Vergeltungswaffe

There is a third option too: Russian cyber capabilities are also overblown and not nearly as good as they claimed.

It is that time of the year when everything seems to be called Pumpkin Spice this or Pumpkin Spice that...

BARB PUMPKIN SPICE VILLAGE DEFENSE
^Udachnyy Vystrel, Soviet Union. Fall 1941. Afternoon in a seemingly quiet Russian village. Light wind from the north. 
^You are Untersturmfuhrer Otto Grossenkeister and lead the 1st platoon of 5th Company in the II Battalion of SS Grenadier Regiment Deutschland of SS Division Reich. Attached to your company is a 50mm mortar and an HMG34. Your ammo supply is severely depleted.
^Battalion reports that several small groups of Red Army stragglers are passing through headed eastward.
^Defend the village while you await resupply.
^You have to hold on for 30-40 minutes. Points are awarded for destroying enemy units and occupying several key areas in the village.
The new scenario file is in the below overall folder link along with the mods folders...
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yoptddfhbnym47w/AAC6dl5WOcTGGxN2jm3CuqRAa?dl=0

Snowy Sherman 2A (original BF.c bmp). It could be better, but it's better than nothing...
View:
https://www.mediafire.com/view/myxkp7gme32xj0i/Sherman_2A.jpg/file
Zip:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/vnm7mf4ywus1g80/Sherman_II_a.zip/file
Snowy Sherman 1B (original BF.c bmp)
View:
https://www.mediafire.com/view/o5zvz39rtqepsku/Sherman_1B.jpg/file
Zip:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/znlta5ex1urercn/Sherman_1B_snow.zip/file
 

My new mod project - Girls und Panzer ...

THIS IS A REAL THING!!!
I'm going to bed now to dream about my next modding project!

I decided to have a small intermediate release. It is also officially version 1.0.0. 😊
https://github.com/DerButschi/CMAutoEditor/releases/tag/1.0.0
The main change is that I added a tool to convert official German digital elevation models into a CMAutoEditor compatible format. You can find it in the folder data_conversion. It has several command line arguments:
--dgm-dir (required): path to the directory in which you stored the dgm*.xyz.gz files --bounding-box (required): xmin, ymin, xmax, ymax coordinates of the box you want to extract. The coordinates have to be in the coordinate system the data points are stored in (e.g. for NRW EPSG:25832, i.e. UTM zone 32N). There are lots of tools in the internet with which you can convert from latitude/longitude to UTM, e.g. here. --contour (optional): set the distance between contour levels. 5 means you will have a contour line every 5m in elevation. You will get a two output files, one with a value for each square and another one with elevation value only for contour lines. --output-name (optional): a common name for output files. You will get several output files with a name that starts with this string. --water-level-correction (optional): xlow, ylow, xhigh, yhigh Sets the low and high point for water level correction (see below for an explanation). There will be four output files: output-name.csv, output-name_contour.csv, output-name.png (a heat map of the elevation values. units are CM squares.) and output-name_contour.png, which has contour lines of the data you extracted.
The actual data is availble separately for each German federal state, e.g.
North Rhine-Westphalia
Hessen (Fulda, etc. ...)
Brandenburg & Berlin
... I just realized that only the data from North Rhine-Westphalia is in .gz files, the others seem to zipped. I'll make that work in the next update. Oh well.
 
Water level correction:
This is an odd one. While you are all well aware that water usually flows downhill, rivers in CM are actually lakes, i.e. every square belonging to the same water body has the same water level. In reality, this is of course not the case. But on the map I am currently experimenting with, the difference in elevation along the river is roughly 6m. This leads to the river looking fine at one side:
mg]https://i.imgur.com/DNrYDfO.png[/img]
And being in a deep ravine on the other side:

Water level correction is still a bit experimental but it should in principle get rid of this. You provide the lowest point of the river on the map (UTM coordinates) and the highest point and the tool will calculate a calculate a plain and lower the higher side (and all the other terrain accordingly) to the level of the lower side.
Contour Lines:
@Bulletpoint
I added this option because there were concerns about performance and stair-step effects. And of course it takes much less time to only set contour lines. I tested versions and could not observe any difference in performance. And for stair-step effects...
Every point set:

5m contours:

10m

Doesn't look precisely stair-step effect free to me... Am I doing something wrong?
Ah, one final thing: I changed the license under which the code is published. I can't really see how this affects you but I don't want anyone thinking I'm sneaking an evil ninja license in 😉. You can do whatever you want with the code, you can even sell maps you made with it (as long as BF is ok with it, that is). I only speak broken legalese but I thought the new license might be a bit more fitting for community made stuff: the only restriction is, if you modify the code and make something new with it, you have to make it open source just like the original one.
Right, have fun making maps! 🙂
 
.

