Second Gulf War 2003 secnario

[Panzer-War]

I have just post'd this scenario to the secnario archive. If you want to help me playtest it then go dl it.

unit scale: company/brigade
turn: 12 hours

this is close to a final version. any sugestions or opinons on how to make it better are welcome. post here if you have any.

[Case]

I've taken a quick look at your scenario, and IMO you need to do a lot of work on the OOB and TO&Es. In particuar:

-Why do Allied battalions have about 50 assault squads? US Battalions have 27 squads and British ones 36 squads. Orbat.com thinks that every allied battalion had an extra company added, but this still shouldn't take the totals to over 36 and 45 respectively.
-Your British 'regiments' should actually be battalions [ie, replace the III with just II]. A British 'regiment' is an association of battalions which normally don't serve alongside each other.
-The USN retired it's A-6s and A-7s in the mid 90s. These days carrier wings consist of 1 squadron of F-14s (10-12 aircraft) and 3 or 4 squadrons of F/A-18s (36-42 aircraft).
-Almost all of the battalions attached to the US 3rd Army were actually light infantry units, not the mechanised units you've depicted them as.
-Similarly, the US 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment is actually a light cavalry unit equiped with Humvees. There's a good TO&E of this unit available at orbat.com and at http://www.tdg.nu/resources/TOE/TO&Es/1946%2B/US%20TO&Es,%201965-1990s.htm (the 2 ACR has three ground squadrons, plus an aviation squadron and some other odds and ends).
-You've grossely overestimated the Australian contribution to the war: Australia commited one company of SAS and one company from the 4th (Commando) Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment [4 RAR for short]. The air support for this force was a mere 3 CH-47s from C squadron, of the Australian 5th Aviation Regiment [which is a British style 'regiment']. BTW, the Australian F/A-18s were based in Qatar.

[Panzer-War]

i use'd the a6 to represent ea-6b and a7 to represent s-3b. As for the uk units with III symbol i gave them it even though there really II size they are officialy listed as regiments. reason i made inf batallions attached to 3 army mecz because didnt find anything to indicate that they were reorganized as light infantry but may change it. as for the info on 2nd armcav is that official to&e because im pretty shure they have m3bfv. i put the raaf f-18s in kuwait because waan't shure where they had been deployd. Reason why marine II have 39 12man squad 3squads to 4platoons to 3 companys + 3 to represent support personel. us army ab 12man squad 3squads to 4platoons to 4 companys +3 arminf 7man squad 4squads to 4 platoons to 3 companys +3
uk para airmobile 8-10man squad 4 squads to 4 platoons to 3 companys +3 uk arminf 7man squad 3 squads 4 platoons to 3 companys +4

[Case]

Originally posted by Panzer-War
As for the uk units with III symbol i gave them it even though there really II size they are officialy listed as regiments.

That's just a difference in naming conventions. British battalions are formally called the xth battalion of their regiment (ie, the 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards Regiment). The III symbol refers to units which consist of several battalion size units. In general, British units tend to be an echelon smaller then American units of the same name (ie an American 'squadron' is a battalion, and a British squadron is a company. Likewise, an American 'troop' is a company where a British 'troop' is a platoon).

reason i made inf batallions attached to 3 army mecz because didnt find anything to indicate that they were reorganized as light infantry but may change it.

They weren't reorganised: they've always been light infantry. If you don't believe me then look them up on www.globalsecurity.org The role of these battalions was to guard the expected thousands of POWs and to provide rear area security.

as for the info on 2nd armcav is that official to&e because im pretty shure they have m3bfv.

AFAIK the 2nd Cavalry only has Humvees. Some M3s may have been attached, but the unit's basic equipment is Humvees. The reason for this is that the 2 ACR is meant to be able to rapidly deploy anywhere in the world. The 2 ACR used to be a heavy cavalry unit, but was reorganised after the First Gulf War.

[Panzer-War]

i have decided to reorganize 2nd cav after going to there home base site. As for the inf bats attachd to 3rd army. ive decided to go ahead an reorganize them as well but i would like to point out.
from globsec:

The Regiment was broken up on 1 November 1955 and its elements reorganized and redesignated as follows:

Headquarters and 1st Battalion as the 124th Armored Infantry Battalion and assigned to the 48th Armored Division.
3rd Battalion as the 154th Armored Infantry Battalion and assigned to the 48th Armored Divsion.
The 124th and 154th Armored Infantry Battalions were consolidated on 15 April 1959 to form the 124th Infantry, a parent regiment under the Combat Arms Regimental System, to consist of the 1st and 2nd Armored Rifle Battalions, elements of the 48th Armored Division.

i prob came to this and decided to make them all arminf and was to tired to read anymore i did a lot of work on this late at night. after recent further reading came to part became part of 53rd inf bde. Witch globsec says is enhanced readyniss bde so i will reorganize them as light inf.

is anyone playtesting this? if you are let me know how it is going.

[CommC]

panzer:
I am beginning to play test your scenario. I am also trying to write a second Gulf War scenario, so I appreciate your effort.

