George MC

Death of a Panther

Errmm that was not Bill that made these - it was myself and Charlie Meconis See link in my sig...

One for the tread heads

Combined arms - armour engages enemy PAK and tanks, whilst SPW are revving up to head into the small village where the smoke is billowing up from.

End of the road...

I created a scenario fo CMBB (CMX1) where a small German mech recce unit with some Hetzers (in mist and fog) conducted a rearguard action against probing Soviet tanks (close range ambushes with panzerfaust and 'shreks) . The mist and fog meant the Soviets could potentially pass any "roadblocks" so the German player also had to sue a screen ID the attack axis and then set-up ambushes. As they fell back they had to ensure they delayed the Soviets long enough to allow the engineers to mine several bridge crossings. I simulated this by having an engineering unit at the bridges and TRPs on each bridge covered by a FOO (the arty and FOO came in reinforcements near the end of the scenario). The arty was heavy duty stuff which did the trick of bringing down the bridges. The same approach works in CMX but you will have to be careful what bridge type you use - lighter bridges struck by heavy duty ordinance will come down or at the very least deny anyone a safe crossing. Oh in the CMBB scenario you did have to make a choice between leaving some of your guys on the other side (to stall the Soviets) or risk the Soviets getting across the bridges...

Maybe - although for me will depend on the underlying modelling of hit chances, armour etc etc. More collectively to a game for me than dynamic campaigns and graphics. Oh and the ability to create scenarios. Edited to add: still it's great we have developers who are willing and able to develop such great wargames set in this time period. Regardless of personal views and choices its great for the wargaming community I think.

As @Combatintman concisely explains before you have to learn basic drills/develop your now SOPS at different tactical levels. In Combat Mission terms and as others have mentioned above keep playing company level QBs to work out basic drills (for both armour and infantry). @Bill Hardenberger has produced an excellent series of battle drills aimed at the Combat Mission player. They'll give you some food for thought (and practice) as to developing your versions of these drills and how they apply at different tactical levels. http://battledrill.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/combat-mission-tactical-problems-cmtp.html Essentially a battalion level combat mission scenario will likely involve a series of different actions "going on" from units in attack, to those providing overwatch, to those travelling tactically into new positions etc etc. Stands to reason you have to know the basics well. Specifically to large actions what I do is ensure my force stays command and control intact i.e. maintain platoon/company cohesion ensuring the CC and links are maintained. This helps for jumping back and forward to platoons via the company HQ. If everyone is spread all over - that becomes more confusing! In a battalion level action not everyone has to attack at the same place at the same time. I tend to assign units as scouts (who are small light units - maybe even just a few guys in softskin vehicles or a couple of tanks) to probe ahead - this works better if you can have hidden "eyes on" your scouts to see what is going to cut them down/blow them up... Then the vanguard (maybe around reinforced platoon size or reduced company) they'll often be following the scouts up to support/blow through anything they encounter, if opposition too strong, they go into firing positions till I work out what I'm facing before, if required I bring up the main body - which is my heavy punching unit. Travelling back as a mobile reserve is the rear guard. In reality this organisation is mirrored at the different levels usually - but all depends on terrain. What I like about large scenarios is I'm still working on perfecting this. I love the complexity and demands these large scenarios place on the player you have to be a jack of all trades and have a good handle on how CC and works to make this work effectively. Enjoy the journey

The key issue in my opinion - is new designers start with far too grandiose ideas for their skill set. Currently the editor is what is - so you have to learn to work within its limitations. So often the frustration is trying to do some complicated and "novel" idea that inevitably due to editor and game engine limitations is doomed to never work as intended. So if you want to start designing a scenario I'd suggest grabbing one of the smallest in-game maps and opening it up in the editor. Then delete every unit, every label, every objective and AI plan. You can then tweak the map by playing about with it. Then have a few units (go for human attacker vs AI defender) on the map. When doing the defence take your time to set-up for this type of battle good set-up will be key to how this battle feels. If you feel bold one AI unit as a counterattack force and one trigger. You can check this works as intended using the WEGO scenario author mode for testing. Briefings and associated maps I'd keep very simple. Bullet points would suffice for the briefing or pinch someone else's brief you like and tweak the key details! Simple screen shot of map of failing that just do a blank one with simple mission brief i.e. attack and occupy farmhouse No1 (500 points). I'd do lot's of these smaller ones all the while expanding your repertoire of techniques in the editor. This is the "game" within the game. For campaigns same rules - start really small using existing maps and a small core unit - make it three scenarios long with limited branching, and discover the techniques to crafting scenarios. I'd avoid anything strictly based on historical for now - they DO take a lot of work - mainly reserach and recreating authentic maps within the confines of the editor. That is a skill all of it's own. Stay small - based on real life but not mirroring in anyway, limited bracnhing - you can for the first just gor for linear progression and aim at force conservation. Hope this helps.

Good to have you back

Cool glad you all sorted.

