Paper Tiger

Excellent find. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

I'm not sure how a new level of Strat AI could interact with the current system without breaking it. Do you mean move towards VP locations of its own volition or when they change hands? I play exclusively against the AI and I find the current timing scripting, along with the fact that we can have up to five AI plans for any mission can present me with a far greater challenge than the old CMx1 AI could. The last point alone is the most important for me as it means I can replay missions I designed myself without me knowing what the AI is going to do or where its units are at set-up so as I can blast them into oblivion with my pre-planned artillery barrage. Now, triggers will go a long way to giving us what we all want. I can't wait to get started work with them when they finally arrive. The current system could be substantially improved as well simply by allowing us to use 16 or 24 or whatever, AI groups instead of the eight we are presently restricted to using. For example, you have a lot of control over what an AI group will do when your AI group consists of only one vehicle. I will add that I am in the middle of playtesting a new mission and I've seen the Tac AI do some pretty impressive things that I didn't know it could do, like reposition an AT gun to fire on forces that are out of its LOS. We're not talking about swivelling in place either When changes do come, they will be in a new title and so I don't expect we'll see them in CMBN, or CMSF either. I think we're stuck with what we've got for the life of CMBN as any change might break existing work.

Excellent work... again. I will await these eagerly and look forward to seeing what you do next.

LOL! When I was a young teenager, I used to play tabletop wargames on my Grandfather's huge train set in the loft of his house. It was the perfect set up for that. My grandpa had houses, trees, orchards, hedges, and bushes etc all carefully placed to make a realistic looking village surrounded by fields for his trains to run through. Then I arrived with my kit on a Saturday afternoon and started blowing things up. (I had lots of Churchill tanks.) Great, great days... I downloaded the PCO demo but it was too much like CMBB for my taste. Don't get me wrong, I loved CMBB but after a few months of 'Shock Force', there was no going back. And I am a RT player. I don't want to be restricted to WEGo again. It takes so l-o-n-g to complete a mission. I prefer to play my scenarios through in one sitting.

The effect of marked mines is that units refuse to walk/drive over them. So, mines on a bridge or on a road with bocage on either side are nasty. Are you sure? In my experience, you can give an Infantry unit a 'Move' order and they will move safely through the marked minefield. Give them a faster move order and they will still run into mines. I don't know about vehicular mines as their action spot is usually blocked by the hulking tank that set it off anyway. :eek:

A clear Blue target line should indicate a good, clear LoS. Jaresh, if you could post a screenshot the next time you see this happen, it will help us a lot to determine if there is an issue here. And, errr... welcome to the boards.

Hamelet v2, eh? That means that you lost the previous mission, 'Le Grand Hameau' and as a result, both your tanks and howitzer support have been diverted to help out there. So you've pulled one of the most difficult variants of this mission. It's a toughie but you have plenty of time so locate the enemy, destroy it with whatever you have at hand, (you might still have some ammo remaining for those 81mm mortars) and then move in. You are correct that the AI player has zero ability to react to the Human player's moves so take full advantage of this. Take your time, hit them hard and move on to the next strongpoint. Good luck and you have my respect for sticking with the result rather than reloading for a better one. If you can win this mission, it will help you with the following missions. And welcome to the boards...

When I'm walking through Epping forest, for example, I sometimes imagine having to fight through it and, I can tell you, I'd far rather be defending from concealed ambush positions than trying to stalk through in an attacking force. The Battle of Epping Forest, eh? That's been done... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOmCXCS1zSw

I'm really looking forward to seeing some StuGs and the JgdPz IV getting the Aris treatment as well. The modded vehicles look so real in the game...

Amen to that! I was fooling around with a 14" Battleship this afternoon in a mission I'm constructing and the shells landed very tightly. I got two salvoes: the first saw all the shells land within a very small space, 2-3 action spots, and the second came in elsewhere in the target area but again, very tightly grouped into 2x2 action spots. The same as you reported. This from a battleship about 14 miles from the target area. Is this realistic?

