[Dinas Rework in progress]

At the moment, if you win every mission in the dynamic version, you get the optimal experience - you're achieving all your objectives in good time and so the regime is off-foot and reacting to your moves. There might be one or two missions where the optimal version will have something special but I haven't decided that yet as I want to get all the vanilla missions done and then get the variants made. Since the variants will usually be harder than the optimal version, you will want to try and keep on the winning track but any such 'punishment' will be a rare event.

My plan is to divide the campaign into four phases of 3-4 missions and each phase culminates in a finale which you MUST win to stay in the campaign.

 

Phase 1 has 3 missions - Shock and Awe

Phase 2 has 4 mission - Red Awakening

Phase 3 has 4 missions - The Crossings

Phase 4 has 3 missions - Agony of Doom

 

The phase names are provisional. You can see some ASL influence there as well.

For phase 1 - Shock and Awe, you will have to win Sabatani or the campaign ends. Losing will usually mean less time to accomplish a later mission and they will have an additional influence of the phase finale. So losing a phase 1 mission reduces the mission length by 10 minutes per loss - lose both missions and the finale is 20 minutes shorter. There are other effects on the finale as well. The experience of Sagger Point will differ if you lose a phase 2 mission so you might have air support or the enemy might have air strikes depending on how you did in the earlier missions.

Winning the phase finale means all is reset so if you were behind schedule in phase 1, a win in Sabatani resets the clock and you're back on track.

In phase 4, losing any mission will end the campaign before the finale.

That's the plan at the moment but it will be a while before all the missions are completed and tested before I get around to the variants. but this simpler structure means that I can make each mission have more impact on following missions without turning the campaign script into a nightmare of variants.

[Dinas Rework in progress]

A quick observation of how projects evolve as I develop them. I am working on missions 2 and 3 this week, Sabatani and Suib and they're both infantry-centric assaults on an urban area defended by infantry attacking across a river. The two missions were so similar that I went to bed last night thinking that I'd just ditch Sabatani. But when I woke up this morning, I decided to remove the river from the Sabatani map. Once I did that, I liked it a lot better but I took a look at the old ASL-style compound to the north of the urban area and decided that had to be redone as well. I need things to look more realistic when I play now.

Here's the OLD Sabatani map with the ASL compounds to the north of the road as well as the dry river bed and bridge.

So I went to Google Earth and scanned around and found a small but rather interesting area in the vicinity of the Golan and so I deleted the original buildings, walls trees etc to the north of the main road and replaced them with an all-new farm complex and a tiny lake which I really like the look of. So Sabatani has been saved from the chopping block by a morning's map work. This afternoon, after work, I fired up the mission and gave it a spin and it looks like it will be sufficiently different from Suib to justify keeping it in. And there's no river crossing battle here either.

Here's the reworked map with the new farm complex and the small lake. (This is a real place). I've also broken up the HUGE grain fields and replaced them with some other crops. Instead of the empty ground, there are some sheep/goat pastures as well to the front of the small town which fill the map out quite nicely.

[Dinas Rework in progress]

12 hours ago, Danny03 said:

Almost forgot to ask you: Are you reworking the linear version of the campaign? If I remember correctly it had a dynamic version too, which I never played.

The dynamic version. I forgot all about the linear version, you win? - you go to the next mission or you lose? - game over. Is that right? Very simple campaign structure. There will only be one version as the original campaign was made back in the good old days of dial-up Internet connections (50-60kb/s - the fun!) and so a 14M download was better than a 64M download. I think most of us have progressed beyond that by now. 

[Dinas Rework in progress]

There are no NIGHT missions but a couple start shortly before sunrise and maybe one on a clear night with a full moon which looks beautiful  but I haven't decided yet. There are BMP-1s and they seem to work fine in the low light. Otherwise, it's daylight (or moonlight) all the way.

[Dinas Rework in progress]

That first picture is from 'Suib', mission 4 of the campaign, which I'm currently doing the AI work for. (I'm working on missions 3 and 4 just now with 1 and 2 more or less finished) As you can see, it's quite built up and so you'd expect at least a battalion to take that objective in under 2 hours. However, it's not quite the herculean task that you'd think and you can do it methodically.