FYI there are no in-game controls where you can set the camera to a specific level. However, there are hotkeys which the user can configure. To check them open your game - go to OPTIONS - then click on CONTROLS - the default there under CAMERA CONFIG (bottom line) is STANDARD. Just to clarfify, are you using the keyboard to change your elevation levels or the mouse wheel? Did you change or amend any of the game's hotkeys files? Only thing I can suggest is check the drivers for both your mouse and your graphics card (what I'd do first) and update/renew them. Then see if the issue persists. If it does I'd log a report in the technical forum - you'll at least get help from someone more tech savvy than me! Good luck

I suspect it would not last too many missions as a red team vs Blue Team campaign...

I've just been around a long time! Cheers hope fully you'll enjoy it - bit different from my CMSF stuff unless you've played the Forging Steel campaign in CMSF, in which case similarish

Can't speak about the specifics re the scenarios you cite. By way of explanation there has been a lot of discussion in the past about scenario time length. There was a view, expressed by many players, they wanted more time to complete scenarios. As a result of these discussion designers will oft time allocate a longer time for the scenario to be played out to accommodate this request from players. Another view could be you are just to good at playing and hence decimated the enemy in a quicker time than foreseen by the designer, or in playtests, hence the gap between you "winning" and the enemy getting back up. I'l admit to having both issues happen to scenarios I have designed. Re the second issue I do try to give the player some hint that more trouble maybe on the horizon e.g. player has to attack to seize objective, then organise defence once objective is taken tor epel enemy attack. This means you may have a "tactical pause" where not much happens but this is time for the player to re-org to ensure they have a chance of repelling an enemy attack. I do though try to make this clear in the briefing. So I guess it's not a V4 issue but perhaps more down to a scenario design which may affect larger (potentially more complex) scenarios where estimating times for key events happening on the CM battlefield can be more problematic for the designer (mind we don't have reinforcement triggers - as yet - which would certainly alleviate the second issue).

Hi @Erwin Good effort on Mission 1 My bad - you don't get on-map mortars Mission - it's the variation Missions with 2 (campaign branches after 1). I'm busy working on another campaign so my recall re details for this campaign is becoming mixed up with stuff from the new one! Aye Mission 2 is winnable without mortars, other players have done it and I've done it - just ensure you manage losses amongst your panzer grenadiers. You can't afford to waste them...

You'd need to re-start - assuming you are not playing version 4 - I did have this on dropbox a while back. The file version will be againts the campaign file. If you are past the first few missions makes no odds as you are past the wee issue with the off-map mortars.

Hi All Just to let you know version 4 has been uploaded. This fixed a persistent issue around the off-map mortars not being available in the earlier missions. http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-red-thunder/cm-red-thunder-campaigns/kampfgruppe-von-schroif-cmrt-campaign/ Thanks to @Bootie for his assistance in amending the file on TSDIII. Cheery!

Nae worries

http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=select&id=6 Took 30s using google. You should be able to find what you want now.

It's a good read - worth getting for sure. I started out doing a few scenarios based on some episodes in this book but binned em as struggled to make them fit into a CMSF framework (map size etc).

I like on-map mortars. Overrunning enemy mortar batteries with AFVs is truly a special moment

For bravery and dedication to duty above a beyond they received a wee spot of leave for a job well done. Actually they are not a core unit - I put em in the first mission as "red shirts"... Given this campaign will whittle down your dismounts I thought I'd give the player a wee bit of padding for the first mission. In other missions where advanced recce is essential you'll find you may have someone attached who's job is to do that very thing. Although caution - most of these units in other missions are not "red shirts" and you will be asked in the brief to look after them rather than have them needlessly slaughtered. Cheery! P.S. FYI - I've sent the revised v4 file to @Bootie to be uploaded to TSDIII when he's got a moment free.

It works in CMSF - I've used this technique in several CMSF scenarios when we had even less AI Groups, namely 8 and tried to make large scenarios with multiple large groups - just watch the timings between groups arriving and the AI Plan orders etc.

For sure - but then again you had the same issue with the old shoot and scoot command in CMX1 as the tank would only pause for a short while, and could (and often) pulled back without taking a shot. The issue is though how long should the tank pause with this new command? 5s?10s? 15s? 30s? That's the point even with a "shoot and scoot" command you would still get the situation of a tank pulling back before taking the crucial shot. Or taking fore from a previously unknown enemy shooter whilst vainly trying to locate them...The whole point of shoot and scoot is getting off a snap shot (at a known enemy) before they can fire back at you...Or at least encouraging someone to break cover and take a snap shot (works well if you have others keeping an eye out in overwatch). As you state doing all this at the end of a turn gives the player even more control. I'd add that I have used hunt command at the last 15s of a turn to get a tank into sight of a located enemy target. Then I can decide next turn how long it stays in sight engaging. In RL you'll see many training manuals talk about firing stops not lasting more than 15s as this was considred the optimal time to locate and engage before the enemy got a bead of you.