Paper Tiger

You're playing Ecausseville. I don't know if you are playing the original version of this mission or the revised version and that will make a difference. The revised version is tougher because the US troops are Green and the Germans have a module of mortars available which they don't in the original. SPOILERS The key to this one is to scout carefully until your forces assemble. Get some MGs set up with good fields of fire before advancing towards the creek. Put down a lot of fire with your 60mm mortars when a target presents itself. The German force is tiny so once you know where they are, you've won half the battle. It's not supposed to be easy. The Germans slaughtered the US troops in the real life action. That wouldn't be fun to play at all so the US can do it as long as you don't advance too quickly at the start.

The point is not that there are only one or two men but that the tank's Tac AI routines are telling it to use its main gun from time to time to fire at a soft target in the open when we know that it would be more realistic if it were to use its MGs. (I am thinking primarily of Daglish's account of Seigel's stand on the Salbey where his tanks sprayed the oncoming infantry with their coaxial MGs. The Churchills also sprayed potential targets liberally with their MGs) I don't think the AI is able to make these kinds of decisions and that's different from I know that it can't. I don't know. If it WERE able to, then there might be a solution on the horizon and we'd see tanks only use its main gun armament against hard targets. If it's not, then there's nothing to see or do here

While reading up on Operation Epsom, I remember reading that tanks on both sides would use their MGs to fire on infantry targets, usually to great effect. Yet in the game, AI-controlled tanks prefer to squander their HE against infantry targets as small as one or two men, lying prone in the middle of a field. Anyone who has played 'Hansel and Gretel' will have seen this. The AI doesn't seem to be programmed to tell the difference between a soft target and a hard target. If it were able to, perhaps it wouldn't be too hard to tell it to use its MGs, if any, against a soft target and its main gun against a hard target. But would infantry in a building be a hard target? A human player can offset this bias by giving his own tanks Target Light commands but the poor AI opponent is stuck with this behaviour.

I just picked this one up as it has the North Shore Regiment in it and they will be the core units in my Carpiquet campaign. I just ran through one of the missions and they do look sweet. The patches on the arms are working correctly so I'll stick with these. Thanks for your work.

Heh. Nice work. Love the map too...

I thought that would apply to late war everybody, except for Germans fighting the Russians.

IMHO, Green is definitely the way to to go. Now that I've updated 'Montebourg' so that the US Army troops are mostly Green to keep it in line with the The Scottish Corridor's Green UK troops, I reckon I'm going to stick with Green from now on. Not because I think that the fighting men of both sides in NWE were Green but because it makes for a much more realistic feeling WW2 game. It also makes the good units shine, i.e., the Regular/Veteran experience levels, when they appear without making them utterly uber. The future is Green! I've been using Conscripts in my Canadian campaign to represent the Hiwis that were fighting neear the beaches. My experience with conscripts shows that they are very trigger happy but they don't hit very much. It's almost pointless giving them an ambush-type order as they'll just fire anyway. They are also very fragile. I'll be using Conscripts more frequently in the future too to represent poor quality replacements and stomach battalions, etc.

The attempt at humour is appreciated.

I see Boche has provided the answer already. I forgot to mention to Cease Fire in the briefing. There's always something.

I'm back at work on this. However, work will go slowly as I am very busy at the moment. But I'm going to keep the mission count as low as I can so it should get finished before I get stuck into something more substantial. I'll try and post screenshots as I go along. At the moment, Mission 1, 'Nan Red', is finished. It's my first (and probably last) ever Beach Landing mission. I honestly don't understand why people like these so much as they are just a crap shoot. Sometimes, you get everybody on the beach and other times, it's a massacre. But it certainly looks and sounds cool while playing so it's staying in. But never again!

