Anyone really desperate for some flaktower action can always fire up Sniper Elite 2 and get to singlehandedly work their way to the top. It may not be too historical but it is an interesting experience nevertheless.
Expensive, but worth the money if you like details like I do. His other books are also very good.
Btw, there's also a reprint of Robert Forsyth Mistel book, in case any Luftwaffe fans are reading this. Hope they will also republish his book on the Galland Circus (JV 44).
Those Who Hold Bastogne by Peter Schrijvers is a good account of the battle for Bastogne. The Battle East of Elsenborn & The Twin Villages By William Cavanagh is a fast-paced narrative which makes for a good bedtime read. Seven Days in January: With the 6th SS Mountain Division in Operation Nordwind by Wolf Zoepf offers a very detailed and personal account of action in the Vosges Mountains during the first seven days of 1945. Also covering the same campaign from the perspective of the US Seventh Army When the Odds Were Even: Vosges Mountains Campaign, October 1944-January 1945 by Keith Bonn. And Victory Was Beyond Their Grasp: With the 272nd Volks-Grenadier Division from the Hurtgen Forest to the Heart of the Reich by Douglas Nash is an insightful account of a rarely covered subject. All of these are manageable size for bedtime reading!
I'm just about finished with Volume 2 of The Oderfront 1945 by Stephan Hamilton. The Germans did pretty good considering the odds. Hopefully there will be quite a few scenarios for that.
“Geographers never get lost. They just do accidental field work.”
Nicholas Chrisman
Talking about mapping for campaigns this early is because it is one the major time sinks for any campaign development, but can begin to occur while you are undertaking your research. This is also advised as many of the following steps really can’t occur properly until the maps are ready.
So, you have your reference files, had some fun in a paint program to create BMP files for your overlays and have started the long task of creating maps inside the editor for the scenarios you need to build. You’re still researching on the sidelines as you start prepping other elements of your campaign but the maps are the first real tangible elements you are working on that will form part of the final product.
A few things to be aware of as your start mapping and that will also map impact on your plans:
Battle damage does not carry over between individual scenarios
The CM2 engine treats each campaign scenario is an individual entity and the map state at the end of one battle does not carry over in any way to the next battle if the terrain is partially or fully identical to the previous battle. What that means in practice is that church tower that the player blasts with a full battery of M7 Priests in scenario 1, will be repaired to its initial state at the start of scenario 2. (The pixeltrüppen are master builders between fights). This also applies to any damaged terrain element, destroyed vehicles and the multitude of craters that may appear across a map after a scenario.
Before you ask, yes, it’s a long-standing wish among many in the community for the importation of map states between battles. Battlefront is aware. For now, we need to use the tools we have. There are four ways around this limitation:
1) Your individual scenarios never take place on the same map.
a. Easy solution if your historical or fictional narrative allows this. If a second engagement of the map is so minor with no real influence on the campaign then push on and skip it, or tweak history and roll that engagement into the main scenario you will be simulating.
2) Earlier battles on a map that is going to be used multiple times have specific force limitations around fierce composition on both sides.
a. Restrict the availability of high explosive weaponry to nothing more than an 81mm mortars or a 50mm gun on a tank. (Modern settings you’ll likely have to be more restrictive). Small craters are safely ignored
b. If historically or narrative appropriate, design your campaign so earlier engagements be more recon based fights with the all-out attack with all the toys occurring on the final battle on the particular map. If this isn’t possible, you’ll need to use method 3 or 4 below.
3) Pre-set the scenarios to occur after any major ordnance has been expended so you as a designer can occur where this will occur on the map.
a. I’ll admit I’m not a big fan of this option as it takes players out of the equation. The best wargames give the player objectives, tools and freedom to work out how to get the job done. Pulling back on the tools and freedom can be a bit of a betrayal to the player – and let’s face it we all like explosions.
b. Give the AI control of the off-map elements and have them target their own positions. This way you can ensure the ‘explosions’ will still occur during the battle and will occur in a position of your choosing as a designer. However, you’ll still have to undertake the next option and it’s a fine balancing act to ensure the AI expends the right amount of ammunition and doesn’t use any excess rounds on the player. I did think of this option at one point for Tukums but shied away from it.
