Paper Tiger

What game is missing is heavy and light buildings. I would like to see different categories of buildings too. I keep reading about stout Norman farmhouses that presented serious difficulties to attacking Allied forces. One famous example being the farmhouse at La Fiere which was a formidable structure. A very small German force held up a much stronger Allied force there on D-Day. These very old buildings, medieval manor houses, were very solidly constructed like miniature castles and were quite common in Normandy. Some are still standing today even after experiencing the rigours of combat in WW2. I certainly don't expect ALL buildings in the game to offer this level of protection but, apart from churches, I haven't found anything quite that stout yet.

Okay, I'll bite but I'm no expert. IMO, Hitler lost the war when he declared war on the US after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour.

Excellent work! Obviously, I spent far more time working with the bocage and not walls for the content I generated for the Normandy title. I'm using a lot more walls in my current work for the Commonwealth module and I was just thinking the other day that the stock walls look too modern. This will make working on these maps more pleasing. Cheers.

Bl00dy hell! They don't half like those screenshots I took for the title. Every one a Montebourg I see MD finally got round to posting a review. 5 out of 10! That's a great score from him especially seeing as how the negatives in his review are just niggles for me, animations, breaching bocage with tanks, no random map-maker, scenario editor is too complicated, etc. Obviously, they're a really big deal for him otherwise he wouldn't have focussed so much on them in his review. That's probably the highest score he's given to any BFC release since CMAK. He must have liked it in spite of the niggles

Ha! I'm a bit late to this one. I'd have loved to have the ability to restrict scenario-mission 'pre-planned' artillery barrages to bombarding locations that appropriate spotters can observe. I thought this was all fine in the Modern Era but in WW2, it feels a bit too god-like, especially as there were many instances where the allies, or the Germans, were heading into relatively unknown territory, even not aware that the enemy was present. In WW2, most Infantry companies sport 2-3 on-board mortars in addition to any off-map assets. These on-board mortars also benefit from the god-like pre-plan allowing the attacker to target a particular junction deep within the enemy position with pin-point accuracy. It's certainly true that you can prevent the attacker from doing this by bringing in the artillery as a reinforcement after 5 minutes. But this means that you will also have to remove each platoon's individual mortar as well (think US Airborne Infantry here). This is a very ugly hack. BTW, when you are the defender, you should expect AI-controlled artillery to bombard your set-up locations almost every time you play a mission and plan your set up with this in mind. Having it land anywhere else is a criminal waste of the AI's artillery. I'm not such a big fan of having this happen when I'm the attacker but this really did happen quite a lot in Normandy and so, as long as it doesn't happen every time, I'm prepared to go on with the mission and play with the hand I've been dealt.

The auto-surrender only applies to the AI controlled side. I once played on after losing my entire force. That's not much fun, I admit. However, heavy casualties will cause your Global morale to fall so much that it will prevent you from doing very much with the survivors.

Um, this makes it sound like we should shelve the game for a few months Nah! It just means that you shouldn't get too excited about it being a 'Release Candidate'. Some folks might expect it tomorrow. Nobody knows when the patch will be released. It might be before this weekend, or towards the end of the month, or, etc, etc. We really don't know. I have scenario designs I'm sitting on And the game works fine just now. All the content that shipped with the title was created using V1.0, as is all the user-created content uploaded to the Repository to date and it's not too shabby.

Missed this one. Yes, I'd go with 'Devil's Descent' as your next campaign as well. I have never played any of the C&F missions (way too many units to control for my taste) so I have no idea how RTM stacks up against it difficulty-wise. For the most part, I'd imagine RTM is a lot easier though. Only three of the sixteen missions were intentionally designed to be 'difficult'. The rest were designed to be fun.

herr oberst PaperTiger makes some incredibly good maps and battles. Not in this campaign, he didn't I believe Sergei is responsible for the School/University missions.

No, it's not possible unfortunately.

Mission 7, eh? That would be 'Labrynth'. The German units in that mission are the same units that you fought earlier in 'Turnbull's Stand' so they are core forces and the campaign keeps track of their kills too. It gives the player an added incentive to hang aroung just a wee bit longer to kill a few more enemies...

