Paper Tiger
-
Posts
3,617 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Paper Tiger
-
-
14 hours ago, PEB14 said:
Oops ... wrong quote
Edit to add:
I was responding to Warts and All's post above...
What an ungrateful bastidge - it would take me less than 30 seconds to count 50+ coins and I'd be grateful for the sale.
Not to mention the free space the box would give me in the shop.
My crush was on Anne Wilson but that's an earlier time, back in the Heart - Little Queen - Dog and Butterfly - Magazine era.
Now a few comments on my OB for Turnbull's force. Most of the sources I've read agree that he had a team of 42 men including himself. This included two BAR teams and a Bazooka team. There is some disagree ment on the number of AT guns though, some say two but having read Keegan's account of the morning, I've made some assumptions - the paras jogged to Neuville from Ste Mere Eglise. They found a .30mm machine gun along the way. Vandervoort arrived in a jeep with a 57mm AT gun which was given to the Bazooka team in a building near the road. He sent a runner to communicate with Turnbull from which I infer that he was near the orchard and not on the east side of the road.
I'm going with Turnbull's HQ (5 men), 2 squads (24 men - 2nd squad w Bazooka)), two BARs (4 men), 1 Para LMG (2 men), 57mm AT gun team (7 men) reduced strength for a total of 42 men. (The AT gun team is not core so should be okay when the mcampaign is complied. However, sometimes the reduction rounds up rather than down and you can occasionally get 43 men. But they're AT gunners so it's not going to break anything. And that's the best I can do with the way the game engine is.
I'm glad the French tanks and one of the AT teams are gone because this is how playtesting went:
First tank shows up - one shot - one kill.
Second tank shows up - one shot - one kill
Marder shows its face (MGs can take it out but again, one shot - one kill.
Leaving my two AT guns with about 12 rounds of ammo left to rip the German squads apart. They are very effective when used against infantry. Easy win for Turnbull.
So that's my OB for this mission. I have approximately two companies of German infantry with two StuGs on the attack so I've made the infantry Green and Low morale so that they're not too much for the defender. You'll need to keep them suppressed so that they don't overwhelm you with machine gun fire. Now it's the mortars which will kill you which is how it went down that day.
-
6 hours ago, Warts 'n' all said:
Oh, yes. That would make sense. I'd forgotten about them. Blame a rotten cold. Were they included in AH's "The Longest Day" by any chance?
Avalon Hill's 'The Longest day?' That was an absolute MONSTER. It was really expensive and just setting it up took longer than most other AH wargames took to play to completion. Believe me, I wanted to buy it and the guy in the wargaming shop tried to persuade me to buy it but I just couldn't see any way that I'd be able to play that so no.
I got that info from another forumite, Mr X. I have lost all my original Montebourg research materials but today I rediscovered the free history of the fight from Utah to Cherbourg by the Center of Military History and found nothing on this. Most of my OOB knowledge of this came from John Keegan's 'Six Armies in Normandy' and a little from the ASL scenario, The Roadblock.
Be warned, this mission is almost entirely different from the original version. My playtests today showed that this was going to need more work to make it playable. The victory conditions, the OOBs for both sides and the map itself have all changed a lot.
Now, I'm going to get back to work on this mission as I've decided to give it a rework which hopefully will keep almost all of the work and testing I've done these last three days and I'm eager to see how the new mission works.
-
9 hours ago, Warts 'n' all said:
Which units would the Stugs have belonged to mate? I can't find any record of there being any on the Cotentin on D-day. Of course, we didn't have horseless fighting vehicles in my day. So what the hell do I know?
I don't have my old research as it was all lost but I have had it confirmed very recently that the formation was the Panzerjager-Abteilung 709. The StuGs in the following mission, Licornets, came from the same formation.
-
A few thoughts on what I've been doing these last couple of day. I've been working on Turnbull's Stand and learning how to use Order triggers. After quite a bit of experimentation, I understand how it all works and there are some cool things I can do with them but building an entire attack plan with them is an exercise in frustration. I can achieve much the same result by using objective triggers and Exit After timers so I revised my attack plan today.
I reread the account of Turnbull's action on D-Day this evening and was surprised to read that he had no heavy weapons, no mortars, just a couple of MGs he'd picked up along the way and a bazooka team. Vandervoort dropped off a 57mm AT gun before the main German assault and that was all he had.
Also, the German 'tanks' were not French tanks but were probably Stugs so I've taken them out. To be honest, they were 100% pure crap and utterly useless in the hands of the AI so subbing them gave me great joy. The only way to keep them alive was to keep them hidden which is not much fun.
