Paper Tiger

Not unless you give 'em rocket artillery

I'm going to assume that the AI side is Syrian and therefore one reason for the no-show is that you haven't given the AI side an artillery observer. Otherwise, apart from not actually giving the AI any artillery assets to fire at the targets , I can't see what else could be responsible.

Wow. That sure was fast. I've downloaded all 140MB!!! again and installed it and everything seems to be working just fine. I'm really glad to read that the dynamic dawn and sunset lighting has been restored. Thanks for that.

If that was Rocket Artillery, then you're seeing the reloads firing. I've seen RA fire three times throughout an hour long situation. After the first strike, it mainly damaged the AI forces as they moved into the target location. However, if it was something else, I'd LOVE to know what you did. I've been trying to get this to work for a LONG time.

This is probably a spotting related issue. Each soldier gets killed when he enters the LoS of the BMP-2, naturally. Since nobody else can 'see' the threat, they just keep coming on, albeit, very cautiously. Try your experiment again when they have some cover available and you might get a different result.

Well, Mr 'CB', you could try marrying that girl of yours and that way, she just might be happy to have a husband who stays at home at nights instead of disappearing off to the pub for a few beers with the boys. That's how it works for me. Sleep? I'm even dreaming about the campaign when I sleep at nights. Almost the whole morning was spent refining the AI attack plan for 'The Barrier' and I think it's nearly there. The idea is sound but I just have to tweak the timing of the orders to co-ordinate the attacking groups for the maximum effect. If I can get this just right, it should be scary. I 'synched' two this morning and together, they nearly got to the phase line. I've spent so much time developing this one attack plan that I think I'll keep it at just one for the time being. I REALLY want to do some serious work on the two climactic battles this weekend so if I make really good progress with them, I'll maybe return to this one and develop a second attack plan before I finally release it. As for balance, I think you'll just have to trust me that most of the time, I slaughter the AI so I've given the Blue side enough AT assets to stop the AI in it's tracks. But Red equipment isn't a sure thing so sometimes, the AI will seem unstoppable and you'll be yelling "BOO!" at the monitor (or something worse). The scenario designer will probably play the situation more times than any other single player so he sees the average outcome. Right now, I think this one is slightly weighted in the human player's favour. It will be interesting to see how people feel about it when you finally get to play it.

MadMonkey: -Playing QB's with hand-picked forces was how I spent 95% of my time playing CMx1. I think I'll have to pass on SF if picking your own forces is not coming back, unfortunately.- Almost the same for me except that the rest of the time was spent in the scenario designer. However, the scenario editor in CMx2 is a much more capable feature than the old engine and since 1.04, I've been spending almost NO time playing QBs. There are some REALLY excellent scenarios available for downloading at the moment and they're just going to keep coming and coming now. It would be a real shame to miss out on them because of the reduced QB functionality.

I downloaded your mod this morning and tried out one of my Special Forces situations. It's a massive improvement over the basic black overalls. Thanks for sharing...

I'm all in favour of more groups too but I also trying to keep my request reasonable in the hope of a reply from BFC . An increase in the number of groups would absolutely HAVE to go with an increase in the number of orders. And increasing the number of groups would probably require a lot of work to implement. I don't understand the same could be true about increasing the number of orders though. I, too, often use eight groups, especially when the AI is defending. But when you have eight groups, you can only give each group one order, or at least you can give them more at the expense of another group. That's fine for some situations but if I want to have the attacking AI to start mounted up, move to location 'B', dismount, attack location 'C' for 20 minutes and then stop, that's a minimum of three orders. And that's fairly basic. To make the AI do anything more sophisticated, you need to use more orders. It doesn't look like anybody's aware why we are restricted to 16 orders.

