Paper Tiger

For me, Stalingrad. The loss there demoralised Hitler so much that he wasn't inclined to interfere so much in 1943. I read that he had the idea of attacking the Kursk salient from the centre and not pinching it off on the flanks as his Generals wanted to do, and the Russians too. That particular operation might have had quite a different outcome had Hitler been a bit more confident.

Yes. There's already one fine example called 'The Scottish Corridor'. You need to get a Major Victory or better to go up a level in the test missions. Any lesser win or a loss and you will stay at the same level.

Mo74 Yup, your question makes sense. A good stand-alone mission that has been created for playing against an AI opponent will have several AI plans and so the missions can play differently each time you play them. There can be as many as five AI plans for the AI-controlled side so it might take you a while to play against each of them. There's no guarantee that you'll get a different AI plan each time you play the mission though. Different defensive AI plans will place the defenders in different positions from plan to plan and so will prevent you from having prior knowledge of their set-ups when you replay a mission. They may also behave very differently in each plan. When attacking, the AI imay take different approaches to the objectives so again, you won't know where the real attack is coming from until the attack begins in earnest. I think you'll find that that review also stated that the scenario designers who created the content did a very good job of scripting the AI. Clever scripting can present even a seasoned player with a real surprise when playing against the AI. So, if you like the demo, I doubt you'll be disappointed. And there will be a ton of stuff coming from the community to play as well. Hope that helps.

Great stuff Aris. Looking at those Churchills, I can almost smell the Yuhu glue that I used to assemble the Airfix models I used for tabletop wargaming way, way back...

Looking to the future, at least of the Normandy title, we'll be covering Market Garden next. To do any sort of Market Garden mission, campaign or stand-alone, justice, the player will have to be under considerable pressure from the clock.

Heh! Just what I wanted. North Shore Regiment and Fort Garry Horse plus extras. This will make playtesting the campaign even more enjoyable. Cheers

The Churchills might be good to do. I love those tanks. However, whatever you choose to do next, I'll be happy to get it.

Don't you want the SS?

A quick update on the weekend's work. I've been playing (and playing, and playing...) the opening mission, Nan Red, this weekend. Beach landings are so bloody and so unpredicatable. It's going to have to be a bit longer than I'd like because it's proving to be very difficult to get off the beaches, secure a lodgement and then attack the main town to the east of the map. I had hoped to keep it to around an hour but it looks like I'll need at least another 20-30 minutes. But you'll have something to do in all that time, that's for sure. I've also upped the amount of firepower you'll have drastically. I've also added a couple of Centaurs to the Canadian OB. Well, okay, Cromwells with the 90mm gun as the Centaur variant isn't in the game. But it means that you'll have a lot of vehicles at your disposal later in the mission but very little room to deploy them. Should be interesting. Perhaps adding an important dimension to the early part of the mission when you have infantry only. As usual, serious playtesting means that the map gets a huge make-over and this one has been no exception. The finished map will look a hell of a lot more interesting than that preliminary screenshot on the first page. There was a 'chateau' down on the beach near the N7 exit which is not there today. I did a bit of guesswork and plonked down a compound on the sea-front which isn't in that screenshot. I also got to work expanding and improving the Tailleville map. I somehow screwed up when I did the initial elevation work for this map. The village is sitting on top of a hill which dominates the surrounding terrain. I'm also extending it considerably to include the northern fringes of the Tailleville forest as well as to the west. I made these maps before I started on the Scottish Corridor maps and I learned that I could place a LOT of trees on the maps without ruining performance. (You should have seen the original Tourville map. It was tiny compared to the final version) With Tourville firmly in mind, I'm happy to include some densely forested areas on this map. It will still be a company-sized action as it was historically. But it might not be quite as easy as I'd thought it would be.

On the Internet, it still amounts to the same experience. Only there are two of them doing it instead of one.

