ASL Veteran

My first thought would be whether the pixeltruppen are confused by the balcony somehow. My second thought for the buildings with no balcony would be to check the ground elevations on the map for those buildings to see if maybe they aren't on entirely flat ground.

Well you know what they say: We all start in diapers and we all end in diapers

It depends on what type of tree it is. With the pine trees you can see a surprisingly far way through them, but with the other tree types not so far. It also matters if the tree is on a light forest tile, a heavy forest tile, or just a grass tile.

IF the western allies did not declare war on Germany after the invasion of Poland IF that resulted in neutral France, Britain, and America along with no Lend Lease Germany invades the Soviet Union in the Summer of 1940. No German occupation forces in France, Norway, etc so the full force and resources of the German military were targeted on the Soviet Union standing alone Italy, Romania, Finland, and Hungary all join the invasion of the Soviet Union (Mussolini wanted to help the Germans in the Soviet Union in spite of Hitler not wanting his help.) I think that even with what we know now the Axis powers would have prevailed. The wild card in that scenario would be if the Empire of Japan still attacked the US in December of 1941, would Germany still declare war upon the US and thus likely bring Britain into the war as well (not sure what France would do in that circumstance). If so, would Germany simply defend the West Wall and send a few troops to North Africa or would substantial forces be moved west to actively fight Britain, the US, and maybe France or maybe not France.

You could just say Japanese. It's only five extra letters.

Because the AI can't adjust it's positioning and has very little situational awareness the game has to make what seem like ridiculous situations possible in game otherwise you could have situations where friendly vehicles are destroying friendly vehicles and I don't think anyone would be a fan of that. The Tac AI does a decent job most of the time, but the Tac AI can't evaluate the entire battlefield the way a person does. That's why.

I don't think I've ever seen a basement big enough to fit an 88 Flak. A garage big enough to fit a Panther is larger than normal too. I have to wonder what kind of house this person had.

I did make a few tweaks to the scenario and hopefully the new version will be released with the Steam release. I've submitted it anyway so hopefully they will grab it when the time comes. I wasn't overly concerned at first about the set up zone, although I felt it was not ideal I figured it was manageable. I think what might be happening is that many players haven't figured out their course of action by the time the main attack force arrives and thus they are basically sitting in the setup zone rather than executing their plan of attack. That's why I gave the player 15 minutes to play around with the minor recon force prior to the arrival of the main force - in the hope that the player would have a plan of action by then and the setup zone 'problem' would be minimized since the player would be on the move. I think I've addressed the issue by planting a whole bunch of the biggest trees available in the editor - they are probably about twice as tall as the ones currently there. Even so some of the TOWs still get in there somehow, but it should be minimized to the point where it should be acceptable for most players. It does look a little funny to me, but it's all I could think to do. I also anticipated the Bradley down by the river situation and modified the American setup accordingly. It's still possible for the American player to do that, but it's an even less probable thing for someone to think to do with the way I have redeployed everything. I also made a few minor adjustments to the American AI and reduced their combat power ever so slightly - probably not even noticeable for most players. I also made some modifications to the Soviet briefing in an effort to help steer players in the right direction if they are not familiar with Soviet equipment / capabilities or perhaps newer to the game. I increased the time by ten minutes as well. I've had scenarios panned before so it's nothing new. You can't make as many scenarios as I have if you have a thin skin. Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't. Hopefully the modifications I've made will result in fewer complaints. I typically try not to comment in scenario threads except for maybe a single post or two, but I was a little surprised and confused by some of the reactions that players were having when playing this scenario. My honest reaction was 'what the heck are these guys doing?' I'm thinking that most of the frustration was the TOW into the setup area when they can't spot what's hitting them. If you are unsure of what your course of action is and stuff is 'spontaneously combusting' I can definitely see someone getting aggravated by that. Hopefully now if a player wants to sit in the deployment zone for thirty minutes while they determine a course of action it will be safer for them to do so.