In keeping with the historical account, I have made several major revisions to the map and the mission. Now you can only set up in the orchard on the west side of the road. The two East Touch objectives are also gone - you're only keeping the Germans out of the orchard.
Finally, you have two squads now with the attached teams giving you 42 men, the exact number Turnbull had on that day. The German don't outnumber you 5:1 but the mission is only 50 minutes long so who cares?
I am pretty sure my original OB was inspired by an ASL scenario, probably called Turnbull's Stand. That's where the French tanks and the Marder came from. So it's ASL no more and now as historical as I can make it. When reading about the action this evening, I was surprised to find that I've scripted something the Germans tried to do and Turnbull had to react to so I'm happy with the AI work I've done today.
I'll continue to test this tomorrow which makes three days of work on this. After this, I'll get back to much easier AI defensive plans.
-
Interesting. Red has some small EW (the lowest possible assist) in these two missions as the Special Forces and the Republican Guards are present. Perhaps that might be throwing off the javelins' accuracy? If it is, that certainly wan't the intention. Or it's as you describe it, a bug. Anyway, I tend to use javelins to kill vehicles so that issues might have slipped my notice.
I'm really glad to hear you got through to mission 6. You're the first as far as I know so kudos.
-
Here's an update on how this is going. I have changed the structure of the original campaign to give it a new opening mission which, together with the original starting mission, Beau Guillot, will form a new campaign prelude, the outcome of which will determine certain parameters for the three Chapter 1 - Georgian Ridge missions.
Having revised and tested the new AI plans for both the prelude and all the chapter one missions including the variants, I'll be picking up where I left off with Turnbull's Stand tomorrow. This is one of the very few AI attack missions so it will require a bit more time to get right but I learned a LOT from making USMC Gung Ho! so I'm guessing this will be better than the previous revision I made earlier this year. I'll just have to make sure that it's winnable. It's almost certainly going to play very differently from the old version, that's for sure.
I seem to be taking about a day to revise a defensive mission at the moment so if I am able to stick with a decent schedule, I should have most of this done before Xmas. However, the two blocks to swift progress will be Le Ham and the finale, Eroudeville. Le Ham didn't have any AI plan associated with it - it was a pure set-up with no variants and I can't let that stand. Eroudeville has a pretty sizeable AI attack so that will take a few days to revise as well.
A few observations about the new core forces - having the US 2/8 INF mostly Green makes for a rather different experience and I nearly undid the change as it was definitely harder to manage these forces in combat. But instead I've added some extra firepower to some of their missions to compensate them for the loss. In Guillot, you get a Destroyer on call to help soften up the defenders and there is air power in a couple of the Georgian Ridge missions. In Hameau, I've added an AA Quad Half Track to provide the attacker with some extra punch as well. The defenders get a little boost too to keep things interesting - nothing massively OP of course, but after all, most of you will have already played the original campaign so these changes should make it feel fresh.
The new AI plans are a considerable improvement over the old as well and the AI is much better on the defence now than it previously was so you'll need to be a little more cautious. Except for the new opener, there are always two or more AI plans in each mission, usually five. The opener is a recreation of a certain famous, historical action which I released as a stand-alone scenario to the old repository so it's intended to be fixed.
I have also found an old mission, Maxwell's House, which I kept a back up of on the Beta boards. It was offered as a possible scenario for the Arnhem module but it didn't cut the mustard. Fortunately, it was still in my folder there so I have been able to revisit it as well. it's a German attack on a tiny but highly detailed rubbled map defended by a very small but elite force of Red Devils in Arnhem. NOT Historical at all, just 100% for fun. It's definitely NOT going to be added to the Nijmegen campaign - that one is finished and I have no plans to touch it again (play perhaps but definitely not redesign) The Breakout from the Neerpelt Bridgehead and the Aalst missions pretty much broke me, the work that went into them was tremendous. The other two Irish Guards missions that formed that series were no picnic to make and test either.
-
Well, as it happens, it was a very simple fix - there were two squads accompanying Turnbull so I've just deleted one from the OB for that mission and I have the same head count, more or less. I doubt folks will be running the Germans off the map now but I'm prepared for folks to prove me wrong.
One consequence is that you'll be more wary of casualties because the VP awards to the Germans for casualties inflicted remains the same but you'll pay proportionately more for each loss. The mission was tested many, many times with the reduced OB so it's more than doable. It just won't be so easy to go toe to toe with the attackers now.
