Best way to play operational level?

[slippy]

I now this has been asked before, so please don't shoot me down in flames. I am just getting back into CM, I haven't played any of the CM2 titles yet just the original CM a while ago. What got to me in the end though was the 'meaningless' of the battles, ie a lack of operational/strategic level.

 

I have seen some posts on using board games, but I must admit this does not appeal to me, so is there any way of simulating or playing an operational game on the PC and extracting the results to a CM2 battle?

I have seen the post on the new operational game in this forum, but it isn't out yet, and after CMCC I am wary of waiting for things. So what does everyone do for now? What base game do they use? and any tips or tricks?

I would like to buy all the new titles eventually but fear I personally will get bored with them without some greater meaning and effect to the battles.

 

regards

 

slippy

[Bulletpoint]

You should check the stuff @kohlenklau is doing. He sets up campaigns in another game and then translates the outcomes to and from the CM engine.

[IICptMillerII]

I agree with Bulletpoint. @kohlenklau is the resident expert at the operational system that I think works best. It essentially uses the John Tiller Panzer Campaigns (PzC) games to simulate the operational level. It comes with detailed strategic maps, full order of battles for the forces involved, and both a scenario and OOB editor. The PzC games cover every major operation of WWII in an insane amount of detail. For example, the Normandy game has an accurate OOB for both the Axis and Allied armies down to the company. Pretty impressive if you ask me. 

I was interested in trying the system out myself and sent Kohl a PM about it. He was very willing to help me out, so I'm sure if you send him a message he will get back to you and help you out. Having learned the system, I think its great. The only real hassle is choosing/making the tactical battlefield maps to fight out an engagement in CM, but you can generally use QB maps for that. 

It would also be worth reading through a few of the running operations here on the forums. Bulletpoint linked to one of the threads above. There is at least one for all the WWII titles, and they all start with "CMPzC Campaign" so a forum search should get you quick results. 

Just remember that it is not a completely perfect system, so you'll likely have to make a few rules for yourself as you learn it. For example, Kohl likes to use a 10x10 100 rule, where he limits the map sizes (in PzC) to 10x10 hexes and only allows a maximum of 100 units (again in PzC that represent companies, armor, artillery, etc) on the battlefield total. I would recommend either trying the system out by yourself first or having a friendly operation with a friend. That way you can learn the system as you go without being in a competition setting first. 

[slippy]

thanks both for taking the time to reply, I will take a look at what you have suggested. One thing I forgot to mention is that I am only really interested in single player, is this system suitable for that?

thanks again

[IICptMillerII]

As a matter of fact, I have yet to play with the system in a multiplayer setting. I've been playing it single player to get a feel for the system, and because its a lot of fun. 

Here's a screenshot of my scenario:

This is a scenario I created myself. Its a modified scenario that comes with PzC Sicily in which the US 3rd ID is attacking north towards the town of Canicatti. I added extra elements of a (fictional) German division using the PzC OOB editor and they are currently in the process of counter attacking the Americans with the intent of driving them back into the sea. The Americans are tasked with parrying the German counter attack and then counter attacking themselves with the goal of taking Canicatti. 

I've played 5 or so battles now and I have to say its a lot of fun. This is probably exactly what you're looking for. The battles have a lot of context to them and the forces involved in the battles are determined by the operational situation, not arbitrary picking and choosing by players before a quick battle. For example I had a battle where a US rifle company was being attacked by a German rifle company and tanks. The US had to fight a fighting withdrawal and hightail it as they had no effective anti-tank weapons. Most of them made it out, but the last two squads were pinned down by the tanks and captured.

In another battle, the opposite happened. There were two German companies (with no anti-tank assets) defending a small village on a road junction. The Americans attacked with a full tank platoon and a rifle company. The German defenders were surrounded and after suffering a lot of direct fire from the US tanks as well as a few heavy 105mm bombardments, they surrendered. 

Be warned, if you do get into it, its one hell of a time sink. Its also a helluva lot of fun! 

Edited January 31, 2016 by IICptMillerII

[slippy]

Thanks again

Where do i find all the rules, how to import etc please?

