Paper Tiger

There are definitely one or two 'Harm's Way' difficulty level missions in 'Hasrabit' but 'Perdition' was quite easy as I just wanted to have fun on those maps. However, those three Perdition missions are all being overhauled for the full length campaign to make them more challenging. It's possible that one or two of them may become night missions too but that's still to be decided. It's true that they don't look as good at night but I'll just have get past that if it makes them better battles. Speaking of which, the Orchard Road map is definitely by far the most beautiful map I've ever played on. I was playtesting it yesterday for the first time in about a month and I was surprised by how good it looks. Screenshots just don't do it justice so you'll just have to wait until the campaign comes out to see it for yourselves.

I just checked CMMODS and it looks like it's down. I'll be sure to post up 'Hasrabit' and 'Perdition' on BFC's site as soon as they get it working.

it's a superb gaming creation and I (nearly) don't care if I don't get my original CM games back. (I do really.) LOL. While reading the earlier part of your thread, I was going to suggest that you play CMSF a few times and then you won't really miss the old CMx1 games so much but you've already found this to be the case. It doesn't sound like you have a second crappy old computer to play CMx1 games on like I do. My 5 year old laptop is more than up to the task of playing CMx1 games but after a few months of CMSF, I just don't enjoy it like I used to. But if you really MUST play CMx1 games, get a cheap old machine to run it. And, on the bright side, early in the new year, we'll have CM Normandy to play with and I'm pretty certain that THAT will permanently put CMBO to bed. (Not CMBB though which was my favourite - but even it will pass into histry when CM Bagration comes out in a year or so's time)

Chops Short of replacing all of your losses via the script file, the way to 'balance' them is to playtest these missions compiled together several or many times to see just how much damage your core forces can reasonably expect to take. Then adjust the individual missions to account for this reduction. With the exception of the 'virgin' Campaign missions where your core forces are seeing action for the first time and can be playtested individually. However, subsequent missions really should be playtested with reduced forces, i.e. compiled as, without full replacement, it's unlikely that these core units will be at full strength. ESPECIALLY if one or two of the missions are challenging. Yeah, I know it's a lot of work but, for me, this is when I have the most fun creating a campaign so it's not really work. And it's not necessary to playtest the ENTIRE campaign. I usually make up lots of small 2-3 mission campaigns to see how individual groups fare within the story before doing the BIG playtest. i.e. if Company C sees action in missions 1,3 and 5, only compile 1, 3 and 5 and don't bother with the rest. Saves a lot of time.

has anybody else experienced difficulty in targetting large walls with a tanks main gun recently? I used to be able to this reliably before v1.10 but for a while now, I've found it very hard to get tanks to perform this action successfully. Yes, they fire but it hits the ground before the wall and when the dust clears, the wall is still intact? Or perhaps this is just me?:eek:

therefore sometime soon we're going to introduce real IBCTs into CM:SF. What? In with the Brit pack? I suppose that would motivate some of the die hard US guys buy the thing...

As the weekend approaches, I have started playtesting the first six missions compiled into a mini campaign to see how it plays and to wrinkle out the errors. The new version of Petani is proving to have real teeth now and I took a couple of screenshots of the action from this morning's playtest of the campaign opener. It's still a hugely violent start to the campaign:D. I only managed to get a draw this morning but I was playing too conservatively. I've usually been VERY aggressive when playing this one. Hopefully, more screenshots will follow this weekend.

Yeah it would be good to have a intermission screen that shows the status of all your units and if they've been re-enforced or not. This is VERY necessary for me to do when I'm making a campaign. It's much easier to keep track of the level of attrition your forces suffer in the course of a few missions before progressing on to the next stage. Even 'Perdition' had one between missions 2 and 3. I take these 'Parade Ground' missions out before I compile the final version though. Perhaps I could leave them in when I'm finalising my next project.