I like your map and your OOB looks a lot better than mine so far. I like your use of the theater options. My map is 5 km/hex and it is a little big to navigate around all that.

I have just started the play test, so I will know more shortly, but I have a couple questions so far.

I see the Nimitz CAG is present at the beginning. I thought it didn't arrive until near 2 to 3 weeks after the start, and one of the other carriers went back to base.

I didn't see the Ansar Al Islam terrorist camp in northern Iraq. I think you should consider adding that.

I noticed that the Kurd forces were unavailable at the start. Do you think it would be better to give the player control of them from the beginning? They can fight the Ansar al Islam and secure the northern airfields until more US troops arrive. If a gung ho commander tries to use them to attack the RI forces in the north, he will have to live with the results.

Some of the marine units have the airmobile infantry symbol. Was that intentional?

The TF Iron horse brigade should have less troops, I thought. I don't recall them being there at the beginning, when it does show, it is attached to the 173rd in the north.

I agree with previous posters about the 2nd Cav, I don't think they had the mech combat power of the 3-7 Cav or 1st Cav. and were more of light inf. force.

Also, the Inf BNs of the 3rd army should be light inf, not mech inf.

The 3 Bds of the 3rd ID are indeed Mech inf. The 4th Bd of the 3rd ID is an aviation unit.

The only Bn of the 1st Armor div. attached to the 3rd ID is the 2 Bn, 70th Arm Rgt. The other units of the 3rd BCT of the 1st Armored Div remained in the States, except for the 1st BN, 13th Armor RGT, which deployed with the 4th ID. The rest of the 1st AD, remained in the US, but is scheduled to deploy to replace the 3rd ID. (You have what looks like the entire 3 BCT of 1st AD in the scenario.)

I like the positioning of the SF troops in Jordan, no one knows where they really originated from, but this puts their helos in range of the key objectives in western Iraq.

I think it would be neat to put in events that give the RI side victory points for scud or other missile strikes against Kuwait (or Israel) until those units are taken out by the coalition side.

Just some initial thoughts. Great job on this scenario.

We can balance it using the scoring modifier for loss intolerance or shortening the time table. The RI side could receive victory points if certain objectives aren't taken quickly, etc.

I guess I should open it in the editor, but what setting did you use for the precision weapon multiplier for US airpower?

Thanks.

[Panzer-War]

Well i think ill start by thanking you for takeing the time to help me playtest this. It is also nice to see that somone thinks ive done some good work. I to was going to use a 5km map for it. Originaly I plan'd on adding on to the gulfwar91 map. But when i start'd to do check measurements to add on i came back with odd numbers that didn't fit so i decided to make my own. i intended in the begining to make all the units II or smaller, but start'd to think that it would be monotonous to have so many very weak nearly worthles iraq infrantry units to move and give orders to. So I organized them into RI inf into brigades and decided it would be better to go with a 10k map instead of a 5k one.

I dont remember the nimitz ariveing to the theater 2-3 weeks after the begining of the war, or any other carrier. im pretty shure they had at least 5 carriers in the theater at the begining. I got this from globalsecurity.org and I consider them reliable. I just went back to there site to take a look and check.
these carriers were listed ass being in the theater 19march prior to and the endo of major military operations.

Kittyhawk
Constelation
Harry S. Truman
Abraham Lincon
Theodore Rosovelt

as for the nimitz it states departs Pearl Harbor 14 March then says arives apr 3 5th fleet aor. I may have miss'd this when i put the oob together. I probly will set them to deploy apr3 but will look into it a little more.

I forgot to put al islam terrorist group in before I released this playtest I do plan on putting them in. Though im not quite shure where in northern Iraq they were. As i remember there numbers were something like 700 men arm'd with ak47's rpg's and mabye other light weapons such as recoiles rifels and unarm'd veichels.

I put a theater option in to request kurd's support it should come up on turns 2-4.

Yes the air mobile symbols for something like 6 marine II's was intentional. The marines are know as light infantry and most of there infantry are train'd in air mobile operations. Im going to play around with the icons and try to come up with a symbol for airmobile capeable marines.

as to where the tf ironhorse was deployd or if they made it in before things fell apart in Baghdad. Im not shure if they were dploy'd if ever. I do remember hearing that they recieved orders to deploy to, I think it was Kuwait. I had been playing around with this for a month or two before the war start'd and start'd serious work on it like 1-2 weeks before it began. this is prob why there are some error's in my oob.

I dont know if you read my last post dealing with 2nd cav and inf bats attachd to 3rd army but i state'd that I plan on reorganizeing them.

I also plan on redoing 3bde 1armd i remember reading that there were 2 arm'd II from 1arm'd attach'd to 3rd id. think they were both of the 3bde/1arm'd. this quite posible wrong and I will look into it.

I also thought Jordan was the most likely place that the spf originated from. I know not from Syria, Saudi Arabia possible but doubt it.

