Hell on Wheels Campaign - Spoilers

[Ron]

Started the US Campaign and just finished the first scenario Hunting Bear with a Decisive victory. It was fun though not without a few hiccups & frustrations, and not as tense as some of the scenarios I had played previously. The AI seemed lackluster and half-hearted this time around for some reason; however it did surprise me initially by coming through the southern route in force and belatedly a more northern route when I had setup for a more central approach through Steinbeck. Surprisingly, the Soviet artillery accounted for a third of the US Tank losses, half of the APC losses and all of the Infantry losses!! ) I had no counter for it at all.


Final battle analysis and reported kills:

Greetings from the Inspectorate of the General Staff -

To: General, commanding Hell On Wheels

* In the battle of "US Campaign 923" your forces worth 19,045 points secured 71% (21802 vs 8903) of awarded victory points against an enemy force worth 21,862 points. The Inspectorate congratulates you and

rates your performance as excellent.

* Your force has claimed 22 Recce, 218 Tank, 96 APC, 33 Inf, 23 HQ, 10 AD and 21 Utility enemy subunits.

* Remaining force tally -
Active: 23 Recce, 86 Tank, 72 APC, 45 Inf, 36 HQ, 22 AD, 18 SP Arty, 9 Utility and 2 Air.
Fallen out: 7 Recce, 6 Tank, 23 APC and 21 Inf.
Destroyed: 6 Recce, 7 APC and 6 Inf.

* By the end of the battle your units had a 79% average readiness and a command cyle duration of 27 minutes.

* Your force finished the encounter in relatively good shape and needs to refit for only a relatively short time to recover the 57 fallen out subunit(s).

Staff evaluation complete.

Estimated subunit states at present time:

- American Forces:
2&1/2-Ton Truck [w] - 2 starting.
A-10 Warthog - 2 starting.
Cavalry Scout - 14 starting, 4 fallen out, 2 destroyed.
Headquarters - 16 starting.
Heavy MG - 18 starting, 6 fallen out, 1 destroyed.
HMMWV-HMG - 4 starting, 2 destroyed.
M1 Abrams - 5 starting.
M1026 HMMWV - 7 starting.
M106A2 - 6 starting.
M109A6 Paladin - 8 starting.
M110A2 - 4 starting.
M113A1 - 10 starting, 3 fallen out.
M163A2 Vulcan - 8 starting.
M1A1 Abrams - 59 starting, 1 fallen out.
M1A1(HA) Abrams - 28 starting, 5 fallen out.
M2A1 Bradley [m] - 92 starting, 20 fallen out, 7 destroyed.
M3A1 Bradley [m] - 14 starting, 2 fallen out, 1 destroyed.
M48A1 Chaparral - 8 starting.
M577A2 C2V - 20 starting.
Mechanized Rifle - 54 starting, 15 fallen out, 5 destroyed.
OH-58A Kiowa - 4 starting, 1 fallen out, 1 destroyed.
Stinger - 6 starting.


- Soviet Forces:
2S1 Gvozdika - 16 starting.
2S3M1 Akatsiya - 16 starting.
9P149 AT-6 Spiral - 6 starting.
BMP-2D - 16 starting, 8 fallen out, 8 destroyed.
BMP-2D [g] - 96 starting, 26 fallen out, 15 destroyed.
BMP-2PG [gm] - 30 starting, 19 fallen out, 10 destroyed.
BMP-Ksh - 12 starting, 5 fallen out.
BRDM-2 - 2 starting, 2 fallen out.
BRDM-2 [g] - 28 starting, 16 fallen out, 4 destroyed.
BTR-60PB - 19 starting, 7 fallen out, 3 destroyed.
BTR-ZD Skrezhet - 8 starting, 3 fallen out, 1 destroyed.
GAZ-66 - 32 starting, 15 fallen out, 6 destroyed.
Headquarters - 29 starting, 15 fallen out, 3 destroyed.
Heavy MG - 9 starting, 1 fallen out, 1 destroyed.
Mechanized Rifle - 81 starting, 26 fallen out, 5 destroyed.
MT-LB - 8 starting.
SA-14 Gremlin - 14 starting, 5 fallen out, 1 destroyed.
T-80BV [m] - 323 starting, 138 fallen out, 80 destroyed.

