37mm

Just in time for the anniversary of „Operation Bagration“ here comes a short update for the WIP:
@Phantom Captain is still fighting bravely through the „Tiger-Trail“ Campaign and until now it seems as if the missions work fine 🙏🏻
The „Into Hell“Campaign also runs playtesting.
“Five Bridges“ and „Partisans Land“ will start with further test rounds soon.
For the „Our Father“ Campaign I am creating 4 maps of the town of Mogilew, based on historical maps/pictures - what proves to be more time consuming than expected because most of the city lay in ruins 😱
 
So, what‘s the next step?
In 3-4 weeks I will need a playtester for a special and huge Mission which is a defense action against a main Soviet Breakthrough Attempt on 22nd June 1944. 
That for now. More news to come.
 
Regards
Mr.X

 
 

Schedule until release:
1. From today onwards, I will stop all CM-work due to professional reasons until January 11th 2024. Of course you
   can always contact me via the forum of e-mail, if you like to volunteer for testing of if there are questions.
2. The final test runs will continue in the almost 6 weeks until January. Enough time for all testers. At this point, 
   a big THANK YOU 🙏 again to all of you !!! 
3. But I still have one big request:
  It would be very nice  if at least one more tester could be found for the campaign "Our Father". So, if you    are  interested: it´s an almost finished product, ready to be played !!! 👍
4. When I will be back on January 11th 2024, I will make some fine corrections:
    = some missions need still some more flavor objects
    = special thanks goes to @pintere who does the very laborious work of correcting my poor English and optimizing               the  briefings - before release, I will add these briefings to the missions.
   = as of now, there is one smaller mission, that needs a real rework, which will take about 3 days - may be, there will be           2   -   3 more single missions, which need some rework, but this should be manageable without release delay.
 
Regards
Mr.X

Some new impressions from the Campaign "Our Father":



 
 

Fully working on the 5th and last campaign "Our Father". Some impressions from the City of Mogilev:

Mogilev Town Hall before the war 
 

And Mogilev Town Hall in the campaign on the morning of 29th June 1944
 

Mogilev, St.Nicolas convent today
 

St.Nicolas convent after the heavy fighting in July 1941, when Germans captured the city
 

And the ruins of St.Nicolas during the campaign on the morning of 30th June 1944
 

And  the German Airfield near Mogilev 
 

Mogilev during WWII
 

Mogilev during the campaign on 28th June 1944
 

Some new impressions from the campaign "Partisans Land":

I am following the topic "annual look at the year to come - 2023" and have seen, that the planned BattlePacks for CMBN and CMFI will probably be delayed due to the real life obligations of the creators 😢
To be honest, until recently, I wasn`t sure whether my huge project could actually be realized in the end.  But to spread some optimism: NOW, I am absolutely sure 👍😎
I`m continually working on it and so far there are enough volunteer testers. At this point, many thanks to you 🙏 without your help, it wouldn`t be possible to do this work...
My very special thanks go to @Phantom Captain, @pintere and @M.Herm for your fabulous efforts and the helpful and detailed AARs and valuable suggestions !!! 
So what`s the next plan?
As of today, a precise schedule has been set as to when the last finished campaign will begin its beta test. This date will be December 1st. From then until January 11th, I will continue to pursue my professional obligations during the final test runs. From January 12th I will be active again and will make the final improvements. From then on it will only take a short time until the release. 
Since we are now in a period of 3 month before the release, I have taken the liberty of opening an additional topic, where the final version of the BattlePack is described in detail and pre-orders can be made. 
More to come...
 
Regards
Mr.X

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

 
"Bobruisk Pocket" - then and now:

 

From today onwards the final phase of the WIP starts with the aim of release on February 1st 😎
The plan provides for the following:
= 3-4 single missions have to be reworked after they failed during the testing. That is a manageable number.
= It still takes some hard work to place flavor objects in a few missions and make minor adjustments.
= Finally, the 20 master maps have to be „cleaned up“  for the players who want to use them. 
 
= And at the very end - if I still have time 🙏🏻 -
I might add a little prologue mini action 😉
 
At this point, thanks again to everyone who helped and to those who are still working hard at the moment 👍🏻
 
Regards 
Mr.X

The first mails with the content are sent 👍🏻
I will continue with the list today in the evening 🙏🏼
 
Regards
Mr.X

There will be a (last) short delay of some days 🙈
I am still working on two missions, which I decided to rework. 
 
Regards
Mr.X

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

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  

It cannot be emphasized enough. If the briefings of the many missions are reasonable, then that is solely @pintere´s credit 🙏 He corrected all (!!) the briefings and repeatedly had to deal with my terrible English. 

