37mm

I forget that most folks around here weren't playing CMSF1 back in the days before the Marines module was released and friendly fire was a real feature in the game as evinced by my anecdote about playing 'Strong Stand'. Hasrabit was made before even AI pre-planned artillery was a feature. (It was revised shortly after it became a  feature and so you find it very sloppily implemented in almost every mission in Hasrabit, an over-correction rather like how movies made with colour in the 50s are riotously colourful just to show off that 'we've got colour now!!!' 
High explosives and ricochets still cause friendly casualties but your units do not misidentify other friendly units and fire upon them anymore. This only really applied to the Syrian side as their C2 is nowhere near as good as your average Blue force.
That's my point, that both Hasrabit and Dinas were made when the game engine was a very different creature and the rework can't be 'the same but better' but has to be a whole new thing. If folks really liked original Dinas, especially back in the very early days, they might not enjoy the rework nearly so well. When this feature was removed, I have absolutely no idea as I was too busy with 'new' Blue v Red and WW2 campaigns to do much more than just add pre-planned artillery strikes to Hasrabit. I certainly didn't retest the mission beyond seeing that the artillery strikes were WAD and so missed the change. Last year is the first time I recall ever thinking about revisiting these two early works and I remember being disappointed that friendly fire was no longer working.

That's what I thought. Thanks for that. Another really important engine change that came along much later was the lethality of MGs. When these campaigns were made, MGs fired in a random direction from the target itself so casualties were much lower. When it was changed. MGs became exponentially more lethal.
I'm finding the Green and Conscript Reserve Infantry formations to be performing FAR better than their early CMSF1 counterparts. There's no Friendly Fire either so managing them carefully at night is no longer a concern. That REALLY changed Strong Stand, mission 2 of the old Hasrabit campaign, where you needed to herd them into the action very carefully otherwise they'd open fire on your Special Forces or each other. Wild. But that's a feature of Hasrabit that is lost forever due to changes made to the engine.

I really wonder how many folks have played the original campaign with the new CMSF2 engine because I suspect it would be a very different beast to play now. In particular, infantry units appear to be far more resilient and have their survivability increased substantially when in a building. In Petani, the opening rocket salvo used to be enough to send half of the conscripts with Low/Poor morale running and make the rest jittery. Now it cause 2-3 casualties, if you're lucky, and the rest are 'concerned' but otherwise okay. If anyone has played Dinas with the new engine, I'd really like to hear from them about their experience and whether they won it or not.
Both Hasrabit and Dinas are very old campaigns, made with the earliest iterations of the game engine and I suspect they are 'gone' for good. Thus the total rework required. I HOPE it will be better but there's always someone who will think the original was better, and maybe it was but the engine changed that.

I've now moved onto mission 5, SAM Hill. Don't think that I'm finished with 1-4 yet. They all have AI plans and forces ready to go but I know I can improve them further, especially Sabatani and Suib but I've seen enough of them for now and will return to them later.
SAM Hill has a map which I really don't like. I've tried it but it just irritates me because it just doesn't look real. It looks like something I just pulled out of my posterior with no real art or skill. I had already tried improving it by expanding it further to the east and adding a small village and some fields to give the BLUE deployment area some depth but I still didn't like it. So, once again, I returned to Google Earth to see if I could find something better and sure enough, I found exactly what I wanted  - a small military base near the border with Jordan. It fit the bill perfectly so I ripped out all the elevations on the map and started work on the new base. It's not going to take long to do, it's just a hill winged by a berm with some weapon sites on one side of the hill and a small number of buildings near the entrance and at the back and that's already all done.
There's what looks like a small barracks area near the site in Syria so i'll add that tomorrow and that's the new SAM Hill map finished. 

A quick update on last week's progress. I spent the week working on two missions, (3 and 4 in the campaign). As mentioned above, early last week, i was wanting to cut one of these two missions because they felt very samey. But i decided to rework the maps and try something different with them. I was very happy with the result in Sabatani and the force ratio is almost 1:1. Considering what you have and the quality of it, you're definitely at an advantage.
And so at the weekend, I turned to Suib. I wasn't happy with the map and the compounds so I decided to revamp the map, removing the large orchards and replacing them with fields of vegetables and grain. I also removed the poor quality compounds to the east of the river and replaced them, once again, with actual Syrian village compounds. I also reduced the height of the hills at the back of the map and gave it a whole new RED OB. I now have two AI plans and another very reasonable force ratio so I feel like I've done a good job on both of these. I enjoyed playtesting them too and had to relearn a lesson - namely that I WANT to kill the player's units. I had an impulse to quit my run and change the AI to reduce the lethality and remembered that I WANT to make the AI tough if you are too hasty.

