Paper Tiger
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Posts posted by Paper Tiger
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Well, I haven't got the 'Strong Stand' pictures ready as I've been playtesting a couple of missions that will be part of the full Perdition campaign. I thought I'd post a couple of screenies from these even though it'll be some time before you'll get to play them.
This is from the first mission in the campaign and it's tentatively called 'First Blood'. So far, it's rivalling 'The Farm' for sheer fun for me. I have been playtesting a version with a Stryker MOUT company with some Stryker MGs and plenty of air support and it's working really well. When the Marines arrive, I'll be able to swap the MOUT company for a Marines company with some support vehicles and Bob's your uncle.
This second one has some action in it. At the moment, Blue force is a Mech Infantry company with BTRs. So far, it's shaping up to be a really good fight.
This last one is from a later mission called 'Battle for the bridges' or just 'Bridges' for the time being.
The map for this one is very big, almost as big as 'Flames' in the mini campaign. These missions are both MUCH more infantry oriented than the three mission in the mini campaign although there are some tanks to keep it interesting for me.
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Well, from what I've managed to glean from the posts about AI artillery, I think I might have 'Perdition' version 1.1 ready. Elmar, if you're still reading this thread, you're a beta tester aren't you? I will probably post the 'new' version at CMMODS tomorrow so perhaps you could give it a try out and see if I've implemented the artillery correctly? BTW, you'll be happy to hear that I've tweaked the first mission somewhat to prevent your infantry walk-over.
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From the announcement...
-Smoke artillery missions (and computer-player AI Support Plans may use it)
So it sounds like it will only be for the opening pre-planned barrage. That's still REALLY cool!
Any word on artillery that's added as a reinforcement being used yet?
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What are the chances that we'll see this feature included at some point in the future? I have just spent the last 2 hours+ testing an AI plan that had a 'Use frequently' order and AI Plan 1 was 'Use rarely' - all the rest were 'Not used' and hey, guess which AI plan I got?
This happens a LOT more often than you'd think. It would be REALLY nice to give us scenario designers this option. And before you object, 'ah but some scenario designers might forget to activate ANY AI plan at all', well, if we're THAT stupid...
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If it WERE part of the new package, it's such a substantial change that I'm pretty sure it would have been included in the announcement so don't hold your breath.
After AI dynamic use of artillery assets during the game, this is definitely my #2 pick. It's definitely coming though so I suspect it will be part of the WW2/Brit pack changes.
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I think I'd rather not be limited to the CMSF Syrian terrain when playing with these toys
100% agree with you there. And it was worth saying it twice.
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Welcome to the boards.
Your first point about why change a winning formula is not difficult to understand. Basically the first CM games (CMBO, CMBB and CMAK) were incapable of being expanded any further. You have already seen everything that game engine was capable of doing and there was no way for them to take it to the modern era. Therefore the game company had to make a decision, continue to pump out the same-old for diminishing returns and go out of business or create an all-new game engine. And here we are.
Your next point about it not really being an improvement was definitely valid when it was first released. Let's just say that you're VERY lucky to be experimenting with the game in the 1.08 version. Yes, the game wasn't pretty when it first came out for reasons you can find if you really want to know them but it's WAY past that now. Just forget that review as it is now completely worthless as it's a whole new game today.
With regards to the game editor, yes, it's definitely more work to create missions but the new engine is capable of far more than the old one so that should be expected. Yes, the only way to create that mission of yours is to buy a whole Battalion and delete all the units that you don't want. But in reality that only takes a few seconds to do once you are familiar with the editor. You can delete all the vehicles if you don't want any. The reason for doing it this way is one that you'll appreciate once you get a bit more familiar with the game and that's C2. The CMx1 series of games have NO C2 at all. For Modern Era it's essential.
If your enemy is standing paralysed in battle than it's because there's no AI plan for your mission. CMx2 games have a whole new, and FAR superior, AI system compared to CMx1 games. Unfortunately this added sophistication comes at a price and so you have to create a simple AI plan to get the AI to do anything.
I can understand your frustration with this because at the start, you have to learn a LOT to get the game to do what you want whereas with CMx1, it was all done for you. But stick with it because once you know how to write an AI plan you will be able to knock out a quick mission in a matter of minutes. If you need any help with learning about the editor this is one hell of a friendly place to do it. There's even a lonk to a simple PDF guide to the scenario editor in George Mc's signature so do a quick search for one of his messages or wait until somebody posts a link to it here and you can get started.
