Paper Tiger

Blue v Blue wargames is an intriguing idea I've played around with especially since we got Brits and NATO forces to play off against each other.

I've pretty much erased my Steam library from my hard drive to make way for some CM titles so I am planning to spend a LOT of time working on campaigns for these titles. I've gotten the bug again and I've already started zooming around in Google Earth for some interesting locations to have a fight. One of the best things about the modern era game is that you're not constrained by history. My Syrian Civil War scenario for Hasrabit and Road to Dinas was pure baloney but who cares? Some of Hasrabit's maps were based on real world locations, especially Hasrabit itself. (It's not called Hasrabit IRL). Dinas has a mix of some maps based on real world locations and some fictional. I prefer real world now as it helps to guide me. So, once I found a few good looking locations for a series of actions, I'll start producing maps. I already have the germ of an idea for a new Red v Red campaign but it's really just an idea right now. But it's certainly going to happen.

It's always good to get feedback. Thanks for taking the time to post it. A few thoughts before I start work... That's why I've never played H2H. I doubt I'd enjoy the game nearly so much against the AI if I had because a human is going to use the forces given in a much more effective manner than a devious AI scripter ever could. I enjoy playing against the AI because when I started playing computer games back in the 80s, the AI in wargames was rudimentary at best. I actually started out designing missions for CMSF by cramming the objectives with massive AI forces because Blue v Red was such a mismatch, or at least it appeared to be that way coming from a CMx1 perspective. When I was invited to join the team, there was an Australian Major on the team who remarked that the attacker was supposed to attack at 3:1 odds and not 1:3. I took his advice to heart and worked hard to create better AI behaviours as well as just learning how to best utilise the stuff the AI already had. In almost all my campaigns, you'll find you outnumber the AI by at least 2:1, often 3:1 and sometimes even more. He also helped me to understand how to use combined arms effectively in my missions which changed the way I played and designed. Montebourg was designed to be as you described it. The Hell in the Hedgerows mission was a catastrophe for the GIR and the 2/8 INF took a big hit at Ecausseville as well so those missions needed to stand out. But otherwise, it was designed mostly to be fun. The Scottish Corridor was a challenge to make as they were very hard battles which the Scots barely pulled off, often at great cost. It wasn't intended to be so brutal but I suppose it reflects the reality better. Like the actual action, it wasn't a lot of fun for the participants involved. The battles should get easier once you've broken through the German defences though and there was one, 'Ten out of Ten' ,which was fun to play. When I read an account of the advance into Grainville, 'Going to Church' and the storyteller said that he turned his Churchill tank round the corner and saw the church was right in front of him, I checked my map and found that it that happened as he described it too. The graphics might not be spectacular but the editor does allow us to recreate the environment pretty well. I also made the mistake of giving folks on the Expert track an additional challenge which was 'unkind' of me. It also had a Green track which allowed you to see through most of the campaign but without the extra time IIRC Nijmegen was a mix of very hard and not so hard. There was a mission in that campaign that I considered to be my best, 'Breakout from the Neerpelt'. I spent absolutely ages trying to get that one as near perfect as I could. If I can get my hands on the original 'The Road to Dinas' cam file, I'll unpack it and make a new core units file and rework it over time. But I'm going to finish Montebourg first and get to work on a small campaign for CMSF2 at the same time. I wasn't thrilled with Shock Force when it first came out as I prefered the CMx1 WW2 setting but I wanted to support the team and so gave it a try. It grew on me and now, I have to admit, it's probably the best of the CM series of games I've played so far. Modern Era is just so much more interesting, not to mention cool. And Red v Red is about as good as it gets for me.

I'd say the chances of it getting updated are very high indeed. But I'm going to have to find a copy of the campaign first as I can't download it from the Scenario Depot. It's an old campaign and so all the files were lost when my computer crashed a few years back. But the campaign extractor is my new best friend which has allowed me to return to my CMSF work. There appear to be a lot of new features in the v2 game, including water, fortifications, more AI groups and on-map MORTARS. (I always wanted those) so it would be a lot of fun to rework this monster campaign to bring it up to date. More AI groups is not a trivial improvement either, having only 8 meant that I couldn't refine the AI as much as I was able to in CMBN.

