Paper Tiger

Quoted for truth. I have tried to punish the human player for taking casualties in almost every mission I've designed. In fact, as long as you are contesting control of those large VP locations, casualties taken is the factor that will likely decide the mission. Personally, I'd like to see a VP objective that awards points for time occupied rather than an all-or-nothing type score. The 'TOUCH' victory objective is probably a better candidate for modifying in this respect as it is constantly checking if the condition is being met rather than the others that determine control only after the mission has ended.

I can't imagine the chaos that would ensue if a player were to take 3 hours or more to play some of the campaign missions I've devised as all those reinforcements that should never arrive will dutifully turn up at some point after the 3 hour mark. This has to be kept in mind as well guys. The content on the disk is designed to be played primarily single play against the AI. The majority of BFC's customers don't play PBEM/Online games. So you would break some of the content very badly by disabling the timer.

slysniper Thanks for your comments. I appreciate what you are communicating. Reading about Epsom before starting work on the campaign, I got the impression that it was a very bitter struggle for both sides. The British took terrible losses on the first day. The Germans had had nearly three weeks to prepare their defences. They had the time to pick the very best spots to site their weapons and lay minefields to cover all of the approaches to their positions. I appreciate that it is better to open a campaign with an easy mission or two to ease the player into the campaign but this would not have been representative of the first day of Epsom where every battle the core forces I chose was very bitterly fought. The 12SS were stretched to the limit here. they had very little force to fight off the Brits. But they did a sterling job on Day 1, that's for sure. The German forces in the opening mission are very thin and they are mostly Green troops with good leadership. Placement had to be everything and I'm glad to hear that I've got that right. The Argyll missions were designed to be more fun to play than the Haut du Bosq series. I really like infantry-centric battles and those six battles take place on some of the best maps I've made for any CMx2 title. I hope you'll enjoy playing them more. There is also a 'hidden' bonus mission, La Mancelliere, at the end of the campaign that was designed to be fun to play. BTW, 'The Road to Montebourg' was intended to be my fun campaign. I hope to do another one like that in the near future.

What I'm getting from this is that losing is not fun? f you can't win the mission, then it's not fun, right? I have had lots of fun playing missions that I've lost in the past. In fact, they're usually the most fun, especially when you beat them. MikeyD said it best when he suggested that you cut your teeth and learn the game playing the stand-alones and training campaigns first before moving onto the campaigns. FWIW, you don't get thrown out of the campaign for losing that mission. If you lose it, ouch, bad luck. Either try again or accept your loss and move on to the next mission. That's how I play campaigns. It's only unfair if losing these missions ejects you from the campaign.

Agreed. And it's possible to do this in CMx2 campaigns as well by having several linked battles covering the fighting over several days. The individual missions focus on the highlights of the battle for that town, perhaps the short but bloody firefight for the Post Office or somesuch building. SL/ASL missions were designed in exactly the same way. They largely focussed on the action that decided the battle, those crucial 5-10 minutes that saw the fate of the battle decided. SL/ASL, in particular the modules such as Red Barricades, have been a real inspiration to me when I have been developing campaigns.

My only experience of WW2 combat comes from movies and tv shows. In both, combat at the level that it is represented in the CMx2 games, is seemingly quite quick. For example, that 'Band of Brother's episode when they attack Hoy, that's a short, sharp and very bloody action, much shorter than any CMx2 mission that I'm aware of. I've no doubt it took a lot longer to fight in real life but basically, CMx2 is more suited to TV-style WW2 battles against the AI than real life ones as everything in the game happens so quickly. Your pixeltruppen are just too heroic, too good at their jobs under fire compared with their real life counterparts are because real people don't want to get hurt. They will do things that beggar belief for their friends but these actions are usually short adrenaline-fueled events that leave them utterly spent. They're not four hour actions at all.

Would those missions be 'Mondrainville' and 'Ten out of Ten'? The AT guns are very, very useful in both those missions and they were used offensively in the historical actions. There is a meeting engagement later in the campaign where you have to move into positions before the Germans do. It's a bit easier to get them placed and set up without interference from the opposition. When using them offensively, it's best not to be too aggressive with them. Don't drive them into the LoS of a MG team for example, even at long range as the carrier gets spotted very easily. Better to unlimber the gun out of LoS and get the crew to push it into place. Putting down some mortar smoke will help accomplish this too.

