Sgt.Squarehead

I don't want to be too specific in giving instructions, but I will place even more emphasis on the imminence of a bombardment.....Will edit the post above rather than posting it all again. I'll add a glossary to the briefing while this exists as a one off, but this would be included in the Campaign Briefing as a rule.....Pretty close to starting on the new AI plans, I know what I want them to do, now all that's required is to persuade them to do it!

Suggestions noted and acted on, the exit zone has been expanded as advised (much better, I should have done this in the first place).....Here's the revised briefing: If you guys think that it satisfactorily covers all the bases I'll post v.1-3 late on today. Thanks again for your continuing advice and support. The points values for the HVTs have been reassigned in the following ratios: Consular Officials, Local Government Officials = 1.25 KGB Residents, Governor's Entourage = 1 Gulf TV News Crew = 0.5

No worries guys, it's my firm belief that mods should be left to the player to use, or not use, so I won't be including any.

They are both Lurchers (Marbles is Shale's sire): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurcher Marbles' line is from a Lure Coursing background, but I'm not really into it TBH: BTW, my name is Andy.

I think he was more freaked when the Police turned up.....The UK had just let the US use it's bases to bomb Libya, so the last thing he expected from them was, apparently genuine and sincere, enquiries as to his health!

Further testing of the artillery revealed.....Another minor map glitch! The Governor's Palace gatehouse hadn't been 'tuned' and had too many windows & doors, one of which was in a wall (fixed it). Keeping in mind the hideous losses you appear to have suffered I've reduced the length of the barrage by approximately one minute. I've returned to a six random targets configuration, but they are now spread around a little more than in the earlier iterations. I've made a few other minor amendments here and there (not all HVTs are created equal) and expanded the briefing in order to clarify any issues raised in this thread so far......I any await any further feedback before posting version 1-3, which, assuming I don't need to make further changes, I will probably do immediately after the useless delayed highlights C4 Formula One coverage later on this afternoon. I shall be incommunicado until then, if I find out the result early by accident it will put me in a really bad mood for two weeks.

Yup.....Still possible: Nobody even fired at them! I forgot to take the exit zone shot in the first test of this, so I ran it again and got them through again, but this time they were very nearly hit by what looked like a stray KPV round from one of the BTRs by the Government Buildings, I think it may even have wounded someone, but they still got through for VPs! In the process of trying to make the Exit Zone more visible (You just can't on highway tiles, the faint hint of green around the edges, just visible in the image above, is as good as it gets.....Nothing I can do about it. ) I did discover that one of the hidden preserve objectives was set to 'Occupy' so that's another minor issue fixed as a bonus.

Erwin, I've tested this thing so many times I just didn't notice the change in the mortaring as I already said. It starts at around 30 seconds in and should end on the fourth turn, it should last about 3-3.5 minutes total. I'd inadvertently turned the mortar ammo setting up by one level, so it lasted longer than it should have in your test. Even so I've tested this thing with every possible AI mortar option and with two salvoes hitting the consular buildings directly (rather than one centred in the road between them as the current target is) and never suffered casualties like yours. At worst (IIRC) I've lost one man from each of two Spetsnaz teams one Elite driver and a Consular Official, bad but not catastrophic. The only casualties that matter are the HVTs & Spetsnaz, all the others are insignificant (in the full campaign version it would be wise to preserve your core troops of course). The Spetsnaz only really need to survive long enough to blunt the major Mujahideen attacks with multiple air-strikes, but if you can keep them going longer and resupply them from a BMD or BTR they are an absolute hoot when the Hinds turn up! Any UAZs left in the target area are toast, I always dismount the ones I'm not using and place them side-on under the balconies, but with only one exception that I recall they always get trashed. In that instance one survived, but the wheels had stage two damage so running would be quicker (So use 'em or lose 'em.....FFS don't leave the drivers sat in 'em!). I've made the briefing MUCH more explicit about the presence of hostile mortars and you do always have the option to move before the mortars start up (you may take some casualties if you are too tardy about getting units into cover). I commonly do this when I'm playing against the AI, probably because I've become so familiar with the AI artillery process I guess. The 'Evacuation Route' is marked on the map (The southern highway tiles are an 'Exit Zone', I'll use a different terrain objective for it to make this more obvious, the current one is quite hard to see TBH.). It is possible (but risky) to have all of the HVTs at the Consular Buildings jump in a UAZ crewed by one Elite driver and just drive them off the map. You have to pick the right route of course and there's always an element of luck as you will be in sight of a few (now rather better in some instances, due to your earlier input) snipers for much of the journey, but an Elite driver will not be put off easily and the UAZ is a fast and fairly hard to hit target. Once I'd established that this was so (I haven't actually checked this option since I turned up all the snipers at your request, but you can be absolutely sure I will do before we communicate again) I got into the habit of keeping the KGB guys around as they know their trade, hence one of them winding up armed with an AK taking pot-shots at the Mujahideen. The more vehicles running around on the map, the more alert the Snipers appear to become, for best results, in my so often repeated experience, try one vehicle and cross your fingers.

