Vergeltungswaffe

We appreciate you and all the content creators for this game.
We're very blessed to have such talented, dedicated people.

I admit it. When it comes to CM stuff, I am like a guy with about a half-dozen girlfriends. I get all into one and spend a lot of time with her and then - "poof!" - she just doesn't do it for me as much anymore and I head over to another hot chick instead.  FRANCE 1940 keeps calling me but it always goes to voicemail and I haven't taken her on a date in a while. CMAK2 AFRIKA I have some excitement going on. With that series I can roll in the hay (sand?) with British and various Commonwealth birds, French Mademoiselles, exotic Polish and Indian ladies, Italianas, German frauleins and even some 1940's Apple Pie American babes.  I have a real faded relationship with my Russian Barbarossa beauty. I built a sauna for my fond memories of my time or 2 with that fine female from Finland. I confess I have been eyeballing a Spanish Blue Division senorita upon occasion. ...BUT...KOREA 1950 has got me doodling her name at work and daydreaming of her all day. I told her to enjoy it while she can.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In this thread I will yammer on about my creation of a scenario for the CMFI KOREA 1950 MOD. It should eventually end with the PBEM DAR. It is another ASL translation. Gary and I just finished it in VASL and I lost. Sort of just barely I lost. ASL scenario victory conditions can be complex and always need the human player(s) to be involved in the victory analysis and determination. Right now I enjoy ditching CM's normal points and victory determination and shifting over to the ASL style.
What is the scenario you big mouth?
It is another great scenario based on historical events written by Pete Shelling. It came out just this year in an ASL related periodical PDF I pay for. 
"ROCK OF CHICKAMAUGA"
KADONG-NI, KOREA. July 15, 1950.
Here is the publicly available online description of the scenario. https://www.aslscenarioarchive.com/scenario.php?id=66450
Here is the ASL map...

The US Army official history is free online https://history.army.mil/books/korea/20-2-1/toc.htm
Here is page 136 that covers the action the scenario is based upon.
Page 136 SOUTH TO THE NAKTONG, NORTH TO THE YALU
The men in B Company saw an estimated 300 to 400 North Korean soldiers on high ground southwest of them-already safely across the river. And they saw that crossings were still in progress downstream at a ferry site. Enemy soldiers, 25 to 30 at a time, were wading into the river holding their weapons and supplies on their heads, and plunging into neck-deep water. [44]
From his observation post, Colonel Meloy could see the crossing area to the left but few details of the enemy movement. Already B Company had called in artillery fire on the enemy crossing force and Colonel Meloy did likewise through his artillery liaison officer. Capt. Monroe Anderson of B Company noticed that while some of the enemy moved on south after crossing the river, most of them remained in the hills camouflaged as shrubs and small trees. Lieutenant Early, fearing an attack on his rear by this crossing force, left his 3d Platoon and moved back to a better observation point. There for an hour he watched enemy soldiers bypass B Company, moving south. [45]
By this time it seemed that the North Koreans were crossing everywhere in front of the regiment. As early as 0630 Colonel Winstead had reported to the regiment that his command post and the Heavy Mortar Company were under attack and that the center of his battalion was falling back. The enemy troops making this attack had crossed the river by the partly destroyed bridge and by swimming and wading. They made deep penetrations and about 0800 overran part of the positions of A Company and the right hand platoon of B Company behind the dike. They then continued on south across the flat paddies and seized the high ground at Kadong-ni. Lt. John A. English, Weapons Platoon leader with B Company, seeing what had happened to the one platoon of B Company along the dike, ran down from his hill position, flipped off his helmet, swam the small stream that empties into the Kum at this point, and led out fourteen survivors. [46]
This enemy penetration through the center of the regimental position to the 1st Battalion command post had to be thrown back if the 19th Infantry was to hold its position. Colonel Meloy and Colonel Winstead immediately set about organizing a counterattack force from the 1st Battalion Headquarters and the Regimental Headquarters Companies, consisting of all officers present, cooks, drivers, mechanics, clerks, and the security platoon. Colonel Meloy brought up a tank and a quad-50 antiaircraft artillery half-track to help in the counterattack. This counterattack farce engaged the North Koreans and drove them from the high ground at Kadong-ni by 0900. Some of the enemy ran to the river and crossed back to the north side. In leading this attack, Maj. John M. Cook, the 1st Battalion Executive Officer, and Capt. Alan Hackett, the Battalion S-1, lost their lives. [47]
Colonel Meloy reported to General Dean that he had thrown back the North Koreans, that he thought the situation was under control, and that he could hold on until dark as he, General Dean, had requested. 
 
