Paper Tiger

Well, it's been a lot more work than I'd anticipated. This is a rework of my old USMC campaign, a six mission campaign I put together shortly after the British Forces module for CMSF 1 was released. I spent SO much time making 'The Road to Dinas' that I missed playing with the USMC, which has turned out to be my favourite US formation to work with. 
 
I thought I was just going to have to make up a new core unit file, sub in the new units and tweak a few bits and pieces to take advantage of the new systems but I ended up pretty much redoing it all from scratch. Anyway, let me show you the old maps and the new versions. Each picture is taken a 6 am in the morning from the same position so that you can see main differences.
 
The first mission is Meet the Flintstones. This is a NIGHT Missions and this is the old map...

And this is the new map...

As you can see, it's pretty much doubled in size. If you've played the original, it will probably feel reasonably familiar with the old version.
The next mission is The High Chaparall and the map for this one has changed very little. it's a DAWN mission.

And here's the new...

It hasn't changed much although there was a LOT of deforestation which took place to the new. Apart from the map, it's been reworked very substantially and the AI improved.
 
The third mission was a real problem for me. It was originally called CAAT Fight and it took place on this map...

The problem wasn't with the map but the battle itself. It was rubbish! It was an interesting idea and was inspired by the first episode of Generation Kill but it wasn't anywhere near as much fun as that episode. So this one got a new map and new forces with the same concept:

I really enjoy playing this one. It's a NIGHT mission and, like the original, you only have the CAAT units to work with. But it feels completely different and I find it a lot of fun to play.
Now we come to the HUGE reworks. These took over a week each to fit up and the missions needed to be redone entirely, new AI forces, new objectives etc...
the first of these is Watching the Detectives. here's the old map...

And here's the new...

It's more than doubled in size and there has been very substantial enhancement of buildings complexes etc. This is a DAWN mission and has gone through several iterations before the right battle was found for it. it's a tough mission with the player attacking down a slope in full view of the defender with little cover to work with. it took many attempts to make this feasible and I'm happy with the end result. You need to take this one slowly.
 
Then Mission 5, Bridges. Once again, the old map has been massively expanded.

And the new one is almost entirely different...

There are some similarities but as you can see, it's almost entirely new with new, more realistic villages added. Again, finding the right battle for this map has taken a lot of time and this is the mission I'm currently playtesting.  it'll probably change a little before I finish with it but I've finally whittled down the forces on both sides so that i can carry out the mission without having too much at my disposal.
Al Qusayr
The map for the last mission is almost the same. there are some significant improvements for it but you won't see these from such a wide angle. the mission has also been redone with new forces added and all-new AI.

And there it is. I'll go into each mission in a little more detail later. This is very close to finishing now. I expect to have finalised it by the end of this month.
 

A quick word about the missions themselves. I play the game in Real time and I don't PAUSE the action very often so I tend to focus in one one area of the map and leave the other areas to manage themselves without my supervision. This means that the missions will be reasonably small, certainly a lot smaller than the battles you're probably more familiar with. I don't manage battalions in Real Time  with any efficiency but I can manage a reinforced company without any trouble. So all the missions will feature a maximum of one USMC company with some attachments. This is my sweet spot. as it happens, a USMC platoon manages the same as most companies. the manpower and firepower they have is awesome but it's easier to manage a platoon than a company, even when the squads are broken into three teams.
I also like to have a slow-ish start with a small force on the map at the start with the rest of the force arriving in stages. I often find it much easier to manage quite a large OB in this manner as I get it set up and into the action before the next packet arrives. However, both Watching the Detectives and Al Qusayr have the entire OB on the map at the start so they both have a faster pace. On the other hand, CAAT among the Pigeons is very small with only about twenty units to manage. And most of them arrive 10 minutes after the mission starts. You start with just three units but there's plenty to do.
I also like to play with all the bells and whistles so you'll have access to a lot of artillery and air support in these missions. The USMC is a light infantry unit but with the artillery and air support is more than capable of going up against the best the Syrians have.

Well, it's been a lot more work than I'd anticipated. This is a rework of my old USMC campaign, a six mission campaign I put together shortly after the British Forces module for CMSF 1 was released. I spent SO much time making 'The Road to Dinas' that I missed playing with the USMC, which has turned out to be my favourite US formation to work with. 
 