Odd, it's always worked for me and AFAK it still does (definitely does in CM:BS 4). However if I Alt+Tab during a scenario or map load, bad things happen.

I don't think I've ever played a map big enough to find out TBH, I guess there must be some out there, but I've not found them. Debecka Pass is pretty much Javelin doing in the 21st century in Iraq what Milan did in the 20th century in Chad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War A friend of mine was working in Libya while much of this went on, despite being an Englishman working for a French company! He was in Tripoli when Reagan had it bombed too, he and his workmates put a big Union Jack on the roof of the building they lived in. Libyan police turned up once the smoke settled, to check that none of the people (all 'infidel' foreigners) had been hurt, no mention of the flag was made. War is a weird thing.

'Kobayashi Maru' for combat missions.....Actually I think that's the coolest thing ever in a CM game, but you are right that it would need to be explained very clearly in the briefings. One of the reasons I hate writing briefings so much is that I know I will inadvertently omit something that seems as obvious as day to me (as scenario creator) that the player (who, not being a psychic as a general rule) will have no clue about, in fact I've had something like this happen just tonight.

LLF, your invaluable input is always appreciated. Came across a useful AI scripting trick that I am going to try out for VBIEDs, I may be 'teaching granny to suck eggs' here, but if you've not discovered it already it's a clever way to make your AI Groups go further: From this thread:

Cunning!

Erwin, just noticed you said you had Crack drivers.....You must have been running an older version, these guys are all the crème de la crème (Elite, +2, Extreme, Excellent) in the most recent version. Ensuring you have at least one intact Forward Observer or Air Controller team for when the Sukhois and artillery reinforcements arrive is absolutely critical (The DRA officers can call the aircraft/guns in but probably not quickly or accurately enough). The relief force includes a Regular Forward Observer and Air Controller, but if you can preserve the Spetsnaz teams they are dead useful later on in the battle (I usually get too gung-ho and get one of the team clipped at which point they can't call in fire). I've been correcting issues and amending the briefing as I go along, I'm also running my own test battles too (In the next one I'm going to try out Ivan Zaitzev's "Your house.....I is in it!" technique for myself! ).....Version 1-3 is provisionally ready, but I'd rather wait a little longer before posting it to see if anything else crops up, I don't want to waste you guys time if I can help it. I really do appreciate you guys taking the time to play this through for me, it's absolutely invaluable for me to get these extra perspectives.....If I've messed up I will always endeavour to fix it as swiftly and efficiently as possible.

