LongLeftFlank

I have no clear memory of that, sir

With infantry, if RED can't get within about 40 meters of BLUE via ambush or infiltration in close terrain, fuggedaboudit. With armour, RED will pretty much never win unless the odds are artificially stacked or the map is tiny; the best that can be hoped for is to inflict some BLUE casualties.

Dude, you theenk we can use the queeck change barrel as a hash pipe?

No problem. Here is my current thinking: Tree A (big deciduous) - dryland eucalyptus tree (bigger leaves) Tree B (tall poplar) - swap in CMSF palm tree, per your request Tree C (big deciduous) - leave as is, maybe darken the bark some (tropical and mossy) Tree D (small deciduous/orchard) - maybe slightly bigger/waxier leaves Tree E (tall pine) - leave as is, maybe make needles yellower and drier (pines tend to be on the low rainfall sides of islands and mountain ranges). Bush A - palm fronds to create spiky leaves Bush B (tall) - big leaves Bush C (short) - leave as is Brush doodads (e.g. heavy forest floor) - try to add some ferns and banana leaves Log doodad - dark and mossy (although this may screw up the look of stuff like bunkers, so I need to test it) Hedge - as is, may enlarge leaves/add flowers to make it look like ivy or bougainvillea Bocage - leave as is, maybe slightly bigger leaves (both in PTO and ETO map design, I sprinkle randomly angled gapped segments in forested areas to truncate LOS into/through what should be fairly inpenetrable jungle and thicket, and improve infantry cover value). These mods may take a while to finish. Anyone who wants is welcome to help. Comments? P.S. So if "Little Angaur" works out, will you tackle a full-sized Angaur, or maybe just the northern part and heights?

Success! 1. I finally figured out how to get CMSF palms to appear (they replace deciduous tree C). 2. By swapping in palm fronds, I also turned the poplar tree B into a "Captain Cook" tropical pine. The unmodded) regular pine (E) is good as is -- it would be seen in hilly areas even on the equator. 3. Bush B now has great big leaves. I might do the same to the remaining deciduous trees A and D to see how it looks, and also play with the hedgerows. I will bundle all this work up into a Jungle Foliage pack once I'm sure it doesn't bugga up the game.

Good stuff. A WIP scenario, or close to publication?

Here's an even better look -- copy-paste the German LW Camo skeleton (.mds) files to the Z folder, then rename them to UK infantry. Also rename CoonDog's IJA uniforms and boots to LW camo. Again here, while CoonDog's IJA uniform textures are distorted, the cut of the German LW camo uniforms looks even better than the Para uniforms -- especially the baggy jodhpur trousers and jackboots, which look like calf-length puttees. A side effect of mixing a UK infantry base with German skeleton files is that the British web gear is no longer showing up, although helmets and weapons are unaffected. That's actually a mixed plus to some extent, since it gives the IJA troops a "combat load" look (as opposed to them fighting in 45C heat with full packs and dunnage). I can probably restore the pouches and webgear with some fiddling in the hex editor. If I can play around with the hex editor some more, it looks like we could use the Polish infantry as a base, repointing to German LW uniforms, gear and faces modded to IJA. The Polish voices can become Japanese. I respectfully disagree with trying to use Germans as Japanese -- their formations and weapons were totally different. Stealing their wireframes is another matter.... That could theoretically free up the British Army to be British again for Burma-Malaya enthusiasts, although the Brits might need to carry K98s or sumfink.

Just to see what it would look like, I renamed the British Airborne "skeleton" (.mds) files to British Infantry in my Z folder, so the Japanese troops would have the longer para blouse. I then renamed CoonDog's uniform textures to Airborne. Although the textures don't map cleanly (e.g. the collars don't fit and the thousand-stitch-belts go too low), I've gotta say, I like the look of the longer tunic better -- just looks more hetai to me than those (unflattering) British trousers. No disrespect to CoonDog for his awesome work. What about you guys?

Wish me luck.

All the best, brother. I only know you from your postings, but I sense a good life energy -- hold your girl close and help her through this. Do not fear. If it does come to bypass, keep in mind it's an amazing surgery but very frequently performed these days. I know people who have had it for 15 years and still doing great.

Problem with marsh-filled ditches is that infantry won't stay in them (i.e. taking the benefit of the cover afforded by the depression). They insist on trying to path around the marsh at every opportunity. My workaround is to fill the ditches with Heavy forest and run a Hedge along the bottom -- infantry tend to follow the Hedge if the waypoints are set short.

Smart of them -- now that IED knowhow has made its way into Syria from Iraq, moving around in the country is going to get deadly, even in tanks.

But in answer to the OP, I have a Tiny recon scenario ready to go, except I can't bring myself to do the AI design and inevitable troubleshooting. I also have a detailed battle map of La Meauffe and environs, and a bigger map covering the entire left bank of the Vire down past le Carillon, but RL has put a serious damper on gaming at the moment. Hope to get back to it eventually. I haven't played a single CW turn yet either, much less purchased CMTouch.

And no disrespect to Tull (lifelong listener), but if you're going to mis-assign a "Metal" Grammy to a psychedelic / art rock band, you can't at least go with Pink Floyd?

For me the killer always seems to be the AI plans. By the time I do the research, build the map and select and deploy forces, I'm too burned out to devise even one intelligent maneuver plan. And bluntly, the current AI toolset doesn't work well for infantry-- without a huge amount of tweaking it tends to result in clumsy human wave tactics and heaps of men mowed down in the open while trying to execute on-the-clock orders that have clearly been superseded by events.