It's been a long weekend here so I've been able to spend three consecutive days working on this. I've just finished working on the Brecourt mission and completed it with only one casualty. To be sure it wasn't a fluke, I ran it again (it's only 15 minutes long) and won again, this time with 4 casualties. If you know roughly how that action panned out in real life, the same tactics will serve you well here but if you just rush in, it probably won't work out so well for you. Neither will it work if you take your precious time. Of course, this is not Easy Company's assault but rather an homage. And it just feels right. BTW, if you have already played the revised version of the campaign, you might notice that I've redesigned the trench network to better reflect the historical set up. So, Missions 1 and 2 are done as well as Turnbulls' Stand. I'm only going to rework a few missions so it may happen quicker than I'd thought. The main task is importing the new core units to each mission. That's not as small a job as you might think

I might have to review Road to Dinas when I have some time. I've forgotten so much about it so I can't give you any pointers about any missions (yet). I know that there were some quite big actions in it and that it was free of the concerns about civilian casualties which meant being able to fire large quantities of HE at buildings. I can't get it on the Repository though as the link is broken. There'a absolutely no rush though as I want to rework 'Gung Ho!' first.

It's always heartening to geed feedback on your work, even better if it is positive. Don't worry, I'm taking care not to up the difficulty too much. In the revised version, the 2/8 INF's experience will largely be Green because in testing, I found these units performed more realistically with Green. However, you get air support in some missions which compensates for the loss. The PIR and GIR units won't be changed in any way except of course, there will be flamethrowers in some missions. I haven't seen them yet but they're in the new core unit file. As it happens, today, I worked on the second, 'new' mission, based on Brecourt, and this is a fine opportunity to make use of the AI triggers. There is a small counterattack that was 'timed' in the original mission but now it will happen when you touch an objective. Not saying which one though. I'm learning how to handle units more effectively in RT now so testing the missions has become much more fun. 'Turnbulls' Stand' has a much better set of AI attack plans now. (I was appalled when I reviewed the AI plans as they were pretty basic and lacked any real co-ordination. While that is more realistic given the historical action meant that the Germans were surprised, it was an 8-hour action condensed into 40 minutes so it can't be too unco-ordinated. Otherwise, it's a wipe out for the AI) I'm not sure if you'll be pushing them back but based on what I've watched on Youtube, I wouldn't put it past a good player to slay them regardless and drive them off the map. Not to spoil anything but they have a more realistic attack behaviour now. I pulled off a couple of victories in testing yesterday though and I'm still far from being a 'good' player yet so it's not going to be an impossible task for a reasonable player. Oh, and there are old, captured French tanks which have replaced the MkIVs. Boy, do they suck! But they're fast.

BTW, a small footnote to this: My early design inspirations were George Mc's scenarios. I always considered any scenario from him to be a master class work. Challenging but fair. Perhaps it's a Scottish thing? :D For map design, Pete Wenman was a major inspiration and pointed me in the right direction. His map work is fantastic and I drew some considerable inspiration from his early CMSF maps. There are others that I admire very much but I wouldn't say they inspired or influenced my work. They have developed their own distinct style and so it's theirs.

