Holdit

You mean "No"?

I'm not sure if this is picking at a scab, but will the patch be addressing the question of unbuttoned crew vulnerability?

"Trappist Ale...'nuff said." I'm a loss to the advertising industry...

Your reaction on seeing signs like these is to want to click on them to select the units...

OK ... https://www.dropbox.com/s/ebl7z9rp9rtwrcn/ASL - Ad Hoc at Chef du Pont.btt?dl=0 Feedback welcomed.

I've got two AI plans created for each side now and both appear to be working. How does one go about ensnaring - oops I mean recruiting - playtesters?

They're not. I've set the default AI plan to "Not Used" and Plan #2, which I'm currently working on, to "Frequently Used".

Well all I can say is that I set a zone for the AI to use in setup and time after time it didn't use it. As soon as I included it in the default setup zones, it used it. When I set up a large AI setup area but only the buildings in that area were part of the default setup zone, it only placed units in the buildings.

This was a big help, and I can even flesh it out a bit after some trial and error. When you paint the AI setup areas, the AI will only set up on those parts of the AI setup area that overlap with the standard setup zones already painted on the map. So if you paint, for example, a small wood as an AI setup zone and that wood isn't included in the default setup zones, the AI won't use it. This is actually a plus if you want the AI to set up in particular locations. You paint those locations as default setup locations, and then the general area as an AI setup location. Now when the AI deploys, it will deploy only in those locations. A nice feature also is that the AI will setup slightly differently each time. The only downside is that if the AI setup area is too large, HQ units can find themselves off on a far flank, since the AI doesn't seem to consider effective HQ unit placement.

I have this working now. The problem was that the game seems to treat the triggered terrain objective as an "occupy" objective - so the pixeltruppen obediently make for the zone..and just stay there. The fix was to create a new exit zone as a smaller zone within the trigger zone and adjust the relevant AI order accordingly. I still had two straggler teams hanging around and I'm not sure why, but I wonder if it might be connected to the fact that all HQs had exited before could. More testing required but if only one squad out of 10 is giving trouble, I can live with it.

Many thanks to all for your suggestions. The last order solution rings a bell and I'd say that is indeed where I'm going wrong. I'll dive in again and have a poke around. If I can get this working over the next few days the scenario should be ready for testing before the weekend. There are a few other kinks to iron out, like why the Germans will head for the exit but not actually exit this but that's probably something simple I overlooked. Whatever the cause, it was interesting watching it play out and having the Germans end up like this... It reminded me of the Bloody Lane at Antietam. Hero of this particular playtest was the soldier who showed what can be achieved with a Thompson and a nice bit of cover. He was the only one covering that hedgerow. That's got to be worth a gong...

I'm at the point in a scenario where I'm setting up the victory conditions and AI plans. The Allied force, U.S. Airborne approaching from the northwest and northeast, has to exit off a road on the south edge of the map so it can secure an important bridge (off-map). The German forces are more or less in the centre of the map. The first question is pretty simple; how do I set up different starting locations for units, particularly defenders? I thought that the different AI plans would take care of this, but they only appear to concern actions, rather than positioning. Is it even possible to have AI defenders in a variety of defensive setups? The second question is more complicated. The original ASL scenario's victory conditions state that the Americans win if they exit 1 or more squads at that point, but that if the German player exits y squads from the same point, then the American player must exit y + .5 squads. My first thought was to simply discard that part of it and just make the fight for a couple of key points in the village and near the bridge exit, but from my reading I reckon I could have the exit point as a trigger that would start the Germans falling back toward the bridge when the first U.S. unit touched it. This might make for a more interesting fight, with the Germans "realising" that the Americans have got through or around them, and displacing to bolster the bridge's defences, and the American player needing to decide which forces to exit and which to leave as a rearguard/exit block to prevent the German player from getting his forces off. It could even play out as a running gunfight with multiple units from both sides head for the exit at the same time. With this in mind I set up AI groups and unit objective groups and set the unit objective groups as "Destroy All" objectives. Then I created an AI plan (the only one) that would trigger when the exit zone was touched by a U.S. unit. When I tested it, though, I could never get more than one German group to head for the bridge; the rest just sit there in their starting locations doing nothing. The trigger was set correctly and to be activated any time between 00:00 and 40:00. I've tried this a number of times but always got the same result. Either no groups move or only one does. I also have an problem whereby the "Wait for" option often doesn't show, and neither does the time limits for starting/ending the order. Any input would be appreciated! TIA, etc (Also posted on the FGM design forum)

The submachine gun is the Carl Gustav m/45

Saving alone isn't the answer. I was saving...but I made a change to the mission parameters or something and saved what I thought was a change to the existing scenario over the scenario file. So when I opened it up again I got the default small map. I'm still not sure how I managed that, but I must have created a new scenario and saved that over the existing file, but anyway the answer isn't just saving, it's saving versions, so if the worst happens you don't lose everything. I don't create a new version every time I save, of course, but I do try to create at least one per day, so that if the worst happens I'll only need to redo a single evening's work. I also store backups of the lot in Dropbox.