From what I recall, the concept of the Panzer Brigade was born out of experience on the Eastern Front. It was found that the Panzer Divisions would generally operate by forming battlegroups since the distances were so vast and it was difficult to form continuous defensive lines with the limited manpower available. The motorized infantry would form a sort of 'anvil' type battle group with all the StuGs and ATG assets and they would be tasked with holding important terrain strongpoints while the tanks would form up with the armored infantry battalion to form a mobile strike force or 'hammer' which would move around to various spots and aggressively initiate combat with Soviet forces that were moving about. Someone then got the idea 'well if the mobile battlegroup is so effective, why don't we just create some new formations that are just the armored battlegroup bit and shed the motorized infantry bit.' In that way it was probably hoped that the Germans could get the most bang for the buck in terms of how their limited resources were allocated and thus they would be a sort of pocket panzer division with all the 'good bits' that formed the mobile strike force.

Maybe we could get Ric Flair

The shopping bags hanging on the gun are a necessary addition to any tank that looks like that.

No doubt the Bob Semple will make its way into this thread at some point

If you just started the scenario then the map size is probably the driver for the file size. Number of units will be a factor as well especially if all the units are doing something - which I suspect is the case. I was going to add something else, but I'll just leave it that - don't want to ruin your game lol.

Sorry you are disappointed. Some points It was not my intention to have the setup zone in LOS of the TOWs. That was an accident of how the map was originally blocked out. You can read about that in the designer's notes. When you block out a map in Google Earth (this is a real location btw) it isn't always possible to determine where units can see and I thought that entire edge was safe since it's behind a slight rise in the terrain. Turns out that it wasn't. The area behind the edge of the map towards the Czech border is all open farmland so extending the map wouldn't make a difference - the TOWs just shoot too far and the map was already pushing max size. It's also very difficult and awkward to extend a map after you have made it and I wasn't going to extend the map another 1000 meters east. We also didn't have a lot of time to finish these things. The setup zone originally extended all the way across the map edge but since the TOWs hit the entire map edge except the northernmost portion it would have been even worse if the setup zone was extended. It is what it is. The TOWs don't start to spot stuff in the setup zone for several minutes and if you stick close to the trees you should be okay. Not ideal, but there wasn't much I could do about it so it is what it is. Once the map is completed the die is mostly cast. There is no artillery with the starting force because it's supposed to be a recon force. The artillery comes with the main force because that's the attacking force. I don't see an issue with that. The air support is addressed in the briefing. The footbridge is a footbridge because it seems like that's what it is in the actual location as far as I could tell. There was another bridge farther north but that part of the map was removed during the creation process - you can read about that in the designer's notes The reinforcements come in one batch (actually three batches) because of the 1 hour 30 minute time limit. If they come in smaller bunches then you have less time to use them. We also have a limit of seven reinforcement groups IIRC and I had already used three of them. The time limit could have been extended, but then people see the longer time and skip it so you can't just put a crazy long time limit on everything. You have to balance what you are doing. The river is not an obstacle for the infantry. It is only an obstacle for the tanks and the tanks are almost irrelevant to your chances for victory. There are plenty of hints and tips in this thread if you are having trouble with this scenario. After reading some of those you shouldn't have much trouble. You can also try it as the American side if you think it's too difficult as the Soviets. I think it's pretty obvious that the main issue most have with this thing is the setup zone and, it is what it is. We didn't have a lot of time to finish these things (I barely finished it in time - many other scenarios done by others were never completed). Extending a map after it's created is very difficult and awkward and extending the map east wouldn't have made a difference since it's all open and modern weapons have range close to infinity as compared to map sizes. Maybe planting a few more trees in the area in front of the setup zone would have helped, but then it would have been more difficult to pass through those trees. A lot of scenario design involves making decisions in the planning stages. Blocking out your map. How big do you want the map to be? Where do you want the edges to be? What can see what? Often times you are doing it by looking at the terrain in 2D in Google Earth and you can't always get a decent picture of what it looks like in 3D until you finish it, and by then it's too late. Once you finally get to the point where you have toys on the map shooting at each other it's basically too late to alter the map without a lot of work (reblocking the map in Google Earth and creating a new overlay and then putting the overlay against the completed parts of the map with all the correct distances - and it's difficult to go back to Google Earth and get the elevation exactly the same as when you first blocked out your map and made your overlay.) When the map was made I thought the entire approach from the set up zone to the mid point in the highway was safe, but when it turned out it wasn't there was nothing I could do about it. I restricted the set up zone to the area behind the trees and put most of the reinforcements there because they would be coming up the highway. If during testing more complained about the setup zone I probably could have had everything come in north behind the mountain, but then no doubt someone would be complaining and wondering why everything is coming in behind the mountain and not on the road. I'll just put this one in my lemon pile and move on. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. There is no way to know how it will play out once it's in the wild.