I guess I look like the new kid in town but I used to be a bit active around here a while back. For reasons I won't go into in this post, I took a long break (10 years) and am back cautiously getting reacquainted with the new game. First, how do I roll? I really like to play missions on realistic-looking maps. I don't like to play anything that is too easy or too difficult so I work for a challenging but fair difficulty a lot of the time and I like to play with all the bells and whistles - that means the player gets artillery, air support and any of the other things that a player would want to play with. So what have I done? let's look at the unofficial Repository stuff first. Hasrabit - 10 missions Red v Red Player controls Republican Guards and Special Forces against Rebel Syrian army units Road to Dinas 16+ missions IIRC, Red v Red Player controls Rebel Syrian army forces against the RG and SF. Basically, the other side. Right from the start, I worked with a twin-story mode in all my campaigns where you play with two (or more) formations with thair own stories, some cross-over and each with a finale for both. I've stuck with this format almost exclusively. Road to Dinas got me noticed and I was invited to join the Beta team and from then on, most of my content was on the 'disks' that you bought. However, I did make up a short campaign for the USMC called 'Gung Ho!' which I'll talk about later. Not to be too modest but my stand-alone scenarios were nowhere near as good as my campaign stuff and there were very few of them. Campaigns are MY thing, the medium I'm most at home with. So, onto the official campaigns. There are a few of these ... CMSF NATO I was asked to head the creation of three NATO campaigns for that module. I produced the concepts and campaign plan for all three and was a major contributor to the German campaign. The Canadian campaign is almost entirely my own creation with one mission from MikeyD included so that I couldn't say that it was ALL my own work. I didn't contribute anything to the Dutch campaign other than the design. Not that there was an issue or lack of interest in the Dutch, but rather that there were other testers who all wanted to contribute. This marks a shift as well for me as I was previously doing Red v Red where the two sides were fairly matched and casualties weren't really a thing. With the player having all the tools you'd like to play around with, I had to resort to low tolerance for friendly casualties. After all, when it's not an existential war, the Western countries tend to frown on taking heavy casualties and don't particularly like to cause civilian casualties either. Both of these strongly factor into the NATO campaigns. This was not going to be an issue for WW2 though. CMBN The Road to Montebourg - 18 missions This was a monster but I was so excited to be playing with a WW2 theatre again that it wasn't as much work as you might think. The Scottish Corridor - 14 missions + a hidden bonus I started getting creative with the campaign scripting and so this has a complex structure. The Road to Nijmegen - well, it's a long one This was the last of my official campaigns. It's an absolute monster and pushed me to the limits. I playtest all my own content very thoroughly in Real Time and so the large battalion-sized Irish Guards missions took an age to get right. The Breakout from the Neerpelt mission was one of my personal favourites and I spent ages tweaking it to get it to where I was happy with it. The difficulty here was mainly derived from maintaining your forces so that they were battle-worthy in future missions. While there were still casualty awards for both sides, the real problem for the player was the attrition of your forces. These campaigns were all long so husbanding your forces was very important. With regards to difficulty, there were some real 'pigs' in the historical WW2 missions because, historically, the Allies lost these actions or were hurt very badly winning them. A good example was the Hell in the Hedgerows in Montebourg. Or the entire Scottish Corridor campaign Otherwise, challenging and fun is my gig. Hopefully, you'll be seeing more in the not-too-distant future.

I wouldn't worry about me burning out this time. My real-life work situation is practically serene compared to what was going on 10+ years ago. Plus my mother died which was a bit upsetting. While I plan to do some smaller campaigns, I doubt I'll ever try anything as ambitious as the Nijmegen campaign again. But declaring that would be stupid - these projects take on a life of their own as I work on them and I think, 'Ah, a mission with this would be cool!' That's a good suggestion - it's been 10+ years since I made anything so who knows who I am. I'll make up another post for the main boards after this.

