fourth wave. Somehow I think Epoletov has at least one more ace up his sleeve.

In the meantime, I needed to attend to the dirty business of digging out the third wave. The Apaches ferreted around in the south, but troops in trees aren't really their forte. Given the remoteness of the location, I could only add a little z-fire to their work. In the north I was able to bring quite a bit of ordnance, and my z-fire already has told Epoletov that plenty of company is coming. I'm hoping to create some very expensive corpses next turn.

In the meantime, I found what is likely a rifle company skirting north of 95,23, heading west with mayhem in mind. The Schmel RFTs came into their own in that skirmish, because I wasn't able to reel off 17 rallies with the leading platoon. The RFT Russian opfire smacked my offending squad with ~30 suppression and ended its fire after one volley.

And finally the turn ended with the usual rolling wave of Russian metal. His artillery almost seems to be getting stronger, which it probably is. All of my CM efforts only tallied about five dead Nonas (20% of his allowed artillery value) and five dead ammo carriers. My 60mm legion did a good job of suppressing another three or four guns to this point, but they're starting to go dry tubes. In the artillery war, at least, the Russian bear is starting to really growl. Let's hope I can take 12 more turns of it cuffing me about.

-- 30 --

[klanx171]

Just to slide off topic and reply to the future war bit (sorry seabolt- last one I promise)

I dont think we will get computing and killing machines on the par of humans for a while but already there are basic weapon systems that can do the job of things like sentries and guarding, and yes there is a big difference between a pilotless drone and true free flyer but again we dont need total human like awareness, just the means to move the ordinance, if you look at how airspace battles are fought now, the pilots are often just ferrying the weapons to the targets (ok thats a slight oversimplification) but the fact that a drone can be operated from the other side of the world does show that the act and the operator are becoming seperate and that in the process and filling the gap is the machine and the computer. Its less transhuman war and more posthuman war.

Of course this only applies to high tech high end warfare, there aint no drones for the average suicide bomber or insurgent but then again they make use of such sophisticated systems and technology so that even they and their organizations that support them have taken on a highly technological aspect.

But in a game like SP it would be easy enough to code in drone tanks, planes and such, as well as in the future, semi or fully autonomous units of drones or robots as basic infantry units, the US mule prototype is a good start in such an area.

In fact future war may be a lot like SP with the general as the god like consciousness hovering over the battlefield directing the robots and drones in realtime or in some sort of slowed down time way.

[seabolt]

In fact future war may be a lot like SP with the general as the god like consciousness hovering over the battlefield directing the robots and drones in realtime or in some sort of slowed down time way.

I wouldn't argue* with anything that you had to say, but to me this was the nut graph. Some of the modern computerized battle maps already lean strongly in this direction. IIRC, Walrus dubbed this "eye of God" in the z-fire thread, which is a nice way of describing the pitch-perfect C3 enjoyed in this game.

Anything approaching the eye of God in real life would be a *ferocious* force multiplier. And it's coming ... for those entities that can afford the infrastructure and development costs.

*Well, OK, I'd argue. I *love* to argue. But not with my usual brio.

-- 30 --

[klanx171]

H hear ya, I just crawled out of two years doing/studying exactly this for my masters with some of the best minds in the biz so I was living and breathing it which was awesome but also turned me a bit nutty on it.:eek1::conf::kill::whis::smoke::):P