Combatintman

A few pointers ... A UK Company group would typically have an FST (Fire Support Team) whose job is to call in all of the big bangy stuff like air, attack helicopters, guns and mortars and generally an FSG (Fire Support Group) which was effectively a heavy weapons 'slice' (so stuff like GMG and HMG) from Manoeuvre Support Company. If you buy a light infantry battalion the companies already come with an MFC (part of the FST) and an FSG. All you then need to do is purchase a FOO and a JTAC to get the remainder of your FST. To get the TUM WMIK you set the equipment values to 'poor' which should give you TUM WMIKs in your FSG although it still seems to pick Jackals for Manoeuvre Support Company. At this time in Helmand - TUM WMIKs were still in use although about to be replaced by Jackals.

So stand by for sums because the final part of the initial concepts that I have to deal with is that of keeping Blue Force casualties low. Just to illustrate how flexible the Mission Editor is, here are the numbers of ways I could do this: Set a Friendly Casualty’ parameter as part of the Blue Force mission. Set a ‘Friendly Condition’ parameter as part of the Blue Force mission. Set an ‘Enemy Casualty’ parameter as part of the Red Force mission. Set an ‘Enemy Condition’ parameter as part of the Red Force mission. Make Blue units a ‘Destroy’ or ‘Destroy All’ Unit Objective for the Red force. Various combinations of the above. First of all I will rule out both of the ‘condition’ parameters and this is really just down to personal preference. I don’t get a warm and fuzzy feeling that these give me the results that I look for so rather than waste time in testing seeing how they work, I’m just not going to bother. In this scenario I can also rule out setting the Blue Force as a ‘Destroy All’ objective. Firstly because the scenario isn’t designed to be played as Red or H2H and secondly because my testing to date has shown that Blue suffers only up to about 5 x casualties and I need to the Red Player to pick up points as the scenario plays out. A good question to ask at this point is ‘why does the Red Player need to pick up points as the scenario plays out?’ The reason is simple and it is one of those nuances that help to polish up a scenario, keeps the player in the game and motivated and adds to the challenge. In short I need to discourage the player from hitting ‘Cease Fire’ early in the mission and getting a victory. Achieving this can be tricky and it is a pertinent reminder that, as a scenario designer, you need to know how VPs are calculated. So before we work out how we create a mechanism for Blue Casualties, I will quickly add another related factor that I haven’t covered in detail which is the safety of the CIA Agent and the HUMINT Source. It is related because it is all in the mix of Blue Force casualties. One of the reasons that I want to make these elements a special case is fairly predictably back to the narrative. Part of the key tasks will be to extract the Spy Group and it is also a challenge because the Spy Group has no body armour or NVGs, only ‘Tom’ the CIA guy is armed and the agent is in poor physical condition. My intent with this group therefore is to weight the VPs so that losses here will almost certainly mean victory or defeat for the Blue player. What I have to do now really is, with the narrative in mind and a rough idea of a ‘fair victory’, play around with the numbers to ensure that Blue remains motivated and challenged and cannot gain a victory by surrendering early. I could of course have done this right at the start of the Victory Points/Objectives process but I didn’t touch it until now because I have to address it now to work out how I’m going to work the Blue casualty angle. While I hate sums, at least I have made the process easier for myself by recording things as I go. So I know for instance how many men are in the Blue Force, meaning that I have the figures needed to work out parameter percentage objectives. I also know from my recorded test results how the battle is likely to flow and how many casualties are likely to result. On to the sums then … Presently Blue will get 26 VPs for Bin Laden, 24 VPs for the Compound Guards and 50 VPs for the HLZ objective for a convenient total of 100 VPs. I know from testing that the compound and its occupants can be knocked over in no more than ten minutes and that Blue has suffered between 0 KIA/WIA and 2 KIA/4 WIA in doing so. In fact this is pretty much the range for the whole mission. This information allows me to firm up my ‘fair result’ criteria which I will initially set as 5 x Blue Force casualties. You may remember this table from many moons ago …. I have highlighted the Assault Element and you will see that they add up to 26 x Soldiers and Agent Mohammed is 1 x individual and ‘Tom’ the CIA guy is another individual so I have 28 x individuals. Although I’ve not entirely ruled it out, based on testing so far it is extremely unlikely that the QRF will come into play in this mission because the logical place for them to arrive is the HLZ and I know that they can secure it easily and totally dominate any enemy approaching it. I’m not going to delete them yet because I know that if I do Murphy’s Law will come into play and as soon as I do delete them I’ll find that I need them again meaning starting from scratch with the force pick. However I have to factor in the elements that ‘never arrive’ due to how the Force Pick system works if I am going to use percentage-based parameters. These are the elements highlighted in Red and amount to another 6 x individuals. With all of that established I can now start doing some sums and I am already starting to lean towards making the respective Blue Elements a series of Red ‘Destroy’ Unit Objectives and balance the whole thing out using a Red Friendly Bonus parameter. So if I make the Blue assault element a ‘Destroy’ Unit Objective where each casualty gives Red 5 x VPs I come up with a figure of 130 x VPs. If I make Agent Mohammed a Red ‘Destroy’ Unit Objective worth 10 x VPs and CIA Guy ‘Tom’ a Red ‘Destroy’ Unit Objective worth 10 x VPs the sum of the parts is 150 x VPs for Red. Based on testing so far I have come up with my ‘fair result’ of 5 x Blue Force casualties, and in fact in one test ‘Tom’ the CIA Guy got zapped, I can come up with the following permutations … Outcome #1 3 x SEALs KIA = 15 x VPs Agent Mohammed KIA = 10 x VPs Agent Tom KIA = 10 x VPs Total = 35 x VPs Outcome #2 4 x SEALs KIA = 20 x VPs Agent Tom or Agent Mohammed KIA = 10 x VPs Total = 30 x VPs Outcome #3 5 x SEALs KIA = 25 x VPs Total = 25 x VPs Using those figures as a basis, I also need to think about how this plays out over time. I’ll work on the premise that 2 x SEALs will get whacked in the compound clearance and the remaining 3 x casualties will get whacked during the exfiltration phase. Based on the above and the other VPs already allocated, if the Player hits cease fire at the moment the compound is clear, the total will look like this: Blue Osama Bin Laden = 26 x VPs Compound Guards = 24 x VPs HLZ = 0 x VPs TOTAL = 50 x VPs Red US Navy Seals = 10 x VPs Agent Mohammed = 0 x VPs Agent Tom = 0 x VPs TOTAL = 10 x VPs So using the VP formula the result would be something like this V = (50 + 10) / (10 + 10) = 6 Because the HLZ objective (worth 50 x VPs) has not been achieved, Blue has got 50% of the available VPs. The result therefore would be a Blue Tactical Victory which is both too easy and not the result I want to achieve. So it is now a case of either tinkering with the figures above or adding other elements such as creating a Red ‘Friendly Bonus’ Parameter. So let’s try that going with a figure of 25 x VPs for the Red ‘Friendly Bonus’. Blue Osama Bin Laden = 26 x VPs Compound Guards = 24 x VPs HLZ = 0 x VPs TOTAL = 50 x VPs Red US Navy Seals = 10 x VPs Agent Mohammed = 0 x VPs Agent Tom = 0 x VPs Red Friendly Bonus = 25 x VPs TOTAL = 35 x VPs V = (50 + 10) / (35 + 10) = 1.3 Because the HLZ objective (worth 50 x VPs) has not been achieved, Blue has got 50% of the available VPs. The result therefore would be a Blue Minor Victory which, while closer to the desired effect, is still off the mark. Clearly more work is needed on the numbers and I have to think about how the scenario will develop fully. So it is time to develop the scenario until the end working on the assumption that Blue suffers another 2 x SEAL casualties and the HLZ is secured. Note I have upped the Red Friendly Bonus now to 30 x VPs and used the original HLZ setting of 50 x VPs. Here’s how this looks … Blue Osama Bin Laden = 26 x VPs Compound Guards = 24 x VPs HLZ = 50 x VPs TOTAL = 100 x VPs Red US Navy Seals = 25 x VPs Agent Mohammed = 0 x VPs Agent Tom = 0 x VPs Red Friendly Bonus = 30 x VPs TOTAL = 55 x VPs V = (100 + 10) / (55 + 10) = 1.69 Although this time the Blue Player has grabbed all of the objectives, the value of 1.69 means only a Blue Minor Victory and I have deemed this to be a ‘Fair Result’ and should attract a victory of some description For the time being this could suffice but, as I hope you’re starting to see … this is a tricky process to get right because I haven’t factored in either Agent Mohammed or ‘Tom’ the CIA Guy getting zapped or accounted for the (albeit unlikely) outcome of the Blue Player not killing Osama Bin Laden and his Compound Guards. Just taking the latter as an example we could come up with a scenario where 5 x casualties are suffered and Blue secures the HLZ … Blue Osama Bin Laden = 0 x VPs Compound Guards = 0 x VPs HLZ = 50 x VPs TOTAL = 50 x VPs Red US Navy Seals = 25 x VPs Agent Mohammed = 0 x VPs Agent Tom = 0 x VPs Red Friendly Bonus = 30 x VPs TOTAL = 55 x VPs V = (55 + 10) / (50 + 10) = 1.08 This would be a draw despite the fact Osama Bin Laden is still alive!!! Now you’ll be pleased to know that I’m not going to keep throwing calculations at you, but I did want to demonstrate the point that getting the VPs right is tricky and requires more than just pulling some numbers out of a hat and hoping it will work. Whichever way I tweak this using the parameters and Terrain/Unit objectives already discussed I cannot get the balance right so I need to do something else to get this to work. I will probably have to make some compromises and I may still not end up with a ‘perfect’ figure but I need to try to get close enough. So what I’m considering is using a Red ‘Friendly Casualty’ parameter. The reason I’m using a Red parameter is I don’t want to go encouraging the Blue player to chase around the map zapping Red Forces so the only time they become aware of it is when they hit ‘Cease Fire’ or the game ends. 15 x Property Defenders 1 x Osama Bin Laden 24 x Compound Guards 24 x PSG 14 x VCP 6 x Police Commandos 41 x QRF 50 x ‘Never Arrive’ group TOTAL HEADCOUNT = 175 First I need to calculate the percentage represented by Osama Bin Laden and his guards (headcount = 25) to give me a rough idea of what the number needs to look like and the magic number is 14.2% (ie the percentage represented by 25 of 175). What I’m trying to do here is to create a figure just over this to generate some Victory Points. The potential flaw in this of course is that the Blue Player doesn’t bump into any other Red Elements but this is mitigated by testing which indicates that this will be difficult for the Blue Player. Working on that assumption, the Blue Player needs to kill 27 x Enemy to hit 15% which effectively means all of the Compound occupants plus two others. This is achievable and if my assumption about it being impossible for Blue to evade without a firefight is correct it should help me balance the VPs better. So the solution would be a Red ‘Friendly Casualty’ parameter of 15%, remembering that it is a ‘less than’ construct meaning that if Blue hits ‘Cease Fire’ after clearing the compound, Red will still grab the points. However, I also know from testing that the Blue Player is likely to bump and probably zap one of the ‘Black Pathan’ Security Patrols shortly after sorting out the compound. This group has a headcount of 4 x guys. My new figure would therefore be 29 which is 16% of 175. If I add one to that figure, meaning that the Blue Player would have to wipe out the compound occupants, the patrol and one other I have a figure of 30 which is 17% of 175. So, after a couple of hours with the abacus and slide rule, I have come up with the following values … Blue Objectives Osama Bin Laden (Unit Objective 1) = ‘Destroy All’ 50 x VPs Compound Guards (Unit Objective 2) = ‘Destroy All’ 25 x VPs HLZ (Terrain Objective 1) = ‘Occupy’ 150 x VPs Red Objectives CIA Agent (Unit Objective 1) = ‘Destroy’ 60 x VPs HUMINT Source (Unit Objective 2) = ‘Destroy’ 60 x VPs US SEAL Team (Unit Objective 3) = ‘Destroy’ 130 x VPs Friendly Casualty Parameter = Less than 17% 30 x VPs Friendly Bonus = 30 x VPs Now anybody with a calculator and nothing else to do will work out that these values are far from perfect but they are the closest I’ve arrived at without spending all day hunched over a calculating device. The bottom line is that they are close enough to give me the desired outcomes based on the assumption that most people will not be satisfied with anything less than a Total Victory. Finally, as I haven’t shown you how the parameters screen works, here is a screenshot of the inputted values. Put simply, it is easy to use because all you need to do is input your desired values by clicking on the box and typing in the numerical values. Now I need to test this to make sure that the values work. This time around I’ve gone for Scenario Author Test Mode in WEGO because it is a long time since I’ve done a WEGO test. While I will recommend playing it in Real Time, I know there is a hard core majority of CM players who won’t touch Real Time with a barge pole so I need to cater for this market. Here are the scores on the doors: Ceasefire at the point all of the Compound units were wiped out with 51 minutes on the clock. Blue Minor Defeat 0 VPs vs Red Minor Victory 60 VPs. Blue suffered no casualties while Red had suffered 17 x KIA and 8 x WIA. Red achieved both the Friendly 30 VP bonus and the 30 VP Friendly Casualty parameter. Note that although none of the Red Compound occupant units remained on the map, Blue did not get the points at this point because some of the casualties were WIA and both units were a ‘Destroy All’ objective. To get the points Blue just has to wait until the WIA expire and to guard against buddy aid. I (fortunately) don’t have any Red units entering the Compound until after they should reasonably expect to die. Ceasefire with 34 minutes on the clock after one security patrol had been engaged. Draw with 75 Blue VPs to 60 Red VPs. This time Blue got the full 75 VPs for the Compound occupants and Red still gained both the Friendly 30 VP bonus and the 30 VP Friendly Casualty parameter. Red had 22 x KIA and 6 x WIA Ceasefire with 32 minutes remaining following other engagements with another security patrol and the VCP patrol. Blue Tactical Victory and Red Tactical Defeat with 75 VPs to 30 VPs. So this is the same as above apart from this time around Blue has inflicted enough casualties to deny Red the Friendly Casualty parameter. Red had 27 x KIA, 11 x WIA and 1 x MIA. Ceasefire with 13 minutes remaining with the Blue force on the HLZ. Blue Total Victory with 225 VPs versus Red Total Defeat with 40 VPs. Blue had suffered 3 x WIA, all of which were SEALs so not the high VP Spy Group and had inflicted 28 x KIA, 24 x WIA, 1 x MIA and 1 x BRDM-2 kill. Blue achieved all objectives and had gained all of its possible VPs so with a ‘V’ value of 4.7 was well across the line. Finally, the Objectives and Victory Point marathon is over and I can put away the abacus and slide rule!!!! We’ll now move to what for me is the one of the more enjoyable bits of mission making – orders and mission graphics.