 

[kohlenklau]

@||CptMiller|| <that @ thing didn't seem to "take"...!>

I am impressed! I think for slippy, for the single player approach he desires (and I have NOT delved into), you are the godsend expert!

I think I will listen in and learn how you do it....

Edited January 31, 2016 by kohlenklau

[slippy]

Cpt Miller

 

Could you please take the time to explain how you play and edit the game files? I have never tried this kind of thing before but i am keen to learn. Is there a walkthrough or something on how to put PzC results into CM files and then the results back to PzC? I must admit i have not played PzC or CM2 (other than the demo) before, also Interested as you mention playing single player.

 

regards

 

slippy

[IICptMillerII]

No problem! This will be a rather rough crash course, so if you would like anything clarified please feel free to ask!

To start I would begin here: https://sites.google.com/site/cmpzch2hoperations/home This is a sort of rulebook that was made a while ago by a forum goer that I used as a primer to get myself acclimated. Note: Some of the rules listed I discarded/tweaked and some of the information is dated (specifically how to track casualties) Despite that, its a very good place to start as it lets you understand the general idea behind everything. 

After you get a basic understanding, you'll want to decide which theatre of battle you want to participate in. Are you fighting to get out of the Normandy beach head? Maybe you're part of Monty's drive on Caen. Sicily, Italy, Normandy, Holland, the list goes on. Choose whatever suits your fancy. After deciding which Combat Mission game you want to be using, its time to find the John Tiller game that covers the same events. For instance, if you decide you want to fight it out in CMBN, then PzC Normandy '44 is the Tiller game you want. This link will bring you to the John Tiller website where you can view and purchase the game of your choosing: http://www.johntillersoftware.com/ Just be aware that each Tiller game is in the ballpark of $40 USD.

Now that you've chosen both the CM and Tiller game, you'll want to learn the basics of how to play the Tiller games. Luckily, its quite simple. I was able to pick it up pretty quickly, and they are pretty fun to play on their own. 

Now its time to marry CM and Tiller. The Tiller games are optimal for this marriage because each game has a lot of overlapping depth. The hexes in the Tiller games cover a 1x1 km chunk of ground, which is a perfectly sized battlefield for CM. The units represented in the Tiller games are small enough to fit the scale of CM. You generally are working with Company sized units across the board. That unit size also translates perfectly into CM. The biggest mismatch I've found is that the OOBs for CM and Tiller are slightly different. For instance, in CMBN an American Rifle company is 160 men all told. In PzC Normandy, the same company is 193 men. This discrepancy exists for most company sized units unfortunately and requires some minor OOB tweaking. All the Tiller games come with both a scenario and OOB editor, so its relatively easy to do, just a tad tedious. However, you do not have to modify the OOB for the first test run you do. I would recommend learning the ropes first as is, and once you get the hang of how it works you can edit the OOB to be a 1:1 match with CM.

If I were you, to start I would chose a small scenario that ships with the Tiller games. Something that is roughly 10-12 turns long and only has a handful of units on either side. This will make things more manageable. One of the great things about Tiller is that you can play both sides of the battle. This is especially useful for testing things out. Here is a very small scenario I used as a test when I started out:

It involves a few companies from the 115th Infantry Regiment (29th ID) pushing their way Westward towards Isigny. They have 1 battery of 105mm howitzers as fire support, and are opposed by a few Osttruppen companies. (Note: This was one of the first scenarios I made for Tiller, and its lacking a few things, such as objectives for either side) The goal of the scenario was for me to figure out how to move my units around, how to initiate combat, and how to fight out a battle in CM and then translate over the results of the tactical battle to the PzC Normandy scenario. These scenarios are extremely easy to make using the Tiller scenario editor, but if you would like I could provide you with this or another simple scenario. 

This is a brief overview on how Tiller and CM line up and the general idea behind CMPzC. In my next post I'll show you how combat is done. 

 

[IICptMillerII]

Part 2: Combat

For simplicity sake, I'm going to use the scenario I made and showed above to illustrate how combat works across Tiller and CM.