Well, I am hoping to have this finished sometime around Xmas but I'm having so many new ideas for this campaign that it's possible that it might slip into January. Since phase 1 culminates in a two-part battle for a particular objective, I am thinking of doing the same for phase 2. That will require at least a couple more maps but I seem to be able to get a new map up and working (certainly NOT finished) within a week so that shouldn't take too much time to do. If this project is going to end up spilling into early next year, I will make a Brit v Syria campaign out of it rather than a Marines campaign since I expect that module to be released sometime very early next year. Seeing as how I'm Scottish, I have more 'interest' in playing the Brits as Blue rather than as the US and I'd definitely enjoy doing it. In the meantime, I can sculpt each mission playing as the US and then later, swap the units and make any necessary, or desirable, changes to the campaign OB and tah dah!, a Paper Tiger Brit campaign.

I have a save game available and will email it to you later. But I forgot to mention that it was like this is the scenario editor first. I noticed it when I was deploying the ATGM 'team' and thought that it was weird, so I fired the mission up to see if the problem was still there after, and there you have it.

I've seen this before when I was designing 'Hasrabit' when a couple of the Republican Guard machine gun sections got 'glued' together and I couldn't separate them. I didn't care that much about it then, but in this case, it's a bit of a ball-breaker. This is the ATGM platoon from a BTR Mech Infantry's D Company. The three teams have been amalgamated into one indivisible super team and that's not going to work in this scenario. It's not possible to split them up with an administrative order either as there are no orders available in that section for 'teams'.

Mission 6 - Sagger Point After a lot of fiddling around with it today, I think I've finally found the optimal version of this scenario. Gone are all the BRDM infantry carrier vehicles and in go B Company and the remainder of Group A's supporting tanks. This will make it a much more infantry-centric bash and it'll probably get a tweak after I've playtested all the Phase 1 battles together later this week. That means that you'll have around two companies of infantry to handle in this one but you're going to need them all. Playesting today revealed that Company A just didn't have enough bodies to do the job, or tanks for that matter. And the IFVs are just in the way so, apart from their ability to resupply their troops during the mission, you won't miss them. It's just too dangerous for them out front and they just clutter up Blue's entry point making it hard for you to get the tanks into action. Now that I've got all the phase 1 battles that I want, I can now return to playtesting the compiled missions again and see what's necessary to make Phase 2 work.

Well, just a quick update after today's shortish playtesting session. The new mission is now called 'Sagger Point' and I'm definitely going with the southern board entry version. It's MUCH better. I have to confess that I found the western board entry version really boring to play as it was way too easy. With the southern entry, I'm not going to have to add any force to Red to keep it interesting. Indeed, Blue might even need a little bit of help. It also brings the whole map into play, and some of the most scenic bits too. That ALWAYS makes me happy as I often spend quite a bit of time crafting these special areas. I'm not going to post screenshots of any of these spots until after this campaign is finished though. It shouldn't require much more than a day or two to get the basics all nailed down before working on a couple of extra AI plans.

