Vergeltungswaffe

+1.  You are a great man among good men. Minstrels will sing songs of your accomplishments at The Few Good Men. 

@PEB14:
Without exaggeration, I assume, it is hundreds of hours. But I didn‘t count 😉
I am in the lucky situation to be able to  combine my work with my hobby. So, while I am sitting here and create stuff, I am payed 🙏🏻
So, no clash with real life, enough time for children and family AND CM 😎
During the last ten years, I never had time for such things and may be, next year my time for CM will be (at least) reduced. So, now is the time to become a legend 🤪

Chapter V:
Mini-Campaign "Our Father"

The Player is commanding mixed forces of the so called "Fortress Mogilev" during their last stand in the encircled city. 

Further short update:
Progress is good. In the mid of May all the mapwork will be done and playtesting will start soon. 
The biggest Campaign is in final testing stage. With two campaigns I start doing the AI plans and the other campaign has 65% of its maps ready. 
So - instead of making the planned additional 3-4 single missions - I have added another small mini campaign of 4 single missions 😎
 

IF ANYBODY EVER WANTS TO GRAB ONE OF MY HUMBLE SIMPLE SCENARIOS...
AND EDIT IT
AND CHANGE IT
AND IMPROVE IT
AND THEN RE-RELEASE IT...
PLEASE DO!!!

Ok, pre-Alpha disclaimer so details are subject to change but this is the first map in the Canadian campaign "On the Weser" - got big plans for this one. A Pete Wenman original:

Just southwest of a little town called Boffzen and south of Hoxter (From Google Earth):

Blow up of Canadian AO with rough zone of this map:

Impressive story. Let's never forget the real people behind our games. Bleeding, suffering, dying. 

I have this morning uploaded the 'final' versions of my creations including:
(1) Normandy and Netherlands Master Maps (7 maps)
(2) ASL/SL to CMBN conversions. (11 Scenarios)
(3) Kandu's Original Scenarios (6 Scenarios)
(4) 82nd Airborne in Normandy standalone scenarios (29 Scenarios)
(5) Mission Boston - Objective La Fiere; a short, five mission, linear, 82nd Airborne in Normandy campaign. A longer version is still in development.
 

I disagree.
Evade is a unique order you don't have access to via "movement" orders. You can shift the "automatic" waypoint it chooses even more easily in WeGo.
The "Stop" button is great when you want to entirely redo a long or complicated set of movement orders.
The "pause" button lets you halt a unit without cancelling all its orders, easier than pressing P 7 times.

Thanks Aragorn 👍🏻😉
map making feels sometimes like working in a factory of the 19th century, but this project will come to a successful end 💪

Short Update: 
This weekend, the Mapwork for the Partisan-Campaign and for the „Into Hell“-Campaign will be finished. 10 maps, a huge amount of work 🙏🏻
Next week, the „Five Bridges“-Campaign will be worked on: 1 Mastermap is finished, 5 maps are in good progress and 4 maps (mostly small ones) exist only on paper right now. May be, during the next 3-4 weeks, I will call again for some testing vomunteers 😎
Regards 
Mr.X

A vignette from a PBEM game of the Combat Mission Battle for Normandy game. Survivors from a British infantry section make a break for it.

