Paper Tiger

That's 'Buying the farm' finished too. I played it through this morning and got a tactical victory when time expired and that's good enough. It should have been a total victory but I was sloppy and didn't finish clearing out one of the victory point locations. It was a very bloody win but that's because I made a couple of BAD mistakes which ended up badly hurting one of my companies. But it was done with only one platoon of Reserve tanks, one helicopter and I didn't have to blow all the artillery to win either. And finally, the other company was just fine with very few casualties as well. The two hour time limit is just fine for this one. I was thinking of cutting it back a bit to make it more challenging but I needed every minute to capture all three of the victory locations this morning. The Apache helicopter is just perfect for this mission too. Its heavy strike is heavy enough to hurt but not enough to break the game for Blue like the F-15 heavy strikes did. And one is definitely enough. So, apart from some graphical tweaks I want to make to the map, that's 'The Farm' finished too. Tomorrow, I'll try out 'Breakout'. No doubt it will require some tweaking too but perhaps nothing that can't be fixed very quickly as the Reserves don't play too crucial a role in this mission.

I playtested 'Buying the farm' (again!) this morning and it needs to be reworked like 'Strong Stand'. Once again, it's the conscript's role in the mission that has to be reassessed after the changes introduced in 1.08. However, instead of just 'upping' the experience level of the conscripts to green like I did in Strong Stand, I have made some pretty substantial alterations to the mission to even things up a bit. I have given Blue a single Apache helicopter instead of the two Kiowas. In the playtest this morning, it was much more effective against armour and buildings than the Kiowas. Just how effective will take a bit more playtesting to figure out. Because they don't have any dedicated air support observers, the Syrian helicopter support is not hugely accurate and so you have to ensure that there are NO friendlies within 300 metres of the target. Secondly, I have deleted one platoon of Reserve tanks from Blue's OB to make the mission a bit more challenging. In the last 1.07 version playtest I did, I seem to recall that I didn't lose any tanks although I think a couple got immobilised. I have also changed Blue's reinforcement schedule to help the player to make some 'wiser' choices with his forces seeing as how I'm not going to give the Special Forces a resupply option in most of their missions. I also substantially reduced the amount of artillery support that Red gets at the start to compensate for the reduction in quality of the conscripts. I also tweaked the timing of some of the AI groups to make the attack more effective and to take advantage of some of the terrain features that have been as yet undeveloped. I was really happy with what I was seeing this morning during the playtest sessions. The different groups were supporting each other as they advanced across the board instead of acting independently of each other. Obviously, these changes will require a little bit more playtesting to ensure the mission is still winnable and challenging. But nothing too serious, one or two days more hopefully. And I suspect that 'Breakout' will require a couple of small tweaks too as it has conscripts in it as well. But there's not much left to do after that. Since all but one of the Republican Guards missions don't have any 'extras', they shouldn't need any real changes to get them finalised. Now that I've got 1.08, this means that these missions are in their final stages of development. I think it's reasonable to expect this project to be finished before 20th April.

Okay, that's 'Strong Stand' finished and hopefully, this time, for good. Since I needed to rework the thing, I took the opportunity to 'beef' the Red side up just a bit and then I playtested it twice. This partly offsets the advantage I gave to the Blue side when I promoted the conscripts to green troops and that makes them just manageable. On both occassions, I managed to get the AI to surrender so that seems a fair result. 1.08 has radically changed the way you handle low quality troops. You really need to manage them VERY carefully otherwise, you'll lose control of them and probably lose the mission too. I had to experiment a bit to find the best way to handle them and in my last playtest, everything worked just fine. I think the REAL challenge in this mission will be to handle the reserves effectively. Screw up and you'll just watch helplessly as they rip themselves apart with friendly fire. The concern I had with the RPGs yesterday was entirely due to bad set up positions. In my two playtests today, I had no problems eliminating enemy armour with them Anyway, there's the proof that it's doable. That was done with light core force casualties AND with 15.07 left on the clock too. I'll continue to work on the remaining Special Forces missions over the next couple of days and get them sewn up. 'Hasrabit' and 'Strong Stand' are definitely done now. Tomorrow, I'll see how 1.08 has affected 'Buying the farm'. I guess I don't care too much about making the missions as difficult as I can possibly make them anymore. When I started out with this project, if I'd managed to get the AI to surrender twice in a mission and with time to spare, I'd have said it was too easy. But it's just one mission in a 10 mission campaign. It also means that the later missions will still be fun to play too. But to prevent it from being a cake walk for Blue, I've decided to restrict the ammo resupply to just one mission in the campaign. Since the Republican Guards carry quite a bit with them, there shouldn't be any ammo problems for them so, consequently, they get none. However, there aren't any resupply vehicles for the Special Forces. I've found a work-around that will take care of this problem so that you shouldn't run out of small arms ammo. However, you won't get any reloads for your RPG-27s or artillery modules. They are incredibly powerful weapons and used together, it's not too difficult to take the Red side apart. But with no resupply, this means you'll have to husband both your RPGs and your artillery carefully. I will , off course, playtest this to see if it makes the later Special Forces missions too tough. For what it's worth, I managed to get that 'Surrender' result in 'Hasrabit' yesterday without using any artillery at all. I'd rather you didn't have any either.

