Paper Tiger

I can't see any down-side to AI triggers :confused:. However, it will make designing good AI plans just that bit more intimidating to new designers.

If they're not fixed, 100%. A module usually contains two things: new content in the form of new formations, etc, and a new version of the game. The new version is usually released shortly after the module as a patch for the main game if the owner decides not to buy the module. If the bug isn't fixed in the new version, it's still there.

Care to be a bit more specific there, Mikey? Educated folks want to know...

In this case, the scenario designer made it very clear in the briefing that the player was to clear and occupy the objective. This fact was mentioned again in the Tac map which also displayed the objective buildings in great detail. Further, the handful of farm buildings in question occupy an objective box 14x17 action spots. Not much more I can do... Having said that, it is very frustrating when it happens. The CMx1 games victory flags had some kind of logic built into them that evaluated the relative strengths of each force to decide who owned the flag. It's a shame there isn't a similar sort of logic to the OCCUPY objective. ***********SPOILER-SPOILER************************** To the OP: Actually, if you read the briefing, you will find that you must also prevent the enemy from exiting the west board edge. You were unlucky to find one guy left on the map as they should all exit in good time. He must have got broken and refused to follow orders to run.

For more or less pure Infantry, I think Normal Dude's Task Force Panther woud fit the bill. Field Marshall Blucher has also done a number of small to medium sized Infantry-only campaigns. From my own work, 'USMC Gung Ho!' is basically an Infantry campaign with some vehicles in support in each mission. And the NATO Canadian campaign was originally designed as a pure Infantry campaign but had to be reworked to use the BattleGroup that BFC decided on. There are a few missions that are pure Infantry in that campaign.

Hi Gerry Well, playing them would definitely count as a spoiler. However, the campaign missions have 2+ AI plans so you might not get the Axis set-up you see by default here. H2H Eroudeville is quite a bit different from the campaign mission because the H2H version has airpower where the campaign mission doesn't. The German OB is tougher with more armour and more, and better, artillery as well. It's also longer than the original to allow the US player to exit some of his forces off the board. I'd imagine that this would be much harder to do against an Axis player who was competent with his armour.

Hi Broadsword First, are you looking specifically at the first mission, La Grand Hameau? I scored that one to give the German player a real chance to get a victory playing against a human opponent as well as to produce a wide range of results. A really good US performance that nets all the possible VP awards will get 350vps while the best the German can get in this case if 75vps. Result: Total US Victory. As the US takes more casualties, so will his victory margin drop. When he exceeds 10% casualties, the best win he can hope for is a Major Victory. As he gets to around 20+% his chances of drawing get higher. To actually lose the mission, the US player wouldhave to lose somewhere in the region of 40-50% of his force and given the drastic imbalance between the two forces and two players of roughly equal ablility, I'd say that was unlikely to happen. I would imagine that a German player would like to have a chance at winning this mission himself and not simply marking down the US player's margin of victory. So, if he can kill 30% of the US forces, he starts winning. He gets a US Tactical Defeat if he reaches 30% and it gets better and better after that the more he kills. So the net result is a very broad spectrum of victory conditions with Total Victories only going to the really good players.