I would love to test this but will not be able to get near this until I get home in December. My 2 cents FWIW based on the premise of the campaign, the fact that I was there in Mar-Apr 07, I have done a few Afghan missions myself for CMSF, I wrote the British Forces TO&E for the game and Erwin's comments. 1. I get the impression that there are IEDs and mines masquerading as IEDs in some of these scenarios. If you are going for realism (and I see that you have labelled this semi-historic) then I would tone these down dramatically. IEDs were barely a factor in HERRICK 5 and I suspect that in the first month of HERRICK 6 they probably didn't pay too large a role. I have looked back through my notes for the tour and for the whole of Mar 2007 I can only recall one or two IED related incidents. Gunshot wounds, shrapnel and people falling over were the main causes of casualties during this time. The other reason to tone them down is that they are pretty frustrating for players because there is little they can do about them which means people won't like the campaign if you overdo it. 2. Sort of linked to the above is the thing about the enemy popping up all over the place. Yes there are Kareezes in Helmand and yes the enemy knew the ground but in many cases, a lot of the contacts were 'enemy pre-seen' which means that we got the drop on the enemy more often than they got the drop on us. So by all means have a cunning enemy and of course try to replicate the 360 degree threat but I wouldn't go mad with it. 3. Erwin appeared to have got massacred in Mission 1 suffering 13 x KIA and 13 x WIA - bear in mind that total UK KIA in Mar-Apr 07 was four. Now I appreciate that it is big ask to replicate the real casualty results but I would structure VPs so that more than 5-7 casualties in any mission is a loss. That will probably mean tweaking the enemy a bit. 4. If the missions are all set in and around Sangin then artillery support would generally be available from FOB Robinson. The Canadians had about 3 x 105 or 155mm guns there for a while and I'm pretty sure that if they had gone by then that 29 Cdo Regt would have had a couple of 105 Light Guns in there. There were also 81mm mortars in Sangin DC itself which would give you a 5km-odd radius of coverage from the DC. 5. TO&E-wise the British Light Infantry battalion should be the basis of the UK force. It is a bit fiddly because of the way it is implemented in CMSF but a Light Infantry Company Group from memory should provide you with most of the bits needed for the British battles. The one thing to watch with all of the British units though is that they don't have much ammunition to start with and they burn through it quickly so I would make provisions for this either through ensuring resupply between missions or making sure that there are some vehicles that the guys can acquire ammunition from. Erwin has already alluded to ammunition problems in his run through. 6. I have no idea how you've picked your enemy but RPG-7s were two a penny over there so I would go for a combatant force pick that has low quality weapons, eliminate anybody with a sniper rifle, which weren't that prevalent and make sure they've got RPGs. Have snipers by all means but I would limit them to one per mission and I wouldn't make them any good. My defaults for 'Taliban' are always 'conscript' in my missions and this setting gives me the results that I think are accurate if you are trying to replicate real life. 7. I note Mission 7 is 'Siege of the District Centre'. Is this Sangin DC and is your map of Sangin DC? FWIW I have a an 1104m x 1248m CMSF map of Sangin DC which I am willing to share so long as you credit me somewhere in the mission/campaign briefing. However if you want it, you'll have to hit me up fairly quickly because I will have limited internet access in a few days. 8. Reference Erwin's frequent 'victories' by hitting CF at the start - I suspect this might be due to there being Red 'Occupy' objectives in these missions and the Red 'Occupy' Objective bug (which I have reported to the Beta Crew). As you might be able to guess from that statement - Red Occupy objectives don't seem to work which means that any scenario with these objectives will likely result in a Blue victory without too much effort. Clearly if my guess is right then you will have to completely rethink how you use objectives and parameters to generate victory conditions. Anyway - that's probably about enough to be going on with apart from saying thanks for taking the time and effort to create this campaign - I have three campaigns which have never left my hard drive (ironically one of them is Op SILVER).

No worries - I can imagine your reaction was similar to mine when you found out the modules had disappeared - I was bereft for about ten minutes because most of my stuff requires the British Forces Module. I'm glad that my limited advice got you out of a fix. Happy gaming.

So more on objectives and victory points … and another recap on the core concepts I talked about … Assault the compound and kill the occupants. Extract the SEAL Team, the CIA Handler and the CIA Agent from the HLZ at the bottom RH corner of the map. Suffer minimal casualties. Award VPs for securing the compound. Award VPs for killing the occupants. Place a premium on Blue casualties. Award VPs for reaching the HLZ. To take the first concept of securing the compound, potentially I am slightly restricted by the Red ‘Occupy’ objective bug and if I make it a Blue ‘Occupy’ objective it means that I have to keep troops there until scenario end which is not what I want. Another option would be to create a series of hidden Blue ‘Touch’ objectives to simulate searching the objective. However my actual solution is based on the reasoning that in order to kill the compound occupants, the Blue player pretty much has to cover all of the compound so in many respects the proposed ‘touch’ are redundant. Another nuance might be to make the Compound a ‘Preserve’ objective and punish the Blue player for destroying it. However I don’t really think that the US Government would shed too many tears about destroying it and I also know from the Blue ORBAT and testing that the Blue Player does not have the resources to inflict the damage required to get overly penalised. It goes without saying that this factor rules out making it a Blue ‘Destroy’ objective. So the actual solution (although I may go back later and create a series of ‘Touch’ objectives depending on testing to simulate the SEALs conducting compound searches/sensitive site exploitation) is to do nothing. The next concept is that of killing the occupants. This is really simple and I think is what the ‘Destroy All’ victory condition was expressly designed for. If I just made the occupants a ‘Destroy’ objective then theoretically the Blue Player could still get a win if they killed most but not all of the units in the Compound. I want to be brutal and make it a ‘Destroy All’ objective which is unusual in my scenarios as most of them use the ‘Destroy’ unit objective type. The mechanics of this are pretty simple but fiddly because similar to the AI Editor, you have to flick between a couple of screens. This becomes obvious as soon as you hit the ‘Mission’ and ‘Unit Objectives (Blue)’ screen because there is a dialogue which helpfully tells you what to do which is to go into the ‘Purchase Red’ screen in the ‘Units’ menu. The dialogue also tells you that you need to hit ‘SHIFT-F1 – F8’ to identify your unit objectives with ‘F8’ being not an objective. This is good as a default, none of the units are objectives which means that you don’t need to hit SHIFT-F8 against all of the units that aren’t objectives. However if you make a mistake and designate a unit as Unit Objective 1 when you didn’t mean to, all you need to do is hit ‘SHIFT-F8’ and it will go back to the default. In the instance below I have gone to the ‘Purchase Red’ screen and found my ‘Osama Bin Laden’ unit (another reminder of the value of naming units as you pick them) and hit ‘SHIFT-F1’. With that done I can return to the ‘Mission’ and ‘Unit Objective (Blue)’ screen. Now if I click the ‘Unit 1’ button I get a series of options as follows: Objective Type. If you click the drop down you get the various types of previously discussed objective types, namely ‘Destroy’, ‘Destroy All’ and ‘Spot’. This is going to be ‘Destroy All’. I can also nominate which side the objective is ‘known to’. This is in the context of whether it is known as an objective rather than meaning that if I set Osama Bin Laden as ‘known to’ the Blue player that the unit is automatically spotted on the map. So how you set these is very much a design decision but in this instance it is pretty simple. Osama Bin Laden is THE objective in this mission and this scenario is designed as a Blue vs Red AI only which means it would be stupid (and would annoy the player) if Osama Bin Laden was not known as an objective to the player. So I have set it as ‘Known to Player’. The next thing is a box in which you type your desired Victory Point value. For the time being I have set the value as ‘26’. This value will almost certainly change but I do like to put numbers in there early to check that the objective is functioning. The last box allows you to free type an Objective Name for your unit objective. As it is a free text field you can put what you want in there but it can be good practice to try and keep your naming consistent for housekeeping purposes. Also, make the name short so that it fits in the text box and make it relevant because this is what will appear on the final Victory Screen at Game End. So call your objective ‘Ermintrude the Cow from the Magic Roundabout’ if you like but the chances are that it will not display in the Victory Screen because there are too many characters and the player will think ‘????????’ Here is what it looks like … On to other Unit Objectives and I won’t dwell on the mechanics. I need to sweep up the other compound occupants which are split into a number of groups due to the nature of the TO@E pick. However that does not stop me making them one ‘Destroy All’ Unit Objective. All I need to do is to find them in the Purchase Red screen and (because this will be Unit Objective 2) hit ‘SHIFT-F2’ next to each entry. Again I can do this easily because I named them as ‘Compound Guard’ or similar when I picked them. Once I’ve done that I go back to the Objectives screen and set ‘Unit 2’ as ‘Destroy All’, ‘Known to Player’ with a VP value of ‘24’ (which will likely change) and called them ‘Compound Guards’. Now from the Red unit laydown and the AI plan and most importantly my testing, I know that there are other elements that the Blue player will come into contact with (ie ‘Property Defenders’, Security Guards and the Pakistani security forces). I could make these Unit Objectives but I’m not going to because the mission narrative is to smash the compound occupants and then extract with as little fuss as possible. If I were to make these other elements Unit Objectives for Blue, it will incentivise the player to actively hunt these units to get the points which is not in keeping with that narrative. It fits the psychology in that so long as the player gets a decent victory, they will be satisfied by their dead enemies and burning BRDMs alone without giving them points for it. Some will grumble for sure (particularly if they don’t get an acceptable victory) but the risk of not perverting the narrative is worth the odd gripe. I’ll now look at the extraction to the HLZ part of the narrative. This clearly can only be dealt with by using a Terrain Objective and of course the ‘Exit’ objective type available in later titles, which would be ideal, is not available to me here. So it boils down to either ‘Touch’ or ‘Occupy’ both of which are valid but I’m going for ‘Occupy’ because it best suits the narrative/realism. In reality, the SEAL Team would have to secure the objective to ensure that it was safe for the helos to land. Added to this, I want the Blue player to earn the objective and as ‘Occupy’ is harder to achieve than ‘Touch’ it makes it a more appropriate choice. Another factor is how the overall Victory Points will play out which will likely mean that this objective is going to be one of the major factors in achieving a victory meaning that it will probably have a high points value. If I made it easy to grab then the mission has little difficulty associated with it. Fortunately the mechanics of Terrain Objectives are less fiddly. You just need to go into the ‘Mission’ ‘Terrain Objectives (Blue)’ screen. Once there just start painting the objective area on the map and the associated dialogue, which is similar to the ‘Unit Objectives’ dialogue, will come up. As you can see from the following screenshot, I have set the values as ‘Occupy’, ‘Known to Player’ with a VP value of ‘50’ (which will likely change) and named it ‘HLZ’. Now with this image you might be thinking ‘wow that is a big objective’ and you’d be right. The decision to make it that size comes in a three parts. Part one is that the Player has to ‘earn’ it because of the likely points weighting. Part two is that in reality, to ensure the safety of the helos, the player has to ensure that there is nothing that can fire on them as they come into land which means pushing the distances out from the relatively small area required for the helos to land. Part three is a combination of the above … I have deliberately extended the zone to ensure that it covers the final movement orders of the Pakistani Army QRF which means that the player has some choices to make. Of course the final movement orders of the QRF are not known to the player but, if they have not dealt with it early, then they have to deal with it towards the back end of the mission. Another short post I know but this is a natural break before getting the slide rule out and doing another of my least favourite activities …. Arithmetic and other mathematical tortures associated with achieving workable victory conditions.

AFAIK flavour objects are resource heavy and standard advice for scenario designers is not to go mad with them. Otherwise I'm sure somebody more knowledgeable than I will be along presently.

This happened to me about a month ago. Norton has a quarantined files folder somewhere, you just need to go in there, find the modules, restore them and tell Norton not to quarantine them. I haven't got the solution to hand but if you do an internet search using the terms 'Norton quarantined files' or similar, you will find the answer. It took me about 15 minutes to find the answer and solve the problem and I'm an idiot when it comes to computery type things.

