AlexUK

FRANCE 1940! Where am I with this? I have gone off on vacation for quite a while.
In the background, I am working with @JM Stuff on a Belgian sub-mod with the famed Chasseurs Ardennais. A pack of maybe 5 small scenarios during the first days of the campaign 10 May 1940 near Bodange. JM loses his cherry on his first ever map and first ever scenario. We must cheer him on! This will not be ready until later this fall I predict.
I have a few tasks to fix things on the Char B1 bis and the Panzer I and Panzer II. 
The Gold Pack needs a fair bit of work. None of the scenarios are ready.
Anybody want to write a France 1940 scenario?

It seems a little too short.
Luckily, I saw an online article for special pills GUARANTEED to make it longer.
After I get them I will offer the British spike bayonet to CMMODS.
 

Well, thanks to Age of Wonders 4, not an enormous amount of progress has been made but I've been working on the first two missions and have finally gotten Overkill and Ambush to where I want them. I'm considering taking out the Adan airfield missions as they are not part of the original campaign and the second one involves a large AI attack and these attack missions are a lot of work to get right.
I've toned down the difficulty of Ambush quite a bit - the new AI fire plans mean that the player will get ripped to pieces by the superior firepower of the attacker. It's an ambush mission - the AI is not supposed to know you're there and to blunder into your well-set ambush. Best guesses aside, I don't really know when the player will launch his ambush so I'm not going to script in fire plans for AI groups and just let them start firing once they know the enemy is there the old fashioned way. But I'm taking this experience with me to the Montebourg rework to make German AI attacks much more effective.
Testing the Guards Counterattack mission is quite hard work because while it's an AI attack, it's also quite a long mission as you have to counter attack, obviously. The opening AI assault is brutal and I'm happy with that but I have yet to win it - the T-90s are not as OP as I'd feared so I'm going to stick with them. The Barrier mission is a meeting arrangement and is going to be a lot of work testing too. I've reworked the original map and extended it quite a bit to improve LoS and added some terrain features to an otherwise barren map. A lot of apparently arid Syria land appears to be worked by farmers so I've worked a couple of features in from real world locations to make it look more interesting.
The AI is defending in Hill 142 so that won't be nearly so much work to finalise. Obviously, Heavy Metal is a complete reboot and another meeting engagement and then there is the final Guards mission, Sadara, which is like Hill 142 but much bigger.
The final mission, Hasrabit, is another large AI attack and quite a beast to manage so there's still a lot of work to do there.
So, it's a lot of work but I'm slowly working my way through it. Slow and steady wins the race (Tell that to Usain Bolt)

Fakety fakety fakety fake lobster juicy good with fake butter roadwheel stabilizer added. 

 

I built some fun roadblocks. But my image host site is acting odd. I will post screenshots later when I can.
It uses 2 new haystack flavor objects. These 2 flavor objects are placed over a hedgehog obstacle that has a transparent texture. Still needs testing to see how she behaves.
I would love to show them but imgur is still acting odd. So mon ami @Simicro gave me a new one. Merci Tony.

@PEB14 

 

Update 11 May.
I played through the expanded version of my 82nd Airborne campaign as far as completing Saul's run. At the end of that scenario I was kicked from the campaign in defeat despite having gained a very significant foothold west of the Merderet River. The problem was victory points set too low for the US player and/or victory conditions to progress set too high. Either one can be adjusted to fix this. Although the scenario result was historical, given the gains that I had made, having the campaign end in a loss seemed unhistorical. That's fixed now so back to the beginning for play test #3.  Am going to have to take a break to edit my Stans Missus gladiator rules and print player cards for this month's wargame event. It's my turn to GM a game.