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The last two, for the time being, come from the older version of 'The farm'.
Unfortunately, I forgot to switch off the floating icons for that last one but it really shows the devastaton that is wreaked on the terrain features during the course of this mission.
Anyway, the next set will come from 'Strong Stand'. This final picture is an oldie and later I'll post some of the new action pics from the new retextured map.
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I have my reasons for starting with photos from this mission as it gives me the opportunity to post some screenies of the retextured Hasrabit maps that will be used in Hasrabitv3.
and this one is just rubbish...
I guess I've just decided not to bother about making things too green to be convincingly Syrian anymore. More temperate looking maps are definitely more visually appealing anyway.
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I've accumulated quite a large number of screenshots during the course of designing my campaigns and quite a few of them have got 'lost' in one thread or another. Therefore I have decided to create this thread to post some of the better ones and as I get closer to completing a new mission I can post some of the better screenies here as appetisers.
This first set of three come from my favourite, and most photogenic, mission, 'Buying the farm' from Hasrabit.
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I think that is the number of threads started. I haven't started very many.
Then you must be in a category all of your own. No way in hell I've started 780+ threads
.or have I...?
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I can't believe I'm going to say this but I suspect that when we get the Russian equipment for CMx2, I probably won't go back to WW2 again. Modern Era combat ROCKS!!!
If I understand what Steve said in his earlier post about this Temperate zone thing then it's not going to be a module but a whole new game. And that will probably start as US army v Russia, then after 6-8 months a Marines module and then a year after that, the Brits module... Okay, perhaps it won't take THAT long to get the modules out seeing as how the modelling and the TAC AI has already been done but we'll sure as hell have to buy them all over again.:eek:
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This sounds excellent. Thanks for sharing this info guys. Since I do Red on Red mostly, I'm curious to know more about the AI's ability to use smoke during a mission. Any info on this would be vey useful as I am planning something for one of the Hasrabit missions.
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Hi there.
If your rig is struggling with Perdition then it will struggle with Hasrabit too I'm afraid.
The maps are smaller than Perdition's maps, sometimes a LOT smaller but there is a much higher unit density, around 2 companies with support on either side, sometimes a full Battalion. And when the firefights start, the CPU can struggle. Anyway, I've temporarily removed Hasrabit for downloading until the new version is ready.
However, I am developing another campaign that will have both smaller maps and smaller forces which should arrive a month or two after the Marines module arrives. It will come in two flavours, Marines v Red AI and Red v Red.
BTW, theFightingseabee... what happened to your post count?
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Hey, don't worry about it. Believe it or not, I was actually considering asking you to playtest things for me in the future because I thought that was a good catch.
Anyway, please don't misinterpret this guys but I've temporarily removed both 'Hasrabit' and 'Perdition' from CMMODS until I can rework them to introduce AI artillery. NOT because of this. I have been wanting to do this since BFC made the announcement about the new features. I was feeling a bit despondent that people were still downloading the 'old' version of Hasrabit because they probably won't bother with the new version when it comes out sometime next month. The new versions will be put back up as soon as possible. Apart from enabling dynamic artillery and retexturing some maps, I'm not planning to make any changes to scenario OBs or anything major although I'll probably tweak the AI plan in the 'Road to Amarah' to prevent people from doing this.
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>SIGH< I guess I'm going to have to develop a thicker skin if I'm going to continue with this lark
Let met just say that Elmar won't be able to do this with some of the other AI plans as the ATGM teams have ACTIVE fire commands and they'll shoot at infantry as well as tanks. In the plan he played they'd probably got a NORMAL or CAUTIOUS fire order and they so were a bit more conservative with their fire. A single AT-14 hit will take out most of a squad on sight, FAR more effective than a MG team so when that happens that will make him think twice. Since I saw this happen many times during playtesting I never let the infantry get too far from their rides and so never picked up the flaw in this AI plan. I actually tried his tactic a couple of times against the ACTIVE teams and it won't work.Please consider that a scenario designer has to make some sacrifices when designing missions as he has only 8 AI groups and 16 orders available to him. It sounds like a lot but it ISN'T. Further, I don't have the world's most powerful computer and so performance plays a MAJOR factor in my scenario designs. The more troops and the bigger the maps, the poorer the overall performance especially when the bullets are flying (literally). When I playtest I usually look to economise and not ADD forces. I guess this is one of the occassions when it bit me on the bum. I'll make sure that when I compile the full campaign and give it the dynamic artillery that I've been desperately asking for for so long, this mission will be more than tough enough for everyone.