4) Create two versions of the same map – a “Clean” and a “Damaged” map state.
a. This way you use the clean map in the first scenario and switch over to the damaged version for the follow-on battles.
b. The best way to do this is to complete your clean version in full and then copy the file and rubble down the second copy appropriately.
c. You can never completely control how the player will use any assets you give them so this will always be an element of educated guess work of you as a designer, knowing what are the tough nuts to crack that will likely use their heavy weapons on and designing appropriately. In Tukums I’m following history and focusing the damage on the town itself as that was the central point of focus for the naval fire support.
The town of Tukums (south side) as it appears in campaign.
What the map will look like as a starting point for mission 3.
Like an indirect support mission would is real life, have a dedicated focal point for where the damage will occur. The most damage is caused here and spreads out from there. This not only saves time but also in many cases will but will look better. In the case of Tukums I’m focusing on the large buildings around the square including the churches which were used as reference points by German spotting players.
Know what type of ordnance is falling so the damage you are simulating is appropriate. An 81mm mortar won’t topple whole buildings and a 302mm Naval shell won’t leave small craters. In Tukums all craters are the largest two sizes given the shells that could fall are either 302mm or 105mm rounds. I’m not worrying about trying to predict where a handful of mortars will be used.
A closer look at one part of Tukums.
In the damaged state you’ll notice I’m using the red dirt around each crater. This better shows the more churned up dirt and broken pavers of the roads and sidewalk. I’ve also removed a few trees where they’ve had the misfortune of being in the same location as an impact site. (The game will keep the trees on the map if you don’t manually take them out when placing a crater). Not shown in this picture but remember to remove any walls or fences near a crater as they will likely be blown over by the blast.
Switching over to the 3D preview mode the craters should serve as reference points. Methodically go through each crater and think about whether or not the impact of the shell would have caused any additional damage around it.
- Remove flavour objects as appropriate;
- Damage walls of buildings for craters that land next to a building.
- Scatter damaged rooftops among your buildings to show that not every shell falls earth. A ruined village but with all pristine rooves looks very odd. (Or the town as an amazing roof tiler).
- The independent buildings with their damaged wall states are much better than modular buildings in helping to convey a damaged environment, so mix these in amongst the modular buildings.
- If you use the appropriate ‘rubble’ mod tags, it’s also good to go back and simulate the debris strewn over the roads and ground around collapsed and damaged buildings.
Combined, this all helps sell the feel of a pre-existing battlefield to the player.
Not from Tukums but a (modded) CMBN map with the same principles applied in a bit extreme manner given the more extensive pounding this village took in that scenario. I had to keep the church walls in place for balance, making it a touch more difficult for the player. Don't forget subtle terrain elevation changes for rubble piles to better sell the effect. I generally use the rule of one elevation change for each story of building that has collapsed after the first.
These tips and tricks are also important for any scenario that is intended to take place on an earlier battlefield where you are walking into literally someone else’s mess. This will be clear from your research if your landmark has already been mentioned six times before your campaign takes place. It’s doubtful that it’s going to look clean and untouched by the scars of war. It’s a little bugbear of mine that so many Combat Mission engagements happen on pristine maps.
You Can’t Import a Map into an Existing Scenario
This is the big reason why mapping should start very early in the campaign design process while research continues. At some point you will hit a roadblock where you can’t progress any further without having some complete maps to work with for individual scenario design.
If you build a map and then begin working on the scenario by placing units and creating AI plans, you can’t then go back and change a master map / reference map and import that additional work into your existing scenario. You’ll effectively have the start your scenario from scratch again.