 

The second picture is the opening mission, Petani, which some will have seen before in Gung Ho!. It's been expanded and improved even further with a small village complex further up the hill but it still works with a single company and tanks in support. There is a small farmhouse complex atop the hill overlooking the villages below and so your first objective is to capture that in preparation for the main assault on the objective. While waiting, your forces should attempt to interdict any attempts to reinforce the village down that road. Therefore, missions like this will be broken down into 2-3 smaller 'chapters' rather than dividing the map up. Of course, you will be free to do what you want with what you've got and not follow the 'story'.

[Dinas Rework in progress]

I'll post my progress on this campaign in this thread from now on. For those who don't know anything about this campaign, it was my second Red v Red campaign made for CMSF way, way back in the days of the release of the USMC module and its setting is a Syrian civil war scenario where some Syrian generals attempt a coup. The premise is that the coup is launched with thunderclap surprise and so rebel forces are put into action as soon as they mobilise. While a good number of divisions will 'wait and see', the regime has a number of divisions that are 100% loyal so the rebels are on the clock as the more time they take to accomplish missions, the more time the regime has to assemble its own forces to oppose them.

This means that time limits will be reasonably strict to reflect that pressure and so casualties are to be expected to accomplish your goals. However, the campaign gives you quite a large core force of which one company and support (usually tanks) is drawn to perform the mission.

One point is that some of these maps are very large and so it would seem like it's a bit of a stretch just to have a single company when a battalion would be better. For example,

A single company? To take THAT?! Are you HIGH?" And this...

In both these situations, the friendly forces arrive in small packages and so the action unfolds over time. My plan is not to change the nature of the campaign too much and keep the player's forces small and have lots of artillery support as well as as many 'cool' toys as I can find in the Syrian OB to play around with.

[CMBN scenarios collection]

Yes, I'm sure there are but I'm going to let some other designers explore these possibilities. Sadly, I used to have a collection of highly detailed QB maps that I'd created from where I lived in Suffolk which covered the A1120 from Framlingham to Yoxford with all the villages between which could have made for a good fantasy German campaign - a drive down the road to capture the village (sans castle) and grab a curry from the excellent Indian restaurant in the village square. But like the Canadian Carpiquet campaign, I lost all this work when my old hard drive burned out. (I still have dreams where I find the Carpiquet files on some CD and then wake up to feel the same sense of disappointment all over again.)

With regards to other titles, I only have CM:BN, CM:SF2, CM:BS and CM:CW so these are the titles I have to work with. Black Sea could be interesting BUT for the ongoing war and Cold War looks like it is made for absolute monster OBs. A single company with support is what I enjoy - but who knows? It looks like you can make some pretty good maps with CW so I might stick my toe in there at some point. It's all hypothetical so why not?

[Gung Ho, Hasrabit and other stuff]

Let's have a little chat about where everything is at the moment with me and my work. As you've noticed, Hasrabit has not been completed yet and no progress has been made. I've been working on Road to Dinas instead and am beginning to encounter some of the issues that delayed Hasrabit. Namely that these two campaigns are OLD, and I mean really old. They were made when I was still in love with the European theatre in WW2 and many of my map designs were influenced very strongly by ASL scenarios. The inexperience really shines through with these two. Don't get me wrong, they both were innovative in some respect (Hasrabit used core artillery and Dinas had Red core units too.)

Like pretty much everybody else who wasn't on the Beta team, I didn't really know how to make a good AI plan back then and I spent a lot of time making Quick battle maps which I used for Hasrabit. Almost ALL the Hasrabit missions have QB AI plans, namely that I painted large set-up zones for a group and let the AI deploy the units in the group according to the desired parameters. AI attacks used these large blocks as well. I was still using this in Dinas as well so you can imagine that this is completely unworkable now. This all started to change when I joined the Beta team to work on the CMSF Brit module and I was no longer working alone on projects. I got a LOT of very useful criticism from an Australian captain which really shaped what I was to produce in the future. By the time I was developing the NATO campaigns, I had evolved an entirely new system of making AI plans which I still use today. And I started using more sensible force ratios.