Some of you may have noticed that I've poked my head up again after a very long absence. I've just been very busy with real life and wanted to spend some time playing games rather than designing content. But this game is a bit like crack for me, it's just so addictive and watching Usually Hapless play this campaign on Youtube got me back into it. (Yes, it's ALL your fault Hapless ) I've done a bit of work fixing things and now want to turn my attention to my first campaign for CMBN, the Montebourg campaign. It's the oldest and was made using v1.0 of the engine meaning that there are only 8 AI groups and no air support. There have also been a number of changes to the game which mean that I can experiment with some of the new stuff while reworking this one. It's not going to be a total overhaul but it will no longer work for players with only the CMBN base game so it's a Repository jobbie. I'll let you guys know what you'll need but it will probably require the full Monty as I want flamethrowers in it. It's also worth saying that anything new in it will be historically accurate and not just added in for the laughs. So no SS with JgPZIVs. Pity. So, I'll keep you up to date with my progress on this. I'm not looking to do a LOT of work. It's mainly to reacquaint myself with the scenario designer and writing AI plans. Mission 1 I have no plans to change anything at all about the opening mission at all. It's fine as is. Mission 2 There is a 'new' short 'Brecourt' mission. It's not really new though as it was in the revised version on the Repository. I'll need to tweak this one as the game seems to have become more lethal since I last played it but otherwise, it's good to go. Mission 3 The first mission to get a full rework is Turnbull's Stand. I'm reworking the AI attack as there were only two AI plans and they were terrible. I've made a number of revisions to the map itself to reflect the reality of the day so it's a bit more open with less bocage and more hedges. I've spent pretty much all morning and most of the afternoon learning how to script an AI attack using the new tools and the first AI plan is almost done. I want a second one with an entirely different focus but it should be much faster to do as I'm not 'learning' anymore. Then, I'll mix it up so that there's four attack plans. And that's where I'm up to. There's no timetable on this. I'm not in any hurry but by posting about it here, I've kind of declared my intentions and am far more likely to stick with it.

Sorry, I was in a hurry when I typed my response. My wife was calling me to do something so it's a tad abrupt. How are you Erwin? Thanks for the offer but Bootie has restored the Montebourg revised file and he's dug up my old CMSF campaign , USMC Gung Ho! which I'd really like to revisit for CMSF2. I want to do some work on the old campaigns before embarking on a new one.

I've got it thanks. Booties has restored the links and the file downloads properly too.

I'm a bit hesitant to make definite statements about what I'm going to do at this point but I'm getting re-inspired. I'd like to look at CMSF2 soon but first, I want to get some issues with my CMBN campaigns sorted out. I'm concerned about the difficulty of The Scottish Corridor mission, especially the finale, Fair and Square. I'd be happy to hear some feedback on that before making any real plans. I think Nijmegen is in a good place and would prefer not to have to do a lot of work on that apart from fixing an issue witha bunker in the Mook Bridge mission. The Irish Guards missions were extremely hard work to build and test because I wanted them to be really special, especially 'Breakout from the Neerpelt Bridgehead', my favourute mission from that campaign.

Hi guys. I've been trying to download the revised version but I'm told that there is no file to download. If anyone has a copy of this revision, I'd be very grateful if you could let me know and see if I( can download it from somewhere.

Trust me, I'm grateful. Without your tool, I wouldn't be able to do anything with my CM campaigns because I lost everything. I got the campaign script and all the missions with your tool. Some of the missions are missing an OB but I know what's missing because they're variants of the main missions.

I just burned out after CMBN Market Garden, I guess. Even before starting the maps, the RESEARCH that was required to make a campaign like the three I made for CMBN was a massive undertaking. I'm going to take it VERY slowly but yes, I plan to make some new content. I doubt very much I'll ever make anything like 'The Road to Nijmegen' again because some of the missions in that featured an entire reinforced battalion and that exceeds my pain threshold for RTS. I can DO it but I miss so much of the action in RT because I'm too focused on what platoon X is doing and that's a lot of the fun in CM for me. I like to get the camera down to ground level and see the action from my pixel troops' POV rather than the God view. I expect you'll see campaigns with reinforced company sized actions and a few smaller reinforced platoon missions to change the pace from me. But there's quite a lot changed with regards to AI scripting - more groups is always going to result in better AI plans but the triggers were relatively new when I last played and I didn't see much need for them. I'd like to see what some of the other guys have doe with the new scripting and see if it's better.

