Assault vs AI - too many mines ?

[serg3d]

I've played several assault battles vs AI, and I feel that AI using too many mines. It just cover all the battlefield , including victory hexex by mines. IMHO it makes the battle less fun:
1. It enforce primitive tactic - all the tactic is to claer mines to victory hexes, or air assault.
2. Because AI spending almoste all on mines it have not enough points to buy essential mobile forces - usually it have 3-4 tanks in the assault battle.
3. Because all the map covered by mines AI can't move and conterattack. Then trying move forces to regain captured hexes it just stuck in it's own mines.
My suggestions - decrease amount of mines 4-5 times, deploy them only on the roads/bridge/fords, around victory hexes and bunkers. Spend freed support point on the bunkers, mobile forces, ATGM, SAM, field and off-board artillery. The game will be a lot more fun, and no less challenging.

[DRG]

Just how many points are you using for these battles and how big is the map and what nations are you using??? All of that is critical information I need to investigate anything like this. Don't assume what you tried is universally true for the entire game for all the number of combinations available to set up an assualt

A 25,000 point assault does not generate enough mines for the AI defender to "cover all the battlefield" on a 100x100 map, not even close so I need to know what you set up your game for

Don

[serg3d]

I'm playing generated campin, I'm getting 4500-6000 points for core force.
The size of map - I have nothing compare to, it's a standart map generated by campain. By "all the map covered by mines" I don't mean that every hex covered by mine, but all AI area covered by the strips of mines from top to bottom, with gap of around 3-4 hexes between strips.

[Pavel]

PavelI have had the same results when playing a generated campaign. Playing 7000 point games I am finding the unending mine fields to be a real pain. Also the changes from the older games on mines makes them much harder to clear.

Someone suggested that you should use engineers to clear them. How?!? Every time the engineers move they are torn to pieces. And the inf in their dug in positions are almost unsuppress-able. (when you have a MRLS barrage hit one, then hit it with the fire of 10 tanks and support vech at 200 meters and it still kills half of the first engineer platoon who moves, one hex, at 600 meters something is wrong. Lots and lots of smoke is the only chance for engineers and then the small mortars kill and suppress most of them so that they can not remove mines. My MRLS and 155mm accurate barrages don’t even make them duck!) Mine removing tanks are the only units that can take the super accurate small arms fire and still remove mines. But with out full terrain info with mouse over, like in the earlier versions of SP, means that you loose most of your mine tanks to trackings after they stumble into a mine field.

The tedious and over costly assaults on the generated campaigns is ruining the most stable and weapons rich version of SP yet! It’s a shame.

[DRG]

Pavel said:


PavelI have had the same results when playing a generated campaign. Playing 7000 point games I am finding the unending mine fields to be a real pain. Also the changes from the older games on mines makes them much harder to clear.

Someone suggested that you should use engineers to clear them. How?!? Every time the engineers move they are torn to pieces. And the inf in their dug in positions are almost unsuppress-able. (when you have a MRLS barrage hit one, then hit it with the fire of 10 tanks and support vech at 200 meters and it still kills half of the first engineer platoon who moves, one hex, at 600 meters something is wrong. Lots and lots of smoke is the only chance for engineers and then the small mortars kill and suppress most of them so that they can not remove mines. My MRLS and 155mm accurate barrages don’t even make them duck!) Mine removing tanks are the only units that can take the super accurate small arms fire and still remove mines. But with out full terrain info with mouse over, like in the earlier versions of SP, means that you loose most of your mine tanks to trackings after they stumble into a mine field.

The tedious and over costly assaults on the generated campaigns is ruining the most stable and weapons rich version of SP yet! It’s a shame.

If your engineers are being "torn to pieces" you are not surpressing the defences enough with arty and smoke ( yes, I did read what you wrote about your attempts to surpress the dug in defenders and I KNOW they *can* be surpressed ). Mine removal is covered in the game guide under "Mines and Field Engineering" you do NOT remove mines with engineers and mine clearing tanks by moving INTO the mined hex. You do that by staying just outside the minefield with the engineers or engineer tanks and point them at the mined hex then let them work and give them full support while they do their work.

If you still find this not to your liking you can always turn mines off in preferences and they will be deactivated when you play assualts but I'm sure there will be other players willing to offer you suggestions on how to deal with them. They CAN be dealt with.

Don

[Shadowcougar]

Smoke is the engineer squads friend. A 120mm plt with smoke is worth more than a MLRS. Of course 8 inch fire will supress anyone.

BTW what nations are you playing. I have run into this against the Chinese in 2006 and at 30000 points.

[desh44]

DRG
A few quick questions concerning mines. What is the percentage chance of a unit setting off a mine. when I play if there is single mine marker in a hex it almost always will kill a vehicle if each marker represents 10 mines does this mean that there are 10 of each type of mine (anti vehicle and anti personnel). Also when a mine had detonated does is the number of mines reduced in the hex. and one last question does artillery fire into a hex have a chance of detonating mines (how about FAE's or napalm)?

Thanks for any info
Tom D

[DRG]

serg3d said:
I'm playing generated campin, I'm getting 4500-6000 points for core force.
The size of map - I have nothing compare to, it's a standart map generated by campain. By "all the map covered by mines" I don't mean that every hex covered by mine, but all AI area covered by the strips of mines from top to bottom, with gap of around 3-4 hexes between strips.

There is no "Standard" map generated by a campaign. You have total control of the map size in preferences when you start the campaign along with how many points for the core. ( you can also change the map sizes between games if you want ) You can tell me how big it is by starting your campaign and place your cursor over the extreme lower right side of the map and reading the map co-ordinates that appear at the top of the screen. That will say something like "Hex 99,79" which indicates the map is set to 80/100 in preferences

Mine removal is covered in the game guide under Mines and Field Engineering. If you still have trouble after reading that perhaps one of the other players on the list can help you with this. A 4500-6000 point core with a medium sized map shouldn't be generating an impossible number of mines for you to deal with

Don