Paper Tiger

I originally had two bonus missions planned for the campaign. One for the Cameronians, which you got, and one for the Argylls, which you didn't. The Argyll's mission was another Bluecoat action featuring three JagdPanthers attacking a squadron of Churchills on a hill near Les Loges. I agonised over the creation of that map. It's huge and it's a real beauty too. But there wasn't enough time to develop the mission properly so it didn't make the cut. Besides, there wasn't much for the Argylls to do except hunker down and hide from the JagdPanthers. Actually, there were two other maps/missions that didn't make the cut. There was a third Bluecoat mission called Sept Vents, a small assault on a fortified village. But time ran out before I could finish the map. And there was a huge tank battle on Hill 113 to the south of Gavrus for the Argyll's battles. The map for that one is ginormous. Maybe one day, I'll finish them off and revise this campaign for the Repository. BTW, let me know how you get on with La Mancelliere. It should be a fun battle

CM1Fan Just for the record, and in case the point gets lost amidst the humour, the AI does not cheat in this series of games. The AI is locked into a script and it will follow its script until either the game ends or the script is finshed. The AI cannot re-evaluate its plans. If the AI has one advantage over the human player, it is that it can co-ordinate very large forces with reasonable efficiency while playing in RT, whereas the human player cannot. And that's about it.

Apparently, it has a very good scenario editor as well. This could be a winning find. I've already got the wife's permission to splurge out the $80 to buy the two games in the series. I'll probably take the plunge tomorrow and have the thing to play over the Easter holidays.

The Churchill v Panther match-up is not a very fair one, that's for sure. However, if you are a GREEN player, you will only have to face Panthers once in the campaign - 'Going to Church'. Generally, the VETERAN level player will see them more often in the fighting for Grainville. Good luck with mission 14, drexil. I gave the player an impressive load of artillery and TRPs, as well as three Achilles tank destroyers so you should have a fighting chance. I really enjoyed playtesting that mission. It feels very 'East Front'. BTW, which version are you playing? Green, Regular or Veteran?

Got it of the Repository and had a look at them in the game. Wicked looking flames. Well done! Nice job. I look forward to seeing what you turn your hand to next.

No bug. If you win 'Going to Church', you control the objective and so start in place in 'No Hiding Place'. If you draw or lose 'Going to Church, your forces withdraw and try again the next day. Sounds like you won 'Going to Church' then.

Don't worry. That's done automatically. I'll look forward to it.

Drakenlorde: That looks fantastic! Are you going to upload this to the Repository or am I going to have to create an account at GaJ's site?

So far, VERY impressed by what I'm seeing in the demo. I see that they're developing an East Front version of the game too. This looks like it might be really immersive.

You might actually find that some people will be so impressed by the iPad version that they buy the full game

Funny. It never even occurred to me that there might be anything negative in this move. I don't have a Pad of any description. To me, they're just hi-tec fashion accessories and I'm not interested in getting into that particular money pit. Fine if you've got tons of disposable income though. (I do love my Kindle reader though. ) However, I suspect that the amount of time BFC's coding team spent on this is fairly minimal. Think of this as a nice little earner that will support BFC to go on and make other serious wargames for us.

I completely disagree with that statement It's certainly like that when you start playing in RT. The control freak in you wants to stop the game and see what's going on. But after a while, the delays between pauses grow, and grow, and grow to the point where you rarely pause at all. Playing RT requires a bit of practice to get comforable with, just as WEGO did for me when I started playing CMBO when it was released. For the record I pause the game when... Reinforcements arrive and I need to issue them orders, Performing the call-in routine for artillery or airstrikes, I have completed Phase A of my plan and I am thinking about Phase B, And, of course, when it all goes utterly pear-shaped. Other than that, I'm completing a 1 hour mission in about 1 hour 10 minutes after pressing START.

I've been having a look at Matrix Games' Command Ops: Battles for the Bulge and it sounds really good. I will download the demo to give it a try as soon as I've finished downloading a few files. I had a hard drive crash on me and so I'm having to redownload a few games from Steam etc. So, while I'm waiting, do any of you guys play this game, and if yes, what do you think of it?

Glad to hear it. Your win will also allow you to play 'Fair and Square'. I look forward to hearing how you get on with that one. I was striving for something quite awesome to finish the campaign. I hope it hits the spot

I'm going to focus on getting the Canadian campaign up and running first, and then I plan to spend some time getting these QB maps finished, along with a few maps from the Scottish Corridor campaign.

My hard drive died on me yesterday morning. Fortunately, the wife was using the computer when it happened, and so she was very anxious to get it fixed a.s.a.p. So I'm back up and running just 26 hours after the failure. I had back-up copies of everything so only the time has been lost. <whew!> The hard-drive is dead. Long live the new hard-drive!

