Apocal
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Posts posted by Apocal
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I have been working on the scenario. I've already run through about 3 complete self-playtests in hotseat mode, everything looks good on that front. Now I'm at the part where I manage scoring. Someone on the forum had a scoring calculator that could determine how to weight things without having to do endless repetitions to make the points sit right but I'm not able to find it at a five minute search of the various maps and mods forums*. Can anybody help me out with a link?
At any rate, it is basically ready for H2H play; I had to tune the forces a little and it is definitely a very shoe-string affair on both counts. Total unit count for both Germans and Soviets is on the low side of things, at least until the first batch of reinforcements show up, and all forces on the field are in various states of worn-and-torn. Hopefully that captures more of the flavor of the east front than TO&E units with TO&E attachments fighting it out with other units, also conveniently at TO&E. As soon as I get scoring figured out (which might take a bit more than planned; it is time-consuming to arrange all the various "knobs" that control victory or defeat so that I have a good idea of what effect they have) I'll upload it at the Proving Ground.
*This is why I think we should merge the forums (most of them, anyway) and use a thread tagging system when people are discussing theater/title specific issues.
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My old thread of suggestions.
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This is more work than I put in across three different game issues combined, so I really hope someone in BF has taken note. On the plus side, in two of those cases there were changes made reasonably quickly that improved things.
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I just want a Sherman, really...
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This is all general CMx2 editor hope, nothing specific to CMFB. I'm just putting it here since this seems to be the most active forum.
1) Adjusting the ammo loadout of AFVs like was possible in CMx1. I know it will lead to the usual suspects loading up all the best tanks with all the best shells, but sometimes I'd really like to see my Shermans not hauling fifty percent AP into a infantry support assignment. Or to take away the HEAT rounds from certain guns. Etc. Apply it to squads with ammo and special weapons, supply trucks with whatever they are carrying, etc.
2) Being able to type the briefing text directly in the editor interface rather than doing the import/export dance.
3) The ability to select headcounts lower than 50%. Not really a big deal, since I just start eliminating whole subunits at that point, but it would be nice to showcase truly ragged-out units, especially in the late war stuff, without having to cut into already limited numbers of squads and such.
4) Allow the attachment of any squad, not just weapon teams, to a formation via the "Specialist Team" tab in the scenario editor. Once again, I know the usual suspects will use it to create some truly head-scratcher orders of battle but I think most players can't (won't) be bothered.
5) A way to see QB prices as a rough guide, for those making H2H scenarios.
6) "Both" as an option for early intel.
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2 hours ago, RepsolCBR said:
hello...
A few observations/thoughts...
- Although i'm pretty certain that swamps could be found at different eleveations i do belive that the terrain of the actual swamps will need to be fairly level. Looking at your last pictures it seems as if the map is slooping a fair bit to the left (even the swamp areas) ....I may very well be wrong about this though...but slooping swamps looks a bit strange to me.
The actual marsh (deep marsh) is level. The light, sorta blue-green stuff I use as the precusor, to show where the transition where gross boggy stuff kills off most vegetation before becoming actual marsh.
46 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:Even in an untouched forest, there are usually patches that are open and patches that are dense. So it's better to break up forests and not only use light/heavy forest tiles, but also include tall grass and weeds in places, combined with patches of shrubbery.
Also I would recommend being careful not to place too many trees in each tile. I find fewer trees make for better looks and gameplay and also it's easier on the computer.
There are actually sparse breaks and such throughout the forest, but it isn't really clear from the screenshot. But I'll take it up a notch. And only maybe 10% of the wood tiles have the dense tree setting, the majority are sparse with perhaps 25-33% being middling dense. It's just hard to find an angle where that much is obvious.
Taking the rest of the stuff into account and fixes being made as I type this.
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Thanks. I'm just going to run through a bunch of AARs and start adding names because I'm tired of seeing the same set over and over and over again.
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Is there any way to add to it?
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Map is done-ish. I cut a few footpaths through so forces can shift from one side to the other. Not in ideal locations though, which is something I'm sure real commanders dealt with. The terrain doesn't look anywhere near as good as George's though; mostly because I'm not a great map-maker but in small part due to the fact it is hard to make a forest look "good" without breaking it up a bunch and most accounts of Belarus stress that there were huge stretches of completely untamed forests, even in the vicinity of population centers. Whole areas left untouched just because no one could be bothered. It isn't readily apparent from the screenshot but I included two different types of trees in my woods.
Outside of the map, I realized one situation during Bagration applies; the early breakthrough battles around Bobruisk as Soviet's 1st Byelorussian Front raced to encircle and take the city before the German Ninth Army could stage a breakout attempt with the assistance of the 20th PD. In real life, the 20th PD was swiftly withdrawn to launch a counterattack further to the south but I'm guessing there were still StuG battalions operating with the Ninth Army. I gave the German force a fictitious designation of KG Roth to avoid having to dig deep, not exactly unreasonable that there would be all sorts of kampfgruppes and alarm units popping up all over the place. The Soviets still have a generic force name, but I'm thinking I might just title them "Forward Detachment."