Funny thing you read my mind on the vps for RI player if mannaged to fire missles at Israel. Though I wouldn't do it if fired at kuwait, because every missle they did mannage to fire eiter was interceptd or miss'd its target. There is only one missle I know hit Kuwait city and that was a Chinese, think was silk worm missle. maybe give a small number of vp's if player mannaged that but more for Israel. As well as if player mannaged to to ignite oil fields or flud the gulf with crued oil. I was toying around with this just before I released the playtest. When i did a test with comps vs comps always look's like player would never be able to do any of these thought. But you have convinced me to put them in anyway.

I think i set it at 95 or a 100 I wasant shure what to set it at but thought it was meant to mean the percentage of guided weapons they use or had. If this is acurate to how it is used im going to put it at 100%. I remember it being stated that only guided munitions were used to limit civ casulities as low as posible.

Thank you for the comploment i was begining to feel like i wasted a month or more of my life on this. Whenever I release a final version of this I will give you credit for helping me playtest it in the briefings and for anything else you do that contributes to it.

sorry about the long post want'd to be thourough with answer's to your question's.

[CommC]

The airpower modifier for precision weapons is a number from 10 to 999, where 10 = 1/10 the normal airpower effectiveness and 999 would be 10 times more effective airpower than normal. (A setting of 100 would be normal airpower effectiveness.)

I have done some play testing at the 999 setting.... and.. umm.. wow, thats some awesome airpower. 999 may be the correct setting for this scenario, but you may want to turn it down a bit to get a little more scenario balance and playability.

I think when the Nimitz arrived in theater, either the kitty Hawk or the Abraham Lincoln left, so that there were always 5 CAs on hand.

I think the important thing regarding the events to give VPs to the RI for missile unit survival is not that they may be effective, but just the threat of their launch is a "victory" for the RI side. One of the coalitions highest priority objectives in the war was elimination of these missiles early in the war. We should reward the RI side if the coalition doesn't accomplish this quickly.

Oh, yeah, one other thing I keep forgetting to mention. I noticed that you have the coalition side theater recon at 100%. Although the coalition recon was good, I don't think it was 100% perfect knowledge. I think a setting of more like 50% would be more realistic. Many RI units were well camoflaged, and although we had a rough idea where they were, we were never certain.

Looking forward to the final release.

:cheeky:

[Panzer-War]

This is To&e that I came up with for sqdrn of 2nd cav
Arm'd truck Itow 36
Aslt At + sqd 31
Arm'd Truck hmg 30
Javelin atgm 4
eng sqd 3
155 er gun 6
120mm mort wheeld 6
Arm'd Truck agl 30
auto grnd launcher 9
Avenger spsam 5
med mg 4
stinger impovd 4
truck 6

ill lower theater rec to 80% and see how it goes.

I plan on getting and updated version done soon. would you like me to send it directly to your emal acnt. the final vers may come out a bit later i came across an editor for cow that im playing around with.

[Panzer-War]

can you tell me the exact difrence between passive and active defender and how they affect the unit?

and if a unit is designated as lightweight what efect that has on it?

[Panzer-War]

thought i would see what you think of these icons.
2of these were ispired buy somone else's post that i saw, post by Crazy Dutch
from left to right (Light Infantry-Marine Special Frcs or comandos-Marine Air mobile)

[CommC]

Ok, Panzer,
I have modified the scenario somewhat and done a play test as the US/UK side.

I removed the 2nd and 3rd Cav armored units, although now I hear that the 3rd Cav is in Iraq now and I think they have armored vehicles. I also adjusted the loss tolerances to favor the Iraqi side to the maximum extent.

I found that increasing the precision weapons modifier for airpower had the effect of adjusting the combat strengths down for all the land units, taking a 12 attack strength to a 4. I didn't like that because it put all the RI units at strength of 1, making it impossible to distinguish them. So I only adjusted the precision weapon modifier slightly.

I also added the Ansar Al Islam camp and created a unit for them to defend the camp.

I played this out against the RI AI and the result was I captured Baghdad on turn 21, about 10 days, scoring an overwhelming victory. The US/UK side suffered slightly more victory point loss due to losses than the RI side (keeping in mind the relative loss tolerances were set at the max in favor of the RI side).

The fatigue model for the US forces looked extremely accurate, after 2 to 3 days of continuous operations, some serious fatigue set in. No RI forces could stand up to US or UK forces.

US airpower, even without the precision weapon modifier, was overwhelming. Interdiction attacks evaporated entire RI units, including Fedayeen units in cities.

A couple of thoughts/recommendations:
1. No need to increase the precision weapons modifier.

2. The victory point awarded to either side due to combat losses were minor compared to the territorial VP totals.

3. To balance the scenario, we are going to have to give the RI side some VPs at start, or at various turn intervals if the coalitions side fails to take certain objectives quickly. I would say after 22 turns the RI side should get VPs equal to all the territorial VPs if the US hasn't take Baghdad, so even if the US takes all objectives thereafter, they can only score a draw or minor victory.

4. There is a problem with Fedayeen units in towns being eliminated by US airpower. Is it possible to set air exclusion zones? I accidentally forgot to change the theater recon setting from 100%, so if we drop it to some lower value like 20 or 30%, perhaps that will help spare the RI infantry in towns.


I'm going to make these changes and playtest it again. Do you want me to send you or post the edited copy?

Thanks,
CommC