SeinfeldRules

Scenarios don't have to be time consuming to release - the map is probably what takes the longest. But once you have a map, the scenario can be finished in a fairly short amount of time. I think people focus on flavor objects, AI plans and perfect play balance instead of just releasing the scenario. I can map a map, select forces and write the briefing in a weekend's worth of work. 3/4 of that time will be working on the map. It won't be perfect, it won't have weeks of playtesting, and it will probably be easy to win, but most people will enjoy playing it, and that's all that matters.

No, at typical ranges you can expect rounds to land in an area 100m long and 50m wide due to uncorrectable conditions alone. Artillery is an area effect weapon and this dispersion is actually welcomed. You will never be able to account for all the sudden gusts of wind, small pockets of differing temperature or air density, and gun tube effects. Even so, one of the biggest errors now a days in a fire mission is target location error. Most UAVs (ie Ravens) are not a stable enough platform that can pull grids with accuracy measured in the single digits. That requires millions of dollars in equipment and is usually reserved for actual aircraft. FOs on the ground have the capability to pull accurate grids but this is often demonstrated on an impact range from prepared, raised OPs with no obstructions. But when you're digging your head in the dirt and have grass and trees in the way, and the enemy is just poking his ahead above the crest of a dip and you can't lase the ground infront of him because of bushes 10m in front of you, and you can't lase the ground behind him because the backdrop is 1000m further away, it's difficult. Most of the time an FO is just looking for a 75% solution, and that can be solved with a GPS, map and binos. When you have a UAV, it's the same thing, the grid you get from the sensors won't be perfect, but it doesn't have to be. It'll get the rounds close enough, and 155mm rounds make a big boom.

Seems to be a bug, but I found a strange fix: select the command vehicle (the actual vehicle) for the BN HQ, and change the type. Doesn't matter what you change it to, you can even change it back, but once you do that I can edit the other BMPs in the companies and platoons.

Thanks guys. Let me know what feedback you have - would love to make these even better.

And another one! Mine Mill Mountain v1.0 bit.ly/1Q7trL8 You are a Soviet Cavalry Squadron Commander in Romania. Our forces have pushed rapidly through the country, bypassing large groups of enemy troops. A group of German stragglers have managed to hole themselves up in a mining town located on the side of a mountain. You've been tasked with digging them out. Please let me know how this plays. Don't know if I have the force balance correct.

Thank you for all the great comments guys - they really keep me going on these things. As proof, here's another scenario! Hitting the Flank v1.0 http://bit.ly/1N3vhaF Our forces are counterattacking. Having detrained merely days ago, your Regiment has been pushing around the flank of the Soviets, looking for an opportunity to halt the Russian juggernaut. The panzergrenadier company you command has been tasked with securing the flank of our regiment's counterattack by taking a town overlooking an important road highway. Located to the NW on the reverse slope of a ridge line, your force is poised to take the town and the woods overlooking the road. This scenario needs testing! I will be uploading it to the Proving Grounds... but please give me feedback on the length of time required and the difficulty. It got very basic testing. Also, for those who like my scenarios... keep an eye out from some CMBS ones! Coming soon...

If you're still looking for more scenario ideas (or anyone else is), my recommendation is to find some memoirs or operational documents on units during WW2. They tend to talk about the stuff that goes on behind the big offensives - what military units have to do day to day that might only get a single sentence in a larger narrative. "3rd Armored Division encountered little resistance on the road to XYZ" can easily translate into a platoon of Shermans running into an anti-tank gun and losing a tank. And the stories are still relevant today, a high intensity conflict will have the same vignettes, only this time it's a pair of ATGMs against Abrams. http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/ is good for the US perspective and http://www.allworldwars.com/Small-Unit-Actions-During-German-Campaign-in-Russia.html has the German side. For your question, you could use a touch objective as well, so that the US player get's the points for reaching the edge of the map as well. Then the degree of victory for the US goes up as more units are removed from the battlefield and can't be destroyed by the Russians. You can also use the bonus points to help even out the scoring.

Thanks sttp and Hister, the comments mean a lot. Glad you enjoy them. Keeps me wanting to put more scenarios out!