I've just finished uploading two H2H Scenario packs to the Repository so you guys should be able to download them sometime later tonight or early next week... The first is a two-mission combo featuring H2H conversions of the two missions I finished off for another Beta tester: Buying the Farm It's a New Dawn Not much has changed here except that I have reworked the set-up zones and expanded the briefings. The second pack required considerably more work to get together.:eek: The Montebourg H2H scenario pack 1 The first scenario pack contains three missions from my 'Road to Montebourg' campaign. These are: La Grand Hameau Le Hamelet Eroudeville THESE ARE FOR H2H PLAY ONLY - There are no AI plans for either side. They have been scored to allow both sides the real chance to win a victory. Casualties taken in the course of the mission will matter to both sides but will be particularly punitive for the attacking player. Because they are adaptions of 'historical' missions, the US side is expected to control the objective at the end of the mission. However, to provide the German player with an incentive to fight, he will be rewarded with the win if he can hurt the US side badly in the course of the mission. They may lose the objective but they will still win the mission. Further, these casualty restrictions may actually allow the German side to contest an objective at the end of a mission. Mission 1 - H2H La Grand Hameau Is a small, Infantry-only mission on a tiny map. A single US Infantry company attacks a small complex of farm buildings as part of the fighting to secure the Georgian ridge on the 7th June. A very small German force is positioned in the complex and must attempt to inflict as many casualties upon the enemy force as possible. Because there is very little chance of the Axis player successfully holding the objective at the end of this mission, he must have something to play for. Therefore, if the Axis player can inflict 30% or more casualties on the US force, then the victory will go to him. Without this casualty threshold, the most realistic result most Axis players could hope for would be a DRAW. Mission duration: 40 minutes (+5 mins extra time) Mission 2 - H2H Le Hamelet Medium-sized combined arms action on a small map featuring a single US Infantry company with tanks and artillery in support assault a prepared German defensive position atop the Georgian ridge on the morning of 7th June. Germans have a number of powerful heavy weapons available to them in this mission which can badly hurt the US side if he is careless. Once again, the US player will have to be mindful of the casualties he takes in the course of this mission. Mission duration: 1 hour (+5 mins extra time) Mission 3 - H2H Eroudeville This is an adaption of the campaign finale and I had intended to have US air support in the original. For the H2Hversion, the air support has been reinstated so this mission has almost everything in it. Both sides have around two companies of Infantry supported by armour and lots of artillery at their disposal and are fighting on a large, and reasonably open, map. The German forces have received a bit of a buff in this version so both sides should have real chance to win this mission. Control of Eroudeville will be essential to win this mission. Both sides know this. Mission duration: 1 hour 40 minutes (+15 mins extra time) I plan to rework some other missions from this campaign as my schedule permits. I'd like to do some 2/505 PARA INF missions next. I will be very happy to support these missions so if you feel that they need a bit of tweeking, post it here and I'll consider it.

I've got work on four already done: Buying the Farm It's a New Dawn le Grand Hameau le Hamelet The first two are reworkings of the stock missions that shipped with the title. The other two are H2H versions of the Montebourg campaign missions. I'm just winding up work on the fifth , Eroudeville and then I'll post them up sometime tomorrow. edit to add - jeez, I thought I'd deleted this post and was going to make the announcement tomorrow.

That message indicates that Objective X was a TOUCH objective and not an OCCUPY objective and that you have fulfilled that part of the mission already i.e. earned the points for touching it. You no longer need to worry about occupying it and can move on to the next objective.

It is entirely possible for the scenario designer to reward a player for having a pre-determined % his forces in good shape at the end of a scenario as well as to punish the player who has burned through all his ammo for that matter as well. If there are no entries in the condition or ammo parametrers, you don't have to worry other than the effects their condition has on their performance in the mission. This lack of concern about either is one very good reason why I prefer designing/playing campaigns to stand-alones.

Okay, I confess, I've never played a single mission H2H so I'm not sure how 'Cease Fire' works when you're playing a human opponent. I think both sides must agree to the cease-fire before it can happen. Is that right? The reason I ask is because I am going to convert a few of my Montebourg campaign missions for H2H play only. There will be no AI plans in any of them. They all employ my own scoring system which may need to be modified if one side can prematurely end the mission. I've scored all my missions so that the Defender will automatically get a good win if the Attacker ceases fire early in the mission. (No Meeting Engagements in the Montebourg campaign) This could happen quite quickly as the only real work I need to do is write a briefing for the German side and rework the existing Tac maps to contain the relevant info for that side. Otherwise, I suspect that the force balance is already quite good in most. If I can get the time to write the briefings during breaks at work next week, I will try and get 'Le Grand Hameau', 'Le Hamelet' and 'Eroudeville' up first.