We are nearly there now but not quite because we now have to think about objectives and victory points. I always think that a bit of psychology is required for this part of the process in addition to translating your all-important narrative into player intent and mastering the mechanics. I’ll start with elements of the narrative which you’ve heard before but bear repeating. In essence, the core mission concepts are: Assault the compound and kill the occupants. Extract the SEAL Team, the CIA Handler and the CIA Agent from the HLZ at the bottom RH corner of the map. Suffer minimal casualties. From those simple concepts above, I can derive some basic victory conditions/objectives which I can fine tune as necessary. These are: Award VPs for securing the compound. Award VPs for killing the occupants. Place a premium on Blue casualties. Award VPs for reaching the HLZ. Time now to examine objectives and how they work. There are three basic types of objective as follows: Terrain Objectives. These are available in four types: Occupy – to gain VPs for the occupy objective type, the player has to put troops in the painted zone and needs to ensure that there are no enemies in the zone. Unfortunately due to a reported but unfixed bug, ‘Occupy’ objectives do not work for the Red Force. Destroy – what it says on the tin. The player has to destroy the painted structure to gain the points but will gain a subset of the points for partial destruction. So if I had a building that I’d 50% destroyed worth 50 VPs, I would expect to get about 25 VPs. Preserve – what it says on the tin and is the exact opposite of the ‘Destroy’ objective type. This is designed to replicate Rules of Engagement (ROE) and collateral damage considerations. Touch – again what it says on the tin. The player only has to touch the objective to gain the points even if the enemy is still present in the painted area. Unit Objectives. These come in three types: Destroy – the player gets points for every element of the designated ‘Destroy’ unit objective. The more elements KIA or WIA means more points as a proportion of the overall total. So if I have a Red unit set as a Blue ‘Destroy’ objective which (conveniently) is comprised of 100 x blokes, is worth (conveniently) 100 VPs and Blue kills 50 x blokes then Blue will get 50 x VPs. Destroy All – this type of objective is binary and is exactly what it says on the tin. So in the example above I would have to kill all 100 x blokes to get the 100 x VPs. Spot – the designated unit objective fairly predictably has to be spotted and identified for the points to be awarded. Parameters. These are binary but potentially offer a number of options to the Scenario Designer. They are: Friendly Casualties – the player has to keep casualties below the specified percentage so if I have a 100 x bloke sized force and a Friendly Casualty Parameter of 50% then I gain points if I have more than 51 x blokes left at the end. Enemy Casualties – the player has to inflict casualties at a level higher than the specified percentage. Friendly Condition – this parameter deals with wounded, incapacitated and routed soldiers. Again it works on a less than condition. Enemy Condition – as above but the player has to inflict wounded, incapacitated and routed solders on a greater than condition. Friendly Ammunition – requires the player to expend less ammunition than the stated percentage. Enemy Ammunition – requires the player to force the enemy to expend more ammunition than the stated percentage. Friendly Bonus – when used, this condition automatically awards the bonus no matter what happens in the scenario. As the manual says, this is useful to ‘balance uneven scenarios’. So the above is pretty dry but it is relatively straight forward. The artistry (or trickery!!) is to make these options work for you to achieve the result intended. Another point to remember is that you don’t have to use all of the above options or balance one with the other. By that I mean that just because I may make the Compound an Occupy objective for Blue, I don’t have to (I can’t anyway due to the bug) make it an ‘Occupy’ objective for Red. The same goes for all of the parameters – one does not have to balance the other. With the basic descriptions out of the way, I’ll talk a little about the psychological aspects and of course this is the World according to Combatintman but so far this approach has worked for me. For me the psychology is about encouraging or discouraging behaviours as well as giving the player satisfaction in playing the scenario. One of the analogies in this whole process I find useful is thinking as it like a tax code. You want people to stop smoking – you increase the taxes and scare them half to death with pictures of diseased lungs. You want people to stop buying big SUVs, you tax petrol and make car parking spaces smaller etc etc. In terms of satisfaction, I feel that the player needs to feel that they’ve earned their objectives (eg had to fight for them or overcome lots of problems to get to them) and the player needs to understand why they’re going for an objective. As an example I’ve seen many scenarios which tell you to go to ‘Objective #1’ for say 50 x VPs and I’ve got there without too much difficulty and thought ‘what was the point of that?’ JonS captures the essence of this well whenever he talks about mission design which is to just let the player get on with the game. Of course setting objectives with VPs are not the only means of incentivising the player, another method is to convey the information to the player in the orders or to make the enemy behave in such a way that if they ignore their orders they will get punished through the simple expedient of getting wasted. That is probably all I need to say about the psychological aspects, you will see some of these come into play as I describe how I’m going to construct the final elements of the scenario. Aside from the psychological factors, the other key element in design is to ensure that your objectives are achievable. There is no point in telling a player to destroy all enemy armour (and making it a ‘Destroy All’ objective if they have no anti-tank capabilities in their ORBAT. With that out of the way, the next thing to talk about is Victory Conditions. Somewhat unhelpfully, the way that CMSF calculates victory levels is not explained in the manual and I for one, because I didn’t know the formula, just could not get my early scenarios to award appropriate levels of victory. However, manuals for the other CMX2 titles (which can be downloaded even if you don’t own the game) have the formula. This is it … So where ‘V’ = victory step one is to determine ‘V’. V = (A+10) / (B+10) In this equation ‘A’ is the side with the most victory points and ‘B’ is the side with the least victory points. This means take the VP score of each side, add ten and then divide the higher score by the lower score. The result is ‘V’ or victory Step two is to determine the level of victory and is determined by a combination of percentages and objectives achieved according to the following levels: Draw: V less than 1.25. Minor Victory: V less than 1.75. Tactical Victory: V less than 2.5 and 30% of potential VP earned. Major Victory: V less than 4.0 and 55% of potential VP earned. Total Victory: V equals 4.0 or more and 80% of potential VP earned. The losing side achieves the opposite result so if one side gets a Total Victory the other will get a Total Defeat. Example: At the end of a mission, the Blue side receives 700 Victory Points out of 1,000 VP possible. The Red side receives 150 VP out of 1,000 VP possible. V = (A + 10) / (B + 10) A = 700 B = 150 V = (700 + 10) / (150 + 10) V = 710 / 160 V = 4.44 The Blue side receives a Major Victory, and the Red side re­ceives a Major Defeat. Although V was over the 4.0 requirement for a Total Victory, the Blue side only achieved 70% of the potential total VP, while a To­tal Victory requires at least 80 of potential VP be earned. Clearly understanding the above (and I hate anything to do with mathematics) is critical to getting your mission right. However, as stated before, the process requires blending it with the other previously mentioned factors which I will delve into in my next post.

As promised this thread will deal mainly with more complex AI planning and should take us to the point where the AI plan (Plan 1 (Red)) is complete. Of the eight AI Group slots I have available I have already used four as follows … AI Group 1 – All of the static elements (Compound Guards, Property Defenders etc) Group 2 – Black Pathan Security Patrol #1 Group 3 – Black Pathan Security Patrol #2 Group 4 – Pakistan Police VCP Patrol Group 5 will be the Police Special Commando Squad which leaves me Group 6, Group 7 and Group 8 to allocate to the Pakistani Army QRF. Potentially this creates a problem which is why I think this falls into the category of complex AI planning. The reason it creates a problem is because of a combination of what I want the QRF to do, the structure of the QRF (HQ, 1 Platoon, 2 Platoon comprising a mix of vehicles and dismountable squads) and the fact that I only have 3 AI Group slots. So first off what do I want the QRF to do? The schematic illustrates the broad plan. In essence the plan above represents a plausible response to an attack on the Compound based on the assumption that the Pakistani Army knew of its significance and had a contingency response. The plausible part of this is that they are going in blind so it is reasonable to assume that they would head for the compound first because that is where gunfire has been reported from and they know the significance of the compound. However they’re not going to just charge in so they will dismount and advance the last few hundred metres tactically. Once at the compound they will notionally assess the scene and question any survivors to gain information and intelligence about the attackers so that they can hunt them down. They will also secure the scene until the Police arrive and hand it over to them before actively hunting the attackers. For the purposes of the scenario it makes no odds whether any intelligence is gained because as the Designer I know where the Blue Force has to end up (bottom RH corner of the map). However if they gain no intelligence, the next logical and plausible step would be for them to go to the VCP and speak to the Police Force there to see if they have seen/heard anything. They would then either go firm there or if they’re lucky follow up on sightings of the SEAL Team. So that is the bones of the narrative and they are plausible enough. However the structure of the unit and the limited number of AI slots potentially causes me a problem. The obvious solution is to make the HQ AI Group 6, 1 Platoon AI Group 7 and 2 Platoon AI Group 8. Now you might think – so what’s the problem? The potential problem comes from the need to dismount and how the AI behaves with mixed mounted and dismounted groups. So as before I need to set up the AI Groups by going into the Purchase Red screen, selecting my unit and hitting the correct numbered ‘F’ key. In this case F5 for the Police Commando Squad, F6 for the QRF HQ, F7 for 1 Platoon and F8 for 2 Platoon which is shown in the following image. Then it is a case of sequencing the orders to achieve the desired effect and, because AI Group 7 and AI Group 8 each have three vehicles and three dismount elements, ensuring that I paint large enough zones on the map to ensure that they will fit into their movement zones (so a minimum of 3 x AS when mounted and 6 x AS once dismounted). Time for a test and with any luck it will look alright which is the main objective of the test. However I am also looking to see that the units can move without too much difficulty particularly given the complex urban terrain that they initially have to traverse. I also want to check that the units arrive and move in the right sequence so that for example the Police Commando Squad doesn’t arrive at the Compound before the Pakistani Army QRF. As with all tests you need to make sure you’ve got a notepad and pen handy to record your observations. Finally with this test, because the focus is on how the Red AI performs I don’t want Blue Forces to impact on the execution of the plan. To avoid this I have two potential solutions, the first of which involves making all Blue Forces ‘reserves that never arrive’ by giving them arrival times of 3 hours. The second is just to move them to an area on the map where I know they won’t see the enemy and to be doubly sure give them tight cover arcs. I’m going with the second option because I want to orchestrate a battle between the SEAL Team and the QRF once it has executed its full AI plan. The purpose of this first of all is to see whether the SEAL Team can overcome the QRF but also to get a feel for how many casualties it will take. Remember that in my previous test there was no QRF involved so this is my first chance to capture this data. In terms of execution of the test, a handy little tip is to run it in WEGO mode as this allows you to click through turns where nothing happens really quickly and will save you a lot of time. The other advantage is that you can replay the turns if you missed something at the first look. So what did I learn from my test? AI Group 6 (The QRF HQ) arrived at the Compound too early. AI Groups 7 and 8 struggled navigating the built up area. AI Group 8 did not dismount at all. All dismounted units moved at ‘Quick’ speed. The AI generally moved Groups 7 and 8 by alternate bounds There was a traffic jam IVO the Police VCP. So now I have to go back into the editor and tweak some timings, try ‘Normal’ as a stance for the patrolling elements to see if this stops them moving at ‘Quick’ speeds and investigate why AI Group 8 did not dismount (likely problem is that I forgot to give them a ‘Passenger Dismount’ order). Incidentally I was right about the reason for AI Group 8 not dismounting – I had forgotten to give them a ‘Passengers Dismount’ order. Other tweaks I made were to change the routes taken by Groups 7 and 8 to avoid initial pathing issues. Otherwise no other changes were made. Obviously once I’ve done this I need to test it again. The next test was done using the same methodology (ie Scenario Author mode WEGO) but I didn’t bother orchestrating a battle with the QRF at the end as I have the data I need and I am beginning to think that pitching the whole QRF against the SEAL Team will prove too much of a challenge so I may make some changes later. This time around passengers dismounted successfully but the sequencing of arrival at the Compound of the QRF is still not right (ie the HQ still arrives first) and I still have a traffic jam at the defile where the Police VCP is located. Changing the patrol group stance to ‘Normal’ had no effect on their movement. So time to make some changes to the timings and run another test using the same methodology. This time around the sequencing worked a lot better and I have eliminated the worst of the traffic jams so I’m happy that I’ve fixed the AI to the point where it functions in a tolerably realistic manner. It is now time for another test to see how this plays out ‘for real’ because I have yet to pitch the Blue Force against anything other than the Compound Guards and Osama Bin Laden. This clearly is an important test so like all tests I need to be clear about what the ‘right’ result is and be aware of things to look out for. In simple terms these are the sorts of issues I’m looking for … I want to ensure that the Blue Force can navigate the map. I want to ensure that the Blue Force can get to the HLZ in reasonably good order. I’m concerned that that the Blue Force may run out of ammunition. I’m concerned that the VCP may cause too many problems. I’m concerned that the QRF will get to the VCP too quickly. I’m concerned that the QRF presents too much of an overmatch. This test was conducted in Scenario Author test, Real Time mode and was pretty interesting. The key points were: Compound clear @ 52 minutes. Patrolling units behave as intended. The Blue Force can navigate the map and arrive at the HLZ in reasonable order. Ammunition is tight All anti-tank natures were expended Most units were in the red for small arms natures MG Teams had 344 and 345 rounds respectively Blue casualties were 2 x WIA during the compound clearance and 3 x WIA during the extraction. Red casualties were 48 x KIA, 22 x WIA and 6 x BRDM-2 knocked out. Overall then it was a pretty successful test although of course this must be tempered by the fact that I was playing in Scenario Author mode and I know the Red plan. Most surprising is that the QRF was despatched with not too much fuss. However, despite it being pretty successful there are some tweaks that I want to make because I feel that the two red response forces really do snap hard at the heels of the Blue Force. What I’m going to do is simply rollback their arrival times/movement sequence times by a few minutes. I’m also going to pull in the patrol patterns of the two ‘Black Pathan’ security elements from a 50m radius to a 25m radius which is probably more reflective of the distance they would patrol. This time around I think I’m pretty much there and despite fighting actions in different parts of the map I’m getting consistent results Compound clear @51 minutes Patrolling units behave as intended The Blue Force can navigate the map and arrive at the HLZ in reasonable order. Ammunition is tight but less so than first time out: In terms of Anti-tank ammunition this time I had 2 x LAW and 1 x AT4 left Most teams were between amber and red for small arms natures MG teams had 150 and 356 rounds respectively Blue suffered no casualties and Red suffered 44 x KIA, 31 x WIA and 5 x BRDM-2 were knocked out with one immobilised. Still a couple of changes to make though. First off I’ve decided to widen the defile by the VCP because I’ve had a couple of BRDMs go into the trenches which just doesn’t look too clever and I need to check the arrival time of the QRF reinforcement Group because I didn’t have the reinforcement group arrival sequenced with the initial move timings out of the setup zone (25 minute reinforcement arrival time compared with initial moves in the AI Plan of 23 minutes for the HQ (AI Group 6) and 21 minutes for the two platoons (AI Groups 7 and 8)). I have now reset this reinforcement group arrival time from 25 minutes to 20 minutes. You may think that this is an unnecessary change because the AI generally performed as intended in my last test. However I think it is best to fix it just in case it throws up something untoward down the track and I also think it may have had an effect on the dismount orders down the track. After making the changes I tested the plan again and this time around I’m happy that everything is performing as intended. Respective results this time were: Compound clear @52 minutes. Blue casualties = 2 x KIA. Red casualties = 40 x KIA, 39 x WIA and 6 x AFV destroyed. Blue again had reasonable ammunition states at mission end: Atk natures = 2 x LAW remaining. Small arms natures were variable with two teams in the amber zone. MG team #1 = 250 x rds, MG Team #2 = 121 x rds. So with everything working, it is time for some graphics to illustrate what I’ve done. As this is a tutorial I’m not going to show you the whole plan. The following sequence of images shows 1 Platoon of the Pakistani Army QRF which comprises 3 x BRDM-2 and 3 x dismounted teams. Points to note on the images are the location of the painted zones and the settings on the panel in the bottom left of each orders screen, noting that after the initial screenshot there are two AI orders per image. Remember I had some misgivings earlier about how the AI might behave with dismounts and troops in the same group and whether I might need to reorganise my groups? Well as you have seen, apart from a few tweaks here and there I was able to get the thing working fairly easily after my tests. Creating AI plans is not particularly hard but, if you forgive the pun, it helps if you have a plan to start with, based on a supporting narrative. You’ll be pleased to know that we have now conquered the sum of all fears that is the AI. My next post will deal with objectives and victory conditions.

