Paper Tiger

Hi guys. I have been kept very busy this last year or so with real life work commitments and I see that some folks have reported that The Scottish Corridor campaign has been broken by an earlier update. I have had a look at the campaign with the latest build and it all seems to be working fine. I got a bit of a scare when I went into the Tiger mission and found that I couldn't see any British AT guns. But the AT teams start limbered up and you have to unlimber them and deploy them yourself. I also read that there are missing Churchils from a mission. The mission I read he report about was 'No Hiding Place'. There are nine tanks available to you in that mission and there are nine tanks when you play it. If there are any other issues or anything you think I should look at, please report it here and I'll do my best to fix it up in time for the next patch.

I know I've been away for a long, long time but I thought that USMC Gung Ho was the best thing I ever made. Nice to see that folks are stil playing these old works.

There are four set-ups in this mission and two in the other Guards missions. Most of my campaign missions, from Montebourg to Nijmegen, have at least two AI plans, some a lot more. I design with replayability in mind.

None taken. IMO, scenarios are like short stories whereas campaigns are like novels. I tend to 'write' trilogies. I wouldn't be surprised to read that every third mission or so is extremely difficult. That's because these missions are tests. If the player 'passes', he gets to step up a difficulty level, to Veteran for example, or back to Regular if he's currently playing Green. The big flaw in this system is that people like to win every mission and will replay until they get a win instead of accepting the loss and getting to play easier missions. I try to craft my missions so that they are challenging AND fun to play. If they're not fun, what's the point? Of course, my idea of what is 'fun' is likely to differ from yours. However, I'd argue that 'The Scottish Corridor' is perhaps the least fun to play of my campaigns because the subject material, Operation Epsom, was so grim and such a hard slog. You might indeed find the German campaign more 'fun' to play for the time being. And if you kind of like what I've tried to do with this campaign you might enjoy 'The Road to Montebourg' which was designed primarily for fun. But whatever, I hope you have fun playing what you're playing.

Heh heh. This one continues to upset people. It got a lot of hate on release. If you hate it now, wait 'til you play 'Crescendo of Doom'. The Cameronians are generally regular experience with Normal motivation. The ASH are generally Green experience with Normal to High motivation. Both have good NCOs and leadership. There are actually a few, very good units scattered about in both infantry formations. Churchills are definitely a bit crap when compared to Shermans and are certainly NO MATCH for Panthers. However, the OBs and match-ups in most of these campaign missions are about as historical as I could make them. The Brits didn't do very well 'Going to Church' either. The 7th and 9th RTRs were both equipped with Churchills and they did do battle with some Panthers along the way. Yes, it's a long campaign. That's just the way I make them. It could easily have been released as two separate campaigns, one for the Cameronians, 'The Road to Grainville' and one for the ASH, 'The Road to Gavrus', but two core groups is pretty much how I've been designing campaigns from the get-go. (Hasrabit had the Republican Guards and the Special Forces)

I'll have a wee look at that one and see if there's a problem. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

The AI can use Fast (Dash), Quick (Quick), Advance (mainly Assault movement orders for infantry squads and Quick for support teams), Assault and Max Assault (which might mean Slow) movement commands. It never uses Hunt and will only use Move when the units are approaching exhaustion. Under which circumstances depends on which order the scenario/QB map designer issues to that particular order. Important to remember that the AI cannot reverse its vehicles except when the Tac AI determines that they are threatened and tells them to back up. If you want them to back up as part of an order, they will turn their backsides to the enemy to do so. As above for Run. The Fire order can make the AI group Hide when it reaches its current order. As for covered arcs, we can issue these by giving them an Ambush order with a range. However, these are NOT the same as the covered arcs you are likely to use. They are 360 degree covered arcs so if you want to play by the same rules as the AI, you have to do this too. One nice thing about giving an AI group an Ambush order is that they will maintain their facing at the end of the movement order rather than swivelling to face their next order. Through repeated play, intensive testing, in particular, observing AI units following their orders in Scenario Author mode and making adjustments where necessary. It's a lot of work but, for me, it's fun work. I spend at least as much time testing AI plans as I do creating my maps.