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Well, since it's got it's own forum now, I would like to ask about the new AI artillery system. I've read the revised manual and found the yellow section about the AI will use any artillery that's not used at the start throughout the mission. That's pretty much what it said before but this time, it's working.
Anyways, I'm hoping to glean as much information about this new feature as I possibly can before the module arrives so that I can hit the ground running rather than have to spend 2-3 days experimenting to find out everything. Between the manual and the comments posted by some beta testers in the announcement thread I think I have a fair idea of how the new system works.
Here's what I'm particularly interested in. First, it would seem that if I give the AI four artillery attack zones and three modules of mortars, then three of those zones will get pasted at the start and then there will be no artillery available for the AI to use. Does this mean that I'll have to give the AI more artillery than it has attack zones (i.e. in my example 5+ modules) at the start of the mission if I want to see dynamic artillery or can it be added later as a reinforcement? The same goes with air support.
Or is the AI artillery interface in the editor now fully functional, i.e. that the different settings will actually work, suppress, damage, and destroy. This would allow me to be more economical with the artillery at the start.
Secondly, what about SMOKE? How has this been implemented?
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I suppose it serves me right for posting my reply too quickly. I missed your bit about pounding the hill houses to dust with your tanks first so that explains why that phase of the operation was so easy for you. I know my tone is a bit defensive but trust me, this has been very helpful feedback and I appreciate it. I'll give some thought to this when I revise this mission for the full-scale campaign.
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Okay, now that's much better. I can learn from that. The main challenge in this mission was to eliminate the ATGM teams without taking too many vehicular losses. It would appear that nobody's having any trouble eliminating the ATGM teams which means that I failed to accomplish what I wanted in this mission. However, since I always found this mission challenging and never boring when I playtested the hell out of it, that just means that my own personal tactics suck. Ah well, that's quite possible and of course it's going to have a major influence on my work.
Have you ever played a mission where the enemy has reinforcements that suddenly show up in LOS of your own forces? Did you enjoy that experience? Those 'cunningly concealed' infantry are actually 'reinforcements'. You found them hiding in their remote location waiting to be activated and they'll fight back if found and attacked. That strikes me as being a better way to 'do' reinforcements than potentially dump them straight into the acton. People complain quite strongly about that sort of thing.
I'm a bit surprised that you didn't have to fight for the hilltop houses. They can be quite tough to overcome, especially if there are still some ATGM teams active. But I don't understand this last part. In spite of being bored and disinterested, you only managed to get a draw. Since you're not forced to make any frontal infantry attacks on the village, AND, as you admit, you have overwhelming firepower at your disposal, how did that happen? I actually enjoy this final part of the mission and in spite of the firepower advantage, it's still not that easy to do with minimal casualties.
Finally, it's a campaign and you don't get any replacement ammo for your artillery. If you blow it all in the first mission to get a nice easy, albeit boring, win, you'll have very little left for the later missions. You might feel like you have too much in the first mission but if you use it all in mission 1, you'll pay for it later. You'll have to play it all the way through to fully appreciate the challenge, not just the first mission.
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Aha, some negative feedback. Please allow me the opportunity to reply to your points sir.
What struck me with the 1st mission is that just about every squad is lying in ambush in some backroom, only targetable if you walk right in.
First, in 4 cases out of 5 this is the TAC AI's choice of placement and not mine although it sounds like you got MINE. I give the AI a fair amount of freedom in its set-up to keep ME guessing when I'm playtesting so I can't take all the blame for that.
Second, there's only one building on the whole map that is 'only targetable if you walk right in' and that's the mosque. You don't HAVE to go through the gaps/gates in the walls from the streets and you know this. Anyway, that's what the engineers are there for. And as you say next...
Apart from the ATGMs I had the run of the battlefield (town excluded) and could go pretty much everywhere unhindered looking for the ATGMs.
