Sunday Tank Battle

[SCG_judgedeath3]

A reason why they were careful are due to several reasons:

1: they had hard time telling if it was only you engaging them or if they also are being shot at by anti tank guns and our panzer troops and also as I was around in the nearby area, its a lot of things to keep an eye on.
2: We play like I said earlier: that our lifes depend on it, one then dont take uncareful moves just to get a kill, one try to survive first of all and try to do the objectives, rushing in like rambo isnt very realistic or something most soldiers would do and a taken out tank slows down the rest of the unit or makes them having to wait for the damaged tank to get repaired.

IF possible we dont abandon the tank for slightest damage but try to repair it and then go on with the mission, we stick to realism and not the normal player mentality of: damn my track got blown off and the enemy tank is driving to my flag and I cant stop him: I bail my tank and grab myself a new one and stop that! NAh that isnt what our group or our missions are doing
With our Dead is dead rules we have a commander/persona and we try to the last to survive and are very careful and having moments of panic and heart rate of 200% when one get into hectic tank battles as any shot or unseen tank or gun or airplane could mean the death of you and your crew.

we take this very seriously

[SCG_SchleiferGER]

Seems my first engagement with Lofte was way worse than I thought.

After meeting him in the woods 50m in front of me I tried to  do a left flank with half our tanks while having the others push up into the woods to make the German unable to react.

While flanking I was unpleasantly suprised by  4  IA tanks (initially I thought that must be Lofte and Judge cause It the time I was only able to see two) coming out of the woods which imidiately lead to the destruction of our two flanking tanks. Our other two tanks followed shortly after.

 

In short:

1 vs 4 unexspectedly went to 4 vs 4 in a matter of 30s.

 

Neun wasn't joking when he said that there will be tons of resistance.

[[KG]Destaex]

24 minutes ago, SchleiferGER said:

Seems my first engagement with Lofte was way worse than I thought.

After meeting him in the woods 50m in front of me I tried to  do a left flank with half our tanks while having the others push up into the woods to make the German unable to react.

While flanking I was unpleasantly suprised by  4  IA tanks (initially I thought that must be Lofte and Judge cause It the time I was only able to see two) coming out of the woods which imidiately lead to the destruction of our two flanking tanks. Our other two tanks followed shortly after.

 

In short:

1 vs 4 unexspectedly went to 4 vs 4 in a matter of 30s.

 

Neun wasn't joking when he said that there will be tons of resistance.

Reminds me of the classic hollywood movie where the heroes get unexpected help at the last second as a cop out way of resolving a horrible situation the director has put the hero in

[Lofte]

23 minutes ago, SchleiferGER said:

Our other two tanks followed shortly after.

Only one by that time, Schlefer (Neun was out). So you faced 3 vs 5 (4 AI-tanks + me) + Judge was almost ready to open fire. Allied side definitely should have much more "shermans" and Axis - less AI-tanks )

[SCG_Neun]

Well that mission was designed to be all American and AI only Germans, that's why the AI was on the German side, but....someone didn't want to play American....:), and someone else couldn't stand for that someone to be alone.....so.....you see, it was hard for Americans for sure.  But we had fun trying, and we will be German next time...I like their tanks better.  ?

Edited July 28, 2020 by SCG_Neun

[Lofte]

3 hours ago, SCG_Neun said:

Well that mission was designed to be all American and AI only Germans

Sorry, I didn't know that...But AI only and PvE missions - not too good idea for me. Honestly to say I like to play versus alive people.

PS - btw, I think there is possibility to link quantity of player spawns to activation of bots.

For example: Red Side has 8 spawn events and blue one - 0 => bots will be activated, if less than 8 - than no. Or if red side have 12 spawns and blue 5 - then also no bot activation.

Something like that. It could help to balance map (roughly of course)..

Edited July 28, 2020 by Lofte

[SCG_Neun]

Prefer humans as well, but player base is pretty poor and not many people have the time to sign up for a set time schedule commitment.  You've never played against one of our AI only missions on the ground, and I can tell you, it's nothing like the other servers.  When we play "Dead is Dead" within those missions its a blast.  Now if we had any interest at all from other players last week, I'd have kept the AI limited, but we just didn't have it.  I'm still open to other players joining us for our missions, but I have to plan for SCG first and that will most likely mean back to our AI missions and "Dead is Dead".    

 

You can't have an on or off switch for the AI because the AI,  AT/artillery, ground attack aircraft, tanks, etc....is what makes the battle realistic, and if one of my genius like Terref, could select certain ai to turn off here and some there, that would be great, but way too complicated.  The problem with other servers....is not enough AI, in my opinion.  AT in fortified advanced positions, and multiple AI tanks to deal with , in addition to bombardments.... is what makes the battlefield.  In servers where there are 6 or so player enemy tanks facing you, its certainly fun, but very predictable that AI will more than likely be confronted near bases, or for a 24/7 server that most of the AI has already been taken out and very possibly when the server was unbalanced.  

