Petrus58

Russia terror bombs Ukraine for over a year
 

 
Moscow gets hit by a handful of small drones causing limited damage and no reported casualties. 
OMFG don't they know the allied terror bombings were a failure!!!

 

Well, thanks to Age of Wonders 4, not an enormous amount of progress has been made but I've been working on the first two missions and have finally gotten Overkill and Ambush to where I want them. I'm considering taking out the Adan airfield missions as they are not part of the original campaign and the second one involves a large AI attack and these attack missions are a lot of work to get right.
I've toned down the difficulty of Ambush quite a bit - the new AI fire plans mean that the player will get ripped to pieces by the superior firepower of the attacker. It's an ambush mission - the AI is not supposed to know you're there and to blunder into your well-set ambush. Best guesses aside, I don't really know when the player will launch his ambush so I'm not going to script in fire plans for AI groups and just let them start firing once they know the enemy is there the old fashioned way. But I'm taking this experience with me to the Montebourg rework to make German AI attacks much more effective.
Testing the Guards Counterattack mission is quite hard work because while it's an AI attack, it's also quite a long mission as you have to counter attack, obviously. The opening AI assault is brutal and I'm happy with that but I have yet to win it - the T-90s are not as OP as I'd feared so I'm going to stick with them. The Barrier mission is a meeting arrangement and is going to be a lot of work testing too. I've reworked the original map and extended it quite a bit to improve LoS and added some terrain features to an otherwise barren map. A lot of apparently arid Syria land appears to be worked by farmers so I've worked a couple of features in from real world locations to make it look more interesting.
The AI is defending in Hill 142 so that won't be nearly so much work to finalise. Obviously, Heavy Metal is a complete reboot and another meeting engagement and then there is the final Guards mission, Sadara, which is like Hill 142 but much bigger.
The final mission, Hasrabit, is another large AI attack and quite a beast to manage so there's still a lot of work to do there.
So, it's a lot of work but I'm slowly working my way through it. Slow and steady wins the race (Tell that to Usain Bolt)

The world is pretty absurd lately. Russians invading Russia. Ukrainians releasing trailer video for counteroffensive. Putin's map that should show Ukraine not existing and instead it shows it existing, unlike Russia. Taliban attacking Iran using American weapons they took from ANA (I've already seen claims this makes them American proxy).
I do wonder if Putin's map is some kind of Orwellian loyalty test. Everyone knows it is utter nonsense but they have to play along, and dig themselves deeper and deeper.

I wanted to stay out of this, but here we go.
On the first part:
Numerous studies (no, I can't produce them, but someone better than me with google / waybackmachine may find the first one I am aware of done by the Pew Research Center) show proportional and related systems to have materially more waste and corruption.  The "why" seems to be that fringe parties - which proliferate in proportional systems - swing the balance of power and leverage this.  Also, in proportional one need not have "big tent" parties, so fringe and lunatic fringe and single-issue parties end up with representation.  And no, the 11% of people who believe Elvis is still alive don't deserve independent representation.
Also, first-past-the-post systems have greater longevity of the polity (fewer revolutions) and less overall political violence.  
For more: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/why-first-past-the-post-isnt-to-be-abandoned-lightly
If the US extirpates gerrymandering (which encourages extreme candidates) and somehow manages to reduce the grotesque amount of money in elections without impairing freedom of expression, it will have better results.
 
On the second, it will never happen.  People have a natural tendency to band together to protect their shared interests (e.g., trade unions), and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Most likely I'll go back to lurking and enjoying the interesting discussions popping up as the Ukrainian counter-offensive warms up.

I did 7 1/2 months without ever having committed nor been charged with a crime.  Then again I was on the left.  They don't seem to use those detention powers on the right.  Our rights are in the constitution, that does not however mean the state can't and hasn't denied folks that right... repeatedly.
Your point however is correct.  One of my favorite political movie lines by Michael Douglas said in The American President 
 

I once worked for the procurement branch of a large org. The boss wanted a new slogan, and amongst the suggestions were "[branch]; delivering yesterday's technology tomorrow" and "[branch]; We're not happy till you're not happy!"
That second one very nearly became official until someone leaned in and whispered in the bosses ear.