This project is not dead at all 😀
The Campaign "Tiger Trail" is going into the final stage of developement. There will be 16 single missions to be playtested. 
First mission for testing is ready now. 
"KG Kuehn Adamowicze":  Command elements of Panzer-Division "Totenkopf", attacking a soviet bridgehead northwest of Grodno. Map size 2km x 2,5km.
2:30 hours. 
 
If anyone is interested, please PM me and I will send you the file.
 
Regards Mr.X 

One may only hope that realization may dawn on the veiled minds of those unbelievers, just as the glory and truth of real football may in time be recognized rather than the imposter behavior of banging basketballs around with one’s head and calling it “football”.
😉

Hi Folks 
New scenario released by Kohlenkau today and be sure tocheck out all the most recent scenarios over at The Scenario Depot.
 
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-final-blitzkrieg/cm-final-blitzkrieg-scenarios/cmfb-busting-out-of-bras/
 
 

😁

Not comparable, from 1944 russians were a minority in Red Army, throwing everybody else into the meat grinder, as discussed before.
When Red Army was mostly composed of russians in 1939-1942 - they've been chased off to Urals. If Germans weren't as violent and as barbaric as their former allies, which resulted in them losing local support in Ukraine and Belarus and locals rushing to join Red Army en masse in retaliation - the outcome on the eastern front could've been very different.

The setting

The setting - Ogledow a view looking east - Ogledow is rear, left of centre.

Looking west - Ogledow is rea, centre right.

Action shot!




 

This x3000.
I so miss the random map generator from CMx1 and this looks like the road to having it back.

It's finally finished.
This is a MASTERTOE of General Paulus' 6th Army (And part of Hoth's 4th Panzer Army) and General Chuikov's 62nd Army from September 13th-30th 1942.
The forces accounted for in this file fought in the city itself. There were maybe 2/3 more of 6th Army troops fighting on the Northern flank along the river Don.
I tried to get it as accurate as possible, BUT I did not account for historical strength. So, everything is FULL STRENGTH.
There were very few tanks, maybe 300 with both sides combined. In this MASTERTOE there must be close to 1000 tanks.
There are ~35 pages of hand edited TOE. It took a very long time to create.
I don't even want to find how many troops there are, but I assume roughly 100,000 per side.
 
There are a few small quirks.
There is 1 German Army HQ and 2 Army Corps included (6th Army, 48th Army Corps, 51st Army Corps). 6th Army HQ is "lost" in the file due to some "editor tricks", and the two Army Corps are toward the end. I included Corps level units for 48th Corps, but couldn't find any information for 51st Corps level assets.
For German tank battalions/companies I added signals tanks. Historically these guns were fake, but they function ingame.
The tank companies also have light tank platoons, with a PSW 231 as the platoon leader (I can't fix this).
I forgot a couple regimental level SMG companies for the Soviets, no way to fix this without seriously altering the file.
 
 
IF I MADE ANY ERRORS LET ME KNOW!
Feedback is appreciated, some things were done for a reason. Some things I might have missed (Like the SMG companies).
***There is a section for the Germans with "CORE UNITS". They work fine on my PC, but they might not on yours. I would appreciate it if someone can confirm that they appear in a scenario for you***
 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/syigx5efikp6f0m/6th Army and 62nd Army 12 September MASTER.btt?dl=0
 
Sources: I used Glantz, Joly, Forzyck, TIK (Youtube), and various other small sources online.
My full dropbox of MASTERTOE's for various titles can be found here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6sd4yw8ckypk7ed/AAAc8MaHw6FsKM7aRmF7gXnja?dl=0

My scenario is up ... details on the dedicated thread here:
 

