Crushingleeek

That's for you to decide! although you'll probably find covering fire pretty fruitless esp w/ raining artillery on the beach

from a campaign design standpoint, I included mission #3 for a few reasons. first, i wanted to provide a break from the relatively larger scale beach scenarios in #1 and #2. I am a big small scale scenario fan. Even with the large scale battles, I try to make them play out and feel smaller. Second, #3 is sort of a set-up for the main St. Laurent battle of #4. The idea was to make players appreciate the struggle that the town would be. Ideally, the difficulty encountered in #3 would make the victory, if you achieve it, in #4 more gratifying and that much sweeter. I'd like to hear if it succeeded in producing these effects for you...

in essence, i try to incorporate some missions that are virtually impossible to "win" from a tactical standpoint, but if you make the right decisions according to the briefing - ie, in this case, don't get your squad killed - you achieve a victory as a leader. think of your score from this perspective, not necessarily always from a greater tactical/strategic standpoint. I think I make it clear in the briefings; let me know if any don't.

Valid thoughts/criticisms. I pondered this myself; I knew it was not going to be a "roam freely through the town and dominate commando style" type of scenario. As is the case in the majority of the decisions I make when I have a choice between history and gameplay, I veered toward the historic story I understand. St. Laurent was held pretty resolutely by 352nd elements. I tried to foreshadow and downplay any "gung-ho" player expectations by including that bit about "no heroes on this mission. heroes go home in body bags." which I learned is an anachronism.

try to avoid a shooting match, it's a scouting mission with very low acceptable casualty rate because reinforcements are continuously coming off the beach. disengage before you get killed. you get points for spotting enemies (not for killing them) but the enemy gets a lot of points for killing your troops this sets up mission #4

oops. i'll change that to boxes?

thanks for the summary! I think you are right, C company, along with Dutch Cota went toward Vierville. damn BB friendly fire! what you say must be true, I did the same thing you did. right flank --> left sweep. those ammo teams were supposed to just keep anyone who got sloppy towards the end on their toes... ie not major resistance, but scare you if you only approached with a broken scout team. looks like i should have done the same for the vierville side, at least for you!

will do, thanks!

Excellent suggestions. I will look into this re-organization when RL permits. Thanks for all the info. and... NICE JOB! That major victory is more than I could ever muster up in my play-testing. But I knew I wasn't the best CMBN player; I imagined it'd be do-able, and it's great to hear that it is.

maybe. in certain areas, that could be devastating to a potential infantry exploitation where getting up the bluff fast means life or death. this in the briefing: "Vierville Draw was surrounded by steep bluffs impassable to vehicles; thus, the narrow lane that split the bluffs was an immediate objective beacuse it was a passage way for vehicles coming off the beach." C'mon! follow directions! if someone really wanted, they could move their limited tanks to the bottom of the bluffs and try to go up them, provided no ATs, mines or artillery crush them first. still, as ian pointed out, it may not work!

interesting, i thought forest terrain did shorten LOS; i don't remember if I had hedges at its border though.

yea, I definitely thought about exactly that. I contemplated putting trees on the slope for the very purpose of axing any ideas about rolling armor up the slope. the problem I conjured up was that it gives the troops a form of LOS cover from fire that they didn't really have.

i think it's pretty awesome what I learned empirically through trial n error turns out to match what you guys provided about the historical limitations to tank angle of incline.

don't tell him!

I'm glad you are having trouble. you're not supposed to drive your tank up the bluff:D:D that's why you need the draw

yea, agree, i sort of like the night missions, which means I can see everything perfectly

do you want to know before you've played it?

The real question, Amizaur, is: How did they get that giant "This is Russia" flag in?

bangalore! Fire in the hole!

I had a blast with the trench fights myself. so much so that, i made the mop-up scenario, which depicts more trenches of stubborn resistance along the bluffs. which weren't major skirmishes, but a pain for some tired and stressed 29ers anyhow.

to be honest, it was just a matter of diggin up some old photos, combined with watching some youtube videos to see the seawall and some reading and a lot of trial and error. for example in this sector, the bluffs are reported to be about 120 ft high, and the beach about 400-500 yards from the seawall at low-tide. starting from the top: water, shallow ford is probably what everyone uses. not much to that. beach: sand, with gentle incline generously littered with obstacles seawall: i don't remember, but some kind of pavement. (this was news to me.) elevations: pretty key. a good tip to remember is that the steepest angle the pixeltruppen can traverse is an increase of 4 meters per action spot (unless you use the pointe du hoc secret!). just some trial n error. the defensive positions were chosen based on the picture posted earlier in this thread. some modifications were made to adjust the attrition level to be more realistic for an intermediate-advanced player. one struggle I had was getting mg42's to open up big-time with the same efficacy as their historic counterparts at the range of 400-600 yards. In CMBN they are a bit more shy about it, which is fine; this type of killing zone wasn't too common. Tweaked the AI behavior to be as active as possible, and setting their ambush range to 1500m helped a little bit.

I appreciate it! I totally know where you are coming from; what appeal does a slaughter-fest in CMBN have? I saw some of those comments before I started the vierville project, and absolutely agreed. But I also thought it could be modeled to some degree of accuracy with the tools in CMBN, and was surprised that no one had yet made that particular sector of omaha (dog green). It's too important to not have a rendition of it. As for the strategies, it definitely took some hours and hours of tweaking and play-testing. I love that you and Ranger33 and some others have found different strategies for making some "progress." Some of the specifics sound awfully similar to my experiences!

yea, shouldn't come out as night time. 6:30 AM, overcast on june 6 on normandy beaches, visibility was good; Ike and SCAEF wanted it that way, much to the chagrin of Dutch Cota... agree that it is a little darker than I imagine (imagination probably skewed by hollywood, who knows if reliable), but it doesn't seem like night time. By 8:30 it's pretty light too.

based on the location directly opposite the draw, it is probably a 116th regiment unit (ie not rangers or combat engineers). They don't appear to be a weapons company so not D. And B and C companies (and D) arrived later than A, so if this is at the beginning of the scenario, it should be A company.

coooool. doesn't get old to me. was that an A Company platoon?