Combatintman asked me to provide some input on the "other side" of this scenario as part of his final analysis. I'd like to give some of my overall design philosophy for all of my scenarios and some specifics for this scenario, hopefully it's useful for future scenario designers: I almost always start my scenarios with a vignette I've read from a tactical or personal account. From there comes an idea. The details generally don't matter too much to me; whether it was Regiment A attacking Town X isn't important, what matters is the tactical task a unit had to perform. I like to focus on company and below stuff - everyone already makes scenarios about the famous clashes, I want to make scenarios about the day to day stuff everyone forgets about. In this case, it's the taking of a step off position for a later attack. An action that would have barely warranted half a sentence in a larger narrative, is the perfect size for a Combat Mission scenario. Once I have my idea, I find a location in reality that would suit my situation - once again the details aren't super important. I rarely use overlays anymore, I just put Google Earth on my second monitor and let the in-game map become it's own place. Once I have my map built, I integrate my situation into it. I almost always start with the enemy side (since I only do Human vs AI). In this scenario, as it is a German attack, I started with the Soviet defense. I look at the map, figure out the required amount of forces to achieve the enemy "mission" that fits the situation, and start building the enemies plan. I never build my maps around the unit or task - this almost always ends up feeling canned and puzzle-like. In real combat, you don't have the power to level hills and move forests (unless you have good engineer support). You take the forces you have and use the hills and forests to your best advantage to build your plan. The small copses of trees in the wheat field isn't there because it would make for a good MG position, it's there because I thought it looked good when I was making the map. Now I (and the player) have to build our plans around it. About the only concession I make in this regard is adding terrain later to block LOS to at least part of the player's setup area. No one likes getting shot on turn 1. For the Soviet side here, I decided a platoon with attached HMGs would be the best force to serve as the blocking/delaying position that fits the scenario. I built the defense to accomplish the mission I gave it, as if the scenario was designed to be played by the Soviet side. I utilized the terrain as best I could to create 3 mutually supporting positions with interlocking fields of fire. If one position was taken, the other two would be able to lay fire down on the one just overrun. I envisioned that most players would choose to attack the position "head on" in some fashion, either taking the town first then the position on the Soviet right, or the outpost position on the Soviet left, attacking over the open ground. Any Germans attacking would have a hard time indeed, and need to coordinate their fire support well to accomplish it. However, the one course of action I did not take into account for my defense was what Combatintman did right here in this very thread! Only one of the Soviet HMGs was looking into the open wheat field that he advanced so boldly through. Surely no player would push his infantry through such a large open field to be slaughtered! What spelt the Soviet doom was that I did not do a proper line of sight analysis - if I had, I would have realized that the critical HMG defending the entire left flank could not see the whole wheat field, and that so called open field had undulations in the terrain (again, something I built into the map BEFORE I started building the defense) that would have allowed a whole company to advance sight unseen deep into the Soviet rear. As such, I did not plan for the eventuality that the Germans would bypass my carefully developed, mutually supporting positions with barely a shot fired. Truly an example of the enemy "having a vote", and my future scenarios won't be so assuming. Next time I will be more complete in my planning. Blame Combatintman for the lesson learned and any increased difficulty. A quick note on doctrine, because I saw it brought up - I am not a student of any WW2 military doctrine, so I built my defense based on what made sense to me and what I have seen work, not anything historical. I do use the built in TOEs to help pick my forces though. To touch on the German side of this scenario, for my missions I try to pick a force that when handled properly, will defeat the enemy even if the player suffers some setbacks. In other words, you don't have to be perfect. I feel that most people play scenarios to win, and if they feel that did everything almost right but still lost, then I have failed to provide satisfying entertainment (some would disagree on this, but it's just how I feel). Usually the degree of victory and casualties taken is the distinguisher between an ok plan and a great plan for my scenarios. A 2 to 1 advantage with supporting arms will generally provide a respectable challenge against the AI while still being able to be won by most. The ratio here is more 3 to 1, as open fields and long sight lines requires more firepower and bodies to absorb casualties. I try to not to force a plan on the player, instead giving them a properly balanced force to execute a variety of actions. I also believe in simple briefings that provides truthful information the player can use to plan, while not giving away the whole show. Everything I wrote was truthful, but it's up to the player to fill in the gaps. Combatintman took the info given, executed a solid plan here and was able to wipe the Soviets off the board with very minimal casualties. So the 2 cents that was asked for is more like 20 cents, but I thought it would be beneficial to explain my overall theory on scenario design and not just this one specifically. I like to create simple, straightforward scenarios with a realistic enemy on beautiful maps, and hopefully I've succeed with this one in that regard. Combatintman definitely executed a great plan that exploited the weak point in my plan. Great thread and thanks for picking my scenario to do it with!

What would a typical CM scenario look like for such a company attack, in terms of map size and assigned frontage? You say they would attack on a 400-500m frontage... would they have sister battalions close up right on their flanks, or would there be 200-300m of empty space on both sides of an attacking company? Did company commanders have much leeway on their avenues of approach or were the frontages so specifically assigned that their approaches were all but predesignated? Did the followup companies have room to maneuver or would they just push straight through?

