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Pro Patria (Valkyria Chronicles)

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Sturmi said:
Remember, once we cross into Aland, we will be fighting in Imperial territory, removing any of the hostile territory concerns. We should probably abandon the heavy tanks at least if we still have them, and possibly the medium tanks so we can guarantee fuel for the light tanks which are still generally at least a match for Federation armor. We might be able to tow some artillery with the tanks, but otherwise, everything else needs to be abandoned immediately to avoid leaving an exact trail of where we're going IMO. The initial withdraw from the outskirts of Sinope needs to be orderly so they don't suspect the spring for Aland we're about to do.
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True. I think we should also give orders to requisition any sort of trucks, cars, motorcycles and even bicycles as well as food and fuel from the Civilian population. We need to be fast and mobile. This means that our infantry needs to keep up with our motorized elements.
In fact, we could end up creating motorized infantry if we make it back.
 
[X] Plan D: launch a wide-ranging attack cutting cross country

Let's make history.

Also, another thing that we have to keep in mind is the men and their morale. This cross country thing is going to be hard, and we'll be losing men bit by bit. There might even come a time where we have to choose between escape, or taking our wounded with us.
 
Sturmi said:
Remember, once we cross into Aland, we will be fighting in Imperial territory, removing any of the hostile territory concerns. We should probably abandon the heavy tanks at least if we still have them, and possibly the medium tanks so we can guarantee fuel for the light tanks which are still generally at least a match for Federation armor. We might be able to tow some artillery with the tanks, but otherwise, everything else needs to be abandoned immediately to avoid leaving an exact trail of where we're going IMO. The initial withdraw from the outskirts of Sinope needs to be orderly so they don't suspect the sprint for Aland we're about to do.
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Even a heavy tank is better than marching on foot, frankly.

also, leaving equipment behind for the enemy to use is a mistake. We'd have to scuttle them, and I am not sure how long that would take.
 
NuclearConsensus said:
[X] Plan D: launch a wide-ranging attack cutting cross country

Let's make history.

Also, another thing that we have to keep in mind is the men and their morale. This cross country thing is going to be hard, and we'll be losing men bit by bit. There might even come a time where we have to choose between escape, or taking our wounded with us.
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Depends pretty much completely on how many troops we end up encountering. A real death sentence for morale would be finding the corps blocking a crucial mountain pass, or worse, having surrounded us.

Asael said:
Even a heavy tank is better than marching on foot, frankly.

also, leaving equipment behind for the enemy to use is a mistake. We'd have to scuttle them, and I am not sure how long that would take.
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It really isn't that hard to destroy equipment if you have the engineers and materials for it. We also probably don't have anywhere near enough tanks to transport the whole force even if we accepted a nonuniform speed, so we'd still need to rest our troops anyway, as well as guzzling precious fuel that could be better used elsewhere.

newwriter said:
True. I think we should also give orders to requisition any sort of trucks, cars, motorcycles and even bicycles as well as food and fuel from the Civilian population. We need to be fast and mobile. This means that our infantry needs to keep up with our motorized elements.
In fact, we could end up creating motorized infantry if we make it back.
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Let's worry about becoming an experimental mechanized brigade if we make it back to the line. That would also consume waaaaaayyyyyyy too much fuel that we will not be able to reliably obtain. Consider that we'd need to somehow obtain enough vehicles to equip over 11k troops from the countryside, or have a nonuniform speed which is unacceptable.
 
[X] Plan D: launch a wide-ranging attack cutting cross country

So people have given a number of solid reasons for picking Plan D:

Extremely unexpected, punches through a much weaker front line, causes massive chaos in Federation rear, will make us bloody famous beyond all measure.

But you have all missed something important I feel.

There is likely a Valkyria on the Aland front. In the setting all about legendary Valkyria.

This option has the most "narrative weight".

And nothing says Valkyria Chronicles more than a desperate plan working until the last moment where-in as it seems like all hope is gone a Valkyria appears out of nowhere to save the day.
 
I hope we have a lot of mines with us or have managed to scavenge some from the Federation supply depots. Once this thing kicks off, we should take a bit of time to mine Sinope in as much as we can. And destroy any roads leading to it. Though, honestly, we should try to destroy sections of pretty much every road we leave behind us. And mine them as well. Quickly dropping some trees in front of them would help as well.

While it won't be as effective as leaving behind minefields and barricades with squads to guard them, it'll add up if we keep doing it the entire way. Besides, repairing roads and removing mines takes more time than wrecking and laying them does.

Depending on the road quality, we could probably even manage to jury-rig some "acquired" plows to heavier tanks and have them rip roads up behind our advance.
 
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Cavalier said:
I disagree that B is plausible. It's far too predictable and way too easy for the enemy to put a corps in our way. The only way it would have worked is with a force five times the size of the one we actually have.
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Putting a Corps in our way is still fine, it means they had to weaken the front defenses. We don't have to be the ones to breakthrough.
 
Ok, so we can either try suicide boat return, try to cut through around 3 corps and hope the friendlies place enough pressure to allow us a breakthrough, establish some sort of bastion and pray our supply lasts, or do a ballsy move that is high risk and high reward, which also leads us towards a Valkyria (holy hell!). My vote is set.

[X] Plan D: launch a wide-ranging attack cutting cross country

As for the discussion of dropping the heavy tanks, we could use them to drag the arty pieces forward, or to drag forward requisitioned carts filled with out men and acquired supplies.
 