Wow! You went into Old Town.....That's where the bad guys usually live! Fortunately for you the Mullahs have called them all to the mosques to announce how they are going to skin the communists alive, meanwhile you're sneaking through their houses, I love it! Better hope you are outta there before they come home though! That's something I really didn't expect and it's exactly why I need testers.....There's no right or wrong way to go about the evacuation, it's doable in several ways, I've tested lots, but never the one you are trying, so please let me know how it goes. Thank you very much for taking the time to test this, it's a big scenario and fairly ambitious, so I really value your input and your opinions will be taken into account as I work on it. At least two more AI plans will be coming once I've ironed the bugs out of this one. PS - Please let me know if you find any problem buildings in Old Town, sorting that lot out took me forever so I'm hoping there aren't any, but if there are I'd rather sort them now.

It looks like I did turn indeed manage to turn up the mortar ammo supply, I realised that some of the enemy units were running out of ammo too early in the fight and it looks like I turned up the whole Mujahideen Battalion's ammo supply up, rather than selecting more precisely, the mortars are part of the unit and thus got more ammo too. I'm going through the units now checking everything. I've fixed the problem and also amended the fire plan slightly. The original six target fire plan often resulted in The Government Buildings or Soviet Consulate taking a double pasting (one target was centred on each tower or building), so I've gone for a compromise with five targets for four batteries, no more than one target per general location. If I could get the AI artillery to work properly the artillery fire would be a lot more nuanced, but it seems to be a case of everything at the start or nothing at the moment. I do appreciate the help finding these things, I've got so used to those barrages that I just never noticed the extra duration.....Sorry for freaking you out!

Definitely going to make the presence of hostile mortars much more prominent in the briefing, I'll also point out that the Sukhois are aware of them and will strafe them, so the player will know he's in the clear on that front at least. You found Vlad then.....He gets everywhere you know! I did place the TV Station guys where I think they would be but I also pointed out in the briefing that the regime really didn't want them to be there, the setup zone is your opportunity to correct the problem by taking charge. I'm staggered at the losses you took in the barrage at the consular buildings, I can only assume you hit one of those outliers we hear about? In all my runs I've never lost a whole Spetsnaz team, I normally leave them hidden at the start and have them slow move to the ground floor until the artillery stops. I'm off into the game to run some checks on the artillery right now, I adjusted the ammo settings of some of the support weapons and it's just possible I increased the mortar ammo supply by accident. Really appreciate you taking the time to test this and to provide me with such detailed feedback, it will all be used to improve the finished scenario (I hope). PS - Minor spoiler.....At no point should you be completely inactive, I've tried to set this up so you can see which way the major attacks are coming and react to that. In the current iteration ordering that ghastly Gulf News TV Crew off TV Station property is time well spent. PPS - Major spoiler.....I've never lost a Consular Official in the Consular Buildings, they're usually on the plane back to Moscow by turn three. I play poker a lot.