-
It must be the compiling process that undoes the creators work in this respect. In Hapless' video of Turnbull's Stand, he has the full OB at the start of the mission but in the scenario as a standalone, they are all at about 50% strength. Well, there's not much I can do about that so I'll have to up the difficulty of the German attack to compensate for the near-doubling of the defender's strength.
-
13 hours ago, Erwin said:
For heavens sake plz don;t overdo it and burn out... That unfortunately tends to happen at some point to all of our most talented modders and designers. But, you're on the right track making your designs a little easier. At we discussed there was at least one Dinas mission that I had to restart over a dozen times.
Agreed...
I'm exclusively focused on Montebourg just now but I do have ideas that are emerging as a result of me posting my thoughts above. While eating breakfast, I got an idea how to soften the difficulty of the Guards Counterattack mission and it might also make the mission more fun as a result. It won't be a lot of work either but rather than rushing off to make the changes now, it's in the book of changes.
I have a quiet period at work from now until the end of the year and instead of binging on other wargames (Command Ops 2, SGS series of Wargames, Rule the Waves 3, DC Ardennes Offensive etc, I'll be working on this.
It's a shame you can't remember which Dinas mission that was.
If you have any vague recollections or a better description of the issues you were having, let me know and I might be able to deduce which mission it is and change it.
-
After some thought, I've decided to rework the victory conditions for the Tourville mission to make it clear that there are a lot of points at stake exiting Company B from the map. While clearly aware of it's existence, Hapless was unaware of just how much weight there was to the exit condition I think and that was the source of his frustration with that mission. I can remedy that now but it's too late for this series. I'll also tone down the number of VPs the enemy earns for denying exit. There's always something that gets through testing and it's a shame that this mistake had consequences.
As it happens, that's another lose = consequences mission. If you win, Mondrainville is a meeting engagement but if you lose, the AI has had time to set up in the village and now it's an attack mission.
I'm enjoying watching his series though. IIRC, he took a break after losing Mondrainville and I didn't know he'd returned to it to complete it so I'd like to see how he approached the other later missions.
Okay, so now you get the following awards:
100 points for keeping casualties below 20% (same)
100 points for destroying the bunkers (same)
100 points for controlling Humpty (same)
200 points for controlling Dumpty (same but hard to do)
300 points for exiting Company B (new)
The intention is that you're unlikely to clear Dumpty in the time alloted so the player should be able to earn 300 points victory if he contests Dumpty without heavy casualties which is a very reasonable objective to meet. This 300 point award is offset by the 300 points, previously 500 points, awarded to the Germans if Company B doesn't exit so you get a DRAW. Winning now will depend on how much of Company B you exit.
A DRAW will mean you follow the optimal path in the new scrip so the degrees of victory will be for bragging rights.
-
This seems to be an appropriate thread to post the following musings. Obviously things didn't pan out the way I expected them to and work on both Hasrabit and Retribution has stalled.
Hasrabit is getting there but I have to admit I haven't enjoyed these missions nearly as much as I thought I would. They're just too damned hard and that's not fun for me any more. One hard mission in a chapter is fine but not all of them and that's been my problem, there are too many hard missions.
The new opener is a cakewalk if you do it right but if you don't, it's a nightmare. I'm not going to change that as it should be obvious what the commander in charge is supposed to do. However, the new 'Ambush' mission is proving really tough to win. I've added air support to the mission but it takes absolutely ages for it to come in and that's not fun. I'm losing this mission quite badly and often during play-testing so the difficulty has to come down. By how much though?
Strong Stand is finished and it's reasonably difficult but you get a LOT of fun toys to play with so I'm going to ease up the mid-game difficulty a bit and that's a day. The initial entry to the map will be challenging but that's fine by me.
The new Guards Counterattack is a beast. I've redone the AI attack plan and it's much more challenging now, so much so that I've removed a whole mech company from the AI OB but it's still very hard to get a win so I'm going to have to ease up the difficulty here.
Hill 142 is in a very strange place. The original was in a very bad condition so I've reworked it and now it's really tough to win. The trouble is that I'm struggling to find the hook for this mission, the feature that sets it apart from the others. It just feels meh to play.
The Barrier is another weird one but I have found the hook. I just need to get the AI working properly.
Now, Buying the Farm is my current favourite of the new missions but boy is it TOUGH. I really need to scale back the difficulty here but I want this one to be a bit of a stinker. But not frustratingly so. This is my chapter stinker and it's at the end of phase 1.
Silence the Guns is probably fine as is and so done but I will need to add more time as it's a bit too tight.
Heavy Metal is kind of stuck - I made an all-new map for this but that means that the original AI plans are lost so I've reverted to the old map and improved it so that I have at least the rudiments of an AI to work with.