[44] Interv, Blumenson with Early, 26 Aug 51. [45] Ibid.; Ltrs, Meloy to author, 4, 30 Dec 52. [46] Ltrs, Meloy to author, 4, 30 Dec 52; Notes, Logan for author, Jun 52; Ltr, Meloy to author, 29 May 52. [47] Notes, Logan for author, Jun 52; Ltr, Meloy to author, 29 May 52: Interv, Mitchell with Meloy, 30 Jul 50; Intervs, Blumenson with Early, 26 Aug 51, and Cutler, 27 Aug 51: 24th Div WD, G-3 Jnl, entry 583, 160730, Jul 50. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Later I will show the Google Earth image of the actual area and slowly develop my CM map and scenario. Then eventually Gary and I lock horns and go at it. Along the way I will try and develop some new [korea] flavor objects and try to make a quality KOREA 1950 map.
 
 
 

Yes.  
Please be aware that the Battle Packs are led and being made by volunteers who have day jobs/mortgages/bills/significant others etc. I can't speak for the others, so maybe they have less demanding jobs, are retired or have secretly won the lottery and are living an Armchair General's paradise I'm just not sure.  Just please be aware we aren't employed by Battlefront working full time on content creation.
The first half of this year virtually nothing progressed because of my real life work skyrocketed, dominating my waking hours. If you can pull a 10-12 hr work day five days a week and then back that up with an additional few hours a night in the editor let me know.   Progress jumped ahead as I took much needed extra time off work in August. Two of three planned campaigns are now in the testing phase. My own testing for my vision of the Carentan campaign also didn't play out as expected. It just wasn't fun. I had to rejig that. It all just takes time.
Maybe I'll be able to post a bone or two soon.
I keep @BFCElvis in the loop on developments as they occur.
My personal secretary trying to keep my life balanced and on schedule, seen here looking up at my monitor trying to work out the differences between a StuG III (mid) and StuG III (late).

Next call for volunteers 😎:
between 20th and 28th October, the Campaign „Five Bridges“ will be ready for its final playtesting before the release. At the moment, single parts of the campaign are running tests. 
The player will lead various forces, mainly from 383rd Infantry Division and 20th Panzer Division through the pocket battles around Bobruisk from 26th June to 2nd July 1944. 
12 missions from tiny to large. 
 
PM me and get this one 👍🏻😉
Regards
Mr.X

Just going to pull on this one here.  So we knew from the start what audience this game was going to appeal to - I personally think that is probably the most important rule of design.  We knew exactly who we were designing for from the start - the obsessively detail orientated grognard.  If anyone else wanted to play the game, great, but the core audience was not the casual gamer.
So this meant that our audience within this community already likely knew more about Soviet doctrine than we did.  We decided very early on to focus less on hand-holding and more on realism over form, and let the customer pull the "fun" out of that.  This is very niche market focus.  So our core demographic is not looking at this scenario wondering what is going on, they already know that three battles in on this axis of Soviet advance is going to get pretty hard.  They also are not looking for luck, they are looking for a realistic starting position and then the ability to see how they would fair within it - that is the "fun".
Now of course we knew we could not make them all brutal so trade-offs were made and we scaled them to ensure we did not totally alienate.  The Soviet Campaign was specifically designed to cater to the truly crazy type who would find this fun...you were warned.  We put a LOT of content into this game - this on top of what CM delivers wrt editors and multiplayer options.  So we did not feel bad about making the really hard campaign.
*Spoilers below - read with caution*
Now as to your experience, well you are making some pretty wide assumptions here.  The first being that no skill can win this fight.  That is not true.  We beta-test every campaign and scenario and they do not pass until someone can beat them through skill.  Our beta testers are one skilled bunch an they found this one challenging, we scaled it back quite a bit to balance it better.  But they could beat it through skill.  They came up with some pretty creative ways to do it but it can be done.  My way, when I went through is what I typed up awhile back.. I went left.  The only real cover exists far left or right.  Left axis through the trees is a hard push but you avoid the Bradleys, while pounding them and has a lone US infantry platoon dug in which can be overrun.  Once you do that you are behind the urban area and can advance outside of the killzone.  The fact we dropped you right into a killzone at outset should be obvious, the challenge is to get out of it and still advance.
So you did not find this one fun?  Well there is a big ole editor and a bunch of master maps, go make one you do find fun.  There is also a really large community that does this for you so I encourage you to explore it out.  Just know we knew exactly what we were doing when we built the scenario.  This is not a failure in QA/QC, it is the direct result of those processes. This was not neglect or laziness, it was deliberate.  Scenario 4 in the campaign is also pretty hard, you are on defence on that one.  5 is more fun, we decided people needed a break.  And Alsfeld is one massive game of smash face in a culminating battle - I found that one to be a blast but not too many actually get to it. 
So difficulty does not preclude "fun"...for some.  And it was those "some" we were doing this game, and the Soviet Campaign in particular, for.  If that ain't you, well no worries, lots of other content to go and play.  A lot of really well balanced scenarios you can enjoy - (although I would really stay away from Valley of Ashes played from the Soviet side if you found this scenario "not fun", that one is brutal). 