The second thing these two campaigns have in common is that you're often attacking at ridiculous odds - attacker v defender ratio is 1:3. While I don't like making them like this anymore, I'm going to stick with it for these reworks because the REDFor is defending the entire map which means you'll always have a local superiority unless you are really far too aggressive. While AI triggers may alleviate some of these issues, overall, the AI is unable to react properly to the player's moves. In addition, your firepower is almost always greater so these numbers are not so much of a problem for me.

As a player, I've slowed down quite a bit and am no longer able to manage much more than a company and some support assets comfortably in Real Time. I also don't particularly want to play a 3+ hour mission either. And Dinas in particular had missons with 2+ mech inf companies with armour in support. This is affecting testing as I just can't motivate myself to manage such monsters in RT. Which brings me to my next point.

A fourth issue is the presence of MOUT elements in most missions which is not always enjoyable and can be a bit repetitive. Dinas has quite a few missions with small MOUT elements - for example, Sagger Point which features a very large hill with emplaced tanks and ATGM teams dug in with great LoS. But there's also a small village at the foot of the hill. Now, with two mech inf companies and tanks in support, this is doable. But I don't want to manage two companies + support anymore so am thinking about having the infantry clear the village and the tanks and support with artillery clear the hill. That's a rather long-winded way of saying that I want to tone down the difficulty of each mission and am concerned about the overall same-ness of many of the missions. A bit of MOUT is a good thing but not everywhere, all the time.

A last point, but an important one, is that these are essentially fantasy campaigns. While a few of the maps are based on real world locations (Strong Stand and Hasrabit in Hasrabit), almost all of them are just made-up. In Dinas, I seemed to be obsessed with river crossings, for example and many of the missions are fights for control of such objectives. This was me still under the influence of some ASL scenarios I played with friends in the 90s. Dinas and Hasrabit are both completely fictional locations and the maps are just a product of my imagination and not on any geographical reality. For example, Lakes in Dinas might work in a northern Syria setting but anyone with Google earth can see that no such feature exists between the Golan and Damascus. There's absolutely nothing I can do about that so I'm just going to remake them and hope that folks just enjoy them for what they are.

My plan is not to change very much with Dinas - I had already reworked some of these maps for Gung Ho! and I have expanded and redeveloped two of these maps for the opening two missions (Petani - Flintstones and High Chaparral - Orchard Road) so that they're not the same. But have resorted to the old Dinas maps for Sabatini (not Detectives) and Where Farmers Dare - (not Bridges) to preserve the feel of the original campaign. Besides, Red v Red is a bit better on smaller maps, especially with Infantry which doesn't spot nearly so well as Blue forces do.

I have redesigned the villages and compounds on the maps to get away from the ASL blocks I used back then. I've found some real world villages in Syria as templates and you'll really see this when you play Petani, Orchard Road, Where Farmers Dare and The Tumah Crossing missions.

For the time being, there will be no core artillery in the campaign and will instead give the player what he needs to get the job done. I might reverse this decision at some point.

I've also replaced the T-72Ms with T-55MVs which, in spite of being older, are just better tanks to work with. Plus I like the look and sound of them.

And that's where I'm at just now. Dinas will get finished first, then I want to rework the Scottish Corridor and then finally finish Hasrabit.

[CMBN scenarios collection]

I've often wondered why I've never done anything with the Germans in CMBN because they're my favourite WW2 wargaming side (Japan being a close second in a strategic wargame). I really enjoy playing as the German in Panzer Corps and Unit of Command 2 up until 1943 and then I lose interest and would prefer to play as the Allies from 44 onwards. So perhaps it's just that I want to play as the side with the strategic initiative as there are so many interesting options to explore there.