I agree with this 100%. I really hate the TRPs and wish that we could pre plot sections of the map for possible fire missions, although I would probably suggest that the size of the target area be a little more standardized rather than the free form way it works now. Hopefully artillery can get a rework in the future although I doubt that it will be something that is done for CM2. We will probably need to wait for a future version of the game before something like that comes to pass if it's something possible to add.

Depending upon the casualties for both sides, it's possible for the Soviet to win just by crossing the bridge. It's also possible to lose after crossing the bridge but there it is.

Keep in mind the CM has multiple eras and if you are only thinking in terms of modern, then you should probably adjust your thinking because we are also talking about WW2 Soviet field artillery. A Fire Plan in the context of CM would be something that was pre planned and pre registered prior to the start of an action / scenario / battle / whatever. A Fire Plan is not 'created on the fly' by the player as he calls for FFEs during the course of a scenario. Now, if you are calling a previous FFE as a 'Fire Plan' then yeah, maybe you should be able to call another fire mission on the same target if the battery is still available because they would still have the coordinates and the spotting rounds would have been already used, but that's not a Fire Plan in the context of something like the British created prior to attacking at El Alamein. It would be helpful to use 'Fire Plan' in the context of the traditional meaning of 'Fire Plan'. In the context of CM 'Repeat' is certainly something that could be argued, but at the same time since CM has no Fire Plans then the At My Command would still not necessarily be appropriate because the battery, not being assigned to a Fire Plan, can be assumed to have other missions to perform other than waiting for a player to repeat an FFE sometime within the next hour or something. Hopefully artillery can get a rework in the future some day, but at the moment an At My Command artillery order is unlikely to be implemented sorry to say.

There may very well be instances within the context of an overall pre registered fire plan where the 'At My Command' order / mission might be appropriate (assuming a battle goes to plan). However, CM doesn't have any pre registered fire plans in the game and the game has no context for any sort of 'At My Command' set of orders so if you just added that order without the context of a pre registered fire plan you would be adding something to every fire mission that isn't going to be representative of reality under all circumstances.

They should eventually toss the demo charge themselves if you just leave them to do their own thing. Targeting might actually confuse the pixeltruppen in some cases.

Variable extra time is not dependent upon scenario size. It's strictly a function of whether or not the scenario designer added it or not. There is a small scenario in CMFB where the scenario is 15 minutes long with 15 minutes of variable time added, for example.

That would be great if a battery is solely dedicated to support your particular unit, but in the case of divisional artillery that is unlikely to be the case since multiple units may need access to that asset. If the player can just have the divisional artillery sitting around waiting for twenty minutes for the player's unit to begin the FFE then some battalion at another (off map) location might get overrun because the artillery is just sitting around waiting for Fred to finally call his fire mission in.

Knocked out vehicles can't be pushed, although vehicles don't necessarily fill the entire 'space' that they occupy visually so if something is KO'd on the bridge it may be possible to still pass, but it might also not be possible to pass so it's a risk.

Just in case anyone is getting confused, every post after White2Golf in not discussing Czechmate but rather the Soviet Campaign.

There is no realistic way to answer your question. The playability comments are the designer's opinion on which side would present the best challenge for the player, but that doesn't mean that you can't play it from the other side if you want to or that you wouldn't enjoy playing it that way either. The designer also doesn't know what skill level the player is at or what kind of situation the player prefers to play so just take it as a recommendation and then play it however you want to play it. It might turn out that playing it the way the designer recommends is too difficult for a player and that playing it the other way is just right. It's just a recommendation, that's all it is.