 

Now that we actually have a good dedicated server we can add more immersion to the missions, and that means more AI, not less.  For the first time last week we did not experience any ghosting, which in the past was server related it would seem.  Anyway, hope to see you again one way or the other....

  

Edited July 28, 2020 by SCG_Neun

[GenMarkof007]

S! Any missions today?
If so, I will try to join you. What time does it start?

Cheers,
GenMarkof

[SCG_judgedeath3]

we start in about 35 minutes. suggest pm neun so you get all details needed

[GenMarkof007]

35 minutes ago, SCG_judgedeath3 said:

we start in about 35 minutes. suggest pm neun so you get all details needed

 

S! I did pm Neun, but it might be a bit too late.
I'll join up and if it's a problem, I'll come for the next one!

Cheers,
GenMarkof

[SCG_judgedeath3]

From todays mission where we did a follow up mission on our kursk 1943 campaign:

We were at the forward advance base where we set up our unit into 3 zuges:
Zuge 1: Me and Neun
Zuge 2: Scleifer and Tornado
Zuge 3: Vonalba and corezero
Our commander for the 9th company gave us a breifing of our goals was with todays attack which was to break through the enemy lines by assisting the artillery with bombarding the front lines and the luftwaffe support for 10 minutes. Then be ready to advance forward and take a village in the north where soviet had a logistical and forward command post which we need to take.
Main objective after that is to capture the bombed airfield in the far north and be ready to assist friendly troops.
I was given the tactical planning and had my zuge taking the lead after the bombardment phase and have the other 2 supporting.

Our artillery opened fire on the enemy fortifications, and so we opened up fire, destroying anything we could see and at anything weird or could hide something:



After 10 minutes we was resupplied by our crews with new ammo and fuel and as soon as everyone was ready we rolled forwards along the road towards the enemy fortifications which was by now burning and smoking and we spread out as we got closer to not get surprised by dug in anti tank guns,



Luftwaffe bombing a group of hidden anti tank guns in our way of advance:

we found one that came out from the house on the right and I found one hidden in the forest, both were taken out very quickly, as we rolled past the destroyed bunkers and saw more fortifications in the distance and couple of houses along the road. I gave order to have Zuge 3 to go left and secure these fortifications and once that was done: zug 1 and 2 would attack the houses just ahead of us.
Zug 3 came to the fortifications and saw they were abandoned and me and the zuges moved forward as we attacked the farm houses when we heard from zuge 3 that we had enemy tanks attacking us from the left flank, we turned our tanks and engaged them at around 1400 meters, 4-6 tanks that were trying to attack our left flank, one of them managed to hide behind a ridge and damaged the tracks of neuns tank, I moved up with my tank and took him out before the T-34 could finish off neun, while I saw more t-34s attacking from the right, told zug 2 to turn right which ended up saving the lifes of one commander. These tanks were soon also taken out.

Damaged tiger:


We hold up to check if everyone was alright or not, neun needed to repair his tank so me and zug 2 became intoa  make shift mix of zug 1-2 and started to advance further as Neun could catch up with us later once his tank is repaired.
Then suddenly the earth began to shake as artillery and rockets came raining down on us, we closed the hatches and prayed to god that they wouldnt hit us, as it bombared down for several minutes, everything shaking, only way to not get hit is to keep moving and hope you dont get hit. One of our tanks got the tracks blown off but we pushed on:



As we made progress the soviets threw a tank assault at us as we saw heard and later saw dust coming from the left and soon we sar tank turrets: several T-34s came attacking as my zug engaged them with the rest of Zug 3 covering our flank to the left, and neun also came back and catched up with us, we managed to take them out after an intense tank battle of around 7-8 soviet tanks.


Once it seemed safe again we started to advance again but soon we heard screaming on the radio as neuns tank went up in flames, killing his crew in an instant, and in our dead is dead rules, his persona is now dead. I tried to go and find whatever had killed him somewhere to our right but I too soon got hit and my engine got destroyed plus my radioman got wounded: gave order to abandon the tank and managed to do so, saving my crew. Had to wait for a reserve tank to come up from the reserves and after a long wait I could again take command and started to drive and catch up with the rest of the unit, my persona/commander manage to survive, puhh that was close!

Me moving up in my second tiger tank, at the horizon where the smoke is coming from is the current front line:


As we began to get close to the village and clearing of more fortifications with these deadly anti tank guns that is so well hidden and can pop up from nowhere: the soviets threw more tanks against us:


We soon reached the outskirts of the village and split our group into 3 zuges again and placed ourself at a good overview and took out 2 anti tank guns and a couple of buildings, before we began our attack from 3 different directions:


Soon we had taken the village after clearing out the area from hidden anti tank guns that almost killed me but zug 3 managed to take him out before he got off a second shot, after that we restocked on ammo and fuel from our resupply truck that the reserves came up with after the area was secure.
We then heard on the radio panzergrenadiers north west of us needed help so we set off towards them:


The panzergrenadiers are somewhere where that smoke is coming from, much driving ahead!

