Paper Tiger

I made this post in the Road to Montebourg thread and it occurred to me afterwards that it might be better to make a thread for it all of its own. I've been thinking about updating this campaign, making a few fixes to some missions and adding air support to one or two that originally had them. Changes I'm considering based on feedback received so far: Ecoqueneuville: Add air support Les Licornets: (1) Place a single hedgehog on the main road to prevent the player from scooting up the centre too quickly. (makes a change for hedgehogs to be holding up road traffic instead of becoming pancakes) (2) Add air support to this mission Labrynth: Quite a few of you found this mission to be too easy because of your earlier success in 'Turnbull's Stand' I think I'll beef up the German OB with some fresh units and add a bit of time to the mission. Hell in the Hedgerows: I might give the Germans a bit more clout, i.e. give them back their Nebelwerfers. This will require some playtesting though. Eroudeville: Add a couple of JPz IVs to the German OB like I did for the H2H version. One potentially controversial change I'm considering is making the majority of the 2/8 INF core units Green instead of Regular. That was my original intention and a lot of the early playtesting was done with Green US Army core units and it worked (and felt) just right. Please note that I am not touching the 2/505 or 2/325 units' experience. If you guys have any suggestions, add them here quickly as I'd like to have this done quickly before I move on to something else. Hopefully by this weekend. I'm not looking to make any drastic changes to these missions other than what's been outlined above.

I've been thinking about updating this campaign making a few fixes to some missions and adding air support to one or two that originally had them. Changes I'm considering based on feedback received so far: Ecoqueneuville: Add air support Les Licornets: Place a single hedghog on the main road to prevent the player from scooting up the cetre too quickly. Add air support to this mission Labrynth: Quite a few of you found this mission to be too easy because of your earlier success in 'Turnbull's Stand' I think I'll beef up the German OB with some fresh units and add a bit of time to the mission. Hell in the Hedgerows: I might give the Germans a bit more clout, i.e. give them back their Nebelwerfers. Eroudeville: Add a couple of JPz IVs to the German OB like I did for the H2H version. One potentially controversial change I'm considering is making the majority of the 2/8 INF core units Green instead of Regular. That was my original intention and a lot of the early playtesting was done with Green US Army core units and it worked (and felt) just right. Please note that I am not touching the 2/505 or 2/325 units' experience. Also, I would like to make sure that each mission has at least two AI plans. I think Eroudeville currently has one only. If you guys have any suggestions, add them here quickly as I'd like to have this done quickly before I move on to something else. I'll try and go through this thread again quickly to see if there are any other issue with some of the missions.

I'm afraid that I'm taking a break for a little while. I got a bit burned out putting this (and Montebourg) together. I'm thinking that my next project will have to have fewer missions. I've been trying to avoid them as much as possible. Without star-shells or other night illumination, they just don't feel real. However, this one really hit the spot for me when I was working on it. No Panthers this time around.

You'll only face Panthers in Mission 13 if you are playing at Veteran level. Regular and Green players will face MkIVs (with something in support).

You should have air support in 'Grainville Chateau' and 'Crescendo of Doom'. Because of the appalling weather, there was no air support on Day 1 and 2 of Epsom. Otherwise, I'd have used it more frequently. Effective or ineffective, I don't care, I LIKE air support (There was air support in the original version of 'The Odon Bridges' mission as well but testing revealed that it really wasn't necessary.)

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Some of the Brit APCs can prevent IEDs from detonating if they are kept close to their location. They jam the radio/cell signal. I don't think they'll prevent the low-tech IED from going off though. IEDs can't be deactivated during a mission except by killing their dedicated IED observer. Once he's gone, either dead or driven from his position to a location from where he can't see the IEDs, they're useless. SMOKE will also prevent the IED spy rom observing the IED. Very useful to know when you're playing a mission designed for single play. TBH, you're not going to get much of a challenge from a QB-generated battle once you've got a bit of experience playing. You'll definitely get a challenge from stand-alones though. GeorgeMc did some excellent stuff for this game. Try some of those out.