Hi Blackcat You'll be 'happy' to hear that both the 2/505 and the 2/325 missions are all finished and from this point on, all the fighting will be done by the 2/8. So their condition is no longer important. There are three more missions left in the campaign: Ecausseville The Farmhouse, and Eroudeville Ecausseville was designed to be tough. Historically, the Allies lost this one very badly but I can't recall anyone having any real difficulty with this one to date so perhaps I'm just not as good a player as I think I am However, if you do exactly what the Allies did in real life, you'll very likely get the historical result. I'll look forward to hearing how you get on with the final three.

Secondly, I was aware from quite early on of some German units on my extreme right flank on about a level with my first fighting position. I knew they were there but as they wouldn't cause me any problems I decided to ignore them save for a couple of squads to screen that flank. When the game was over and I reviewed the map those German units had left their starting positions and had moved back towards their MLR. It looks as though the AI was reacting to my moves. I have never seen that before either. Mr. Tiger, if you read this would you care to comment? Certainly. As you noticed earlier, ther defending force is quite small. Neither is it uber in any way, i.e. Veteran+ experience, High+ morale or even +2 leadership. It's a small, bog-standard German force and so position is everything. The AI is scripted to perform a very mobile fall-back defence in this mission, and other missions in the campaign. I spent a LOT of time testing each AI plan in this mission to gauge the time units should spend in their positions before the 'enemy' was able to overwhelm them or call in artillery. So, although it might look like the AI is reacting to your moves, it is just following orders. There are four plans in this mission and each one is different. Because I start with AI plan 1, I generally script AI plan 2 to do something quite different from the first plan so that a player who played the mission once against it and anticipates the AI's movements will find it counters his counter-moves. In this case, the third AI plan is also a counter to plan 2 while plan 4 is utterly, utterly different. You got plan 4 - Fortress La Vallee. I spent a lot of time working on the AI for this particular mission because it is a very important one in the campaign. My real aim when creating the campaign was to make it replayable. I wanted the campaign to be first and foremost, fun to play so that a player may later return to it and try again and see if he can get a better result. Thus, in most cases, the US player will be attacking at good odds with plenty of support on call against credible German defenders. By putting in the work, I hope that players who return to it will get a fresh experience when replaying it.

The patch that screwed up older missions was the v1.11 patch which introduced the AI 'Bug-out' behaviour. Prior to that, the AI pretty much stayed in its positions and fought there until it died. Afterwards, it would run away which was both good and 'bad'. Good because you could clear the AI out of buildings more easily and bad because they would sometimes bug out into building locations deeper within the objective and could be really nasty when you encountered them.

I'd absolutely love to have the ability to place burning buildings and other terrain features in the scenario editor at the very least. I also think the lack of burning terrain makes the missions look too pretty. I don't need to have that fire spread or to start during the mission just yet although the lack of it is gradually growing in importance.

Blackcat I will add that the barbed wire moves around from plan to plan as well so the eastern attack can sometimes work as well. It sounds like you drew the 'Perfect Storm' plan there Strong 'Goulet' backed up by barbed wire on the left. There are four distinctly different AI plans in 'Hell in the hedgerows', each with equal weight of being selected. Just be grateful that I didn't use minefields in this one Agua Glad to hear you enjoyed it. I wanted the finale to be special and memorable (in a nice way! )

I have to confess, those test results are not what I'd expect to see either. I can understand that folks looking over a wall are more likely to be spotted than troops prone in the open. But that's a different situation from them being as equally vulnerable (or more so) as an enemy force prone in the open. This means that 'prone in the open' is marginally better than 'kneeling behind a wall'. I'd have expected the guys behind the wall to have some advantage in a fire fight over the guys on the ground.