Wow, this is great, seeing one of my scenarios used in such a fashion - makes all the work worth it! Hopefully the scenario execution won't let you down. For everyone reading, this stuff really does happen, in this level of detail too, especially at the battalion level. And as an artilleryman and fire supporter, I get to see this level of planning from the maneuver guys every time I go to the field - and every time I'm thankful my job is the easy part of all this - blowing stuff up!

Thank you for the high praise, my maps are a personal point of pride and I do my best to make them feel absolutely real... and coming from you, it definitely means a lot! I still hope to publish more scenarios eventually... I have several sitting in my folder waiting for either some final touches or an AI plan... but it's summer in Alaska and that means I've spent all my available time on the river with my fly rod. But winter is fast approaching and with the bitter cold brings more time to sit at my computer and crank out scenarios!

The LRAS is a very fragile box full of glass and electronics, for day to day operations (ie not combat or field training) the LRAS is better off kept inside the vehicle. The FSV right now has a mounting bracket that protects the LRAS during movement of the vehicle, I believe the RVs just have regular troop seats.

Maybe getting a little off topic, but what would the German strong points look like and what kind of terrain would they exploit, in areas outside of what you already mentioned? Would they be at the company level, with the company's machine guns upfront and the platoons several hundred meters back? Would a Russian attack try to take out one MG Strong point or attack on a general front to find the weakness?

In regards to your first post (Russian mech and rifle arms in the attack), what is the German response to these tactics? It seems they are continually presented with a damned if you, damned if you don't situation. Obviously this is the desired end result of any military tactic, but were Germans were able to successfully respond and hold the line, even if it was locally or for a limited period of time? If so, was this a result of a specific German response or more just the break down in synchronization between the Russian supporting arms?

Thanks for all the positive comments, guys, especially about the quality of the maps. I really put a lot of my effort in the maps and they are my babies, the scenarios are just a happy byproduct! Please continue with the feedback, it's the only way I can make my scenarios better!

Happy you liked it Miggo! Let me know what you think of Interlock OP as well. Heinrich, great photo! You don't find the new flamethrower stuff used very often in scenarios, so I tried to include it here so we get a chance to play with all the fun goodies in the game. You definitely made good use of it!

Thanks for the comments guys! Hopefully you'll find some time to try these scenarios as well.

Hi All, I have a new scenario (Reverse Slope) for CMFI to share, and I thought I'd do what I did for CMRT and create a thread where I have all my scenarios in one easy place. Hopefully this will expose them to more people too, as I'm still looking for feedback on all of them! Please let me know what you think and what needs to change! *NEW* Reverse Slope v1.0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/fvg44cw2tjlt1b0/AD%20Reverse%20Slope.zip?dl=0 Your Rifle Company is poised to breakout of Salerno and push towards Benevento. The whirlwind of German counterattacks has finally abated, and battalion has passed down the order to push forward. Our first objective is a village strongpoint on the reverse slope of the ridgeline to your front. Our patrols know that at least a German company has spent the past several days digging in and are prepared to defend it. Your riflemen and attached tanks are assembled in a wood several hundred meters short of the village, and must push over the ridgeline and into their reverse slope defense... Allied vs AI only. Flak Hunt v1.0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/4fb0qmzz6oc4n60/AD%20Flak%20Hunt.zip?dl=0 You are in command of a British parachute company that has been dropped into Sicily as part of Operation Fustian. Your battalion has been dropped far south of its intended dropzone. You've managed to gather the majority of your company, but are unsure of where the remainder of your battalion is located. During the drop, you noticed a German flak battery among some fields and orchards. Absent of any orders, you have taken the initiative to take out the battery with your troops. Allied vs AI only. Pontine Patrol v1.0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/08afuepgzmcrwjq/AD%20Pontine%20Patrol.zip?dl=0 You are a company commander in the 1st Special Service Force (1st SSF). The 1st SSF is a mixed American-Canadian force, highly trained and well led. Your unit currently sits on the western side of the Mussolini Canal, forming the right flank of the Anzio beach head. East of the canal is the Pontine Marshes, drained by Mussolini in the 30s for farming, and flooded by the Germans following our landings. The government farms built by the fascist Italian government have turned back into swamp. Since our arrival here we have been aggressively patrolling into the Pontine Marshes, and in some places have forced the Germans to pull back their lines almost a kilometer. Yesterday evening a strong German force moved back up towards the canal, and occupied several farms just east of us. We believe they intend to hold the farms and overlook the canal in order to stop our aggressive patrolling. Your company has been tasked to cross the canal and show the enemy they can not take up positions so close to our lines. Allied vs AI only. Recon Gone Wrong v1.0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/thkc0f004bdtkt6/AD%20Recon%20Gone%20Wrong.zip?dl=0 You are an Italian infantry company commander in Sicily, July 1943. Your company is currently guarding one of the many secondary roads to Palermo, in a defensive position not too far from a bridge running over a riverbed. Shortly before dusk your forward positions overlooking the bridge spotted American soldiers and personnel carriers rushing towards the bridge. Half of the enemy force has already crossed the bridge and have setup on our side. You take the initiative and attack... Axis vs AI only. Small Patrol Action v1.0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/z70081b9igh4wrk/AD%20Small%20Patrol%20Action.zip?dl=0 FEATURED ON YOUTUBE BY PEWPEWCHEWCHEW! You are Charlie Company's commander, a part of the 2d Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 3ID. You and 2 of your infantry platoons were on a foot patrol along a local road when you recieved machine gun fire. You ordered your troop to take cover along both sides of the road and informed your battalion commander of the situation via radio. He has ordered you to take your platoons forward to the enemy and to eliminate any resistance you may find. Allied vs AI only. Snow Day v1.0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/xe8ts5i2jt6xwpb/AD%20Snow%20Day.zip?dl=0 It is winter in Italy and our advance up the eastern coast has been slow going. Our major combat operations have ceased for the moment, but that doesn't mean you or your soldiers will get any rest. Your infantry company has been tasked with seizing a small town sitting to the west of our position in order to better secure our front lines. Allied vs AI only. Wires and Rifles v1.0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/czzs22okjl9yb98/AD%20Wires%20%26%20Rifles.zip?dl=0 You are a German recon commander in Sicily, July 1943. Your recon company has been tasked with delaying the American advance, harassing their flanks and conducting raids on exposed positions. It seems that your unit has found a seam between the American forces, as your column has pushed far forward without encountering any organized resistance. The lead elements of your column have just ran into an American support unit laying communication wire along a road. Your lead units were spotted and fired upon, but were able to withdraw without any casualties. You quickly decide to take your company forward and attack. Axis vs AI only.