I love how each shot is modeled in terms of where it goes until it stops. I remember playing a game where the lead tank in a column of IS2's got into a gun duel with a Tiger II. The Tiger II fired first and I heard that CLANG-UNK sound, but when I checked the lead tank it was fine. It wasn't until the next time I tried to plot a move for the next IS2 in the column that I discovered it had been knocked out...by the shot that missed the leading IS2...

I'm just doing it to punish myself for being so stupid in the first place.

Long-overdue update.. I stupidly overwrote my scenario file (no version control or backups) and had to start the whole thing from scratch, but after some time away at last the new map is nearly ready. I've also added the forces, setups and victory conditions so it should be ready for testing soon. For the OOB, I've create two groups for the Americans, the Western Group and the Eastern Group as per the OOB below. Because of the situation with mis-drops on 6th June, I've reduced the American headcount to 70%, which is (probably understating it even at that). I've made the Americans "Crack" or "Veteran" and "Fit" with "High" motivation. The Germans 4-6-7s are "Regular" and the 4-4-7s are "Green", with "Normal" motivation and "Typical" fitness.

It depends on whether the age of the aircraft was a factor in the crash i.e. if some sort of mechanical failure was involved. If it wasn't then the age of the aircraft is unlikely to be relevant. Pilot error, a common cause of crashes, is a factor that can strike the most modern aircraft - Air France 447, for instance, amid countless others. For example, there is a suggestion that the JU52 crash crash may have had something to do with the unusually hot weather in Europe over the weekend, which would affect density altitude. Density altitude is affected by temperature, and in hot weather can make the aircraft fly as if it's at a higher altitude than may be indicated by the altimeter. This can result in pilots unwittingly taking their aircraft outside its performance envelope, sometimes with fatal results. Anyway, one thing I've learned about air crashes is to ignore almost everything in the news stories, and assume nothing until the accident report comes out. The Manx Air 7100 and AF 447 crashes are great examples of this. The causes eventually identified in the reports were well wide of the speculation indulged in by the press, which is usually written by people who are utterly ignorant of the subject matter and are more interested in eye-catching headlines than in cool factual reporting. Update: (a) The Swiss investigators appear to be ruling out the hot weather as a possible cause, and (b) it has been reported that this particular JU-52 is the same one use in the filming of "Where Eagle Dare".

That would be a great help, thanks. Hmmmm...I don't think the expense of consulting a lawyer is worth it for a hobby. The differences between the two systems preclude a straight copy, although I do use the maps as a template, but I use some artistic license to make them more suitable for the CMx2 engine. For example, I've attached a screenshot of a section of the board I'm working off, and also the corresponding section of the CMBN map: On balance, I think it would probably be best to fictionalise/genericise it and say it's "inspired by...". This one, by the way is...(ahem)...inspired by the ASL Starter Kit Scenario "Ad Hoc at Chef-du-Pont", which can be downloaded for free from the MMP web site. Excellent idea. That's what I'll do. Thanks.

Greetings, My use of the scenario edits has been limited to map-making until now, but I'm keen to try my hand at an actual scenario. I'm starting low-key with a scenario based on small ASL scenario. The map is done and I've added the forces. I'm starting on the AI plans for both sides next. I'd like to get some advice on the following... How are the briefing maps created? I think I downloaded some graphics files once but it didn't seem obvious how to use them and I can't find them now. What is the best way to get a scenario tested and where is the best place to look for testers? I had thought it would be The Proving Grounds, but there seems to be little to no activity there. Are there any copyright issues with converting ASL scenarios for CMx2? Is it better not to use the original name and stay away from any reference to ASL? Where is a good source of copyright-free WW2 photos to use as the scenario image? I know Wikipedia specifies copyright details but I've head that this information isn't always correct. Any advice would be appreciated. I hope to have it in a ready-to-test state sometime in the next two weeks.

On the subject of interrogation, I remember in Cornelius Ryan's "A Bridge Too Far" a description of a XXX Corps officer whose technique was simply to walk up close to the prisoner and scream questions into his face while simultaneously shoving the muzzle of his pistol hard into the prisoner's belly. Apparently it never failed.

It is possible, though, to be into wargaming and fundamentally anti-war. Wargamers are likely to be better informed about what wars horrors and chaos than less-informed but more jingoistic compatriots. For example.. http://leadnobleed.blogspot.com/2009/11/10-introductory-rant-ethics-of.html

From American Civil War movies, I learned than any discarded musket or abandoned cannon is always loaded and ready to fire. Also, infantry instantly become qualified artillerymen just by shouting the order "Turn the guns on them, boys!" And of course, in any period, any soldier who sows a picture of or talks about his wife or girlfriend back home is already being eyeballed meaningfully by a cowled figure carrying a scythe...

I don't have any of the CM post WW2 titles, and I'm not really interested in them but I'd buy a CM Vietnam game. Not that I'm into gaming Vietnam, but more because of Vietnam movies I've seen and books I've read* and documentaries like Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War. (*Fields of Fire, Matterhorn and...a couple of others I can't remember.)

An OB screen that allows the player to click on a unit and have it selected on the map ("Ah, there it is...")