I guess it's really old to say this by now but I really wish BFC had gone back to 1941 to do the Russian Front and work forward instead of 1944 (of course I understand why this was done - the ability to recycle unit models and formations for one side so that they only had to make everything for the Russians who fortunately sported some lend-lease kit which was also already done.) Had that been done, I'd probably have done nothing but German WW2 campaigns as 1941-43 is where the excitement is at for me, especially 41.

Unfortunately, I've never managed to find the enthusiasm to make a German CMBN campaign as there are severe limitations to what can be done with them and to find a situation and craft a core force which could feasibly survive several missions. Some what-ifs could be interesting - what if Rommel had had his way and the Panzer divisions were positioned closer to the beaches? But I just can't see any real chance of driving the Allies out of Normandy as their completely mastery of the air would make that nearly impossible to achieve. I'd imagine that the Allies would have responded devastatingly had an existential threat emerged to the invasion so I don't see how it could have changed much except to make the victory more costly for all parties.

[CMBN scenarios collection]

Fantasy would mean having SS formations with Tigers attacking Utah Beach on D-Day or a Carentan battle with King Tigers. While most of us are wargamers, I don't think we're all experts on the minutia of these historical missions at all but you do find some people around here who are and they will let you know.  They've read the same sources as me and some I haven't. But almost all of us know that that example above never happened. 

When designing for the 'disk', you need to be fairly rigorous when doing your research but even then, there are some missions where history gets 'bent' in order to create a fun mission (example- mission 3 of the Scottish Corridor campaign - the Tigers were on the other side of the salient.

 

Fighting in a forest is my least favourite CMx2 experience.  I appreciate that the Bulge wasn't all knife fights and that there are plenty of open terrain missions but my own feeling is that the Germans had already lost the war at that point and that they're just there to delay the inevitable. That takes something away from the experience for me, knowing that nothing can really be won at that point and that the sacrifices just mean more people on all sides having to make the sacrifices for several more days at best.

East Front? I'd have to buy that as I don't have that game and am not a tester for it. Again, 44-45 is already 'game over' for the Germans and so the experience is tarnished - thus the notion that a 39-40 style blitzkrieg campaign with air support would be fun but total fantasy - a Harry Turtledove WW2 campaign if you will.

[CMBN scenarios collection]

When it comes to making scenarios and campaigns for actual historical actions, having fantasy OBs and things that just never happened happen is very jarring for a wargamer. Most of us take the details very seriously and will complain about such inaccuracies. Making any historical campaign requires the player to have done some research, in some cases, a LOT (Montebourg, Scottish Corridor and Nijmegen - I still have the library to prove it), and I'd like to be free of that in WW2 like we are in CMSF2 - it never happened so we can do what we like.

I admire the balls it takes to make a completely fictitious WW2 campaign free of all such concerns such as I've read about above. I'd imagine there's a hell of a lot of fun to be had from such if you can just enjoy the missions for what they are. I would love to make a German WW2 campaign where the Germans enjoy air support and have the all the advantages they enjoyed in 39-42 and all the kit they had in 44-45, with the Allies being on the back foot.

[Latest Usually Hapless Video (Scotish Corridor 10)]

On 1/29/2024 at 10:22 PM, Centurian52 said:

I remember really enjoying this campaign when I first played it, sometime around when the Commonwealth module for CMBN was first released. Combat Mission has improved so much in that time that the potential for revising this campaign seems exciting. But, @Paper Tiger, please don't tone down the difficulty too much. I did find this to be a very difficult campaign when I last played it. But that's a huge part of what I enjoyed about it.

Besides, I'll always take historical accuracy over balance. And my understanding is that this operation was no cakewalk for the Allies.

I'm not planning to make it easier overall but there were one or two missions (Fair and Square [veteran] comes to mind) where the AI forces need to be toned down a tad. I would like to add a flamethrower tank to the mix in the opener only but otherwise, the plan is simply to update the AI where it is needed. Some of the missions have very small AI forces so 8 groups is already fine but I'm sure some triggers would make the missions a bit more challenging. Where the real work lies is in improving the AI attacks, of which there are quite a few when the SS counterattacks come in. 