I'm 52 and have played wargames since I was 15. And I mean, I've played wargames almost every single day since I was 15. When I got my hands on CMSF, I decided to give RT play a try and found it very hard to control. However, I stuck with it and it quickly became the only way to play for me. I can't do WEGO anymore as it takes so long to play anything. I don't want to spend days playing an hour-long scenario. I prefer to play a mission in one sitting, and I can do that in RT quite comfortably. And that's why I prefer RT. BTW, playing the game RT is definitely NOT a clickfest, and I get a bit tee'd off when I read posts scorning RT as a 'clickfest' for RT 'twitchers'. You're wrong when you post that. It's not. I'm proof that it's not.

I'm hoping to have this wrapped up sometime in May. If I keep it to around eight missions, that should be doable. The maps are all done so it's just designing the AI plans and playtesting. All the most enjoyable work still to come.

I've stepped back to do another all-new map for this campaign. I can't help myself . These things just grow and grow as I playtest and get more ideas. (The 'Scottish Corridor' campaign started out as an 8-mission campaign) This new mission takes place before the Tailleville mission. It's set in St Aubins on the morning of D-Day. It will be a very small mission and probably with plenty of time on the clock as it was an easy mission, historically. It's a small, densely urban map with St Aubins church in the SE corner. The unit density will be very, very light on both sides and so this should allow the map to be very highly detailed. At the moment, it's still quite pristine but that will definitely change as playtesting goes on. You'll have a lot of firepower at your disposal to make up for your lack of numbers but you'll have to find the enemy before it will be of any use. Seeing as how it's so small, I thought it would only take a couple of hours to create this map. However, it's fairly accurate and that takes a lot of time to do. I might need one more small one like this and that will be it. Then playtesting gets going in earnest.

If you want to give an AI group an ASSAULT order, there must be at least two units in that group in order for it to work.

Well, then you'll forgive me for saying it but I'm having a hard time believing that just now Not much chance of that happening for a while what with the Canadian campaign growing on me. However, I have to confess that I'm yearning for the East Front. West Front '44 and '45 are really not my thing and so I'll eventually get bored with it. I'm a German player at heart. As it happen, the final battle in this campaign (mission 14 - 'Fair and Square') reminds me very much of an Eastern Front style battle. I can't wait to get back to the East again.

Erwin, Erwin. You remain so determined to be negative and suspect the worst of my work. Of course it's not a "find the trick" challenge. I don't do those. Never have. Never will, thank you. The OP was just asking for some help and I gave him a pointer.

If you are up against Panthers in mission 13, that means you are playing the VETERAN level of this mission and that means that you'll get a nice 'surprise' when you finish it, win or lose, it doesn't matter . The REGULAR and GREEN versions have PzIVs. There are a few key positions that allow your 17-pdrs to dominate the battlefield. They are the key to victory as they usually kill the Panthers with one shot. And you only need to deprive the AI of control of the VP locations.

Here are three screenshots of the new, revised Tailleville map. The first is of the village from the north, just left of the St Aubins road. The village is behind that copse of trees. It became necessary to expand the map a considerable distance to the south of the village to allow the early stages of the battle to be represented. Compare with the original screenshot. Especially to the dramatic changes in the elevations on the new map. As you can see, the map terminated just at the back of the village. Now, it's been extended to include the forested ridge behind the village. And again, from the SW map corner. I'll probably have two battles fought on this map. Although the Germans will have units placed on the forested ridge, there won't be nearly enough time on the clock for you to get at them. Your priority in the first battle will be to clear the village of German forces and that should be a tough call. Then we'll have a second battle to clear the forest on the 7th June.

I've been quiet this week because I've been working flat out on expanding and improving the Tailleville map. I'm going to post some new screenshots of the map later this weekend. It's now massive and it looks absolutely gorgeous too. Right now, I'd say it's the best map I've produced to date. Most of the time was spent getting the elevations just right and the finished product looks very natural and realistic. I have to stop myself from just aimlessly moving the camera around in 3D mode admiring the scenery. The map expansion became necessary after further reading about this action. The unit densities are surprisiingly low for both sides. A single infantry company with support for both the Canadians and the Germans. And I've got the battle covered from its opening stages so it will have to be a long battle. The map has been extended far to the north to cover the battle's earlierst stages and far to the south to cover the potential battle for the Tailleville forest. The latter will probably require a second battle using the same map. I doubt that I will be able to do the Radar Station any justice as the current stock of fortifications won't cut it. There are no fortified gun positions and that will just make it too easy for the Canadians to take the position down with artillery. Sneak an artillery spotter into position. Kill the guns with the artillery then bring the tanks up to kill the MG bunkers. Game over. Easy win. Absolutely NOT historical at all. However, there will probably be an extra mission after the initial landing to cover the mopping up operations. A small battle on a small map so it shouldn't take long to get it up and running. It will also be neceesary to allow me to string thse four missions together in a very meaningful way.