Power Plant Map (Game Vs the Real Life version)
Jun 7, 2021 17:32:24 GMT -5
7Chandrian and Oliver Kloesov like this
Post by onasander on Jun 7, 2021 17:32:24 GMT -5
This isnât meant to be political as per forum rules- aim is merely to point out I was stationed in a power plant in Iraq for over a year, and a lot of the features match up:
Main difference is I was stationed a few years into the war there, and it was through us the walls around the place was finally completed. The cliff/hill is the closest approximation to that, but in our case the Musayyib Power Plant was elevated precisely because itâs west side bordered the Euphrates River, and it was artificially raised that way under Saddam wisely to avoid flooding, but turned it into a sort of castle.
The place had the war houses you see in the game (canât really see them in the pictures Iâve showed pulled off the net), full of pipes and industrial supplies. They had guard towers on the perimeter, and gates (four in total but we sealed one off), stuff like a hydrogen plant that was produced as a byproduct. A former unit in the Iraqi Army and then the US Army wisely sandbagged that hydrogen plant heavily. My unit commander didnât comprehend the Iranian missile attacks were not aimed at out barracks or the power plant but this plant, because they kept overflying it and hitting our empty helipad- which obviously wasnât what they were aiming for, but some of our guys were convinced they really hated the gravel in the helipad and avoided it.
It also had lots of bunkers. Saddam built two large bunkers on either side, flooded out inside mid way through our stay as we didnât use them anymore and I quite frankly didnât know how to use the water pumps to keep it dry- I emptied the west side one of all its furniture from a older unit.
The power plant itself was dying. It was Soviet in design (not a denigration or political statement) but kept alive by a bizarre array of technologies from various nations, and most engineers only knew Arabic and English. I found the manuals for everything mildewing at the extreme top of the stairwell in Korean, German, Japanese and Chinese. Mold was growing on them. They kept it running somehow under years of sanctions but it barely worked by the time the second gulf war started, and it heaved its last sigh when my unit showed up. We had to 「dookie」 most of it down and start from scratch not just on it but also building a natural gas plant next door in the Iraqi Base (that would be on the far opposite side of the map far away from the ship).
The pic where you see dirt in cardboard wired barriers looking chaotic was out ammo supply. It was next to a massive bunker that kept ancient Soviet style blinking switch computers.
I couldnât imagine the base surviving a mech walker war. Every power line and tower would instantly be destroyed. No doubt, destroyed no matter what ground bot you used. The parameter would of been full of holes- ours were, and the reason is for foxholes. Iraqis used them, still found ammo in them. We put up a concrete fence on one side (closest to the road and inside of base) and a wire fence outside of them, leaving all these holes and a few minions room sized houses in them. Whenever guys were demoted or punished, they would be sent out into this no manâs land to pick up trash tossed over the walls by guys on humvees too lazy to find a dumpster after missions. After the surge was announced it was my turn to be demoted (was in good company, donât regret it) and they sent me out, and I would under 5 minutes fill up two bags of trash and slink off into one of the abandoned houses and lay low so snipers wouldnât snipe me. Had a bed made of coffee cans and a door, and a lizard on the wall. I would lay there thinking of all the hard work them would make me do at that moment if I wasnât demoted and sent to hard labor, and look out at the fish farms to the north of the base and the Euphrates River to the west of them. Very quiet, peaceful.
It was one of the few jungle like areas in Iraq- via helicopter looked like a island in the middle of a swamp with roads connecting. Because the power plant ran Saddamâs Nuclear, Chemical and Biological research center across the River- 1/4 of the power supplied that base, they had a lot of need for military, and so there was lots of C4 and tank reserves kept around. Tanks never saw action, the C4 the Iraqis abandoned was constantly used to mine the roads.
I will say a mech the size of the Titans from Command and Conquer Tiberium Wars could fit inside the power plant. However, they would rip the power lines up. It wouldnât be advised. Something like a few artillery Behemoth with Zenits would fit naturally as our base had a big mortar emplacement. We didnât need to fly a hot air balloon like a lot of bases did as the power plant had height for a camera.