Company A/1/115th Inf Rgt moves down the road until it bumps into an Osttruppen unit (1/Ost.439) however the company no longer has enough movement points to assault.

I end the US turn, and for simplicity sake during the German turn, they decide no one is moving or firing at anything. So the beginning of turn 2 looks like this:

You'll notice that company A now has all of its movement points back and is ready to assault. Company A assaults the Osttruppen, and the battle begins. Before we can dive into the CM side of this, we need to take down some important details. The hex coordinates of the hex being assaulted (shown in the bottom right) the type of terrain (shown in the upper left when the hex is selected, under the unit portrait) the units involved and their status (who they are, how many men do they have, their quality/current state of morale/fatigue) including any fire support that is in range and you decide to commit to this battle. The final bits of info are the time and date (shown in the lower right hand corner) and the weather conditions, which is shown by clicking 'Info' at the top and then 'weather.' Once this information is collected, you can jump into CM. 

In CM the hardest part of this process is finding/creating a map that will work for the battle. If you want you can make the map yourself in the editor, or you can find a QB map that is a close approximation. The latter is the method I would recommend for now. For this battle I chose the QB map called Attk Large Open QB-015. Once you know the map you simply orient it correctly (US attacking from West to East) create the set up zones and place both sides down on the map. For this battle its relatively simple, just a rifle company per side. Remember that Osttruppen were of very poor quality. I set their morale to low and their experience to conscript. Remember, this scenario is not meant to be challenging, its supposed to teach you the ropes. (Note: For Osttruppen I like to use the Grenadier Ersatz, but you need the Market Garden module for these units) One last point, if you decide to commit your howitzer battery to this fight, then go ahead and add 12 105mm howitzers to the US side as well. If you use them in the battle, then they will not be able to be used in another battle this turn. 

Now that you have the battle set up, you finally get to the good part and get to play it out! (Note: I find that its easier to just play the battle in Hotseat against yourself than it is to bother with creating AI plans)

I don't recall the exact numbers off the top of my head, so I'll make up some battle results here: US suffered 8 KIA and 14 WIA - Ost suffered 27 KIA 38 WIA 8 MIA. Again, for simplicity sake we are going to just add up the casualties for each side so we have a simple total to deal with. So company A suffered 22 casualties total and the Osttruppen suffered 73 casualties. 

Note: I would highly recommend using this battlefield career recorder to track casualties for a scenario you play out: http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=2990 Its really cool seeing the data as the scenario plays out. There are other recorder programs you can use but they're more technical. This one is more than adequate. Thanks @Ithikial_AU !

Translating casualties from CM to PzC is a bit technical, but is easy to get the hang of. The first thing you want to do (and should have already been prompted to do) is save the PzC battle. Call it something like "My CMPzC Test Battle" or something else that you will be able to instantly identify. You should now have a save file in your PzC folder called My CMPzC Test Battle.btl. You now need to convert the .btl file to a .scn file. The good news is all you need is Notepad ++ (free for download if you don't have it already) Open the .btl save file with notepad ++ and simply Save As "My CMPzC Battle Test.scn" and you're all set. Now, open up pcedit.exe (the Tiller editor located in the main folder) and scroll all the way to the bottom of the scenario list to find your save file. Open it, and use the editor to subtract casualties from both units involved in the battle, as well as to move the Osttruppen out of the assaulted hex and move the US into the hex. Simply save the file and close the editor, then head back into PzC Normandy and open the battle back up (via the scenario selection menu) and you'll see all of your edits have taken effect and you can continue playing!

 

Hopefully this quick and dirty run-through is enough to get you and others interested acclimated with the basics of the system. Once you get the hang of it it is loads of fun, and you can start making your own house rules to fit your style of play. If you have any questions please feel free to ask! Also just want to give a bit shout-out to Phil (Kohlenklau) for getting me started, and the other forum goers who helped pioneer the system!

Edited February 1, 2016 by IICptMillerII

[slippy]

Thanks a million Cpt Miller that is a superb tutorial, i can see i have a lot of catching up to do  .