Hmm, I'm not sure I agree with successive losses resulting in penalizing the player. A good CO should realize when his units need additional help to get the job done. I.e., if Company A has failed twice to take a hill, then the Battalion C.O. is not likely to send them up a 3rd time without additional assets. Just doesn't make sense. However, I do like the idea that if the player keeps winning that it should get tougher for him. After all, everyone likes a challenge more than a cake walk. All good points. Just wait and see what the Commonwealth module brings But let's not derail a thread about help for the German campaign.

It would be nice to have separate replacement levels for: Armor Light Armor Trucks and the like Infantrye.g. after a battle the force could replace infantry losses, but not armor losses. +1. But it's not likely to happen until we get a new UI. I'd also like to see a seperate parameter for re-equipping units that lose their MGs/mortars etc. BTW, it is quite possible to have units gain experience between missions. The designer can alter the core unit's experience in each mission but it would need to be done in every mission thereafter as it won't 'stick'. I haven't done this yet as most of my campaigns take place within a very short span of time but if you were to have units fighting in a three4 month campaign, that's how I would do it. What I have done is have core units' morale increase or decline according to their level of success in earlier missions.

In many cases, losing a mission will send you to a variant of the original mission or even a whole new one. I usually punish players who lose missions in some logical way in my campaigns and the more missions you lose, the more the penalties accumulate until you are eventually ejected from the campaign. 'USMC Gung Ho!' is a good example of this when losses mean that you will not receive additional support in subsequent missions. However, I have been known to punish players who win every mission by giving them a tougher opponent to face in the next mission ('The Road to Dinas' was the first campaign to feature this) It's up to the player to decide if he wants to win every mission or to suck the loss up, accept the consequences of his loss and follow the story. I prefer the latter but I suspect that I am in the minority here.

I agree that the Churchill should be able to crash through bocage. However, from reading units diaries of Churchill units that did this, it was very hard on the crews and so should not be without some risk to them.

This is fantastic work. How did I miss it? Thanks so much for sharing your work with us. I am about to embark on a few missions that feature the medium and heavy german tanks you've modded and this will make the playtesting experience even richer. I add my voice to the chorus hoping that you will continue to work on the remaining vehicles. cheers PT

Have you seen Le Manoire De La Fiere? Only in Google Earth and photos from the battle in WW2. Sadly, I live too far away for me to take a weekend trip over to check these sites out in person anymore. It's a castle... literally - it has a tall tower with thick granite walls and strategically-placed loop-holes big enough to poke a gun out of, and not much more. Well, it's a manor house, probably a Knight's house from the Medieval period when they built these small fortified manor houses as shelters for the community in the event of a raid or attack. The community could gather within their walls and they were sufficiently castle-like to deter all but a serious attacker. They had stout curtain walls and some had a gatehouse. I'm not surprised that there was a tower. (You can find similar towers on old buildings in Aberdeen in Scotland.) Normandy is blessed with plenty of these fortified buildings. We're not talking about constructing small towns or entire villages with buildings like these but they are certainly not rare in Normandy and one per village is about right. They are present in good numbers in SE England as well and I have been inside them. They are cold and dark inside, even at the height of summer because of the thickness of their castle-like stone walls. And they make very comfortable houses for a single family to live in nowadays. There really is no way in the game to adequately represent this. I'm not sure I'd agree with that statement. It's certainly true that we can't adequately represent this at present. I'd just like to see a sturdier structure introduced at some point that would. I doubt that it would be a big deal to do either. Further west (2km-ish) of La Fiere is Chateau De Amfreville (dubbed: 'grey castle' by the paras - hints at it's nature) has a huge castle-type twin-towered gatehouse and very thick walls, these are the 'stout Norman farmhouses'... small castles, positions built specifically for fighting and defence. I guess castles are sort of like really big, well-fortified farms Yup, that would be an actual castle and I can assure you that I very familiar with those and am not confusing the two. I am not lobbying for castles to be constructed in the editor. I'd just like to have a stout Norman farmhouse and barn. (I'd also like to have some of the stone walls reskinned so that they look less brick-like. I am familiar with ancient stone walls and the game skins are too modern.) BTW, the Germans used 81mm mortars, right? I think they are sufficiently powerful to do considerable damage to these ancient structures. Thus the need for 'artillery or armour support' when assaulting these structures. I'm not so sure that the US 60mm mortar was quite so effective but I'm certainly no expert and am very happy to be corrected (politely, of course). We'll just have to wait and see how effective the Brit 2" mortar is against troops in buildings.