Now I've just got to finish the briefings and it will be H2H ready. AI play will have to wait a bit longer while I deal with triggers and pathing and silly AI tricks, etc.
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24 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
Also, was .50 cal used much in Europe in the early war ? I thought that calibre was basically something the Americans brought to the fight later. But I'm no military expert at all.
AFAIK, not really. The Soviets had their DShK around that time but that was pretty much it. I was referring more to it in-game though -- matches feature ahistorical mixes between nations, so you might be in a BT-5 and get roasted by a M2A2 (the pre-war tank), or you could be in one of the thinner Panzer IIIs facing off against a early Sherman and have it's commander's fifty blast through the thinner areas of your sides. There was an element of hyperbole, though.
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16 hours ago, John Kettler said:
For the longest time, nobody had anything remotely similar, just as nobody had the super high tech NTC, either. My argument is that these factors matter, both theoretically and in battle and are independent of nationality.
And now they do, so... just crank the experience level higher or lower as you see fit.
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2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:
Maybe that goes for competitive online shooter games. But in CM, if you have a Tiger, you can be sure the enemy has several guns like the 17 pounder that will go through it like wet cardboard. So there's usually no real advantage in having more powerful tanks. Everything just scales.
Both those games employ match-making systems that ensure the same scaling. What I'm saying is a different thing entirely though. The point was that a lot of early war tanks were, by any objective measure, actually bad tanks and by having large numbers of people running through them and seeing exactly how bad "bad" can get. I've always been somewhat lukewarm on the early war, but having situations where fifty cals were knocking out my full AFV (and this being realistic) pretty well soured me on the potential early war armor fights.
"Guess they couldn't pony up for that last bit of steel, eh?"
Anyway, the plus side is that a lot fewer dudes these days have an aversion to playing the Soviets, which seems like it is more a thing with older people. And we can easily play against actual Russians, since games aren't as actively offensive to their sensibilities (depicting drunken Siberians with arms linked attacking in literal waves of flesh, etc.) as they were about two decades ago.
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I would prefer they imported War Thunder's detailed damage modeling. There is some weird stuff that goes down between impact and subsystems damage in CMx2, for sure.
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10 hours ago, John Kettler said:
What I want to know is given that troop quality is standardized, how are such vital things as training time deltas and goodness of training reflected in CMBS? Seems to me that a force with guys who fire tens of rounds a year and are out there a lot on the maneuver grounds as a unit, rather than firing, say, 3 rounds/year and doing almost all live training for the company in one tank are going to have quite a performance edge, especially if they've been doing this for years. As a case in point, I remember gasping aloud when I read in SECRET level docs during the Cold War the Russian pilots were, I believe, getting a fourth of the monthly time aloft the US pilots were. As a case in point, while I'm sure that the significant use of contract soldiers has greatly improved Russia's situation vs the US for tank crews over what it was during the Cold War, just how well do Russian tankers stack up, man for man, when it comes to the metrics I've described? How should the differences I know are there be modeled in the context of the existing game? Also, how much better can the less well trained force get as a result of seeing combat? These are serious questions which can just as easily be applied to Russia vs Ukraine. To be clear, am excluding altogether Morale and Fatigue from the issues above.
Regards,
John Kettler
There is almost certainly more variation between a rapidly deployed (i.e. greatly shortened pre-deployment spin-up cycle, no NTC/JRTC rotation, crucial training pencil whipped) National Guard BCT and an active duty US Army BCT than there is between the deployed portions of the Russian forces and that same US Army BCT. So national characteristics shouldn't be as much a thing and the experience slider can account for difference in skills. Plus the national characteristics thing in CMSF was one of the big community bugbears.
47 minutes ago, cbennett88 said:I always assumed that lack of adequate training was already built into the UKR and Russian forces. It always seemed to me that their "veteran & elite" were only at the level of "regular & veteran" in the US forces...
I assumed it was because they didn't have night vision and Javelins. Night and facing down armored anything is when I notice the biggest different between forces, so I chalked it up to equipment rather than skill, which is reasonable. It isn't like going to the (small arms) range three or four times a month is expensive in military terms and that should be enough to maintain a reasonable level of proficiency with weapons. And going to the field costs figurative pennies.
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I've decided to stop talking about it and be about it when it comes to making small(er) scale scenarios and (possibly, in the future) a full FMB-style campaign. Just one minor hiccup: I don't really know how to make maps very well in CMx2. That's OK though, practice makes perfect and all.
The scenario I'm aiming for:
On 5/26/2014 at 6:53 AM, JasonC said:Russian exploitation vs alarm units. The small Russian force should be based around a single platoon of T-34s with SMG riders. They may also have a couple of BA-64 armored cars, recon infantry split into 1/2 squads in jeeps (simulates motorcycle infantry), maybe 1 US halftrack carrying heavy weapons. The Russians are in road column - there should be more than one road route across the map and the Russians should have a choice of routes available. The Germans should get a grab bag - a reduced pioneer platoon e.g., Flak guns (potentially both heavy and light, but only 1 88 if they have heavy), a few tank hunter teams with panzerfausts. Give the Germans a "reaction" force based around 1 StuG and 1 infantry platoon that arrives from side or rear in the middle of the fight. Russians are trying to shoot up the Germans and punch across the map, Germans to stop them.