I actually spent half an hour reviewing the opening two missions of the German NATO campaign this morning and you are correct that the ammo is restocked between missions even though there is no resupply between missions in the campaign script and they are indeed core artillery units. Since this was all tested and WAD for the CMSF campaigns, there has probably been some change made to the engine which affects this.
Anyway, the matter is moot for two reasons:
First, your point is that it was not spelled out to you how many missions the core artillery was meant to last and that's fair enough. It was an old campaign and the first I made as a beta tester so I own that error.
And second, there is no core artillery in Dinas. I stripped them out very early in development.

Well, I can kill two birds with one stone here. Including the Depot missions where you can review your core units is definitely doable, in fact, it's a very easy ask. I wasn't planning on having it in the new campaign because it's not necessary anymore but you're not the only person who liked this feature so why not? Bit there will only be one per group and not after each phase as I'll explain in a bit. I'll have to update the depot map as it offends me a bit.
 
At the moment, each company performs 2 or 3 missions at most throughout the campaign so there won't be much in the way of ammo resupply between missions. I have yet to decide where this will occur but if I'm using the depot missions, that would be the logical time for an ammo resupply. Even so, you will receive some non-core units in most missions including at least one truck and some Gaz jeeps so you'll get some ammo resupply from these even if they are a tad fiddly to use.
As I've mentioned as well, there will be no core artillery in Dinas - instead you'll be allocated artillery from regiment each mission so this is not an aspect you'll have to manage. The reason for this change is that it makes testing individual missions much less complicated and reduces the need for lots of compiled mission testing. I spent MONTHS working of the original Dinas campaign and I don't wish to spend months more if possible.
Secondly, as I've already told you, you should create a thread to bring up issues with the CMSF2 campaigns as they are official campaigns. I am responsible for the CMSF1 NATO campaigns and the only one I have a real interest in revisiting is the Khabour Trail, the Canadian campaign for which I made all but one of the missions. But it's an official campaign so it's not on my to-do list. I might just do it for my own pleasure though.

At the moment, if you win every mission in the dynamic version, you get the optimal experience - you're achieving all your objectives in good time and so the regime is off-foot and reacting to your moves. There might be one or two missions where the optimal version will have something special but I haven't decided that yet as I want to get all the vanilla missions done and then get the variants made. Since the variants will usually be harder than the optimal version, you will want to try and keep on the winning track but any such 'punishment' will be a rare event.
My plan is to divide the campaign into four phases of 3-4 missions and each phase culminates in a finale which you MUST win to stay in the campaign.
 
Phase 1 has 3 missions - Shock and Awe
Phase 2 has 4 mission - Red Awakening
Phase 3 has 4 missions - The Crossings
Phase 4 has 3 missions - Agony of Doom
 
The phase names are provisional. You can see some ASL influence there as well.
For phase 1 - Shock and Awe, you will have to win Sabatani or the campaign ends. Losing will usually mean less time to accomplish a later mission and they will have an additional influence of the phase finale. So losing a phase 1 mission reduces the mission length by 10 minutes per loss - lose both missions and the finale is 20 minutes shorter. There are other effects on the finale as well. The experience of Sagger Point will differ if you lose a phase 2 mission so you might have air support or the enemy might have air strikes depending on how you did in the earlier missions.
Winning the phase finale means all is reset so if you were behind schedule in phase 1, a win in Sabatani resets the clock and you're back on track.
In phase 4, losing any mission will end the campaign before the finale.
That's the plan at the moment but it will be a while before all the missions are completed and tested before I get around to the variants. but this simpler structure means that I can make each mission have more impact on following missions without turning the campaign script into a nightmare of variants.

A quick observation of how projects evolve as I develop them. I am working on missions 2 and 3 this week, Sabatani and Suib and they're both infantry-centric assaults on an urban area defended by infantry attacking across a river. The two missions were so similar that I went to bed last night thinking that I'd just ditch Sabatani. But when I woke up this morning, I decided to remove the river from the Sabatani map. Once I did that, I liked it a lot better but I took a look at the old ASL-style compound to the north of the urban area and decided that had to be redone as well. I need things to look more realistic when I play now.
Here's the OLD Sabatani map with the ASL compounds to the north of the road as well as the dry river bed and bridge.