I've never sweated much over elevations in the past. Google Earth is good enough. Road networks, placement of buildings, field networks and forests is where the time will be saved and that is a big saving, no doubt.

Heh heh! With BFC attempting to speed up the cycle of releases, we have even less time to construct our maps and form credible AI plans than we had before. This means that I will be able to concentrate my efforts on AI planning and mission improvement rather than map construction. That map overlay feature is a big help getting your road network laid down and the builings placed accurately on your map etc, no doubt about it. But there's a second aspect to map creation that the changes to the editor won't help with and that's the detail work, the work that makes your map look real.

There you go. There's a lot of reading in this thread. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=103215 FWIW, I am going to develop the solution I came up with to make the Scottish Corridor campaign playable for folks at all difficulty levels in my next campaign. It should keep the 'no time-limits' players very happy indeed. Further, when I revise 'The Scottish Corridor' campaign, it will also have this new solution.

There's the nub of it. That is how it works. If there is no actual enemy unit sitting in that location, you are tracing LOS to the ground level of that action spot. Therefore, LOS might be blocked to a unit prone on the ground (level 0) in that square but not to a level 2 or 3 tank. It's better to test LOS to the obstructing terrain first and apply a bit of common sense to what it potentially will block behind it.

General Lee Irked Thanks for that... I think Please, no hamsters on the altar though. FWIW, I was planning to craft a campaign with lots and lots of dummy decision missions quite a while back (Brit Paras at Pegasus Bridge) but you spent a lot of time loading and making decisions. For example, which platoon of three will you send to location X? That's a minimum of two decision missions. Then what about where to send that AT gun? Another decision. That's three before you've played anything and I wasn't sure that people would like having to do all that before playing a mission. I think FMB 's excellent 'Devil's Descent' campaign demonstrated that people are willing to make all these decisions. For me, the real flaw is that the decisions are all made by the player. The AI must follow the player's decisions too. It can't decided to send its two PzIVs to location X or Y. I've started work on formulating a mission where the AI must make a decision. I think I have a method to do this. I just have to try out a few experiments. Then, I'll be in the business of crafting small decision oriented campaigns as well.

I am a great admirer of Aris' work. When I'm Beta testing, I can't use any mods when I'm playing the game and I do miss them. It's not because they are necessarily better than the stock skins. It is because they are part of a set. He hasn't just modded the vehicles in the game but he's modded the guns and the walls and I believe he's done a terrain mod too. I suspect Aris has been a bit discouraged by the news that he might have to redo all his skins to keep them compatible with v2 of the game. I sincerely hope that his skins will work with v2 though. The amount of work he put into this is incredible. I can only imagine how I would feel if I had crafted 30-40 highly detailed and accurate maps for scenarios only to find out that v2 would render them useless. (It won't - hypothetical situation only, just to be clear)

Chas when you quote me, please quote me properly. I didn't say that the player WILL lose the mission. Quite the opposite as the quote above clearly says. No, you should not. You just have to work a bit harder to get your win. If you lose the mission, you go to the historical meeting engagement that took place the next day. If you win, the Brits occupy the village and the Germans are the attackers. There's the fun. Did you beat the Germans in 'Going to Church'? It looks like a lot of folks did. So do I as I've stated. Again, I agree with you completely. I think you are barking at the wrong campaign designer . And, FWIW, a lot of folks in this community liked that he did that Good! I'm all in favour of encouraging folks to create campaigns. I can't wait to see what you do with the campaign script so that the player is writing the story.

I'm not a big fan of that myself. Not sure how that comment pertains to this campaign though. Basically, if you win one of the Grainville battles, you are given the opportunity to fight off another German wave, just like the Cameronians did in real life. Lose and the campaign ends (sort of). The only battle that you 'shouldn't' win is 'Going to Church' (the Allies lost that battle) but it is possible to win that mission. Most folks seem to be able to beat it. Otherise the Brits won or drew the other Grainville battles. . You are playing the campaign by a script . At the moment, it's a fairly rudimentary, binary campaign script and so is not capable of much subtlety. (While you can create dummy missions to present the human player with operational/tactical decisions, you can't do this with the AI as it will always be tied to the path you follow, voluntarily or otherwise)

Heh I've only got room in my head for one foriegn language nowadays. When I am asked to say something in French, I usually end up saying something in Indonesian. . I'll make sure that this linguistic slip is corrected for the final version...

Heh heh! As it happens, I've got the campaign script open in front of me. Losing Ten (Green) v2 sends you to Vilains (Green). Glad to hear that you've sorted your problem.