I'm in the process of redesigning one of the missions in my Red on Red campaign partly because of this friendly fire at night issue. This situation has a company of poorly motivated conscripts with poor/conscripts tanks in support at night. It really can't get any worse than that. They were behaving fine as long as I kept them all together and there was no action. But once the shooting started, it rapidly descended into chaos. They were opening fire on those groups next to them. And it got worse, they started firing their RPGs at their own tank support and the tanks started returning fire with their main guns. I've never seen so many '!'s on the board at one time as in this situation. It was a riot to watch but I can't leave the situation that way.

Well, I got one good result and one bad today. The good news is that the campaign finale 'Hasrabit' is finished. I playtested it twice and on the second go I managed to get a surrender with 17 minutes of regulation time still on the clock It wasn't difficult to get this victory either so it's definitely finished. It looks good after the sun sets too... I like the way the moon is just peeping over the horizon. Okay, that's the good news. The bad news is that 1.08 has really made conscripts with low motivation completely useless, as they should be. I spent the rest of today playtesting 'Strong Stand' but haven't really found a way to make it winnable yet but I'm sure it'll get fixed tomorrow. One thing I'm worried about with this one is that, sometimes, the RPG 27s just can't get kills on enemy armour. The second time I tested it I got absolutely slaughtered. So I tried again with a different set up and managed to break the enemy attack. It might have been due to a bad set up. Further playtesting will tell. I'm SO glad 1.08 arrived before I released this one as it would have completely stuffed 'Strong Stand'.

as long as it's a loaded herring...

After posting this, I'm going to start playtesting all the Special Forces missions with low quality troops in them again. As it happens, I finished the 1.07 game save of 'Hasrabit' and got a victory without too much trouble so it was all balanced for 1.07. Of course, once I got 1.08 installed, I loaded it up and started another game and , WOW, the AI attack was brutal. I barely survived it. I'm not sure what change happened in 1.08 to have this effect. Anyway, it's welcome and so far, I've defeated the AI attack and am fighting back. I'll finish that game save first and if I can get a win, I'll call 'Hasrabit' balanced. Then I'll have to look at 'Strong Stand' in particular as you really NEED those crappy conscripts to get a win. Until 1.08, you could get a win with them but you had to manage them very carefully. I don't mean micromanage here, just keep them together and not split them up into 'teams' like you would with better quality troops. Otherwise the friendly fire you'll see is AWESOME!!! It shouldn't affect 'Buying the farm' at all as I WANT those conscripts to bug out. So far, they've been proving too tenacious and are doing too much damage to the AI attackers. And the same goes for 'Breakout' too.

oooops! Hit the wrong key and that happened. Let's try again.. first, use Hunt movement orders to move cautiously towards suspected enemy positions. second, once some enemy positions are revealed, bring up as much support as possible to attack those positions third, fire at such targets until I get bored and then... fourth, perform a frontal assault on these enemy positions, usually using Assault movement but occassionally Quick too. fifth, watch in horror as my casualties mount up and I lose the scenario once again. as a footnote, I used to love playing CMBB as the Russian side, especially with poor conscripts performing human wave assaults against fortified German positions. This tactic does't seem to have the same efficacy in the Modern era though.

Simple and ineffective... a

A whole tank brigade :eek: But with the new hotkey to toggle the smoke off or on, this might actually be doable now, hehe...

Not yet as I'm presently sitting in front of my computer waiting for it to download. (Gamersgate customer so no incremental patch for me!) However, as soon as it's up and running, I'll be giving the missions with the poorly motivated Conscripts a run to see how they've changed.

