MajorRH

Yes. It's the way to go. I have 1920x1200. Bigger battlefields are alaways better! Like everything in the computer world, once you have tasted bigger sceens, tough to go back. Bigger would even be better!

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Thank you all for your kind comments. Retributar: Your comments on Airborne Forces are right on. Indeed a larger map would be needed to do this. I built the game with a mix of stategic and tactical play in mind. The beauty of SC2 is that, although brilliantly designed for strategic gaming, the gaming engine can facilitate tactical game play too. It's almost there with a few tweaks. As I developed the MOD, I mused about a larger scale map...but I was already commited at that point. Perhaps I will amend with the PDE expansion. I now have most of the information resources to do it. Hubert: Thank you for your comment. You and your team have made a great gaming platform. Few limitations here. Cheers! I look forward to the PDE release. Arado234: Industrial output is still work in progress. This is my current focus. As far as airlanding units, I was thinking of a rule whereby a tile must be under German control in order to introduce the 22nd Air Landing Division. Airfields were not contemplated at this scale. Again thanks to all for your comments. MajorRH

I am having trouble posting my sreenshots. Here I try again: WAR MAP: BRIDGEHEAD: COUNTER ATTACK: MajorRH

Operation Sea Lion – The Invasion of England – August 13, 1940 – Beta Coming Soon I have posted this to see how much interest there is in this MOD. If there is, there may be an opportunity for some collaboration to make this a great MOD. Operation Sea Lion is one of the great “what ifs” of the Second World War. Could Germany have successfully launched an Invasion of England and could it have been ultimately successful? This intriguing question led to some significant amount of reading on the subject and more recently, the development of this SC2 MOD. The MOD starts on August 13, 1940 – Eagle Day. It plays out until August 31, 1941 (I am still assessing the final end date). This is a Brigade / Division level MOD with terrain tiles representing about 15 km (10 miles). Each turn represents 5 days. To win, the Germans must control and hold several key cities and ports. The MOD is almost ready for outside play testing. I am working on the MPP allocations now. Certain scripting (such as US involvement and AI scripts) will come later. I have tried to present a reasonably accurate Order of Battle with respective unit start positions and relative unit strengths. I plan to make one more final review and tweak the current dispositions. Artistic license or a best guess was taken in regards to Artillery, Anti-air and Home Guard Units. These do not fit as neatly into the OOB compared to (for example) how Divisions and Brigades do. The first German Sea Lion plan called for some 41 divisions (including OKH Reserves of 8 divisions). This force would attack in 4 waves on a broad front from Ramsgate to the east and Lyme Bay to the west and would require 4 weeks to completely land. The plan was subsequently scaled back due to lack of sufficient naval transport. The final plan called for 25 divisions (including 2 airborne divisions) to land in 3 waves. The 4th wave, representing OKH Reserves, was never established. The first wave of 11 infantry divisions (which included 260 amphibious tanks), 1 Panzer Division the 7th Parachute Division and the 22nd Air Landing Infantry Division would land over the first 14 days. The balance of invasion force would land during the following 4 weeks. Thereafter, a 4th wave would be drawn from the 60 other remaining divisions in the west following the fall of France. Defending against this invasion force would be 2 Armoured Divisions, 4 Armoured Brigades, 22 Infantry Divisions and 9 Infantry Brigades. Units from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand would also be added to the British OOB. Many units were at half strength. While the Germans would be concentrating their attacks, the British would be somewhat spread out - challenged to protect and defend all of the UK. The key to Allied success would be the strength and effectiveness of the RAF and Royal Navy. This MOD captures their vital role in the success or failure of a German Invasion. I have included some screen shots. The first shows the War Map and provides a birds-eye view of the campaign set-up. The second shows a successful initial landing. The third shows a British Army counter attack underway. BRIDGEHEAD: COUNTER ATTACK: Please note the following: 1. Current MOD status is for Human vs. Human play. Future AI is possible. 2. It should be played with Fog of War on. 3. The game has been designed using Military 2D Counters. (I would need help editing 3D icons) 4. Engineers have been changed to become Home Guard Units and are used both as local Home Guard and as Garrison Units on key coastal cities/towns. 5. To reflect naval transport limitations, the Germans must follow the following landing restrictions: a. Turn 1 – Max 5 Divisions/Brigades via amphibious / naval transport. You can transfer any number of units to Amphibious Transports in Ports but cannot exceed the stated limits for crossing and landing. Airborne units can be dropped and 1 HQ unit can be amphibiously transported. b. Turn 2 - Max 5 Divisions/Brigades via amphibious / naval transport. c. Turn 3 - Max 3 Divisions/Brigades via amphibious / naval transport. d. Thereafter, Max 2 Divisions/Brigades via amphibious / naval transport. e. Exception: The Germans can land 4 further divisions + HQ from Norway / German ports. f. Artillery and Anti-air can only be Sea Transported through Ports. Input and thoughts are welcome.