Have a re-read of Keegan's 'Six Armies in Normandy', p99 to 102, (The 1st/505th at the Merderet) if you think that buildings in Normandy shouldn't offer much cover to defending infantry. These stone-buillt farmhouses were veritable fortresses even to WW2 weapons. You needed artillery or armour to reduce these strongpoints. The MG team holed up in the Manor team held up an entire company of US paras and their 60mm mortars were useless against them. In the game, you can kill the defenders in buildings with a single 60mm mortar without much difficulty. There were a significant number of these stout Norman farmhouses and barns peppered around behind the landing zones and they were significant enough threats to attackers to warrant mentioning. (ibid. p171) We're not talking about town buildings here which may offer less protrection to a defender.

I suspect a part of this Lemming behaviour could be eliminated if units did not behave so bravely when they come under fire. If a squad with NORMAL morale takes a casualty, perhaps, it would be better if its current movement order was cancelled in the same way that a HUNT order is cancelled when the recipient spots an enemy unit. Units with higher morale could continue for a while longer with Fanatics rushing head-long into the maelstrom. This would make the AI opponent a little less likely to keep running forward blindly, or at least add some time before the game issues them with their next movement order to get to their group's objective. I know that when I'm playing, I will cancel a movement order when I see units literally running into trouble. (On those rare, RARE occasions when I played WEGO, I would often shout at the screen 'Stop running, you idiots!' when this happened.) Of course, I will then issue my units with a new and entirely different movement order appropriate to the new tactical situation. The AI won't be able to do this.

Hi guys Thanks for the interest. Just a quick update. I am working my ar$e off just now getting a whole load of new maps done for my next project and won't have much time to finish off the Montebourg maps for a wee while. I'm not sure when I'll be able to finish off the three that are in progress. TBH, there's not much left to do to finalise them and so, if I get sick of map work, I'll maybe finish them off over a weekend.

Funny. I have actually been thinking along these lines these last couple of weeks as well. But when we move to the fighting on the Commonwealth front, artillery will play an even more important role in the missions, especially when the Germans are on the offensive. I don't particularly want to have missions that are simply artillery shoots so I'm going to have to get creative to keep it realistic. Not much fun when your success in the mission centres on where you position your FOO.

LOL. I just read an account of a squadron of Churchills that did just that during Operation Bluecoat

I've been reading up a lot on operations on the other side of the landings and it seems that tanks were seriously confined to driving along roads by the bocage. The bocage was not 'tank country'. If you allow tanks to pass through bocage even with a small time penalty, you would make the bocage 'tank country' as the tanks would be able to cruise through the fields with their infantry following behind using the breaches they created. I'm not reading anything that supports that idea. I read accounts of tanks advancing without infantry support through bocage and having to take a chance every time they turned a corner that they would run into an ambush. This would not be possible in CMBN as you could just drive your tanks through the bocage and outflank your ambushers.

Cemetary Hill by Andreas 'Germanboy'. I remember it well. I have never won that mission. That mission was notorious and it played a large part in my creative thinking when I started designing missions of my own.

I enjoyed reading the AAR. However, I would appreciate it if you could warn people here that link you posted to that thread on other board contains posts from some folks I'd rather not read. Nothing personal. I simply don't want to waste any of my time with them.

Hi Gerry No, it's not a game engine restriction. Missions can be as short as 10 minutes if that's what the designer wants. I don't really want to play a mission that is over an hour in duration any more unless it is in some way special. I prefer to finish my missions in one session, in RT with very few pauses. Quite a few folks like to play missions where they have lots of time to recon the enemy positions, carefully prepare everything and then take their time assaulting the objective and that's fine. I've crafted a few of that ilk myself. But it's also fun to cut through all that and get straight into the meat of the mission, the assault on the objective itself. Your guys start the mission already poised to strike and the clock is ticking. 10-30 minutes of pure mayhem.