Posted By: 33lima
Operation Spring Awakening (Steel Fury) - 01/28/21 10:53 AM
This mission is one of ten packaged in STA 3.4 as 'Combat Episodes'. The stated mission date is after the war's end and looks like a typo for 15 March 1945, as it's set in Hungary during the Battle of Lake Balaton. The mission title presumably reflects the fact that Unternehmen Frühlingserwachen was the Wehrmacht's name for the battle, said to be 'the last major German offensive of WW2'.
A disadvantage of the STA 3.x mods is that they pitch the player straight from the above mission intro into the action, once the mission has loaded. Previously, loading ended by presenting the player with the mission orders (aka briefing) screen and map, giving you more time to review the situation and make a plan before the action started to develop. With missions made for STA 3.x, mission makers have sensibly started to tag the mission orders text onto the end of the historical intro, as seen above, so that you can a least read your orders before the mission begins. In this case, I'm leading a platoon of three of the very new IS-3 tanks and an infantry platoon, as part of a force tasked to capture first one village then another.
A disadvantage of Steel Fury generally is that you can't zoom out the in-mission map far enough to see all of it that matters. Hence this is the attacking force, most of it under my command...
...but I have to scroll well up to the east to see the objectives and can just about get the two of them onto the same screen. There are some (red) friendly forces sandwiched between them, as can be seen.
There's a fair distance to cover and rather than plotting a fancy course, I decide to drive directly to the first objective, with my tanks and troops ordered simply to 'Follow me!' ('Do as I do' in SF terms). My number three tank is on my right and the dismounted infantry are arraigned behind us - it didn't occur to me to save them the walk by ordering them (if I could) to mount up.
I decide to button up my own tank as the Soviets usually fought hatches shut - in SF your 'wingmen' like the fresh air and can't be so ordered; they make their own decisions, based on the threat.
Ahead and left as we move off is the rest of the force - some IS-2 tanks. I'm not sure the IS-3 really saw action before the war ended, but the earlier model certainly did. Slow-firing but formidable adversaries they were, for the best of the panzers.
Our advance to contact draws no fire so I decide to get a last breath of fresh air, while everybody else is still doing so.
The objective is apparently just over the next crest, slightly left and beyond a dip in the ground, next to some woods which come in from the left. The IS-2s draw ahead of us - I'm moving more slowly as I don't want to tire out my accompanying infantrymen - and the shooting starts. Time to button up!
...to be continued!
A disadvantage of the STA 3.x mods is that they pitch the player straight from the above mission intro into the action, once the mission has loaded. Previously, loading ended by presenting the player with the mission orders (aka briefing) screen and map, giving you more time to review the situation and make a plan before the action started to develop. With missions made for STA 3.x, mission makers have sensibly started to tag the mission orders text onto the end of the historical intro, as seen above, so that you can a least read your orders before the mission begins. In this case, I'm leading a platoon of three of the very new IS-3 tanks and an infantry platoon, as part of a force tasked to capture first one village then another.
A disadvantage of Steel Fury generally is that you can't zoom out the in-mission map far enough to see all of it that matters. Hence this is the attacking force, most of it under my command...
...but I have to scroll well up to the east to see the objectives and can just about get the two of them onto the same screen. There are some (red) friendly forces sandwiched between them, as can be seen.
There's a fair distance to cover and rather than plotting a fancy course, I decide to drive directly to the first objective, with my tanks and troops ordered simply to 'Follow me!' ('Do as I do' in SF terms). My number three tank is on my right and the dismounted infantry are arraigned behind us - it didn't occur to me to save them the walk by ordering them (if I could) to mount up.
I decide to button up my own tank as the Soviets usually fought hatches shut - in SF your 'wingmen' like the fresh air and can't be so ordered; they make their own decisions, based on the threat.
Ahead and left as we move off is the rest of the force - some IS-2 tanks. I'm not sure the IS-3 really saw action before the war ended, but the earlier model certainly did. Slow-firing but formidable adversaries they were, for the best of the panzers.
Our advance to contact draws no fire so I decide to get a last breath of fresh air, while everybody else is still doing so.
The objective is apparently just over the next crest, slightly left and beyond a dip in the ground, next to some woods which come in from the left. The IS-2s draw ahead of us - I'm moving more slowly as I don't want to tire out my accompanying infantrymen - and the shooting starts. Time to button up!
...to be continued!