Western OPFOR in Durango Valley

[loktarr]

Has anybody here been involved in a Join Exercise between armored forces of various western countries? I have read something about a huge superiority of US crew/tanks , I will post it, if I can find it again. It describes from the point of view of a US M1 gunner the "inferiority" of German and French crews.
I want to change Durango valley with western OPFOR

[Sarunas]

Professional armies should outperform conscripts, no?

[PlasmaKrab]

Germany still has a conscription army, though I guess the amount of conscripts depends on the unit (likely less in armor batallions). French forces have been 100% professional for about ten years, so that's not the point here.

You can try patching up a Durango Valley: OPFOR Germany or France or UK, but for that you'll have to save the map and create a new scenario where you re-buy both forces, otherwise your new OPFOR forces will still have Russian or Chinese leaders and morale/exp ratings...

[loktarr]

To PlasmaKrab:
Any idea how to keep the US unit list and remove the Chinese one? Or to take the map, buy new units for OPFOR and rebuy same US units? (without doing it one by one).

To Sarunas:
I found the post I was refering to. It was in a forum, so don't take it like direct report:

when i was with the 1AC me and a couple other guys went over to germany to conduct war games with the french and the germans. the 1AD was in iraq, so they didnt have enough manpower left in rear det to conduct them, so we got to do it. the french did better than the germans, even though the leo 2 is probably (actually, almost certainly) the best tank out of the 3 (leclerc, leo 2, M1A1). like i said, french were decent except they were so worried about getting the first shot out, they almost never hit us with it on the first try. that's too bad for them because they did manage to get on our flanks a couple times.

and the germans just had no creativity, at all, they were an open book. they were upset with us for playing the offensive team, digging 3/4 of our tanks into hull down positions and concealing them, and then using the remaining 1/4 to flush them out of their positions (which were dug exactly by the book and thus were childsplay to recognize) and drive them toward our waiting ambush. they actually accused us of cheating because we forced them to move by doing consistent hit and fade tactics on their rear armor to drive them into our ambush.

they did start to learn eventually though.

point is, in training at least, they werent as good as our US crews. who knows who'd do better on the battlefield, like you said, neither french or german tankers have been tested. it's unfortunate too, the leopard II is arguably one of the best MBT's in the world right now.

The guy speeks of Iraq, so it may have been back in the 90': he was, if I remember correctly on a M1A1. The opposing tank in 1990 must have been any Leo 2 type and AMX-30B2 but not Leclerc (error?). Other possibility, it was 1 to 3 years ago but I serously doubt about that: 1AD was in Iraq in 1990 but not in 2003.
Then both German and French units would include conscripts...

[pdoktar]

Maybe professional armies are better conducting war operations, but novadays it seems that the real war starts, when the operations are over. Then I might disagreee, because given the civilian nature of consctripts, they should be better at ending those wars, and getting people to side for them not against, as we see in Iraq.

[loktarr]

I would say that when you come to involve conscripts in war, reason are such that nobody in invaded population will dare to resist... See what happened in Germany after 1945.

[PlasmaKrab]

Loktarr, the French tank could have been a Leclerc early in the 90s, AFAIK the first ones came in service in very small quantities in 1992. Shortly afterwards you could have had enough of them in operational trials to conduct some multinational cross-training. And there's no way you can mitake a Leclerc for an AMX-30, particularly if the US visual recog training is the best as well

Any idea how to keep the US unit list and remove the Chinese one? Or to take the map, buy new units for OPFOR and rebuy same US units? (without doing it one by one).

Hmm, no. As far as I've tried, the only way to make sure the leader names and ranks and ratings are consistent with the new country is to rebuy the units all over. Better yet save the map and restart one (don't forget taking note of the pre-deployed positions and reinforcement turns in the original). To do this, load the original scenario, click "edit map" hit the "save map" button so you can save the map alone as a stand-alone map, then start a fresh scenario, use your new map, and do what you want of the buy/deployment menus.

[loktarr]

Ok, thank you Plasmakrab, I should have found this alone
About the Leclerc recog, you are certainly right, only pb is that that 1AD was back in germany in 92 if I'm not wrong. In my scen there will be AMX-30 because against M1A1 in 92, the Leclerc kills the balance of the game.

[narwan]

On LeClercs; when I was hitchhiking my way across southern parts of France with a friend of mine we at one time got a ride from a french army Colonel. Turned out he was in charge of the (only) french battallion with LeClerc's at that time. They were not yet 'operational' in the sense that the vehicles and crews were still being tested (as part of a larger formation and as they actually held up in the field) and trained. That gave us something to talk about...
Anyway, that was back in 1994 AFAIK.

Narwan

[Marek_Tucan]

pdoktar said:
Maybe professional armies are better conducting war operations, but novadays it seems that the real war starts, when the operations are over. Then I might disagreee, because given the civilian nature of consctripts, they should be better at ending those wars, and getting people to side for them not against, as we see in Iraq.

OTOH the public miht be even more sensitive to the casaulties. After all today the agitprop types tend to say in 50% of cases (atleast here) "These mercenaries just deserved it, doing it for the money" and all that, while with conscripts dying it would be "you see they took this young man away from his family and now killed him"...