LOL, I know. To be honest, more than 90% of these posts are coming from me when I'm at work with some free time and nothing better to do. The posts with screenshots come from my home computer. Then I can look at the pictures at work and develop some more ideas. You have no idea how happy I'll be when I finally get this campaign finished.

I must confess, I had been thinking about releasing some of my campaign missions as individual scenarios. However, to do that would require quite a lot of work as I'd have to rebalance most of them as they're designed to be played with slightly (hopefully) reduced core forces and so would be too easy to win as stand alone missions. However, some of the opening missions would play just fine. But on the other hand, I'd prefer people to play the whole campaign rather than just one or two of the missions. Further, campaign missions are usually designed for play by one side only and would be unsuitable for playing as Red vs the AI or as another Human player. And they don't usually have lots of AI plans either. When I started work on my campaign I thought I'd have to design the usual 4-5 attack plans for the AI. But then I realised that most people will only play the campaign once and so, one is usually enough. (Although there are a few with two.) As to difficulty, I'd have to agree with the two previous posters. What is difficult for some is very easy for others. I remember when I posted 'In Harms Way' in CMMODS I thought that it would be too tough for most folks. The first few posts tended to confirm that suspicion and then I started getting posts from people who were blowing through it. I think Pandur even managed to get a total victory with 10 minutes of game time still on the clock!!! To sum up, yes, you'll probably see a 'Hasrabit' scenario pack at some point in the future with some of the best missions as stand alone battles. But not for a while.

I'm at work just now and so I haven't had a chance to get the download installed. I'm very happy to read that you've included a toggle for the smoke effect. I hope I don't have to use it too often as I love the look of smoke on the map but it does sometimes kill frames per second so it's good to have that option. I'm also delighted to see that flavour objects will be removed if there is a huge explosion in the vicinity. I have to admit that it looked strange to see them still there when the buildings around them were rubbled. Those were some TOUGH crates man. I'm looking forward to trying out the new patch tomorrow morning. I think I'm going to have to do some serious re-balancing of some of the missions in my campaign after this. Especially the ones that have poorly motivated Conscripts in them. But these are all changes for the better.

I'm at work just now and so I haven't had a chance to get the download installed. I'm very happy to read that you've included a toggle for the smoke effect. I hope I don't have to use it too often as I love the look of smoke on the map but it does sometimes kill frames per second so it's good to have that option. I'm also delighted to see that flavour objects will be removed if there is a huge explosion in the vicinity. I have to admit that it looked strange to see them still there when the buildings around them were rubbled. Those were some TOUGH crates man. I'm looking forward to trying out the new patch tomorrow morning. I think I'm going to have to do some serious re-balancing of some of the missions in my campaign after this. Especially the ones that have poorly motivated Conscripts in them. But these are all changes for the better.

I'm at work just now and so I haven't had a chance to get the download installed. I'm very happy to read that you've included a toggle for the smoke effect. I hope I don't have to use it too often as I love the look of smoke on the map but it does sometimes kill frames per second so it's good to have that option. I'm also delighted to see that flavour objects will be removed if there is a huge explosion in the vicinity. I have to admit that it looked strange to see them still there when the buildings around them were rubbled. Those were some TOUGH crates man. I'm looking forward to trying out the new patch tomorrow morning. I think I'm going to have to do some serious re-balancing of some of the missions in my campaign after this. Especially the ones that have poorly motivated Conscripts in them. But these are all changes for the better.