I thought I was just going to have to make up a new core unit file, sub in the new units and tweak a few bits and pieces to take advantage of the new systems but I ended up pretty much redoing it all from scratch. Anyway, let me show you the old maps and the new versions. Each picture is taken a 6 am in the morning from the same position so that you can see main differences.
 
The first mission is Meet the Flintstones. This is a NIGHT Missions and this is the old map...

And this is the new map...

As you can see, it's pretty much doubled in size. If you've played the original, it will probably feel reasonably familiar with the old version.
The next mission is The High Chaparall and the map for this one has changed very little. it's a DAWN mission.

And here's the new...

It hasn't changed much although there was a LOT of deforestation which took place to the new. Apart from the map, it's been reworked very substantially and the AI improved.
 
The third mission was a real problem for me. It was originally called CAAT Fight and it took place on this map...

The problem wasn't with the map but the battle itself. It was rubbish! It was an interesting idea and was inspired by the first episode of Generation Kill but it wasn't anywhere near as much fun as that episode. So this one got a new map and new forces with the same concept:

I really enjoy playing this one. It's a NIGHT mission and, like the original, you only have the CAAT units to work with. But it feels completely different and I find it a lot of fun to play.
Now we come to the HUGE reworks. These took over a week each to fit up and the missions needed to be redone entirely, new AI forces, new objectives etc...
the first of these is Watching the Detectives. here's the old map...

And here's the new...

It's more than doubled in size and there has been very substantial enhancement of buildings complexes etc. This is a DAWN mission and has gone through several iterations before the right battle was found for it. it's a tough mission with the player attacking down a slope in full view of the defender with little cover to work with. it took many attempts to make this feasible and I'm happy with the end result. You need to take this one slowly.
 
Then Mission 5, Bridges. Once again, the old map has been massively expanded.

And the new one is almost entirely different...

There are some similarities but as you can see, it's almost entirely new with new, more realistic villages added. Again, finding the right battle for this map has taken a lot of time and this is the mission I'm currently playtesting.  it'll probably change a little before I finish with it but I've finally whittled down the forces on both sides so that i can carry out the mission without having too much at my disposal.
Al Qusayr
The map for the last mission is almost the same. there are some significant improvements for it but you won't see these from such a wide angle. the mission has also been redone with new forces added and all-new AI.

And there it is. I'll go into each mission in a little more detail later. This is very close to finishing now. I expect to have finalised it by the end of this month.
 

A quick word about the missions themselves. I play the game in Real time and I don't PAUSE the action very often so I tend to focus in one one area of the map and leave the other areas to manage themselves without my supervision. This means that the missions will be reasonably small, certainly a lot smaller than the battles you're probably more familiar with. I don't manage battalions in Real Time  with any efficiency but I can manage a reinforced company without any trouble. So all the missions will feature a maximum of one USMC company with some attachments. This is my sweet spot. as it happens, a USMC platoon manages the same as most companies. the manpower and firepower they have is awesome but it's easier to manage a platoon than a company, even when the squads are broken into three teams.
I also like to have a slow-ish start with a small force on the map at the start with the rest of the force arriving in stages. I often find it much easier to manage quite a large OB in this manner as I get it set up and into the action before the next packet arrives. However, both Watching the Detectives and Al Qusayr have the entire OB on the map at the start so they both have a faster pace. On the other hand, CAAT among the Pigeons is very small with only about twenty units to manage. And most of them arrive 10 minutes after the mission starts. You start with just three units but there's plenty to do.
I also like to play with all the bells and whistles so you'll have access to a lot of artillery and air support in these missions. The USMC is a light infantry unit but with the artillery and air support is more than capable of going up against the best the Syrians have.