Also, look at it from the enemy perspective. An enemy force of unknown size has marauded through the local garrisons after historic naval battle, and they know their own deployments on that flank are weak... Granted that might have been a trap, but they will be expecting an advance to either a port or the front line. So that formation mobilized against us will likely come down the coast from the 'weak' spot to prevent the possibility of a critical distraction, which means we might actually pull out of their advance by going east.

At least until they get better actionable Intel on us. Might be feasible to leave our tanks as rearguards, showing the flag and giving the impression that we haven't picked up stakes and simply left.
 
[X] Plan D: launch a wide-ranging attack cutting cross country

Will will either go down in Imperial history as a statistic, or a Leonidas
 
[X] Plan D: launch a wide-ranging attack cutting cross country
The best thing about this plan is that even if we get surrounded and have to surrender we'll have done the maximum amount of damage to the enemy possible.
 
No7sHere said:
[X] Plan D: launch a wide-ranging attack cutting cross country
The best thing about this plan is that even if we get surrounded and have to surrender we'll have done the maximum amount of damage to the enemy possible.
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As much as I agree with this reasoning it feels a bit to fatalist to be an in character reason.
 
[X] Plan D: launch a wide-ranging attack cutting cross country

You got me at 'probably insane'.

Plan A has the potential to get us back to the safety of Imperial lines in the fastest amount of time. If the Federals in Sinope are lacking in heavy equipment compared to us, taking the city can be done with acceptable casualties and it can deprive the Federals of a battleship and a naval base. A lot will depend on the Imperial Navy, though. If Plan A is unable to get us back, then the end result is basically Plan C, if we haven't surrendered or find ourselves at the bottom of the sea yet.

Plan B may be doable if Rudolf was a tactical genius, which I'm not sure he is. His reputation as such would be cemented if he manages to defeat an entire corps, let alone an army with just a single division. High reward, very high risk, and almost guaranteed to have very heavy casualties.

Plan C will probably end up in us surrendering or dying with the Federation flattening our defenses since they have the firepower, manpower, supplies, and time to do it. The question is whether it was enough to give the Imperials a winning advantage in this theatre. Could have some synergies with Plan B. If defending on rough terrain, it might be useful to borrow some ideas from the IJA island defenses.

Plan D is insane and funny. No one will expect it, or even think it's feasible. The looks in everyone's faces will be hilarious. If we do succeed, then we have found an alternate way of achieving our objectives while still surviving, though much equipment will be abandoned and casualties incurred is not something that can be estimated. Unknown reward and and unknown risk but expected to high on both counts. Pretty dicey, but Plan A and B are as well.

Clink's Plan E is also funny but nowhere near as insane or useful to the Imperials. Clink might be the most sane of us here, but since he's here even that could be questioned.
 
Since it looks like Plan D is winning here are some possible in character reasonings...

Plan A:
Sure, success means we escape relatively intact, but we completely fail all of the operational objectives.
But, failure means we default to Plan C with terrible positioning even if there is a higher chance of relief.
Complications:
Rudolph has to imagine the slog the last city invasion he led turned into. I mean he still one surprisingly quickly, but so many things went wrong.
Even if we manage to crush Federation forces before they can skuttle the ships in the harbor, we might not even be able to use them.
It's also the most obvious plan for ourselves. That Federation has to be heading right for the port.

Plan B:
Success means we've somehow managed to complete our objectives.
Failure is the complete destruction of our forces
Complications:
Our second most obvious choice.
Forget coordinating with the Imperial General, we'll be running straight toward the Federation army already on the way to kill us.
And even if we do coordinate an two-prong assault, we are talking about the part of the front lines where Federation forces are thickest. I simply don't think we have the numbers to force a break out without some lucky rolls.

Plan C:
I'm not going to even dignify this plan with anything but the consequences.
We basically hope to find somewhere to hole up then sit pretty and wait to either die or for the Empire to win the war without us.
Any arguments about how we'd be pulling Feds away from the front are just redundant justification.

Plan D:
Success means we live as legends.
Failure ranges from, we die as legends to we die as a footnote.
Complications:
Our army is not built for fast constant movement.
We will have to improvise A LOT and not only basically loot everything we find, but have to constantly weight taking the time to loot and taking the time to travel more.
We have no idea what to expect the farther away from the coast we get.
We will need to expect constant low morale and constant exhaustion.
No matter what we will be pulling Federation front line. But we will have to decide how "noisy" to be.
The faster the Feds pull people off the front line to hunt us --> the weaker their defenses are --> the more likely the front is to collapse.
The more Feds hunting us --> the more likely we are to be caught and killed
It may not matter how many people are hunting us due to bad luck.

So basically,
I'm saying Plan C is a non-starter and Plan B is throwing ourselves into a meat grinder and hoping to come out the other side.
Plan A is the conventionally smart choice, but Rudolph has been recently burned invading a city and no real reason to expect it won't turn into a less predictable Plan C.
Plan D is the least bad option simply because Rudolph's paranoia is too ignorant to properly categorize everything that could go wrong in comparison.
 
Are we going to stick around long enough to see what Hall's dropping us? We'd only lose half a day at most sticking around until nightfall to see what could be in the box of mystery, and I really want to find out for some reason.
 
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