I have to say...and this is coming from the center left...that a lot of the antifa folks in DC were completely obnoxious. The BLM folks were what we would call around here 'good protesters'. They did their thing, acted coherently and didn't randomly attack whatever for the thrill of it...the burning of the lobby of the AFL-CIO being a particularly egregious example of the tendency to burn for the fun of it tendency of some of the Antifa folks. A lot of them looked like teenagers burning off covid isolation.
But...neither one had anything like the sheer nastiness of the radical right wingers. Patches like RWDS (that stands for "Right Wing Death Squad") and Confederate flags were routine and far more common than outright Nazi regalia. People telling my neighbors with a pride flag at their house that they "will come back for you later". Or the 100 or so Proud Boys that charged a police line my kid and I were behind because they were trying to get at BLM folks on the plaza on 16th Street behind us. Oh...and did I mention the guys with the long guns that got arrested at one of my places of business?
We got to see the monster with it's mask off...because they were sure that they were going to get a pardon sooner or later as they would tell DC MPD who had to deal with them...and I would strongly suggest you all take it seriously. Out of patriotism if nothing else. Nobody benefits more from it than Vladimir Putin.

anyone who thinks we don't have a fascist problem because folks won't take down their confederate flag to put up a nazi one does not understand that in America, that confederate flag IS the nazi one.  Not specially a response to your comment Steve, but just to point out for folks that think Americans don't blatantly display fascist trappings ought to think twice.  
Getting this back to Ukraine, if I was in the UA and someone from America came and told me they were concerned about some unit in the UA having a patch that resembled a Nazi symbol I'd be scratching my head about that confederate flag I saw on TV being marched through the halls of congress on 1/6.
The History of Democracy: Fascist Movements in U.S. History | WKMS
 

One of my ongoing side projects (aimed, mostly, at the new influx of Steam Players) is to host an 'All in One' for every CM game here.
CMSF2 has been a bit of a mess on that front with separate modpacks for Syria, Afghanistan as well as old dropboxes of content from SF1 scattered around the place.
This has now all been brought together under one package... a proper 'All in One'.
Arguably this 'All in Ones' primary feature is a vast mass of content (361 scenarios* & 31 campaigns) which has been organized into four different categories...
 
Syria
The default modpack should be fairly familiar to many consisting of (tweaked) versions of @Kieme(ITA)'s outstanding terrain & buildings mods (I also added a few of @Zveroboy1's Allepo buildings), @MikeyD's horizons, @Pete Wenman's flavour objects, a tweaked version of @Sir Lancelot's realistic Syrians, @Jock Tamson's unconventional & (tweaked) British mods, tweaked versions of @AtlasActual's Canadians & a few bits & pieces from @mjkerner's USMC mods. There are also some .mds fixes by @Kevin2k & @Jace11. Many of the old SF1 vehicle mods by the likes of @Ryujin, @M1A1TC, @Kieme(ITA) & @Marco Bergman will also be quite familiar. @Mord's Marine vehicles have been given [brown] tags & so don't conflict with the US Army vehicles.
UI mods are provided by @xacto, @SteppenWolf, @Vinnart, @Mord & @MikeyD. Whilst music is a mix from @Blimey & (I believe) @Augusto. The ME effects compliation & ME soundscape (with its expanded dynamic range) & voices by waclaw, @George MC &  @Mord complete the package.
What might not be familiar is that I have added "rudimentary weathering" to (I believe) every vehicle in the game & used @JMDECC's .psd layers to add dust to every uniform.
207 user made scenarios & 23 user made campaigns are set in Syria.



There are three zip files inside the Syrian mod folder labelled Afghanistan, MENA & OPFOR. Unzip ONE of these files to activate that particular regions mods...
 