Now for the slightly challenging bit … the AI. So I won’t deny that this can be tricky and I have seen heated arguments and discussions about how various bits of it work. I can only show you what I know and how I get things to work using the AI in the context of this mission. Whether my method is the right way or the best method is another discussion, all I can say is that I can achieve tolerable results. First off though I need to do some housekeeping in terms of my earlier unit picks because most of them I have only picked and placed but not set them up as reinforcements. I need to do this now because the AI works to a timed script. I have already shown you the mechanics of setting reinforcements so I won’t go over that ground again. What I do need to do is remind you of timings and narratives and although I have said it before, the narrative is really important. For me it is half the battle to programming the AI because if you know what you’re trying to replicate and what you want the AI to do, it allows you to script the AI more efficiently. First a recap on timings. Compound clearance takes no more than 10 minutes. Moving to the top LH corner of the map after clearing the compound takes 17 minutes Moving to the ‘river’ line takes 35 minutes. Moving to the bottom of the map takes 39 minutes. Moving to the exfiltration zone in the bottom RH corner of the map takes 45 minutes. The Pakistani Army QRF could realistically arrive any time after 15-20 minutes. The Police Special Commando Squad could arrive any time in the 20-30 minute window. The Agent Group will arrive IVO the safe house at about 15 minutes into the mission. The remainder of the Blue Force is about 30 minutes flight time away So as part of my housekeeping I need to (initial rough cut settings): Set the Agent Group as a reinforcement arriving at 15 minutes. Set the Pakistani Army QRF as a reinforcement arriving at 20 minutes. Set the Police Special Commando Squad to arrive at 25 minutes. With the remainder of the Blue Force, I’m still not sure whether I will use these or not so I’m just going to set their arrival time to 3 hours just to get them out of the way for this initial batch of AI programming and testing. AI programming can be fiddly and it looks daunting but once you find systems that work you should be able to knock up workable AI plans without too much difficulty. First of all there is the AI screen which is shown in the following image. The first important thing to understand with the AI is that it defaults to ‘Plan 1 (Blue)’ when you enter the editor. So every time you go in there, make sure that you click on the plan that you are working on. This mission is only going to have one Red AI plan so first off I need to select ‘Plan 1 (Red)’. Once I’ve done that I need to tell CMSF how frequently I want it to use this plan. The options are: Used Frequently Used Sometimes Used Rarely Not Used These settings mean pretty much what they say on the tin. JonS advocates ‘Used Frequently’ for all plans based on the rationale that all plans should be of equal quality and therefore it shouldn’t matter which plan CMSF selects when it loads. This is a viewpoint I pretty much agree with so my advice would be to default to ‘Used Frequently’. Here’s how it looks. Conversely you might be thinking ‘Well why have a ‘Not Used’ option’. This actually is really useful for testing where your scenario has more than one AI Plan. Let’s say you have two AI Plans ready to test. By setting AI Plan 2 to ‘Not Used’ it means that you know that when the scenario loads that you will be testing AI Plan 1. When you want to test AI Plan 2, all you do is set AI Plan 1 to ‘Not Used’ and AI Plan 2 to ‘Used Frequently’. Of course you need to remember to reset both plans to ‘Used Frequently’ before you release your scenario. The next thing to understand is that the AI works on what CM calls ‘Groups’ and these are numbered 1-8 with Group 1 being the default. The limited number of groups can be pretty restricting when you start designing large missions or missions with lots of moving parts because you’ll either run out of groups to assign or you have to rein your ambitions in. For this mission I should be able to achieve the required results without too much difficulty because in broad terms I have the following ‘Groups’ Pathan Security Group #1 Patrol Squad Pathan Security Group #2 Patrol Squad Pakistan Police VCP Patrol Squad Police Special Commando Unit Pakistani Army QRF. The rest of the Red Force is just going to sit in place so I don’t really need to do much with the AI for them if anything at all. From the above then, you can see that conceptually I need 5 Groups. However the Pakistani Army QRF is quite a large unit and has a mix of vehicles and soldiers so in AI terms, it will probably be at least two groups and possibly more. To start with then Non-moving units will be ‘AI Group 1’ Pathan Security Group #1 Patrol Squad will be ‘AI Group 2’ Pathan Security Group #2 Patrol Squad will be ‘AI Group 3’ Pakistan Police VCP Patrol Squad will be ‘AI Group 4’ Police Special Commando Unit will be ‘AI Group 5’ Pakistani Army QRF will be ‘AI Groups 6-8’. Now, just because I have used all 8 groups, it doesn’t mean that you have to use them all but as you can see from the above, a small number of units/moving parts quickly uses up those 8 AI groups! So the broad church represented by ‘AI Group 1’ includes: Osama Bin Laden Compound Guard Units Static Pathan Security Group Units (eg the non-patrolling ones). Static elements of the Pakistan Police VCP (eg the non patrolling groups). The civilian ‘Property Defenders’ As you already know, these are deployed all over the map and I want them just to stand and defend in place. I have already set their alertness through their soft settings in the unit pick and I have put them where I want them to be. The net result is that I have to do nothing in the AI for ‘Group 1’. The added bonus is that ‘Group 1’ is the default so I don’t have to take any affirmative action in identifying these elements as ‘Group 1’. See …. Who said that AI planning was difficult??!!!! Ok so it is more complex than that and ‘AI Group 2’ will demonstrate this. So step 1 needs you to identify the unit as ‘AI Group 2’. To do this you need to go into the Unit Selection Screen and find the relevant unit. Once you’ve found it (this where naming units as you pick them helps) you select it and hit the ‘F2’ key. Once you have done this, the text ‘A2’ will appear next to the unit. Here’s how it looks … An important point is to ensure that you select the exact unit. By this I mean that if I had selected the higher HQ of the unit, all of Pathan Security Group #1 would become AI Group 2. This would mean that the whole unit would follow the Group 2 AI plan. That is not what I want, I want the other elements to remain where they are ‘guarding’ the commercial premises while the patrolling group conducts perimeter patrol. Another point to note is that when I selected and named my patrol element with the ‘F2’ key, in addition to the text ‘A2’ appearing next to that unit, the text ‘A*’ appeared next to the higher HQ. All this means is that elements of units under command are in more than one AI Group – it does not mean that the whole unit is AI Group 2. With that done I now have to have a concept of what I want to do and timings before actually scripting the AI Group 2 plan. The narrative is that on hearing helicopters and gunfire at the target compound, the chief of security has alerted the patrol group and ordered them to patrol the perimeter. The magic time for this to occur is 10-15 minutes and is based on the fact that I already know that the Compound takes no more than 10 minutes to assault and then a ‘fudge factor’ of 5 minutes for the decision-making and the guys getting their sh1t together. The other factor is that this group is closest to the Safe House that the Blue Agent Group will arrive at in the same timeframe. Part of the reason for having this unit is to cause problems for the Blue Player so it meets the design effect. Of course I could just have them patrol from the start but that just creates more work in the AI Editor and I am inherently lazy and my laziness will be invisible to the player. The other ‘lazy’ element of this plan is that because I have an idea of the timings I know that there is no point in extending the ‘patrol’ timings much beyond 30 minutes because the Blue Player will be long gone. Back to the AI menu then and remembering to ensure that you are working on ‘Plan 1 Red’, select the ‘Group’ drop down and click ‘Group 2’. Once you’ve done that select the ‘Order Sequence’ drop down and you’ll be presented with a list beginning ‘Setup’ and then a series of order numbers from 2-16 (the maximum) which are currently greyed out. This is what it looks like … It is worth saying a couple of things about orders. First up, orders do not have to have map zones painted on the map. If there is no map zone, the unit will stay in place and action all the other components of the order such as their combat stance and suchlike. The second important concept is that painted zones are the end point of the order not the start point. So for my patrolling group, I already have them placed on the map where I want them. I have no need to paint a setup zone so I can move on to the other factors. The setup order is slightly different from the numbered orders in that it doesn’t have all the other factors available which is all fine and dandy, no real need to dwell on it. Here are the factors you have … What I call ‘Building Status’ and these are pretty much what they say on the tin … Rooftops Upper Floors Mixed (this is the default) Lower Floors I have left this at the default of ‘Mixed’ but to be honest as the unit is already placed this will have no effect. It would only come into play if I painted an order end zone in a building and then the unit would try to occupy whichever floors you specify. The next is what I call ‘Unit Posture’ and these are pretty descriptive too …. Active – is described in the manual as ‘shoot early and shoot often’. I use this most of the time because it means that the moment a unit sees an enemy they will open up … and this is a wargame, not peacegame after all!!!! Normal – Somewhat unhelpfully there is no description of ‘Normal’ in the manual – I take it to mean that contact with the enemy is not expected but people are covering their arcs. It is the default setting and for this group, it is the setting I will use for the setup order. Cautious – is described in the manual as shoot only when a clear target presents itself. Possible uses might be in scenarios where the group wants to conserve ammunition or is trying to infiltrate. I have used it but I think only rarely. Ambush – This order has settings for 1000, 600, 300, 150 and 75 metres. Again, this is pretty self-explanatory in that units will only open fire when enemy units close within that distance. This is a good one for setting up AI ambushes. I’m pretty sure that the rule is not absolute though – if the AI Group is engaged by an enemy unit, the Tac AI will often kick in and allow it to return fire. Soft settings in the Unit Pick will also no doubt have an impact. Hide – Again what it says on the tin. The group will hide and avoid attracting attention. If the group is engaged it may return fire but other units not engaged will continue to hide. Finally there is what I have called the ‘Dismount or No Dismount Status’. Fairly obviously this only applies to units mounted in vehicles. If the unit has no vehicles or dismounts the AI ignores the order. The options are ‘Dismount’ or ‘No Dismount’. There are some nuances here in that a ‘Dismount’ order is enacted before the group reaches the painted map zone and once dismounted a unit cannot remount their vehicles. For my AI Group 2, this is irrelevant because the unit has no vehicles so again the AI will not take it into account. I have left the setting at its default of ‘No Dismount’. I’ll deal with the ‘extra’ unit postures found once you get to the numbered orders when we get to them. The next component is time. As I have previously stated, you have to have a good appreciation of time and space to put together a decent AI plan because the AI works on a ‘timed script’. Timings count from the start of the mission in the AI Editor. This can be confusing because of course in game, the timer counts down whereas under the AI hood the timer counts up. So in a 1 hour mission, when the player has played 10 minutes, the game clock will say ’50 minutes remaining’ while the AI clock reads it as 10 minutes elapsed. In the AI editor, there are two time choices of ‘Exit Before’ and ‘Exit After’ and I have seen, and participated in, more heated discussions about how these work in both the Beta and main forums. As I said at the very start of this section of the tutorial, I will tell you how it works for me. According to the manual ‘Exit Before’ means that the group will try its best to get to the next order before the set time. According to the manual ‘Exit After’, means that the group will not move until that time is reached. Points to note are that in my experience you don’t need to use both ‘Exit Before’ and ‘Exit After’ for each order so choose the appropriate one for the effect you want to achieve. In the context of my ‘AI Group 2’ I want it to stay where it is until 15 minutes have elapsed and then start patrolling. This makes ‘Exit After’ with a setting of 15 minutes as the solution to the problem. To set the timings it is a just a case of clicking the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ keys until the clock ticks over to your desired time. If you just left click, the timer moves in 30 second increments. If you do ‘SHIFT-CLICK’ the clock will move in 5 minute increments. So three ‘SHIFT-CLICKs’ later on ‘Exit After’ are all I need to do here. As a failsafe I always set the ‘Exit Before; setting to ’00:00’ in these instances. Once I’ve done that I click the ‘Add’ button which sets the order up. Doing this activates the ‘Order 2’ option allowing you to set the parameters and timings for that order. On then to ‘Order 2’ and once you have got to ‘Order 2’ an extra option is available in the interface which I call ‘Movement Stance’ but is called ‘Order Type’ in the CMSF manual. These are the options … Max Assault - Max Assault tells the Group to stop and engage with maximum firepower whenever each unit sees an opportunity to do so. Now this might seem an attractive order type but the nuance with this order type is that you can only use this with units that have the ability to split squads. This therefore replicates the command in the normal game interface called ‘Assault’. Basically, because so few units in the Red Force Pick can split squads, if you are programming a Red AI plan you are unlikely to be using it often. Assault – (from the manual) this order emphasises combat over movement. Units ordered to assault will generally interrupt their movement when facing the opportunity to engage the enemy, but will not remain stationary for too long. Or as I put it this is similar to Max Assault only with a bit less shooting. The same rules about split squads and the lack of them in the Red Force pick apply. Advance – this is the default setting and probably the most commonly used AI movement order (I pretty much use it exclusively and it is the order type I am using in this instance). The manual describes the behaviour as ‘Units instructed to Advance decide what they should do, but generally it is to keep moving after taking some shots at spotted enemy units’. Now this may not be exactly what you want but if you can’t use ‘Assault’ or ‘Max Assault’ due to having un-splittable squads it is the only show in town. Quick – I think this pretty much is an exact replication of the ‘Quick’ order type found in the normal game interface so it means that units will cover ground quickly, not tire out quickly and will ping the odd shot back at the enemy. As my AI Group 2 is a patrolling unit, it is not appropriate here but it is a useful order type nonetheless. Dash – I think this order type is an exact replication of the ‘Fast’ order type found in the normal game interface so the group will move at maximum speed, become tired very quickly and be very unlikely to fire. I rarely use this order type. So those are the order types, now the only thing to do is cover off on painting the order end zone. This is quite simple and just involves clicking on the area of the map that you want the unit to end up at. The nuances are that you must ensure that you paint a large enough zone for the unit to occupy and that the zones do not represent an orders path. What does this mean? With regard to the zone size in this instance it is a fairly moot point because my AI Group 2 unit is a single squad so painting a single action spot more than suffices and it allows me to paint exactly where I want the unit to end up. However, if my AI Group 2 comprised say a platoon with a platoon HQ and 3 x squads I should paint an area of at least 4 x action spots. Now the Tac AI will make some adjustments so it is not an absolute rule but I can guarantee that if your AI Group is a tank company of 10 tanks and you paint a single action spot as the end zone, the AI will either ignore the order or will do something that you don’t want it to do. The second point about an orders path is adequately described in the manual … ‘The TacAI determines, based on a Plan’s Orders and tactical Commands, how to get from one Map Zone to another. A Group will NOT follow a long and skinny Map Zone; it will simply move all its units onto it and stop before moving onto the next Order’s Map Zone. If you want to influence the path a group of units takes, issue several orders as you would waypoints’. So those are the mechanics and the next screenshot shows the painted ‘Order 2’ for AI Group 2. I’m not going to go into a detailed narrative about all of the orders so I’ll just summarise the settings I have used to achieve the effect in this schematic …. Setup – Mixed, Normal, No Dismount, Exit After 15:00, Exit Before 00:00 Order 2 – Advance, Mixed, Active, No Dismount, Exit After 16:00, Exit Before 00:00 Order 3 - Advance, Mixed, Active, No Dismount, Exit After 17:00, Exit Before 00:00 Order 4 - Advance, Mixed, Active, No Dismount, Exit After 19:00, Exit Before 00:00 Order 5 - Advance, Mixed, Active, No Dismount, Exit After 21:00, Exit Before 00:00 Order 6 - Advance, Mixed, Active, No Dismount, Exit After 22:00, Exit Before 00:00 Order 7 - Advance, Mixed, Active, No Dismount, Exit After 23:00, Exit Before 00:00 Order 8 - Advance, Mixed, Active, No Dismount, Exit After 24:00, Exit Before 00:00 Order 9 - Advance, Mixed, Active, No Dismount, Exit After 26:00, Exit Before 00:00 Order 10 - Advance, Mixed, Active, No Dismount, Exit After 27:00, Exit Before 00:00 Order 11 - Advance, Upper Floors, Active, No Dismount, Exit After 00:00, Exit Before 00:00 Order 11 is not shown on the schematic but basically involves the unit returning to its start point which is the 2-Storey building where the first arrow comes from. So that was all nice and simple but does illustrate how quickly you can burn through your 16 Order limit because as you can see I used 11 just setting up a two cycle patrol. I have done similar with my other Black Pathan Security patrol and with the Police VCP using the same mechanics but different timings. As I’ve shown you the mechanics there is little point in going through it all here. That covers off on basic AI planning, in the next post I will deal with some more advanced AI planning.