Not to mention that each one of those nifty little US 60mm mortars can drop their lethal rounds directly onto any spot completely out of their LOS on a reasonable sized map with almost pin-point accuracy at the start of a mission. If a player wants to have these realistic, preplanned strikes fall on locations out of his LOS, that is what the TRPS are for. The scenario designer can give the player agreater number of TRPs to represent this forward planning. Hell, it even adds depth to the missions by allowing the player to choose where these TRPs will go. It also means that the scenario designer can deny the player the ability to gamily target the entire map with his onboard assets when the player is supposed to be advancing into unknown territory. Yes, I know that I can keep the 60mm mortars off-board and have them arrive as reinforcements at T+05 but this is an artificial work around. The mortars are part of the Airborne/Glider platoons and it just adds to the micro management of the game having the player re-organise these forces when they arrive on the board.

Well, that's 24 hours and still waiting. I'd forgotten how long it takes BFC to clear stuff that is posted to their Repository. Perhaps it's the holiday weekend? Hopefully, the revised version will be available to play sometime in the next 24 hours. In the meantime, I'm making very good progress through Ecoqueneuville in spite of the Green troops. The extra 10 minutes make it feel a bit more relaxed. And the air support is a lot of fun too.

I just played my way through the first two missions of the new revised 'RtM' and had a blast. The Green troops make quite a difference to the way you play the missions. I added an extra 10 minutes to several of the 2/8 INF missions to allow the player to take things a bit more slowly. As a result, I'm feeling rather generous this morning. The good news is that I've uploaded the extra mission as a stand-alone as well. It should be available for downloading sometime tomorrow. I made almost no change to the campaign version as it is really good fun to play the way it stands. I guess I'm looking to have fun just now rather than playing too carefully. The stand-alone version is for Single Play v Axis AI only. There is only one German AI plan as it's a recreation of the Brecourt mission so variable German set-ups are not necessary. I don't think anyone would play this H2H as it would be ridiculously easy for the German player to turn his guns at the start of the mission to face the US attack and blast the crap out of them. Same goes with no US attack AI plans. What would be the point?

I'm uploading the revised campaign at the Repository as I type this so it will probably appear sometime later tomorrow. If you guys want to keep the old file, I'd recommend that you make a back-up of it somewhere else or rename the original file before copying the revised version into your campaign folder. I would have liked to do more but the more I change, the more I have to test and I don't really have the time to do that. I might return to this and create a FINAL version when BFC finally include the captured French tanks. I'd have prefered to use them in 'Turnbull's Stand' and in 'Labrynth'. As mentioned earlier in this post, the revised campaign contains one new mission. I will probably release a slightly tweaked version as a stand-alone if folks would like that as it's good fun for me to play like that. I deliberately kept the campaign version reasonably easy to win as the player can't afford to sacrifice too many of his core forces pursuing a victory. The stand-alone will be tougher, but not much as it's supposed to be fun. Next up will probably be the revisions I'd like to make to the Scottish Corridor campaign, i.e. breaking them up into two seperate campaigns and adding the extra missions that I'd originally planned to include but didn't have time. I don't have any plans to change the existing missions though but I will include an option for the player to play them withgreatly extended time limits if that is how they like to play them.

I am really hoping to have this up on the Repository before next weekend. That could mean tomorrow or sometime mid-week. I would have it up earlier if I had more time but I'm busy at the moment and can't spend quite as much time designing stuff as I'm accustomed to. I'm hoping to get started work on something meaty in July but for now, I can only do one smallish project. I honestly thought that I'd have it up tonight but there's too much checking to do. 'RtM' is a very complex beast and while I've finished changing the master missions, I have to create all the variants from them once again.

Right, this is where we are on this. I am not going to add a second mission to the campaign as it will take too long to do and I want to have this finished this weekend. It's not just the time to develop and test the mission but the increased complexity of adding it to the campaign script. It took me quite a while this morning just to add the 'Brecourt' mission to the script in a meaningful way and I'd rather not have to do that again. Just too big a chance that it will stuff something up. Besides, the map just doesn't look 'Montebourg'-like. It might fit in the 'Scottish Corridor' though but I think I'll just create a stand-alone from it as I did with 'USMC Second Storm'. Here's a quick photie... So there will be an new mission #2 prior to the Georgian Ridge series of missions. Later today, I want to concentrate on amending the briefings and then I'll get it posted up at the Repository with a list of the changes made.