As we advanced to the rescue we saw luftwaffe strafing and bombing surronding areas, even saving us from further soviet flanking attacks, but as we got closer 3-4 enemy tanks showed up and tried to attack us but we managed to take them out. As we got closer I split up our unit into 2 groups, one to go directly down to the valley where the friendly troops were and the other to support and protect their flank. Soon the group down in the valley came under attack from 2 enemy tank units, me and the supporting unit took out the tanks to their left while they took out the enemy tanks down in the valley directly in their front. When the area was secure we drove down there too and cleared out the area from russian troops and anti tank guns, 2 of these guns managed to surprise me again but luckily the front armour held as I reversed back to safety, as I let the other tanks go on the guns left flank and surprise them, soon they were taken out. We now began to move back to our main objective: that airfield.

Burning anti tank gun that earlier shot at me:


The final objective in the distance:


As we started our attack on the airfield my zuge cleared out a farmhouse which hidden 2 kv-1s and a anti tank gun and armoured track, but thanks to jumpfroging tactic and support from zug 2 we could clear it out, while we were being attacked from the air by IL-2 attack planes, but luftwaffe soon came in to the rescue thankfully:


As we got closer russian artilley started to bomb us again but as we advanced at full speed to get out from these killzones we soon started to see soviet tanks starting up and moving towards us while they manned their anti tank guns, I decided to let zug 1 and 2 converge and go for the airfield and engage these while I cover their right flank as I saw a russian tank convoy coming towards us in the far distance at our right flank, I deemed I could take them out while the rest of the unit can go in and take the objective.
As a fierce tank battle commenced as the main unit attacked and burned their way through and started to reach the airtrafic control tower and hangars as I myself closed in on the russian tanks and started to engage them from 1500 meters, putting the first one in flames so the others behind had to show their sides as I took them out one by one. While the main unit made progress but as they got closer a T-34 hidden behind one of the buildings killed another of our tanks, the tank went up in flames together with its commander, another crew was dead and a loss for our unit of a such experienced tanker.(restarting a new persona and start from the beginning isnt fun)

Artillery:


The airfield:


As I had taken out the tank convoy I turned back to the airfield to help the others as the soviets started a tank attack from the nearby forest, could see in the distance around 8 enemy tanks attacking so I moved up at full speed to close the distance, the main unit did well, taking out most of them and when I got close enough to engage only 2 tanks were left. But When I thought it was safe: 6 more soviet tanks was coming against the airfield from another ridge, but I had them in the flank and managed to kill 2 of them before they started to retreate as it was obvious we had taken the airfield and todays battles came to an end.




After todays battles my commander has survived 6 missions so far and in todays mission taken out:
6 anti tank guns
12 tanks
2 armoured cars
Lost 1 tiger tank but it will be made operational again as it wasnt destroyed and we managed to hold the lines so the repairshops could restore it.

But our unit lost 3 tank commanders which is a far worse set back, but now we can rest and do maintance on our tanks and prepare for tomorrows battles.


Okay I have way more pictures and cant recall all things that happened on the battlefield, took around 3 hours to do todays mission and so many decisions and stuff happening its hard to remember it all but can say its pretty close to how the eastern front was like and very realistic This is just a short diary of how it can look like on our sundays

[SCG_Neun]

 

Just sharing some video.....Started our first day of Kursk with a bombardment of the Russian fortifications along with our Luftwaffe that hammered the positions as well.  Out of the rubble they managed to emerge with several AT weapons which were quickly silenced as we moved past their lines.  They of course called in a few rocket attacks on us in addition to sending the 5th Tank Guards  to hit our left flank.  The Tiger 88 reached out very effectively and silenced this opposition as we continued our move deeper into their entrenched positions......

[SCG_judgedeath3]

The sound of that artillery gives me the creeps and panic, and this is just from the distance, being in a tank being shelled is a loud and chaos filed experience, quite a unique feeling ?

[SCG_Neun]

 

Well perhaps I should share my demise early on in the mission.  Repeated rocket attacks roughed my crew up pretty bad, but I kept firing on enemy armor to our left flank and paid little attention to our right, as we had exposed ourselves on the knoll earlier and seemed to be okay.  But as luck would have it a Russian AT position was down in the valley and with disciplined gunners, waited for the perfect time to deliver a shot on my exposed side armor.  I show it from the gunners position, and then you can see it from my tanks position....just a split second muzzle flash and it's all over for me and my entire crew.  I wouldn't want anyone to think we were without casualties.  We did fare fairly well, but lost two Tigers on this first mission.....

Edited August 4, 2020 by SCG_Neun

[SCG_Neun]