Red Storm Rising Campain

[TheAbomb12]

Im looking to put together a team to make a campain on Red storm Rising. So if you have read the book and are intrested please tell me.

[ntstlkr]

Cheers A,
As posted a little while ago, been heavily into researching and putting together material for this. Although I intend to incoporate some things from WWIII:The Untold Story (both older and updated books by Sir Gen John Hacket, would suggest you read those too in addition to TC's book). Would like to hear your views on this.

Have some rough outlines done of parts of the storyline, some music and sound effects saved up as well as listings of various vehicles/ac/vessels needed. Gotten some schematics/pics/diagrams and such for most of the needed addons to be built.

Various issue have to be worked out, most importantly the "larger scale map". This one alone impacts depictions of the air/naval battles since they take up the most space and are quite important for any realistic portrayal of those type missions. A blank piece of ocean does nicely (easy enough to make!) for any part of the North Atlantic, but the space and size needed to show the Soviet attacks against the American Strike Fleet/Convoys is key.

Would be really interested in discussing how you propose to tackle these things.

NSDQ!

[TheAbomb12]

Yes I think that the Russians attack on the convoy are very important, however, massive tanks battles should be the focus because that is the reason the convoys are out there.

As for addons, ofp should take care of most. for the missions we might need; SAM launchers/vehicles (both sides), almost the entire navy exept for the LST(both sides), a destructible bridge(for that sad scene in RSR), fighter planes (both sides), Leopord tanks, and finally bombers (b-52s,backfires). Those are all the addons that i could think of so do you have anything to add to that.

(I noticed your post before posting mine, I thought you were makeing a campain of the ww3 book ...)

[TheAbomb12]

This is a little mission I put together real quickly

It's a med. scale battle where WEST holds the hill with limited armor support while the east has a large amount of armor and air support to take over the sector. This is how I imagine most of the key Tank battles and would like to expand in the depth and detail of the missions.
Note-I used a 1.0 ghz comp with 256mbs of ram so if you have less than this dont expect it to run very well.

[ntstlkr]

Cheers A and Merry Christmas!
Ran your battle (I've got a 1.8 Ghz w/512 so it didn't do too badly, gotta tweak the specs so it'll run more smoothly though), good stuff!
Just a coupla things for consideration. We'll have to create maps that are more terrain specific to Central Europe. While some portions of the 3 base maps are ok, Germany's geography is really quite different from what the islands hold. Whether it's the Fulda Gap, the Harz Mountains and the Teutoberger Wald, or the Northern Plains.  I've got my own recollections from all the field exercises run there but I've also collected some good pics to build maps from.

Tactical notes:

While the Soviets espoused the same 24 hr battle doctrine we did, their implementation left much to be desired. They generally avoided full scale night-assaults due to the complexity of coordinating the various combined arms. This, combined with their highly centralized command structure and general low-level of professionalism exhibited by the line troops combined to make overly complex missions (like night actions) something to be avoided. What they lacked in finesse and tactical flexability they made up for in brute force and simple easy to understand planning. Their greatest emphasis was placed on superise, aggressive execution, and timing of combined arms fire.

Basically before your attack would even begin, serious artillery preparation would commence on the defensive positions. Just as the artillery lifted, the attack helos would come in to rocket any particular defensive strong points identified, all the while the armor and infantry would move in. Speed, speed, speed.

The first missions would be engagements between what we referred to as our "covering force" (usually the ACRs were designated for this role) and the Soviet "advanced guard" formation in what we and they both termed "the meeting engagement". I'll get into that later.

I'll put together a "package" of stuff for you to look over and see what you think.

NSDQ!

[TheAbomb12]

You are right about the night attack thing and artillery, however, the helos (in the book at least) did attack before the troops actually came as well as playing the role of close combat support. Also, the russian made several plans describing massed tank assualts over key areas over europe. Any massed attacks would have to be complex in nature(I do agree that these complex plans worked against the soviets i.e. ff)

I want to stress strengths and weaknesses of soviet/NATO forces. Soviets do have the superiority in numbers on the ground, however they lack the air superiority of nato. NATO on the other hand lack supplies, vehicles, and men but make up for it from close air support..

[ntstlkr]

Cheers A,
Right on that Attack helo stuff, thats generally why they referred to them as supplements to the forward artillery. Our air superiority lies more in the quality and flexability of our air crews rather than numbers. While NATO could field 3000-3500 combat aircraft (including dual role light attack aircraft like the Hawk or Alphajet, which were primarily trainers), the Soviets could put in excess of 5000 or so AC into the air. However, like the ground forces, they relied on strict centralized control and very simple and straight forward tactics. They really never got the hang of the low-level stuff we developed following our experience in 'Nam. In addition, although they too placed an emphasis on suppressing air defense, they never developed into the art we did. They didn't have, and still don't as I recall, dedicated air defense suppression ac (like our F-4G, EA-6, EF-111's). We termed this particular type of mission as SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defense) and it encompassed all arms assets. For example, if a portion of the enemy air defense is within range of our artillery (say 155-ER or MLRS) then we would allocate a portion of their fires onto AA sites to open up a break in the enemy sam and AAA belt.