A small request for you modding guys. Are any of you making up special badges, uniforms for certain units? I'm currently putting together a campaign featuring the Canadian North Shore Regiment and it would be nice to have the correct badges, etc.

Here are a couple from my 'Scottish Corridor' playtesting sessions. No Photoshop touching up, thank you. Although I am using Aris's splendid vehicle mods... I thought this first one from one of the Grainville battles was iconic. And this second one is from one of the Gavrus missions.

Hey, Combatintman is back! I was wondering what had happened to you. Glad to see that you're safe.

I'm surprised that nobody's linked this yet... http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/15/wot-i-think-combat-mission-commonwealth-forces/ This is particularly relevant. My other major CMx2 gripe relates to AI. Reliant on pre-prepared scripts, much of the time artificial enemies turn in respectable and challenging performances. What they don’t do is react spontaneously or credibly to player manoeuvres. If, during an assault, you decide to, say, push hard on the left side, you won’t see a foe scrambling to reshape its defence in response. The rigidity is particularly obvious when you manage to sneak vehicles into an enemy rear. Often opposing forces seem rooted to the spot, preferring to cower and die rather than put something solid between themselves and the unexpected threat. He goes on to say this. To be fair to the scenario designers, they really do seem to know how to get the most out of the engine. I’m about mid-way through both the 14-mission Scottish Corridor campaign and the 8 mission Kampfgruppe Engel one, and have witnessed some chillingly effective advances and fiendishly stubborn defences. Like the events it simulates, CMBNCF is a game in which sloppiness is frequently costly. Failed to scout that lane properly? Some Hitler Youth youth with an MG 42 and an unhealthy devotion to duty, will probably make you pay. Failed to space out your eager Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders? You’ll regret your laziness the second the 8cm HE hailstones start doing it for you. This is a title that rewards methodical wargamers most generously. Which isn’t to say slightly slapdash COs like myself can’t taste success and have a ball too. Because the Allied campaign doesn’t start rewarding defeats with barred progress until mission 10 there’s plenty of time to learn from mistakes. Forces are carried over between chapters in the German campaign, which seems a nice touch until you realise you’re nervously quicksaving after every cleared copse and cottage. Where is the whining about time constraints from a professional game reviewer? If he felt they were unjust, he'd have said so.

bodkin My understanding of the complaints a small number of posters are making is that they don't like feeling pressured by the mission clock. Those are time constraints. They want to have enough time to do everything slowly and cautiously so that they don't take many casualties in the mission. Whether that means another 30 minutes added or going the whole hog and making the mission 4 hours long is not important. They don't want to feel pressured by the clock. I've already explained why I think time constraints are important. If you disagree, that's fine and we'll agree to disagree. I think they're appropriate and the time constraints in these missions are very reasonable. If you're finding it too difficult, accept the loss and drop down to the Green level where you frequently get more time and artillery. More help winning in general. There's no point in me creating a variable difficulty campaign if players are not going to accept any losses. I might as well just make it linear.

Have you read about Operation Epsom? Slow and cautious, maybe. Let's have a quick look at Daglish's estimate of Brit casualties from the start of Epsom until the 1st July. Totalled, it come to around 2,720 men. (Appendix 2: The Butcher's Bill) The highest losses were sustained on the first day. Not necessarily Monty's fault. I put that down to the German's unwillingness to lie down and surrender even after having the crap pounded out of them by the stupendous artillery barrages that preceded nearly ever offensive move. There's nothing counter-intuitive about this at all. The fighting in Normandy was hell. Frankly, we all got off very lightly playing the US missions in the title. The US suffered horrendous casualties in the course of this campaign as well. JonS did a nice job in 'Courage and Fortitude'. I was a little more timid in 'Montebourg'. I couldn't be timid if I was going to cover Epsom. Operation Epsom opened with a hellish artillery bombardment. And yet they still lost the first day and took terrible casualties in doing so. The Brits fell behind their creeping artillery barrage and so couldn't take advantage of it. The Germans hunkered down, let it pass and then got back into their fighting positions.BTW you get more artillery if you are playing the Green versions of the missions.

