Vergeltungswaffe

Hey Guys,
Took a few years, but I'm back to working on CM stuff. Have revamped my Combat Mission Website and over the last few months have populated it with some old (5 Campaigns). some reworked (5 Scenarios of which three are really new), and some new (6 new scenarios).  Also have other things in the works including a 9 scenario campaign for CMFB ' Task Force Baum'  and a 7 scenario campaign for CMCW 'Son of Major Nosov'. 
Think the new layout of the website makes it easy to not only get at the scenarios/campaigns but should provide enough description to see if your interested in downloading them or not. Would love to get feedback on any of them you attempt to play. Enjoy, and I am happy to be active again.

A few QB suggestions from someone that has now made a bunch of QB maps that you see in FR and FB:Downfall-
-If the QB map is Huge/Large, select mechanized/armor forces only - infantry can't traverse the map in time and be fit enough for any AI plan where that branch is concerned. Large force sizes will work best with these maps
-Medium sized maps can be used with all forces, but the infantry can struggle sometimes with any AI plan in terms of lagging where the plan is set for.
-Small and Tiny QB's are for all force types, and I think will give the best challenge for single-player. Don't over-stuff them with more forces than are appropriate for the map-size, though.
When making AI plans for QB's-
-The AI plans weight heavily to Groups 1-3. Group 4 may never be used, or assigned to a very small, ineffective group in Small/Medium sized force selections. I concentrate on these 3 plans, and will only add 4rth or 5th AI plans for Huge maps, as there may be a far larger force used.
-If AI plans use these 3 AI groups primarily, they seem to distribute each AI group to a higher HQ. If the AI force has 3 Platoons, each one seems to always be assigned to a different AI group.
-PAY ATTENTION TO THE TERRAIN when making the AI plans. Don't just make a blob in a location, and hope for the best. Use the available cover, and the height toggle to judge good positions for the task. This takes some extra time, but it pays off in better simulating at least half a brain for the AI side. Look at the AI plans from Downfall to see examples of this, if you have it. A lot of work went into these QB plans in FR and Downfall.
-Use the appropriate movement state for a wide-range of forces. Quick works for unobserved areas, but Fast will tire out any infantry beyond use. Know that the AI plan could be either infantry or mechanized, so it needs to suit either.
-I use Assault/Maximum Assault and Aware for areas where contact is likely. It gives the AI a chance to fire back and be more active, and not just keep charging towards the player, doing the crawl of death. It won't avoid it completely, but this gives the AI more of a fighting chance.
-Let the AI set the artillery targets. It can do a decent job of calling in support, when available - and this is actually reactive to the battle that is happening. If choosing manual force-selection, give them an observer or two if they have artillery.
-Keep the AI orders to a large enough area that most force-sizes can utilize. But pay attention to the underlying terrain, and don't leave unit areas in open areas when they are near cover.
-Embrace odd AI plan shapes when necessary, based upon the underlying terrain and heights
Other Single-Player QB Suggestions:
-Start a QB. Make manual force selections and manual map selections. Start the game, and save it. Name it something helpful, like the size of forces and map. Forget about it for a while. Make a bunch of these. Return to them later, after you forget what the manual force selection was. That method adds some randomization to the experience. Trade these with other people.
-Trade mid-game save-games with people, or use the above method for your own. It should be a save from once the opposing forces are coming into early contact. This simulates being dropped into command, mid-battle.

Playing this against a competent PBEM opponent will show exactly why the Soviets appreciated the Germans wasting so many men and so much material on ill advised attacks instead of forcing them to crack prepared defenses in good terrain consistently.
It wouldn't have changed the end result, but it would have slowed things considerably.

In the CMBN Campaign 'Sie Kommen II - Allies' there is a battle called 'Night Recon' which has 6 Terrain Touch Objectives, but also (where you get more points) 7 Unit Objectives that are all based upon spot... The whole Scenario is predicated on moving around the map to specific 'touch' points and 'spotting' enemy units, firefights are to be avoided because loss of the recon units take a big points hit... The AI plans are designed to have Axis units moving in what you would call 'Guard' motion, back and forth, up and down a street, and all the armor is set to hide mode throughout the scenario, but are located in difficult map locations to get to (you have to dodge the troops on guard duty). I forget who the play testers where, this is from 2011 in CMBN, but IIRC they enjoyed the concept and thought it worked out well... 

Just for added thought I am making a new CMFB campaign and there will be a scenario along the 'Spotted Objective' lines. I created a few standalones like this but they have long gone by the wayside in the great flood of 2019... 

From WSJ:  https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/putin-death-rumor-carlson-interview-5c58a974?mod=latest_headlines
"Over the past few months, a Russian political scientist named Valery Solovei has stoked a global frenzy with a sensational claim: that Vladmir Putin died last year and today is represented in public by a body double. The Kremlin’s elite, Solovei tells his half-million online followers, controls the double and has stuffed Putin’s body in a freezer. 
Then on Thursday, journalist Tucker Carlson aired a two-hour interview with Putin. Solovei shrugged it off as a sham. Carlson, he said, interviewed Putin’s doppelgänger, who will now be passed off as real to millions of viewers in the West. “Putin is dead, irreversibly dead, he will not rise again, he will stay in the freezer,” Solovei said in a broadcast earlier this week."
Well, that explains the weird TC interview...  Of course we are more technologically advanced and have a walking zombie as President...