You and CoonDog have hugely exceeded my wildest expectations! Thank you thank you thank you!

Amazing work! Puts an authentic human face on the IJA. Kurosawa would be proud!

Yes, no self-respecting metal band includes a flute player among its front men (although indeed, that instrument is in fact made of metal). Tull is archetypal art rock. I suppose someone who'd never actually listened to JT could guess "heavy metal" purely based on song titles like "Aqualung", "Locomotive Breath" and "Thick as a Brick". Just like "10,000 Maniacs" clearly must be a LA thrash band.

I downloaded this but regrettably it doesn't help you much if you don't bring a baseline of sound editing skills. I've been able to tweak the speed of the "Banzai!" so it sounds like different voices, but can't isolate or filter that noise at the end. Strangely, nearly all Japanese available in wav files seems to be women.

First Rule (of the thread): Don't whine about Fight Club, err, BFC lack of official interest in CM:PTO! The modders are doing wonderful work here! I like the ersatz plantation house on stilts with verandah. And Brits (not Germans) make a reasonable if incomplete stand-in for IJA. As for voices, I found a "Banzai!" wav out there, but it has a nasty feedback glitch at the end of it that I haven't been able to remove.

Good insights, thanks. Plugging unexpected holes posthaste with ad hoc forces was a German strong suit of course; to wit, Anzio... And Normandy for that matter. Of course the Russian front had given them several years of practice at that,as far back as Demyansk 1941.

Had the Germans deployed the 9th and 10th SS to rest and refit somewhere other than Holland (and not replaced them with comparable formations), would that have allowed success? Or would Volksgrenadiers with StuGs have contained and made equally short work of the Red Devils after their initial surprise?

Or you could always do alternative history and do the CMSF version of "Twilight 2000" RPG; the original setting was a group of 25th ID survivors wandering about post-nuclear Poland. Also, I believe the setting for CMSF2 was supposedly Ukraine, not Georgia. That setting is not too hard to believe -- a plausible backstory for a campaign could go something like this.... Germany leaves the Euro and EU in disgust amid world recession in 2013 and forms a rival bloc -- say Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, and Czecho. Relations with the remaining EU deteriorate quickly, although Britain, the US, the Nordics, Switzerland, Turkey and the Baltics are friendly to the new Zollverein. NATO remains intact but an increasingly disunited and impotent talking shop. And no, there's no appetite for military conflict -- I don't personally find that plausible. Meanwhile, Putin sets out to reassemble the Slavic portion of the Soviet Union; Belarus quickly declares economic and military union, but his machinations in the Baltics are resisted, and the Germans and Poles back the Balts. Violence erupts -- Russia threatens intervention; the EU sponsors talks although they are suspected of being pro-Russian. Ukraine. You figure out which caused which: 1. Russian populations in Crimea and east of the Dnpr agitate for their "human rights". 2. The Kyiv government draws increasingly close to the German bloc; some might even say, dependent Bottom line: sectarian violence erupts here too in short order. 2016. Ethnic cleansing escalates in the Donbas and Crimea, including districts that never had Russian majorities before. The Ukrainian army performs poorly against well-armed Russian irregulars and the tottering government becomes increasingly dependent on German bloc aid, including "Polish" advisers and arms. Tension increases on the Belarusian frontiers; the Russians accuse the Poles of seeking to recover Lviv and Lublin. Russian minorities scattered throughout western Ukraine begin to face revenge persecution by Ukrainian extremists who have lost patience with Kyiv. An especially gruesome massacre occurs in Odessa; the Russian navy "quarantines" the port, indignantly threatening to land. Open war now looms, although both sides shy away from that fateful step, preferring to fuel their war by proxy. In a desperate UN-brokered effort, a peacekeeping force (UNPROFOR), including French, Italian, Hungarian, Brazilian, Egyptian, as well as an Anglo-American regimental team (US and British Royal Marines, plus a Stryker battalion?) included at Ukrainian insistence land in the strife-torn city to enforce a cease fire. At Russian insistence though, only the French are permitted to ship in heavy armour*, and the UNPROFOR commander is French. The Ukrainian Army agrees to withdraw its heavy weapons from the UN area of operations, and the Russian Navy to return to port. As UNPROFOR deploys into Odessa and the surrounding countryside (Transnistria, the lower Dnpr), the Anglo-American commanders quickly become suspicious of the motives of their EU colleagues. They also become aware that the Ukrainians are hell bent on rearming and retaking their lost lands, and need the US nuclear umbrella to do that. And if that means ensuring that Leathernecks and Bootnecks come into conflict with Russian "terrorists" then, well, so be it.... Anyway, you get the idea. The chess pieces are on the table. I guess you'd be disappointed if you're looking for the massed clash of Russian and US tank brigades refighting Prokhorovka, but this backstory provides plenty of opportunity for dramatic tactical actions between ersatz combat groups on a reasonably equal footing. Also, it's really not clear who are the good or bad guys here -- the Russians have legitimate gripes too.

Just a guess, but the log may share a bmp texture with the tree trunks, which will make it impossible to mod without also changing the latter.

I think this is just fine just as is, given how the game models vehicle movement; the wrecks don't block movement, they slow it. If BFC is going to tweak something, I'd rather see vehicles able to squeeze slowly through half square (4m) sized gaps in walls and hedges. At present, they simply refuse.