LongLeftFlank

My Mum, bless her Old Empire Loyalist heart! read the review in the #FailingNYT and just knew this game was for her son. She was exactly right! Talonsoft got instantly kicked to the curb.

Ha ha mate, I think your work has long surpassed my crude modding and hacking skills (now almost entirely forgotten). No more training do you need. ... I sometimes get tempted to pitch the Philippine Army to contract BFC to develop an officer tactical training aid, with scenarios based on Marawi, SAF-44 and various anti-NPA actions. (Which would incent them financially to cover off some longstanding issues like heavy/light buildings and proper foliage which would benefit the rest of us). Filipinos are brave, hardy soldiers (that goes for their enemies too, who are also Filipinos) and quite good marksmen, but even elite unit leaders routinely bungle simple platoon tactics like flank security and tactical cordons. Allowing enemies to ambush them, or readily slip away to fight another day.

Hi folks, just a brief touch and go here: as usual, work and RL doesn't give me much leisure for CM, except in short single evening bursts. I'm pleased, and honoured, you are getting some enjoyment out of my 2012 burst of post-Ramadi CM creative hacking (Makin, Dien Bien Phu, Baba Amr, le Carillon), which several others mentioned in this thread contributed to. I'll mail you the mods over in a few days (they're on an old computer). But please don't look to me to fix anything, sorry. This stuff is strictly as-is, where-is. Feel free to alter and (hopefully) share it with those like minded. PS. In the pre-Blender world, the Brits (Poles) made the closest analog to Japanese troops in terms of small arms: rifles, Brens, Mills bombs. Modding German formations to Japanese was hopeless and I didn't own CMFI. The sole reason I modded LW troops as well was to get an on map 75mm infantry gun not available in the CW arsenal. Those units are walled off behind bocage and aren't supposed to ever see actual combat, mainly owing to the very un-Japanese MG42s their ammo carrier sections are toting. It was just another crude hack, one of many.

PM me with an email and I can send you them, along with the Iraqi Army mod by the same author. Please note that if you own CMSF2, uniform mods won't work, as the figure wireframes changed. These are CMSF1 mods only.

A little more progress at last. I (re)wrote US and German briefings and worked up tactical maps for PURPLE HEART CORNER. Now to start playtesting.

Agreed. Rural areas are also extensively cut up with small stream beds, rivulets, drainage ditches, and large boggy patches, in all seasons. Most of these won't entirely stop tracked vehicles -- tracks are designed for cross country after all -- but they do make movement slower and more chancy... and bottlenecked. These features, which also tend to be lined with trees and vegetation, also provide natural covered routes for infantry (although the TacAI won't put the guys into them unless one puts in a fence along the trace). That said, they were also some of the first things skilled minelayers like the Germans would mine. These important features are insufficiently employed by CM mapmakers, IMHO, in spite of the handy ditch lock feature.

Yeah, this is another venerable pain issue where your actual ability to see/shoot/be shot doesn't match the visual feedback or the LOS tool. Modeling real woodlands filled with many young trees and undergrowth would really tax graphics cards. I made my peace with it once I understood the 1/2/3 trunk visuals are mere abstractions of the actual trunk density in that forest tile. 'Old growth' trees, with the kind of trunk thickness shown would actually be quite rare anywhere near human settlement. But because I'm an infantry player, the 'steel trunk' phenomenon doesn't bug me so much. Absence of woods edge thickets -- new growth that (seasonally) restricts LOS but not fire (think double height grain) -- is what bothers me more as a designer. But I simulate that on my maps by varying tree types, using gapped bocage/hedge and/or varying local terrain height.

In a shooter, you want unnatural contrasts to aid spotting bad guys. Since CM units generally make their own choices what to shoot, we can go for photorealism (except maybe at night). These building collapse physics are badly wrong, like dominoes, but if shooter players just want to blow stuff up with ubertanks, who the heck cares? Sure, CM could use a modest overhaul of its building physics and cover values but this kind of eye candy isn't the solution.

Yes, but as always that's work driven.

@Erwin, I'll extend time as seems necessary as I playtest. "Winning" here is really about not losing too many guys to sniping and mortar stonks. After 5 more hours, I got the ersatz morning fog smokescreen to work across the full US frontage. It's actually fired by the AI Germans (they have no other use for smoke rounds). Here's how it worked out: 1. As warned by @RockinHarry, no matter how large or irregular you paint an AI Support Target zone, the AI always converts it into a single small radius point target. 2. So to get broad coverage, you need multiple Smoke Support Targets. The AI fires on them promptly, one at a time, in no particular order, using both OBA and onboard guns. LOS is irrelevant. 3. Each Support Target needs its own arty unit, although sometimes 2 units will plaster 1 ST zone and leave the other unfired. Gentle breeze will cover gaps. 81mm mortars with Scarce ammo seem to work best. A Support Target mission keeps firing until tubes are dry, but they only have a few smoke rounds each, so it's over in 1-3 minutes. (Their HE will of course be available to the AI for conventional missions later). 4. For those interested, AI Support Target missions always assign a nominal "green line" spotter, even a sniper, and even if he can't see the zone. If no units are on the map (all reinforcements), the mission won't fire.