I've got all of Aris's excellent vehicle mods installed and when something is present that he hasn't modded yet, the omission is positively glaring. I'd like to see those JgdPzIVs next...

That's a given seeing as how I've been using Destroy Unit scoring conventions in every mission I've devised since I joined the Beta group back in Jan 2009. I like to see players get lesser victories when they take lots of casualties while 'winning' the mission. Only really good players should be able to get Total Victories. Further, they're usually skewed to punish the attacker more than the defender. I'm happy to bump up the experience of a few German units in the Farm mission but otherwise, the force balance is okay in both of these?

I finished off two missions for one playtester that were included on the disk. They were: Buying the Farm It's a New Dawn While they have 'playable against X AI or H2H' tags, they were never playtested H2H and I am going to rework them to make them more suitable for competitive play. I am aware that there are huge issues with 'Buying the Farm' as a H2H mission but I suspect that 'It's a New Dawn' is actually quite well balanced as it stands. So, if any of you guys have played either of these H2H, I'd appreciate your feedback on how they could be balanced for H2H play with special attention to the balance of forces. I've not touched 'It's a New Dawn' yet but I've already made the following changes to the 'Farm' mission: Replaced the patchwork German set up area with one large set-up zone, Removed the hidden German EXIT objective

Why don't you start a thread with a title like 'Which scenarios are designed for H2H play?'. I know JonS's 'Baugin' mission is one and I'm sure there are a few more that shipped on the disk that had H2H play strongly in mind. And I can say fer sure that 'Buying the Farm' is not a good H2H mission in spite of the H2H tag (my bad). Then, once you have a list, stick to those missions for the time being. There are sure to be more to come. It's a real shame that Mark Ezra didn't make any of his H2H missions for the WW2 title. He's a very good designer for H2H play. Perhaps you guys can persuade him to work more on them than producing QB maps. (Personally, I think the community should step up here and produce more QB maps )

Long post but I'll try and respond to the important points. First, 'Barkmann's Corner' is not my mission to feel offended about. Personally, I think the Designer is thick-skinned enough to take KRs comments onboard without taking any offense :cool: but he's not around just now to do so. However, that may not always be the case. I happen to think that the most valuable members of this community are the artists who produce scenarios and mods. Some of those folks will have more 'artistic' temperaments than your average wargamer and that needs to be respected if you wish to encourage the growth of this community. Negative feedback can be very helpful when it is sweetened with some positive feedback. A sweetener will go a very long way to helping both the emerging and existing talent to develop. Otherwise, you're just smacking them and a smack without something positive is bad in almost every context in life. I appreciate that you are trying to raise the awareness of the scenario designing community of the need for a scoring system that rewards each player's perfomance. I agree with you 100% that this is absolutely necessary for missions that are played competitively and ladder play. However, Barkmann's Corner has no such 'Playable H2H' tag and so is not really a good example of a mission that is badly scored. If you play scenarios without an H2H tag, you should not be disappointed when they are not scored for H2H play. However, the number of true H2H missions that shipped with the disk is very small (I think 'Bois du Baugin' was the only one that was designed first and foremost for H2H play). Finally, I do design 100% for my own satisfaction and I have a pretty good idea of my work's worth;). The fact that others enjoy playing them is just a bonus. I love this game so I'll still design for myself even if nobody else enjoys my work. At the moment, I have no WW2 missions under my belt that are suitable for competitive play. No doubt that will change at some point in the future and if there is a demand for my campaign missions to be made available for H2H play, I might be persuaded to do so.

Ah, the pissiness of some of the posts about scenarios on these boards! Barkmann's Corner? You play that one to have some fun re-enacting the historical action, that's all. Why get all pissy about the Victory Points? Did you enjoy playing a mission? Yes = good scenario. No = not so good. I find the lack of respect for the designer's feelings a bit much. We need to encourage more people to get working with the editor and not start pointing fingers or being overly-critical of their work.