This creates a natural hard cut off or mid-point in making a campaign centred around mapping. Think of it like making a movie. Making your maps is like on set filming but there gets a point when filming is completed and the whole production has to go into post production to bring all the elements together into a finished product. You can go back and film again during post production, but it’s expensive and time consuming. If you constantly go back to mapping as you are piecing together the campaign (particularly if you have multiple maps of the same area – as per above), you’ll end up in a cycle of delays and frustration, plus these ongoing edits likely won’t be as up to spec as the rest of your mapping product as you rush through as your attention is on other elements of the campaign.
This is also why “Master Maps” are seen as a great way of mapping out terrain for a campaign. As we’ve discussed previously in part 1, Combat Mission campaigns do naturally favour smaller scale series of engagements over a relatively small area of a wider theatre of operations. There’s a good chance when working on something historical that you will be creating multiple engagements that are within an afternoon stroll of each other. Village A that your historical force took in the morning and then village B only 500m down the road which was taken in the afternoon.
Rather than trying to create all the prep work for multiple maps, do it once on a larger scale and create the one master map including all the ground between the two scenarios. This will give you flexibility down the track if you need to edit the boundaries of a scenario for either something you’ve picked up in research or through testing. Remember you can import your units into a new battlefield, but you can’t import the battlefield into the scenario.
Master Maps don’t need to be functional on their own. It’s simply one giant blank map for you to work with throughout the rest of the production process. It makes scaling and style really easy to maintain across a wide area since everything is present in the same file. When you jump into 3D mode you can quickly see if everything is matching and looking like it’s taking place in the same vicinity. For Tukums this allowed me to ensure all the buildings across the map were brick or stone (with only a handful of exceptions) with red tiled roofs to do as much as I could to keep that Baltic Region look. If I built three individual maps, I may have missed this tiny but noticeable element until it was too late.
“Combat will occur on the ground between two adjoining maps.”
Murphy’s Law of Combat – no. 60
This is also true of Combat Mission. Your scenarios may partially crossover into the same terrain. Sadly, battlefield commanders generally don’t have future wargamers in mind when fighting their enemies. This occurs in Tukums as Mission 1 and 2 do share small slither of the same terrain around the waterway. For mission 1 I’m expecting it to be largely dead ground for the player of no real interest but it needs to be present since the map is always a rectangle. By using a Master Map, I can ensure this crossover of terrain is identical between multiple engagements. If all the trees and swamps look different, the player will after 6+ hours of playing the missions will notice this type of inconsistency.
Campaigns are naturally bigger affairs than most scenarios. Have a map to suit. If you players are going to be fighting over the same terrain for a longer period of time, it needs the attention to detail because if you miss something, a player spending 6+ hours on the same map is bound to pick it up. Master maps (though big and daunting) are the chief way to ensure consistency and quality across your work.
The remnants of the sole German armor effort which counterattacked my infantry. I had two Sherman 75s on overwatch and they made fast work of both Stug IIIs, plus the Captured M4 seen on the left. The stugs started farther right, which afforded them defiladed approach and so they actually got pretty close to my truppen in the woods to the right. They did get my FO's jeep, the bastids!
I'm looking forward to get my hands on this one....i
I've been reading quite a few of David Glantz books lately...his knowledge is truely impressive...but the maps ! is pehaps not the best part of those books...
It would be kind of neat if he could release a 'complete' mapbook with high quality, larger size, easily readable maps covering the majority of his books 🙂...
I belive such a thing would sell quite well...
There is the 4th volume of his Barbarossa derailed series...i'm thinking of getting that one dome day but haven't yet...has anyone bought that book ? If so...is it worth the money ? Are the maps much improved ?
I'm sure I've posted about it here before but Bloody Streets is the single best book on the battle for Berlin. The level of detail will amaze you. I haven't read the 2nd edition yet but if its better than the 1st its amazing. The separate map book is beautiful. Panzers In Berlin 1945 and The Panther Battalion Brandenburg are also top shelf. The latter has also seen a 2nd edition, great book.