 

Out of interest have you or anyone else tried using Command Ops2 for the operational side of the game? It looks pretty good and has had good reviews, not sure if or even if you can import/export data from it. Would like to know if anyone has tried.

 

thanks again

 

slippy

[BarbaricCo]

@IICptMillerII Thanks for this. Another @kohlenklau outstanding idea. Now if just Steve and John can make some automated package from this it would be priceless. But that's wishful thinking  

[IICptMillerII]

Glad I could help! Hopefully it doesn't come across as too intimidating or anything like that. It really is a simple and easy to use system once you get the hang of it. 

I've never played Command Ops2 but I've been thinking about getting into it for some time now. The reason the Tiller games work so well is because of the OOB and scenario editors, and the scale that the game goes down to. Without the editors I'm not sure how you would be able to use CM for tactical battles, but then again I'm not even sure if Command Ops has editors or not. Would be worth looking into however. Maybe someone with some experience with the game could chime in?

[sburke]

Command OP's has editors, I recall someone creating a d day fight.  However it is real time single player only which imho really limits it's usefulness.  

[Aberdonian]

I've just downloaded Command OPs2 core engine which includes 3 scenarios plus map and scenario editors from Lock n' Load website: lnlpublishing.com

This is a FREE download with the options of purchasing further modules later. The latest version is also multi-player.

Hopefully this looks like it may be of use. 

[slippy]

yes I noticed it was a free download for command ops 2 core well, have not had time to look into it yet though. Not having ever played a pure operational game before I was wondering if any knew if it was workable for what we require, the fact that it is single player and is supposed to have a good AI, ( I believe Panther Games also make Sims for the military) made me think it could be a possible contender for those of us looking for a single player solution.

I believe the same company made Highway to the Reich and similar games, and that Command Ops 2 is a successor to them, I even think there may have been demos for some of the older games which may prove good for seeing if they are suitable contenders or not.

 

regards

slippy

Edited February 1, 2016 by slippy

[slippy]

I have asked over at Lock n load forums (for Command Ops) to see if any one over there thinks Command Ops 2 is capable of doing what the PzC series can. I will post what info i get here.

 

cheers

slippy

[kohlenklau]

I have CO2 and back a few months ago I sat on a rock to think if this would be a good match up.

My evaluation was that trying to work with CO2 would not be as easy as with PzC. Plus my brain already has been through the learning curve with PzC.

Also CO2 doesn't give you the unit images and some other display type features that make PzC the best lash up IMHO.

One of the only if not the only area that CO2 would excel in is the map making flexibility as compared to PzC's only semi-editable map.

Sorry for the late chime in. I meant to post earlier.

Edited February 2, 2016 by kohlenklau

[IICptMillerII]

As I stated earlier I have not gotten a chance to play Command Ops2 so I'm not sure of its full potential. However having played and learned the CMPzC system I can say that I have no reason to look elsewhere. CM and PzC mesh extremely well, and you get everything out of each product. There is little extrapolation or abstraction required. Plus, the technical bits really are quite simple. As I said before the only real hassle is choosing a map and setting up the battle, but I imagine this would not be an issue if there was some kind of random map generator included in CM, and its also worth pointing out that a master map can be made of the whole area of operations, and then cut down into chunks for the battles. This is how Kohl has been doing it with his CMPzC series here on the forums. 

Lastly, it will be a lot harder for you if you decide to try and develop a whole new system for a different operational game, because you'll have to pioneer the entire thing from scratch. One of the best parts of CMPzC is that there are already a handful of people who play it, know how it works, and have proven that it works and its fun to play. I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't try another system, or that CMPzC is the end all be all, just that its probably going to be the best place to start.

I would recommend giving the CMPzC system a go. I think you'll find that its easy to learn and once you get the hang of it, you won't be disappointed or feel its lacking in any major way. If you have any more questions about it feel free to ask!

[Blazing 88's]

Thanks IICptMillerII for the above explanations.  I just might have to give this a try soon.  I own several of the Panzer Campaigns games so I should really give this a look.  I have been holding off because of free time mostly.