[Gung Ho, Hasrabit and other stuff]

I've never been comfortable with praise and have issues accepting compliments when offered but I'm learning.  Thank you. Feedback on the other hand is very welcome. 

I'm actually semi-retired now and have much more time on my hands than I did ten years ago. I did spend the whole day on Sunday getting the entire campaign story worked out, organising it into four phases rather than two and tracking the consequences of a loss through the script until its resolved. An enormous job but I did that while listening to some classical music and prog rock albums from the 70s so it was pleasant. But that's an outlier. Usually, it's 1-2 hours a day, most days which is a good pace. But I am playing Dominions 6 just now so I'm not going to burn out. I am in no hurry to finish Dinas and I want to enjoy the campaign creation process as much as possible.

This game is a game for all moods: I enjoy making and improving the maps, I enjoy scripting AI plans and testing them and I enjoy just playing the game, seeing it all come to life. I even enjoy creating the artwork necessary and writing the briefings when I'm in the mood. They're all different types of activities so when I don't feel like 'working', I just improve the maps.

[The Road to Montebourg revision for v4.0 is available]

9 hours ago, Warts 'n' all said:

Started the campaign and I've just played "Silence the Guns". The Germans abandoned three guns. But, I didn't receive points for any of them. Are there hidden "Touch" locations that I am meant to find?

The briefing states...

You are awarded
TOUCH Gun 1         50vps
TOUCH Gun 2        100vps
TOUCH Gun 3        250vps

 

Yes. you need to TOUCH the gun positions and they're marked on your Tac Map.

Perhaps if they run away and you leave the gun intact, they'll just come back after you run away and start firing again.  They can't do that in the game - once you abandon a gun, you can't reacquire it.

[Gung Ho, Hasrabit and other stuff]

9 hours ago, Danny03 said:

Great news, I really happy to hear that you decided to update the "Road to Dinas" campaign paper tiger. just curious how are you gonna make "Sagger Point"  playable with just one attacking company?

If I remember correctly it had a pretty large and dense city on the attackers right flank, which was usually populated by at least with one reinforced company. So, if the player will attack with just one company I believe it would be problematic to achieve a surrender.

note: I won this fantastic map twice with the AI surrendering, by sending 4 platoons to the right and 2 platoons to the left, and placing all the tanks in overwatch. Maybe it is possible to get a win by going only on one attack axis? 

I will be reducing the defending force considerably too so the balance of forces will be more in your favour than the 1:3 you faced in the original. (That seemed to be my preferred attack-defence force ratio back in the early days of CMSF1 rather then 3:1 that is the norm.) Now it will be much closer to 1:1. Of course, the numbers are not the whole story as the firepower ratios are in your favour.

Plus there are a lot of new tools provided to the player in the shape of temporarily assigned assets that were not in CMSF. They're brutal when used properly.

And there will be proper AI this time around too.

But if playtesting makes the mission even more implausible, adding a second company to your OB is not an issue. I'll do what needs to be done to make sure the player enjoys a favourable firepower ratio.

[Gung Ho, Hasrabit and other stuff]

Core units have been imported into most of the missions and the RED side's forces have been updated to the CMSF2 formations to avoid any potential glitches in the future. There are only two missions left to do but that won't take very long.

All the maps have been updated, the only map still requiring some substantial reworking is the Tumah Crossing mission because the old map was rather empty and uninteresting to play on. I have a clear idea of what I want the map to look like and such a change will take several days of work off and on to complete but the work should be worth it.

I've also redone a lot of the building interiors. In the old CMSF game, the engine didn't fix internal walls at all and so quite a few buildings have windows and doors connecting them and they need to be removed. It's not sexy work at all but it needs to be done.

I'm not going to do map work exclusively as they're mostly all finished now but work on the AI in the phase 1 missions is underway. We're up to mission 3 just now.

After that, it's testing time, the FUN part.