No matter how much work I have to do playtesting missions, I always like to have a new map on the go and this is the latest one. After playtesting the hell out of the two new mission last weekend, I got started on this one last Monday evening and, after a LOT of editing and reworking elevations (always fun!) I finally arrived at something close to my original conception. It's not that big at just around 1.8km x 1.2 km. I figured that phase 1 needs one more battle to crown it so this is initially slated as mission 6, at present with no name, not even a joke one. The government forces have a strong prepared defensive position on that hill in the background and I'm working on two iterations of it at the moment: the first, a blue attack from the west and second, a blue attack from the south. I playtested the first version yesterday and found it to be very easy. That was because the defending troops quality is conscript and so they spot poorly and react even more slowly. But it doesn't make much sense story-wise to make them better quality. However, I am hoping that the southern attack route will prove to be the more interesting option and that's what I'll be doing this weekend. Here's one little anecdote I can share with you here about mission design. When I set this mission up for it's first playtest I found that the game froze up at the briefing screen. In spite of the total unresponsiveness of the mouse, I managed to get the game to start by hitting the Enter key. But it just got worse. The game was completely frozen up, not even 1 frame per 10 seconds. So I went to the task manager and found that CMSF had stopped working. Boy, was I pissed. I was all ready to post something about this in the tech forum but I opened it up in the scenario designer first to check that everything was in order and got a big shock. I had omitted to delete all the unwanted Blue core forces from the OB and so Blue had a full regiment with support elements on the map at the start. :eek: No wonder it gave the game a heart attack. Happily, after deleting almost all of those forces, it all runs super smoothly and I'm contemplating increasing Red's OB to up the challenge in this one. One unexpected result of all the recent playtesting is that I've substantially reduced the number of tanks in Blue's OB in some of the missions. For example, in the opener, 'Petani', Blue received a full company of T-62s with good crews. But, because I play Real Time all the time, more than half those tanks were just sitting in overwatch positions and doing nothing. I figured that I was using about half of my forces during the mission so I removed two platoons of T-62s, reduced the quality of the defendng tanks and voila, it was perfect. I still got my win easily and only lost 1 tank in the process. (I was unlucky but it felt fair) That means that I will be making some serious changes to the 'already finished' Perdition missions before the campaign is finished. That full strength T-62 company in the Road to Amarah mission is the same as in Petani so you'll only have a maximum of four tanks available for that mission (and 'Perdition's Flames' too for that matter) now. The battery of howitzers has gone too. Instead, you will have a single module of heavy rocket artillery which is a lot of fun to use. I have also decided to keep Blue's OB in all the missions, (with ONE or two exceptions only, 'Flames' being one of them), to about one infantry company with support elements rather than have almost a full battalion onboard. I just get a headache playtesting these monsters and frankly, I no longer find it fun. This will also be my mission when I am working on my Marines campaign. A single infantry Marine company is enough for me. And the Syrian forces that would be required to give a full Marine Battalion a challenge in a mission make me shudder. And my CPU doesn't relish that particular nightmare scenario either.

I heard a rumour somewhere that the BFC staff and Beta testing team have been hard at work watching 'Mary Poppins' to get Dick Van Dyke's cockney accent just right before they start recording the voices for the Brit mod.

But what about some trucks for the Syrians? Not sexy but very desirable.

Yeah, my briefings are a bit 'wordy'.

I don't think so as I did a test with a completely empty flat map and the problem was observed there. There was zero cover available on that map. However, one of the beta testers had a look at that map and found the same problem so it's quite possible that BFC are looking at this and it'll get sorted on the 'quiet'. So far they've been pretty good at working out the wrinkles in the game so I guess I'll just trust them on this too.

I know, because for 10 years now I've had it happen to me just about every day 99% of the BS rolls off our backs, otherwise we'd close up shop and do something else less sadomasochistic. Even with only 1% of it sticking, that still amounts to an enormous pile of BS. Thanks for sticking with us.

Well, I tried a couple of experiments with the Battalion HQ + Battalion FO section and didn't see any difference. However, I did see a difference when I paired them up when they were under MY control. I set up the Battalion HQ in the same location with the Battalion FO and while the command delays were the same as I usually see, (9 minutes for organic Battalion mortars) the green crosses were much larger. So, I started the mission and I gave the battalion HQ an order to run away as fast as possible and as soon as the FO was out of his command range, those green crosses turned into tiny yellow pinpricks. However, the delay time stayed the same. Now, I'm not really sure just what that means in the game as there's no reduction to the delay but I was impressed enough to make sure that I will do this whenever I can in the future. I have to confess that most of the missions I'm playing just now are of 2 hours duration and that's probably why I'm not getting to see it happen at all. I will try another experiment this weekend with a much shorter mission and see what happens. BTW, I have also seen the AI use linear targets in my AI artillery test scenario.

Taki I think we just approach this game from different viewpoints. For me, I have NO military experience whatsoever. However, I have a solid 33 years of wargaming experience under my belt and that means, holidays and sickness apart, I've played them almost every single day. For me, this is a wargame, and not a reality simulator. I can say with 100% certainty that Area fire has been a part of tactical wargames since the original Squad Leader, which I played, and it was certainly part of CMBO when I played it too. Now, I have NO idea how frequently area fire is used, or indeed at all, by troops who are in a REAL war zone, i.e. NOT fighting police actions against insurgents. The answer to that may be yes or no and I'll leave that to the real-life military guys to answer. So, I am addressing your problem from the perspective that we're both playing a wargame that uses area fire. Therefore, you should be using area fire and prepping those positions before moving your troops into the open to attack them.