Heh, you guys were warned. The Soviet campaign is not to be taken on lightly.  It was designed to be brutally realistic.  If a player can pull “fun” out of it (and they have), well good on them.  I think one has to be a special masochist to really enjoy some of these fights, but they are extremely realistic.  We pulled straight from Soviet and US doctrines, and period plans.  Eirterfeld is straight out of a staff wargame from back in the day.  We knew the CM crowd was not “casual” to begin with so catering to the upper end of challenge was a design decision early on.  
I saw one video of someone actually completing the Soviet campaign, respect.  So if you did not enjoy it, well that was kinda expected.  The US campaign is much more forgiving.  The NTC one is pretty kind as well.  The Soviet one is basically the CM version of Punishment mode, especially March or Die.  We knew this when we built and tested them.  Trust me, we dialled them back off historical difficulty.  Soviet tactical forces did not get a lot of time and space to plan,  So if Div or Regt Recce failed, and by the halfway point of a fight they would, then lead tactical units - who by this point are 2nd ech - were going to be driving into a lot of fights that look like this one.
S’ok to hate the Soviet Campaign…it can take it.

Working is going on very very well 😎
Again I need volunteers. Part II of the "Five Bridges Campaign" is almost ready for its run as Betaversion.
1x tiny mission + 1 huge mission + 1 medium/large mission. 
PM me 👍
 
Regards
Mr.X

And here some new impressions - today  a comparison "original picture vs game" 😉

 
"Bobruisk Pocket" - then and now:

 

Some news: work is going on very well 👍
Part 1 of the "Five Bridges Campaign" is running its test as betaversion and the whole campaign will start its final testrun within the next 3 weeks.
Special thanks to all testers 🙏
 
Regards 
Mr.X

I am lucky that CMFI has late war US combat garments and boots. I think it looks great "as is"...


A barbed wire and broken down Kia sedan block the main road up the middle...

 
 

We will pick up the action later today unless postponed by TV sports...
Meanwhile, here are some more screenies.
A face I did from a Korean actor. He played the bad guy in "71 - Into the Fire".
You can also see my "stick grenade pouch"...


The Maxim MG team hunkers down in turn 1. These guys are now ex-parrots, singing with the choir invisible.

Some more guys in that team wearing their "Keds hightops"...

This guy is a warrant officer in command of the company group. He had served in the Red Army during dubya dubya two.
I had a cool idea for the "stick grenade pouch"...each texture for the grenades can be randomly plucked from the data.
Some are transparent so a guy can have 0, 1 or 2 grenades in the pouch.
GRAVEYARD: I googled a little to try and see what a circa 1950 Korean graveyard might look like. I had no luck really. So I just deleted the Italian names off of these CMFI gravestones. Mi dispiace!

 
 
 
 

I'm just going to make this one statement to inform if never heard of. Whether you choose to look into it further is up to you or not. When the nations of Turkey, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Ethiopia, and Russia or former parts of Soviet Union which are muslim to name a few form an alliance of key players to pile on Israel then it's going to get Biblically prophetic hot. Notice that Egypt, Syria, and Iraq are absent from the alliance although they fought against Israel in the past. Iraq could be considered part of Persia though. Saudi Arabia specifically will not be part of this alliance, and will actually condemn it. All these countries will come against Israel, but it will be victorious which will be viewed as a miracle of God. The aftermath is described as taking 7 months to cleanse the land with special people who have to mark the land as the dead need to be disposed of in a particular way. The very fact that Israel became a nation again after 2000 yrs in 1948 as prophesied it one day would is something to consider in accuracy.
I did this painting, "The Bringing of Mars", 24 yrs ago in 1999 about it, but Ezekiel 38, 39 were written thousands of years ago.

He has Easy Eights coming in on both flanks!


My Zis-3 takes a hit but only loses one soldier. 

 
My right flank HAD a Maxim in the 2nd floor of the church across from the Kimchee shop...now scrap metal for a Hyundai.