Sadara is in a similar condition to Heavy Metal - I've improved the map considerably, especially the town outskirts which look really good now but haven't done any real testing yet. I expect it will take a while to rebalance but the original AI still works and just needs to be improved. This is the Guards finale so it can be a stinker.
Finally, we come to the finale, Hasrabit. I've greatly expanded the original map and reworked the town so that it resembles its real world counterpart. Like the previous two mission, no real testing has been done.
So there's till quite a bit of work to do on this but I'll get through it after I finish the Montebourg rework or at least while I'm doing it but Montebourg is the priority for now.
As for Retribution, we'll see. I'm finding Red v Red a bit too slow when using artillery and air strikes and I've grown to love them both in Gung Ho! and Montebourg. It's a nice idea and I've got some really good maps for this short-ish campaign and I haven't done anything with the Syrian Airborne formations so I'd really like to do this eventually.
Now, let's touch on Dinas. I'd really like to revise both my earliest campaigns to take advantage of the changes to the game engine and if I real the community correctly, Dinas is a very popular one so I really should revisit it. That will be a massive amount of work to do so it's later next year at best. But having just finished making up an new core unit file for the Scottish Corridor and importing and placing all the units, I know how much work will be involved. Dinas has a nearly a regiment of core units and some of the actions are huge so placing is going to take a lot of time.
And that brings me to artwork - both Hasrabit and Dinas are completely fictional, as in the maps are all made out of my head (except Strong Stand and Hasrabit which are real places in Syria). I will have to redo the artwork for these campaigns completely as the original is definitely a bit naff now. Working with GIMP is okay now but it's certainly not fun for me so this is one of the things that deters me from working on this.
So that's where I am with this. It's not forgotten. I just don't enjoy playing and testing really hard campaigns any more and just want to have fun while facing a reasonable challenge. After all, the REAL difficulty comes from the accrued losses in each mission over the span of the campaign.
-
1 minute ago, PEB14 said:
Not sure to understand what you suggest here?
I mean if I reduce the forces imported in the unit's starting mission to 80% strength rather than having the core units in the core unit file at 80% strength and importing them that way which is how I did the Scottish Corridor. I'm pretty sure that's how I managed the PIR 'losses' on D-Day in Montebourg but since I lost the original core unit file, I can't remember exactly how it was done. I don't think this is a behaviour that was changed by a patch - it's probably just carelessness on my part.
I've been reading your other post in another thread - thanks again for the good feedback. I will add a bit more time to the Chateau mission. I had a feeling you got an AI plan that makes it more difficult as I play-tested that mission many time - I really enjoy the smaller missions with air support and never really had any problems there. But it's on the to-do list.
-
Just something quickly to comment on that Hapless video of mission 4 - I just watched it a few minutes ago and it seems I didn't make it clear enough just how much was at stake exiting B Company from the map edge. I guess I'll have to clarify that in the briefing.
But again, where was the smoke? Perhaps it's just something that folks miss about the Brits - those 2" mortars that every platoon has can lay down a smoke screen to cover an attack. I use smoke all the time playing as the Brits.
The real problem with the 2nd ASH missions is that there are very few combined arms missions, they're largely infantry actions as they were in the real operation. It does sap the fun a bit.
-
No problem, constructive feedback is always welcome and exchanges like this help clarify my objectives.
Mission 1 - early surrender - that's an easy fix - just add some reinforcements to the German OB that never arrive and they'll fight on a bit longer. However, this will inflate the German player OK soldiers count at the end and make it look like you were fighting a larger force, I was insanely proud of how tiny but effective the defending force was in that mission - I put a LOT of work into the AI anticipating the player moves etc and it paid off. And the icing on the cake was people's reaction when they found the enemy force was so small at the end - they thought they were fighting a large force. That was 10+ years ago though and the moment has passed so I think I'll add another squad or two to the German OB as reinforcements that never arrive to delay the surrender.
I've already added an extra 10 minutes to the first missions of both campaigns (1 and 4 as you mentioned above).
Mission 10 - that's the Going to Church mission, right? That was a historical loss and there is a good account of it. I was again insanely proud of the mission too because the enemy force is very small but effectively placed. Not only that but when I read the first-hand account of a tanker's experience in that battle, I was surprised that it generally gave you the same experience, especially when you turn the corner at the bocage line and see the church clearly at the top before the 'fun' starts. I don't want to change anything with that one as you're supposed to lose it but if you can get a win, kudos and you get a different mission to follow.