Once again, my entire CM session this morning was spent developing and playtesting 'The Barrier'. This has easily been the most difficult situation to design in the campaign so far. The reason I used the sneaky AI flank attack was because the AI otherwise has to attack across some very exposed terrain as well as cross some crest lines. Without either more orders or more groups available in the scenario editor, this is a very challenging thing to do. I was massacring the AI this morning and I was tempted to give the AI more tanks to make things more challenging for the human player but I hit upon the simple expedient of delaying the human player's reinforcements. What a difference that made. Before, the reinforcements arrived just as the AI attack was starting to develop and 5-10 minutes later, the terrain was littered with burning wrecks and the AI was finished. Now, with the reinforcements arriving later, the AI attack has a real chance to develop and become a challenge for the human player. I played it once this morning and it was much tenser but I still won easily. Before going to work I tweaked the terrain to help the AI attack a bit so I'll playtest it again tomorrow morning to see if that helps. I have also added a new victory phase line to the game that will make the situation more challenging for the human player. Namely, an invisible phase line that the human player must stop the AI forces from touching at all costs. Whist this sounds massively unfair, there is a really good reason for using it this way but I'll save that for the briefings. Needless to say, it's placed so that it's very hard for the AI to touch and so far, in all the last couple of days playtests, they haven't come close to touching it once. But then, I aggressively use my assests to prevent them from doing so. If you play more conservatively, the greater the risk will be.

With the Red side given the option to resupply in a scenario, this is even more feasible now especially for 2 player games. However, I think ammo is the real reason why the battles are restricted to 2 hours. You REALLY blow through the ammo very quickly in MOUT operations and ONLY the human player can resupply. The only way the AI can do this is with more reinforcements and that usually increases the processor's workload.

There are certainly no legal restriction to doing this. However, I must confess I'd be pretty pissed off if somebody did that. Scenario design is really hard work when it's done properly and I think it's a bit lame of someone to open up somebody elses scenario, edit it a bit and then submit it even if credit is given to the original author. For your own private pleasure, no problemo. But that's just my opinion... perhaps others would be happy to see more scenarios.

I've been spending a lot of time working with the scenario editor almost since day 1 and I am still trying to figure out why we are restricted to 16 orders for the AI? I can understand why there's a limit of eight groups because the more groups you create, the slower the game runs. But I really can't see any reason why we're restricted to 16 orders. I'm assuming that there is a very good one. Can anybody tell me why this is? Are there plans to give us more orders in the future? Also, consider this a really important request- please, please, PLEASE, let us disable Plan 1 if necessary for playtesting purposes. When I'm playtesting a new AI plan, I often get Plan 1 even when it's set to 'use rarely'. I can't see any reason for not enabling this option since we already have it for all the other plans.

You mean, like this? I saw that last weekend. the tanks also seem to want to take advantage of the enhanced cover buildings now have too... However, I have been seeing these issues arise for a long time. I don't think it's a 1.06 issue.

Whew, rereading my last post, I think I was a bit stressed out when I posted it due to lack of sleep. We're getting huge tropical thunderstorms in the night just now and it's hard to get a good nights sleep at the moment, even with earplugs. There's a great flash of light and then whole house shakes man. It's freaking scary. Anyway, I'm still REALLY groggy today but not so stressed out. I got a lot of work done this morning on 'The Barrier', implementing some of the changes that The Louch made to me and it's a hell of a lot better for it. I reckon one more day of playtesting and it will be finished and then I can return to developing the phase 2 battles. The new AI plan is much fairer to the player than the sneaky flank attack plan that it replaces. But you'll still have to bite the bullet and confront the enemy in this one or lose the situation. I've designed the new plan so that you'll actually have that choice. Webwing: thanks for the encouragement. I really am trying to make this something special. The red on red game is a very different experience for so many reasons. Perhaps the most important one is the reduced lethality of the ATGM weapons systems. A hit rarely means a 100% chance of a kill, they're nowhere near as lethal as a javelin for example. Therefore I am seeing mech forces exchanging volleys of fire but not so many kills. It makes them quite exciting and also unpredictable too. It makes some situations really hard to balance as sometimes the BMP-2's AT-5 will kill a T-55 and other times it won't, it's around a 50-50 chance. When they don't get those kills, you'll feel frustrated and the situation will seem excessively tough. Yet, when they do, and it will happen for some folks, the situation will seem to be very easy. I guess I could have had this finished a couple of weeks ago if I didn't care so much about getting everything just right. I want every battle to be different and exciting. I think people will especially like the Special Forces missions in the campaign. I'm REALLY hoping to get it finished in the next 3 weeks but I'm not going to rush it. It'll be finished when it's finished. (now where have I heard that before...?)