OP goto youtube search free whiskey domfluff combat mission soviets
there should be a few vids that are excellent. also u can dm me for specific tips. 
You have to accept YOU WILL TAKE CASUALTIES
You HAVE TO USE COMBINED ARMS
The tank sensors WILL NOT SEE THE WESTERN TANKS FIRST, UNLESS YOU ARE SITTING STILL LOOKING AT WHERE THEYLL COME FROM
Learn to use your ATGM inf teams to take out western tanks that are exposed.  If you can tactically at all always try to have the western tank advance or move or enter your tanks LOS, your tanks on the move will never spot the western tank first.   If you cant do this, you need to have infantry with the tanks, and mass your tanks.
I almost always let the tac ai target on its own, but in this case if you are doing massed tank attacks consider things like t62s or maybe not the best sov tanks.  Franjly I think T64Bs are always a better choice than a T80B, perhaps except defense where the reverse speed is like a lousy 4 km/h better.   But in case of massed tank attacks with infantry, use weight of fire.  So lets say you got 12 T62s and see 3 m1s.  First remember western platoons are in 4s with tanks and pact is 3s.  so always look for an extra tank, tho it may not be there. second, weight of fire, tell your tanks like if its m1s you want 3-5 tanks shooting at each m1.  This by weight of fire will kill or mess the tank up so bad it can at least stop a disaster. 
DO NOT TRY POPPING SMOKE if its DEFINITELY A THERMAL EQUIPPED WESTERN WEAPON - THEY WILL BE ABLE TO KEEP FIRING AND NOW U CANT EVEN TRY TO SHOOT BACK
Soviets have a fckton of IFVs, apcs, and tanks.  almost all have coax and a few thousand rounds.  literally shoot eveerything potentially  that could have enemy troops in it with target light for mg fire, multiple vehicles, for a min or two per spot, longer on buildings.   This often also gets a repsonse or makes a human think you know where their men are
Soviet arty respone times suck,. Get TRPs and preplan your arty otherwise
everyones different. the way I play them works great or disastrously-  I like high tempo attacks.  IE Im on you and th ebattles gonna be decided fairly quickly...  If you do this right, or learn to do this right lots of people are terrible at handling this, some ppl play really cautiously or slow.  The entire sov doctrine actually encourages what I do somwhat, you need to basically sorta probe or designate a couple attack lanes and send some BTRS or BMPs, and have some infantry near running wit hthem
Where you fin dthe enemy weakest you want to RUSH your men into that hole, and try to blow into their rear where they hopefully arent even sure where u are exactly.   Then You should also on the move be able (time is key, dont stop and mass) pick the avenue you want to strike from now and either roll up th esides, or maybe you wanna rush your tanks over into keyholed spots spots with only a small LOS window as it were ) and have your infantry take up good cover and now the western defender has to come dig u out
thats off the top of my head sorry g2g booty call

I have a list of FRANCE 1940 scenarios I decided I must do before I can retire. You all will be damn ready for me to go after all this retirement moaning and groaning! You guys are great. Thanks for the kindness and understanding. 
BODANGE (Ardennes Chasseurs) IN PROGRESS
STONNE (French attack)
ETALLE (GD) IN PROGRESS
SUXY (GD)
VONCQ (SS-Polizei's first combat) map started
YONCQ (big French armor attack against the Panzers) map started
ok, you might be scatching your head. Yes, there really is a Voncq and a Yoncq
PERBAIS (German infantry attack)
a few others I can't recall the town name...
 
 

Just a quick post to reassure you that I am still working on this. However, Age Of Wonders 4 dropped last week and I've spent all my game time playing that and will likely be playing a lot of it for some time to come. I'll be working on this in the evenings in the future as I don't generally 'play' games then. It's also good because it prevents burnout from being a thing.

Very sad but you will be missed my friend, thank you for all you have done for the CM community!
Cheers Phil, thank you again.

Yes, I also became nostalgic after my 5 years break and returned to the cult...errr..I mean the game community.
That overlapped with the 5 years that BFC took to make CMRT F&R module.
HEY! Maybe if I go away now for ANOTHER 5 years then BFC will make an early war module?

Mounted assault



 


 


 
(Close) Encounter in the dark


 
Just as he was about to throw a frag grenade, the rifleman got hit. This were some bad news for his leader cowering next to him.

 
 
A halftrack formation gets blown to bits by one well positioned US 57mm AT gun.

 
Remember: Enemy artillery can be your worst enemy but can provide good cover too.
Without the previously created crater of the enemy artillery, this fire team would have been blown to bits.

 
"Herr Leutnant...wouldn´t it be wiser to spread the weapons of our fallen comrades around the squads ? They all just have those old bolt action rifles and...."
"God damn it, Feldwebel Heinrich ! When I say that you give the sniper rifle to the machine gunner, I mean it.
Don´t you dare question my leadership !"


 
 
Advance through the smoke.


 
A bit of posing for the Wochenschau.

 
"Hans, you said we should go the right path but I haven´t seen no friend nor foe for hours. Where is the front ?"
"Shut up Klaus and let me think !"

