11. Panzer Division - From Montélimar to the Drôme

[Egger]

Fantastic work, good trick the broken roof to make a tower effect (the chateu).

[winkelried]

The maps look amazing. Can I ask, how did you do the flat roofed towers? Can we put in building without roofs now, or is this one of the mods you'll be packaging with the maps? They're very cool looking.

I used a high (6-8 level) modular building. First I destroy all walls of the top floor - either completely (=flat) or partially (=edged roof) and then I destroy the roof of the building - et voilà.

[Childress]

You Swiss must have oodles of spare time! This is going to be a defensive campaign?

[Lets_All_Fight]

I used a high (6-8 level) modular building. First I destroy all walls of the top floor - either completely (=flat) or partially (=edged roof) and then I destroy the roof of the building - et voilà.

Excellent. I'm going to go try that now. Cheers!

[Vergeltungswaffe]

This project looks utterly amazing. Anyone who makes scenarios/campaigns deserves accolades, but this appears to be right up there with Paper Tiger, Fredrocker and George Mc's work.

One thing that scares me a little is your phrase that the US will have "lots of artillery and air power." IMHO, a tiny bit of airpower goes a long way.

[winkelried]

You Swiss must have oodles of spare time! This is going to be a defensive campaign?

French living in Switzerland ;-)

there will be defensive battles (some of them quite desperate) and offensive battles (including the odd night battle). You will see things like

• holding off an allied attack until the rear echelon convoys have left the area and then successfully disengage.
  
• fighting the Maquis when your front line troops are engaged by the Americans.
  
• removing American roadblocks with an armour heavy force
  
• holding off an American assault until your heavy forces show up to counter attack
  
• rooting out entrenched American infantry using third rate Luftwaffe units supported by a few tanks.
  
• searching and routing FOs who harass your rear echelon columns with artillery
  
• exfiltrating what's left of your infantry after being cut off by the Americans ...
  
• getting pounded by 108+ U.S. artillery pieces (never all of them together though )
  

and ...

some goodies :-) even firing a few shots with these before they get captured by the Allies at La Coucourde

if you want to learn more read Riviera to the Rhine Chapter IX

[winkelried]

IMHO, a tiny bit of airpower goes a long way.

There are lots of trees for hiding under

[wespe001]

Tu as fait un excellent travail cher compatriote

Les campagnes ne sont jouables que contre l'IA?

Ou H X H en chaise tournante si mes souvenirs sont bons.

[Hister]

Waaaawwiiii, that's just breath-taking!

[Broadsword56]

Winkelried,

Is Crest the same place where the Maquis launched an offensive, took over an entire plateau and declared it a liberated zone (expecting the Allies to arrive and join them) only to see the Germans arrive instead and massacre the inhabitants inside a locked church?

[winkelried]

Winkelried,

Is Crest the same place where the Maquis launched an offensive, took over an entire plateau and declared it a liberated zone (expecting the Allies to arrive and join them) only to see the Germans arrive instead and massacre the inhabitants inside a locked church?

no. you probably refer to the Vercors which was not far to the northeast of Crest, but does not include Crest.

In the battle of Montélimar the French FFI units were organized along military lines and cooperated closely with the U.S. forces. Relevant units for the battle were the 4e Bataillon FFI du Drôme of the Zone Sud with 6 companies in the Montélimar-Sauzet-Marsanne-La Coucourde area and the 2e Bataillon FFI of the Zone Centre with 10 companies in the Crest - Loriol area.

The FFI were deployed in coordination with the Americans as infantry - although mostly in defensive tasks - except for some hit and run attacks on rear echelon units.

A bit farther north the liberation of Valence was left to the FFI when the U.S. forces were needed at Montélimar.

(take with care - not my area of focus )

[wespe001]

I hope the card will be available for download

she is gorgeous, great job

[Smeel]

Breathtaking is the right word, absolutely gorgeous looking maps!

[Aragorn2002]

Winkelried, which units will you use as Maquis?

[winkelried]

Winkelried, which units will you use as Maquis?

I use dismounted ( )American armored infantry (almost) without heavy weapons (no mortars, some MGs and the odd bazooka). I think this gives them a simple weapons mix (mostly M1 and a few carbines) - and naturally i hope BFC will gives us some FFI in the near future with a nice hodgepot of weapons :-) - and naturally i wait for the traction avante.

[snake_eye]

@Winkelfried

I am glad to read that you have almost finished your campaign. For having tried to test it back in march 2012 (Montelimar to Valence V01. cam), I can write that the map of the first battle is fantastic. Writing that is far from the truth. I have never seen a landscape so well done. It is almost identical to what you might see being at la Courcoude.

The briefing is very well done and illustrated, making you want to get into the fight.

When I have seen at that time, the enormous work being done (scenario design and historical setting), I got really mad when I had difficulties to load the campaign (it took a long time) and then its first battle. You must have a clean install in order to have all the memory available. When I finally succeeded in doing it, I did not go that far, CMBN V1.01 crashdumped in the next 10 minutes of a real time battle. That was what I reported to you at the time.