Piecekeeper There is no air support in any of the official campaigns or missions that shipped with the title. At one time, there was air support in Ecoqueneuville, Les Licornets, and the finale Eroudeville though... Fetchez Yes, I designed most of the missions to be winnable but the real challenge would be to win them by taking as few casualties as possible. I think, one day soon, I'll return to this and significantly bump up the difficulty of some of the missions. So all this feedback is very useful as I'll know what to change. LemuelG We're all eagerly awaiting the arrival of AI triggers. At present, the AI is totally unable to respond to a developing situation. I can't wait to get my hands on that and see what I can make the AI do. I admit I could have made this one a bit more challenging and paid more attention to denying the use of the road to the allied player. I would have liked to have placed a few minefields here and there along it to accomplish this but, historically, the Germans had just moved into this area and probably wouldn't have had enough time to prepare such defences. Only an hour or so earlier, they were attacking the north of Ste Mere Eglise and so defence was probably not on their mind.

LemuelG I was able to watch your video at work this afternoon (a very quiet day indeed). That was well done. I suspect you'd nailed some of the road defenders with your opening barrage as it wasn't meant to be that easy. An added bonus would be that it forced the StuG commanders to button up as well. A mere 20+ minutes to take this one down with only 7 WIA!!! I am beginning to think I made those two missions a bit too easy now. Ah well... that's life.

tiger123 sorry, but the AT Gun moves from spot to spot in different AI plans. Blackcat Yup, 'Labrynth' can be really easy if you did well in 'Turnbull's Stand' - they're the same German units that you fought in that mission. A player who didn't do so well there would find this one a tad more challenging. The accounts of the fighting that took place on the 7th June to the north of Ste Mere Eglise don't indicate that the Germans were able to put up much of a fight and so the plan was to have these two missions rated 'Easy'. Thus the big guns... Besides, it's a 16 mission campaign and I didn't want each mission to be hear-tearingly difficult to play. I want folks to finish this one and have fun doing so. I can count the number of times I've read an End of Campaign AAR report from my previous campaigns on two hands and still have fingers left to spare. Making difficult missions is actually really easy to do. Making fun ones is not so easy. It's a LOT of work creating a campaign and it makes a change for me to get to read people's AARs right up to the end of it. I'm lovin' it! The roads in both these missions are covered in one of the AI plans. From what I'm seeing from pics posted here of 'Licornets', I see lots of folks getting the second plan and not the 'PT plan'. You might find 'Licornets' has more teeth when you get that one. LemuelG I'll be taking a look at that video later today as well as the Grand Hameau Asasault AAR posted in another thread. Thanks a lot for posting them guys.

Hah! Holding Action can be a real bitch depending on which AI plan you get. There are two very different AI plans in that one and it is important to keep tabs on what the AI is doing while you're playing this mission. I won't issue any spoilers other than that You definitely got the more difficult of the two plans though. The counter-attacking units arrive from the EBE and move to their objectives. With regards to the 75mm artillery missing from Le Ham, That's a mistake in the briefing. There used to be, but towards the end of developing this mission, I subbed the 75mm Light Howitzers for that platoon of Stuarts and neglected to delete the text from the briefing. Oops...

Nice result second time around there There are four distinctly different AI plans in this mission and in some, you'll have to fight for Le Goulet while in others, you'll get in without a shot. So it can play differently when you fire it up again. A in in this missions smoothes over your progress through the remaining Le Ham missions. Good luck with Breakthrough. If you liked the map for 'Hell', you'll love the map for Breakthrough.

Yes, I thought that's what you meant. It doesn't look like it's going to work so I'd recommend that you either forget about that second battle and leave it at 80% or include it in your campaign and let the player take the casualties, or not, by himself.

Oops. My bad. I described the scenario as playable as ALLIED vs AXIS AI or H2H. But it is not ideal for H2H play because of the tight restrictions on the Axis player when he sets up. It was thoroughly playtested as Human Allied v Axis AI (5 plans), and to a lesser extent, Allied AI (3 plans) v Human Axis but never H2H.

I take it you are talking about changing the headcount of core units that have already seen action in an earlier mission? And therefore is possibly not at full strength? If this is the case, then I have no idea what will happen if you reduce their headcount. I've never tried it to see what would happen and I suspect none of the other testers have either. I have started a campaign with core units with reduced head counts and later, when they refit, they go back to 100% strength and not their original headcount. So I have no idea what will happen when you reduce core units further.