Afghanistan
Users of the (now discontinued) SF2-Afghanistan 'All in one' will be familiar with this mod option. It is in essence a fusion of @Zveroboy1's excellent Afghanistan, Taliban & ANA mods alongside a port of Combat Mission: Afghanistan's terrain & @Bil Hardenberger's Afghanistan trees as well as various doodads from @SeinfeldRules & @Kieme(ITA). The modpack has been tweaked & simplified somewhat from the 2021 version but little has really changed.
There is now a folder for appropriate text changes (renaming "Syria" into "Afghanistan" for example) however this will only work for the current game version (2.06). This folder will have to be deleted for all other game versions prior or to come.
2 user made campaigns & 44 scenarios have been given an "AFG" prefix to highlight that they are set in Afghanistan.



 
"Middle East & North Africa" aka "MENA"
Whilst planning the 'All in One' I was considering updating the old "Road to Bahgdad" mod by @Blimey using primarily the cool DCU uniform mods by @beeron & @Damian45.
However as I sorted through all the user made scenarios, I came to realize that there were many other Middle Eastern scenarios set in places like Libya, various fictional Middle Eastern kingdoms, various training camps & even a blue on blue battle set in an Egyptian shopping mall.  As such the MENA modpack was born... the best way of describing it is "The Middle East but NOT Syria".
Terrain & doodads are a port of the old SF1 terrain & (I think) is quite pleasing to the eye (it also looks much sandier than I remembered). @SteppenWolf's UI & music take centre stage here & more of @Zveroboy1's buildings enter the mix. There's a few different vehicles by @M1A1TC, some more voices by @Mord (as well as a different mix of portraits). @JMDECC's .psd's have been used to create alternative red uniforms alongside his Iranian vehicles (although these have also been rudimentarily weathered &, inspired by @IICptMillerII's sandy vehicles, recoloured somewhat).
There is also a folder for appropriate text changes however this will only work for the current game version (2.06). This folder will have to be deleted for all other game versions prior or to come.
2 user made campiagns & 60 scenarios have been given a "MENA" prefix to highlight that they are not set in Syria.



 
"Generic OPFOR"
The old SF1 content creators (and some of the newer SF2 ones) were an adventurous & experimental bunch and, with only one CM game to work with for many years, unsurprisingly made a considerable amount of content set in alternative theatres. There are scenarios set in Europe, in Chechnya, on Artic Islands, nuclear wastelands, Africa, South America, New Zealand, New England, various fictional countries... I think there's a Chinese invasion of the United States & a zombie attack or two.
To mod all of these places would be impractical to say the least, so I came up with the "Generic OPFOR"... they are everyone & nobody, everywhere & nowhere.
Terrain is a mix of the old Euroscape & Syrope mods by @dpabrams & @birdstrike respectively as well as their US vehicle mods. @Kevin2k provides the Syrian & British vehicle mods whilst @JMDECC provides the various woodland uniforms. I also added some @Oleksandr uniforms to the mix.
Yet more of @Zveroboy1's buildings are added to the mix alongside the modern UI mod by @Kinophile. I have no idea where the music tracks are from.
There is also a folder for appropriate text changes however this will only work for the current game version (2.06). This folder will have to be deleted for all other game versions prior or to come.
4 user made campaigns & 50 scenarios have been given the "OPFOR" prefix to highlight that they are not set in the Middle East.



 
There's also another two additional folders...
Extras & Options
Here you will find various extras which can be activated when needed or desired for example there's a modern version of @RockinHarry's re-animate mods (I used a lot of SF1 animations for the modded stances) designed to keep the pixeltruppens heads down & (possibly) increase their survivability.
There's the old SF1 marsh & mud to water mods which can be used whilst playing SF1 campaigns which are meant to have water on them (the old content creators did not have access to water so often made do with marsh).
There's an untagged night effects pack designed for dawn/dusk scenarios (this will also have the added benefit of removing all those sunglasses... your troops will no longer wear shades at sunset) as well as @Kieme(ITA)'s optional HD highway pack (these look good but don't work with every maps highway set-up).
Modtags
There's not many but here you will find @Zveroboy1's ANP pick-up, a weathered & desert version of @Chelentano's T-34, the old "Road to Bahgdad" cemetary mod & @Pete Wenman's squalor mod. They're activated automatically.
 