Mission 6 was 'Ten out of Ten', right? I can add a bit more time. Again, reading the historical account of that action will suggest a way to win that one and it works in this mission - no spoilers. But I'll have a look at it - perhaps just another 10 minutes will do the job or maybe some extra artillery that's not core. I'll have a look anyway.
Mission 12 has to be the Chateau mission, right?
That's definitely going to get a look at. I wanted it to be a fun mission so I'll try and focus on the fun part there. But it may just be that you got an AI plan that really stuffed up your chances. I'm definitely going to replay that one a few times.
I'm glad you enjoyed the Mondraineville mission (5) as it was meant to be fun - lots of light forces on both sides. Hapless had a bad experience there - I'll have to re-watch his videos of missions 4 and 5 because I recall he went to the Green branch after losing mission 5 which must have hurt a bit. IIRC, he didn't USE Company B very effectively in mission 4 because exiting it off the map was important but I used it as a fighting force and took some casualties but won it handily. As I said, I watched these videos earlier this year (around April) and may be misrecalling. I just remember feeling sorry that he didn't get a win and that was my fault as I was really enjoying the series. I think there is a psychology that comes into play when you use these types of victory conditions, similar to what we observe when you set a Preserve Order in CMSF - players treat it as a DON'T DESTROY' condition when all it does is reduce the overall total number of points earned at the end - as long as your casualties are low enough, you still win big and the enemy gets no VPs for you failing to earn the points. That's my thinking anyway. I have some time this evening so I'll watch those two videos again.
Now, consequences. That's definitely possible to do with a rework because I've spilt the campaign into two smaller ones and so it will be easier to keep track of the variations that would be required. The 'consequence' was that you went to the Green branch if you lost but you still followed the same line as if you won it. It was a cool idea back then which addressed the complaint that people expected to be able to complete the campaigns on the disk that they paid for. Since this is a free rework and playing it is entirely voluntary, I have no such qualms. Of course, extensive reworks of missions to have real consequences beyond going Green will take quite a bit of time to do but why not?
-
Well, I don't have to worry about rationalising it then - it doesn't work.
I could do it in the opening missions I suppose as the game will remember their strength at the end of the mission but I think it's better to amend the briefing and just go with full strength OBs.
The attached PIAT teams are gone though and the PIATS added back to section 1 of each platoon. I am toying, and I mean toying with the idea of attaching some heavier kit to the companies like I did in Montebourg just to make it a bit more 'fun'.
-
On 12/11/2023 at 12:25 AM, PEB14 said:
Since the post you've quoted, I've finished the campaign, achieving a Tactical Victory. This was my first "serious" campaign so I'm pretty satisfied with the result. Therefore I'm a little surprised to have the campaign rated as "too difficult"! I suffered only two defeats and one draw as a newbie… (And the scoring leading to the draw is highly debatable!
). Isn't a campaign too difficult when it's simply hard to achieve a final victory?
Regarding the JgPzIV in mission 2: I personnally met a StuG, which probably means that the JgPzIV is only for the "elite" mission path… I also achieved Total Victories in the last two Grainville missions, so I don't feel you need to tone them done — except perhaps those from the "elite" mission path… but isn't it supposed to be challenging?
On the other hand I agree with you that splitting the campaign in two (Cameronians/ASH) would have made it more enjoyable to me, as both focus and overall stakes would be clearer.
I enjoyed the first half of the campaign very much. Fun missions of very different kinds with different tools at hand. But the whole Grainville affair sounded too repetitive to me.
More generally, while defensive missions lead to some epic stories to tell, I feel there are too much of them in the Scottish Corridor. Whatever the author's gifts, I think the AI scripting is too basic to produce varied and convincing attacks; assaults generally turn into bloodbaths, during which a brainless AI attacker tries to submerge the human side with hordes of infantry and tanks (and artillery). Enjoyable once but not in the long run…
The amount of work you needed to manage campaign's branching must simply be astonishing. The choice to have different levels of missions obviously helps the weakest players while providing more challenge for the better ones; but it also leads to some frustrating results, as it significantly lessens the impact of successes and defeats. You can fail to take a key position, or to exit troops as requested: you will progress to the next mission anyway, and the tactical situation at the beginning of the next mission will generally be the same whenever you won or lost the previous one. So the message delivered from this design might be understood as: forget the mission and spare your men, wether you achieve your assigned objectives or not, the results will be the same in the long run.
I was also frustrated by scoring sometimes. By example, in mission 2: I achieved all assigned objectives, except my own force preservation ratio. Our friend Usually Hapless deliberately stopped his effort to spare his forces for the next missions: doing so he scored better than I did !