And nothing to say about the ASH missions? :eek: How many of them did you play? Did you get to play the Odon Bridges mission? I spent absolutely ages crafting the map for that one and playtesting the AI plans. Glad to hear it. That was the plan. However, it might not turn out to be quite the cakewalk you think it will be... No

CM1fan! How could you forget to mention Russia! Once the Russian Front titles start appearing, it's goodbye from me to everything else (except CMSF2 perhaps). I'm only doing WW2 West Front because there's no WW2 East Front yet. Having said that, and since we're likely to have to go through Market Garden and the Bulge title before we ever see an East Front game, there are a lot of very interesting battles still to cover. If I'm going to do anything for these two games, I'd prefer to focus on something less well-covered than the city fighting in Arnhem for example. This game doesn't do city fighting very well I'm afraid.

I think I'd be run off these boards for good if I tried making some of these missions harder. Stripping the armour of their infantry support was exactly what the Allies did in Epsom (and especially the bonus Bluecoat mission that made it into the campaign.) I didn't have enough time to add a second AI plan to this particular mission. Mission 12 is the 'Grainville Chateau' mission, right?

Funnily enough, that was one of the best things about CMSF for me. My creativity was never constrained by historical events. I feel like I have to tread very carefully doing anyything with WW2 because of the high grog factor you're inevitably going to encounter on a WW2 game site. I quite like the idea of doing some more work with Modern Era for CMSF2 with its temerate climate setting. And of course, it will be hypothetical as well, as in no history. But we're quite likely to find that the Russians are still a pushover when facing the US.

Hindsight is such a wonderful thing. Since we all know how it turned out, we find it hard to see what an exciting and innovative idea it was. It must have looked like a good idea at the time and they obviously thought that there was a real chance that they could pull it off. It wasn't unreasonable to believe that the Germans were out of the game after the thrashing they'd just taken. The Germans astonished the Allies and would have done so wherever the Allies had made their next effort. The war wasn't going to be over before Christmas because there was too much fight left in the German army. If the Allies had gone with another plan, we'd all be asking if 'Plan X' could really have worked.

Probably not The Colleville defenders are very tough to kill and they should be. Use your artillery very generously here. That's what I gave you it for . You're probably trying to 'do' Colleville too quickly. You don't need C Company to assist in the attack on Tourville. Let B Company do it and back them up with what you can from C Company after Colleville has been cleared. The other German defenders are not nearly as tenacious as the Colleville defenders so you should be able to take them out with small arms and a bit of artillery. As for the Lugers/pistols issues, let's just say that this particular issue has been brought to BFC's attention It's up to them to decide if they want to fix it.

You've played most, if not all, the campaign missions at Veteran level? From 'Road to Cheux' onwards? That's impressive indeed! I suspect that you'll find the 'Crescendo of Doom' and 'Fair and Square' missions quite challenging at veteran level. I look forward to hearing how you fare with them. And I'm glad to hear that 'No Hiding Place' bloodied your nose on the first playthrough. I don't think anybody playtested that mission apart from myself, and I was worried that it might be too easy.

Hi Nigel You are correct about the history of the ASH. Shame I didn't have you to proof-read my campaign briefing before it shipped. However, with regards to them being GREEN troops, that was a design decision. I find that troops with Green experience and Normal/High morale behave much more realistically that Regular troops with the same morale. In the early days of developing this campaign, the Cameronians started out as Green units too. However, their missions are significantly tougher than the ASH missions in this game (not a comment on the real-life action) and so they ended up being mostly Regular. On a side note, I'm a tad disappointed that I've had so little feedback on the ASH series of missions in this campaign. I spent a lot of time working to create a very different experience for the player from the Cameronian missions and I sweated blood crafting the maps for them which are amongst the best I've ever made. And yet, nothing. Plenty of Haut du Bosq and Grainville but nothing on Tourville, Mondrainville and Gavrus. Mondrainville was my absolute favourite map in this campaign.

You were playing the Veteran version of the 'Crescendo of Doom' mission, right? If you lose any of the missions after 'Going to Church' at Veteran level, you qualify for the bonus mission. Regular players have to get to 'Fair and Square' to qualify - they don't have to win that mission, just getting there at Regular level suffices. Green players don't get to play the bonus mission though. Congrats, and I hope you enjoy the bonus. I tried to make it 'special'. Edit because I just read your second post - If you want to play those missions, you'll have to get a win. Easier said than done at veteran level.