[Ron]

Because I care and like this game I have a few questions:

1. - As mentioned the Soviet artillery really hurt. My response was to put my artillery batteries on counterbattery, first one then two then all of them. However, they did not counterbattery fire once throughout the game. When I did occasionally use the artillery for barrages, guess what? The Soviet artillery responded with counterbattery fire! Lol. I'm assuming because the Soviet artillery was off-board they were immune to counterbattery fire - is this correct? If so, seems a bit of a cheat as the US artillery likely had the range I would think.

2. By the end of the battle, the US response time was down to less than 30 minutes. However, to plan any sort of movement it would take excessively long, an hour or more, even if it was only to move 500m! It was better for Recce units but Line units are really slow to respond. I made sure everyone was in command range all the way up the line so am unsure what can be done to mitigate these delays. Any input?

3. Something observed repeatedly now is that once any unit gets down to a '1' runner it becomes disproportionately hard to eliminate. These ant units will soak up a lot of fire power and distract several units in response. It does work for both sides but it seems wrong. Anyone else observe that?

4. As mentioned elsewhere, in between campaign battles the artillery does not replenish its special ammo - smoke, minelets etc.

5. I'm not sure of the ramifications of fully refitting/repairing my units before the next battle. If I decide to forego that will the Warsaw pact forces be depleted as well? And vice versa, if I maximize my force what are the consequences? I do not fully understand this aspect, any information would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Ron]

Final unit dispositions and kill zones:

[GloriousRuse]

1) I'm not sure, however if you ever saw your units bombarding supposedly empty hexes to the rear, that was probably counter-battery. Sometimes you get secondaries letting you know you hit something. Sometimes not. I am not sure if there is a hidden casualty mechanic. If that did not happen..couldn't say. Maybe your CB radars got trashed in the opening moves of the invasion.

2) Your command cycle time and unit response times are separate. A unit with low readiness and low morale will take much longer to get in motion; if their HQ is in low readiness and low morale, it will affect all the units under it. As moving and fighting generally cause readiness to decrease rapidly, it usually means you have two or three good moves or one good fight with a unit before this kicks in. You need to assume a committed element is out of the picture for 30 minutes to an hour after the shooting stops.

3) This does seem to happen, especially with infantry. Vehicles tend to brew up reasonably quickly regardless. I'm not sure if this is a feature or a bug, but I have to admit, finding and clearing out the last 8 men in a city block is enormously frustrating in reality...

4) Have to ask the devs, sorry. I'd hazard a guess that the specialty munitions are rapidly depleted across the theater, just like smart weapons, and that attacks on logistics centers means NATO rolled out with what they had in cantonment. Still seems odd that 90 hours later you have not scraped together more though...

5) I don't know if anyone has tested it, but I think the WP composition is independent of your actions. It does create a situation sometimes where you have more VPs of units than the WP attacking, which downgrades your victory status unless you execute nearly flawlessly.


4)

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Ron

2. By the end of the battle, the US response time was down to less than 30 minutes. However, to plan any sort of movement it would take excessively long, an hour or more, even if it was only to move 500m! It was better for Recce units but Line units are really slow to respond. I made sure everyone was in command range all the way up the line so am unsure what can be done to mitigate these delays. Any input?

my instinct here is that this reflects two different problems. Since you chain of command and HQ units are pretty much intact you can give orders/plan/revise etc with some ease.

But - the high level of EW means that actually getting units to respond to your new master plan is like wading in treacle. So you have command capacity but very poor means to actually deliver those orders.

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: Ron

Because I care and like this game I have a few questions:

1. - As mentioned the Soviet artillery really hurt. My response was to put my artillery batteries on counterbattery, first one then two then all of them. However, they did not counterbattery fire once throughout the game. When I did occasionally use the artillery for barrages, guess what? The Soviet artillery responded with counterbattery fire! Lol. I'm assuming because the Soviet artillery was off-board they were immune to counterbattery fire - is this correct? If so, seems a bit of a cheat as the US artillery likely had the range I would think.

On map units cannot fire at off map units. This is done by other off map units. That may need to be looked at to see if it is working correctly. There is a lot of Soviet artillery in this scenario. The way to see if they took any losses would be to check them after the battle is over.