I had sufficient time however to see that the trees and the map size were dropping the game speed resulting in a sluggish move of the units. I had to pause, insert my pathways and orders and finally resume the game in order to try to play it. I usually play RT and I tried also Wego

Despites many graphic and memory setting on my 2.00 GHz,4.0 G Ram, 32 bits Vista OS Laptop, I have been unable to eradicate the crashdump.

Since I played many battles without any problem, I really hope that players won’t face the same. I think that Desktop computers will fare better than Laptop.

I tried again your campaign file today with CMBN V2.0. The loading of the campaign failed at the 60% mark and with CMBN V 1.11 at the 74% mark.

I must say that I have had quite a disillusion with the V2. patch since quite a few scenarios don’t load farther than the 74% mark as I reported it with others in the Forum. That happens with “Wittmann’s demise”, my scenario “Die Amis Kommen” as well and others I have not yet released.

A strange thing happened. I have been however, able to play Wittmann’s demise since in one of my install I omitted to patch to V1.11 before applying the V2.0. I had the “famous” Marder crew shown extending their arms. (That was equally reported in the Forum). Reading it and having seen that I made a check at my Data and saw that I had omitted V1.11

If I am writing about these problems and the one I had at the time, it is only in order to draw the attention of BF about the problems we are having. As a player it is sufficiently annoying not to be able to play a battle we like, but as a scenario designer I have no words to describe how we feel, seeing how such an amount of work is more or less annihilated by a game having graphical and speed difficulties, as soon as we are playing a big battle on a large map.

If I have to formulate a CM wish for 2013 it is that BF overcomes the V2.0 problems and that we might be able to play your really fantastic campaign.

Cheer

That book “Riviera to the Rhine” from Jeffrey J. Clarke & Robert Ross Smith might be of some interest to some of you

[Wodin]

Snake eye..maybe it's time for you to upgrade? It happens to all of us at some point. Games move on and we need more powerful hardware to play them. If this is happening then the min specs should be upgraded. I'm not certain you can hold the game to fault if your hardware isn't powerful enough to play it. I have no issues playing the larger scenarios\campaigns, I don't have an uber desktop either...tri core ADM @3.2, ATI 6850 1gig and 8 gigs of ram Win 7 64 bit. The ram wass bought lthe year befre last for aorund £35 and the card was less than a £100. I've had the CPU for over three years now.

[winkelried]

thanks snake_eye i remember your issues - that's one of the reasons why i waited for 2.0 to finalise the campaign - we'll might still see some of those issues on some configurations i suspect. i use the following platform config to playtest:

Intel Core i5 CPU M430@2.27 GHz

4 GB RAM

64-bit OS Windows 7

NVIDIA GeForce GT 320M with 1'024 MB Video Memory

Loading times for large maps (w/o units) are in the range of 3 to 8 minutes on this platform at best/best graphic settings.

Now running CMBN 2.0 with CW module and had no issues during playtesting till now.

[snake_eye]

@Wodin

Your answer confirms what I suspected already. That is that a Laptop with a CPU of 2.00 GHz (Intel core Duo T7250) with 4.0 GO RAM is OK for most of the battles but for the ones having big units (Battalion strength) and consequently a larger map.

A Desktop will have generally a more powerful CPU than a Laptop. Mine is a HP Pavilion dv9500 from December 2007 running with Vista 32 bits. 5 years make a difference, you are right.

I have tried today to bypass that V 2.0 probable Out of Memory issue with the74 % mark crashdump happening frequently while loading a scenario file by using a 8 GO memory card as Readyboost.

I have been able to play RT,Breaking the Panzers without any problem during one hour non stop till a crashdump with 01:00 remaining time happened.

If you had to buy a lap top today which one would you buy? If you don’t see one worth it, then the answer would be to play with a desktop one. However, I don’t favour that since I am travelling quite frequently.

[nathangun]

WOW ! Absolutely amazing. A mammoth undertaking.

[snake_eye]

@Winkelfried

Looks like you have a laptop ? My Nvidia Geforce 8600M GS has only 256Mb. That makes a difference while playing when the right graphic setting is not used, but should not interfere during the loading of a file. Still had the crashdump at the 60% mark (not with a clean install) using the Ready Boost.

What surprise me is that I was able to load it with the V 1.01 patch.

There are two issues now days : The file loading ability of the computer (depending on the CPU and the RAM) and its ability to play the game. The last one depending on the CPU, the RAM and the Graphic Card (with its memory).

I'll have to find a solution as soon as I get back from a long trip abroad. That way I'll be able to play your campaign and won't be frustrated anymore.

Cheer

[winkelried]

snake_eye

try to fiddle with the mods you have installed. had some issues with stability and removed all mods and reinstalled one by one. left some out at the end...

[JohnO]

Wow, nice job, can't wait ti play it.

[Bil Hardenberger]

Just wanted to throw my comments in with the rest.. great looking maps, excellent subject matter for a campaign, 11th PD was an amazing unit... my only problem is that I never play campaigns as I can't play them multiplayer... any chance we will eventually see these as stand alone scenarios?

[mjkerner]

Bil, there's a utility in the Respository that extracts scenarios from campaigns. Works real nifty. I can Dropbox it to you if you can't find it.