This mission is not historical, hister. The Germans did counterattack Haut du Bosq later in the day with their Engineers with some vehicles in support but there are not many details in the books I've got. The Tigers actually counterattacked on the eastern side of the salient and not the west. But I hate being too straight-jacketed by history all the time. I wanted a Tiger in this campaign. I'm learning to love the WW2 armour game and I wanted Tigers, Panthers, JPzIVs, as well as the JagdPanther and the King Tiger (much later). So I bent the history a bit to create a more 'fun' mission. But, yes, Day 1 of Epsom was hell for all concerned. BTW, I originally crafted this map to cover Siegel's Day 2 action where his platoon of PzIVs held up the Brits trying to advance south directly towards Grainville. But it didn't work out because the human player will never, ever do what the Allies did and would end up massacring poor Seigel and his heroic tank platoon. A bit of player-deployed SMOKE and it's game-over for the Germans. So I used the map for a German counterattack on Day 1 instead.

Good to hear it. You can now progress to the Le Ham series of missions. They're much easier.... But what a shame that we've still got that big, red 'Thumbs Down' symbol at the side of your post.

The map is only 560m x 528m. That's a small map by almost anybody's reckoning. You don't have to wait very long to find the enemy either. And you've got a huge amount of firepower at your disposal as well. Finally, you do have the possibility of up to 10 minutes of extra time. Most of the time, you'll get at least five of those, and other times, you'll strike out and get one or two. But 50 minutes is enough to do this one even if you take your time and play cautiously at the start. The assault on the objective can be done very quickly and violently. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=103215

Not sure what you're asking for here. You appear to be doing just fine without any help from me. Keep up the good work.

Destroy objectives give points to the enemy side. If you 'scratch' a building in a Preserve objective, you simply lower the total number of points it is possible for you to earn in the mission. As long as your margin is wide, who cares how few points you earn A Total Victory with 200 points total v the enemy's 24 casualty points is a much better result than a Minor Victory with 500 points v the enemy's 350 casualty points. I'm glad to see that someone is still playing this. Personally, I think this is the best thing I ever created for CMSF. It has some very, very good fights in it.

And at Veteran Level too. That's quite an achievement, Hister. Congratulations. The Friendly Forces Preservation Bonus should be very hard to earn in this mission. Getting a green tick in that box when you win gives you bragging rites. Look forward to seeing how you get on with the next series of missions. It'll be a real change of pace from the first series.

stiykiypixie [bIG HINT] It's not necessary to preserve the buildings to get a win. But if you are a bit too Gung Ho with your artillery assets and you still take lots of casualties, you'll be in serious trouble. In fact, you need to give up some of those Preserve points to get a win. Do that and you'll find that the mission is quite easy.

Heh! Those are not photos of the finished product either. Those are pictures of the maps when I was showing the other testers what I had already done for the Commonwealth campaign way, WAY back . They have both had a LOT of work done on them since then. Once I get back to work on them, I'll show the finished product.

Here's a screenshot of the 'Brew Up!" map. This was intended to be the bonus Argyll mission. This was probably the most difficult map I have ever crafted. (Why? Look at the roads. They're all straight - avoiding the wigglies while staying true to the real terrain is a LOT of work). I nearly gave up on it several times. But now, this map is completely finished, with the fine detail work on all those little farm compounds done (and some of them are very beautiful). However, while the initial playtesting was fun as the Germans, it was zero fun to play as the Brits. It was a massacre in real life and it was a massacre in the game too. So I have to rethink the historical action to make a more interesting action. Sometimes historical sucks! This is the map for Bougy and Hill 113. It is more or less finished too and it's huge. It was intended to sit in between Les Vilains and Gavrus Part 1. It's a historical action between two very large groups of tanks (over 100 in total). I've played this one a few times but the Shermans are just too good against the Germans, especially the Fireflies. The Germans don't have much of a chance in this battle when it's close to historical even though they did very well in the real life action. As to when I'll get around to developing these, I honestly don't know. Real life is quite interesting just now and I have other demands on my free time. But I fully intend to finish these two off at least. There is no screenshot of the Sept Vents village map as it's not finished. Besides, there is a stand-alone that ships with the module called 'Seven Winds' that covers the same battle, more or less.