Some very cool screenshots.  On the top of your screenshots I noticed you have the words:
PAUSED ESC to continue ALT-Q to Quit etc. 
While watching a play back if you hit SHIFT & ESCAPE the game will pause without showing the words at the top of the screen.  You only have to hit SHIFT & ESCAPE one time.  After that one time you can use the normal pause and the white wording will no longer appear on the top of the screen.
In some of the screenshots the status block is visible in the bottom left (the green writing that describes what each soldier is doing, spotting, firing, etc.  The status block shows when a unit is selected.  If you have no unit selected then you'll have no status block displayed on your screenshot. 
Most players will generally crop out the User Interface (UI) along the bottom of the screenshot.  Sometimes you may want the UI to display in order to show the C2 status, level of suppression, ammo etc.  If you don't need the UI displayed for some reason it can just be cropped out of the screenshot.          

Hi,
agree on all points🙂.
Remember the James Bailey, Normandy CMMC? Best wargame I ever played. And never even fought a CM contact battle through the entire campaign.
With CM engine 4 and the quality of the Vassal versions of many a great operational cardboard game would be fun. But would be so much easier if one could password protect scenarios and edit Saved games.
All the best,
kip. 

I played in them, and the Onion War campaign. Best campaigns.

We know who'll play putin in his younger days...

I've made a First Clash redux version 4 Its temporary home is at the following DB link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nkgfb6m561ev13x/First Clash Redux_v4.btt?dl=0
This scenario was originally released as part of the CMBS base game. Whilst the intent pre-release was to create an intro to modern armoured warfare it appears many players post release considered it too easy – mainly due to the strength of the US forces arty and air support, oh and all the US AFVs had APS. The preponderance of APS equipped armour did mean the M1s were pretty unstoppable. 

I've tweaked it over the years and this is the latest iteration - In this redux version 4 all the APS protection systems for the US have been removed and experience levels toned down for both sides. 

Overall I think this change WILL make the scenario a more challenging proposition for the US player.

P.S. watch out for the radio messages via reinforcement units!
Cheery!
George

I did, but for the hedgehog mod into dragon's teeth I think we are limited to one size and one texture. These are NOT flavor objects ... yet. It's a quick way to build your very own Westwall for a map. If we also do flavor objects then, yes, it's possible to make all sorts of barriers. I had a conversation with @kohlenklau about this and, similar to what @RockinHarry's suggesting, one approach is to use the hedgehog as an invisible, immoveable object with flavor objects as the visible item, if we can make this work as there are caveats as Harry pointed out. It would be similar to the way your wrecks might be based on a barrel or something like that. This then allows us to have maybe half dozen various sizes of teeth, barriers and other gnashers.
Soon my friend, soon ...😉
I'll make a version 1 for you to get stuck into then we can see about some others using flavor objects. I'm thinking The Westwall mod set (otherwise known as Mrs Miggins hangs out her Washing on the Siegfried Line)
Re: the tram, my latest thoughts on that are an invisible immobilized AFV - a halftrack, or even something like a Bison would do the trick I reckon, so long as it's thinly armoured and not likely to be dangerous. It will provide a kind of core for cover and some concealment, so the pixeltroops would hopefully hide behind it. Course another option that just occurred to me is low bocage - not really a feature of cities so might be a way to mod a straight section into something more useful. Could certainly make the basis for a pile of rubble combined with an impassable ground tile like forrest - who knows.
Anyway I digress - your tram if on something like a halftrack could also encourage your pixeltruppen inside ... or what about a small independent building ... no ... could we? I really don't know enough about buildings to say ...
Yes, yes, yes, lets not get ahead of ourselves here - those things look like giant jacks ...
For the uninitiated, this is how we used to pass the time ... (for @Warts 'n' all  I think this is still in your future, although according to Wikipedia you may have been playing with a different material)

The great thing is, there are enough CM's so that you can have a different favorite every day of the week.

We know who'll play putin in his younger days...

Yes we're all desperate 😣 But praise where it's due. Anything you can deliver, just anything, please ... 😉
Don't know - with the state of our economy this could be gainful employment, pay per click ...
I don't understand how this (the contour generator) wasn't included, and at least a randomising paint brush for terrain features, or the random map maker as @Vergeltungswaffe mentioned. It's kind of a no-brainer IMHO - sorry BF but in this instance I really think this was a corner cut too many. 
Let's hope it's noticed.

This x3000.
I so miss the random map generator from CMx1 and this looks like the road to having it back.