So I went to Google Earth and scanned around and found a small but rather interesting area in the vicinity of the Golan and so I deleted the original buildings, walls trees etc to the north of the main road and replaced them with an all-new farm complex and a tiny lake which I really like the look of. So Sabatani has been saved from the chopping block by a morning's map work. This afternoon, after work, I fired up the mission and gave it a spin and it looks like it will be sufficiently different from Suib to justify keeping it in. And there's no river crossing battle here either.
Here's the reworked map with the new farm complex and the small lake. (This is a real place). I've also broken up the HUGE grain fields and replaced them with some other crops. Instead of the empty ground, there are some sheep/goat pastures as well to the front of the small town which fill the map out quite nicely.

That first picture is from 'Suib', mission 4 of the campaign, which I'm currently doing the AI work for. (I'm working on missions 3 and 4 just now with 1 and 2 more or less finished) As you can see, it's quite built up and so you'd expect at least a battalion to take that objective in under 2 hours. However, it's not quite the herculean task that you'd think and you can do it methodically.
 
The second picture is the opening mission, Petani, which some will have seen before in Gung Ho!. It's been expanded and improved even further with a small village complex further up the hill but it still works with a single company and tanks in support. There is a small farmhouse complex atop the hill overlooking the villages below and so your first objective is to capture that in preparation for the main assault on the objective. While waiting, your forces should attempt to interdict any attempts to reinforce the village down that road. Therefore, missions like this will be broken down into 2-3 smaller 'chapters' rather than dividing the map up. Of course, you will be free to do what you want with what you've got and not follow the 'story'.

I'll post my progress on this campaign in this thread from now on. For those who don't know anything about this campaign, it was my second Red v Red campaign made for CMSF way, way back in the days of the release of the USMC module and its setting is a Syrian civil war scenario where some Syrian generals attempt a coup. The premise is that the coup is launched with thunderclap surprise and so rebel forces are put into action as soon as they mobilise. While a good number of divisions will 'wait and see', the regime has a number of divisions that are 100% loyal so the rebels are on the clock as the more time they take to accomplish missions, the more time the regime has to assemble its own forces to oppose them.
This means that time limits will be reasonably strict to reflect that pressure and so casualties are to be expected to accomplish your goals. However, the campaign gives you quite a large core force of which one company and support (usually tanks) is drawn to perform the mission.
One point is that some of these maps are very large and so it would seem like it's a bit of a stretch just to have a single company when a battalion would be better. For example,

A single company? To take THAT?! Are you HIGH?" And this...


In both these situations, the friendly forces arrive in small packages and so the action unfolds over time. My plan is not to change the nature of the campaign too much and keep the player's forces small and have lots of artillery support as well as as many 'cool' toys as I can find in the Syrian OB to play around with.

Hello guys, after days of work, is finally here, this is an high fidelity remake of Strike at Karand from BF2 to Shock Force 2, the map consists of an 1520 x 1520 City with Hills, Suburbs and an Factory, the outskirts were modified so it could fit well in Combat Mission Gameplay, there is 9 versions of this map, 1 Base version so you can do your scenario or your own quick battle objectives and setup zones, 3 Meeting Engagement, 3 Blue Assault, and 1 Meeting and Engagement and 1 Assault based on the original Battlefield 2 Flags that were on the conquest version on it, hope you enjoy !
 
Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VscLVSszzFhz7K5ZIhjc31blZW-Bo3Dw/view?usp=sharing
 
Gallery: 
 








 


 
Enjoy.
 

Ive had this map of the Fullujah Jolan District on my hard drive for over a year working on it little by little. It's still being tweaked. I would like your thoughts on it. Ive tried to keep it reasonably accurate and still make it playable. It is 1376m wide and 1440m deep. It included the rail station and the large cemetery. To do the cemetery and not having the typical burial facilities that Iraq used, I had to improvise by creating the tombs with the smallest single story buildings in the editor and submerging them into the ground. Then make them all look the same. It's not perfect but hopefully will give the impression of a large cemetery.
Since I am planning on making a campaign of the battle I would like some thoughts. I can use the entire map and have the action at battalion level combat with a lot of moving pieces, or cut the map in sections for a smaller scale action. Or a combination of both. Obviously for those who are not fans of MOUT combat this will not appeal too. But for those that do it should be a urban slugfest.
Anyway here is the link to some quick screenies so take a look and let me know what some thoughts are. I am still tweaking it, height adjustments, terrain tweaks etc.
http://www.mediafire.com/folder/39mh26tih7w6r9n,cqj2oksu1mq0qto,240ri57s14p8idt,139ayqn99wft6nn,p7f3aw7h5lzgqlf,np1izv5e5cedjwl,mya8xyjqraeq2dh,pbfsj6hdbubak8j,au74m03ubwqa3un,5dxj0x9q4weg9df,naszyrf0rttzksr,ec8mc02hkckglbp/shared
Thanks
Michael