My 82mm mortar on the right flank starts to drop rounds into the path of his infantry.

A command element observes...

The Zis-3 scores a hit on the Easy Eight but the effect is not yet determined...

Tank 211 creeps forward on the right flank...

 
 
 
 

ROK PATTON'S GHOST
0930, 27 September 1950. 
Just south of Osan. The sky is a haze with a light wind from the west. It is hot and the ground
is dry. 
^
Task Force Lynch will proceed on through Osan to link up with friendly units of X Corps coming
from Inchon. The North Koreans were taken by surprise by the Inchon landings. Their offensive
energy has largely been spent hammering against the Pusan perimeter. The landings were
successful and the perimeter held. You now are part of the pocket's counter-attack with a
goal to drive forward and link up with X Corps coming from Inchon.
 
^
You are Lieutenant Hartmann and command Love Company of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Cavalry
Regiment. Your entire battalion is brand new to Korea. You WERE previously part of the 3rd
Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Georgia. You all traded your "Rock of the Marne" for the
"First Team" shoulder patch. In addition to your rifle company, you have two Super Bazooka
teams and three Easy Eight Shermans.
^
The North Koreans are a shadow of the force that started this war back in June. Their 4th
Division is estimated to number only 2,500-3,000 men. Local males have been pressed into service from
conquered farms and villages throughout South Korea. But these conscripts are led by a cadre of
veteran officers and NCO's. Additionally, the KPA still has numerous tanks and heavy weapons.
Supplies may be dwindling but expect the force in Osan to be perhaps 2 platoons of infantry
with a few tanks and heavy weapons. Their mission is to delay your advance so the rest of their
comrades can retreat northward.

^
You have 45 minutes to accomplish your mission to drive through Osan to the exit zone beyond
the river. There are 3 basic routes forward. a) on your left, cross the tracks and head through
the "Old Town" towards the rail bridge, b) up the center along the main paved road into the
city and road bridge; and c) on your right along the edge of rice paddy fields to a secondary
road that eventually fords the river.
^
Points are awarded for occupying the designated buildings but the final scores for each side
and who has obtained victory is settled by post-battle analysis and discussion between the
players.

 

I forget who did this mod! But today I had to make another mod in Blender so the tracks did not appear on the turret and so you see the wonderful "131"...

Updated the Vassal module with adjusted WIA/KIA rules and instructions on Insurgent camp missions. LINK

Also, depending on what you delete and what order you delete it in, some HQ units and things will not be able to be deleted.
Put them in a reinforcement group that doesn't show up for 3 hours and they won't be in the scenario.

New [CMBN] Force Specific Backgrounds now available.

Credits to Umlaut for original idea and style. Check out his background mods for CMRT and CMFI. I have used online colorization tools and the results is mixed, but even in the cases where its
far from perfect, I prefer it to the original black and white images. You can always remove ones you dont like, just remember to rename the files accordingly as a break in the number sequence will see the files after the break not loading.

I have also included a musich splash file with Eisenhowers D-Day speach.

Cheers,
Fizou
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/cm-mod-warehouse/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cmbn-other/cmbn-force-specific-backgrounds/
 

Its up on TSDIII https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-red-thunder/cm-red-thunder-add-ons-scenarios/cmrt-german-tank-tactical-problems/
Enjoy!
Cheery!

OK, slowly modding a few things to get more of a Korea 1950 vibe to the battlefield...

 

Combat veterans from all ranks and all branches describe their experiences in/with combat, but they also explain what they believed worked, and what could be improved.
Amount of info is stunning, and some of the tips and advice could still be useful on the modern day battlefield.
 
Urban fighting, logistics, AT-warfare, combined arms, engineering, camouflage, maintenance, supplies, medical stuff, transport and much more.
It is a 388 page report, and you can (safely) download it from this WW2 US Bombers channel. Play in Youtube, than see description below this video how to obtain this report.
 
Whether you want this very interesting download or not, but you have even a slight bit of interest in WW2 bombers, check this channel out. You will be amazed, no doubt about it.

Stug III G earliest snowy (on BF.c bmp textures).
View:
https://www.mediafire.com/view/kukequdlalpzupj/Stug_3G_earliest_snowy.jpg/file
Zip:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/m06528u1q1m5jog/Stug_3G_earliest_snowy.zip/file
 

Another "I will try" here...

... a miserable September morning sees a reinforced US mechanized platoon trying to delay a Soviet MRB at a small village called Hohkeppel.

The russians have proven to be very good at turning their own equipment into scrap.