CMBN Pacific: Makin Atoll

[JM Stuff]

3 minutes ago, Aquila-SmartWargames said:

I got it, this is even more than I expected, even with Japanese sounds

Enjoy it and give a feedback !

[Aquila-SmartWargames]

1 hour ago, 3j2m7 said:

Enjoy it and give a feedback !

Scenario alongside the Pacific terrain and ambience mod is great, unfortunately the Japanese Infantry and US WW2 Marines mod comes in legacy CMBN file standard. The Japanese are a real challenge. They are using Luftwaffe airborne skeletons in British infantry slots and renaming everything in order to make it work can really start to let your head smoke.

I just tried to convert those Japanese and managed a partial half-hearted result but I had to remove the LW skeletons because otherwise they got weird faces and uniforms, there is a chance that I incorrectly changed files.

Perhaps somebody that is good with CMBN naming conventions, dependecies, and conversions like @LongLeftFlank himself, @37mm , @Mord or somebody else knows if this can be converted without extensive rework.

This is really a gem of mod I didn´t know that it existed. It comes with alot of content, Japanese audio, UI mod, and pacific terrain. Taken together with the content that was recently provided by the H&E mod there are alot of options to go WW2 Pacific or whatever similar.

Edited June 9, 2020 by Aquila-SmartWargames

[JM Stuff]

47 minutes ago, Aquila-SmartWargames said:

Scenario alongside the Pacific terrain and ambience mod is great, unfortunately the Japanese Infantry and US WW2 Marines mod comes in legacy CMBN file standard. The Japanese are a real challenge. They are using Luftwaffe airborne skeletons in British infantry slots and renaming everything in order to make it work can really start to let your head smoke.

I just tried to convert those Japanese and managed a partial half-hearted result but I had to remove the LW skeletons because otherwise they got weird faces and uniforms, there is a chance that I incorrectly changed files.

Perhaps somebody that is good with CMBN naming conventions, dependecies, and conversions like @LongLeftFlank himself, @37mm , @Mord or somebody else knows if this can be converted without extensive rework.

This is really a gem of mod I didn´t know that it existed. It comes with alot of content, Japanese audio, UI mod, and pacific terrain. Taken together with the content that was recently provided by the H&E mod there are alot of options to go WW2 Pacific or whatever similar.

Yes all this masterpiece is from  @LongLeftFlank and all the credits and our respect !

Thank you Aquila I was quit sure that you could do something about this mod minimum see it in details ! 

(I just tried to convert those Japanese and managed a partial half-hearted result but I had to remove the LW skeletons because otherwise they got weird faces and uniforms, there is a chance that I incorrectly changed files).

And with help from some others good modders like @LongLeftFlank himself, @37mm , @Mord or somebody else that I could forget...

I m sure to see one day (I hope not too late)  a reborning  Pacific Theater !

[37mm]

@LongLeftFlank's Pacific mod provided, in many ways, much inspiration for Heaven & Earth (his Pacific mod has been mentioned in the thread) especially with regards to our [delta] tag.

I know nothing of WW2 skeleton naming conventions & have only very recently started some preliminary experiments with CMFI, however, I'd imagine the Asian faces from @puje would be a great improvement over what was available back then (early versions of Heaven & Earth featured tweaked versions of the Asian faces made for this mod).

[LongLeftFlank]

Hi folks, just a brief touch and go here: as usual, work and RL doesn't give me much leisure for CM, except in short single evening bursts.

I'm pleased, and honoured, you are getting some enjoyment out of my 2012 burst of post-Ramadi CM creative hacking (Makin, Dien Bien Phu, Baba Amr, le Carillon), which several others mentioned in this thread contributed to.

I'll mail you the mods over in a few days (they're on an old computer). But please don't look to me to fix anything, sorry. This stuff is strictly as-is, where-is. Feel free to alter and (hopefully) share it with those like minded.

