JulianJ

I agree with Michael Emrys: I am sceptical of much mass media content nowadays. This bit is just plain wrong: "The Allied bombing raids over German cities were more intense, shorter and occurred during the day." I too would like to see a proper scientific paper, before I jump to any conclusions.

Editor & Scenario Design Ctrl-S Ctrl-Z That would make Scenario design a little bit less tedious, and I think, be fairly simple to implement. CMBS Air Defence (in particular- could be implemented in other CM games but not as necessary) Some kind of indication (animation, onscreen message) whether you have shot down, damaged, forced away, or missed enemy aircraft. Currently enemy Air Power is a Big Angry God that you have no understanding of. I think that is neither realistic, nor makes for a good game. I note that Dr Phillip Karber of West Point says that the Ukraine war was a very hostile environment for tactical air power

I thought it didn't look colourised. Rare indeed, and thanks to @John Kettler but we can glean some info - the Semovente seems to be painted in red-brown and green over sand, like German AFVs. And the M3s are either very bleached and/or dusty as other posters have said, doesn't look like the deep green olive drab we imagine they should be. And look at that hill in the background - that's an obstacle, isn't it?

There's also the fading of old photographs, lovely though they are the few colour images from that era cannot be assumed to be the actual tone. Which makes things difficult for people wanting to model the vehicles correctly. I seem to recall that Bovington Tank Museum went to great lengths to get original colour swatches or paint samples to restore some of its classic AFVs and sometimes the colours turned out to be different than was thought.

Unfortunately that isn't it. I did exactly the same for the pub and the fashion boutique and only one of them came out funny. Also, (not shown) I made a kiosk kebab vendor out of the newspaper kiosk, and half the signs were reversed. It's very frustrating,and seems to make no sense to me.

I have come across another very strange thing while modding buildings - images are flipped horizontally so left becomes right etc. This means any writing is reversed, which is very peculiar. It happens on buildings and modded flavour objects as wel. First image - in foreground is a pub, all the writing is OK (even if you can't read the beer signs); in the bg I have created a women's fashion shop. It's flipped, and the writing is wrong - although I cannot read Ukrainian I know when it is up the creek, and people who can (including Russians) will be annoyed. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I don't want to put up a risible mod that will be laughed at. Any ideas what's going wrong? The second shot is the ground floor as it should be.

BTW one takeaway from it is "10/10/10" a Russian concept of 10 mins to call arty in, 10 mins of firing, ten mins to scoot out and move to a new location.

This is slightly OT but @kevinkin's link has an amazing lecture about the Ukraine war here. I wonder if the slides are available? https://mwi.usma.edu/video-dr-phillip-karber-ukraine-russian-way-war/ I found it fascinating - I didn't agree with some of the politics in the first few minutes, but then it goes into military matters. Highly recommended - I think most people on this site, interested in modern war, will find it useful, if scarey!

OK Mord, thanks for the heads up. I'll take that out of the instructions. Done now!

My white barn mod is available for download now either here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/5aszwd6czkymgcv/Barn_Building_201_Whitewash.zip/file or from the usual stockist: http://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/?p=7172&preview=true cheers Julian

Here is my new, modded barn: http://www.mediafire.com/file/5aszwd6czkymgcv/Barn Building 201 Whitewash.zip I shall be uploading it to the official mod sites now. This is a modded, whitewashed, weathered wooden barn based on the independent CMBS building Barn 201. So it should be building201 (03). If you put the folder in your DATA>Z folder it should be available for scenario creation. Shift-left clicking should change the barn till you get this one. (alternatively you could rezpack it into BLACK SEA v100b, using the Mod Tools but I would suggest that is not necessary). It is suitable for anywhere and any period of Combat Mission where they have whitewashed barns. I imagine that's most places. It is in Standard Definition (if you like) so it will load quickly. I considered making it in HD (Like Kieme's Mods) but decided it was simpler this way and will not look out of place near existing buildings. It is fully functional, men on foot can enter and shoot out, and it is destructible, as normal.

Yes, me too. The problem is it is tempting, and was in the scenario, to rush forward by vehicle into cover in the town buildings before the smoke evaporated then debus. The big road parallel to the river was covered by enemy fire, so men going across on foot copped it too. Just one of the pleasant command dilemmas we CMBS players love to have.

Update: Modding is proceeding well, though slowly. I have done two houses plus the barn and some flavour objects. It's a bit tedious, so I get bored and go off and do other things....bit like building a house I suppose so will post reports when I feel ready to.