This is basically me just musing although there is some news in this post.
I'm in the final stages of putting together the first of three short campaigns, USMC Gung Ho. I thought there would be a very quick turn-around on this project because it was already largely finished and fully tested. I thought it would just require a new core unit file and a few tweaks here and there to take advantage of all the changes that have come over the last 10+ years. Well, was I wrong. One of the missions (CAAT Fight) was just absolute rubbish. I have no idea how I thought it was fun on any level. That required a whole new mission which I'm very happy with and much more in line with what I wanted. I ended up massively expanding two of the maps as well, (Watching the Detectives and Bridges if you're interested). The opener also got overhauled and expanded as well but not to the same degree that those two did. The AI forces in each mission have been reworked as well and the AI plans totally redone. So, it's been a lot more work to fix than I'd first thought.
Anyway, it's close to the end and if you're familiar with the campaign design process, this is when I, at least, start to look forward to my next project. I've been focused solely on Gung Ho for the last few weeks and the AI is done for all six missions and final testing is under way. But, at this stage, I feel like I've seen it all with this campaign so I've started looking at Hasrabit and boy, did I get a shock.
Hasrabit is basically my first real project and the AI design sucks! I opened up a few missions and had a look at placement for both and was very disappointed. Then the AI plans and was even more disappointed. I'd rate the current standard as unplayable but it's definitely fixable. The maps are actually quite good although a few of them would benefit from improving and expanding, particularly the armour clashes. I used to think anything over 1km in one direction was H-U-G-E.  And back then, it was. Computers are just so much more powerful nowadays that I can manage the massive firefight that results in the first five minutes of the Gung Ho finale without so much asd a hiccup. That would have dropped to about 2-3FPS on my old rig.
So, once Gung Ho is finished, I plan to get to work on Retribution and Hasrabit together. Red v Red is where the real fun is at for me so I'm excited to revisit the latter and to start work on the former. I expect the Brit version of Gung Ho won't take too long to finish though but no promises. I don't want to fight 'Meet the Flintstones' again for a L-O-N-G time.

This is basically me just musing although there is some news in this post.
I'm in the final stages of putting together the first of three short campaigns, USMC Gung Ho. I thought there would be a very quick turn-around on this project because it was already largely finished and fully tested. I thought it would just require a new core unit file and a few tweaks here and there to take advantage of all the changes that have come over the last 10+ years. Well, was I wrong. One of the missions (CAAT Fight) was just absolute rubbish. I have no idea how I thought it was fun on any level. That required a whole new mission which I'm very happy with and much more in line with what I wanted. I ended up massively expanding two of the maps as well, (Watching the Detectives and Bridges if you're interested). The opener also got overhauled and expanded as well but not to the same degree that those two did. The AI forces in each mission have been reworked as well and the AI plans totally redone. So, it's been a lot more work to fix than I'd first thought.
Anyway, it's close to the end and if you're familiar with the campaign design process, this is when I, at least, start to look forward to my next project. I've been focused solely on Gung Ho for the last few weeks and the AI is done for all six missions and final testing is under way. But, at this stage, I feel like I've seen it all with this campaign so I've started looking at Hasrabit and boy, did I get a shock.
Hasrabit is basically my first real project and the AI design sucks! I opened up a few missions and had a look at placement for both and was very disappointed. Then the AI plans and was even more disappointed. I'd rate the current standard as unplayable but it's definitely fixable. The maps are actually quite good although a few of them would benefit from improving and expanding, particularly the armour clashes. I used to think anything over 1km in one direction was H-U-G-E.  And back then, it was. Computers are just so much more powerful nowadays that I can manage the massive firefight that results in the first five minutes of the Gung Ho finale without so much asd a hiccup. That would have dropped to about 2-3FPS on my old rig.
So, once Gung Ho is finished, I plan to get to work on Retribution and Hasrabit together. Red v Red is where the real fun is at for me so I'm excited to revisit the latter and to start work on the former. I expect the Brit version of Gung Ho won't take too long to finish though but no promises. I don't want to fight 'Meet the Flintstones' again for a L-O-N-G time.