An important part of the missions to think about also is the disparity not only between NATO-Warsaw Pact forces, but also between the various forces within the alliance itself. The Soviets had it way over us on standardization of equipment. I mean, when the design for all their weapons and equipment comes from ONE supplier, it makes it kinda easy to keep everyone together.

For us on the other hand, it was a whole another picture. Even within the US Army itself.

My Brigade (think I mentioned we were the largest combat brigade in the Army then), was equiped with M1As (CHOBHAM w/105mm gun) and were transitioning to the M1A1Es (CHOBHAM w/120mm smoothbore). That was from '86 to '88. BUT, all of our APCs were still M113s, with M901 ITVs for heavy AT support. We didn't get the M3/M3s till '88-'89. We used CUCVs (basically a Chevy Blazer), jeeps, although we did have some HEMMTs I think. The 3rd IN DIV did have Bradleys and M1As, but didn't get the M1A1Es till later.

Alot of the national guard units set for REFORGER did have both M1A1s and Bradleys.

The Brits were still using Chieftains, but the Challenger was being fielded (we went against them during the Canadian Army Trophy tank gunnery competition with the M1's their first time. The Challenger's were really having problems. As I recall it was the impetuts for them to develope the Challenger 2. The Germans had both Leopard 1A4Es and Leopard 2s. The Danes were making good use of the old Leopard 1s (they still did rather well). When we won the competition, we took everyone by suprise, since it was the first comp for our M1s, and noone expected us to do as well. I remember well the victory party at the beer tent for that one!

I think, if we get it all straight, we can offer, not only a compelling and interesting campaign. But one that shows some insight into the way the war would have been fought then.

Its alot to think about and go oevr but it'll be worth it.

Was Santa good to you this year?

NSDQ!

[TheAbomb12]

Yes, I'm having a rather fun christmas...

My computer just crash and I had to rescue it loseing all my ofp information.  >:(But what really bugs me is that I can't find the manual which codemasters put the authentication code on sooo....I won't be able to run anything for a while but even before we do lets talk about the start of the campain.

Do you want the campain to follow the story line of Red Storm Rising(I would perfer a campain with a different title but still mostly based of the book). do you have an aim scene name (damn i have to install that to) so we can talk at a little faster rate. Mine is *gasp* TheAbomb12
hope to hear from you soon.

[ntstlkr]

Cheers A,
Let me tell you, !%%%@$@%$&!!)**GHFQ@##!!, I spent a freakin hour typing out some crap heer and when I go to post it, my log in time had run out. So I lost it all!

Oh well, live and learn. Yeah been through all that reinstall crap. What a pain in the behind! I ended up having to buy the game again. Figures there's no way to get it back from online registration. I mean, whats the point of registering it anyways?

Alot to cover though. I'll have my AIM up this weekend, though I have ICQ running, my # is 157259562.

Originally the impetus for this came from wanting to do a series of missions showcasing various aspects of the modern battlefield (i.e. armor ops, mechanized, air assault, airborne, light infantry, Ranger & SOF, etc. doing the gamut of operations like ambush, meeting engagement, patrol, deliberate attack, AT defense etc.) and thats when the idea of using RD as a vehicle hit me.

I needed something a little more to flesh out the flow of the war on a operational/strategic level, so I turned to the WWIII book. There's some stuff in there that really provides some good background for the overall campaign. Some pivital battles to be fought to determine the course of the war.  The 2 books merge quite nicely.

We don't have to call it RD specifically, although, like you mention, using the book as a guideline works really well. Besides generating some great missions to perform, lets try to provide some emotional connection to the characters. Let the players feel whats its like to be the people involved in this conflict, and deal with the aftermath.

Actually, we need to recruit some more folks. Maybe it won't shape up to be a full blown MOD (although it looks like it), but having an individual handle each set of characters would be good I think. I.e. One guy handle the naval characters and look after those missions, same for the Central Europe guy, and so on. Kinda break it down according to character groups and battlefield area.

Something to consider.

I've got boatloads of music downloaded to listen too also.

Catch you sometime this weekend.

NSDQ!  

[TheAbomb12]

ntstlkr,
Get your aim up as soon as possible (i dont have icq)

I do agree with you about the potential future for this mod, however, lets focus on developing the story line, enviroments, battle details of the missions. That will make the actual production so much easier.

(we need to get talking on aim because this is really slow)

[Fishion]

Hi,
I don't wanna mess too much with your ideas just a few
suggestion on the technical side that might (or might not) help:

-Anybody not familiar with modern Combat (and that would be
almost everybody, besides a few old tankers ), I'd suggest
you play a few hours of TacOps. It helped me alot to get a
different perspective on a cold-war combat enviroment.
You can get it at: http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=1116
(it's not the completes version on the net but it should do, I got one with about
200MB of Handbook data...)