DOWNLOAD LINKS & INSTALLATION
 
https://www.mediafire.com/file/hk8tt6jfxv2ro8l/CMSF2_%27All_in_One%27.7z/file
https://app.mediafire.com/izmk6muctniv5
Unzip the file & add the "Z for Syria" folder to your games data folder (the folder with the .brz files in it)... that's it.
For the content, add the campaign .cam files to your games campaign folder & the scenario .btt files to your games scenarios folder... I suggest adding the content to folders which only contain base game scenarios & campaigns.
 
*I have updated a lot of the old SF1 maps which featured marsh being used as pseudo-water with proper SF2 water however there's nothing much I could do about the campaigns (other than provide the old "marsh to water" mods as an optional extra).

One of my more favoured aphorisms is "for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong."
Words to remember, words to live by. It's a complex old world out there, and dumbing it down doesn't help anyone.

Just a quick post to reassure you that I am still working on this. However, Age Of Wonders 4 dropped last week and I've spent all my game time playing that and will likely be playing a lot of it for some time to come. I'll be working on this in the evenings in the future as I don't generally 'play' games then. It's also good because it prevents burnout from being a thing.

a few recent-ish shots...















cheers,
rob

I think there is a little bit of smug misinterpretation of what he actually said there. He was surprised by the napalm because you have to fly low and slow to deploy it. This implies either the Russians are either suicidal (and we haven't seen any massive losses in the VKS) or at least somewhat confident they can fly low and slow over part of the front. 
The other point which I think is worth taking seriously is the fact that the hundreds of russian planes currently preparing for the Ukrainian offensive don't need to be very effective to be a threat. They will introduce a significant amount of friction and constraints into the offensive, just like in Kherson. 
Related: a lot of talk here like the whole operation is going to be easy and the Russians have learned nothing/are terminally incompetent.
1. The Russians may be incompetent at (pointless politically driven) offence, but they are still stubborn on the defence. 
2. The Russian defensive trenches, mines and anti tank ditches are a formidable obstacle
3. The Russian air force will be used to bomb rear areas, ammo dumps, bridges etc. They may be slow to react and inaccurate but a e.g. bridge isn't moving anywhere and they will hit it eventually. That puts constraints on the operation. 
4. Russian EW and drones will be used to add more friction: your arty has to move due to counter battery fire, a Lancet hits an hq vehicle on the move, your attack is blinded by EW etc
5. The Ukrainian formations doing this did not exist this time last year. They have not had a lot of time to train together and are still quite green. 
I am not predicting disaster, in fact I think the offence will be a limited success, but I think we should not write the Russians off just yet.

I've had a really bad cold this week and didn't make the tremendous progress I was hoping for but regardless, I soldiered on and got something done while I was sniffling and coughing and dosed up with the really potent medicine they prescribe out here such non life threatening illnesses. (I'm not complaining though) When I'm feeling really, really crap, I work on maps as it requires almost no concentration so I started adding some new terrain features to the Guard Counterattack mission (that name's going to have to change - it's SO ASL!) as well as making other similar tweaks to other missions, in particular to the Breakout mission which I'll talk about below.
But the MAIN work has been on the two Phase II Special Forces missions, 'Buying the Farm' and 'Breakout'. Since observing the AI carry out its plan is quite easy work when you're feeling sick, I can settle back with a cup of tea and make  notes and the necessary adjustments. I had big ambitions for the AI attack in the Farm mission but I have had to temper them as the AI really, REALLY can't make any sort of attack across a bridge. I can't get them to manage the crossing unopposed either as it's an absolute mess to watch as the vehicles just get confused and just mill about. I really don't like to undo hours of work planning and adjusting AI plans to reposition the forces for the assault and was even trying to justify leaving it in to myself as making the player's job easier. But that's just a poor excuse for crap scripting.  But it's not for nothing as I will be working on the AI for the Republican Guards later and there are no bottlenecks on their maps so the experience will serve me well when I get around to that.
'Breakout' is a much simpler beast to script. It's another 'living' battlefield experience but you'll be on the clock on this one - find the AA guns, knock them out and exit your forces from the map. Getting the timing right on this one will be challenging - it's not a hard mission to kill the guns but getting off the map is a different story. While having too much time will just make it a filler mission.