stikkypixie -Someone help me out here -- how do I tell a unit to target an enemy it cannot see? I can try to click on the ? icon, but since the enemy is out of LOS, nothing happens.. - That's shared information. One unit sees the enemy unit and passes the info along to another unit. First it 'sees' a '?' icon and then, as info improves it knows it's a tank, infantry squad etc. then, you can target it but it won't actually be able to fire because it can't see it, it just knows 100% that it's there. I actually watched this happen this morning. I had an ATGM team positioned on the flank of a hill. On the other side of the valley, there was an infantry platoon hidden and they could see a stationary T-55. After a couple of minutes, the ATGM team first saw a'?' icon and then the tank icon so I targetted it but it couldn't fire because the target was out of LoS.

Nice... WAY better than the stock black overalls. Who cares about reality if it looks better

I spent this morning reviewing the AI plan for 'The Barrier', the new name for 'Passed Off' which was just a working title. The Louch kindly playtested this situation for me and it came up wanting so I'm glad I got a second opinion. Let's just say that the AI plan would have pissed off a few folks so I've dropped it and put in a whole new one that's actually very similar to the original plan. The original version had two full companies of mech infantry supported by a company of T-55s but even with all this force, I was able to defeat that plan without too much trouble. The 'new' AI plan made the AI attack up one flank using a terrain feature to conceal it from the other side of the board and it was so effective that I was able to cut down the number of platoons in the mech companies. It also happened to make the situation very 'frame rate' friendly. However, I was a bit concerned about this plan for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it used only about 30% of an otherwise excellent map. Now, I've reverted to the original full-board attack plan and the AI is still presenting me with a serious challenge so I might have to cut back the AI forces a bit more so that the scenario is 'likeable'. I have some more ideas to make it even more challenging but fair. For those of you who have been kind enough to express interest in this project, I would like to warn you that there will be situations in the campaign that are designed to make you sacrifice your force to save yourself from a defeat. Some people really won't like it but it fits in with the idea of the campaign, ie a high risk military operation that will pay big dividends if successful but will require some sacrifices to be made to make it attainable. 'The Barrier' is one such situation. But if you're going to have to sacrifice your force, I want you to have some 'fun' doing it and not frustration. Also, I'm spending a lot of time working on these situations to make them as challenging as possible for me and not just an enjoyable easy gaming experience for you. Therefore, you'll get a lot further in the campaign if you play the game as if you're playing against another human opponent. No, the AI planning is NOT THAT good but I hope that you won't think that it's stupid either. This is particularly important with respect to the AI usage of artillery. At the moment, and for the forseeable future, the AI has to fire off everything at the start and there's no way to tie an artillery plan to an attack plan. Therefore, the AI will target locations where I think you'll set up so if you consider that I've done that, you should consider your set up more carefully. If some place looks like an excellent place to put an ATGM team, I might have thought of that too. The AI never gets an unreasonable weight of artillery but, sometimes, a battalion will get the full artillery support that it's due. So be warned, it can cover quite a few locations but it can't cover everything. Since the AI is attacking so it's reasonable to expect it to have plenty of artillery support. And of course, when the artillery barrage lifts, that perfect location will still be there.