2. By the end of the battle, the US response time was down to less than 30 minutes. However, to plan any sort of movement it would take excessively long, an hour or more, even if it was only to move 500m! It was better for Recce units but Line units are really slow to respond. I made sure everyone was in command range all the way up the line so am unsure what can be done to mitigate these delays. Any input?

Just because your HQ's are in good shape doesn't mean your line units are. They lose readiness and morale as they are exposed to combat. They recover readiness and morale as they are not. The lower the readiness the longer it takes to give a unit orders it will respond to.

In essence, they are getting tired after 6,8, 10 hours of combat. Pixel troops don't get tired. Real ones do. We tried to simulate the effects on actual troops.

3. Something observed repeatedly now is that once any unit gets down to a '1' runner it becomes disproportionately hard to eliminate. These ant units will soak up a lot of fire power and distract several units in response. It does work for both sides but it seems wrong. Anyone else observe that?

This is a bit counter intuitive. When a unit starts in combat there is a hard core of tough soldiers in it. They are normally spread out and help the squads they are in. As the unit takes casualties most of the inexperienced ones will eventually die. Those that live are the hard core of the unit. They are the ones that know how to fight and stay alive.

This last remnant is harder to kill because there are only a few of them. They do quite a bit of damage for their size because they are normally in a target rich environment. They are hard to hit because there are only a few of them left.

4. As mentioned elsewhere, in between campaign battles the artillery does not replenish its special ammo - smoke, minelets etc.

I have not seen this mentioned before. This needs to be checked and fixed if that's happening.

5. I'm not sure of the ramifications of fully refitting/repairing my units before the next battle. If I decide to forego that will the Warsaw pact forces be depleted as well? And vice versa, if I maximize my force what are the consequences? I do not fully understand this aspect, any information would be appreciated. Thanks.

There are a couple of things.

1) There is a time limit for the campaign to be completed. The number of hours you use for each event is subtracted from that. Run out of time before the campaign is finished and you lose any scenarios not finished. Or you may find yourself with 3 or 4 hours left of the last fight.

2) Soviet units don't roll over from one scenario to the next. They are not part of the campaign. Each scenario in the campaign has units that are specific to it.



Thanks for playing the game and sharing your views/concerns.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Ron]

Thanks for the responses guys, that helps fill in a few gaps for sure.

1. Good to know re offboard artillery, I will keep that in mind for future battles. In this first battle, all US artillery in on the map so that would explain the lack of counterbattery fire.

2. I understand completely about tired or battle weary troops, but that isn't what sparked the question in this case. In this first battle, I kept an initial company of mech infantry in reserve so good readiness and morale etc before committing them. Their response time was abysmal even just for a short move, in one instance just an adjustment of 500m. I will pay more attention next battle to see if there are other factors operating here, but may need looking into.

3. I understand what you are saying but imo it may need tweaking also as these units can draw and absorb fire from several enemy units, in a nutshell become a bit a an exploit by distracting fire away from more promising nearby targets.

5. Again good to know. Since every battle I have played to date has ended early in sudden death with the AI impaling itself, I am banking on taking the full time to refit/repair!

Thanks again.

[TigerTC]

My first campaign:


To: General BROJD, commanding Hell On Wheels

You won 117,802 cumulative victory points completing 5 of 5 battles in the US Campaign campaign in 81 hours. Also, you personally survived the battle.

Scenario 1: 60% rating - Tactical Success
Scenario 2: 51% rating - Contested Battle
Scenario 3: 73% rating - Marginal Success
Scenario 4: 96% rating - Decisive Success
Scenario 5: 62% rating - Contested Battle

Your overall success based on your average outcome is a marginal success.

Your forces claimed a grand total 105 Recce, 20 Helo, 651 Tank, 506 APC, 364 Inf, 18 SP AT, 5 AT, 161 HQ, 96 AD, 9 SP Arty, 28 Arty and 75 Utility enemy subunits destroyed in combat.

Apart from fallen out subunits, your forces took lifetime losses of 17 Recce, 1 Helo, 43 Tank, 59 APC, 27 Inf, 3 HQ, 6 AD and 1 SP Arty subunits. They accumulated 0 medal(s) for heroism and leadership and 0 medal(s) for valor in recognition of their losses.

Transmission ends.
Campaign record complete.

Check the Staff Diary / Campaign History tab for further details of the campaign.