My preferred mission? The bonus one. You've got pretty much all toys available to do the job: Churchill of all brands, SP guns, tank destroyers, engineers, artillery (from mortars to heavy howitzers), planes). And those Tiger II… How enjoyable to knock them out…
The one I disliked the most ? Grainville Château. You don't have many tactical choices (only one, obvious one…), the time allowance is ridiculously short (a general issue with most of your Scottish Corridor scenarios IMHO)… and in the version I played, the German IG gun was in position to cover diagonally the British approach to the Château's southernmost border hedges: I was butchered. (Interestingly, none of the players who published AAR on Youtube faced this German deployment). Terrible and not funny at all, as you can do nothing against it (no time!).
All in all I learned a lot thanks to this campaign; I'm certainly a better player after playing it, so I MUST thank you for designing it !
That was helpful, thanks. Perhaps I'm not phrasing it properly but my concern is mostly about the 'fun' aspect of the campaign - it's hard and (IMO anyway) mostly fair but it's not always fun. I'm not sure how much 'fun' I can create from such a campaign as the weather was appalling at the start and when it cleared, they ran into a tidal wave of SS counterattacks as we see at Grainville. I intend to leave the difficulty as is though. Defensive missions are the hardest to do well because the AI just follows orders blindly regardless of what is obviously happening around them.
I tried to vary the Grainville missions so that they're all distinctly different, attacks coming from different directions, new areas of the map exposed, but you're right, it does get a bit repetitive.
With regards to scoring, I really don't want to tinker with that as it would require new artwork and I'm trying to avoid that. The VP conditions in the Road to Cheux mission encourage you to contest the VP location and keep your casualties below 20% while killing the enemy units for VPs.
IIRC, watching Hapless' videos of the two opening missions, he didn't use smoke very much at all. The Brits have the ability to generate a lot of smoke on the battlefield which allows them to infiltrate enemy positions and I used it ALL THE TIME when playing as the Brits. It's like their superpower.
I suspect if you use smoke more frequently, it's not so hard to get good results when you're on the attack.
The reason why you don't see others get the same set up in a mission is that most, if not all missions have at least 2 distinctly different AI plans. Chateau is a very small mission so it's probably got more. It's been SO long since I played any of these missions that I can't remember what it's designed to do but I'll have the last of the new core units imported into these last three missions later today and I'll give that one a spin first to see if there is anything wrong. I don't like forcing one approach to win at all - thus the different AI plans which usually counter one approach hard but are weak against others.
I'm thinking about what to do with this revision - it seems a bit pointless to just remake them and post them as you can just play the Scottish Corridor from the 'disk' and it will be the same, only much longer. I already have some ideas about using triggers to make AI attacks more effective and to add some new AI groups to the larger attacks. I enjoy scripting AI attacks and I remember enjoying these as the Germans get the fun toys to play with. In the end, the real fun in the The Scottish Corridor belongs to the designer who gets to 'play' around with some of the coolest WW2 kit. I'll see what i can do to improve these AI plans.
If anyone has noticed anything weird, let me know. I tried reading one of the longer, old threads on the campaign here but most of the 'feedback' in its 10+ pages is just embarrassing to read now. I am more than open to adding a little extra time to certain missions for starters - perhaps the first two ASH missions need a bit more time? Let me know what you think.
-
On 8/12/2023 at 7:23 PM, AndrewO said:
Just finished the same scenario and had the same problem. Makes the scenario objectives impossible to achieve which is pretty damn annoying to be honest. Auto defeat effectively and a waste if time. I am a bit shocked the bug hasn’t been fixed yet.
This was fixed in a patch earlier this year. However, you have to restart the new, revised campaign from scratch as older campaign saves have this bug baked into them. To benefit from the fix, you need to start it all over again. Not ideal, I know but that's how the engine works - it's not a fix that a patch can make alone.
-
I've got a fairly easy three weeks ahead of me so I've decided to revise this one but it's not going to be a straight up remake. Rather, I'm going to split the campaign into two separate campaigns, one for the 9th Cameronians (9 missions) and a second, shorter one for the 2nd ASH (6 missions). I see no good reason to keep this as one long campaign as it's not for official release and splitting it up will make it much easier to manage script-wise. There will be some tweaks to how the player goes to the Veteran or Green branches but I want to get core units done before tackling the new scripts.