You are my favourite person from now on. Thank you for making such a simple tool available. I'm afraid I had a horrible computer crash a few years back and lost everything CM-related and now I can access all the campaign files and perhaps rework them. Thanks PT

Hi guys. I have been kept very busy this last year or so with real life work commitments and I see that some folks have reported that The Scottish Corridor campaign has been broken by an earlier update. I have had a look at the campaign with the latest build and it all seems to be working fine. I got a bit of a scare when I went into the Tiger mission and found that I couldn't see any British AT guns. But the AT teams start limbered up and you have to unlimber them and deploy them yourself. I also read that there are missing Churchils from a mission. The mission I read he report about was 'No Hiding Place'. There are nine tanks available to you in that mission and there are nine tanks when you play it. If there are any other issues or anything you think I should look at, please report it here and I'll do my best to fix it up in time for the next patch.

I know I've been away for a long, long time but I thought that USMC Gung Ho was the best thing I ever made. Nice to see that folks are stil playing these old works.

There are four set-ups in this mission and two in the other Guards missions. Most of my campaign missions, from Montebourg to Nijmegen, have at least two AI plans, some a lot more. I design with replayability in mind.

None taken. IMO, scenarios are like short stories whereas campaigns are like novels. I tend to 'write' trilogies. I wouldn't be surprised to read that every third mission or so is extremely difficult. That's because these missions are tests. If the player 'passes', he gets to step up a difficulty level, to Veteran for example, or back to Regular if he's currently playing Green. The big flaw in this system is that people like to win every mission and will replay until they get a win instead of accepting the loss and getting to play easier missions. I try to craft my missions so that they are challenging AND fun to play. If they're not fun, what's the point? Of course, my idea of what is 'fun' is likely to differ from yours. However, I'd argue that 'The Scottish Corridor' is perhaps the least fun to play of my campaigns because the subject material, Operation Epsom, was so grim and such a hard slog. You might indeed find the German campaign more 'fun' to play for the time being. And if you kind of like what I've tried to do with this campaign you might enjoy 'The Road to Montebourg' which was designed primarily for fun. But whatever, I hope you have fun playing what you're playing.

Heh heh. This one continues to upset people. It got a lot of hate on release. If you hate it now, wait 'til you play 'Crescendo of Doom'. The Cameronians are generally regular experience with Normal motivation. The ASH are generally Green experience with Normal to High motivation. Both have good NCOs and leadership. There are actually a few, very good units scattered about in both infantry formations. Churchills are definitely a bit crap when compared to Shermans and are certainly NO MATCH for Panthers. However, the OBs and match-ups in most of these campaign missions are about as historical as I could make them. The Brits didn't do very well 'Going to Church' either. The 7th and 9th RTRs were both equipped with Churchills and they did do battle with some Panthers along the way. Yes, it's a long campaign. That's just the way I make them. It could easily have been released as two separate campaigns, one for the Cameronians, 'The Road to Grainville' and one for the ASH, 'The Road to Gavrus', but two core groups is pretty much how I've been designing campaigns from the get-go. (Hasrabit had the Republican Guards and the Special Forces)

I'll have a wee look at that one and see if there's a problem. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

The AI can use Fast (Dash), Quick (Quick), Advance (mainly Assault movement orders for infantry squads and Quick for support teams), Assault and Max Assault (which might mean Slow) movement commands. It never uses Hunt and will only use Move when the units are approaching exhaustion. Under which circumstances depends on which order the scenario/QB map designer issues to that particular order. Important to remember that the AI cannot reverse its vehicles except when the Tac AI determines that they are threatened and tells them to back up. If you want them to back up as part of an order, they will turn their backsides to the enemy to do so. As above for Run. The Fire order can make the AI group Hide when it reaches its current order. As for covered arcs, we can issue these by giving them an Ambush order with a range. However, these are NOT the same as the covered arcs you are likely to use. They are 360 degree covered arcs so if you want to play by the same rules as the AI, you have to do this too. One nice thing about giving an AI group an Ambush order is that they will maintain their facing at the end of the movement order rather than swivelling to face their next order. Through repeated play, intensive testing, in particular, observing AI units following their orders in Scenario Author mode and making adjustments where necessary. It's a lot of work but, for me, it's fun work. I spend at least as much time testing AI plans as I do creating my maps.