Here are some preliminary screenshots of a master map I have been working on of the Arghandab River Valley in Afghanistan. It is roughly half done is by far the largest map I have ever tried to create. It will be 4160m wide and 2992m deep and it covers a variety of terrain including farm fields, waddies, compounds, villages, highlands and lowlands. There is tons of micro terrain to battle through and the map is for a future campaign for either the 82nd Airborne or Canadian forces, haven't made up my mind yet.
In Kandahar province, the Arghandab River flows south from the Afghan central mountains, passing just north of Kandahar City. Together with its various tributaries, the Arghandab irrigates the greater Kandahar area—including the Arghandab Valley, northern Panjwaii, Zhari and Maywand—before continuing westward to join the Helmand River immediately south of Lashkar Gah.  The Registan Desert lies south of Kandahar and the Arghandab. To the north, foothills and mountains of the Afghan central mountains separate Kandahar from Oruzgan province.  A highway runs southeast from Kandahar to the Spin Boldak-Chaman border crossing and thence to Quetta, Pakistan.  The Kandahar to Kabul section of the Afghan Ring Road stretches east and northeastward from Kandahar into Zabul and then Ghazni provinces.
Arghandab district is one of the most troublesome in Kandahar because of the level of insurgency and insecurity. The Taliban have taken control partial of complete control of the strategic district as they see it as a gateway to the city of Kandahar. It is strategic terrain given its proximity to Kandahar city (it is only fifteen kilometers to the north). It also offers natural defenses. Insurgents can hide from the air attacks of the ISAF Forces in the district’s fruit orchards. 
The map is as accurate as I can make it using satellite imagery and photographs though there will be some fictional farms and villages. The campaign I hope to create will hopefully be a different type of experience where the idea is your forces, based out of a FOB and a OP, are responsible to gaining control of the valley from the Taliban. The valley is a rich source of poppy harvests used to produce opium that the Taliban use to finance their insurgency. Your mission will be to secure the villages from the Taliban and win the hearts and minds of the local population.
If anyone has a preference of whether to have the 82nd or Canadian Forces you can chime in. Right now I am leaning towards the Canadians. The master map has a long way to go so it will be a future project.
Here is the link to the screenshots. I'll post more as it comes along.
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/utq8x5kmoyusg/Arghandab_River_Valley

Scenario Depot:
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-shock-force-2-2/cm-shock-force-2-scenarios/cmsf2-iiw-operation-dawn-8/
Situation
10th February 1986
Time 6:20 hrs
Mission time 60 minutes.
Weather Hazy.
Wind Light, From West
Ground Condition Dry
On 9 February 1986, the Iranians launched Operation Dawn 8, in which 100.000 troops comprising five Army divisions and 50.000 men from the Pasdarian and the Basij advanced in a two-pronged offensive into southern Iraq.

There were originally ten missions in Hasrabit. But I added a new opener which is staying so right now there are eleven.
However, I've got a possible two extra missions as well at Adan Airfield, one of which is already finished and tested but the second of which would require me to make up a whole new AI attack which can be a lot of work. I'm humming and hawing over including this short series because scripting AI attacks can be fun if you're in the right frame of mind so we'll see.
I'm also considering removing the Heavy Metal mission as it's a strange one and too similar to what I have already done in the earlier Hill 142 mission. It may require too much work to update. But again, we'll see.
There are so many AI meeting engagements in this campaign and they're the hardest to make challenging. It was not much work when the AI was simply move group 1 to A, then B, then C and just co-ordinating these groups but now there are up to sixteen of them with triggers as well. It gives much better results but is commensurable to the effort put in by the designer. (I haven't used that word in a long time)

I've been taking a break from CM but, when I return to it, the CMFB AiO most needs updating... I want my Wintery Brits to have gloves, weathered vehicles & snow speckled uniforms.