There should be a jungle growing along the shore of War Robots map was more realistic. Ours was a thicket of weeds. We also had a driveway in the wall where the water beacon is for water based craft to enter the base, the power plant was built that way with that ramp into it, but it made a sharp turn so it wasnât straight in.
The place would randomly blow up or catch fire. The petroleum pipelines were ancient and would just explode and the trains barely worked and was more expensive than piping it in. So every once in a while I would call a guard tower and ask them why they are on fire, as no explosions happened- and they would reply they didnât know why, ground just spontaneously on fire. Would have to be abandoned till the pipeline was shut down and fire trucks in base out the fire out. Other times random oil puddles would sit for months, then a minor power line would spark for seemingly no reason catching the puddle on fire. I had to walk into the power plant and explain Iâm broken Arabic to the Iraqi fire chief once a month what new part of the base was on fire.
Because the place was on fire, and because the US Government hired engineers from around the world, the power plant ran on anything and everything. A Brazilian Engineer once told me one of the smokestacks ran off broken chairs and goats thrown into the furnace. Wildly different colors of smoke would exit the smokestacks, sometimes they burned pure oil. At night the air temperature and density would change and the pollution would fall to the ground, but because we barricaded the walls the smoke would fill the base up like a soup bowl. The guys on night shift would try to outrun the smoke but always lost in the end to the wall of pollution. Prior to the concrete wall being finished packs of wild dogs would break in under the wire fence and run havoc at night. At dawn prior to the smoke lifting Iraqis in the base next door would burn their trash, which made the worst smell- but also resulted in bugs flying up in the air, and thousands of birds would fly up in the air and circle around pooping in great circular waves as they flew, nonstop bombardment.
Also a statistic only I can supply, I did a few night time statistics- roughly 200 civilians at any given time lived in the bushes or inside the power plant. They were scared to leave, due to the war- or their job was defunct due to that portion of the power plant having long since died, but didnât want to loose their job so kept showing up even years later. Little kids lived inside, we had a museum, a mosque and street food festival, and a business (small shop) that sold only to Iraqis and me and a few of my friends (the shop keeper liked my as I bought a little girl who was scared of me his girls toy kit for her) all stuff our base commander said didnât exist, and because he said it didnât exist, it didnât exist.
We also had a place called âThe Russian Villageâ because that was where the Russians used to live by a bunker near the River. Small simple one story barracks complex. It was used till mold and roof issues became a issue, then command decided to move our B company out of it, and poorly fenced it off with rolls of barbed wire on the ground. It was something easily stepped over and a guy said he owned it, showed me paper proof in Arabic I couldnât read. I told our Sargent Major, and said what was our stance on private property and squatting rights, and he flipped out saying no such thing exists in a base. He eventually recognized his right to rebuild a house in the base, but not the Russian Village, but that guy rented out the rooms anyway to Iraqis, but our Sargent Major didnât believe me and he made guys keep fixing the easily stepped over fences- so the Iraqis living in that place could get in but not throw their trash away, and the trash piled up. One day a reporter from Time Magazine came through the base to leave through the north gate, and saw these little Iraqis standing around in trash and slums surrounded by barb wire, and yelled at me saying it was a concentration camp, and started taking pictures like crazy. Nothing came of it as the road north of our base was equally trashed as few places bothered with trash collecting. Big difference is ours had a fence.
What else? We had a junk yard, hugh industrial waste. Apparently the Iraqis had guard towers as one was thrown in, and we stuck it upright. It has a very hard to squeeze inside of spiral stair case and wooden floors. The wood floors largely decayed but if someone mortared the inside our base, our mastermind CSM would station guys up in that tower with thermos to watch the power plant workers, thinking they would come out, decipher the crater and adjust for firing the next day. Wasnât them, was the water tower mechanics doing it, but command didnât believe me cause they were 「slow」. I always saw them up there behind the hydrogen plant plotting trajectories and pointing, even pointed it out to the CSM as they did it and nothing came of it. The Iraqis were afraid of hitting the power plant because if they knocked it out, everyoneâs air conditioner would go out too, and that would collapse any support for them. So they had to be very careful what they hit.