I will PDF it mate - but probably not until I get back home which will mean that this will be my Christmas present to you all.

I am back again, to recap my previous post, here is a summary of the things I’m going to add to the mission: Platoon-sized Pakistani Army QRF. CIA Handler and Agent plus possibly one or two family members. Property defending residents. Armed private security guards. Pakistani Police road block and patrol and possibly a SWAT team equivalent. Now because I want to do a bit of testing as I add these elements I’m going to deal with the Agent and Agent Handler group (known henceforth as ‘Agent Group’ in this narrative) first followed by the Property Defending Residents (henceforth known as ‘Property Defenders’). Initially I just want to test that the Agent Group can be seen and attacked by Property Defenders so I’m just going to pick a few and plonk them on the map and then see at what ranges the Property Defenders start spraying and praying. I may need to fiddle around with hard and soft factors to make this work so be prepared for some testing and adjusting. First off the bat then, let’s look at the Agent Group and here is where I introduce a little known trick in the CM engine because of course the Blue Force pick does not have agents. To enable Blue to pick from the Red force pick you have to go into the ‘Data’ screen and change the mission from ‘Blue vs Red’ to ‘Red vs Red’. This then gives you the full suite of Red units to pick from. Once you’ve picked your units you then go back to the data screen and change it back to ‘Blue vs Red’. The screenshot below shows where this is. Starting with the CIA Handler who will be called ‘Tom’. The image below shows how I’ve set him up and renamed him from IED Cell to ‘CIA Handler’ and called the triggerman ‘Tom’. For hard and soft factors you can see the choices I’ve made. I won’t dwell on them but suffice to say I’ve chosen them based on what I think would be right. Importantly now that I’ve changed from ‘Red vs Red’ I must remember to use the ‘Purchase Blue’ screen otherwise ‘Tom’ becomes a double agent!!! Next the Agent and his family – I’ve opted not to bother with the family – just because I don’t think they’re going to add much value. I don’t want the agent to be armed so the Force Element will be the UNCON ‘Spy’ unit. I am going to pick one of these to replicate the Agent and I will give him pretty poor hard and soft values to reflect the fact that he has no military training and that he will be frightened and unfamiliar with what is going on and won’t have been hitting the gym every day. This is part of my rationale for including the Agent Group as it means that the player will have to shepherd a slow and unpredictable person around the battle space. Finally as part of this segment I want to deal with the ‘Property Defenders’. In reality these are civilians who will fight tooth and nail to defend their property but may not have military training, will not have the best equipment etc so I will give them fairly poor hard and soft values too. The property defenders need to be armed so I am going with a similar solution to ‘Tom’ by picking an IED unit, stripping out the IEDs leaving me with an AK-47 armed individual. As I mentioned earlier on, I want to run some tests to see how these elements react to each other and if necessary test and adjust. So with my ‘Property Defenders’ I initially went with the lowest experience value of ‘Conscript’ which would be reflective of their ability but unfortunately in testing I pretty much had to move my Spy Group virtually on top of them to provoke a reaction. However they did react to the SEAL team from a slightly greater (but still really close) distance. So following further testing I manipulated what I think are the two important factors in this calculus. The first one is obvious which is to increase the experience level of the ‘Property Defenders’. The second is less obvious but I touched on it in one of my earlier posts and it relates to the ‘Civilian Density’ setting within the data menu. This was originally set as ‘Sparse’ and as a result I have changed it to ‘None’. Is it reflective of the environment … no, however it has a direct impact on how UNCON units are spotted. In simple terms, the greater the civilian density the harder UNCONs are to spot so by dialling down the values I can increase the likelihood of them being spotted which is the effect I want to achieve. Additionally, unless the player reads this thread or cracks the scenario editor open, they will never know what the values are. My overall reflections on this testing is that I can’t really get the exact results I wanted to achieve which were to make it possible for ‘Property Defenders’ to be able to spot out to about 4-5 action spots. However things are what they are so rather than brood about it, I will stick with my final settings and lay out the ‘Property Defenders’. No need for details here because I have shown you the mechanics but the art/science of laying them out requires a bit of what the military call ‘Red Teaming’ and/or Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace. If you look at either my planning thread on the CMRT board or anything that @Bil Hardingberger has done in his many AARs you get the idea. Put simply, I don’t want to put ‘Property Defenders’ all over the map, just in those places that I think will sit close to likely exfiltration routes that the player will take. Remember the effect is just to generate thought and planning in the mind of the player. However what is important is that I record the numbers of ‘Property Defenders’ that I pick and deploy in case I decide to set an ‘Enemy Casualty’ parameter as a victory condition for the Blue Player. The magic number is 15 for those that are interested. Now on to the Private Security Guards (PSGs) and as with the ‘Property Defenders’ the intent here is to create problems in the battle space rather than make them something that the player has to kill. If you recall, I had identified two areas on the map that looked like business premises that would be likely to employ PSGs. The complexes both have two entrances so it is logical and plausible that they would have permanent guards at those entrances. In addition, they probably have a mini QRF or patrol force to check the perimeter. The other part of the PSG narrative is to ‘Red Team’ their likely response to the sound of helicopters and gunfire in the area. Realistically they would probably hunker down initially and then when the gunfire subsides would patrol the perimeter of their premises. They absolutely aren’t going to go charging around the countryside hunting Navy SEALs … as everybody hears in the workplace ‘not my job mate …’ Having established that I need a unit pick that will give me the option of permanently placing people on the gates and a small patrol force. The patrol force will of course require an AI plan but I’ll deal with that later. Despite my earlier disparaging comments about Ninjas, for variety I have decided that the Private Security Company will be called ‘Black Pathan Security’ which now allows me to use the Fighter (aka ‘Ninja’ black uniform) pick. As I have covered off previously on the force pick mechanics I will not spend any time on the detail save to talk about hard and soft factors. A typical PSG profile would involve basic weapons, limited ammunition, average to poor leadership, average fitness, low to average motivation and some form of training so I’ll go with settings that reflect that profile. I don’t intend to fiddle with the settings too much as I now have a pretty good idea of how the lower end settings work from my previous test with the ‘Property Defenders’. Picking these was a bit fiddly because weapon allocation throws up some randomness – as I said what I wanted was basic weapons and my first picks gave me sniper rifles in the mix. To get around this I had to delete and pick again using the same settings. In the end I had to do this four times to finally end up with two groups that had no sniper rifles. While I’m not going to create an AI plan yet for my proposed patrolling groups, I have used the ‘Rename’ feature in the force selection menu to name the patrol groups so that I can easily identify them later which will save me some faffing around later trying to find them. Also, as with previous Red force picks, I have made a note of the headcounts and the sum total of the PSGs is 24 men. Next Force Pick is the Pakistani Police checkpoint and this caused me a few difficulties which inevitably involved some form of compromise. Ideally I wanted to pick a unit from the Special Forces Pick because of the uniform colour which is at least gives me a black coloured top and a helmet of the right pattern. However this proved unworkable in realism terms because Special Forces units come with NVGs which is not something a standard police patrol would have and it would unrealistically increase their spotting capabilities. In the end I had to park my aspiration to have them look like the Pakistan Police and focus on capabilities and effect. The end result of this was to pick a Militia Battalion which have plain green uniforms. I then looked at the unit in the ‘Deploy Red’ screen to find elements that would resemble a Police patrol and ended up with the Bn HQ comprising 5 x guys armed with 2 x pistols and 3 x AKs, A Coy HQ comprising 3 x guys armed with 2 x pistols and 1 x AK and finally the A Coy Command Team comprising 6 x guys armed with 5 x AKs and 1 x RPD. The plan is to have the two HQ teams static on the checkpoint and the Command Team as the satelliting patrol. As you can see above I have already taken note of the numbers (14). Hard and soft values are subject to change based on later testing, for now they are Experience – Regular, Motivation – Normal, Fitness – Fit, Leadership – 0, Ammo – Scarce, Equipment – Poor and Vehicles (not that it matters) – OK. It’s been a while since we’ve had a graphic so I’ll now construct the Vehicle Checkpoint (VCP) using flavour objects in the map editor. Another solution would have been to use MG bunkers in the Red Force Pick but these have limited FOV and I want to give these guys the best chance of spotting any SEALs or Agent Groups transiting the vicinity. So I’m going to use drums and I want the stripey ones. Flavour objects can be a bit fiddly because you don’t have any reference to what the numbers ‘1’, ‘2’ and ‘3’ mean. Community members have produced reference guides but bottom line is that I just prefer selecting one of each and placing them on the map in different action spots. I then go into the 3D preview and actually look at them so that I can see which one I want. I can then delete the unwanted ones in 3D view by hitting CTRL-CLICK with my cursor on the unwanted item. Manipulating flavour objects is handily explained in a panel on the bottom LH corner of the map editor once you select ‘Flavor Objects’. This image shows the interface. So after some SHIFT-CLICK activity in the 3D Preview to line up my oil drums and then going to the ‘Deploy Red’ screen to put my recently picked VCP team, this is the finished result. I have to think about the satellite patrol when I get to programming the AI but that is a ‘later’ task. The Police SWAT or Special Commando team is next. This made for a fairly easy pick in terms of finding something that looks like the real thing because of course the Special Forces Company is clad all in Black. Given that the intent of this force is just to add another factor to consider for the player and I think we are really pushing credulity by having it a part of the mission I don’t want to overcook this force. I may actually delete it later but we’ll see about that. So I picked a Special Forces Company and stripped everything out of it apart from the Coy HQ and associated UAZ-469 utility vehicle. This gives me a lightly equipped team of six guys armed with 6 x AK variants and an UGL (and NVGs). This should be more than enough because all I plan for them to do is to arrive at the top LH corner of the map and then move to the Compound to ‘secure the crime scene’. In my view if the player even sees them then the mission is really going downhill. Hard and soft values chosen were: Experience – Crack, Motivation – High, Fitness – Fit, Leadership - +2, Supply – Full, Equipment – Poor and Vehicle Condition – OK. A slight nuance to note with this force pick is that the UAZ-469 does not have a dedicated driver so when the unit dismounts, the vehicle goes nowhere. This may be relevant when I think about AI plans. Anyway, here is what they look like in their entry area. Now for the Pakistani Army which of course is not modelled in CMSF. This pick will inevitably involve compromises and the suspension of reality. Originally I was looking at a BTR mounted Mech Inf platoon mainly because the type is in very limited service in the Pakistani Army and Mech Inf uniforms look similar to Pakistani Army uniforms. However in the end I went for the BRDM Recce Coy as, although it is named as a company in terms of dismounted strength I get 27 dismounts which is about platoon-sized. Those numbers are just about right and I have the added advantage of getting 7 x BRDM-2s and I have two separate manoeuvre elements which gives me flexibility when designing AI plans. As to hard and soft factors I went with Experience – Veteran, Motivation – High, Fitness – Fit, Leadership - +1, Supply – Full, Equipment – Poor, Vehicles – OK. As with previous picks I may fiddle with these later if testing requires it. Overall headcount for this unit is the 27 dismounts plus two crewmen in each vehicle (2x7) = 41. I then went hit ‘Deploy Red’ and put them on their likely entry point at the top RH corner of the map. The image shows part of this unit, note that I have made sure that they are all facing in the correct direction – one of those many little touches that add polish to your mission. We’re really making progress but things are about to get more tricky because after a bit of housekeeping it is time to delve into the object of many fears …. the AI.