Yup, that's what I've done and it works too. Thanks for the tip though. Having finished all the phase 1 battles for now, I decided to get started on the campaign finale, the street fighting in Hasrabit. It took a while to get the battle set up right but after a couple of hours testing, I finally found a good mix of forces for the Red attacker. I had to expand the map a bit so that the AI could set up out of sight of Blue's set up area. I revisited the google earth pic of th real world location that is Hasrabit and I was happy to see that there were feilds and orchards to the east of the town so they got added in to good effect. I'm going to be spending a lot of time working on this one because it's the climax and I want it to be really intense. At this point, the core forces should be reduced considerably but I'm playtesting it with the full OB. If I can win regularly without having to rely on luck with the full OB then it will be balanced. Lose too much of your core force then, tough... First, the inevitable opening artillery barrage... and then the first phase of the assault begins... then, the first of your reinforcements arrive and you must secure your zone, etc... It all takes place in the late afternoon and so by the end, it should be dark. At 1hr 30mins long, I will have to see how ammo works out for both sides in this one.

Okay, I haven't really played much MOUT yet, preferning to play operations in the countryside. It was just too stressful for me to play before 1.06 but I finally got round to some serious MOUT testing this afternoon and it ROCKS! Okay, it was Red v Red and it's a new scenario for my forthcoming campaign. I was totally blown away by the gameplay. I think I'm going to be doing a lot more MOUT in the future. Thanks for getting this game sorted guys. It's a beauty... I finally get to see some MOUT action in the centre of Hasrabit market... and another one... and yeah, that's going to work guys... and I caught this cool pic of a building coming down after a direct hit from a 120mm mortar round. the AI's doing all the attacking and so far, it's been doing a bloody good job.

I go for moody. Here's another one from a scenario I was playtesting this afternoon. hasndihoc: depends on your operating system mate. If you've got Vista, you'll probably need to get Fraps. That's how I get mine...

The Louch check your emails this morning...

Heh, I really enjoyed "Polyanskoe", that was a fun one. Glad to hear you've updated it. I will definitely give the new version another go later. As it happens, if you're still interested in playtesting something for me, check out my thread in the scenario forum for more info... You're Red v Red cred means that I'll value your opinion...

I really like this one...

handihoc: don't worry, it's still a few weeks from completion, hopefully sometime in early March. The Red v Red allows me to make the kind of battles I'd like to play with SF. This all started as a scenario for US v Syria, a large meeting engagement between two mechanised forces but it was a total wipe-out for the US side, just way too easy for Blue to get a win. The M1 is far too tough for anything that the Syrians can field. Yeah, it can be killed with side or rear shots but on a large map with the Blue side as the AI, it's still possible to program the AI to use them effectively and avoid those side shots like I would if I had room to manuoevre. So I did the same engagement with red v Red and I had a blast. Since then, I haven't played a Blue v Red battle. As for the looks, well, the more realistic the map looks, the more immersive the experience is for me. But it's programming the AI to attack effectively that's the real challenge in this one. I'm trying to avoid making the situation intense merely by swamping the human player with opponents that rush at you. I've got one battle at the moment where the AI has only a slight material advantage over the defender but it gives you a hell of a fight until your reinforcements arrive. All the battles are combined arms battles although there are a couple of Special Forces situations where the human player has infantry only. The AI on the other hand always has some kind of support vehicles, tanks, BMP-1s etc. I'm even trying a meeting MOUT engagement, a first for me. That's still under development but I should be starting it very soon. The Louch: I'll definitely want somebody else to playtest 'Hill 142' and 'The Barrier' so if you're up to it, I'd be grateful. I finished 'Hill 142' yesterday when I got a total victory against the AI without substantial material loss so I'm very happy with that one. I'm a bit concerned about 'The Barrier' though as I think it might be a bit too difficult. It's the new version of 'Passed Off' and the new name is more appropriate for reasons you will discover if you playtest it. Anyway, here are three new screenshots from the action in 'Hill 142' yesterday morning. as you can see, you get tanks in this one... With the smoke screen laid down, finally, it's time to start the attack on the village. And something a bit less exciting but just as tense... I had to redesign the map to eliminate some of the half tile houses so that I could get the AI to deploy inside them. With the cover value of houses enhanced in 1.06, you really have to dig the rebels out of those houses. Now we just need fortified houses...