PS. In the pre-Blender world, the Brits (Poles) made the closest analog to Japanese troops in terms of small arms: rifles, Brens, Mills bombs. Modding German formations to Japanese was hopeless and I didn't own CMFI.

The sole reason I modded LW troops as well was to get an on map 75mm infantry gun not available in the CW arsenal. Those units are walled off behind bocage and aren't supposed to ever see actual combat, mainly owing to the very un-Japanese MG42s their ammo carrier sections are toting. It was just another crude hack, one of many.

Edited June 10, 2020 by LongLeftFlank

[JM Stuff]

4 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Hi folks, just a brief touch and go here: as usual, work and RL doesn't give me much leisure for CM, except in short single evening bursts.

I'm pleased, and honoured, you are getting some enjoyment out of my 2012 burst of post-Ramadi CM creative hacking (Makin, Dien Bien Phu, Baba Amr, le Carillon), which several others mentioned in this thread contributed to.

I'll mail you the mods over in a few days (they're on an old computer). But please don't look to me to fix anything, sorry. This stuff is strictly as-is, where-is. Feel free to alter and (hopefully) share it with those like minded.

PS. In the pre-Blender world, the Brits (Poles) made the closest analog to Japanese troops in terms of small arms: rifles, Brens, Mills bombs. Modding German formations to Japanese was hopeless and I didn't own CMFI.

The sole reason I modded LW troops as well was to get an on map 75mm infantry gun not available in the CW arsenal. Those units are walled off behind bocage and aren't supposed to ever see actual combat, mainly owing to the very un-Japanese MG42s their ammo carrier sections are toting. It was just another crude hack, one of many.

...a word from Druid must always be heard and respected !

however, when somebody have  a magic potion...!

Edited June 10, 2020 by 3j2m7

[LongLeftFlank]

Ha ha mate, I think your work has long surpassed my crude modding and hacking skills (now almost entirely forgotten). No more training do you need.

... I sometimes get tempted to pitch the Philippine Army to contract BFC to develop  an officer tactical training aid, with scenarios based on Marawi, SAF-44 and various anti-NPA actions. (Which would incent them financially to cover off some longstanding issues like heavy/light buildings and proper foliage which would benefit the rest of us). 

Filipinos are brave, hardy soldiers (that goes for their enemies too, who are also Filipinos) and quite good marksmen, but even elite unit leaders routinely bungle simple platoon tactics like flank security and tactical cordons. Allowing enemies to ambush them, or readily slip away to fight another day.

Edited June 10, 2020 by LongLeftFlank

[JM Stuff]

32 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Ha ha mate, I think your work has long surpassed my crude modding and hacking skills (now almost entirely forgotten). No more training do you need.

... I sometimes get tempted to pitch the Philippine Army to contract BFC to develop  an officer tactical training aid, with scenarios based on Marawi, SAF-44 and various anti-NPA actions. (Which would incent them financially to cover off some longstanding issues like heavy/light buildings and proper foliage which would benefit the rest of us). 

Filipinos are brave, hardy soldiers (that goes for their enemies too, who are also Filipinos) and quite good marksmen, but even elite unit leaders routinely bungle simple platoon tactics like flank security and tactical cordons. Allowing enemies to ambush them, or readily slip away to fight another day.

...you see with the ideas of your old mod, that awakens new ideas, new hopes in fact ... you are reborn ! let us only feel what is deep in you, and follow ALWAYS your FIRST idea !

[Aquila-SmartWargames]

19 hours ago, 3j2m7 said:

Enjoy it and give a feedback !

Okay I´ve played the scenario. It comes with a big OOB which was absolutely beyond my personal comfort zone and left me playing rather thoughtless and laid back. Preferring smaller OOBs is personal preference and others might look exactly for something like this, specifically if you always wanted to recreate the Iwo Jima Yellow Beach landings.