Strong Stand and Adan Airfield are both done now, AI plans made and tested and victories scored in both missions. With extensive use of triggers in both missions, they make the Adan mission feel alive with units reacting to your moves. They're scripted not to be 'John Wick' efficient but to behave realistically. But they'll still fight.  
This is Adan Airfield. I've reworked the Minakh Airfield map and made a whole new mission from it. There will be two versions, the Attack version, which will be the new opener (because the result will have consequences for the rest of Phase I) and the Defend version in Phase II which is intended to be a real tough one and will similarly have consequences for all the Phase II missions.

I suspect some folks are going to rage at me for giving you 40 minutes to capture the airfield. I just forced a surrender with just over 9 minutes on the clock so it's more than doable.
Here's the Strong Stand map:

It's been extended a fair bit and the compounds have all been reworked to make them more realistic.

That's not a small amount of work but it's all done and the mission appears to be doable too. The original version was a real dog to play, 2+hours fighting in the dark against a numerically superior mechanised force that was well trained and equipped. It's a Light Infantry action and Special forces are just not that good against mechanised forces and, to be honest, i was finding the prospect of testing it a bit daunting so I decided to rip it all apart and start again with a whole new Red OB with new AI plans. Now it's a lot of fun to play.
So that's all the Special Forces phase I missions finished. So it's on to Phase II now which will take a bit longer as the maps have been changed so substantially that they'll need a lot of testing to get right. The Phase II missions are
Adan Airfield (Defend)
Buying the Farm
Breakout, and
Hasrabit.
After that, I'll get to the Republican Guards missions.

I think history has shown you are destined for disappointment.

Well, it's been a really busy week this last week and because it's the last week of Ramadan, it's quite noisy at night, fireworks, drums etc, (silent through the day though) and so sleep suffers a bit. And that means I can't really focus to do a good job of AI planning. So instead, I've been reworking the existing maps to improve each of them and make the compounds and villages much more realistic. They're all real world places in Syria although from wildly different parts but the difference it makes in night and day. While they look like NATO maps now, they still strongly resemble the original maps which is a considerable improvement. And it hasn't required an enormous amount of work either. The best change made so far is The Guards Counterattack which looks pretty realistic in the moonlight. Screenshots will follow later but boy, is that a brutal mission!
That map has been expanded quite a bit too as has the Barrier mission which has been reworked as a Prevent enemy forces from exiting the map edge mission. I'm happy with how the changes look too. They make the map look more interesting.
Another mission that has been substantially reworked is the Buying the Farm mission. I was looking for a large warehouse feature in Google Earth and had the idea to make it a railway yard instead and so the entire thing has been redrawn, trees removed and elevation changes substantially reduced and rail lines added with bridges over them. It looks really good and I'm looking forward to trying it out.
I've added a couple of new missions to the campaign to create a story line with consequences that matter including a new opener, which is tiny, but a lot of fun (for me anyway) and should allow the player to indulge himself letting rip with the heavy weapons in a civilian area, a welcome change from the usual Blue v red restriction. Called 'Overkill', winning this mission deters the civilian population from rising up and joining in the revolution at least for a few hours anyway. This allows me to create a variant of the opener which is much easier if you win Overkill. This required a new map but it's very small and I finished it this morning. Funnily enough, it started out as an experiment to see how the Special forces AA, Grenade and HMG vehicles work and I was so happy with the result that i decided to make this the new opener instead. So you have a single platoon and some new vehicles to play around with.
Immediately after that, I decided to do a whole new map for Heavy Metal because I just felt I couldn't use the old one. It was too small and too artificial for what I need but I found a location to the SE of Damascus which fits the bill perfectly for a large mech/tank clash and have got it 50% done. It's an arid map so it's pretty open and flat but there are lots of berms which break LoS up.
I have created the core unit file and done the admin for the campaign so that I know who goes where and when and have imported the new units into all the existing missions except heavy Metal so I've done a LOT this week, just no new AI plans which is the real work. With regards to the core units, I've decided to try out a couple of platoons of T-90s to accompany the Republican Guard. Now you have just two mech companies with attachments instead of three but I figure the T-90s will more than compensate for them. if they're too OP, I'll swap them with the T-72 TURMS again. There are three SF companies but one is designated for a special series of two missions on the same map (the second new mission) which it's unlikely to survive so there will be one company with attachments in each mission, usually Reserve Infantry and some tanks from the very bottom of the barrel, just like original Hasrabit.
So, Ramadan ends mid-week next week and I have a week's holiday so the sleep deficit should get paid back quite quickly. Then I'll be able to focus on doing AI plans and testing done on some of these missions. I guess I'll have a better idea of how long this is going to take after we get back to work after the May Day holiday. I'm hoping it won't be too long as I'd like to have this wrapped up by mid-June. That's probably a tad optimistic but we'll see.