-The real hard part on a mission would be to get part right with:
finesse and complex tactics (West) vs. simple tactics with brute force (and higher
numbers, East).
Considering that OFP is game that is largly based around
Infantry (but for Infantry Combat on those situations), it will
probably usefull to do this from a Infantry point of view, which
creates a few problems:
1) As an Infantry in the game it is sometimes hard to
understand what is going on, which is realistic, but when
fighting tanks I think you don't really figure what is going on,
besides that fact that Infantry based AT-Warfare simple sucks
with the AI (or did when I last tried it).
Communication could point a way out of the problem, though
looking form the realistic side, not every infantry soldier has a
radio. Of course when the play drives a tank you don't have the problem.

2) Artillery and Air-Power:
You somehow have to manage that the Artillery (which comes in before the
real Action beginns), appreas to be deadly and
effective, yet does not kill the player for more than 3 out of 10
times. In the end everything would look somewhat shot up.
It's possible but so far I had little success making it look
deadly and convincing (I used Sabot rounds, for smaler blast radius).
The biggest are probably the Helicopters, because they'll really
shoot up all friendly tanks, and bring quite an imbalance to the
field. Of course they could be shot down, or reinfocements
arrive after them, but somehow that never felt right.

3) AI, and the CarlGustav:
In the Army we trained it that way:
2 Guys, one with with the Pzf3 and one shot, the other
carrying one or more spare rounds for the Pzf3.
Unfortunatly I've never been able to recreate that in Ofp,
neither is the AI able to do that (specially not the shoot and
relocate part). The player can relocate though you have to
distribute ammo boxes along the secondary fireing positions.

4) Mobile defense: haven't been able to really implement
that...

All that leaves me with a big problem concerning Infantry
(provided that you use it for more than just cannonfoder for
tanks).

I know this hasn't touched the campaign issues of pictureing
the cold war gone hot, though I think you won't get around
the issue of Infantry against Tanks (if I remember it right it
was also in TCs book).
Besides that you'll need Troops from several nations...most notable Germany  
Is this playing in the Winter-Maps or the normal Maps?

-Fishion

[TheAbomb12]

Good stuff Fishion,

Right on about the numbers/firepower of Russians. West most of the time would be out numbered and out gunned and mostly on the retreat due to causalties and supply needs. I do disagree that the infantry based warfare is useless. Infact it should be quite effective,think about this. If you was 5 guys with some sort of AT weapons against lets say a T72, Even if there was a machine gunner up top(which ofp doesnt support) the tank would be dead real fast. Of Course not every infantry man will be carrying around an AT weapon, so of course their main job is to kill the enemy soldiers that do (as well as the ones that don't)

Don't worry about the Artillery if it seems underpowered, we can add sound if needed. As for Air support, helos should be overpowering on the battlefield, however, thier life expectance over the battlefield should be short  (especialy so to the russians)

Yes, I was thinking of germany as well. Germany will probaly be a mixture of west units (the german army) and resistance (civilians fighting for thier home). I also had an idea for an addon. Putting a TOW or AT missile of some sort on a jeep designed for hit and run attacks in mind.

[ntstlkr]

Cheers All,
Will have more comments to post shortly, back from trip. AIM is up (ntstlkr) so lets get hooked up!

[Fishion]

I didn't try to say Infantry AT-Warfare is useless, I said
it's gonna be real hard to put it into OFP in some useful
realistic way (at the moment every AI can only shoot one
shot with the CarlGustav...limiting thier effectivness).
I've made a small mission (quite along time ago actually)
trying to get some realistic AT-Infantry based Warfare, which pinnes about 20 tanks (Mostly T80 and T72, some
BMPs, and 2 BRDMs [when the addon cam out]), against
about 50 Infantry troops with CarlGustavs. I treally
depended on the player if he won the mission or not, though usually only 20% of the Tanks survived (without
the player doing anything...yes it was in Infantry
favourable terrain).

As for Helicopters and Arty...the hard part there it seems
is to make it balanced. Just a slight difference in the
parameters and they'd be either not convincing enough
or too deadly. Helicopter would have to do pop-up manuvers which no script exists yet.

Force-structure:
I personally would doubt that there would be civilians
fighting in germany, since in a ColdWar gone hot, everything would be happening a bit to fast, and
Weapons and Ammunition are somewhat short (execpt
maybe a few hunting rifles and shotguns...and nobody
would be that crazy to go fighting with that), though
germany has an army into which young men get drafted
(around age 18) for 10 months (at cold war times 15 months), as a result of that there is a large number of
men trained in the military and being (more less
nowadays) ready, to be reequipped in the reserves (that's the whole idea behind the drafting system isn't it?).
As a matter of fact I still got my uniform laying around
here (actually in a closet), and as far as I know there
were quite a stockpile of new weapons ready to be
handed out in the case of an conflict at those times.
So I'd say your Resistance part would actually be German Army Reserves.

-Fishion

[Fishion]

Ahhh I love it when my 'puter screws up and I end up doulbe posting everything...sorry guys