We've all been there with pathing bro, feel ya pain. While not a comprehensive pathing fix, one of my 'top 5' wishlist items is for designers to be able to paint AI 'don't go here, known threat!' (mined, fire lane, wevs.) squares. The unit TacAI for the affected side (even if player controlled) would 'see' these squares as marsh or sumfink, and avoid entering them. During setup, perhaps these threat zones would highlight in red and could also be labeled. Yes, one could also use actual marsh or mud squares (I've been tempted at times, believe me) as a crude hack, but they are ugly and have other effects. They also affect both sides.

...Ah, here's my workaround! I will autoplot a smoke mission with Severe ammo shortage (ht, @MOS:96B2P) across the US area which will lower visibility for the first few minutes, simulating dawn light plus June river fogs. Will let you know how that works.

As noted above, this scenario is compressing a full day (0530 to 1945) historical small town clearing action (by a green unit under fire) into a single hour of CMBN gameplay. It gets rather dull if it runs longer - yes, I do care about my players. So I'll need to go with an 'average' daylight condition. This is a pity, since most of the point of attacking at dawn is to take advantage of low (but not disorienting) visibility while advancing to contact. Just as dusk can be a good time for a brief push / counterattack to secure positions for the night. But, ya can't have everything. And a 'speed up the day relative to the clock option' (a la the original version of Morrowind/Skyrim lol), or else dynamic weather (mist lifting, rain ending) to simulate the visibility changes is a ways down my CM wishlist.

OK, daylight is a good part of my spotter problem. The historical attack begins at 0645 (Overcast). When I push it forward to 0930, I do get spots and the kind of shelling I was looking for. Many thanks gents, for the useful pointers!

Correct. I am at 3.0 as I don't want the agita of 4.0. The German fire support is 81mm and 75mm, and the FOs are far enough away; as noted, they will eventually call fire if the Amis sit on the TRPs for a while. So my current guess is that they're so keyholed they can't see what's going on in the vicinity of the TRP zone, I think someone said 20m? Ergo, they don't 'realize' there are stonk-worthy forces there....

So after another year long work hiatus, I'm back online, doing some design and playtesting on this project. But I am having an absolute bugga of a time getting the AI German spotters to call fire on their TRPs. Disrupting the advance of the green Amis with a steady rain of 81mm harassing fire (and some ranged MG and sniping, plus a few mines) is the key to the German defence scheme. They simply lack the bayonet strength to go toe-to-toe. That was exactly the RL dynamic, and the battered 352nd Division made it work well for a month north of St Lo. ... At least one spotter now has LOS to each TRP, usually keyholed (tricky enough to do in the bocage/ village terrain), but none of them will draw a bead and start plotting a fire mission. Unless the Yanks obligingly sit on the TRPs for about 10 minutes, waving. Any ideas here? Many thanks. 13 years in, the CM2 game engine remains unique, but in design mode I keep feeling like I'm fighting it over seemingly simple things that take forever to tweak. Note: The "Support Targets" AI command brings in far too intensive a barrage, even when spread over a wide area. I really want localized stonks, tied to the US axes of advance. The RL Germans had this entire area registered and under good observation from church towers and the Carillon heights. It was a school solution to their infantry shortage. One idea I'll be trying: more solo (50%) spotters, hidden closer to the TRPs (broader LOS of the zone). Has this worked for anyone else, or do they just get shot?

After another year+ long work-related embargo, quarantine has allowed me to do a little CM design work once again, on my second Le Carillon CMBN scenario, using version 3.0. FWIW, I have observed the following AI pathing oddity, and am tacking it to this thread, as it isn't worth a separate one. It didn't otherwise show up in search. 1. After repeated tests, it appears that once AI controlled units enter a building, they invariably take up a unit Facing that is OPPOSITE the building side they entered. In Scenario Test mode, you can see the AI assign that facing (blue line) at the end of the move. That is true even if the unit is facing *away* from the enemy. This is regardless of what the Friendly Direction setting may be, or the unit's game start facing (I tested). 2. They won't subsequently change their facing, even if an enemy unit shoots them up ("Psst, we're over here you idjets!"). In the case of a Spotter team, that's more than a little inconvenient.... 3. The workaround seems to be to give them an order to a spot behind the building (i.e. opposite the side you want them to face), and then a follow on order to enter. Just make sure those doors aren't obstructed. 4. I stress tested this using different building types, set destination squares only on the desired side of the building, flagged the enemy as Target Units, slapped a TRP on top of them, confirmed LOS was clear, gave the AI side Full Intel, etc. No love, nothing got the AI's attention. Same thing happened with a non-Spotter team, although larger squads will post some squaddies facing other directions. BFC, please fix or sumfinksumfinksumfinksumfink...