Would´ve welcomed a couple of TRPs. I´m not a big fan of time limits and changed it to 4h, again personal preference. Map alongside terrain mod very beautiful, really liked the ambience sound and Japanese voices.

It was challenging to adapt which is good news. Not just a reskin which means that this provides some kind of new gameplay experience as fighting on this map and the situation felt different, like playing a different CM game.

 

Edited June 10, 2020 by Aquila-SmartWargames

[JM Stuff]

2 hours ago, Aquila-SmartWargames said:

Okay I´ve played the scenario. It comes with a big OOB which was absolutely beyond my personal comfort zone and left me playing rather thoughtless and laid back. Preferring smaller OOBs is personal preference and others might look exactly for something like this, specifically if you always wanted to recreate the Iwo Jima Yellow Beach landings.

Would´ve welcomed a couple of TRPs. I´m not a big fan of time limits and changed it to 4h, again personal preference. Map alongside terrain mod very beautiful, really liked the ambience sound and Japanese voices.

It was challenging to adapt which is good news. Not just a reskin which means that this provides some kind of new gameplay experience as fighting on this map and the situation felt different, like playing a different CM game.

 

For my part it is more than I was expected I also hope that other members will like it, with this view it makes you want to play and replay again, well this is my opinion, thank you for this conclusive test, if you made personal changes please let us know, thank you for this work,... now jump to the editor and prepare Guadalcanal !

[Aquila-SmartWargames]

42 minutes ago, 3j2m7 said:

if you made personal changes please let us know

1) changed the Pz.II to R35

2) added some ships to the 3rd Reinforcement Wave

About the changes made to the uniform mods, it was a rough brute-force attempt to get the Japanese in somewhat working condition. I´ve dropped alot of the skeleton files thus the result is not as sophisticated as the original work.

[JM Stuff]

1 hour ago, Aquila-SmartWargames said:

1) changed the Pz.II to R35

2) added some ships to the 3rd Reinforcement Wave

About the changes made to the uniform mods, it was a rough brute-force attempt to get the Japanese in somewhat working condition. I´ve dropped alot of the skeleton files thus the result is not as sophisticated as the original work.

Sound good are your changes available ?

[Aquila-SmartWargames]

43 minutes ago, 3j2m7 said:

Sound good are your changes available ?

 

CMBN LLF Pacific Mod modified by SMW.rar (Experimental)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1tviryry89g6py7/AAAJpSvGH6u1iEx4WzwVLSnJa?dl=0

- for current CMBN versions

- there are two version of the Iwo Jima scenario included, the original, and a mod including the following slight changes:

2 hours ago, Aquila-SmartWargames said:

1) changed the Pz.II to R35

2) added some ships to the 3rd Reinforcement Wave

Note:

23 hours ago, Aquila-SmartWargames said:

unfortunately the Japanese Infantry and US WW2 Marines mod comes in legacy CMBN file standard. The Japanese are a real challenge. They are using Luftwaffe airborne skeletons in British infantry slots and renaming everything in order to make it work can really start to let your head smoke.

I just tried to convert those Japanese and managed a partial half-hearted result but I had to remove the LW skeletons because otherwise they got weird faces and uniforms

2 hours ago, Aquila-SmartWargames said:

About the changes made to the uniform mods, it was a rough brute-force attempt to get the Japanese in somewhat working condition. I´ve dropped alot of the skeleton files thus the result is not as sophisticated as the original work.

- some textures might be misaligned

Edited June 10, 2020 by Aquila-SmartWargames

[JM Stuff]

8 minutes ago, Aquila-SmartWargames said:

 

CMBN LLF Pacific Mod modified by SMW.rar (Experimental)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1tviryry89g6py7/AAAJpSvGH6u1iEx4WzwVLSnJa?dl=0

- "works" with current CMBNv4 engine

- there are two version of the Iwo Jima scenario included the original, and a slight mod by me including the following slight changes:

Note:

 

tHANKS i WILL probably not be the only one to download it, but I can tell you that I am the one that really enjoying to waching the video, this was like you said a new CM !