Not going to lie, I'm kind of burned out on doing infantry-centric missions at this point. I don't know if it's the cold and the resulting poor quality sleep or if I've really just played too much of the same kind of missions for too long. Whatever the reason is, I know that I just can't face playtesting either Farm or Breakout any further without doing something else instead. Fortunately, 😉 the campaign has a mix of Infantry (Special Forces) missions and Mech (Republican Guard) missions to mix things up for the player so I'm going to avail myself of that option as well and do some work on the Guards missions for a few days before returning to work these two.
Besides, working on the AI attack plan on the Farm mission has got me enthused about reworking the AI in these set of missions. The AI attack plans in The Guards Counterattack mission are abysmal. (Although there are four of them and some are very aggressive which compensates a bit) You're still fighting an entire battalion in the original version of this mission which is just too much. While I've already removed an entire company from the AI's OB, that might change if the T-90s are just too OP for the AI to go up against. The tools exist now to make the AI much more effective on the attack (though nowhere near as devious as a real opponent) and I've got far more experience with the editor now so I don't need to rely on maxing out the AI's OB to create a challenge.
I seem to recall sneaking along the board edges to get LoS on the enemy in the earliest versions of this game and I don't want to be doing that again. I'm looking for a better experience this time around.
I'm a bit disappointed because I'd rather hoped to have almost all the SF missions in the bag before I return to work next week but what's the big rush? I need to spend quite a bit of time playing each of these missions properly before I can make it available for the community so I'm just going to go with the flow and accept that it's time to work on the Guards missions for a few days instead. It's not like it's time wasted.

I've had a really bad cold this week and didn't make the tremendous progress I was hoping for but regardless, I soldiered on and got something done while I was sniffling and coughing and dosed up with the really potent medicine they prescribe out here such non life threatening illnesses. (I'm not complaining though) When I'm feeling really, really crap, I work on maps as it requires almost no concentration so I started adding some new terrain features to the Guard Counterattack mission (that name's going to have to change - it's SO ASL!) as well as making other similar tweaks to other missions, in particular to the Breakout mission which I'll talk about below.
But the MAIN work has been on the two Phase II Special Forces missions, 'Buying the Farm' and 'Breakout'. Since observing the AI carry out its plan is quite easy work when you're feeling sick, I can settle back with a cup of tea and make  notes and the necessary adjustments. I had big ambitions for the AI attack in the Farm mission but I have had to temper them as the AI really, REALLY can't make any sort of attack across a bridge. I can't get them to manage the crossing unopposed either as it's an absolute mess to watch as the vehicles just get confused and just mill about. I really don't like to undo hours of work planning and adjusting AI plans to reposition the forces for the assault and was even trying to justify leaving it in to myself as making the player's job easier. But that's just a poor excuse for crap scripting.  But it's not for nothing as I will be working on the AI for the Republican Guards later and there are no bottlenecks on their maps so the experience will serve me well when I get around to that.
'Breakout' is a much simpler beast to script. It's another 'living' battlefield experience but you'll be on the clock on this one - find the AA guns, knock them out and exit your forces from the map. Getting the timing right on this one will be challenging - it's not a hard mission to kill the guns but getting off the map is a different story. While having too much time will just make it a filler mission.

Strong Stand and Adan Airfield are both done now, AI plans made and tested and victories scored in both missions. With extensive use of triggers in both missions, they make the Adan mission feel alive with units reacting to your moves. They're scripted not to be 'John Wick' efficient but to behave realistically. But they'll still fight.  
This is Adan Airfield. I've reworked the Minakh Airfield map and made a whole new mission from it. There will be two versions, the Attack version, which will be the new opener (because the result will have consequences for the rest of Phase I) and the Defend version in Phase II which is intended to be a real tough one and will similarly have consequences for all the Phase II missions.

I suspect some folks are going to rage at me for giving you 40 minutes to capture the airfield. I just forced a surrender with just over 9 minutes on the clock so it's more than doable.
Here's the Strong Stand map:

It's been extended a fair bit and the compounds have all been reworked to make them more realistic.

That's not a small amount of work but it's all done and the mission appears to be doable too. The original version was a real dog to play, 2+hours fighting in the dark against a numerically superior mechanised force that was well trained and equipped. It's a Light Infantry action and Special forces are just not that good against mechanised forces and, to be honest, i was finding the prospect of testing it a bit daunting so I decided to rip it all apart and start again with a whole new Red OB with new AI plans. Now it's a lot of fun to play.
So that's all the Special Forces phase I missions finished. So it's on to Phase II now which will take a bit longer as the maps have been changed so substantially that they'll need a lot of testing to get right. The Phase II missions are
Adan Airfield (Defend)
Buying the Farm
Breakout, and
Hasrabit.
After that, I'll get to the Republican Guards missions.