On a Saturday morning too... cool. Just in time for the weekend. Enjoy.

This is excellent news. Contrary to current popular belief, beta testers are not egocentric elite players. Most of us really care about fostering a good community here because it supports BFC and this benefits us all because it allows us all to keep creating new missions/campaigns for the community to play. I have no doubt that blow's campaign will be welcomed enthusiastically by the posters who are calling for massively extended or no time limits. Now you have a designer who is catering for your own particular needs. I encourage you guys to get behind him and help with his project and offer him all the support and encouragement that you can.

From the manual /* Campaign Header*/ [PLAYER FORCE] blue // options are: blue/red [HUMAN OPPONENT ALLOWED] no // no/yes So you can allow a Human opponent but I don't think anybody has ever crafted one that can be played this way. Until someone does, we won't know if it's possible.

I'm working on something with massive amounts of trenches for the AI controlled side and all the fortifications are hidden at the start of the scenario, including wire and bunkers. Are you playing an 'extracted' version of this mission, as in extracted from the campaign so that the mission can be played in single-play?

And so it begins... thanks a lot for doing this, Aris. Downloading now.

I really don't want to give out spoilers at this stage of the campaign. It's only been out for a week . However, I will say that those two tanks appear in two missions only. And the PIAT is quite capable of taking out the enemy AFV in mission 2 (if you can get it to hit:eek:) And you get lots of refits. The Cameronians get a refit before moving on to Grainville while the ASH get refitted before moving on to Gavrus. These refits represent both replacements and scrounging men off other companies that have taken heavy casualties. In all cases, you get a full refit so that there are no one-man sections or platoons without a Platoon HQ etc, at least until the next refit. But you don't get a full head-count. As you go on, your overall head-count will reduce your overall strength. That's about as much as I'm willing to give away for now.

I always play in Real Time but some of the testers play in WEGo. When I play RT, I also handicap myself with a few 'house rules'. For example, I rarely pause the game, only doing so when: a) I am calling in an air or artillery strike reinforcements arrive c) I'm really, really flummoxed d) I have to go and pee, whatever I also do not take unfair advantage of intelligence I obtain in the game vs the AI. If an enemy unit does not have a spotted icon, '?' I will not fire at its position. So if some of my boys are getting pasted and I have a tank with LoS to the building that they're taking fire from, I won't give that tank a 'Target' order to that house until it gets a '?'. This is a tough rule and sometimes it's very, very tempting to break it. But in my book, that's cheating and since I'm designing stuff for you guys to play, I avoid it like the plague. I don't fire at every possible enemy location when I'm playing either. I absolutely do not take advantage of my knowledge of all the AI set ups to plan a sneaky opening artillery barrage. (Again, this can be very tempting but when playtesting...) You guys must have noticed that I take some screenshots of the action from time to time? When I'm playing RT, I have the camera way down near the soldiers' shoulders so that I can experience the game at its very best. I miss a lot of course, and this also means that when I'm focussed on one part of the battlefield, there are units standing around doing nothing or are on autopilot. This is probably very inefficient as probably only 1/3 of my forces are being used. So, no, me playing RT with my own 'House rules' in place is not giving me an unfair advantage. And BTW, I know this will sound utterly insane :0, but sometimes I deliberately do something incredibly stupid which costs me some pixeltruppen so that I get a better feel for what you guys are going to experience when you're playing these missions. Assume that anything that I release was designed and playtested by me in RT using those rules and under those conditions (and I play EVERYTHING that I design). And if I had playtesters, then it was a mixed group so that they're tested both RT and WEGO.

Ah, this one looks like it might be very useful. Thanks for that link.

BTW, I'll be very willing to listen if anyone wants to direct me to any particularly good online resources for researching this. I've got a copy of Marc Milner's 'D-Day to Carpiquet' at the moment and I've used it to get the OBs for the battles.