Drama Between Budapest and Vienna, The Final Fighting of the 6. Panzer-Armee - Naval & Military Press (naval-military-press.com
This is another fantastic book it also has a separate map book. I bought it about 5 years ago and it wasn't cheap then. Very similar in format to Bloody Streets and an excellent book
The second edition of Bloody Streets is definitely worth the investment, I sold my first edition so that I could get it, a very worthwhile investment. Anything published by Luftfahrtverlag-Start has been utterly fantastic so far, am sure the reprint of The Panther Battalion Brandenburg, which adds 16 pages and 14 images will be top notch, am sorely tempted to replace my first edition but don’t think I can justify it on top of volume 2 of From The Realm of a Dying Sun and a couple of new titles from Peko - Fortress Budapest: The Siege of the Hungarian Capital 1944-45 and Bloody Vienna: The Soviet Offensive Operations in Western Hungary and Austria, March-May 1945 both by Kamen Nevenkin. There has definitely been a renaissance in the last few years of high quality military history publishing all to our benefit, though one has to save a bit of the old pocket money for them.
One of the books I would try to rescue out of a burning house is The Panther Battalion Brandenburg and it's prehistory as I./PzRgt.26 1944-1945 by Wolfgang Ockert and Axel Urbanke published by Luftfahrtverlag Start. For anyone who's planning to make a scenario on Cherkassy, Budapest, the Oder Front or the Halbe Pocket this book is a treasure trove. Excellent maps, extremely well researched text and lots of great pictures. A must have for every Ostfronter.
From The Realm of a Dying Sun
Volume 1 superb detailed insight into the workings of a corps staff plus solid operational account of combat in Poland follow on volumes (2 just published) chart the operational history of IV SS Pz.Kps
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/From_the_Realm_of_a_Dying_Sun_Volume_1.html?id=OF3JDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y
I'm sure I've posted about it here before but Bloody Streets is the single best book on the battle for Berlin. The level of detail will amaze you. I haven't read the 2nd edition yet but if its better than the 1st its amazing. The separate map book is beautiful. Panzers In Berlin 1945 and The Panther Battalion Brandenburg are also top shelf. The latter has also seen a 2nd edition, great book.
Remagen bridge scenario, the tunnel entrance is RIGHT THERE. No avoiding it. Maybe they're going to be 'remarkably clever' and find a way to include it, or maybe they're going to cut the map right at the tunnel entrance. I know 'important people' want to see the bridge but it may be more trouble than its worth.
Agree on all points. Also the fact that they were armed with a PIAT would lead you to believe they'd have orders to engage any armor that got within range.
Before the Christmas holidays would be great, although my wife won't agree with that.
Btw Douglas E.Nash released the second volume of his trilogy on the IV.SS Panzerkorps, covering the Budapest relief efforts in December 1944 until February 1945, called From the Realm of a Dying Sun. I have it in my hands while I type this and it is as good as the first volume, which is high praise. Nash is superb. Good company for the coming Fire and Rubble module. Recommended.
Btw, does anybody know whether Douglas E. Nash is related to George H. Nash, the author?
Sometimes you get lucky and pull off the sort of stunts you curse the AI for. This 75mm M4 got sent on a rat run to try and get behind a Tank Destroyer that I knew was keyholed on this street. Against my expectations. the Sherman rolled over the short brick wall and put an AP round where the sun doesn't shine 😆
As soon as that was done, the Turret swung left and engaged a Panther(!!) at emerging from the intersection at the top of the street. 2 hits on the side of the turret, and it was ablaze.
jtsjc1 got a reaction from BFCElvis in Fire and Rubble Preview: The Anatomy of What Goes Into a Stock Campaign Release
jtsjc1 got a reaction from Commanderski in Fire and Rubble Preview: The Anatomy of What Goes Into a Stock Campaign Release
jtsjc1 got a reaction from Lucky_Strike in WW2 christmas reading....tips
jtsjc1 got a reaction from Glubokii Boy in WW2 christmas reading....tips
jtsjc1 got a reaction from John1966 in Spotting dirty great armoured behemoths