 

I've had a really bad cold this week and didn't make the tremendous progress I was hoping for but regardless, I soldiered on and got something done while I was sniffling and coughing and dosed up with the really potent medicine they prescribe out here such non life threatening illnesses. (I'm not complaining though) When I'm feeling really, really crap, I work on maps as it requires almost no concentration so I started adding some new terrain features to the Guard Counterattack mission (that name's going to have to change - it's SO ASL!) as well as making other similar tweaks to other missions, in particular to the Breakout mission which I'll talk about below.
But the MAIN work has been on the two Phase II Special Forces missions, 'Buying the Farm' and 'Breakout'. Since observing the AI carry out its plan is quite easy work when you're feeling sick, I can settle back with a cup of tea and make  notes and the necessary adjustments. I had big ambitions for the AI attack in the Farm mission but I have had to temper them as the AI really, REALLY can't make any sort of attack across a bridge. I can't get them to manage the crossing unopposed either as it's an absolute mess to watch as the vehicles just get confused and just mill about. I really don't like to undo hours of work planning and adjusting AI plans to reposition the forces for the assault and was even trying to justify leaving it in to myself as making the player's job easier. But that's just a poor excuse for crap scripting.  But it's not for nothing as I will be working on the AI for the Republican Guards later and there are no bottlenecks on their maps so the experience will serve me well when I get around to that.
'Breakout' is a much simpler beast to script. It's another 'living' battlefield experience but you'll be on the clock on this one - find the AA guns, knock them out and exit your forces from the map. Getting the timing right on this one will be challenging - it's not a hard mission to kill the guns but getting off the map is a different story. While having too much time will just make it a filler mission.

But I'm quiet sure in 5, 10, 15, or even 20 years, when he will have a cane, a big moustache and glasses, and also perhaps a wheelchair, because he will need to rest his legs, with his little blanket to cover himself, he will be able to do us another favor, on a mod that we will try to solve...

For someone about to retire, you are reaching your peak! Going out with a bang? You will be missed!

This mod, like many others I have embarked upon, has been a great learning experience.
FRANCE 1940: I have learned so much about this phase of the war. Wow. Great stuff. <BFC, maybe you should rethink your hardline? A handful of forumite nobody's has created a damn good product in 9 weeks. Imagine what YOU could do with the keys to the game. No "Fake Lobster!" put downs for you guys. > 
I am working with @JM Stuff to do a small sub-mod to FRANCE 1940. We are creating the Chasseurs Ardennais. I plan to do a scenario, or maybe a mini-campaign, for the "Battle of Bodange" in Belgium, as the Germans tried to get through the Ardennes.

 

I have to say that the game engine has improved massively while I've been absent. Today, I really got my teeth into my first proper AI assault and the new orders really, really make a huge difference to the AI's effectiveness. It's still nowhere near as good as a human opponent but it's about as good as an AI can get and it means that I can keep the numbers roughly even, with BlueFor outnumbering RedFor. Of course, a substantial part of that force is going to get wiped
In the original 'Buying the Farm' mission, a small force of reserve infantry started in the centre of the map and were attacked immediately by a mech company. Later, when we were able to add Artiilery Fire zones to our AI plans, I subjected the poor sods to a massive artillery barrage. In the meantime, your Special Forces were building up and getting ready to come to the rescue.
I wanted to maintain as much of that as possible but I was struggling to get the AI to attack a well-defended railway station surrounded by berms. No matter how big the barrage (and it was getting really stupid) when the attackers crossed the berm, they were mowed down. There was nothing for your Special Forces to do so the berms had to go and what a difference that made! Now the AI artillery barrage has been massively reduced to sensible proportions and the AI clears the station very efficiently with few casualties. I tested and tweaked the AI attack all morning and early afternoon before finally bringing in the core forces and play testing.
It's still 'Buying the Farm' but it's tougher and more fun, at least for me. I might have to rename the mission though as it's a railway station instead of a large square block of 1-story buildings, perhaps 'Repo Men' as the AI takes control of the station and it's your job to repossess what was stolen. Now I just need to make sure that it's winnable without being too bloody, a three-hour slog or too demanding of your core artillery assets. As before, you'll have some very shaky reserve infantry forces and some bottom of the barrel tanks to help you win the fight. 

Strong Stand and Adan Airfield are both done now, AI plans made and tested and victories scored in both missions. With extensive use of triggers in both missions, they make the Adan mission feel alive with units reacting to your moves. They're scripted not to be 'John Wick' efficient but to behave realistically. But they'll still fight.  
This is Adan Airfield. I've reworked the Minakh Airfield map and made a whole new mission from it. There will be two versions, the Attack version, which will be the new opener (because the result will have consequences for the rest of Phase I) and the Defend version in Phase II which is intended to be a real tough one and will similarly have consequences for all the Phase II missions.

