Marine River force in Vietnam

[Kessu]

Found a great resource on the brown water navy, rich with first hand accounts of the guys on the ground and on the water. Tons of great pictures and Ops reports (!!). http://www.rivervet.com/

Army/Navy joint ops but the dynamics apply to a large extent on the riverine operations carried out by the Devil Dog.

Loving the campaign Duff. Kudos!. Some fine-tuning and you'll have yourself a classic. Half way through the 3rd scenario (hopefully). The V.C is making a lot of widows with their mortars and I'm tempted to tune down artillery effectiveness back to 100% but having laid down the law as a FO I personally know that 81-82mm mortar rounds do more than just pick up dust in RL, and that the 100m kill radius of a 155mm shell means just that.

P.S
Downloaded the Vietnam total conversion (TO&Es) which suits the campaign like a glove.

[Suhiir]

Battle #3 (LZ Ambush)

The LZ had 3 fortifications in the middle; the treeline surrounding it swarming with 6 Hv AAMGs, 12 RPG armed squads, and 3 snipers. The surrounding jungle sported another 6 ZPU-4's and 3 Hv AAMGs. All this supported by 19 ... yes 19 ... 82mm mortar sections (I wasn't aware the VC even had mortar battalions).

Obviously those AirCav guys were from the 7th Cav (Custers' outfit).

It was impossible to reach the LZ before the first wave of AirCav appeared.
Needless to say it was ugly.
Only by performing a banzai attack were some of the USMC units able to slightly clear one side of the LZ before the second wave of AirCav appeared.
Again, it was ugly.
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After 3 battles I have to wonder ...
Do you playtest your scenarios yourself to see how well they work and if they're balanced (assuming they're designed to be winnable ... some aren't)?
In a campaign most players sort of expect the majority of their CORE to survive to participate in the next battle.

[duff]

Also - is there a way to show in the game a MG which has had a jury-rigged AA mount put on?

[duff]

Suhir - the briefing was intended to convey "Don't go up the road!". When I re-read it without an Australian use of words I'm guessing "roll up" suggested rolling in tanks rather than just "go to". I'll reword the briefing - you're supposed to land at the dock in your boats. Thanks for the advice about the amount of mines, with luck one of those after battle reports will give an amount of mines recovered so I can keep it a bit more real.

With the fist battle - Would it be more realistic to remove the "extra" troops and add challenge by shortening time? When I playtested I found the artillery support pretty much left all the VC in the village unable to shoot and I don't want to make it a cakewalk (Whereas doctrine tries to make Decisive victory with minimal casualties the result as much a possible).

[glaude1955]

Hello Duff,
Your campaign seems to be interesting.
The first difficulty is, for my level, the recruitment.
I'm French and Viet Nam does not evoke much for me. Also a fixed core would be a great help.
By building your various scenarios, I suppose you have a clear idea about the composition of your core force. (Would that the equilibrium scenarios). Could you give us the benefit of your experience?
Regards

Yves

[duff]

Most of my playtest run-throughs I had a marine company with 1 platoon replaced by engineers, a platoon of mortars, 3 "squadrens" of 3 PBRs with a mix of weapons, an FO and an ammo LVT. I usually had a road patrol and fire team squad, sometime replaced 1 squadren of plasties (PBRs) with PT boats. I usually had a few recoilless rifles for bunkers and to make a big bang in suppression fire. When I could afford I bought a seal recon team and helicopter (which I had fun with but it died often, (same with the hovercraft when I had them). I'm some battles would be very hard without the PBRs. I enjoy open cores myself which is the main reason I left it open. If most people would prefer a fixed core I can certainly do that.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by duff

Suhir - the briefing was intended to convey "Don't go up the road!". When I re-read it without an Australian use of words I'm guessing "roll up" suggested rolling in tanks rather than just "go to". I'll reword the briefing - you're supposed to land at the dock in your boats. Thanks for the advice about the amount of mines, with luck one of those after battle reports will give an amount of mines recovered so I can keep it a bit more real.

With the fist battle - Would it be more realistic to remove the "extra" troops and add challenge by shortening time? When I playtested I found the artillery support pretty much left all the VC in the village unable to shoot and I don't want to make it a cakewalk (Whereas doctrine tries to make Decisive victory with minimal casualties the result as much a possible).

Given the terrain it takes more then half the scenario to simply reach the objective village (assuming you don't just motor in and land at the docks).
You could cut say 10-15 turns if they player didn't have the counterattack force to deal with.

Originally Posted by gila

In my humble opinion,i think its best to have a fixed core and limited repair/build pts.,for an challenging campaign.

I very much agree.

[glaude1955]

Hello Dufff,
Thank you for the answer that helps me tremendously.
Nota Bene:
Regarding the fixed core force, players who prefer to use an open core force can easily change it with the editor. The reverse is not possible.
Regards

Yves

[duff]

That's a fair point. I'll include a fixed core option when I do version 1.1

[gila]

In my humble opinion,i think its best to have a fixed core and limited repair/build pts.,for an challenging campaign.