Agreed! I wouldn't expect to see Regular troops with Normal morale not in foxholes behaving quite as heroically as described in the OP. Veterans with High morale, now that's another matter completely. They've 'seen the elephant', been battle-hardened, the fittest have survived etc, etc. If we want to have troops who behave like that in the game, we mix a few of them in like that in the editor and voila, we've got Audy Murphy and Bruce Willis. I have suggested previously that we'd perhaps all feel a bit better about what we're seeing if the coded values for experience and morale were reduced a tad so that everyone behaved a little less heroically.

Here are a couple of screenshots. First, the AAR screen from my last playthrough. Not a bad result, I can tell you... The time on the game clock was -0.53 (that's 53 seconds of extra time) of the potential 10 minutes available. The mission is 15 minutes long. Yes, 15! That's probably about as much time as Messrs Winters and Co needed to do the job in real life and you're packing a bit more of a punch than the real life Paras were as well. It plays out in remarkably similar fashion as the real life action too. And here's the Company HQ hitting the last VP location. Still just over 4 minutes of game time left. BTW, after a few more minutes, I'd figured how to do the assault and keep my guys in the trenches while doing so

Missed this earlier. Sorry I didn't reply sooner. I did a search online for Operation Epsom and one of the sites I found was a tabletop wargame AAR that had a very detailed OB for Epsom. Just a very lucky find for me. I also used info from other wargames to flesh out the details of the German OB in Montebourg. And sometimes, I just made stuff up... A couple of comments on a further 2/505 mission for this campaign. I was a bit surprised to find that there were only four 2/505 missions in the campaign (Turnbull's Stand, Les Licornets, Stalemate/Breakthrough, and Holding Action.) I don't recall anyone having any real difficulty with any 2/505 mission except for 'Holding Action' which can really bite you if you get AI plan #2. So a sixth 2/505 mission, this time featuring Easy Company might be a very good idea. (And I like the US Paras. They're right up there in my 'favourite-to-play' formations.) Now, I have a map all ready for this but it's not any location near Ste-Mere-Eglise (It's not set in France at all, actually but in Suffolk!) But it's a beaut and it's never gotten to see the light of day. So I might use it and then call it a deal. I'll get cracking on it this morning and we'll see how long it takes to get a viable mission up and running with two AI plans. One final point. There were supposed to be two really difficult missions in this campaign, 'Hell in the Hedgerows' (where I think I succeeded) and 'Ecausseville', a 2/8 INF mission which was a terrible defeat for the Allies. I think I might try and up the difficulty of this mission as it should be a real toughie. It was also a good fun fight so that might be time well spent. After this is done, I think I'm going to call it quits for doing CMx2 stuff from the Allied perspective, (at least no more 16+ mission campaigns anyway) and concentrate on my favourite WW2 side, the Germans.

The 'Brecourt manor' mission is now completed and playtested and good to go. It's going to be a 2/505 mission in which a single platoon from Dog Company 2/505 will perform the assault on a German artillery position on the morning of D-Day. It's going to be called 'Where all the Glory Lies.' because Brecourt was a 101st mission (don't we all know it) and they're not in my campaign, but it is Brecourt in every other detail. It would be an understatement to say that I have really, REALLY enjoyed playing this one and I know that I will play it again and again as a stand-alone. I hope that it's worthy of standing along side 'Turnbull's Stand'. Now, here's a funny thing. I am considering adding a further 2/505 mission to this campaign. I have a few maps that I've never used. Before I started work on the Montebourg campaign, I was preparing a fictional campaign featuring US Airborne fighting on D-Day near a fictional French village called Remarque (Of course, it was Ste Mere Eglise' but using a fictional name would allow me to play fast and loose with history and craft it as I liked). I created three maps for the 'Rue d'Remarque' campaign and I think I'll use the map intended for mission #2, 'Crossroads'. The map is the second map I tried making for CMBN so it's not quite up to the standard of the other Montebourg maps but I'm sure I could lick it into shape quite quickly and create a further fictional mission for the 2/505 on D-Day.