Although it was made prior to the 16 AI groups patch, I'm quite happy with the AI as it stands so don't expect any significant changes here. However, the most important change will be that the core units will not start at 80% strength but rather at full strength. While these units were at 80% strength historically, it's not a particularly good way to represent this in the game so I've decided that the fighting strength of these formations should be at 100% and the 'reserve' companies are seriously under-strength. That seems to be a better way to represent this. One side effect of this though is that I'm going to remove the PIAT team attached to every platoon and give 1 section its PIAT instead. This also serves to reduce the number of units the player has to manage and that's fine by me.
I made the new Cameronians core units file last night and have started importing units into the Cameronian missions. I don't expect this will take very long and so it's possible this will be finished later this week. After that, I'll do the same for the ASH missions. I don't want to make any changes that require significant play-testing either. The plan is to have this campaign 'working' again for possible future revisions. But I'm happy to 'fix' any issues you guys might have with it as long as they're quick.
If, and that's a big IF, there is the interest, I may decide to enhance one or both of these campaigns adding flamethrower units as well as further improving the AI, especially the big attacks at the end of each. Regardless of interest, the next step after this is to finish the Montebourg revision so if you have any comments or suggestions for this one, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
Move it! Move it! Let's go!
-
I have posted a new version of the USMC Gung Ho! campaign I updated earlier this year. Here is a link...
What's changed?
The campaign script - winning a mission will guarantee that any vehicles that are immobilised or damaged will be repaired for their next mission.
Mission 1 - a Grenade Launcher Team is temporarily attached to 1st Platoon.
Mission 2 - an extra 30 minutes added to both versions
all mud tiles removed
Syrian Grenade Launchers replaced with MMGs and a Recoiless Rifle team
Mission 4 - an extra 30 minutes added to the mission
helicopter and air support assets are doubled (the second Cobra arrives as a reinforcement with a full load)
added transport vehicles to 1st Platoon and the engineers.
Briefings clarified for artillery assets shared between missions (hopefully)
Missions 4 and 5 are now must-win scenarios to progress.Many typos fixed as well but I'm sure you'll find some new ones.
-
I've done a pretty substantial rework to mission 4, "Detectives' so I think I'll wrap this one up and upload the revision to the FewGoodMen site.
You'll be pleased to note that I've added a Grenade launcher Team to the OB for mission 1 only as you recommended.
A full but short list of changes will accompany the post I make when it is available. I could have made much more substantial changes but until I hear ANYTHING AT ALL from folks about missions 4 and 5, I don't feel encouraged to put in a lot of further work to improve these. As a result of these changes, personally, I enjoy playing mission 4 much more now and mission 5 is still my favourite of them all.
-
On 9/4/2023 at 1:23 PM, PEB14 said:
UH is a great player and a formidable AAR storyteller, and as such a great source of inspiration, at least for me. (The above post wasn't meant to be direspectful, absolutely not!) All the way through playing the Scottish Corridor campaign I like to watch his videos and compare our strategies and performances. When I managed to do better than him (on two occasions), I was pretty proud
! Comparison leads also to very strange results, sometimes the results achieved at the end of missions are quite... surprising!
Indeed this mission 10 is a difficult one. Even more difficult that it should, because you generally win the previous one by a large margin, and so one generally has to play the "hard" version of "Going to Church".
I myself had tried something similar to Usually Hapless' plan (flanking movement along the railway). Unfortunately the Panther indeed have good LOS through the orchards and, even though I tried to hide my tanks behind the buildings, after one half hour I had lost two or three tanks and a dozen of casualties and achieved absolutely nothing. I asked for a ceasefire to preserve my forces and took the loss.
It's now mission 11 but to be honest I'm not motivated anymore. I now have to play a meeting engagement on the same map (that I don't like) again, with the same crappy, 57 mm Churchills against Panther, and after 10 missions of British suffering I'm losing focus and motivation... I've waited one month to start the mission, and I haven't played it for one week now...
I think this campaign is just too long...
I've been considering splitting this one up into two, shorter campaigns- one for the 9th Cameronians and the other for the 2nd ASH. There's no real overlap for these two stories. No promises but I would like to drop the difficulty down a notch. I watched Hapless' video series on this campaign and it did make me reconsider the difficulty. After all, not many of us are lucky enough to get out work played like this and I would like to encourage it rather than 'embarrass' the good folks who do. It was meant to be a HARD campaign, after all, it was a very hard operation but I think the last two Grainville missions need to be toned down and that JgPzIV in mission 2 subbed for something a little less intimidating.
-
On 12/7/2023 at 6:38 PM, Warts 'n' all said:
Having been away for quite a while for health reasons, both my own and my PC's. Did this reworking ever get finished?