One observation I made was that I was concerned that the update would not be as good as the original but after playing some of the originals to get a reminder of what the missions are supposed to do, I don't have that concern anymore. I was playing Jameelah, the AI attack mission and the AI was coming at me from the get-go. And there was only one small field between us!  It's like the decision will be reached by the 5-minute mark. That's way too fast so I reversed the friendly map edges so that the enemy has much further to travel. But no matter what I do, it will end up being better than the old campaign as long as I keep the fun alive.

The old RED OBs were massive as well with you fighting nearly a full battalion of reserve infantry in some missions. I know how to do much better now and with the new tools, I'm confident I can make the missions more challenging even with the enemy at 30-40% of its original strength. 

[The Road to Montebourg revision for v4.0 is available]

9 minutes ago, PEB14 said:

Hi @Paper Tiger, and happy new year!

Just one short question: campaign header says 17 missions while uncam reaveals 18 different missions (discounting the variants sharing the same name). Is one mission an alternative or is the header wrong?

Yes, there is an alternative. There are 17 missions in the campaign but there are two missions that you can go to after Hell in the Hedgerows - Breakthrough if you win and Stalemate if you lose. Both use the same map and more or less the same OBs but there is quite a difference between them  

[Shock Force2 v2.06 patch is now available]

9 hours ago, David Jaros said:

I think i found another bug and  it looks like Syrians using night vision now even reserve units . That is very sad and iam not willing to play SH2 anymore unless Devs give us patch 

Are you sure about that? I've been playing a few night missions with Reserve Syrian Infantry and they can't see squat at night unless it's a clear, moonlit night.

 

And I am constantly reminded that the Brits went into the Falklands without night vision against the Argentinian troops which did have. It sounds like that was 'bad scenario design'. I'd expect regular Syrian formations to be similarly equipped but perhaps not reserve. Perhaps the scenario designer had equipment set to EXCELLENT when he bought the formation?  I tend to set it at ABSOLUTE CRAP for Reserve formations. But who knows? Genuine question - if you know, I'd like to know too.

[Gung Ho, Hasrabit and other stuff]

13 hours ago, AlexUK said:

The Dina’s campaign is often mentioned as the favourite CMSF campaign. I never played it (always hoping for a remake for CMSF 2 - and here it comes). I’d be interested to know why you prefer the Syrian theatre?

I hadn't read that it was a community favourite myself but that's interesting. I thought Red v Red was niche. I'll try to keep it as close to the original as possible without changing too much. But some changes are inevitable because the game engine has changed so much. For example, in the original opener, the rocket artillery pretty much won the game for you causing large numbers of casualties and breaking the Conscripts with POOR morale.  It was devastating and so I placed two companies of infantry in the village so that there was something left for you to fight. Now, the rocket artillery hardly makes an impact on the defenders causing a small number (single digits) of casualties and morale is eroded by one or two levels. So there's only one company in the village now and that's quite a significant change just there.

There are some things that are missing from the old engine that are important in the remake, like friendly fire at night which used to be a real issue in the Hasrabit 'Strong Stand' mission - you needed to shepherd your conscripts onto the battlefield very carefully or they'd start firing on each other and that was spectacular. That's no longer a factor in the new engine. Also buildings seem to provide much better cover for their inhabitants than before. But the positives FAR outweigh the negatives - the point is that CMx1 Dinas will not be quite the same as CMx2 Dinas. Hopefully it will be just as good if not better (otherwise what's the point?). So I can keep the rocket artillery in Petani and preserve some of the shock and awe that I was aiming for in the original. It means I'll be relying on better AI plans to make the defence more effective instead of numbers. 'He who defends everything defends nothing' is trumped by 'just add more and more troops to defend everything.'

 

As for why I prefer the Syrian theatre, well, that's hard to say precisely. I like both chocolate cake and carrot cake and all things being equal, I'd rather eat carrot cake. I just know that when I come back to this theatre after playing WW2, I no longer feel that  something is missing from the experience. What that is is not easy to define. But one thing that stands out is C2 when you're playing BLUE. I also really enjoy the helicopter sounds - it just sounds incredibly immersive when one is active - and really scary if it's not yours.