I suspect some folks are going to rage at me for giving you 40 minutes to capture the airfield. I just forced a surrender with just over 9 minutes on the clock so it's more than doable.
Here's the Strong Stand map:

It's been extended a fair bit and the compounds have all been reworked to make them more realistic.

That's not a small amount of work but it's all done and the mission appears to be doable too. The original version was a real dog to play, 2+hours fighting in the dark against a numerically superior mechanised force that was well trained and equipped. It's a Light Infantry action and Special forces are just not that good against mechanised forces and, to be honest, i was finding the prospect of testing it a bit daunting so I decided to rip it all apart and start again with a whole new Red OB with new AI plans. Now it's a lot of fun to play.
So that's all the Special Forces phase I missions finished. So it's on to Phase II now which will take a bit longer as the maps have been changed so substantially that they'll need a lot of testing to get right. The Phase II missions are
Adan Airfield (Defend)
Buying the Farm
Breakout, and
Hasrabit.
After that, I'll get to the Republican Guards missions.

A quicky job but I kinda like it. I have different markings going on soon.
BACHILLES
.K
and
some other card markings company symbol

 

What a beautiful mod!

 

We know that the spotting model in CM is done from pairs of eyeballs (so an infantry section will have perhaps 10 different chances to spot something), and that there's a larger chance of spotting directly ahead of the spotting eyes, than to the periphery. Moving targets and large targets will inevitably be spotted faster. The individual optics for each position are modelled, so (for example) a tank with a decent thermal optic on the gunner's sight will have the gunner spotting better than the driver. Depending on the vehicle, commander's often have access to the gunner's sight, and sometimes have an independent sight of their own (to a large extent that's what the M60 cupola is doing).
Plenty of other factors will be at play here, including the individual line of sight of each spotter (it's entirely possible for a tank commander to see something and the gunner's sight to be blocked by complex terrain). and the soft factors involved, not to mention the spotting contacts that have been shared across the C2 network.
So sure, all things being equal, a stationary unit should tend spot a moving unit before the moving unit spots a stationary unit. I cannot imagine what hoops you'd need to jump through to engineer a situation where all things were actually equal, and even if this was the case, it can only be a probability and a tendency, there will always be outliers.

In the case of armour specifically, the chances of spotting is also going to be atrocious (even in something ultra-modern like an Abrams or a Bradley, by comparison to infantry), so your initial chances of anyone spotting anything are going to be terrible. Your baseline in all situations, but especially in CMCW and the WW2 games, are that tanks are blind. Infantry are your spotters, and that's one of the many reasons why "combined arms" is a thing.

Can we get a vehicle pack with T34s so that the Russian player can at least take shots at, and presumably kill, NATO IFVs?

From my notes on fighting like the Soviets:
1) Time spent on recon is never wasted.
2) Time and resources spent killing enemy recon is never wasted. 
3) Have a plan and execute it. 
4) The artillery fire plan dictates the maneuver plan. The maneuver plan dictates the fire plan. These must be mutually supportive. 
5) A company of Sov tanks spots better than any single German/American tank. 
6) Take away the better spotting offered by the NATO habit of fighting unbuttoned. Get them heads down to decrease their situational awareness. 
7) When you attack, attack! Don't poke him with one finger at a time. Make a fist and crush the enemy with overwhelming force. 
10) Use a platoon to crush a squad > use a company to crush a platoon >> use a battalion to crush a squad. Fair fights are for suckers.
9) Keep pressing attacks until they aren't feasible anymore, but don't reinforce failure. The Germans/Americans never have enough troops/tanks. 
10) Just because you have mass doesn't mean the only way forwards is a frontal assault. There are other ways to win that don't involve sticking your dick into the meat grinder until it jams. Recon routes that bypass the enemy, the Germans/Americans never have enough troops/tanks to cover every avenue of approach. Infantry infiltration is a thing.
11) Take you time, don't be in a rush to die. You'll probably run out of people, tanks, and/or ammo before you run out of time. 
H

Don't worry, I do like making this map. 🙂 And thank you for making this mod, early war is so terribly under represented...
I'm in the mood for some work-in-progress (mainly flavour objects and some things, like the water tower that need to be added by hand still missing) screenshots:





 

A screenshot from a scenario by @kevinkin
FR40B FIREFIGHT AT ANNELLES
We are preparing the SILVER PACK for release in a week or so...