Sgt.Squarehead

Ye gods, imagine the concussion.....That tank would be ringing like a bell!

Why? You could very easily make that with the units & terrain available in CM:BS.....Or do you mean current CM:BS scenarios do not feature sufficient use of fortifications?

Or a computer controlled friendly platoon gets blown to smithereens by an IED (as a warning) rather than one of the player's own.....Oh yeah, if you could do it, it would definitely be done! This and a third neutral 'Grey Force' could make the game much more interesting and would allow scenario designers much more scope for creativity.....Are those friendly locals approaching, or is it actually cover for an ISIS suicide-team?

To be fair they're supposed to be MRAPs, it's about as close as we can get right now. The CTS core force has some interesting kit at its disposal, it has the usual Russian weapons of the Syrian SF unit it is built with plus all the NATO goodies from the Humvees and Nyalas. They all have night-vision gear and are Veteran +1 with high morale, these are some tough hombres. The core force's ability to summon death from above is not inconsiderable either.....Supporting fires from US 155mm or Russian 122mm & 152mm howitzers, BM-21 MRLs and airstrikes from F-16s, Su-25s & Mil-35s are all available, pretty much on demand. With this lot in your hands, if you think I'm going to have ISIS go easy on you..... This is asymmetric warfare, so do not expect your opponent to fight the battle you want them to, dirty trick will abound (just read the news).....If the IEDs and so on are too much for you, you probably shouldn't be in Iraq and definitely not in Hayy Al Karamah.

Says the fella who doesn't write AI scripts! Actually it's a great idea, but the workload that utilising it would create for scenario designers is not insignificant (but there a plenty of folks, including me, who would definitely use it)!

Pg:109 of the CM:SF Manual.....It's be a pretty crude battle though.

All the titles you say? CM:SF & CM:A too.....Please!

Yes. You could 'Bake' a whole fight I suppose.

No worries fella, will do, this is all just testing at the moment.....I'm trying to work out some baseline concepts that I can use to give the scenario the right feel (I hope). The lack of truly miserable weather options in CM:SF may be a hindrance here, but I'll do what I can. I'm also still working on the map with flavour objects.....If I can persuade everything to do what I want, when you are told to look for 'things' they will be there to be found, but you will have to look. I don't want to say too much here, but I think you know where I'm going with this from conversations elsewhere (I'll ping you a piccie by e-mail).

Good question.....Probably not I suspect, but the crew were in a very sorry state, I wrote killed in the post above, but actually almost all of them suffered serious injuries rather than death, so they would be back in a mission or two. On the other hand, the IED blast did set off a pick-up truck full of RPGs.....Which would have made things rather exciting, so the overall effects seemed about right to me, give or take. Erring on the side of caution, I would use a Small IED rather than a Medium were I to include this concept (which I am now seriously considering).....In the earliest scenario with the highest population density there is, by my rough estimation, about a 12-14% chance of a successful IED suicide-attack at the start of the mission. That seems pretty reasonable to me and naturally the player will be warned in the briefing that it's a possibility, allowing him to take some steps to mitigate the damage.

Got it.....Cheers LLF!

So, assuming then that 1st platoon didn't just explode.....A Co. HQ moves to secure a large compound: In our earlier Discussions both LLF and Combatintman pointed out that this area rapidly becomes depopulated, I'm contemplating keying this to the player's success in evacuating civilians.....There would be a number of evacuation missions, with each success causing a campaign branch. The following scenarios on either branch would be pretty much identical copies of each other, but in the successful branch the Population Density setting would be reduced by one level for each successful mission. This will result in uncon forces, particularly (VB)IEDs, etc. becoming increasing ineffective if the player is successful.....It also brings a humanitarian touch to an otherwise rather nasty battle.

I have sussed out how to do the random IED spawning! PS - I should probably add that if the player can capture Hayy Al Karamah with under 50% CTS casualties, he's doing better than the historical unit.....That's how bad it was, seriously! PPS - Did I mention the mines?