@Aragorn2002:
Sounds nice 👍🏻
But no worry - I don‘t like huge Mega-battles very much. CM shines with Micro-management…so, 90% of the missions will be company sized.
Regards
Mr.X 

https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/cm-mod-warehouse/combat-mission-fortress-italy/cmfi-other/cmfi-france-1940-mod/

Short update: 
Work is still in good progress 👍🏻
Today I have been able to almost finish a mastermap of 3x2,5 km of wooded and wild landscape in the region north of Witebsk. 
 
In total, there will be 35 to 36 single missions to be played through the 4 campaigns. 
 
Regards
Mr.X

New Version, after patch 2.06 : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r6ER3WESS1_xBTeAsKFzRGr30pos7-js/view?usp=sharing

Well, it's been a really busy week this last week and because it's the last week of Ramadan, it's quite noisy at night, fireworks, drums etc, (silent through the day though) and so sleep suffers a bit. And that means I can't really focus to do a good job of AI planning. So instead, I've been reworking the existing maps to improve each of them and make the compounds and villages much more realistic. They're all real world places in Syria although from wildly different parts but the difference it makes in night and day. While they look like NATO maps now, they still strongly resemble the original maps which is a considerable improvement. And it hasn't required an enormous amount of work either. The best change made so far is The Guards Counterattack which looks pretty realistic in the moonlight. Screenshots will follow later but boy, is that a brutal mission!
That map has been expanded quite a bit too as has the Barrier mission which has been reworked as a Prevent enemy forces from exiting the map edge mission. I'm happy with how the changes look too. They make the map look more interesting.
Another mission that has been substantially reworked is the Buying the Farm mission. I was looking for a large warehouse feature in Google Earth and had the idea to make it a railway yard instead and so the entire thing has been redrawn, trees removed and elevation changes substantially reduced and rail lines added with bridges over them. It looks really good and I'm looking forward to trying it out.
I've added a couple of new missions to the campaign to create a story line with consequences that matter including a new opener, which is tiny, but a lot of fun (for me anyway) and should allow the player to indulge himself letting rip with the heavy weapons in a civilian area, a welcome change from the usual Blue v red restriction. Called 'Overkill', winning this mission deters the civilian population from rising up and joining in the revolution at least for a few hours anyway. This allows me to create a variant of the opener which is much easier if you win Overkill. This required a new map but it's very small and I finished it this morning. Funnily enough, it started out as an experiment to see how the Special forces AA, Grenade and HMG vehicles work and I was so happy with the result that i decided to make this the new opener instead. So you have a single platoon and some new vehicles to play around with.
Immediately after that, I decided to do a whole new map for Heavy Metal because I just felt I couldn't use the old one. It was too small and too artificial for what I need but I found a location to the SE of Damascus which fits the bill perfectly for a large mech/tank clash and have got it 50% done. It's an arid map so it's pretty open and flat but there are lots of berms which break LoS up.
I have created the core unit file and done the admin for the campaign so that I know who goes where and when and have imported the new units into all the existing missions except heavy Metal so I've done a LOT this week, just no new AI plans which is the real work. With regards to the core units, I've decided to try out a couple of platoons of T-90s to accompany the Republican Guard. Now you have just two mech companies with attachments instead of three but I figure the T-90s will more than compensate for them. if they're too OP, I'll swap them with the T-72 TURMS again. There are three SF companies but one is designated for a special series of two missions on the same map (the second new mission) which it's unlikely to survive so there will be one company with attachments in each mission, usually Reserve Infantry and some tanks from the very bottom of the barrel, just like original Hasrabit.
So, Ramadan ends mid-week next week and I have a week's holiday so the sleep deficit should get paid back quite quickly. Then I'll be able to focus on doing AI plans and testing done on some of these missions. I guess I'll have a better idea of how long this is going to take after we get back to work after the May Day holiday. I'm hoping it won't be too long as I'd like to have this wrapped up by mid-June. That's probably a tad optimistic but we'll see.

https://youtu.be/OnxHgyMMD90
 
A Combat Mission Fortress Italy story, using Bil Hardenberger's and A Canadian Cat's excellent C2 Hard Cat Rules v2I.
 