The AI attack is shaping up nicely. I played the first hour of the mission a couple of times this morning and had a blast. When I hit 'cease fire' and checked the AI's positions to see what Blue was up against for the counter offensive half of the mission, I was more or less happy with what I found. Except that there is one group that refuses to move from it's base line. I can't for the life of me figure out why it's doing this but I'll check it out again tomorrow morning. Because that group's objective zone is exclusively painted over full house tiles, it's possible that there's a vehicle in the group that I haven't found yet, but I don't think that's the problem. I'm probably just going to eliminate that group altogether and give the extra couple of orders to some of the larger tactical groups. I'm pretty sure that the final Red OB has been determined though. I have been able to beat the initial AI assault without too much trouble with a Blue OB at roughly 70% of the starting OB. Of course, this is a little unfair because although the head count might be an accurate assessment of the Blue force after completing all the missions, they're all grouped into full strength squads. And you definitely won't have the full compliment of RPG-27s in the final mission, or at least I won't. I'm half way through my first full length playtest and so far, it's going fine. The AI is now on the defensive and I'm embarking on my counterattack. If I can get a win without too much difficulty, then I'll call it finished as few people will have as good a force in the final mission as I am playtesting with. There are simply too many variables for me to predict exactly what you'll have after completing the previous four SF missions short of playtesting all the compiled missions over and over again and there's no way I have the time to do that. But, based on the results I've had playing each mission individually and the compiled missions together a couple of times, I think it's a fair assessment to say that most folks will bring between 50-70% of their core force to this one. There are still a couple of things that I haven't really discussed yet, such as supply and the branched missions. Because the camapign takes place within a 24 hour period, there will be little or no resupply for the core forces. the Special Forces will get full resupply after the first couple of missions and I'm still debating if I'll give them a resupply after 'The Farm'. But there will definitely be none after that. The Republican Guards will definitely get none. This will help to balance out the artillery problem. Now, after I finish with this campaign, I'll definitely work to put together a 'Hasrabit QB map pack'. That's going to require quite a bit of work of it's own as each map will need a few attack plans for both Red and Blue.

c3k from your earlier post... Steve, I'm not sure I understand: Are you saying that prone=no LOS? Or are you saying prone=no LOS to anything at the same level or lower? No, that's not what he's saying. Both those statements are incorrect. The level of the terrain is important. Let's say that the terrain level of your craters on that road is level 10. Since that's slightly lower than the road, we'll say the road's at terrain level 11. Okay, now a unit that's prone on a piece of terrain draws LOS from the level of the terrain. Therefore, prone in the crater, level 10, prone on the road level 11. Now, obviously, you can draw LOS from level 10 to the adjacent level 11 action spot but no further because, then, the LOS would have to be drawn through the ground. Further, if you're prone on the road at level 11, you can draw LOS to all other level 11 terrain tiles or higher where LOS is not impeded by some blocking obstacle. Now, if a unit is kneeling on a piece of terrain, it's LOS is calculated from terrain level +1. Therefore in the crater, it's now calculated from level 11, (terrain level 10 +1 for kneeling) If it's standing on that terrain then it's terrain level +2. Therfore in the crater, LOS is calculated from level 12, (terrain level 10 +2 for standing), So that means that it's possible for LOS to be drawn from three different points in a piece of terrain depending on the unit's posture. (Actually there's 5 but that's not for infantry) There's nothing in between those levels. Nothing, regardless of how it looks on your screen. It's an abstraction so it's utterly irrelevent if you can see the Sniper's eyes and weapons peaking over the crater's edge in your screenshot. As for the anomolous point further down the road in your screenshot, that's a bug but it's a bug that doesn't appear affect gameplay as you can't actually fire on that point. It could be a result of some terrain alterations made in the scenario editor or something else but it's not really important as you can't exploit it in any way. So, if something isn't working in the way I've explained it above, then it's a bug and by all means you should report it. I would imagine that a FPS would be able to calculate LOS with the fidelity you're looking for in this simulation. But it's absolutely impossible in a game of this scale. I don't think you're one of those people who don't like the game and are picking it to death mercilessly. But you do seem to have rather unrealistic expectations, probably due to due to the 1:1 on-screen representation, and are therefore picking it to death mercilessly.