Heaps to do yet mate ...

So with the exhausting task of getting the map made, it is now back to the fun stuff. That is not to say map making isn’t fun, I do enjoy the creative aspect of it and I get real pleasure out of creating a final map that reflects the ground. It is just the mechanics of the process particularly with large maps because it is such a time soak without the overlay feature … please please please Battlefront etc etc. This next section is all about developing the narrative and adding complexity because right now all we have is a very quick smash and grab attack on a compound which in previous tests lasted no longer than 10 minutes which while fun, is not much of a mission. If you recall previous posts I have some ideas about developing the scenario and this is where we get into the nitty gritty of it. First of all, we have no Osama Bin Laden target yet, all I had previously in the Compound were the other residents who I changed to Osama Bin Laden’s bodyguards/security detail. As this mission is about the kill/capture of Osama Bin Laden I think you’d feel cheated if he wasn’t there. There are a couple of possibilities here such as: Consider capturing him. Exploring whether he could escape as part of an AI plan. Making him difficult to kill First off I’ve already ruled out capture because it just isn’t something that the game engine can handle unless I made him a Blue Spy but then I would have put him somewhere that the Red security detail couldn’t see him and kill him. In the close confines of the compound that is just too much like hard work and at the end of the day, he was killed on the night so he will be picked from the Red Force pick. Escaping as part of an AI plan is more feasible but my earlier tests show that it is pretty much a physical impossibility unless I change the Blue setup to have the strike force ‘land’ further away from the compound. Again, to keep with the spirit of historical accuracy I just think this stretches plausibility too far so I am ruling that out. This leaves me with the option of making him difficult to kill and due to the limitations of the force pick I have to use some form of specialist or spy. Making him a spy would mean that initially he will be difficult to spot but spies are unarmed so I am going to make him an IED specialist which I think gives the mission a real twist because it gives the plausible option of Osama Bin Laden blowing himself up in a moment of glory and killing hated infidels at the same time. This also appeals to what I think Special Forces operations should be all about which is overcoming extreme situations through aggression, firepower and superior training – it is about exploiting split second advantages so the effect should be that a reasonably competent player should have no problems. Now I find IEDs really difficult to get to work properly in the AI but in this instance I’m not too bothered whether the IED works or not, the key thing is that it is theoretically possible that the compound will detonate in a ball of flame. The other advantage is that IED specialists are armed so if nothing else he could potentially take out a few members of SEAL Team 6. In terms of selection, it is important to understand how IEDs work and balance that against what I’m trying to do with the IED. In this instance I’m simulating Osama Bin Laden wearing a suicide vest which of course is not something that exists in the editor as a unit pick. I have three options which are Radio, Cell and Wire IEDs. I’ll rule out Radio and Cell straight away, not only because they can be defeated by ECM but also because typical (but not all) suicide vests are triggered by wire. Each have arming distances of which wire is the shortest but for the purposes of the effect I’m trying to achieve in this mission, it is unimportant. So now it is a case of picking the unit and sorting out the name and hard and soft factors. I have covered these steps before so I have summarised them in the image below. Note that I have set the hard and soft factors to reflect those of the ‘Sentry’ groups because accounts indicate that Osama Bin Laden was very much awake when the raid took place. Now all I have to do is deploy the unit which I will not illustrate because we’ve gone through these steps before and there is nothing difficult about it. However the slight problem I did face and this was new to me is that you cannot set up IEDs in buildings. So my desired replication of a suicide vest ain’t gonna happen. However I am over it so as a compromise I have placed the IED somewhere in the compound. Now this is the important bit with IEDs and comes back to what I said about understanding how they work. In essence, for an IED to trigger it has to be activated, and the triggerman has to be in range of the device, be able to see the device, and have sufficient morale and a functional trigger device for it to operate. Activating the device is unnecessary as the AI does that automatically (although I did check this by testing). I then made sure that Osama Bin Laden could see the device by using a target command from his setup position to confirm LOS. Range is not a consideration as wire devices have a 100m range and I know I am well within that. So with that done, as I alluded to in the previous paragraph, I ran a single test in real time mode using Scenario Author test mode. This pretty much gave me similar results to my earlier tests in that the compound took just under 10 minutes to clear, the US force suffered 5 x WIA and had a reasonable amount of ammunition left. The device did not detonate but as I said I’m not too worried about that – the point is theoretically it could detonate and I will create that uncertainty for the player by mentioning it in the briefing … remembering of course that this is all about narrative and complexity. Also, because I forgot to do it earlier I extended my test to get a feel for time and distance. This is vitally important in terms of ensuring that the mission is the right length. Clearly there is no point in making a mission 45 minutes long if it takes a minimum of an hour for the player to cover the ground or complete the tasks you’ve set. It is not only about getting the mission length right though. Having an appreciation of time and distance is vital if you’re going to sequence the arrival of reserves correctly and it is absolutely vital for AI planning and programming. The following graphic shows the timings counting down from one hour taken by the group to clear the compound and then move sequentially to the areas shown. The bottom line is that if I cropped the mission to 45 minutes it would be a big ask for the player to cover the ground so right now I don’t need to change my mission length. So we now have Osama Bin Laden sorted … now for the rest of it and the rest of it involves a combination of things I have been thinking about. This is where we return to the narrative and if you recall from earlier posts my limited research has identified that the compound was close to a Pakistani Army Base and from my imagery search I have identified that is a couple of kilometres away. This is where we get into the realms if plausible reality and depart from the facts. The trick here is to keep within the bounds if plausible reality. So here are my thoughts on plausible reality. It is reasonable to expect that such a large base will have strong guard force / QRF (Quick Reaction Force) It is reasonable to expect that the QRF would be about platoon strength. A reasonable response time would be 15 minutes (pushing it) to 30 minutes (possibly too long to fit into the scenario). The most likely entry route would be in the top RH quadrant of the map and they would likely march to the sound of the guns (ie head for Osama Bin Laden’s Compound) first. While the detail will be sorted out in testing, the aim I’m trying to achieve is to create some problems for the player requiring them to think about options and plan accordingly. The initial and obvious effect being that if they tool around in the compound too long they are going to have to beat off a platoon’s worth of soldiers and I know from my testing already that while that should be doable, they will pretty much be out of ammo by the end of that encounter. An important point to note for later on down the track when I think about briefing graphics and orders is whether I’m going to reveal this information to the player and if so, how will I do that. I’ll deal with the mechanics of the Force Pick later. Also right from the get go, I realised that if the compound assault took no more than 10 minutes and the distance to an exfiltration point in the bottom RH corner of the map is only a few hundred metres then the mission could be done and dusted in half an hour and would be pretty simple. Particularly when you consider the bounds of reality above regarding arrival times of a Pakistani Army QRF. I want to stretch this out more and you will recall that in my last test I investigated how long it would take to move from the Compound to the top LH corner of the map. Inevitably there was a reason for this and the basis of that comes from my initial research which stated that CIA operatives were part of the raid and that Human Intelligence (HUMINT) played a part in actually locating Osama Bin Laden. So again, while not something that actually happened on the night, it is plausible that we could factor in the extraction of a HUMINT source and his CIA handler as part of the mission. Agent handling 101 states that you always protect your sources which adds to the credibility of the narrative. So given that, I am going to add a CIA handler and an agent (and possibly his family members) to the mission having them arrive at a safe house somewhere near the top LH corner of the map at about 15 minutes into the mission. This adds to the decisions that the player has to make – does he send his SEALS to RV with the agent or does he hang on in the compound and wait for the agent and CIA handler to come to him. As you already know that I’m planning to have the Pakistani Army bear down on the compound, this is another factor that the player has to consider. Additionally, when I get to it later, I need to think about victory points for the CIA Handler and the Spy. This comes back to agent handling 101 – ‘protect the source’ so I will likely make this group a Unit Objective for the Red Force and allocate a lot of Victory Points (VPs) to it. Again, the mechanics of the Force Pick I will cover later. Linked to the inclusion of the agent and his handler and to the concept of adding decisions and difficulty for the player I need to add some more ‘enemy’ to pose a threat to this group and the SEALS. Again however I have to keep it plausible so some research is required. Fortunately and rather conveniently for my purposes, the search term ‘gun ownership in Pakistan’ pulled up this article … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Pakistan As you can see from the article, guns are widespread in Pakistan and particularly in this part of it and this suits my purpose ideally because the ‘enemy’ I had in mind were civilians defending their properties. As a Force Pick I will again use the IED pick and delete the IEDs leaving me with an armed triggerman. I’ll buy quite a few of these and scatter them around the various buildings on the map, particularly those buildings that I think will sit close to routes I think the player will take. The intent here is not to create more people for the player to kill, it is to create entities that the player has to avoid and if the player does not take proper account of the risk, could get penalised in the form of a burst of AK fire going down range. When combined with my intent to make the agent and handler high VP targets for the AI, this will be a very real consideration in the player’s mind. This of course is another thing that I will need to consider in terms of briefing content. The mechanics of the Force Pick will again be dealt with later. So what else can I do to add complexity? Well while making the map I identified two large compounds which look as if they might be small factories or business premises. Whether they are or not is another matter and I’m not going to waste time trying to find out. The important thing is that they could be and for the purposes I intend, given the gun ownership rate in the area, it is reasonable to expect that they would have some form of armed contracted security force. As before, the intent is just to put some armed entities on the map that the player ought to avoid rather than engage in combat. Again, I will deal with the mechanics later and I need to think about briefing content. The following graphic shows those locations. With all of the above, it would be fair to say that the mission now presents a lot more challenges and complexity but I’m not done yet although I do need to be careful not to overdo it. The final factor then will be the Pakistani Police Force. There are two effects I’m trying to create with these guys, first to generate another plausible response force to encourage the player to get a move on but also to have a force towards the bottom / bottom RH corner of the map to create problems close to the exfiltration zone. I came up with these ideas as I was putting the map together. In essence the concept is to have a road block with a roving patrol down the bottom of the map while the response force will be some form of SWAT team equivalent which will secure the ‘crime scene’ created by the attack on the compound. Whether I include both will depend on testing because I think the SWAT team idea is really pushing the bounds of credulity. This is not because it is something that would not happen, I just think a realistic response time would be outside my proposed mission length. As before I’ll sort the mechanics and briefing aspects out later. The image below shows the proposed road block and this was chosen because it is both in the ‘right’ place on the map but is also a logical place to have a road block because it is where a road crosses a stream thus creating a defile. Not shown on the image is the SWAT Team but if I include it, then it will arrive at the top LH corner of the map which is the closest direction to the centre of Abbottabad and the likely location of the local Police HQ. That is about it for this part of the process so I can now move on and deal with the mechanics of adding all of the above to the mission. However that will not be for a few days as I have some RL things to take care of but rest assured they will turn up so keep checking the thread.

I will pdf it at some point and find somewhere to put it on the interweb.