I've been taking a break from CM but, when I return to it, the CMFB AiO most needs updating... I want my Wintery Brits to have gloves, weathered vehicles & snow speckled uniforms.

Link for 'All in one' mod pack is in this post.

The Syrian Airborne & Special Forces still only carry 100 MG rounds as standard.

While we wait the modding master to perhaps arise once again, I couldn't help myself.

So here's the first of a few mods of weathered vehicles for the Downfall module. Don't know how many I am going to make, but it certainly won't be all the new Downfall units.
Here's a Dropbox link for the Pershing - but it will only be temporary until the files have become available on https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/cm-mod-warehouse/



 

Here's the Morris C9B SPAA. A slightly reworked version of my mod for CMFI.

This a USMC  mini campaign designed for the latest version of CMSF 2 and the Marine module. It is semi-historically based on the Second Battle of Fallujah in 2004 and follows the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines and supporting units through four battles in the Jolan District of Fallujah against the insurgency based there. Due the game date being 2008 the weapon load outs may not be historical but I tried to keep it as realistic as possible.
The maps for each battle are cut from a master map I made of the Jolan District (see the thread about this map). It is not to exact scale due to game and system limitations but it gives a good representation of the Jolan District with actual places with in the district.
Campaign Notes:
There are four battles:
1. New Dawn
2. Fubar
3. Facing the Fanatics
4. Get Some
I have included the mods in the download that I used for the campaign and all credit goes to the authors of these mods. I also included actual background information in the opening designer notes about the events that led up to the battle to help set the stage.
The Core Units:
3rd Bn 5th Marines
Lima Company
Kilo Company
India Company
Weapons Company
Recon Platoon
Light Armored Recon Platoon
Scout/Sniper Platoon
Howitzer Battery
Supply Platoon
Support Units
Charlie Company 2nd Tank Battalion
I MEF Engineer Group
Task Force 2-7 ( US Army Mechanized Calvary )
Various air assets
 
Special Notes:
This campaign depicts heavy urban combat and may not appeal to many players. It requires patience and careful planning and orders to be successful. There is a fairly high refit/replenishment factor to help between missions. In the real battle the U.S suffered around 95 casualties. Do not expect to try and maintain this ratio, you will be frustrated. You will take losses depending on your skill level. I spent a good bit of time placing the insurgent defenders to have interlacing lanes of fire to support each other with a fairly sophisticated AI. There are mines and IEDs (use the engineers wisely). You have the firepower advantage so use your armor and support assets effectively to support the Marines.There are a lot of moving pieces to watch as the battles are medium to large in a tight urban environment.
However if you accept it for what it is it will be a fun challenge. I had a blast testing the missions, even when I was losing my Marines.
The download includes the .cam file, the mod folder, the individual scenarios to play without the campaign format and the master map. The map is clean and has a fair amount of flavor objects though I wanted to add a lot more but CPU limits would probably be tasked. I recommend using the included mods with the map for the immersion.. You are free to use it to create your own scenarios, just please give me a little credit when you do.
Here is the link. let me know if you come across any issues: 
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/mvmb5grjat8s8ba1gxjpn/h?rlkey=i9k4oo4fcypxyal05drv77qre&dl=0

Just trying out a WIP 'Return to Baghdad' [r2b] modtag...

One of my ongoing side projects (aimed, mostly, at the new influx of Steam Players) is to host an 'All in One' for every CM game here.
This is my initial effort for CMBN & its primary feature is a large collection of weathered vehicle & guns mods (almost entirely by @Aristoteles & @umlaut). It also features terrain mods by @SeinfeldRules, @Falaise & @patboy. UI mods by @Juju, @Marco Bergman& @Mord alongside loading screens by @umlaut. Infantry mods by Vincenzo21, @Damian45, @Vein, Jacquinot, @EZ, @mjkerner,  @Jorge MC, @nik mond& @Aristoteles. Building mods by @Tanks a Lot & @Juju as well as the ME effects package, ME soundscape, subdued @Taranis& HQS voices plus many others.
It has integrated & default early summer & early autumn (using the [holland] tag) options as well as a couple of zip files which can activate a late autumn & late summer look.
Additionally it comes with a vast quantity of content (hundreds of scenarios, scores of maps & 20 odd campaigns).
Here's a taster of some of what you can expect...
 







Here's the link for the CMBN 'All in One'...
https://www.mediafire.com/file/bplqhvfkl4da5pq/CMBN_Initial_%27All_in_One%27.7z/file