You should see on top of the highest structures fighting positions, never the fuel depots but the power plant itself.
My only recommendations for this map to improve is there should be Dragon Teeth- a proper wall wonât keep out a mech but a few zig zags and a fix defense on the perimeter of the map makes sense. This power plant design in game is flood prone, and no vegetation exists. Also know a crap load of humans are around and running in terror- Shenzhen should have the most people but power plant has cranes and trains (ours was sealed out at a certain point because Army likes making stuff difficult).
It should have wires and towers if it is a power grid, but if this game ever goes the direction of Command and Conquer 3 Kainâs Wrath with a World Domination Mode, you could make the case it isnât a power grid plant but more power cells and a manufacturer or nuclear devices for mech and Titan modules. That would make a lot of sense why it would be a crucial military target. Iraqis didnât try too hard to hold the power plant as they were more eager to surrender, and while fighting did occur (bunkers had evidence of mortar strikes in the concrete sidewalk) they didnât want to break the place in defending it and so no major structural damage took place. Place was only decaying due to sanctions, not war.
I canât offer any insights to the other maps as Iâve never walked on the moon or been to Vietnam. 99% of the Iraqis not named Jack in the power plant were really nice people. I became friends with a few and donât use that term lightly. We had over 1,000 Iraqis within the walls of our base at any given time, completely unheard of anywhere else.
When you play this map, realize it is teaming with scared people. Giant rats the size of small dogs are running around, and the place stinks horribly and wherever you step you likely will squash me. Iâm undoubtedly down there somewhere, or napping in my secret house off to the side of a spawn point as everyone else in my unit is getting stepped on.
I can answer map realism questions or very basic questions about the war in relation to map realism but canât go into politics due to forum rules. Feel free to ask.
Will say the sound for this map isnât realistic- the echos should be throwing everyone off from bouncing off power plant walls. This will never be fixed, because if it was accurate nobody would guess from the sound alone which way fights are happening. Everyone would constantly be disoriented. Iâm guessing same goes for Shenzhen, all those buildings producing echo canyons.
Main difference is I was stationed a few years into the war there, and it was through us the walls around the place was finally completed. The cliff/hill is the closest approximation to that, but in our case the Musayyib Power Plant was elevated precisely because itâs west side bordered the Euphrates River, and it was artificially raised that way under Saddam wisely to avoid flooding, but turned it into a sort of castle.
The place had the war houses you see in the game (canât really see them in the pictures Iâve showed pulled off the net), full of pipes and industrial supplies. They had guard towers on the perimeter, and gates (four in total but we sealed one off), stuff like a hydrogen plant that was produced as a byproduct. A former unit in the Iraqi Army and then the US Army wisely sandbagged that hydrogen plant heavily. My unit commander didnât comprehend the Iranian missile attacks were not aimed at out barracks or the power plant but this plant, because they kept overflying it and hitting our empty helipad- which obviously wasnât what they were aiming for, but some of our guys were convinced they really hated the gravel in the helipad and avoided it.
It also had lots of bunkers. Saddam built two large bunkers on either side, flooded out inside mid way through our stay as we didnât use them anymore and I quite frankly didnât know how to use the water pumps to keep it dry- I emptied the west side one of all its furniture from a older unit.
The power plant itself was dying. It was Soviet in design (not a denigration or political statement) but kept alive by a bizarre array of technologies from various nations, and most engineers only knew Arabic and English. I found the manuals for everything mildewing at the extreme top of the stairwell in Korean, German, Japanese and Chinese. Mold was growing on them. They kept it running somehow under years of sanctions but it barely worked by the time the second gulf war started, and it heaved its last sigh when my unit showed up. We had to 「dookie」 most of it down and start from scratch not just on it but also building a natural gas plant next door in the Iraqi Base (that would be on the far opposite side of the map far away from the ship).