[slippy]

Kohlenklau and Capt Miller

Thanks again for your replies, Like you quite correctly mention there has been a lot of good ground work done here to get PzC and CM to work together, and therefore that is going to be the best way to proceed.

I only asked as i have no experience of either PzC or Command Ops, and they both look quite similar. Therefore i thought from a learning from scratch point of view Command Ops may have been a better solution long term, from your very informative posts i can see i am probably wrong.

 

Cheers again both, will take a look at PzC

regards

 

slippy

 

[IICptMillerII]

Thanks IICptMillerII for the above explanations.  I just might have to give this a try soon.  I own several of the Panzer Campaigns games so I should really give this a look.  I have been holding off because of free time mostly.

Definitely do! Just be aware that CMPzC is a big time sink, mostly because its loads of fun. Once you start, its hard to stop. "Just one more battle..."

Kohlenklau and Capt Miller

Thanks again for your replies, Like you quite correctly mention there has been a lot of good ground work done here to get PzC and CM to work together, and therefore that is going to be the best way to proceed.

I only asked as i have no experience of either PzC or Command Ops, and they both look quite similar. Therefore i thought from a learning from scratch point of view Command Ops may have been a better solution long term, from your very informative posts i can see i am probably wrong.

 

Cheers again both, will take a look at PzC

regards

 

slippy

 

No problem! As I said I've yet to give Command Ops a try, and I've never heard of anyone using it as an operational layer for CM, so your work was cut out for you if you went that route. 

As an added afterthought, there are some great texture mods available for the PzC series of games. They overhaul the UI graphics as well as the map itself. I personally prefer using the mods because I think it makes the game look less dated (the vanilla presentation is very Windows 98-ish) and the map has better detail when you zoom in. For future reference, here are the links to the two websites where you can get the mods:

MapMod: http://mapmod.hist-sdc.com/

Volcano Mod: http://www.volcanomods.com/

There are some alternative OOBs and scenarios that come with the mods as well that are fun to play around with. 

[Blazing 88's]

Definitely do! Just be aware that CMPzC is a big time sink, mostly because its loads of fun. Once you start, its hard to stop. "Just one more battle..."

No problem! As I said I've yet to give Command Ops a try, and I've never heard of anyone using it as an operational layer for CM, so your work was cut out for you if you went that route. 

As an added afterthought, there are some great texture mods available for the PzC series of games. They overhaul the UI graphics as well as the map itself. I personally prefer using the mods because I think it makes the game look less dated (the vanilla presentation is very Windows 98-ish) and the map has better detail when you zoom in. For future reference, here are the links to the two websites where you can get the mods:

MapMod: http://mapmod.hist-sdc.com/

Volcano Mod: http://www.volcanomods.com/

There are some alternative OOBs and scenarios that come with the mods as well that are fun to play around with. 

Yes I can recommend getting the mods for PzC.  Makes it look much better and a lot less dated.

[slippy]

Thanks for the mod links, tried them on the demo they do make it look more modern. One quick question, whilst looking on the John Tiller software site i noticed he has two titles in the Panzer Battles series, which it says

Panzer Battle wargames fit in scale between Squad Battles and Panzer Campaigns, having 250 meter hexes and platoon units. Panzer Battle wargames are designed to focus on tank battle and ranged fire

has anyone used these? The Panzer Battles Normandy quite appeals to me. Is there any reason we could not use them? Or does the system only work with the Panzer Campaign Series.

 

cheers again

 

slippy 

[Blazing 88's]

Thanks for the mod links, tried them on the demo they do make it look more modern. One quick question, whilst looking on the John Tiller software site i noticed he has two titles in the Panzer Battles series, which it says

has anyone used these? The Panzer Battles Normandy quite appeals to me. Is there any reason we could not use them? Or does the system only work with the Panzer Campaign Series.

 

cheers again

 

slippy 

Dude...  Just use PzC.  Rules and game implementation are already figured out.  You don't have to create a new system.  Also, PzC has a whole lot more games to use for the different theatres that CM has.  Panzer Battles looks to only have Normandy and Kursk - Southern Front.

Whatever though, do what you want.