[LongLeftFlank]

Wow @Aquila-SmartWargames, I just watched your video end to end! Many thanks for making it, I enjoyed it very much and learned a lot from you.

The 1943 Makin landing was very well documented (by SLA Marshall, no less!), and most of those bunker lines you had to slog through were in their historical locations.

And it sounds like you encountered all the frustrations of a real life BLT  commander, especially inability to access your plentiful-on-paper support firepower once ashore. The original design was that most of those ships and aircraft plastered the map in the first 5 minutes without player involvement, but perhaps the updates to CMBN since 2012 altered the logic, or did you make a change? TRPs would definitely have been totally ahistorical, though convenient gamewise. The Navy had to be very careful with the bombardment and even then there were numerous friendly fire casualties. Shore to ship fire coordination by radio was simply infeasible in timelines less than a day in late '43. And it was an extreme rarity in the PTO that an Allied force had the luxury of standing off and letting big guns pulverize the enemy; invariably the bulk of the Japanese were still in their holes once the smoke cleared, still needing to be cleared out the hard way (you know this all, I'm sure). 

As you noticed too, jungle warfare is extremely fragmented, a series of lethal 3 on 1 hide-and-seeks, down and dirty. In a big scenario that presents a CM micro nightmare. I personally don't play above company level in RT and it sounds like you're the same. 

But with WeGo it is quite manageable, albeit lengthy. It would have been hard to hack this action up into small chunks without losing a lot of the wargame command decision element. I respect that's not your priority though; fair enough.

Some of the other annoyances you mentioned are also historical, and deliberate. Just as in the real landing, the platoons landed all mixed up all along the beach, having got hung up on the reef, so you need to sort them out prior to moving inland. (Platoon movement (Hunt, usually) helps a lot with speeding up the issue of orders). Those snipers out in the water on the wrecked hulks (bridges) were a very real irritant; their fire held up the main landing force for an hour (!) while a US destroyer sailed in close and pulverized them! I was smiling as they popped up again and again.

I notice you largely used only one speed: Quick, which caused your guys to take a lot of extra casualties. And you also pushed the same Green squads forward again and again without letup until they broke. So, they panic, hair-on-fire: the engine 4.0 issues compound that problem of course. That's why you really need a whole battalion to clear this map (that's in the briefing, which I will admit runs on far too long). Only a subset of formations are in action at any given moment.

Were I ever to redo this scenario (unlikely), I'd make the tanks a lot less powerful. You had them flitting all over the map, which is skilled gaming, but pretty ahistorical. Again, just as in Vietnam there was no high tech magic bullet to PTO jungle warfare; just filthy, dehydrated young men scrambling through dense thickets with rifles and grenades.

Anyway, thanks again for taking it for a spin, and for the excellent video!

Edited June 11, 2020 by LongLeftFlank

[Aquila-SmartWargames]

7 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Wow @Aquila-SmartWargames, I just watched your video end to end! Many thanks for making it, I enjoyed it very much and learned a lot from you.

What really? Haha it was one of my sloppiest CM playthroughs. I started by taking care of every single man with the observer beach party but when the batallion came into play I started to waste the forces and drive tanks around all over the map somewhat in flight mode.This has something to do that I indeed prefer smaller OOBs up to company level and like to focus on single situations. Yes I´m using to many quick command and not enough rest because time limits ill-trained me once to and it really showed here. I also became hungry.

I guess I am prone to apply a modern mindset when it comes to ww2 air support but yes I know from accounts that it often was next to possible to bring support options to effect especially in the PTO. To my knowledge I didn´t alter any of the air support in the editor but accidents happen. Calling in all support options from the beginning would be also my choice when deciding again.

Very unique scenario. Would like to see a <=company-level campaign based on these Pacific assets.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Aquila-SmartWargames