The pic where you see dirt in cardboard wired barriers looking chaotic was out ammo supply. It was next to a massive bunker that kept ancient Soviet style blinking switch computers.
I couldnât imagine the base surviving a mech walker war. Every power line and tower would instantly be destroyed. No doubt, destroyed no matter what ground bot you used. The parameter would of been full of holes- ours were, and the reason is for foxholes. Iraqis used them, still found ammo in them. We put up a concrete fence on one side (closest to the road and inside of base) and a wire fence outside of them, leaving all these holes and a few minions room sized houses in them. Whenever guys were demoted or punished, they would be sent out into this no manâs land to pick up trash tossed over the walls by guys on humvees too lazy to find a dumpster after missions. After the surge was announced it was my turn to be demoted (was in good company, donât regret it) and they sent me out, and I would under 5 minutes fill up two bags of trash and slink off into one of the abandoned houses and lay low so snipers wouldnât snipe me. Had a bed made of coffee cans and a door, and a lizard on the wall. I would lay there thinking of all the hard work them would make me do at that moment if I wasnât demoted and sent to hard labor, and look out at the fish farms to the north of the base and the Euphrates River to the west of them. Very quiet, peaceful.
It was one of the few jungle like areas in Iraq- via helicopter looked like a island in the middle of a swamp with roads connecting. Because the power plant ran Saddamâs Nuclear, Chemical and Biological research center across the River- 1/4 of the power supplied that base, they had a lot of need for military, and so there was lots of C4 and tank reserves kept around. Tanks never saw action, the C4 the Iraqis abandoned was constantly used to mine the roads.
I will say a mech the size of the Titans from Command and Conquer Tiberium Wars could fit inside the power plant. However, they would rip the power lines up. It wouldnât be advised. Something like a few artillery Behemoth with Zenits would fit naturally as our base had a big mortar emplacement. We didnât need to fly a hot air balloon like a lot of bases did as the power plant had height for a camera.
There should be a jungle growing along the shore of War Robots map was more realistic. Ours was a thicket of weeds. We also had a driveway in the wall where the water beacon is for water based craft to enter the base, the power plant was built that way with that ramp into it, but it made a sharp turn so it wasnât straight in.
The place would randomly blow up or catch fire. The petroleum pipelines were ancient and would just explode and the trains barely worked and was more expensive than piping it in. So every once in a while I would call a guard tower and ask them why they are on fire, as no explosions happened- and they would reply they didnât know why, ground just spontaneously on fire. Would have to be abandoned till the pipeline was shut down and fire trucks in base out the fire out. Other times random oil puddles would sit for months, then a minor power line would spark for seemingly no reason catching the puddle on fire. I had to walk into the power plant and explain Iâm broken Arabic to the Iraqi fire chief once a month what new part of the base was on fire.
Because the place was on fire, and because the US Government hired engineers from around the world, the power plant ran on anything and everything. A Brazilian Engineer once told me one of the smokestacks ran off broken chairs and goats thrown into the furnace. Wildly different colors of smoke would exit the smokestacks, sometimes they burned pure oil. At night the air temperature and density would change and the pollution would fall to the ground, but because we barricaded the walls the smoke would fill the base up like a soup bowl. The guys on night shift would try to outrun the smoke but always lost in the end to the wall of pollution. Prior to the concrete wall being finished packs of wild dogs would break in under the wire fence and run havoc at night. At dawn prior to the smoke lifting Iraqis in the base next door would burn their trash, which made the worst smell- but also resulted in bugs flying up in the air, and thousands of birds would fly up in the air and circle around pooping in great circular waves as they flew, nonstop bombardment.
Also a statistic only I can supply, I did a few night time statistics- roughly 200 civilians at any given time lived in the bushes or inside the power plant. They were scared to leave, due to the war- or their job was defunct due to that portion of the power plant having long since died, but didnât want to loose their job so kept showing up even years later. Little kids lived inside, we had a museum, a mosque and street food festival, and a business (small shop) that sold only to Iraqis and me and a few of my friends (the shop keeper liked my as I bought a little girl who was scared of me his girls toy kit for her) all stuff our base commander said didnât exist, and because he said it didnât exist, it didnât exist.