That all sounds very familiar as I've been working on the opening two missions over the last couple of days. That reassures me that the decision to keep it as much like the original Hasrabit as possible is the best way to do things.
Anyway, I had originally planned to redo Ambush entirely and made up a whole new map which you can see at the top of this thread. I'm glad I decided to stick with the old map as I've been able to redesign it using the new ideas I had that inspired the  map above. Bear in mind that this is a NIGHT mission and so I've switched to daylight for screenshots.
Here's the old map:

Not a bad map at all but I wanted to make the opener a bit more realistic so here's the new Ambush map

And here it is from a different viewpoint

The two sides of the river are both real world locations but not close with each other. Gone are most of the trees and the elevations have been reduced substantially. It's mostly finished now. I expect I'll rework one or two areas as playtesting goes on. The large empty areas are necessary though so the one you see in the first picture won't change. They also look quite good at night anyway. As you can see, the large workshop area has been replaced with more realistic looking compounds and there is now a small hamlet on the other side of the river. The map has been extended somewhat but it's still quite small. Since it's a hazy night mission, it feels big enough though. And I've erased about half a million flavour objects from the original map. I'm definitely of the opinion that less is more in that respect.
And that brings me to the OBs. Both have been stripped down slightly with the Special Forces only having two platoons and some support and the REDFor has been similarly stripped down. Otherwise they'd just be far too OP for the player to fight against. The v4.0 engine allows me to do things with the AI on attack that I was never able to do before and it's a game changer. So OBs have been reduced by about 33% for both sides and the mission has been extended as well to allow for more time for the situation to develop.
I usually return to the opening mission of a campaign several times as I get deeper into it so there will be more than one AI attack plan by the time this is finished. Now it's time to get playtesting mission 2, Strong Stand.

As some of you will already be aware, I've decided to fast track revising my ancient 'Hasrabit' campaign and I've been busy with it since last weekend. I tried out the very first mission, Ambush, and didn't like it and my initial reaction was to abandon the original opening map and create an all-new Ambush map. I started work on it on Wednesday and I finished it earlier this afternoon. It's really big and very detailed but, well, I suspect you can already see why this map isn't going to work in this campaign...