This scenario has been tested in WEGO and Real-Time, about half a dozen runs each, I've mostly been focussing on WEGO as that seems the most popular format for large battles. I think in the briefing I must clearly place much more emphasis on the fact that the Mujahideen (not Taliban, that comes later via ISI) are setting up mortars.....Sounds like those HVT losses could be pretty catastrophic (you might even need a restart), those guys are worth BIG points! Were they all on the rooftops? The impressive artillery barrage is actually the lowest intensity possible in the game (8x60mm tubes on four targets, earlier versions had six targets, with four chosen at random from among them, I may return to this format), but with the longest duration possible using the AI 'Support Targets' option (it should last around three minutes, I need to check this). The purpose of the barrage.....Well it's an artillery barrage! They're trying to pin you in place so they can come in and kill you in horrible ways! (little hint for future runs, if you are prepared to gamble, Elite UAZs move a lot faster than Mujahideen mortar crews fire, you'll notice I only had three vehicle crews in my comment above) As you know from earlier discussions, the mortars won't come back after they cease-firing as the AI artillery seems to be broken in this one (no idea why, still haven't set up all the tests), but that's cool as I figure the four Fitters on the way to your location may have paid them a quick visit in passing! As far as I can tell the game has two small arms ammo categories, 'Light Small Arms' and 'Medium Small Arms'. In CMSF I've found it's possible to resupply AKs, SVDs & PKs from the 5.56mm & 7.62mm stores on Humvees etc. I haven't actually tried resupplying NATO small arms from ex-Soviet stores, but I'm fairly confident that it would work. There should be three doors at the back of the TV station: One exits onto the street by the small warehouses in the north-west corner (on the left in the image below), the other two exit through the car park annexe (you can see one of them on the right in the image below, the other is on the opposite face of the annexe): All of my buildings should be very precisely modelled, so plot your routes through them point by point, don't just click an end-point. I actually discovered there IS an error on the version of the TV station that you have, there should be four access doors to the roof, two in the tower (see above), and two facing those (you can just see one on the extreme upper right in the image above), but your version only has three. (Dammit! ) This is a legacy of me playing the game too much and still using Ctrl+Click to quick move around while in the editor.....This is a habit I'm trying to un-learn as it's a recipe for disaster on an urban map. You see Ctrl+Click also just happens to changes the window/door configuration, should you inadvertently do it on one face of a building, with complex buildings built using Alt+Ctrl+Click trickery this can royally **** things up (you see why building tweaks are such an issue now)! The setup zone at the TV station is specifically there so you can stop that lunatic Ali & his crew from being up on the rooftops filming WWIII break out in your city (and broadcasting it to the bored scions of wealthy families in the Gulf, you know, the sort who own big construction companies and stuff like that). One more hint, remember your non-spies are still built with 'Spy' units, so while they are a bit pants for spying (apart from the KGB guys, obviously) they are still unarmed civilians in a city full of same, so the Afghans won't shoot at them (Unless the homicidal maniac picks up an AK-74 and starts shooting at the Afghans first of course!) or otherwise detain them unless they have an opportunity to directly interrogate them (ie: don't get too close).

Thanks for that George, saved me some testing time.....I played another of your scenarios yesterday as it goes, now I shall have a look in the editor and see how you achieved it.

This thread is wandering badly.

Clever stuff.....I'm going to try that in CM:A & CM:SF where it really could make a huge difference! Kudos for a top-tip.....Just hoping it all works OK on the older engine. If it does I can put a stream of VBIEDs on the same AI group and have them attack singly in sequence, or all together in different AI plans!

All of those things will be covered in the master campaign briefing.....I'm probably going to adjust the date of the campaign slightly (1982 is a good candidate) switch to fully fictional mode and historical accuracy be damned for this one (I've got Mosul for that), hopefully it will still 'feel' mostly right and be fun to play.

I still haven't really got to grips with mods TBH, but what I've seen of them is very impressive, a couple of the screenies in the CM:BN thread really blew me away.

In my last test run my drivers wound up with 1xRPK-74, 1xAK-74/40mmGL. 1xPPSh (and lots & lots of ammo).....One of my KGB dudes had an AK-74 too! There are hints to be found in that sentence. I've corrected the minor issues I discovered on the map ('State Bank' and adjacent apartments), I will be adding one or two more AI plans to this scenario, so hopefully given a rest after the first run it won't feel too stale on a second try (I've played this version maybe half a dozen times in one form or another, as part of the process of tuning it to this point).....This iteration is really just about laying the groundwork and finding any issues with the map, I'll be using it as a master map for several smaller things of one sort or another (so I can gradually wreck it basically). Here is the absolute latest version of the map.....I'm not even going to look at it again until someone's played it (other than me) or we'll be going round in circles forever! https://www.dropbox.com/s/f6ahtgj53bdte6l/[Test] Action %26 Reaction 1-2.btt?dl=0 If you feel like tweaking the briefing (you did offer), simply open the scenario in the editor, select 'Mission' from the master tab (the editor usually opens to Mission by default), then select Mission(Red), then 'Text' followed by 'Export'. Pick a place where you want to save it and edit to your heart's content! You can e-mail it to me or just paste it in a message here and I can copy it direct.