A quick update on last week's progress. I spent the week working on two missions, (3 and 4 in the campaign). As mentioned above, early last week, i was wanting to cut one of these two missions because they felt very samey. But i decided to rework the maps and try something different with them. I was very happy with the result in Sabatani and the force ratio is almost 1:1. Considering what you have and the quality of it, you're definitely at an advantage.
And so at the weekend, I turned to Suib. I wasn't happy with the map and the compounds so I decided to revamp the map, removing the large orchards and replacing them with fields of vegetables and grain. I also removed the poor quality compounds to the east of the river and replaced them, once again, with actual Syrian village compounds. I also reduced the height of the hills at the back of the map and gave it a whole new RED OB. I now have two AI plans and another very reasonable force ratio so I feel like I've done a good job on both of these. I enjoyed playtesting them too and had to relearn a lesson - namely that I WANT to kill the player's units. I had an impulse to quit my run and change the AI to reduce the lethality and remembered that I WANT to make the AI tough if you are too hasty.

@Aquila-SmartWargames made a U-Tube video.  Very cool Battle Pack. 
 
 

I found a couple really good resources for historical data. The first is a google drive which has NARA rolls on pretty much every single armygroup, army, corps and division that fought during the war, including OKH and OKW sections.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11j1SA3HtfUxdvf9qplqhWznTtVA7aVlo
 
Also, this website (Follow the instructions.. I recommend using the tool WinSCP since Filezilla seems to be broken) has situational maps for pretty much every front and every day of the war. It also has aerial photos and lots of other stuff including NARA rolls.
https://jcarlcalvin.wixsite.com/wwii-photos-maps
 
 
Both of these are awesome tools and I'm in the process of filling my new 14tb enterprise drive (They go for just over $100 on ebay these days... an insane bargain)

I thought it was fun to fire up the scenario and read the briefing.
A readme.txt is certainly easy, but I appreciate that he put his thoughts and process into scenario form.

It wasn't unclear at all.
We undermeant what you stood.
😁

It wasn't unclear at all.
We undermeant what you stood.
😁

I was so glad to get this.
Frank put so much time and love into it and I will enjoy every bit of it for many hours to come.
Hope we can persuade him to create more down the line.

First of all:
Thank you for all the very nice emails that so many people have sent me. 🙏
There are actually so many that I can't answer each one, but I read them all
and really enjoyed them !!!
 
Then a small note:
I was a bit unclear with the .btt file that I also sent you.
 @PEB14  alerted me to that little problem:
This .btt file means the following: I sent you a .btt file (named CP SoD Introductory Part) -- this file, you should find in your scenario-folder. It is no mission, but a kind of introduction to the CampaignPack. It consists of 5 own short written chapters, of which  chapter 2 describes the general conditions, players can expect, when playing the CampaignPack.    Hope that explains everything 👍     Regards   Mr.X  

This a USMC  mini campaign designed for the latest version of CMSF 2 and the Marine module. It is semi-historically based on the Second Battle of Fallujah in 2004 and follows the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines and supporting units through four battles in the Jolan District of Fallujah against the insurgency based there. Due the game date being 2008 the weapon load outs may not be historical but I tried to keep it as realistic as possible.
The maps for each battle are cut from a master map I made of the Jolan District (see the thread about this map). It is not to exact scale due to game and system limitations but it gives a good representation of the Jolan District with actual places with in the district.
Campaign Notes:
There are four battles:
1. New Dawn
2. Fubar
3. Facing the Fanatics
4. Get Some
I have included the mods in the download that I used for the campaign and all credit goes to the authors of these mods. I also included actual background information in the opening designer notes about the events that led up to the battle to help set the stage.
The Core Units:
3rd Bn 5th Marines
Lima Company
Kilo Company
India Company
Weapons Company
Recon Platoon
Light Armored Recon Platoon
Scout/Sniper Platoon
Howitzer Battery
Supply Platoon
Support Units
Charlie Company 2nd Tank Battalion
I MEF Engineer Group
Task Force 2-7 ( US Army Mechanized Calvary )
Various air assets
 
Special Notes:
This campaign depicts heavy urban combat and may not appeal to many players. It requires patience and careful planning and orders to be successful. There is a fairly high refit/replenishment factor to help between missions. In the real battle the U.S suffered around 95 casualties. Do not expect to try and maintain this ratio, you will be frustrated. You will take losses depending on your skill level. I spent a good bit of time placing the insurgent defenders to have interlacing lanes of fire to support each other with a fairly sophisticated AI. There are mines and IEDs (use the engineers wisely). You have the firepower advantage so use your armor and support assets effectively to support the Marines.There are a lot of moving pieces to watch as the battles are medium to large in a tight urban environment.
However if you accept it for what it is it will be a fun challenge. I had a blast testing the missions, even when I was losing my Marines.
The download includes the .cam file, the mod folder, the individual scenarios to play without the campaign format and the master map. The map is clean and has a fair amount of flavor objects though I wanted to add a lot more but CPU limits would probably be tasked. I recommend using the included mods with the map for the immersion.. You are free to use it to create your own scenarios, just please give me a little credit when you do.
Here is the link. let me know if you come across any issues: 
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/mvmb5grjat8s8ba1gxjpn/h?rlkey=i9k4oo4fcypxyal05drv77qre&dl=0

I was so glad to get this.
Frank put so much time and love into it and I will enjoy every bit of it for many hours to come.
Hope we can persuade him to create more down the line.

