Air interdiction in MC

[James Ward]

Wow is NATO interdiction powerful in West Germany scenario of Danube! As the WP I'm losing hundreds of men and dozens of guns and vehicles each turn moving formations to the front.
Should I be moving in T mode at night or am I destined to just get hammered 24/7?

[JDR Dragoon]

Move at night or during daylight turns with bad weather (visibility 1-2). Move units out of Travel mode as far as is possible (only really possible with tanks and SP Guns. Infantry and Towed guns have to hitch up in order to move aywhere)

[Ostland [SPR]]

Hide. Aircraft NATO very strong.

[Aaron]

I think in the original it had interdiction effect set at 25 which i felt was to much myself, i toned it down to 15 in the Bolt when the defense values were at 16 as they are in the original but now since the defense values in the Bolt have been change to 20 i have returned the interdiction effect to 25 which keeps it about the same level.

Aaron

[James Ward]

I can understand getting hit occasionally but they way they are pounding me is hard to take. It especially sucks when a non moving unit gets wiped out , like my poor helo HQ unit did on turn 1, because another unit passes through the hex!
I sure hope weather and night reduce the effects or I gonna have one massive force assaulting Berlin :)

[FLG]

There are several measures you can use to reduce interdiction attacks. I generally don't suffer from them with any severity any more.

Move all night and dusk and dawn turns if avaliable, then rest for 3 turns during the day. This halves the number of turns you can be interdicted straight away and it keeps your guys fresh. Don't forget once fatigue passes 100, moral drops and so does the movement rate.

Keep out of t-mode when in the open. Armour in MC's shouldn't need to use t-mode at all except to cross major rivers and traverse forests and marching paces for infantry tends to be quiet high in MC.

Only move towed art in the clear during the day when absolutely necessary. You may think you need to it in position immediately but if you keep on moving it during the day it will end up as a smouldering twisted pile of scrap, which won't be of any use to you at all.

Plot routes through forests and towns where possible.

I tend to see less interdiction the further away from the front line you are. Though this is purely speculation on my part as there is nothing in the rules ot suggest this is a factor.

You say that interdiction attacks are too high but maybe it is your unrealistic style of play. Look at Normandy in WWII, or the Road to Basra in 91, to see what interdiction can do when a niave commander attempts to move his troops by road during the day under heavy interdiction.

[Glenn Saunders]

You say that interdiction attacks are too high but maybe it is your unrealistic style of play. Look at Normandy in WWII, or the Road to Basra in 91, to see what interdiction can do when a niave commander attempts to move his troops by road during the day under heavy interdiction.

Guys:

There is a really great pocket book called RED ARMY by Tom Peters. Told completely from the Soviet side - an extremely good book and a fast read. Now you might say it is fiction - yes, but those that recognize the authors name will tell you he is a expert at these sorts of things - writes a column for the Asrm Chair General.

FWIW, some of the NGP Spetznaz S|O's are taken directly from this book - I think the bridge is at Hameln - see the NGP Scn 10_16: The Pied Piper of Hameln.

[James Ward]

You say that interdiction attacks are too high but maybe it is your unrealistic style of play.

This is my first try at MC and the interdiction is really different, I'm used to the interdiction in PzC.
Dusk and night have brought some relief. I did not know if it had an effect.

[Steel God]

Obviously designing a PzC game is much easier to model since we have historical results to try and base the model on. With MC series games you have much less real world data to base the model on, most of it therefore becomes speculation based on expert opinions, balanced against the little bit of real world data, most of it derived from Arab Israeli conflicts.

But NATO doctrine in the 80s was reliant upon it's ability to gain some measure of air superiority and use that to interdict Pact forces as the moved, otherwise they knew they would simply be swamped at the FLOT. Allowing for the fact that the pilots of the Arab countries would probably not be as high a quality as Soviet pilots, the equipment loss rates suffered in the ME conflicts indicates that NATO doctrine would have likely had a large measure of success in attrition of the Pact forces in the 2nd and 3rd echelons. All of which is to say, I would expect the interdiction rate of an MC game based in the 1980s to be high for NATO.

[Outlaw Josey Wales]

Need to have an air sector map and control the air unit allocating them to Air Superiority, Interdiction, CAP etc etc. I know where James is coming from. I understand Normandy and Basra, but remember the good guys also had total or near total air superiority whereas at least the first few turns nobody would have it yet the interdiction is atrocious for either side really. Without actually having a more detailed air game who is to say who will have AS on any given turn.