Supermen Infantry?

[Suhiir]

I recall playing one of the Vietnam scenarios recently (US Army VS VC/NVA) where I was defending a firebase.

I got really ticked when turn after turn my defensive fire at a moving enemy in the open or tall grass produced 1-3 casulties from the combined fires of a dug in platoon during a turn and forget supressing, pinning, or routing them - never happened. Yet they managed to consistently kill 3-5 of my guys in the trenches every turn with small arms fire.

Then and there I changed the Player Infantry to 120% Toughness and AI to 80% and have left it there ever since. The AI still acts like superman, with a small "s" but at least I can deal with it now.

[DaveTheRed]

I tried playing the 5th Marines campaign and in my first 2 battles encountered the following:
1) A VC in a spider-hole surviving a Spooky gunship run..
2) A VC ammo bunker surviving direct hits by 4 airstrikes of 500lb bombs and 1 napalm...
3) The Super VC! A VC 12.7 sandbagged MG Nest on the northern part of the 1st battle. It was down to one man, surrounded 180 degrees by 3 marine squads, 2 M-60 teams, 1 LAW team, 1 .50 cal team, and a marine sniper. EIGHT rounds of pounding later this guy is still alive and inflicting casualties while refusing to be suppressed or routed! I'd say something needs to be tweaked in the realism department concerning these freakin VC!

[thatguy96]

If you have a chance to pick up Osprey's new book on VC and NVA fortifications and tunnels by Gordon Rottman I would recommend it. 3 miniguns from 1000 feet plus would not have done a thing to a VC spider hole, and from how the fortifications in Rottman's book were described, US military planners themselves ran into the problems you are describing.

Hits from 750 lb. and 1,000 lb. bombs, with their crater only 6-10ft. from bunkers, left them intact. Walls and roofs did not even collapse...One example is a triangular 12.7mm AA machine gun position. A 750 lb. or 1,000 lb. bomb landed directly in between the three pits, creating a 20ft.-diameter, 10ft.-deep crater; the pits were 36-60 ft. apart and remained unscathed. There were 2-3-man fighting/living bunkers within 10ft. of 38ft.-diameter, 18ft.-deep craters - and the bunkers survived.

The general conclusions concerning the effects of artillery and air strikes were summarized in a study as follows:
*NVA bunkers withstood anything but a direct hit by artillery or bombs.
*Delay fuzing produced the best effects against bunkers; however, much of the ordnance penetrated too deep before detonating in the soft soil.
*Super-quick fuzing was effective for stripping away camouflage to expose positions, but was not effective against bunkers.
*Napalm was not effective for burning off large areas of foliage. WP artillery rounds were more effective.
*105mm and 155mm howitzers were not effective against bunkers.

So from that you see that in the realism department the scenarios you describe might not be too unrealistic.

[Marek_Tucan]

Spookies were great as firesupport during humanwave attacks, as were later Spectres (which btw were most often used for truck hunting on Ho Chi Minh trail IIRC) but minigun or not, you have to remember they're machineguns, not 8in guns