Great question! I jumped into trying to build a very complex MOD (Operation Sea Lion - The Invasion of England 1940 - at Divisional Level). I have kept a general log of the variuous design steps and challenges. I have been at it during work and family down time on the weekends since late last fall. In hind-sight, a step by step disciplined approach would be the "efficient" way to go (I will eventually post my 'NEW MOD DEVELOPMENT PROCESS/CHECKLIST'). However, you will find that there will be many times that you will want to pause and "test play". In Sea Lion, after building much of the Map, I stopped the Map work and researched and built the land and air action parts. Thereafter, I paused the development work and had too much fun just playing with what I had. The Map was finally completed (roads and rail were finally completed - they make a difference!). Naval elements are just being finished now. Although I have some scripting done, MPP's and scipting need more work. Everything seems to take a lot longer than you might expect. But hey, making a game can be as much (and more) fun than just playing one. Cheers and Good Luck! MajorRH

Hey Joshua22 and Honch, I hear you on that. in building the Sea Lion MOD, I played with various scales. In the end, I went with the 15 km per square scale to allow some decent movement/play options in South Eastern England (namely the areas south of London), the Channel and Northern French Coast. On a divisional level, even this scale is unit dense based on historical dispositions. I have found that if the Germans achieve the beachhead (not easy), and begin to move North, the Map opens up big time. If the US and Commonwealth intervene in force, the second phase becomes a big battle of maneuver. Part of me likes this, however, at this scale I feel I am missing something. There seems to be alot of open area at this scale. Probably the need for additional static defence units and follow-up German units to fill some of the voids. Although artistic license is always fair in a "what if" scenario, I am trying to stick to available historical forces as much as possible. If I ever finish this, I would like to collaborate and build an appropriate scale map of Europe which can be used for any number of divisional scale mods.

to finish the above post: What am I missing?

I want to post some screen shots. I thought I could just "Prt Scr", pick it up in PAINT, save as JPEG and somehow, intuitively insert this in the text

Honch: I have painfully built northern France, Benelux and all of UK at 15 km scale for division level action (for my Sea Lion Mod). It's one big map! My big nagging question is whether 15 km is the right scale!? It seems right from research and Mod play testing. All of Europe would be EPIC!

Did this MOD get completed?

IMO - having more units to work with in MOD development is a good thing. It does afford greater opportunity in MOD design without having to compromise. The current stock line-up of unit types in WAW is pretty extensive and yes you can modify them in any number of ways. However, I think a further 2 or 3 "User Defined Units" in each of Land, Air and Naval would do the trick here. The additional units become more relevant when the scale of your game is reduced from Army/Corps to Division/Brigade/Batallion levels. The following is my current (additional) unit wish list: Land - Militia, Garrison/Static, Mountain Air - Naval Attack Groups, Recon, Medium Bomber (thereby having both Heavy and Medium Bomber types) Naval - Torpedo Boat (Flottilas) Naval Mine-laying and Mine-sweeping units would be interesting (future design challenge thread entry-this would entail more than just units). I like the idea of some dedicated User Defined Units. MajorRH

Operation Sea Lion - The Invasion of England - 1940 The campaign will entail divisional / brigade level operations with map tiles representing 15km / 10mi. scale. The Map includes all of England, Ireland (Case Grun anyone?), Northern France, Benelux, a bit of the Norwegian Coast (inc Stavanger and Bergen), and an interesting little Island in the middle of the North Sea to allow Luftflotte 5 to operate within the 25 tile game limit for range. Land, Air and Naval Order of Battle has been researched including respective start positions as at August 13, 1940 (Eagle Day - marking the start of the Battle of Britain). There are currently about 200 units represented. I am about 75% complete towards a BETA test game. I hope to have something for mid March. I am currently working on Home Guard and Auxillary Unit activation scripts. I think I will need some help on some of the scripts. I will advise as I get to them. With all the time into it, I hope this will become a good "what if" simulation! It has been a very interesting research exercise in any event! MajorRH

With over 100,000 French and Belgian troops evacuted to England from Dunkirk, does anyone have info on what these forces did in the UK. Could they have been utilized in the event of a german invasion? In preparing my Order of Battle for Sea Lion, I am trying to determine whether some number of now UK based French Units could be reasonably introduced into the Mod. My guess is that upon invasion, surviving French Units would reorganize and form perhaps 3 or 4 Brigades that could operate at some basic level. They may operate in local areas as the Home Guard would have done.