... once the ATGMs are taken out, you have ALMOST complete freedom to go where you want and this allows you to take out almost every location without a problem except for the mosque. And you simply have to hit it hard with artillery or tank fire to 'open' it up. Neither are in short supply in this mission. The high ground completely dominates the town so it's YOUR decision where to hit and what not to hit. After all, look what you say next...
With ATGMs gone every room without a view was levelled by my armour. Recce, illiminate, bombard, no gunbattles or shootouts at all. Very dull and didn't feel realistic.
Bearing in mind that the mosque is the ONLY non-targetable location you obviously chose to target the easily accessible locations where YOU expected me to deploy my forces, and didn't target the 'less easily accessible' ones where the Special Forces were actually located. How is that a bad set up? I'd be very surprised if a human opponent didn't set his forces up the same way to take advantage of this too.
No gunbattles or shootouts? That's a definite possibility in this mission as you have massively overwhelming firepower. Dull ...? Not for me I'm happy to say but we all have different tastes. Didn't feel realistic? Sometimes, in real life the odds are stacked so high against one side that it's not 'realistic'. For me, I usually relish the opportunity to rampage as retribution for all the (potential) hassle caused by the ATGM teams. Once the ATGM teams are taken out it's effectively GAME OVER for the Red side and that's the way I designed it. I don't want EVERY mission I make to be incredibly difficult. It would have been easy to make it that way by removing two of the T-62 tank platoons from your OB. Then you get shoot-outs and gunbattles. Nah, this one's about the tanks.
Please get some interlocking fields of fire and add a few machineguns as some sign the enemy wants you to stay out of their turf, this setup felt really gamey and silly.
Hmm, you obviously haven't started up the second mission yet. Which brings me to my final point... it's a campaign, not a scenario. There is a much larger design here than you're seeing by playing only one mission (well, maybe not MUCH larger). When you've finished the third one, I'll look forward to hearing your comments.
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handihoc:
However, I had previously occupied and cleared these buildings, so these guys must've slunk in later, after I'd moved on. Is that so?
>Evil cackle<
Red Rage
(should give me enough time to forget enemy positions and what i did before - to keep the freshness factor).
The first mission has 5 plans and they're all different so, unless you get the same plan when you replay it (1 in 5 chance), it'll definitely play differently with enemy units going in different positions and doing different things. Even in that little village at the crossings... The other missions both have two plans and once again, they're very different.
Both ATGMs fired and both missed
Then you were very lucky my friend. Those ATGM teams are GOOD. You definitely got a better result in the first mission than I ever got in all the times I playtested it. Well done.
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Well, I must confess that I have wished for this feature from time to time but, in general, I like the game the way it is. It forces the player to do a thorough search of the entire victory point location to ensure that it's cleared. I often miss one unit but then, the worst that happens is that we both get 0 vps for that location. I even factor this into balancing my missions/scenarios.
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Sounds like you'll have to give it another go. Be careful though as there are five AI plans for the first mission, each with the same probablility of being chosen and they all do something different.
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A quick word about some of the work that's been done on v3. I have pretty much retextured all the Special Forces missions maps to make them greener and they all look much better now. I guess when I first made the maps that I was really striving to make them look 'Syrian' although I really have very lttle idea of what the Syrian countryside looks like. Anyway, from googling Syria I can see that there are some large swathes of green so the Shuruk valley will be green and that includes the Hasrabit map. I'm going to leave the Republican Guards missions maps as they're appropriate.
Perdition - a Red v Red mini campaign
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted
Hey, it's not dynamic ... (yet!) so just win the missions any way you can and try to enjoy it. I have made a couple of significant changes, the first is to change the AI's artillery and Air Support zones to, hopefully, allow the AI to use it's artillery more effectively when the Marines come out. Of course, none of us ordinary plebs will see this happen for a few weeks yet.
The second change is to reduce the amount of artillery given to the Blue force. After reading Red Rage's report about mission 3, I decided that 3 batteries of 130mm artillery on top of a full compliment of mortars was just a bit too much. I figure that he was using his tanks as mobile artillery (very cool!) and since Task Group A get resupplied, the Blue force already has enough fire power to do the job. But don't worry, there's still plenty.
And of course, I absolutely HAD to change mission 1 to prevent other people from having Elmar's experience. So, carry on with what you're doing for the time being and tell me how you got on. I LOVE that second mission.