So the broad "concept art" of my first map, after twenty minutes of work. 1600x832 meters. I haven't yet begun placing trees and the map itself is basically flat (just a bit over 10m total elevation difference throughout and all of it gradual) but I basically have two routes through a sunken wooded area broken by marshes. The German setup zone is basically three-quarters of the map itself with the Soviet starting areas largely restricted to the roads.
1) What kind of trees should I use for this map supposed to be set in Belarus?
2) Should there be marshes involved or are they superfluous/incompatible with heavy forest in real Belorussian terrain? Should they only correspond to locations that are at or below "sea level" in CMx2 map terms (I know you can't get 0 elevation) or is a slight rise to them acceptable?
3) Did the Russian mech actually exploit against opposition through such terrain? This is the third question instead of the first because I'm not too hung up on historical reality as I am interesting tactical situations but I still want some plausibility involved. I know they had to traverse it at some point, but I'm unsure if it was actually against forces that could check them or simply an admin move through broken, minimal and uncoordinated resistance.
edit: I just realized I sort of forcibly split the player force, particularly reinforcements, with the big mass of heavy woods in the far eastern side of the map, so I'm going to cut some routes through that, using roads so bogging isn't as much a concern.
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On 7/15/2017 at 10:38 AM, Michael Emrys said:
I am not an avid fan of the East Front, so my information may be distorted by that fact, but my sense of it is that most players who like myself have only a casual interest in it are lukewarm towards any game devoted to the last months of the GPW. From certain perspectives it looks like merely the coup de grace of an already defeated Germany. Such players are more interested in the period Barbarossa to Kursk. BFC has given their reasons for working the timeline as they have and those reasons are cogent in my view. But I fear that it might have cost them some sales.
Michael
There are a lot of casual wargamers out there who have little or no interest in the East Front (for a variety of reasons) but will begrudgingly play it as long as the "cool" stuff is fielded. We're talking IS-2s, SU-152s, T-34/85s, Panthers, Tigers, etc. I blame World of Tanks and War Thunder for somewhat killing the interest of new wargamers in the early war; grinding early war vehicles is awful and by time you can drive something late war, you never want to even look at another stub-gunned, HMG-vulnerable early war track again.
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Did anyone make a set of training scenarios like JasonC's Russian Training Exercise series?
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I wish you could change the allotment of unit's ammunition directly.
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59 minutes ago, c3k said:
Infantry who are not moving and are in tall vegetation are VERY difficult to spot. I haven't bothered to look at your test: are you using tall grass/bushes/shrubs, or just short grass?
Short grass. The default mix, with a slight lip they can duck behind on hide orders.
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On 7/12/2017 at 6:17 AM, SLIM said:
You need to stop saying the words "sound contact" because these things don't specifically exist anymore.
Contacts are contacts, and there is no specific provision as to exactly how a unit gains a contact, and there is no specific delineation as to the type of contact.
Specific sound contacts existed in CMx1, and were literally labeled 'Sound Contact', however that hasn't been a thing since CMx2 was first created.
You are looking at the problem with blinkers on. Stop thinking in terms of sound.That still leaves tanks spotting infantry under iffy circumstances, including no matter what you do (hide, cover, etc.) inside a certain range. These aren't other vehicles radioing it in or the result of guys firing or anything like that. I can even put a tank in a straight-up shootout with ATGs -- literally trading rounds -- and have it spot close-in infantry just as well as when it is sitting fat and happy with nothing around.
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1 minute ago, Vanir Ausf B said:
When I stated earlier that tanks cannot hear infantry you referenced this test as a counterpoint.
Yeah, that was before I knew that the contact markers weren't necessarily sound contacts. I still don't know how to differentiate them from visual or shared.
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8 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:
It looks like you haven't changed anything. The Panthers are still in C2 with each other.
I know they are. I don't care because I'm only concerned about their ability to spot infantry. The issue was tanks were straight up spotting infantry under questionable circumstances (in a building to their left-rear) as fast or faster than infantry could spot them.
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Here is the scenario.
The weird thing is that the Panthers apparently have sound (since they can't see over the berms) contacts on each other at the beginning of the turn, despite being buttoned. Or at least they have on every run through of the test.
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On 5/28/2017 at 7:53 PM, Ts4EVER said:
Also that you sometimes get StuGs instead of Panzers.
I didn't choose the StuG life, the StuG life chose me.
Getting back into scenario making.
in CM Red Thunder Maps and Mods
Posted · Edited by Apocal
I actually did a search, but for "scoring calculator" and "points calculator."
With the caveat I didn't use Google.
Thank you both.