I was so glad to get this.
Frank put so much time and love into it and I will enjoy every bit of it for many hours to come.
Hope we can persuade him to create more down the line.

Thanks Frank! What an amazing achievement. You are a treasure to this community. 

Exactly one year after the first announcement, the project is now finished. In order to avoid
misunderstandings on the part of the company Battlefront.com, I chose the name CampaignPack 😎.
The pack (as described in former threads) consists of 5 campaigns in which the player is thrown
into the events of the summer of 1944 in the sector of the German Army Group Center.
In total you will play minium 52 single missions, maximum 55 single missions (depending on one
branch). To avoid technical problems, I didn't add any mods to the campaigns. But I can, for example,
highly recommend the excellent work of @JM Stuff, especially his extraordinary mod collection of vehicles
and wrecks 👍
I recently visited the forum regularly to stay in touch with people who wanted to register. However, I have
asked the people at Battlefront.com several times to delete my profile.  This request has not yet been
granted to me, so as a quasi "undead" I will always stop by - but I will no longer take part in any discussions
or answer any questions in the forum. To get in touch with me, please write to me at:
E-Mail: f-s-zbg@web.de.😎
Of course, I can still send the campaign pack to anyone interested.
 
So all I can say is:
It was a great pleasure for me to finish this project and share it with many people.
I hope you have as much fun playing as I did creating it 🙏
 
Best regards
Mr.X 

Thank you for this great work
 and please stay with us:
 

I actually spent half an hour reviewing the opening two missions of the German NATO campaign this morning and you are correct that the ammo is restocked between missions even though there is no resupply between missions in the campaign script and they are indeed core artillery units. Since this was all tested and WAD for the CMSF campaigns, there has probably been some change made to the engine which affects this.
Anyway, the matter is moot for two reasons:
First, your point is that it was not spelled out to you how many missions the core artillery was meant to last and that's fair enough. It was an old campaign and the first I made as a beta tester so I own that error.
And second, there is no core artillery in Dinas. I stripped them out very early in development.

Short Teaser: Actually, I didn't want to do this because there are good tools out there... but over the last year or so there were so many questions, calls for help and even an offer to pay me for making a map that I came to realize that maybe, just maybe not everyone out there is a map nerd or geodesy scholar. So, I have been clobbering something together that should make getting those elevation maps (and possibly OSM, too, at a later stage) into CMAutoEditor as comfortable (and fool proof!) as possible.
More info to come but I will close with asking for help myself: Are there any volunteers out there willing to beta test this tool? If so, please PM me! 🙂
 

They are truly amazing, especially against the uninitiated.

Tonight, I have finished the complete (as it is now called) CampaignPack „Summer of Destruction“.
During the next hours, I will complete the short intro file and then start to send the content to all the guys who have ordered it. Within the next 2-3 days, everybody should get it 👍🏻
 
There is a small limitation:
The announced 20 master maps are not included yet. I simply don‘t have the patience to wait any longer with the release. I will send these maps with a second mail within the next 2-4 weeks.
Regards 
Mr.X

BTW, to echo @Anthony P.s excellent points above, the guy in the video has a website (linked in the video description) containing a wealth of Soviet primary source material. But he is absolutely not an impartial investigator. He presents information that supports his narrative, ignores everything that doesn't, and is hostile to anyone who questions the data.

That's the issue I wasn't going to raise by myself, but since it's been broached...
Samsonov's written some interesting bits based on translations of original documents but he sorely lacks a historian's background, and it shows in some ridiculous methodology. I'm not going to trawl through years' worth of his blog posts to provide an extensive list of examples, but some which come to mind:
"Disproving" the notion that the T-34 was a cramped tank by comparing a T-34 and a Panzer IV's manuals, and measuring the headroom available to the crewmen illustrated in said manuals. Since the illustrated T-34 crewman had a millimeter or so more space between the top of his head and the roof in the manual's pictures, he'd "proven" that the T-34 actually had a roomier crew compartment than the Panzer IV.
"Proving" that Soviet helmets provided superior ballistic protection to German helmets based on a 1942 report testing half a dozen completely random, captured German helmets from the battle of Moscow against new Soviet helmets. Ironically he'd also translated the part of the report which noted that the methodology was so flawed that no conclusions could be drawn from it.
Basically, anything he reads in original Soviet documents, he takes at face value with supreme confidence. It seems he doesn't realise the point of studies beyond those he is already capable of, i.e. translations.