Not yet but it's on the to-do list. The real hold-up is reworking the Le Ham mission which is a monster. It turns out that there were no AI plans for this mission and I have to remedy that.
Otherwise, most of the details are complete. I've learned how to use some of those special moves like Withdraw for example so I'd like to revisit most of the AI plans and see if they can be improved further but I'm not going to let it turn into another monster revision that will never get finished.
-
40 minutes ago, AlexUK said:
Repairing being more generous would help as I was being very economical in the second mission with the Abrams.
In the second mission too, I don’t think the Stryker ATGMs are working (thermals on that model are still broken I believe).
In the second mission my force was too worn down (I thought) to push on much beyond the main ridge.
i hope to have time to have another run through the campaign in the next month or so.
I've added an extra half hour onto each version of mission 2 so the player shouldn't feel rushed to capture the back VP locations.
You might want to hang on a few days before restarting as there should be a v2 available mid-week. I just need to make sure that the player has enough fire support to complete mission 4 without taking too many casualties. I've extended the time in both versions of that mission as well as giving much more intel on Syrian starting positions. The Syrian Mech forces have been somewhat degraded to prevent them from standing and fighting too long. The REAL fight should be in the outskirts of the town. I've also doubled up the number of helicopters and F-18s available. I will playtest the new version after posting this.
-
This is going to be revised in the not-too-distant future as I suspect it's WAY too hard, especially mission 4 of which there is a conspicuous lack of feedback
What I've done so far is to rephrase the campaign briefing so that there's no confusion over shared artillery assets or the campaign terminating early.
I've also reworked the campaign script to be much more generous with repairing damaged vehicles after a successful mission. My impression is that the USMC would be quite efficient at getting broken stuff repaired after a mission.
I've removed the mud terrain from mission 2 so that there's little chance of a bog happening.
What I want to do later today and early this week is to 'fix' the Detectives mission so that it's much easier to win. How exactly that will happen, I don't quite know yet but what I DO know is that it's going to be a quick fix and I'm not going to let it turn into a 2-3 month revision. I don't plan to change much, if anything about missions 5 and 6 especially as mission 5 is intended to be hard to win. I have no idea of Al Qusayr is winnable as it stands as nobody but myself appears to have played it but I'll probably tone it down a tad too.
It's not too late to step in and tell me what you think needs to be fixed with these missions. If anyone has actually completed it, I'd like to know if it is possible. After all, I test my own stuff but I know what is in each mission and, more importantly, what is NOT going to happen which is not the same as your experience. I playtest with full spoilers.
Not to mention the free space the box would give me in the shop.
If you have any vague recollections or a better description of the issues you were having, let me know and I might be able to deduce which mission it is and change it.
Revising The Road to Montebourg campaign
in CM Normandy Maps and Mods
Posted
I've got an attack plan that works reasonably well now. I managed to get a DRAW by cease firing at about T+40 and I hadn't exited any of my forces so that was a comfortable win. I made a few adjustments to the AI victory conditions as a result and so I think that's enough for now. It's quite a short mission with a very low unit count for the player so I'm going to continue to test it and tweak it while work is ongoing on the next missions in this chapter. Victory point adjustments made are basically now instead of having three TOUCH compound locations, I now have three phase lines which extend about 150m on both sides of the road on the south side of the stream which award the Germans points for touching. The further they advance, the more points they earn each line hot so you'll have to work hard to keep their heads down until you think it's time to run.
I started work on Licornets this afternoon. This is one mission that REALLY needs 16 AI groups and I'm using almost all of them already. Combined with a variety of triggers, I can really make some effective AI counter moves if the player activates them. With each StuG being in its own unique group, I can use them more aggressively in my defensive plans rather than just positioning them at the start of the game. Giving a movement order to an AI group with two vehicles on opposite sides of the road isn't going to end well.
I'm not going to agonise over this and will just get two working plans and create variants and that's that for this one. I'd really like to have the chapter 2 missions finished before Christmas.
I have very few plans to change much with the Glider Infantry missions in chapter 3 but I'm probably going to put the nebelwerfers into Hell in the Hedgerows as that also happened to these poor buggers in real life. They really took a pounding and lost that mission but I shied away from it when I made the original. But war is hell so why not? I need the casualties to make their following missions more challenging. So I expect a quick turn over on chapter 3 with perhaps only the Holding Action needing any real attention.
And that leaves the short chapter 4 missions which I'd really like to have finished before New year. Yes, that'll happen.
That's my plan though. Much as I'd like to do a compete overhaul of each mission, that would take me another 4-6 weeks after the New year and I'm almost certainly going to want to move onto something else in a couple of weeks.