The explosion seen above is a medium IED, so I could still go down a size, typically with the locked deployment you see above it kills 3-4 CTS from the Core and knocks out their Humvee.....It also completely lays waste to the 'Armed Locals' and royally messes up an Iraqi Police platoon. I definitely won't be using this particular idea (it's just an experiment/warning) , but if I can persuade the random spawning to work correctly I may use something similar.....I'm experimenting with other suicide bomber concepts, none of them quite as spiteful as this one. These should actually be a bit easier to deal with than a well placed IED man (they are in essence very badly placed IED men), but they could be quite nasty if you happen on them unawares. IEDs and Suicide attacks were a huge part of the fighting in East Mosul, so it's something you will have to take into account in your planning, waves of VBIEDs are to be expected once the fighting hots up! PS - If a 'Shock Event' was going to ruin a battle I wouldn't put it in.....Hence my tuning of the mortar bombardment and rewriting of the briefing in the CM:A scenario, after you reported so many unavoidable critical casualties (still not had anything close in my own runs). If it had been Sarandoy or DRA Army guys you had lost, I'd have told you to 'suck it up soldier'!

On-going testing of the suicide bomber in the setup-zone concept reveals that the player's units will spot and shoot him before he can earn his virgins about 60-70% of the time: The rest of the time: In either case, the player's various units can wind up having a little fire-fight with each other, in the confusion.....It's all rather satisfying TBH. Thoughts? PS - Sadly it looks like this concept's out, for some reason the IED man ain't spawning where he's supposed to unless I directly put him there and then it seems he will only spawn there.....I'm sure I've had them spawning to random spots (using multiple AI plans) before, but can't get them to do it tonight.

Nooooo......Still testing ideas, seeing if they work. I'll keep hacking away at it and posting updates, should have a workable scenario before too long. Erwin, I agree there are still options for the 'Jailbreak' scenario, it may yet see use.....IIRC designing that was how I discovered there are no 'Mine Teams' in CM:SF. CM:A is a better game in many ways, but then there are those damned silly trucks (& possibly some issues with AI artillery, still need to get to the bottom of that). Just out of interest.....If there were perhaps a one in five chance of there being an ISIS suicide bomber amongst those 'Armed Locals', how would folks feel? It's pretty damned harsh (detonating an IED in the player's setup-zone on turn one, with malice aforethought and no warning), but it's entirely within the bounds of possibility in the environment I am attempting to model.

I started on a CM:SF scenario (set on the classic 'moutmapextendedfinal' quick battle map) that works exactly that way.....The player was to command Syrian rebels & jihadists in an attempt to break their leaders out of jail. The problem that brought things to a grinding halt is that in CM:SF the uncons do not get Mine Teams (guys with satchel charges) like they do in CM:A, I would have had to use Syrian Engineers and it just didn't feel right.

It's in the title that shows in the 'Battle' screen.....I titled it 'Going Soviet: Action & Reaction'. I've changed it to 'Going Soviet - Action & Reaction'. This is still a learning process for me, once I'm sure I'm getting the balance right (or learn how I'm getting it wrong) I'll feel a bit more confident to plunge in.....I've scripted up a lot of stuff for several CM games (all of them TBH), but none of it is in a state to be released as is.

Really looking forward to it.....I'm in the process of 'hiding things' in Mosul at the moment.

November 2nd 2016, Iraqi Police and CTS tentatively enter the Hayy Al Karamah district: A small group of armed locals volunteer their services in return for assistance freeing their family members from the ISIS controlled areas.....Can they be trusted?

Sorry was in hard-core modeller mode there, referring to Hunnicutt's 'Sherman - A History Of The US Medium Tank'. Haven't checked yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they used thicker plates on the sponsons in the M4A3(W) series, the late production Sherman really was a half decent tank, ask the Japanese.....Or the Israelis!

I can well imagine.....I've recently been reading about the politics of Peshawar, in an earlier, more innocent age! Itching to give this a try, is there a link yet?

Not even close.

Yup, still working on it, going to build a series of hopefully fun scenarios from the same core then string 'em together see where we get to.....This scenario is kind of easy if you don't get overrun immediately, but it can be still be quite costly on the Core Force without suffering a defeat if you are too gung-ho (like me), so in the campaign I think it will serve quite well. In a moment of stupidity I put a ':' in the scenario title of that version, so it will play up when you first go to save it in game (everything works fine, you just need to rename it), I've fixed it now.

Not being entirely sure of forum policy relating to royalty, so I shall refrain from comment. Latest scenario version is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/chpr1kge4i58dzs/[Test] Action %26 Reaction (1-3b).btt?dl=0 Still only one AI plan in this one but everything else is done.