3. Make sure the FO is in command. If he's out of command, it will add a lot to his command delay to call in the artillery. I'm already solid on points 1 and 2. I guess every mission I create after the Marines module will have one group dedicated to 'fixed' position units. However, I'm intrigued by point 3. In all my time playing Red v Red missions, I don't think I ever once cared about keeping the Battalion's dedicated FO in command of his boss. And in many of my scenarios, the FO is 'independent' and therefore C2 isn't an issue. I'll have to experiment later today and see if pairing the battalion HQ with the FO makes a difference to delays. If it does, I'll have to amend all my current work to incorporate it into them. Thanks for that hint.

No problems. I would like to have this all finished and posted before Xmas and at the rate I'm going, that's not impossible. Then, I'll have to get the Marines campaign done and then I'll have a bit of a break by making up the QB pack. The story line of my campaigns really get's going once I start playtesting the compiled missions as it becomes clear what's needed to fill out the story. Otherwise, it just becomes a series of dynamic or linear missions. Since I started playtesting 'Opening the road', I found it to be a very difficult and challenging mission and consequently not much fun to play. This was mainly due to me setting an hour and twenty minutes for the scenario length and that wasn't enough. So now it's up to two hours and it's much more enjoyable. But one other thing that emerged from my first compilation is that I'm going to need another mission for the phase 3 battles. Rather than create a whole new map from scratch, I decided to update one of my earliest maps and include it in this campaign. And here it is. For those of you who haven't played it, it's an adaption of my first ever scenario, 'In Harm's Way'. To make it appropriate for this campaign, I had to completely redo the textures to make it took a bit burned out and massively expand the number of buildings. I should have the first five missions all finished and ready to go by the weekend and then I'll be working exclusively on the phase 2 and 3 battles. There will be three phase 2 battles, of which two are almost finished, and now 2 phase 3 battles. It's not impossible that I might do another phase 3 battle. Phase 4 consists of the three Perdition battles (already finished) and Dimas Parts 1 and 2. The part 2 map is still under construction but it will be a small very dense urban map and hopefully very detailed.

In order to engage Steve on this I suspect we'll somehow have to make it relevant to CMBB, Machiavellian politics or otherwise allow him to use one of his famous car analogies. I am a little surprised that the game developer won't address an important issue that's posted in a polite and respectful manner on their own forums and yet the 'Why do the Syrians suck?' thread gets several posts. (No offense to anyone posting on thread by the way.)

Yes, I have to confess that I'm a bit disappointed too at the way it's been implemented. Apart fom my dedicated AI artillery test fire scenario, I have only seen the AI use it's artillery ONCE in every single game that I've played since I installed the Marines. On a positive note however, when it DID use it... OUCH!!! It's mostly to do with this artificial delay imposed on the AI that prevents it from using it until at least half way through the mission. But as SgtMuhammed (and Steve in another thread) have said they're going to reduce this delay a bit. Personally I'd prefer it if it were removed altogether as the canny scenario designer can ensure that the AI doesn't blow all it's artillery in the early part of the mission by the simple device of giving the AI artillery as reinforcements later in the mission. However, I doubt that's going to happen so I'm really hoping that it is reduced so that it NEVER delays more than 15 minutes in a 2 hour scenario. My main complaint about this artificial delay is that I now KNOW that the AI won't use any artillery in the first half of the mission so I can perform my attack or defence in full confidence that I'm safe, much as it was before this feature was introduced. Then, as I approach the half way mark, I begin to get a bit more careful and where possible, try to close the ranges and I never see it happen. However, I'm really looking forward to seeing what a difference there is when the new patch arrives... whenever. If it could use it's artillery like it did the only time I've seen it used in a mission, it would be awesome.