Marine River force in Vietnam

[duff]

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

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by duff

Perhaps include in the briefing the words "There is known to be a VC battalion in the area, however you are not required to engage the whole force and our information suggests they are not battle ready and are unlikely to move against you." ?

If there was a "known battalion in the area" the smallest force they'd send into the area would be a reinforced battalion with lots of artillery, helo, and air support on-call.

[Suhiir]

Battle #2

Again, excellent map!

Without getting into details:

The VC were all dug-in, makes them MUCH harder to hit/suppress.

94 Squads (mostly 3-man scout teams, hard as hell to hit due to size 0)
3 Sniper
12 Fortifications
3 MMG Section
7 Recoiless Rifle
5 82mm Mortar Section
3 Hv AAMG
3 ZPU-4
3 57mm AA Gun

And most interestingly ... 67 mine symbols.
To quote the manual: "A 'mine' is not '1 mine' but a random small number of mines. It is a symbol for a mined area and may be 2 mines or it may be 8 mines (or 3 or 5)."
Let's assume an average of 4.5 mine per symbol ... 67 x 4.5 = 301.5 ... the average anti-tank mine weighs 30# ... so 301.5 x 30 = 9045# ... 4.11 tons of mines ... very industrious those VC.

The ONLY reason I made it to the village via the road was I ignored the scenario advice and bought a single tank, an M67A2 Zippo to be precise, as part of my CORE. Then picked up two Engineer Squads with scenario support points. Gotta love flame tanks when it comes to roadside ambushes

[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]

I did play test them all and got a DV for each - obviously knowing the opponent's layout that's not due to any gifts in my play. With the ambush I lost a boat to the 14 mil AA (which I'm happy to be getting rid of...) The torpedo boats and PBRs from my core force (and the hovercraft when I took them) "Z"ed most hexes before my troops moved in and it wasn't too bad. The barges were late to the party and the troops in them only got to take part in the plantation attack. I used smoke to make sure I only had to deal with one section of the "Ring of fire" at a time and had it mostly sorted by the time the choppers came. (I forgot about the spider holes in the middle of the LZ and gave myself an awful fright when they opened up!) I think the barge troops stopped off to deal with the morters.

If that was an odd way of dealing with that battle, please let me know. I'm not trying to design battles where most people will never "beat" because of my quirky way of thinking.

[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.

[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