I suspect that mortars are very well done at the moment but I'm not convinced that WW2 artillery was quite as precise as it appears to be in the game either. I believe in its accuracy in CMSF but in WW2, I'm not so sure. I'm working on something just now where the German AI side has a FOS with a module of Light Nebelwerfer rockets on call. Playing in Scenario Author mode I watched the guy call in a point target and when the rounds came in, they all fell within a very tight little pattern indeed. I remember back to my school wargaming club when somebody first modelled a Nebelwerfer and the plastic artillery fire overlay for it was huge. After playing this particular mission several times, I can't get those Nebelwerfers to scream in and devastate a portion of the battlefield. They fire more like mortars when their call-in pattern is tight. And the same goes with Naval artillery. It's just so damned precise that it's beyond belief. I like the idea of an artillery box as opposed to a point or linear target, especially for the bigger stuff, but I have no idea how accurate that would be. I'd like the player to be able to set the centre point of the box but have its minimum boundary automatically laid by parameters set by the scenario designer with the option to expand it further. Very board-gamey I know but that's where it all started for me.

Mo74 AI Plans can be really simple or very complex. You can put all the AI units into one group (They go into Group 1 by default so you don't have to do anything) and paint one huge movement objective on the Victory locations and the AI wil move towards them. It might give you a challenge at first until you learn the ropes. Then, when you're ready to tackle something a bit tougher, you can create a second AI group and co-ordinate them. Eventually, you can have a total of 8 AI groups with 16 orders each and have loads of fun co-ordinating them together into a coherent attack. You can randomise the start locations of AI controlled forces if you use different AI plans. It's possibe to create quite a bit of uncertainty even with very simple AI plans.

Don't worry sir. None of us want our work to stress-out or otherwise confuse the customers. Leaving the hidden exit zone out of the briefing was a bad oversight on my part. I usually lay out all the victory conditions very clearly for the players in my missions. I guess by the time I got round to doing this, I was 'tired and shagged out after a long squalk'. The 'protect your heavy weapons' instruction in the briefing was from the original briefing. I subbed out the original Flak 88 with the 50mm AT gun and the 75mm INF gun (I love those). Use them to kill the enemy but protect them well as ou'll have virtually no chance to exit them. BTW, you should try playing this mission as the Americans. It's a lot more fun

Yeah, I'll be waiting for these as well. Very nice looking work indeed. And I don't mind the painted flowerpots or lamps either. Viewed from certain angles, they'll look just fine.

Back again. There's not much more I can say about this. I finished it off for another tester after I finished work on Montebourg. The EXIT zone was my addition, which I put in for the reasons I explained above, as were the AI plans. But other than to record the equipment changes in the OBs I made, I left the original briefings in the mission. (I HATE writing briefings!) So, the omission of the hidden EXIT location in the briefing slipped by. My bad and I'm sorry if it has spoiled your fun! My focus in the time we had remaining was on making the mission playable and testing the new AI plans (a HUGE amount of work as there are 5 German plans and 3 US plans all had to be tested by me alone with no help from anyone). I am far more rigorous when I'm designing my own mission though...

When you're playing US v the AI, you will find a lot of German units routing away from advancing US forces. Without the EXIT zone, those units just sit uselessly on the board edges until the US player comes and shoots them up. So I added a hidden EXIT zone along that board edge that would allow these routers to exit to safety depriving the US player of the casualty points for them. The EXIT objective will allow you to exit any German unit regardless of its condition. With one exception, the AI side is scripted to sit in its opening positions. They will only abandon them if they break under fire and start moving towards the board edge where they can rout to safety. (Sorry. A tad distracted as my wife has just come back in and is quite excited about something. I'll answer your questions later.)

I'm going to hazard a guess and say that he's playing 'Buying the Farm' as the German side. It has a very small map and a time limit to match. There is a one-line exit zone at the back of the German position to allow those broken or routing German units from piling up against the east board edge awaiting slaughter by advancing US forces. I HATED seeing that happen when I was playtesting this mission.