Not really, just the usual CMBS snafus and deadly fire. I got one of the wagons blown up with the infantry inside from a keyholed position and others were ground down by fire. took a few risks that didn't pay off. I was able to flush enough of the enemy out to get some more footsloggers safely across one of the bridges further up the river, but the time ran out and it ended in a draw. If I'd had another 15 or so minutes I think I would have won as I was holding most of the objectives. So just another bloody day at the office

Here's my perfectly-executed river crossing from Brutal: not a man nor vehicle lost getting over the river under cover of smoke. Of course it all went a bit downhill after that.

For example, if a bunch of Uncons have fortified the lower level of a multi-storey car park and it has underground areas, as many have, raining arty down would be absorbed by the upper layers, and the enemy could retreat underground to safety. It would be hell to assault with infantry. I think that's the sort of scenario.

To answer the TOS-1 question: I read on one of the Syria War sites that the MBT (T72/T90) chassis was so that the vehicle had the protection level to be brought up close enough to direct fire thermobaric warheads at bunkers/cellars/entrances to tunnels/lower levels of massive concrete buildings, particularly in an urban setting, where any lighter armoured vehicle would be vulnerable and enemies in these locations are very hard to take out without risking troops. I think also that it gives the arty better cross-country mobility and there are lots of T72 chassis lying around so it is an easy mod. Sorry I can't remember where I read this, it was a few years back.

Frequently.....then I go off in a swoon and don't need to mod anything. Plus my posting goes asdfhslo 04985023489-30 fjl9ip'a nasf; q .....shine on you crazy diamond....:-)

I can have a go at things like that. The only limitation is my shaky hands. I used to be able to paint cap badges on 15mm figures. That is no longer the case so I don't want to mess stuff up...I'm going with my limitations.

Hi Erwin and Badger. The building is actually weathered - and has some minor stains and things. Perhaps you can't see it in the still I posted. As it is a modded indie building I thought it would just get the damage textures from the game. However it is good to check as I haven't done that. Ta! I'm going to get on the comms net to Bootie now.

One other thing, I have chosen to work in "standard definition". I now see why Kieme and others chose HD - the quality is better but it does not match the rest of the buildings and I think that it the potential performance downside is not worth it. I think many players don't care very much about the buildings. Which is understandable, I am a bit of a tankie myself and wouldn't want to reduce game effectiveness for the sake of a few nice buildings, which are going to get blown up anyway.

Thanks everyone. I've also modded some flavour objects. [Some stupid fwit in RL was supposed to answer my emails and send me work yesterday. They didn't, so I was sat at my desk, doing nothing. Modding was theraputic and stopped me fuming or sending abusive emails.]. Welcome to Little Mayhem

Hi all, another question: I have now modded three independent buildings - a barn, a house, and a commercial building as "variants" e.g. they have different numbers in brackets (02) for example. Most buildings don't seem to be limited in the number of variants you can have. Commercial buildings unfortunately seem only to have 3 variants (00) (01) (02)....is that correct? I have tried calling a building (03) and also renaming it 109 but in neither case does it appear. I might have made some mistake somewhere but the other two buildings were OK so I don't think so. This is important, IMO, because the difference between Modern and WW2 is commercial building facades - the shops in my street are modern at ground level, but created in old buildings, which are fairly unchanged above. It should be easy to put some neon signs and current adverts on them and retain the functionality while giving the buildings an appearance of today. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I wouldn't have tried modding without reading Kieme, Tanks a Lot and Umlaut's posts here, so any input from the commmunity would be most helpful. cheers Julian

Well, after some trials and tribulations I have successfully modded another Independent building. It's a whitewashed and weathered barn, suitable for most periods of CM. The Town of Маленький Mayhem Malenʹkyy Mayhem is on its way, rather slowly, but I think it will now move foward. BTW should I zip it to send it to the two game repositories? As it is an extra building, not a replacement for existing ones it can be used immediately.

HI Umlaut, Thanks for taking the time to reply. I've seen some of your awesome mods I'm beginning to find that out! The problem is that I don't know things that I am sure is in the "collective knowledge" of the community, so I don't want to mess around by trial and error when someone could tell me if there are only 9 INDY commercial buildings allowed (=slots). I thought my building would turn up as No.10 in the scenario editor. If not it's probably something wrong in the MDR file? There's 16 houses, for example. Anyway, I will take your advice and contact NPye. thanks again Julian