I am looking to include UK Home Guards Units in my divisional / brigade level Sea Lion Mod under development. In the mean time, I have decided to redefine UK Engineer Units as Home Guard. Home Guard Units were actively involved in building various local defences anyway. Under the Campaign Country Data Menu, you can re-label the unit, redefine its MPP cost, its production delay and combat data to something appropriate. More unit type selections will offer better game development opportunities. Cheers, MajorRH

Hubert, I am running as an Administrator. Fu Chu, thanks for the Compatibility Files info above. That does seem to explain what Vista is doing here. MRH

Hubert, I am running as an Administrator. Fu Chu, thanks for the Compatibility Files info above. That does seem to explain what Vista is doing here. MRH

Thank You for your input Hubert. MS Vista seems a bit quirky here. I found the files per your suggested path. In order to access it, I had to unhide the folder. So to confirm that I am doing this right, after I open the SC2 editor and select the script, I hit "open/edit", close the "system path cannot be found error" box, then in Notepad (which is now open in the background) File-Open to the path in the AppData Folder and select the desired script, make the edit, save in Notepad and then select "Update" back in the SC2 editor. I had no luck in accessing the script files in the AppData folder using the new SC2WW script editor.

I have confirmed that the Campaign folder is NOT marked read only. Issue continues. Thanks anyway. Should I expect to see the the modified .cgn file and folder in the master campaign folder if I look for it using Windows Explorer?

I am taking a run at editing scripts. I opened the basic 39-FALL WEISS game in the editor and saved it as a modified game with a new name. I have made a few minor edits in the modified game - no problem. I am able to see and open both the original and modified campaign in both game and editor. However, when I try to access and edit either the event or AI scripts in the new modified campaign (I select the script and hit `open-edit`), I get a Notepad `The System cannot find the path specified` error. Indeed, when I look for the modified campaign files with Windows Vista Explorer, I can`t see the modified campaign folder or .cgn file. Am I approching this the wrong way MRH

Thanks for the input. Cheers.

Thanks Normal Dude. This is my first major attempt at a Mod, so I am learning alot of things the hard way. I am working on "Operation Sealion-1940" on a Divisional / Brigade scale. I have built the map and am now compiling my research regarding the order fo battle. The range limitation will be OK for fighter aircraft (Air Squadron) action, but be short for bomber action. I wonder if there are any tricks? I also wonder what other limitations I might encounter with my 20 km (12 mile) per tile map scale (I wanted to create a multi-purpose map). My map includes the British Isles (including Shetland Islands and Ireland), Northern France, Northern Benelux and Germany as far Berlin. I also include the west coast of Norway and the seas around and in between (I'm 190x85 tiles). Am I going to have a game speed problem with this size? In any event, I am keeping a log of this development process and will post it if I can successfully complete this project. Thanks.

Hello: I am working on a mod. My scale is 20 km per tile. I have run into a limitation on aircraft range of 25 tiles (plus 5 more if research is maxed). Is there a way to increase this. Assistance would be most appreciated. Thanks.

Here's a tip for Mapping new Mods. I was looking on-line for a particular map which I could download and begin some mapping for a new mod. I found a few maps, however, the best solution came from Google Earth! Zoom into the map area of interest anywhere in the world. Fill your screen with this area. Use the Ruler feature to establish a horizontal distance (you will need this to sync your map scale with your game scale later). Add what ever layers you like (Cities, Terrain, Borders, Shopping Malls etc.). Then save the image (under the File Menu - it will saved as a JPEG). Open the image in MS Paint and adjust the attributes to match your ruler line representing the horizontal distance of your game map. Save it as a *.bmp. After that, reference the SC2 Map Making Tutorial in the SC2 Extras Folder. If your don't have Google Earth, go to http://earth.google.com and get the Free Version. I think it's just great! Cheers

Hello Joost, I test drove your Western European Battle last night...it was lots of fun! Your map is fantastic. I liked the general scale. Are you considering expanding the map to include more of France and England in your new version? I had some thoughts while playing. I will try to organize them and send you a note over the next week. Cheers to You!