In this episode you will see the Hard Cat rules in operation, reflecting the lack of intel if C2 is lost, and the efforts required to gain fresh intel and the issuing of fresh orders.

Really nice prelude.
I would never send armor forward without infantry working into recon position and spend a while spotting, but that's just me and the scenario parameters may not give you enough time to be as deliberate as I like to be.
Looking forward to seeing what happens.
PBEM takes up most of my game time, but I've used house rules similar to the Hard Cat rules in single player forever.
Makes playing against the AI so much more enjoyable and immersive.
 

Guderian's 'klotzen nicht kleckern' might be appropriate as well

I've been working on a new system and I've built the Vassal engine for the campaign. 
Download link

So how it works is that each formation HQ has a certain amount of AP's (ACTION POINTS) .
Each unit that is on one of the highlighted hexes, must be given orders.

This practice will help myself in building the CM battle, if a delaying action is selected, I exit zone is placed on the map for the defending player.
Assault/Hold Position - I place capture points on the map for both sides to capture/hold.
Probe - Is really a recon in force order, a capture point is placed on the map for the defending player to hold the attacking player is checking out what's there but the defending player doesn't know that.
Place an order on top of the units just moved/placed, and be sure to right click and select 'mask'.
When the campaign starts, make sure the Soviet AP markers are topped up.

AP Costs
Move - 1 AP per unit chit. This moves units two white outlined hexes, the AP points are deducted from the formation HQ, in the example below it's the 3rd Bn HQ.

Assault/Probe - this costs 2 AP's to the attacking formation HQ.
Support assets - 1 AP per support, this brings in CAS and/or artillery support if it's available.
If unavailable they will appear like these.

Deploy formation - 1 AP cost to the Higher HQ (in this campaign the 17th GTR and the Blackhorse HQ).
Attach a unit from one formation to another - 1 AP cost to the Higher HQ, both units must be on the same hex or in the holding box before deployment.
The higher HQ's.

When the Soviet AP's are topped up the NATO commander gets to place one formation onto the battle map.
In this example, the NATO commander places B Company in Grusselbach, as he places each of the 'chits' onto the battle map he right clicks and selects 'mask' and then places a 'Delaying' order, which is also masked.

We now begin Turn one, the Soviet commander deploys his first formation, 1st Bn 17th GTR and the GTR HQ spends one AP to do so.
Notice that the NATO forces on the battle map are masked to the Soviet player.

The 1st Bn 17th GTR HQ orders his formation to move, 1 AP for each unit (3 AP's) to Assault (2 AP's) the NATO position for a total 5 AP's.

The NATO retreats to the next legal hex still with delaying orders.
The Soviet player declares that the 3rd Bn has finished it's actions and gives it Hold Position orders and then deploys the next formation.
This process goes on till the Soviet Higher HQ can't deploy anymore formations and that each formation has useable AP's left.
Now you might be wondering why the Soviets are the only one that get to move one turn one, lets say that they had the strategic surprise.
Each following turn, NATO gets to deploy/move one formation then the Soviets get to move one formation and so on till both sides pass then the turn marker is moved one square to the right.

Really nice prelude.
I would never send armor forward without infantry working into recon position and spend a while spotting, but that's just me and the scenario parameters may not give you enough time to be as deliberate as I like to be.
Looking forward to seeing what happens.
PBEM takes up most of my game time, but I've used house rules similar to the Hard Cat rules in single player forever.
Makes playing against the AI so much more enjoyable and immersive.