Hmm, my lack of experience with MOUT operations is really showing when I playtest the campaign finale. I'm having to learn a completely different set of tactics as well as design a competent AI attack plan. In this mission, you are the defender and the AI is going to have the burden of the attack, at least for the first half of the mission anyway. The original AI plan was very basic and I was using it just to see what the map looked like when there were units interacting on it. The only way I could keep the situation challenging was to stack up the AI groups with loads of forces and hurl them at you. Further, almost all of the action was focussed in the south west corner of the board. And finally, the AI doesn't really take full advantage of the houses in it's objective zones and this meant that all I had to do to get a win was find good firing positions and slaughter the AI as they ran/crawled down the street. Well, all that has changed now. I had an idea for a completely new attack yesterday morning and I've been playtesting it throroughly these last two days. I won't give away any secrets but now, I've managed to script the battle so that most of the town will be fought over at some point Assuming that you survive the initial AI attack until your reinforcements arrive that is... My initial playtest of the new attack plan resulted in the total annihilation of my start force so that meant that I was able to reduce the forces available to Red which is a good thing. Since then, I've been learning how to conduct offensive MOUT operations which has been a lot of fun. The engineers with their Blast option is really good fun and gives me more options when attacking. Another factor I must bear in mind while playtesting is that the player will most likely have lost a significant portion of his anti tank capability before getting to the final mission. Therefore, I have to be careful not to make the mission unplayable by giving Red too sizeable a tank force for this one. Once you've exhausted your RPGs, there's nothing left for you to do to hurt any surviving tanks. But I've decided that it's the player's responsibility to make sure he retains a significant AT force for the later missions. Red gets a pretty big artillery barrage at the start of the game and I'd used all 20 artillery target zones so that the barrage would be unpredictable. However, since your core forces are already badly beaten up, I've decided to restrict the parts of the map the AI can attack to preotect your force and prevent an unfair wipe out due to bad luck. The player will be instructed in the briefing to avoid setting up in the eastern sections of the town. I could stop you by restricting the set up zones but I'm going to let you guys take a chance and set up wherever you want in the town. It's definitely going to take a little while to get this one finished but as there's no sign of 1.08 yet, I think I've got until Sunday at least to work on this one. Then, it's just a matter of balancing 'Saudara' and then it's finished. Since 'Saudara' is almost finished, that shouldn't take long.

Thanks, guys. I just hope the missions live up to the expectations that the pictures are raising.

Then it's just one of the abstractions that the game uses. The ground in the crater is at level 1 while the ground around it at level 2. Because the units are prone, LOS is calculated from level 1. If they were kneeling in the crater, I suspect LOS would start at level 2, above the crater. Standing in the crater, they'd check LOS from level 3. If that's a roughly accurate assessment, then I think that's a hell of a lot better than anything I'd expect from a tactical wargame. We might have to wait a long time for a game of this scale that calculates LOS from the soldiers eyeballs wherever they may be.

Well, it looks like I've almost found my final version of 'Hasrabit'. I figure nobody's going to be brining more than the equivalent of two companies to this one so I've been trying to balance it with slightly less than two and, so far, I've been having great success with it. I had to make some changes to it to keep the frame rates up. Red has lost most of his tanks. There was originally a full company but now we're down to a much smaller number. Here they are, basking in the warm evening sun. I gave the Red side a bit more infantry to keep up the challenge. I will continue to playtest this version as it feels about right. Blue also lost the IED's but I've given Blue something that will be much more useful in an urban environment: a couple of platoons of engineers. I haven't used them yet so I'll see how things work out with them as playtesting continues. I also made a few changes to the map and setting to make it look better. For starters, I changed the weather from Heavy haze to Clear and that improved the look of the map both before and after sundown. Everything is much sharper with clear skies. I also extended the time limit to the full 2 hours as you're going to need all that time. The mission is a tough one but should be doable within 2 hours + extra time. The mission starts later so there will be less daylight and that will confuse the action somewhat. However, there is a full moon so there will be plenty of light. A small detail I noticed while playtesting, it looks like Mars is red in the late evening skies. Very nice touch there BFC. I don't want to go overboard with flavour objects in an urban environment as I want to keep frames up in double figures. At the moment, the games runs at around 10-12fps after the artillery barrage finishes. It dips slightly when you're reinforcements arrive but returns to normality quite quickly. But that's doable for me.

Ah, what the hell.. you got an answer in 20 minutes.

I'd imagine his passengers would be pretty pissed...

Sounds like your units have LOS into an adjacent action spot but not one beyond that. Perhaps if you got them to crawl to the edge of the crater, you'll find they can see further. Very easy to do if you play in RT, not so good if you play WEGO though... I feel for players who play WEGO because the Hunt command is pretty much nerfed now. Units move cautiously towards their waypoint and spot something and then drop prone. However, they often lose sight of that target and can't fire on them. Because I play in Real Time I can micromange them after contact to move into a position to fire on that unit but I can imagine how frustrating it must be when it happens in WEGO and you just have to watch your units go prone and do nothing for most of the turn. I'm sure that as time goes by the game engine will be tweaked to take more and more advantage of the sophistication of the excellent new ELOS system. Because I play RT Elite, I use Hunt to gather information on the enemy's dispositions without taking significant casualties, in fact often none. Then, I know the unit is there but I can't fire on it but that intel is invaluable and I can then develop a plan to take the position out.