Actually, I think we see a lot more realistic in-game behaviour from our pixeltruppen when they are Green with Normal morale. Regular/Normal troops are a tad too good IMO. Fine for Modern Era troops but I'm not quite as sure that it's so appropriate for WW2. One of my favourite Schwartznegger movies BTW

I've made all those changes already and have started playtesting a quick and dirty version of 'The Guns of Brecourt' to be the new mission 2 of the campaign. It will feature two platoons of 2/8 INF attacking the 'Brecourt' gun position with two light ACs in support and some artillery. I want to put this is because, so far, it's proving to be a lot of fun to play. And I'm getting ideas on how to develop it into an even more fun mission.

I should get this finished quite quickly. Then, I'm thinking of having a look at the 'Scottish Corridor' campaign. I'm thinking of breaking it into two seperate campaigns, one for the Cameronians and the other for the ASH. I'd like to finish off the three bonus missions that I was working on but didn't have enough time to finish before BFC released the module. I'd also like to present the player with a decision at the very start of the campaign, to play 'All-Green' versions of the missions or play the standard campaign with the variable difficulty. I'd make the Green missions much easier to win too. That would give me two eight-mission campaigns with one extra Cameronians Bluecoat mission and two extra ASH missions, one huge tank battle on Hill 113 and the ASH Bluecoat mission that never made it.

Actually, I can sympathise with this. I stopped playing the game a few weeks ago too. I was hard at work getting the Canadian 'Road to Carpiquet' campaign up and running and the missions are hard. I just got fed up playtesting 'hard' missions and stopped playing as a result. Now, I'm getting back into the swing of things and have no interest in playing anything 'hard' for a while. I'm looking to have some fun for a while. And there's not a whole lot of that around at the moment. Plenty of 'Difficult' and H2H though. Once the game stops being fun to play, you get less forgiving of perceived 'errors' and are more likely to complain about something that is a one-off. So let's just let the guy get it off his chest. This game is just too damned good to stay away from for any long period of time and hopefully, when he gets back in the mood to play it again, there will be more 'fun' stuff for him to play with his game modded by Aris.

Good points raised here. I will get to work revising this later this morning and get the revised campaign up on the Repository as quickly as possible. I'm going to have a look at Licornets and see if I can block up the road with destroyed German vehicles instead of having to resort to using a hedgehog. I just want an anti-tank barrier of some sort to prevent the Allies from driving up the road and taking the German defences apart too easily. The road is a long straight one, even in WW2, so I can't introduce any kinks to place an AT asset behind to deny the road to the Allies. Besides, it would be too obvious a spot to resist hitting with a pre-planned strike from one of the onboard 60mm mortars . I will think about the air support carefully. If it does go in, it will be Green and it will arrive as a reinforcement. I would imagine that it would be quite hard to use in Ecoqueneuville as there are so few good LoS postions in the US sector. And by the time you've captured one or two of them, the scenario clock will be ticking down... We'll see. No nebelwerfers for Hell in the Hedgerows then. But I will give the Germans a wee bit more artillery support. I did make a heavy mortar asset available to the Germans during testing but I must have deleted it along with the Nebs. So I'll probably reinstate it. I am toying with the idea of adding a bonus mission to this campaign using my Brecourt map. But we'll see as that would require a bit of work to create and playtest. If I do add it, it will be a simple fun mission so it might be quick and easy to do as most of the work is done already. And it's a nice little map too. One final point. I will also revise the campaign script so that Replacements are handled in a similar fashion to the Commonwealth campaign.