Combatintman, You're right, the downside of these small scenarios is that they are "canned" and can only offer so many surprises. The benefit of course, is that they take no time at all to make! The more fun scenarios I can make the better. Plus I get a lot of enjoyment out of making the maps, the scenario portion is just so I can get the maps out there! Right now I'm trying to do one scenario a week. fry, Don't hesitate to post your scenario, so we can give you feedback! And yes, sometimes people try to do too much with a scenario and forget that the original CMx1 had NO AI plans, and when you were the attacker vs the AI, the AI mostly just sat there! There's a reason all of my scenarios so far have you as the attacker...

Thank you for the feedback combatintman and grungar! I'm happy everyone has liked them so far. I'll definitely look into some of the ASL stuff, do they have scenario "stories" like CM, or is it more of a freeform scenario, kind of like a Quick Battle? fry30, I've never thought about it that way, but it's very true! I feel there are lots of these little "episodes" in war, you just have to read between the lines when books and such talk about macro level events. Not everything has to be a titanic clash, even the "quiet" periods were full of patrolling and small unit actions. And another one: Into Lithuania v1.0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/s8uyz9zc0fr9kjy/AD%20Into%20Lithuania.zip?dl=0 Our tanks drive on into Lithuania. Following the capture of Minsk, our forces are now pushing up the road to Vilnius. Your company of T-34s is currently leading that push, and just as you cross the border of Belarus and Lithuania, your lead vehicle brews up in a mighty explosion. It is clear the Germans have something waiting for you in the village ahead... Allied vs AI only.

Thank you for the feedback and the screenie! I'm happy you enjoyed it so much. Hope you try some of the other scenarios as well!

Guys, would love some feedback on these scenarios... I really threw them out there with the minimum amount of playtesting (I figure 5 ok scenarios now is better then just one that is super polished 3 months from now...), so I know these can be way better!

Another scenario... Assault Position v1.0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/d85cs6w3xeeg0oi/AD%20Assault%20Position.zip?dl=0 Our forces are counterattacking. Having detrained merely days ago, your Regiment has been pushing around the flank of the Soviets, looking for an opportunity to halt the Russian juggernaut. Your panzergrenadier company has been tasked with securing the flank of our regiment's counterattack by taking a town overlooking an important road highway. Located on the reverse slope of a ridgeline, you determine that a wooded grove just NW of the town (and SE of your assembly area) would be the perfect place to form up your company before it's final attack on the main Soviet defenses. The morning of your attack, you begin to move your company to take your assault position. Axis vs AI only.

I have never played CMx2 head to head, so I don't know how to design towards that type of gameplay. The scenarios may work, they may not, I just don't know! Unfortunately I don't really have the time to dedicate to playtesting with someone else (my amount of free time comes and goes from week to week), but if anyone else wants to try, I am more then open to critiques geared towards H2H play!