[Gung Ho, Hasrabit and other stuff]

On 12/16/2023 at 5:09 AM, Danny03 said:

Paper Tiger

I'm really happy to hear that you didn't give up on the "Road to dinas" remake, it is my favorite user made CMSF campaign

(Hasrabit is the runner up). The force preservation and management aspect in "Road to dinas" is simply amazing. And the Regimental force presentation (when you can review your whole remaining force) at the end of Phase 1 is brilliant idea.

Erwin

The mission that you describe is exactly were I was unfortunately stuck due to force erosion (The two core infantry companies that were responsible for this mission took terrible causalities during the other battles before I got to that mission, so I had barely one platoon at the start of the battle and another two understrength reinforcing platoons which were the remnants of the second company).  

And the fresh T-62MV company had a really tough time dealing with the T-72 Turms that came as the counterattack. I simply couldn't get the first shot on the T-72 Turms while standing on a high ground and aiming on their side while they were rolling in the valley.  The T-72 Turms and the remnants of the ATGM's on the other side of the valley that I failed to knock off, spotted my tanks 1st and picked them off.  

A brutal map

Paper Tiger

When/If you decide to tweak the balance of the campaign while you redo it, could you look into the T-72 Turms/ T-62MV spotting disparities, I have the feeling that maybe the reason is the CMSF 2 balance changes. 

 

Danny

 

 

ALL of your concerns have been noted and hopefully addressed. There won't be any T-72 Turms in Dinas at all. And the mission in question was Tumah Crossing which was performed by  Company B, the company which attacked Sulit airfield (Syrian airborne) and bore the brunt of the attack in Jameelah. It is a spent formation by that point so another company will be used instead.

[Gung Ho, Hasrabit and other stuff]

Well, this will probably surprise you but I've made up a new core unit file for Dinas and have imported the new units into the first few missions and started play-testing them. I am going to focus on getting THIS finished before I do anything else, or at least that's my intention for the time being Why the change?

Hasrabit is the oldest of all my campaigns and there's an enormous amount of work involved in updating it. For example:

• Almost every mission has an AI attack and quite a few of these missions are meeting engagements which, as you would expect, are probably the hardest to pull off.
• The maps were very outdated and basically were 'Normandy in Syria' because, whether I like it or not, I really wanted WW2 with CMx1 and was trying to make it all feel as 'familiar' as possible*.
• The maps are green with LOTS of trees.
• The original OBs were the CMx1 OBs which are different from the CMx2 OBs for the same formations so both side's unitrs need to be repbought, replaced and regrouped.
• The AI placement is non-existent with units just plonked down in a place where they have good LoS but no protection and are easy to spot and kill.
• The AI that IS there is abysmal and sometimes doesn't even follow through to capture all the objectives - a small number of AI groups with large numbers of units, sometimes two+ platoons, just have three large order zones painted with some times on them. Sure, the AI does its best with that but I really didn't know much about the system when I made this and it shows.

Anyway, Dinas is mainly all player attacks against fixed defensive positions with only one AI attack mission in the 14-mission campaign and that's MUCH easier to manage and rework. Quite a few of the maps need to be reforested (not deforested) as orchards and that's what I've been doing these last few days. Most of the maps are ready and a small number are pretty much done already with new OBs imported and placed for both sides except for new AI plans. I've reworked some compounds because I've grown more familiar with Syrian residential blocks which are small compounds so I've integrated those in Suib and Sabatani.

With the exception of Petani, the opener, I've also elected to keep the maps largely as is unlike Hasrabit. Sure, compounds will be improved and orchards will be pretty ubiquitous in each mission  but otherwise, I'm trying to keep it as close to the original as possible. I extended the east map edges to give the player a larger entry zone for Suib and SAM Hill yesterday and it allowed me to add a new compound to make it more interesting. Dinas's set up zones are probably the weakest thing about the campaign so this work is really needed and largely done. But otherwise, it will be more or less the same.