A quick reply, you might want to have a few guys performing a Target Light fire mission on the building you're attempting to enter. As long as you don't throw any HE at the building, your boys won't get hurt by the small arms fire. Also, place a movement waypoint outside the door so that your assaulting squad can use Target on the building as well. Go in hard and heavy and don't mind the ammo expenditure. There's plenty more in your vehicles. Or you can use SMOKE. It's amazing how frequently folks forget to use this valuable asset. I use it all the time.

I should have said the Commonwealth instead of Britain, my bad! The New Zealanders threw their hat in the ring too.

I don't think that WW1 would offer much for the CMx2 engine, that's for sure. I might be wrong but I suspect that the BFC guys are really armour fans and that might apply to their customer base as well. Me, I'm more of an Infantry guy I like tanks but I don't want them to be the centrepiece of my missions. I think WW1 Grand Strategy, done properly, would make for a very good wargame. I am looking forward to AGEOD's 'To End All Wars' too. But it might be a few months after the release before it becomes really first-class. If they can make sure that fronts remain reasonably static and hard to crack without one side making a major effort, it'll be a classic. To be sure, the air and naval aspects of the war have been more popular with the gaming community at large.

For me, WW1 is the ultimate war for a wargame as it featured static lines, massive, lengthy offensives that resulted in gains of a few kilometers at most. I have no idea why but that's a big, big draw for me. It probably doesn't help that it's not a war that the US got involved in until near the end either . Until 1917, it's just Germany, Austria-Hungary, The Ottomans, France, Britain, Italy and Russia plus a few Balkan minors thrown in for good measure.

That was a one off and I don't expect that ever to happen again. We can speculate that BFC were forced to released the game before they thought it was ready due to contractual relations with another game company. Steve posted once that v1.05 was the version he'd have liked to release the game in. That was about 3-4 months after the release. Since then, BFC have been releasing games when they are ready and every other CMx2 title has been pretty solid at launch.

Two things I really liked about Shock Force: One was that it was a fictional setting which meant that it allowed designers to craft plausible missions without being constrained by history. Designing for WW2 NWE has required a considerable amount of research before getting to work with the editor. Not to mention that Google Earth shows us the state of the world in the last few years and so making maps with GE is much easier. This is the same for Black Sea. The second was that it was not just about killing the other side and capturing/holding VP locations without regard for your own casualties. You could really make life difficult for the US/NATO player by imposing Preserve Terrain victory conditions on him as well as punishing him hard for taking casualties during a mission. With good VP objectives in place, suddenly the Syrian, and especially the UNCONs, became a serious force to be reckoned with. I guess Black Sea will eventually become my favourite title.

It's a Monday so I'd have to say CMSF is my favourite CM game. However, on another day, I might reply that CMBN is my favourite. They're both so good that it's hard to say which one is my favourite overall. It would be easier to say that I have little attachment to either CMFI or to CMA as I have never felt inspired enought to make a mission for either of them. Don't ask why. I really couldn't say. Italy just isn't interesting for me. I've only just started to look at CMRT and I am beginning to think that ahistorical. fictional missions are the way for me to go with this title. At this stage of the war, 44-45, the battles are pretty gargantuan and I'm a RT player only. Anything more than a couple of companies is too much for me to handle without pausing and I hate pausing.

I would leave it in when the human player is the defender. Nothing wrong with getting plastered by an AI attacker's opening bombardment. That's as good a bombardment as the AI is going to make and it should hurt. I don't use the stock QB maps. All mine are customised to my own playstyle and so are not suitable for BF QB maps. I never have the AI waste its artillery with bombardments on the attacker's set-up zones. If the AI is doing an assault or an attack, yes, if doing a Probe, Meeting or defending, no opening bombardment.