It just doesn't look like any of the other maps in the campaign. It actually looks like the maps I made for the NATO campaigns. So I'm going to use this in Retribution which will come a bit later. I'm not teasing you by showing that in a thread purporting to be about Hasrabit, it's just that it's the end result of 3 days of work and I'm very happy with the end result. I'd LIKE to use it but the other maps would all look utterly incongruous beside it and I certainly don't want to redo them all.
Hasrabit is an old campaign and so I'm not going to change very much with it because otherwise, what you'd get wouldn't be 'Hasrabit' - it would be a whole new campaign using similar forces. So it's going to be an update instead. I'm going to improve the old maps for sure and make them look more Syrian, adding water and bridges for example and redesign the compounds and villages so that they look much more realistic. And bye bye to the vast glowing fields of wheat, the lush, green grass and the dense forests that made the maps look more like NW Europe. I'll expand a few of them, particularly the ones with armour clashes but otherwise, they will all stay pretty much the same. I'm also going to stick with the totally made-up background story as again, this is Hasrabit and there's no such place or governorate and so I'm just going to let it be. 
I've also decided to keep the original Ambush mission but take out the artillery strike on your starting positions and also remove all the trees and the mud which was everywhere and replace them with orchards. That huge yard will also get removed and redone with something that looks more Syrian. I suspect that the river will also have to go but we'll see how I feel once real play-testing starts because the bridges are a pretty bad bottleneck which the AI can't handle very well..
Which brings me to what will definitely change - the AI. I was rather surprised to find that the AI attacks in almost every mission and that's going to be fun to do. The old AI plans are atrocious though as are the set-up and positioning of the AI's units. The player set-ups look really terrible too with very narrow set-up are areas with units all crammed together so all that will change. I now have 16 groups to work with and can give them far more orders with some special ones which were not in the game the last time I played. And, of course, some triggers.
So, that's the plan as it stands. I've made up the new core units file and I've already started improving the existing maps. So, I'm going to import the new units and get down to some serious play in against the old AI plans and OBs before I rip them out so that I know the original intention behind the mission and try to stay faithful to it. I'll probably add shots of the 'finished' maps here as I go. I suspect that by the time I've finished this revision, I'll have relearned all the skills I formerly had and will be able to do a better job of the new campaign I plan to follow it with.

BTW, Hasrabit is still the #1 priority. I've been working on the map for the new opener all morning and it's shaping up as it wanted it. I read through the campaign and mission briefings last weekend to reacquaint myself with the backstory and it's a bit <cough> out there, as in just me making **** up. 'Hasrabit' is an actual place that I found on Google maps as the map for Strong Stand was (yes, that location looked like that back then with walls and orchards just stopping for no good reason.) The real 'Hasrabit' is a small town just to the south of Damascus International Airport but the name appears in Arabic and I'm too lazy to translate it. [lightbulb moment] Perhaps one of my Muslim students could translate it for me. But otherwise, all the maps are just my creation. You have to remember that there was no scenario overlay back when I made both this and Dinas so the maps are imaginary. Ambush!, the opener is probably the least useable so it's gone but I want to keep the rest as far as that proves possible to do. Otherwise this project will take me MONTHS!
So the campaign backstory will need to be reworked a bit. There's no Shuruk valley or river and since I'm more than capable of doing real-world locations in the editor, there's no good excuse for making it all up entirely. It's still going to be 100% fictional because the campaign is called Hasrabit although I'm picking a few choice real-world locations for the new maps. But Hasrabit will stay as the titular Governorate and it will feature a mix of locations from near Hama and Aleppo as well as the old imaginary maps. I'll try to keep it consistent, Special Forces in the greener orchards and the Republican Guards in the more open, arid areas.
And I'm going to add a new mission to it for an important campaign branch.