I updated some of Dina's original maps for USMC Gung Ho! a long time ago, in particular Flintstones (Petani), Detectives (Sabatani) and Bridges (Farmers). While Flintstones is being expanded even further to make it all look and feel new, I've decided to use the original versions of Sabatani and Farmers instead so they might feel similar to some who have played Gung Ho! but are much, MUCH smaller and less built up.

So there we have it. Hasrabit is not abandoned, just delayed while I get Dinas working. Instead, i'm going to try and stick to my 'one company with support' per mission so that battles are manageable on real time without pausing (that's how I play) so no 2-3 companies of mech infantry missions. Yikes!!! There were only 2 - Sagger Point and Dinas itself so maybe Dinas might have 2 but Sagger only 1 with support.

 

* This attitude absolutely all changed after I was asked to do the NATO campaigns for CMSF and by then, I LOVED the Syrian theatre and still do, probably more than I do WW2 now funnily enough.

[The Road to Montebourg revision for v4.0 is available]

5 minutes ago, slippy said:

Hi PT

Could you possibly change the type of hedge at these locations? Would that enable them to be placed behind the hedgerow but still have LOS?

 

Just a thought

 

cheers mate

As it happens, that's an option I was considering. The StuGs get spotted instantly by Shermans anyway so not much would really be lost. 

[The Road to Montebourg revision for v4.0 is available]

2 hours ago, Falaise said:

Hello, I have just noted the different scenarios where the orchards are not “Norman” if some are purely cosmetic, others actually risk modifying the gameplay orchard hill for example.

-Breaktrough

-Ecoqueneauville

-Le grand hameau

- Hell in hedgerows

-Labyrinth

-Licornet

-Neuville

-orchards hill

-stalemate

as I told you I can modify them, I'm waiting for your greenlight.
it might take a little time though !!
in relation to the problem raised by Kohlbie I made a post a while ago about an issue with an old scenario where units were placed in front of hedges at startup; this one didn't generate much interest I reinstalled the game, it stopped but randomly reappeared maybe something changed in the last update

 

I think the areas you're describing in some of the earlier missions are not orchards but woods. At least that's what they appear to be in Google Earth. You must surely have them in Normandy too

Neuville can definitely be changed though because that's a big orchard and not a wood but don't worry, I can do this myself.

Hell in the Hedgerows, Orchard Hill and Breakthrough - Stalemate can't be changed without doing the AI placement and plans all over again. I tried replacing the orchards and units that could see through the old, un-Norman orchards couldn't anymore. That's a LOT of work. It'll get done at some point though as now you've pointed it out to me, I want the maps to be as authentic as the editor will let me.

 

EDIT to add:

Neuville is done. it looks good too. It actually helps the defenders as well. Thanks for bringing that one to my attention.

[The Road to Montebourg revision for v4.0 is available]

I'm not sure what to do about this. I tried having the StuGs advance one action spot to the bocage line at the start of the mission and they don't poke through. Good, but they can't spot diddly either. The one in the east gets spotted pretty much instantly - I drove a buttoned up Sherman into the field and as soon as it entered, it spotted the StuG behind the bocage and started firing. Of course, the StuG couldn't see anything at all and took three hits (ineffective except to close the hatches further reducing their chances to spot).

We had the opposite on the east flank where nobody could see anybody else so the StuG is completely ineffective and safe.

So, what to do? I think I'll just leave it as is because at least they can do something even if it looks weird.

[The Road to Montebourg revision for v4.0 is available]

I've had a look and they're 'okay-ish' in the set-up. Since they're positioned EXACTLY where they were placed in the original scenario, I might speculate that the game engine works differently now. The eastern StuG looks like your photo above and you're right, I can't change that but the western StuG is fully behind the bocage. I'm not sure why it's 50-50 like that. I've tried moving them back one action square but then they can't see anything. I might have to reposition them differently. Let me know what happened in your game. If they get spotted really quickly because they're poking out, I'll reposition them. (I know you didn't get AI plan 2 :D which is probably the plan I got when I tested it.)