Okay then. You'll have to hang on a bit until I can get the files from my back-up computer. I had a hard drive crash on me shortly after the module release and the files are not yet on my main machine. I'm insanely busy just now and I've also got a head cold as well so it might take a day or two...

Nope. MikeyD is one of the guys responsible for producing the artwork you see in the game, vehicle skins and the like. He's kept very busy doing this work and doesn't have much time left for creating scenarios.

I'll take a stab at this one. I suspect that he's laying 'The Scottish Corridor' becuase of the Green level comment. Depending on whether you're winning or losing missions, missions 4 and 5 will vary so I'll need a name for the final mission. What I suspect is that you've got to the campaign AAR after losing lots of missions. If you lose Green missions, you go through the campaign very quickly indeed.

I prefer to have quite large set up zones for the attacker but occasionally, I like to keep a map as small as possible to avoid too much detail work. An extra 100-200mm on the friendly board edge might mean a lot of work to keep it up to par with the rest of the map. I remember this being the case with the La Grand Hameau map. Fortunately, your guys are not at risk from an opening AI artillery strike in these campaign missions. No, not a team. They design their own stuff. GeorgeMc hasn't done as much stuff for CMBN as I'd like. 'Carbide Carbide' and 'Hussar' are the two offerings that I know of. He was more prolific with CMSF. I definitely made the time to play his CMSF missions. And Pete Wenman has made a number of top notch maps for both CMBN and the Commonwealth module. He's a modest chap so I don't think he adds his name to the scenario info. However, he did do 'In the Shadow of the Hill' for the module and 'Pleasantly Shaded Woodland', 'Silence the Guns', and 'The Crossroads at Monthardou.' Looks like I just answered Edit 3 as well. BTW, I am a great fan of MikeyD's stuff as well. He seems to be able to hit the sweet spot for me as well. Again, he's too busy doing artwork to create content which is a real shame.

Whew! Quite a few questions to answer there... No, I'm afraid I don't. But that's because I don't have much time to play other people's stuff. I keep promising myself to sit down and play somebody elses missions/campaigns but I just never get round to it. FWIW, my favourite scenario designer is GeorgeMc and my favourite map designer is Pete Wenman. Yup,. Here's a link... http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=103226 I'm not sure if that will be possible as I make stuff for BFC's releases for the most part and the mods don't exist for them yet. However, when I get around to revising the Scottish Corridor campaign, I'll try and post links to the mods that are suitable. I don't think you'll haveto worry about that for a while yet. I don't expect to see the final module for CMBN until second quarter next year. But you never know. I don't see any logical way they could include the French tanks in the MG module but if they do, maybe early next year? At the moment, I can divide the AI force into eight groups and issue them with their own orders. When we get to version 2, I will be able to coordinate sixteen groups instead of eight. This will make for much more detailed AI plans. No, I'm afraid not. TBH, I really doubt that we're going to see AI triggers for a very long time indeed. I suspect that the Bulge title will be the first title to include Fire, Nighttime Illumination and, possibly, AI triggers. But when that happens, I'm sure BFC will release a version 3 for CMBN and we'll finally see all these improvements in this title.

Ach! I missed that one. It's so close to the edge that I thought it was on the other side. Thanks for pointing that out. I've moved it back into the correct set up area and I'll likely release a revised version again later. I'm really hoping that we'll get some of those old French tanks in the final module and then I'll do a final review of this campaign. In fact, after OMG, I doubt I'll be making any more large campaigns like this for the Allied side again. Instead, while waiting for the East Front title to arrive, I would really like to expand and improve the three big ones, Montebourg, The Scottish Corridor and <ahem> the 'next one' as well as finish off the shortish Canadian campaign. I want them all to benefit from the version 2 changes. I think having 16 AI groups will allow me to finesse the AI attacks to make them considerably more effective, as well as making the AI defending plans a bit more unpredictable as well.

You'd think so, wouldn't you. Congrats on your victory. This is the revised version you're playing, right? I made it a bit more difficult for the US player to get a win this time around. That one is meant to be a bitch, but a winnable bitch, as you have demonstrated. You are correct that the smoke won't last long because of the weather conditions. I'll be very interested to read how you fair as the campaign continues.

Ah, 22 and smashed. That explains it then. I count myself to be very lucky that there was no Internet to log onto and make an ass of myself when I was that age and smashed. Fair enough.