We also had a place called âThe Russian Villageâ because that was where the Russians used to live by a bunker near the River. Small simple one story barracks complex. It was used till mold and roof issues became a issue, then command decided to move our B company out of it, and poorly fenced it off with rolls of barbed wire on the ground. It was something easily stepped over and a guy said he owned it, showed me paper proof in Arabic I couldnât read. I told our Sargent Major, and said what was our stance on private property and squatting rights, and he flipped out saying no such thing exists in a base. He eventually recognized his right to rebuild a house in the base, but not the Russian Village, but that guy rented out the rooms anyway to Iraqis, but our Sargent Major didnât believe me and he made guys keep fixing the easily stepped over fences- so the Iraqis living in that place could get in but not throw their trash away, and the trash piled up. One day a reporter from Time Magazine came through the base to leave through the north gate, and saw these little Iraqis standing around in trash and slums surrounded by barb wire, and yelled at me saying it was a concentration camp, and started taking pictures like crazy. Nothing came of it as the road north of our base was equally trashed as few places bothered with trash collecting. Big difference is ours had a fence.
What else? We had a junk yard, hugh industrial waste. Apparently the Iraqis had guard towers as one was thrown in, and we stuck it upright. It has a very hard to squeeze inside of spiral stair case and wooden floors. The wood floors largely decayed but if someone mortared the inside our base, our mastermind CSM would station guys up in that tower with thermos to watch the power plant workers, thinking they would come out, decipher the crater and adjust for firing the next day. Wasnât them, was the water tower mechanics doing it, but command didnât believe me cause they were 「slow」. I always saw them up there behind the hydrogen plant plotting trajectories and pointing, even pointed it out to the CSM as they did it and nothing came of it. The Iraqis were afraid of hitting the power plant because if they knocked it out, everyoneâs air conditioner would go out too, and that would collapse any support for them. So they had to be very careful what they hit.
You should see on top of the highest structures fighting positions, never the fuel depots but the power plant itself.
My only recommendations for this map to improve is there should be Dragon Teeth- a proper wall wonât keep out a mech but a few zig zags and a fix defense on the perimeter of the map makes sense. This power plant design in game is flood prone, and no vegetation exists. Also know a crap load of humans are around and running in terror- Shenzhen should have the most people but power plant has cranes and trains (ours was sealed out at a certain point because Army likes making stuff difficult).
It should have wires and towers if it is a power grid, but if this game ever goes the direction of Command and Conquer 3 Kainâs Wrath with a World Domination Mode, you could make the case it isnât a power grid plant but more power cells and a manufacturer or nuclear devices for mech and Titan modules. That would make a lot of sense why it would be a crucial military target. Iraqis didnât try too hard to hold the power plant as they were more eager to surrender, and while fighting did occur (bunkers had evidence of mortar strikes in the concrete sidewalk) they didnât want to break the place in defending it and so no major structural damage took place. Place was only decaying due to sanctions, not war.
I canât offer any insights to the other maps as Iâve never walked on the moon or been to Vietnam. 99% of the Iraqis not named Jack in the power plant were really nice people. I became friends with a few and donât use that term lightly. We had over 1,000 Iraqis within the walls of our base at any given time, completely unheard of anywhere else.
When you play this map, realize it is teaming with scared people. Giant rats the size of small dogs are running around, and the place stinks horribly and wherever you step you likely will squash me. Iâm undoubtedly down there somewhere, or napping in my secret house off to the side of a spawn point as everyone else in my unit is getting stepped on.
I can answer map realism questions or very basic questions about the war in relation to map realism but canât go into politics due to forum rules. Feel free to ask.
Will say the sound for this map isnât realistic- the echos should be throwing everyone off from bouncing off power plant walls. This will never be fixed, because if it was accurate nobody would guess from the sound alone which way fights are happening. Everyone would constantly be disoriented. Iâm guessing same goes for Shenzhen, all those buildings producing echo canyons.