Short feedback:
I'm very pleased that I still receive inquiries every day🙏. I hope that every player has currently received the entire CampaignPack. There was actually only one technical problem with the email in one case. But if anyone else hasn't received the email yet/or can't find it in his mailbox, please just contact me via PM.
Regards
Mr.X

A few notes:
1. Many thanks to everyone who takes the trouble to send me kind emails with the first battle reports from the Eastern Front. I look forward to every AAR 👍
2. In order to avoid unnecessary confusion, I have sent the promised 20 mastermaps to @Bootie today, who promised to make the maps available for download in the near future. Thank you @Bootie 🙏
3. So far only one player has written to me that there were a few crashes in the scenarios (especially chapters I and II) that involve a lot of fortifications (trenches, barb wire etc.) --It seems as if this is a specific, individual problem for this  PC  🙏 .
Otherwise, I haven't heard of any technical problems (just like during the test phase). But if such problems arise, please feel free to get in touch.
4. If any player from my mail list is still missing the CampaignPack - please let me know, too. Actually I shouldn't have forgotten anyone, but you never know...😬
5. And if someone else would like to have the CampaignPack sent - contact me via PM or mail👍
I always try to respond within 1-2 days.
 
Regards
Mr.X

😜✌️

Thank you very much Bootie 🙏🏼

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 

I've been taking a break from CM but, when I return to it, the CMFB AiO most needs updating... I want my Wintery Brits to have gloves, weathered vehicles & snow speckled uniforms.

I've been taking a break from CM but, when I return to it, the CMFB AiO most needs updating... I want my Wintery Brits to have gloves, weathered vehicles & snow speckled uniforms.

Well, it turns out the Sagger Point rework took a bit longer than I'd anticipated. It's almost finished now but I've had to redo the map. They say a picture is worth a thousand words so here are a couple which show the old Sagger map and the new, reworked one, both taken pretty much from the same perspective.


As you can see, the new map is a lot less yellow with more realistic farmlands and completely reworked compounds. The old village has been relocated to the centre of the map and the huge hill to the north has been cut down to size a bit so that it's a less dominant terrain feature. I think I was obsessed with building them really high back in the early days of CMx1
 
The plan here is to try and keep the OB to a company of mech inf with support rather than have two full mech inf companies + support. Sorry folks but I just don't play that way anymore and since this is going to require a lot of playtesting, I need to be able to manage everything in RT. By relocating the village to the centre of the map, it fits in with my strategy of giving the player mini goals to achieve while his forces arrive on the map for the big set piece, the assault on the hill.
I'm using some UNCON units in this mission to represent small bands of civilians who are against the rebellion so the initial opposition is not too tough to manage with a small force. They are scattered around the small compounds and the villages and I'll be able to vary their set ups between AI plans so that nobody knows exactly where they'll be even if you've played it once already.
Gone too are the 'emplaced' tanks on the hill so that you will be able to move your mech inf in sight of the hill without the AI overriding n your orders with self-preservation retreat orders.
The map as you see it is relatively bare with respect to details and flavour objects - that's an evening job when I prefer to relax, listen to some old Eagles albums and do some light map work.

That's interesting but the friendly fire I'm referring to is gone from the game. It used to be that units could misidentify a friendly unit and fire on it with everything and it was brutal. Perhaps most of you have never experienced this in your game because the feature was removed long ago. When this happened though, I have no idea.
I can fire up the original version of Strong Stand which was an excellent showcase for this feature - a night mission which had a couple of companies of conscript reserve infantry arriving to reinforce a battle. You had to be extremely careful how you brought your conscript reinforcements into the battle space as they would misidentify your Special Forces as well as other conscript platoons that were out of initial C2 and a full-blown firefight between these formations ensued. I first noticed this feature was missing when I returned to revise Hasrabit last year - I was expecting it to happen but the conscripts never fired on each other.

I spent most of this last week reworking the SAM Hill map. For some reason, I just hate that map and can't play on it so it's been a massive job to overhaul.  I finished it yesterday and have tested it a couple of times and also got the Sulit Airfield map and mission updated. I'm currently reviewing the Sagger Point mission, the half-way point in the campaign and the Phase 2 finale, with probably the most ASL-style map of the entire collection and I just KNOW that I'm going to have to rework it massively. It's too yellow, there are too many hills, the fields are horrible and unnatural and some of the compounds could do with being made more realistic. Unlike SAM Hill, it's not a bad looking map at all but it looks completely artificial and I don't enjoy them like that any more. Although I'm not going to redo most of the elevations, this is going to be another SAM Hill-like rework so that's my job for next week.
Sulit Airfield was pretty simple with just some prettying-up of the map, adding some hedges and fences and redoing the player set-up area so that it looks like Syrian farmland. As it happens, Syrians farm right up to the berm of military airfields so I've done that here. However, I'm going to take it a bit easy for a while as the SAM Hill rework took quite a lot of time to do and I want to play something else for fun for a while.