Okay, that's it uploaded. The picture failed to load but I don't care about that too much at this point.
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-shock-force-2-2/cm-shock-force-2-campaigns/cmsf2-usmc-gung-ho/
This is a six mission campaign featuring Bravo Company of 1st Battalion 8th Marines. I should mention that it's a rework of my much earlier CMSF1 campaign of the same name but it's so reworked that it's really an all-new campaign that takes advantage of all the CMSF2 features. You'll need the NATO module to play this as the Syrian Airborne features in one of the missions. Sorry about that but I guess most folks reading here already have the full Monty.
It's designed primarily to have fun with one of the most unique factions in the game, the USMC, a light infantry formation that punches far above its weight even without the air support that you'll have in these missions. It should also be quite challenging but not too challenging. Mission 3 - CAAT among the Pigeons is intended to be very easy, to allow you to let rip with a rather unique formation within the MEU. 
I look forward to hearing how you get on. Perhaps you can tell me how many kills HITMAN got in your campaign? You're not beta testing this - I've already played this myself but that's a potential issue, it's been tested by one player with a particular play style and skill set. I try to break these missions but I'm not as creative about that as some of you will be  If you find any typos, let me know. I've been scanning the texts these last couple of days and can't see any but that's likely fatigue. Unless something egregious is found, you should be safe to complete a campaign before a revision comes up. I'm hoping that won't necessary but I've done this before and it can always be improved.
With the exception of CAAT among the Pigeons, each mission has several AI plans to give the campaign replayablity. So, if there's enough interest in it, I will return to this to make a new version featuring the German Gebirgsjagers which look like they'd be a blast to play with as well and not need much work to be done beyond making a core unit file and importing the units into each mission. And finally, I want to make a Brit forces Light Infantry version but that will need more work to do.

Would it be possible to limit the name calling, "rural dimwits" "right wing looney's" and focus on the war in Ukraine? 
Thank you.

AI testing is now over and I'm in the process of making up the alternate versions for the campaign as well as the amended briefings and artwork needed for them. Once that's done, I'll get the campaign briefings and artwork done, compile it and test it over the weekend. Of course, I'll go through each mission carefully to make sure that everything is set up properly but when you're doing this all by yourself, there's always something that gets through the net though so I'm curious to see what it will be this time.  (For those who remember, there was a real stinker of a placement error in the original version of The Road to Dinas)
Even though it's likely all that will be done later today, there's definitely not going to be an April 1st upload because what could possibly go wrong with that? Hopefully, this should be wrapped up and uploaded early next week. I'm pretty burned out with this particular project now and want to get started on a new one instead. But it will be a fresh experience for you guys even if you've played the original version. 

I’d argue America is still in an ‘imperial phase’.  I’m not sure when you’d consider it to have ended.  
It’s nakedly acknowledged that the US still acts as a hegemon with NATO providing the imprimatur of ‘international assent’ for domestic consumption.  
It’s why a ‘defensive alliance’ is leveraged to compel an ethnic partition (Kosovo) or regime change (Libya).  
I’m using oligarch in the dictionary definition sense:
a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence
Historically, I’m not sure there has been something like our modern billionaire class that didn’t operate directly from the halls of power already.  It takes vast wealth to create a disparity of this scale.  
Did the Patricians of Rome enjoy the proportionate share of wealth that the elite today control?  My gut leans toward ‘no’, but I don’t pretend to know.  
 
Agree we’re more like Chimps than Bonobos when it comes to conflict.  Shame really, Bonobos seem to have it figured out…

A quick word about the missions themselves. I play the game in Real time and I don't PAUSE the action very often so I tend to focus in one one area of the map and leave the other areas to manage themselves without my supervision. This means that the missions will be reasonably small, certainly a lot smaller than the battles you're probably more familiar with. I don't manage battalions in Real Time  with any efficiency but I can manage a reinforced company without any trouble. So all the missions will feature a maximum of one USMC company with some attachments. This is my sweet spot. as it happens, a USMC platoon manages the same as most companies. the manpower and firepower they have is awesome but it's easier to manage a platoon than a company, even when the squads are broken into three teams.
I also like to have a slow-ish start with a small force on the map at the start with the rest of the force arriving in stages. I often find it much easier to manage quite a large OB in this manner as I get it set up and into the action before the next packet arrives. However, both Watching the Detectives and Al Qusayr have the entire OB on the map at the start so they both have a faster pace. On the other hand, CAAT among the Pigeons is very small with only about twenty units to manage. And most of them arrive 10 minutes after the mission starts. You start with just three units but there's plenty to do.
I also like to play with all the bells and whistles so you'll have access to a lot of artillery and air support in these missions. The USMC is a light infantry unit but with the artillery and air support is more than capable of going up against the best the Syrians have.