So on to mapmaking then … I’m not going to say too much about map making mainly because I think that the mechanics of it are fairly easy and of course I have already touched on it in earlier posts where I described some of the problems in recreating Osama Bin Laden’s Compound. That said, while the mechanics of it are easy, recreating actual ground in CMSF is punishing work due to the absence of the Special Editor Overlay that was introduced in the WW2 titles. The key things to remember are that each tile is 8m x 8m so try as you might, you will never ever get all of your terrain features accurate to the last metre. The first trick is just to get over it and push on. The second piece of advice I think that is important is to try and minimise your placement fudges because once you move something by more than a few metres it has a knock on effect across the rest of the map. Overall my semi-formal rule about maps is to think about those areas where you see the main actions take place. Once you’ve identified those, focus on getting those right (or as close to right as you can) and generally the rest of the map follows. These areas should also be where you put the bulk of your flavour objects because the player is more likely to see them and it means that you are not wasting your time ‘dressing’ areas that may not be seen and most importantly you are not clogging up memory/processor time by overloading the map with objects. Otherwise with flavour objects I generally handrail a few of the major roads with a telegraph pole every 200m or so and pretty much leave it at that. Roads can be a little fiddly and again to save stress it is best not to worry about tracing the exact line of the road. I generally plot my roads from junction to junction and I try to get these in the right place using the real World dimensions. I mark these with a rough tile and then just look at the general flow of the road and paint the road to join the junctions using rough tiles. Once I’ve painted the route with rough tiles I then go into the road menu and physically trace the road over the top of the rough tiles. To finish off I then change the underlying tile to a suitable colour. For tarmac roads I generally keep the rough tile but for dirt roads I usually use either a hard red or dirt red tile. The following image shows examples of road construction. When putting foliage down I do try to measure single trees in isolated areas but for tree lines I don’t bother. For the tree lines I measure the start point and end point and then just plonk the trees down. Where it is obvious that there are thick trees from the imagery I will use the two or three tree buttons as required. However bear in mind that these are processor hogs so if you have a lot of trees on your map you should ensure that you use these only where you absolutely have to. The following image shows an example of foliage. From the Google Earth imagery there are a few small streams which clearly presents a problem in CMSF because there are no streams in the editor. My work around is to use trenches overlaid on mud tiles because I think that this replicates the closest terrain effect of streams (eg can be crossed by dismounts at slightly reduced speed but could cause a vehicle to bog). If the water feature was wide or deep then the effect to be achieved is to make it impassable to both so I would use a marsh tile. In this instance it is a stream so I use a similar method to the way I build roads so it is a case of identifying the junctions and entry/exit points on the map and then painting them with mud tiles. Once that is done I join those points up with mud tiles and then overlay them with trenches. The following image shows how this looks. For built-up areas it is again important to not get stressed about exactly replicating the real World because you are battling against both a road grid, buildings that may not be the appropriate size or orientation (you are restricted to increments of 45 degrees). My rough method is to lay out the road grid and then fill in with buildings in the right (or close to) spots. With this map, the only structures that I deemed really important were those associated with Osama Bin Laden’s compound because that is where the main action is going to take place. Otherwise it was a case of laying out buildings as closely as I could to their real locations and then ensuring a bit of randomness in terms of colours, heights and layouts. The important thing with buildings, particularly conjoined ones or those that back onto walls is to make sure that you get rid of windows on the walls facing the building joins and either removing doors completely or making sure they line up. If you recall from my earlier post about making the compound, this is done using CTRL CLICK. Finally I will point out, because I have seen it a number of times … make sure it is possible to enter any building that should be entered so when you do your map checks, ensure that buildings have at least one door on the ground floor. Fields and crops are probably the easiest to do but I think it is important to do more than just randomly paint the open areas. I generally put the boundaries down first of fairly large areas. The boundaries can be any linear feature such as a tree line, river line or road/track. Once I’ve done that I look at the real World image and look at the colour tones to identify brown, green, dark green etc and measure the extent of those areas within my bounded area. Once measured I paint with the appropriate tile. The only word of warning is to remind you that if you use a mud tile for brown areas you run the risk of creating areas that effect mobility when in reality they would not. For this reason I tend to use the dark yellow tile for these areas. To simulate crops the gridded button combined with either a small tree or bush aligns the ‘crop’ uniformly in the centre of the grid square allowing you to create neat rows of crops. There are none on this map so I can’t show you this. To finish off the map, we need to look at elevation/relief. There are different schools of thought on this with I think the majority view being to do the elevation first. The reasoning here is that once you’ve got it sorted out, it makes it a lot easier to build the remainder of the map. I don’t disagree with this but I think it is only important if there are lots of elevation changes and really large hills or deep valleys to portray. With this map it is clear that there are hardly any elevation changes and so it is just as easy to do elevation at the end. There are various threads with terrain resources that show you how to get programs such as Google Earth and Google Maps to show elevation / contours but again I’m not going to bother because the elevation changes are not dramatic. All I need to do is capture the ‘feel’ of the ground. So to do this all I’ve done is gone into Google Earth and from the ‘Tools’ menu bar selected ‘Options’. This brings up the screen below and as stated in the image you set ‘Elevation Exaggeration’ to its highest value of ‘3’. This will allow you to see those elevation changes much more clearly. So this is what it looks like on the real ground …. As you can see elevation on the right hand side of the road/track running up the middle of the map is generally higher than on the left hand side. So to create this in the Map Editor, we select the ‘Elevation’ tab which will then show all the map elevations on the screen and bring up a number of options. The default elevation on all maps is 20m and generally with maps that don’t require much in the way of elevation changes or where the actual heights don’t matter too much I tend to work with this 20m default because it makes less work for me. Remember that while you can change the elevations to the actual heights on the real ground, this is entirely invisible to the player so it is really a personal decision as to whether you take that approach. As I’ve said I’m not going to. So to create the elevations I will make use of the ‘Direct’ feature as shown in the image. To change the elevation up you hit the ‘+’ key on the keyboard and to reduce it you hit the ‘-‘ key on the keyboard. For those of you that are old enough to remember the CMX1 Map Editor, you had to laboriously paint every elevation but in CMSF the process is much easier because as soon as you paint a height onto the map, the remainder of the map self-adjusts. So for my road to be at 20m elevation, it means that I don’t have to paint every single tile. The numbers on the following image are an approximate reflection of where I’ve painted ‘Direct’ elevation tiles. As you can see there aren’t many so it is a fairly quick process and this actually works well in terms of processing speeds because ‘Direct’ elevation changes tend to consume resources so the fewer the better. So this is the finished article compared with the real ground – as you can see it is not a perfect match but it is close enough for Government work as they say. This image I think reinforces the point that you have to accept that the 8m grid and 45 degree road and building angles require compromise rather than banging your head off the screen. So that is all I have to say about map making – we may return to the map later as we develop the rest of the scenario … we shall see. Next we need to look at developing the mission narrative more fully and adding in some difficulty.

Best news ever - I am itching to crank out scenarios once the map overlay feature comes in.

@MOS:96B2P - you should do another one mate while I'm temporarily unavailable to create scenarios .

By the way @Erwin and @dragonwynn thanks for the comments and the interest in the thread.

Nearly ready to do my initial feasibility test … and with about 14 hours work under my belt already this had better damned well work!!! However there are a few things I need to do before I can test and the most important is to have a fairly clear idea in my mind what I am testing and what outcomes I am looking for. I’ve pretty much covered off on this already in that in broad terms I’m looking to see if 26 US SEALs can assault the Osama bin Laden Compound defended by about the same number of insurgents while suffering no more than about three casualties. Concurrent to that I am going to test how long it takes units to move around the map, this is not key to the main part of the test but I am doing it now as a time saver. This test (like all tests should be) will be run a number of times so that I can get an ‘average’ result. This ‘average’ result will then determine whether the mission is feasible and if feasible what changes if any I need to make. It will also give me data to use later for victory conditions. You have seen that I am talking about averages and data – so perhaps the most important thing with testing is to be prepared to take screen shots and to take notes while you’re doing it. With the broad parameters set, I just need to do a couple of things in the Editor before I can test. The first one should be obvious from my previous screenies … they are all in broad daylight while the mission took place at just after 0100 hrs on 02 May 2011. So I have to change the date and time to replicate those on the day. Now I can’t get the year right because 2008 is the only year option but I can certainly get the month and time of day correct so let’s do that now. The date and time values sit in the ‘Data’ screen so while we’re here we’ll change a couple of other things although for the purposes of the test I do not need to do this now. So from top to bottom here’s what I’ve done … Length of Battle – Changed to 1 hour. This may not be the final length of the battle but it is the ballpark I am aiming at. Like most things I can change it later if I need to. Variable Extra Time – Left at the default setting of ‘None’. Again I may opt for variable time later but I don’t need it now. My preference generally is not to go for extra time variables if I can avoid it but unfortunately it is a design principle I violate frequently. Year – 2008. Unfortunately in CMSF, I am only allowed 2008 so not a lot I can do with that apart from stating the real date in the orders. Month – Set to May which is rather fortunate because the only options are May, June or July. These months by the way and the year 2008 are set this way because it is in keeping with the dates of the fictional conflict that CMSF was set. Perhaps again another appropriate time to say how versatile the game can be if you are creative in the editor. Although in terms of how the game performs, this setting can dictate certain climatic effects (in Syria obviously), for the purposes of this scenario it probably doesn’t change the price of fish much. Day – Set to 2 to reflect the real day. Hour – Set to 01 hours to reflect the real time. Minute – Unchanged from the default of 00. Weather – Set to ‘Clear’. I have no idea what the actual weather was although I had a not too hard look for it. For the purposes of the mission I am sure ‘clear’ will be fine. If I come across the actual weather than I will of course change it. Wind Strength – Set to ‘Gentle’. Comments pretty much as above. Wind Source – Set on ‘West’. Comments pretty much as above. Temperature – I have set this to ‘Cool’ based on an average climate chart. Basically climate charts for Abbottabad show the month of May to have temperatures ranging between 16.5° C and 29.1° C (or 61.7°F and 81.4° F if you’re American). Given that nights are going to be cooler than days I am looking at the bottom end of that range. That equates to cool in my interpretation of CMSF weather. Ground condition – I have set to ‘Damp’ based on my limited climate research which suggests that the area is prone to precipitation. Bottom line is that ‘damp’ should have no appreciable effect on the mission. Civilian Density – I have set to ‘Sparse’. Now this is potentially important to this mission. First off, if you look at the Google Earth images, it is clear that there is a lot of housing in the area around the compound so there is justification for upping this value. However it is important to understand how this parameter effects the game. In CMSF, civilians are abstracted which means that the higher the civilian density, the more difficult it is to spot Unconventional Forces. Given that the compound guards are all ‘Uncons’ this could cause a massive and quite frankly unwanted problem. So, using the rationale that there will not be too many civilians out and about in the wee small hours, I have used the ‘sparse’ setting. Testing may require me to lower it to ‘None’. Blue Friendly Direction – Set to SE. While I have not settled on the later parts of the mission yet, in one of the earlier posts I talked about having the assault force extract to one of two extraction zones towards the bottom RH corner of the map. For those not aware, this setting reflects the direction that the Blue Force will naturally retreat towards when acting under AI control. While this is less of an issue for a Blue versus Red AI scenario (which this is) it is important when you’re designing H2H scenarios or scenarios versus the AI that can be played by either side. Red Friendly Direction – Set to NE. As this is a Blue versus AI scenario, this setting assumes greater importance because the Red force in this scenario will be AI controlled. I have chosen NE as the friendly direction because, if you recall from early posts, that is where the Pakistani Army Barracks is located. Early Intel – Set to ‘Neither’. Now to be honest I don’t really like or get on with these settings so I tend not to use them. If I want to convey intelligence to the player I put it in the ‘Enemy’ paragraph of the briefing and on the associated graphics, which is ANOTHER GOOD REASON TO READ THE DAMNED THING. (This may not be the last time I mention this btw J) Intel Strength – Set to ‘No Intel’. As stated above. Force vs Force – Set fairly predictably to ‘Blue vs Red’ because that is what this scenario is. Note that I may change this a bit later based on an idea I have rattling around my head but I’ll explain that at the appropriate time but whatever I decide about my idea, the setting will ultimately have to be ‘Blue vs Red’. Here’s how it looks in the Editor … And now we can see that setting the time to 0100hrs actually has an effect … Zero dark thirty indeed …. Nearly ready to test now but one thing I overlooked earlier when I was picking the Red force was the fact that the AI automatically surrenders once it suffers a certain number of casualties. Somewhat unhelpfully this threshold is not covered in the manual but previous experience indicates that an auto surrender gets triggered when the AI force gets down to about 35-45%. As I want to test the compound battle as a whole to see if it is viable for the Blue Force to knock over the defensive force I need to create some ‘never arrive’ reinforcements. In fact, my concept for the mission is that I want this to play down to the very last minute so I am going to need these guys anyway. To do this, initially all I need to do is to go back into the unit editor and select one or more suitably sized units. Once I’ve done this I will rename them to ‘never arrives’ and then set them to arrive as a reinforcement in the last reinforcement slot. If you recall, my plan is for the mission is to last for an hour, so any time after that is fine. As stated above, go to your ‘Purchase Red’ option and purchase the required units – DO NOT CLICK the ‘Reinforcements Red’ button – you have to purchase the units first. In my case I purchased two ‘Huge Combatant’ units. Because these never arrive, it makes no odds what their hard and soft values are so you don’t need to fiddle with them at all. For administrative purposes I have renamed them ‘Never Arrives #1’ and ‘Never Arrives #2’. There is no need to do this but it can be helpful if you have a lot of units to consider for allocating to AI Plans and as Unit Objectives. In some cases it can be counterproductive to do so because for my USMC Marine Bn HQ which I have to keep due to the way the TO&E works, if I renamed that ‘Never Arrives’ all of the units subordinate to it would be named ‘Never Arrives’. Now time to click ‘Reinforcements Red’ and you’ll see 7 Blue icons towards the bottom left labelled ‘Reinf 1 – Reinf 7’ and some text telling you to designate reinforcements by using the number keys with the number 8 meaning that the unit starts on the map. As a rule of thumb, I always make my ‘Never Arrive’ reinforcements the last slot available which is ‘Reinf 7’. So what I now need to do is to go back to my ‘Purchase Red’ button and then select the unit that I don’t want to arrive and then hit ‘7’ on the keyboard. Once I do this the text ‘R7’ will appear next to the unit in the activated units screen. Now if I click ‘Reinforcements Red’ and click the ‘Reinf 7’ button, I will get a series of options for that reinforcement. I can set its earliest possible arrival, any variable time to that arrival and I can give the reinforcement a name if I so choose. In this case I have gone for 3 hours as the earliest possible arrival (it is the latest time available that can be selected) and specified ‘Exact’ meaning no variation in the arrival time. I have, although it is not absolutely necessary, named the reinforcement ‘Never Arrives’ by typing that text into the box. The following graphic shows the reinforcement dialogue … I could now go to ‘Deploy Red’ and deploy these two units but, as they won’t arrive there is really no need. I generally do go through the process though and park them in the Red Friendly Direction corner of the map. What is a useful exercise though is to have a look at the units and do a head count because these could come in to play if I am considering using a parameter as part of victory conditions. Clearly this needs to be recorded somewhere – remember that accurate note taking is as important in mission design as being skilled in the editor. The respective headcounts are ‘Never Arrives #1’ has 24 guys and ‘Never Arrives #2’ has 26 guys. This is also useful as a gross error check that your never arriving reinforcements are big enough to ensure that the unwanted auto surrender is not triggered and in this instance the numbers are more than enough. Finally, before I can test, I have to save the scenario into the ‘Scenarios’ directory because that is where the game looks for scenarios when you click ‘Battle’ after CMSF loads. Doing this is easy, just click the save button and look for the ‘Scenarios’ folder, click that and then click the green tick icon to save. So …. Finally after about 14 hours worth of work, I can actually do my feasibility test. The mechanics are simple, boot the game up, hit ‘battle’ select the scenario and then play it. So that is what I did selecting ‘Scenario Author Test’ mode. I tested twice in Real Time and twice in WEGO. These were the results … First Test (Real Time). The compound was cleared at 51:55 with no Blue Force losses. I went all guns blazing and as a result ran dangerously low on 5.56mm ammunition natures. Enemy losses were 17 KIA and 7 WIA. Second Test (Real Time). The compound was cleared at 55:10 and again with no Blue Force losses. The enemy suffered 18 KIA and 6 WIA. I was less profligate with ammunition and although I burned through a fair amount, my troops would have sufficient for further action. Third Test (WEGO). The compound was cleared at 53:00 but I took a hammering this time with 2 KIA and 4 WIA. Enemy casualties were 15 KIA and 9 WIA. Again I ran short in some ammunition natures. Fourth Test (WEGO). The compound was cleared at 54:00 although again I took some casualties (3 WIA). Enemy casualties were 18 KIA and 6 WIA. Ammunition expenditure was better this time and as per test 2, I would have had enough for a couple more firefights. To caveat the above, I tried slightly different schemes of manoeuvre in my tests and I am not the best WEGO player when conducting clearances. With regard to the latter, in Test #3, I lost some guys to Blue on Blue due to poor synchronisation in one assault. So what to make of all of this? Well the deductions seem to be: (1). The mission is feasible. (2). It can be played in both Real Time and WEGO although it is better suited to Real Time play (to be honest I am not surprised by that but it is good to have some proof). (3). An average (not a mathematical one) result is that all of the defenders get wiped out and Blue Forces can expect to lose a couple of guys in the assault. (4). An average (again not a mathematical one) time for the compound to be cleared is about five minutes. (5). Ammunition consumption is a worry. I need to mitigate this either by: a). Making use of the QRF element. b). By giving the player lots of information in the briefing about enemy locations. c). Limiting the number of further engagements for the Blue Force. So all useful stuff – I am particularly pleased given the amount of work that has already gone into this scenario that the mission is feasible. So now I just have to crack on with finishing the map which will be the subject of the next part of the tutorial.