OT, but our old friend JasonC got completely owned last month on BGG by one Electric Joe, another Supah Genius© (ex USN staff officer) with the same disdainful and assertion-dense posting style. Jason weaved and shifted the goalposts for a while but eventually gave up. Hoist on his own petard. It's a what-if discussion regarding a Japanese invasion of Hawaii (after US carriers are sunk at Pearl). *Please* don't start discussing that topic here though (go over there), this is just flagged for nostalgic amusement, as so many of us here have been stomped on harshly by Jason over the last 20 years. That said, I've learned a lot from him and still follow him quietly on BGG. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2325042/gaming-strategic-effects-catching-carriers-pearl/page/3 'Japan versus the U.S. in late 1941 is the geo-strategic equivalent of an episode of "Jackass."' Lol! The snark king is dead, long live the snark!

So, did anybody ever do a CM map of the Baghdad Green Zone? Asking for a fiend....

Hornets' Nest indeed. The defender has free choice of ~140 individual compounds (read: ready made fortresses and death traps) that BLUE can't safely neutralize with ranged firepower, or even spot, unless he first enters them with squishies. Clearing a district this size IRL will take 5-10 days and bleed whole battalions white. In CM you can do it in an (intense and harrowing) sitting, but you need to assume lengthy (sometimes night long) pauses 'off the clock.' Bring shaped charges and grenades, infidel dogs! And plenty of water. And blood plasma.

Cool indeed, mate. But I am once again on cold turkey CM hiatus for work reasons; relocating to a new country. Keep pushing the boundaries!

Not urban, but how about a little reelpolitik to go with your COIN?Interesting case study here, from a part of the world where I've spent time about how (counter)insurgency can be made to pay, handsomely. Dynamics by no means limited to Myanmar. In game terms, perhaps we could mash up @MOS:96B2P 's ingenious works with Settlers of Catan to create a nice little post-SHTF warlord game, lol. Oh, so you won't trade coal for sheep eh? Let me explain Largest Army to you.... Strategic Violence During Democratization (For Fun and Profit) Prior to democratization, the Myanmar military government peacefully colluded with ethnic rebel groups to split the profits from jade mining and smuggling—a sector worth roughly half of Myanmar’s GDP. But fearing that the new civilian government would assume control of jade-mining areas and the associated rents, the military has ginned up unrest in mining townships to deter the development of an alternative authority. Shortly after 2011, the Thein Sein government announced its intention to tax the previously sheltered [Army run SOEs] UMEHL and MEC, which have substantial interests in the jade sector. At the same time, the... NLD, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, de facto prime minister) included strong language about increasing government revenues from the jade sector and cracking down on smuggling. ...Military families (commanders’ wives often serve as owners of record) and their companies made over $1 billion from their official jade sales in 2013 and 2014. This figure represents a lower bound, as most jade is smuggled out of the country, thus avoiding the heavily taxed emporiums.... more than 50 to 80 percent of jade is smuggled from Myanmar into China... less than 10 percent of total jade sales in 2011 was taxed by the central government. The military elites not only have large stakes in major mining operations, they also run a lucrative racket in Kachin State.... military officers demand 20 percent of the value of any stone found by small-scale, artisanal miners. Moreover, the Tatmadaw receives payments from concessionaires, who both pay for soldiers to guard their compounds and distribute bribes to clear any roadblocks along their smuggling routes. Proceeds from illegal jade exports not only benefit military elites and their cronies, but also provide an important source of income for the Kachin Independence Army (kia). The KIA, the armed wing of the KIO, consistently has been one of the largest and most active insurgent groups in Myanmar since its formation in 1961.... the group boasts membership of close to ten thousand troops and occupies territory in Kachin State as well as in northern Shan State. Funding for the KIA also comes from a variety of other sources: because it has lost control of jade-mining areas, it has relied more heavily on illegal logging and timber sales. The military has allegedly hampered increased civilian oversight by timing attacks to disrupt visits by ministers or international observers. In an area still occupied by a historically rebellious ethnic army, the civilian government cannot easily discern whether violence reflects renewed separatist activity or military provocation. As such, the military can exploit unrest in this region—even of its own making—to convince an uncertain civilian government to cede authority to the generals in administering lucrative and “disputed” territory. “Ceasefire capitalism”—the period of relative peace in Kachin State that enabled the exploitation of the region’s natural resources—enriched military elites and KIA/KIO leaders but did little to benefit the rest of the population. This generated resentment among the rank and file.... And after these lower-ranking officers seized power, they adopted a more confrontational stance vis-à-vis the Tatmadaw.

`Good-morning; good-morning!' the General said When we met him last week on our way to the line. Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead, And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine. `He's a cheery old card,' grunted Harry to Jack As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack. . . . . But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

Gamey bastige! ©

Excellent advice again, saving me a lot of playtesting, many thanks. With no disrespect to the GIs, as they say, history is written by the victors. Yet the American AAR forensics on le Carillon et al. also betray a distinct admiration for the formidable German defences in the le Carillon sector, successfully held for nearly a month by critically undersupplied and undermanned regiments heavily staffed with unreliable Ostruppe. And even when the breakout came in July, a single battalion of 897 Grenadiere still took down almost a quarter of the trench strength of the newly committed 137th US infantry. Which is what drew me instantly to this series upon initial release of CMBN.