AFAIK it is a new feature which has only been implemented in the last fortnight or so. It is still bedding in and I'm guessing that it actually needs people to rate scenarios/content on the site. Given that the feature hasn't been around for long, it is likely that few people have rated content meaning that there are no results to show at this stage.

Glad you are enjoying it and yes it was a bit of an effort putting this together but I made notes as I went along and also took the screenshots as I went along. As some of the notes I took (such as the table in the last post) were part of data capture to assist in scenario design not everything that I did was extra work. I will admit though that I usually take handwritten notes when I make scenarios so I just had to change the way I did business slightly. As to the point about time and energy - yes it is a lot of work but some of us take great pleasure in doing it. I rarely play the games now, I spend most of my CM time in the editor and so most of my 'play' is actually scenario testing.

Almost ready to test but of course I haven’t deployed my Blue Assault Force to their start positions yet. A bit of research (see graphic below) tells me that the assault force was delivered by two helicopters at opposite ends of the compound. Time for more compromise, not only because I don’t have helicopters but also because if I set up one team for instance in the west courtyard of the compound as if it had fast roped as shown in the graphic, they will almost certainly get fired upon straight away. While the engine can handle it, players generally rage quit when something happens over which they have no control – particularly if it is in Turn 1. One of the unwritten scenario design rules I’ve come across over the years is to try and avoid situations where the player loses troops in Turn 1 so it is worth filing away in your top tips folder. So to avoid this situation, we come back to making a compromise to give the player control over Turn 1 by putting the SEALs outside the compound as if the two helos had landed there. The following graphics show how it looks on the ground. Now while I am playing fast and loose with history, I must keep it plausible so first of all I have to divide the groups into two separate chalks or sticks to replicate the fact that they have ‘arrived’ in two different helicopters. To do this I have had to do some squad splitting to try and even out the numbers. So my western group was put together as follows: West Group: And the East Group looks like this: Again I could have done this a number of ways but importantly I had to have more or less equal groups bearing in mind the capacity of a Black Hawk/Pave Hawk is 11-12 troops (I’m slightly over but hey …) and each group had to have roughly the same capability. The latter is generally important because it is good practice to have balanced teams but in CMSF it also gives the player choices. If I dictate through my force pick that one group is a fire support group and the other is an assault element then it forces the player into using those groups that way which is not overly popular. This is particularly so when troop resources are limited which is very much the case here. So the basic rationale is – roughly equal groups with each group needing a manoeuvre element, a fire support element (M-240 team) and a breach element (5 Squad team). The fact that the numbers worked out was a bonus. Finally before moving on, it is the little touches or the ‘polish’ that can make the difference in missions. So what I’ve done is put two elements facing north and two elements facing south in each of the two groups with a gap in the middle where their imaginary (in CMSF terms) Blackhawk has just landed. Standard drill is to exit to the 90° and 270° angles from the helicopter’s nose (this avoids getting decapitated by the tail rotor) and assuming all round defence. While they don’t generally affect gameplay, these touches are important and aid player immersion. If you look at some of the testing threads on the CMx2 forums, you will see that testers make the comment ‘my troops were facing the wrong way at setup’. That is about all I have to say about initial force selection, although I will return later to the subject of unit picks. The next instalment will cover off on some of the final preparations required prior to the initial feasibility test.

Now for the Red force pick which in terms of interacting with the editor works on the same principles but as you will see, I need to make this pretty nuanced. Remember that at this stage I’m really only interested in the forces around the compound. Going back to our research, you will recall that there were 22 residents of the compound, many of which were non-combatants. The first thing I’m going to change in order to enhance enjoyment/playability is to fudge the truth and make all of them combatants. While I’m at it I will probably not be too disappointed if my numbers overrun the 22 resident figure, however I don’t want to go madly overboard. So in the image below I have selected ‘Purchase Red’ and then ‘Unconventional’ followed by ‘Combatant’. The pick list then appears on the left hand side of two large areas of the screen ready for me to pick. I have gone for ‘Combatant’ for no other reason than the ‘Fighter’ force pick all look like bloody Ninjas with their black uniforms whereas ‘Combatants’ wear a mix of jeans and a combat jacket. Otherwise there is no real difference in the forces as far as I am aware. You will see that I have gone for a number of ‘Tiny Combatant Groups’ which is a deliberate choice and I finally picked 8 of them. The reasons for this are that a ‘Tiny Combatant Group’ gives you three guys so 8 of them give me 24 people in the compound which is close to the actual figure (22) and gives parity or near parity with the assault group. The other reason for going with so many tiny groups is that it gives me more flexibility in setup when you consider possible AI plans and C2 relationships. The final reason is it gives me the flexibility to tinker with individual hard and soft values if I need to. I might want to do the latter to reflect the fact that while one group might be asleep (modelled by giving them an ‘unfit’ fitness rating) another group might be on guard duty justifying say a ‘fit’ fitness rating. Remember that this soft factor dictates how a unit might perform under fire and move across the ground rather than being a reflection of how many pies they eat and how often they go to the gym. The inset next image shows what a ‘Tiny Combatant Unit’ looks like – as you can see there are three in the group with my initial deployment in the compound. You will see that I have labelled three units as ‘sentry’ and the remaining five units as ‘sleeping’ units. This is a deliberate attempt to reflect the reality that in the early hours of the morning, only a portion of the available force is going to be awake. Although not clear from the image, the sentry units are facing out and covering their arcs, while I have deliberately positioned the sleeping units so that they are facing away from doors as a means of slowing down their response time to the US Navy SEAL attack. That is to say that they will have to turn and face the attack which requires a small amount of time to do and they will face a spotting delay as they turn to face and identify the threat. Now that delay is likely to be only mere seconds but these are the kind of margins that Special Operations Forces are trained to deal with. This also serves to reinforce the fact that CMSF is not really the best medium to replicate Special Forces Missions, not because the game is borked, it is because it was never designed to replicate these sorts of missions. It is time to go back to the subject of hard and soft factors so that I can differentiate between my ‘sleeping’ and ‘sentry’ units. As an initial pick I kept the same settings which were: EXPERIENCE – ‘Conscript’ which is the lowest setting. Apart from particular units (eg snipers or a unit that is identified through research as being of good quality) I generally make all of my insurgent units in my scenarios ‘Conscript’. LEADERSHIP – I left as ‘Typical’ which will give me a range of values to reflect leadership qualities. MOTIVATION – I chose ‘Fanatic’ because I do want these guys to fight to the death … let’s face it they are defending Osama bin Laden. However, if my testing shows that this setting results in the routine slaughter of my assault force then I will tone it down to a level that gives me the results that I’m looking for. For your information I am aiming at no more than three US casualties in the assault. SUPPLY – This level has also been set at ‘Typical’ giving a range of ammunition loads. This setting shouldn’t matter too much because these guys aren’t going to be around for long but of course if I change my mind I can always adjust it. VEHICLE STATUS – As with the Blue Force, it is irrelevant due to the force not having vehicles so I have left the value at ‘ok’. FITNESS – I went with a blanket value of ‘Unfit’ to replicate slow reaction times due to the fact that it is the middle of the night and some guys will be asleep. I will tweak this for the units I have marked as ‘Sentry’ but leave it as ‘Unfit’ for the others. EQUIPMENT – Is universally set as poor. This is a reflection of poor weapon maintenance standards of many insurgents but most importantly it determines what weapons they get. With combatants, a poor selection results in AK-47s and the odd sniper rifle. To be honest I could do without the sniper rifle but I only got one across the whole 8 groups I picked so I will leave it at that. Outside the scope of this scenario, when I model the Taliban I always pick ‘Excellent’ because this guarantees me at least one RPG-7 in a group and RPG-7s are ten a penny in Afghanistan. So I will now go and change the fitness rating for my ‘sentry’ units to ‘fit’ from ‘unfit’. To be able to do that I need to identify them and, because I picked a whole bunch of units in one go rather than picking one and deploying it, picking another and deploying it, I can’t tell the difference between the units. So I need to name them and this screen shot shows how you rename units. Basically, select your unit, click ‘rename’ and then enter the details in the dialogue box. All very simple but one thing worth knowing is that you need to consider FOW when you rename because players at the Basic Training level will see the names when the unit is spotted. So if you name a unit ‘last gasp reserve’, it gives the game away to players at those levels. In this instance I am not bothered in the slightest, notionally the attacker will have had a pretty good idea of what was in the compound, the unit is in the compound so it is pretty obvious what it is even without an obvious name. Now I can go back to the ‘Deploy Red’ screen and select each of the units that I previously annotated as ‘Sentry’ units’ individually and note the name so that I know which ones to change to ‘Fit’ in the unit editor. The image shows Compound Guard #3, the other ‘Sentry’ units are Compound Guard #1 and Compound Guard #4. Armed with the correct units, I can go back to the Unit Editor and bump up those individual fitness ratings. As you can see it is pretty simple, first select your unit then click the box (in this case Fitness) which will show a drop down menu where you select your desired value (in this case ‘Fit’). Now that I have completed the enemy compound defender pick, I will pause before my next post which will be a short one showing final tweaks to the Blue assault force and their deployment.

In my last post I covered off on the mechanics of force selection and some considerations for unit quality, this post will show some of the nuances of ensuring that you get the right forces for the job. The analysis sits largely outside the editor as you will see. First off I will tabulate everything, not because I have to, but it is a useful process further on down the track when I start thinking about victory conditions and writing the orders. With that done, I know I’m on the right track although clearly I have a lot more troops than were present on the day, I do know that I have the basis for the ‘two dozen’ assault force and I have breach charges without needing to purchase an Engineer element and trimming it down. The questions I’m now looking to answer are how to organise the group, how to trim the numbers and will there be enough demo charges. As an initial cut, here is my proposed force element …. As a first cut, I am pretty happy with that given that there were 79 on the operation so I am over my limit by 5 and only over by 2 if we accept that the Bn HQ will never arrive. Also, I have managed to put together an assault element which is in the ‘about two dozen’ ballpark which at first look will have the tools to do the job. To be honest I am most focussed on the Assault Element because subject to testing, I would rather limit the mission to just this element. Note of course that this is my solution, there are other ways I could have come up with the numbers and capabilities required but I opted to keep the chain of command intact where I could, I wanted to hang on to the Javelins just in case and hey it’s not special operations without snipers!!! Although of course they may never arrive …. Everything else of course I can now delete from my force pick so I can either do that now, or wait a while to see the outcome of the initial test. For caution’s sake let’s keep things as they are for the time being because in my initial test to see if the compound attack will work, I can park them in a corner of the map well out of the way. I can also use them to do some time and distance testing as concurrent activity to my compound assault test. Of course, once I’m sure they are surplus to requirements I will then delete them. I will move on to the Red Force pick in the next post.