This is basically me just musing although there is some news in this post.
I'm in the final stages of putting together the first of three short campaigns, USMC Gung Ho. I thought there would be a very quick turn-around on this project because it was already largely finished and fully tested. I thought it would just require a new core unit file and a few tweaks here and there to take advantage of all the changes that have come over the last 10+ years. Well, was I wrong. One of the missions (CAAT Fight) was just absolute rubbish. I have no idea how I thought it was fun on any level. That required a whole new mission which I'm very happy with and much more in line with what I wanted. I ended up massively expanding two of the maps as well, (Watching the Detectives and Bridges if you're interested). The opener also got overhauled and expanded as well but not to the same degree that those two did. The AI forces in each mission have been reworked as well and the AI plans totally redone. So, it's been a lot more work to fix than I'd first thought.
Anyway, it's close to the end and if you're familiar with the campaign design process, this is when I, at least, start to look forward to my next project. I've been focused solely on Gung Ho for the last few weeks and the AI is done for all six missions and final testing is under way. But, at this stage, I feel like I've seen it all with this campaign so I've started looking at Hasrabit and boy, did I get a shock.
Hasrabit is basically my first real project and the AI design sucks! I opened up a few missions and had a look at placement for both and was very disappointed. Then the AI plans and was even more disappointed. I'd rate the current standard as unplayable but it's definitely fixable. The maps are actually quite good although a few of them would benefit from improving and expanding, particularly the armour clashes. I used to think anything over 1km in one direction was H-U-G-E.  And back then, it was. Computers are just so much more powerful nowadays that I can manage the massive firefight that results in the first five minutes of the Gung Ho finale without so much asd a hiccup. That would have dropped to about 2-3FPS on my old rig.
So, once Gung Ho is finished, I plan to get to work on Retribution and Hasrabit together. Red v Red is where the real fun is at for me so I'm excited to revisit the latter and to start work on the former. I expect the Brit version of Gung Ho won't take too long to finish though but no promises. I don't want to fight 'Meet the Flintstones' again for a L-O-N-G time.

This is basically me just musing although there is some news in this post.
I'm in the final stages of putting together the first of three short campaigns, USMC Gung Ho. I thought there would be a very quick turn-around on this project because it was already largely finished and fully tested. I thought it would just require a new core unit file and a few tweaks here and there to take advantage of all the changes that have come over the last 10+ years. Well, was I wrong. One of the missions (CAAT Fight) was just absolute rubbish. I have no idea how I thought it was fun on any level. That required a whole new mission which I'm very happy with and much more in line with what I wanted. I ended up massively expanding two of the maps as well, (Watching the Detectives and Bridges if you're interested). The opener also got overhauled and expanded as well but not to the same degree that those two did. The AI forces in each mission have been reworked as well and the AI plans totally redone. So, it's been a lot more work to fix than I'd first thought.
Anyway, it's close to the end and if you're familiar with the campaign design process, this is when I, at least, start to look forward to my next project. I've been focused solely on Gung Ho for the last few weeks and the AI is done for all six missions and final testing is under way. But, at this stage, I feel like I've seen it all with this campaign so I've started looking at Hasrabit and boy, did I get a shock.
Hasrabit is basically my first real project and the AI design sucks! I opened up a few missions and had a look at placement for both and was very disappointed. Then the AI plans and was even more disappointed. I'd rate the current standard as unplayable but it's definitely fixable. The maps are actually quite good although a few of them would benefit from improving and expanding, particularly the armour clashes. I used to think anything over 1km in one direction was H-U-G-E.  And back then, it was. Computers are just so much more powerful nowadays that I can manage the massive firefight that results in the first five minutes of the Gung Ho finale without so much asd a hiccup. That would have dropped to about 2-3FPS on my old rig.
So, once Gung Ho is finished, I plan to get to work on Retribution and Hasrabit together. Red v Red is where the real fun is at for me so I'm excited to revisit the latter and to start work on the former. I expect the Brit version of Gung Ho won't take too long to finish though but no promises. I don't want to fight 'Meet the Flintstones' again for a L-O-N-G time.

This is basically me just musing although there is some news in this post.
I'm in the final stages of putting together the first of three short campaigns, USMC Gung Ho. I thought there would be a very quick turn-around on this project because it was already largely finished and fully tested. I thought it would just require a new core unit file and a few tweaks here and there to take advantage of all the changes that have come over the last 10+ years. Well, was I wrong. One of the missions (CAAT Fight) was just absolute rubbish. I have no idea how I thought it was fun on any level. That required a whole new mission which I'm very happy with and much more in line with what I wanted. I ended up massively expanding two of the maps as well, (Watching the Detectives and Bridges if you're interested). The opener also got overhauled and expanded as well but not to the same degree that those two did. The AI forces in each mission have been reworked as well and the AI plans totally redone. So, it's been a lot more work to fix than I'd first thought.
Anyway, it's close to the end and if you're familiar with the campaign design process, this is when I, at least, start to look forward to my next project. I've been focused solely on Gung Ho for the last few weeks and the AI is done for all six missions and final testing is under way. But, at this stage, I feel like I've seen it all with this campaign so I've started looking at Hasrabit and boy, did I get a shock.
Hasrabit is basically my first real project and the AI design sucks! I opened up a few missions and had a look at placement for both and was very disappointed. Then the AI plans and was even more disappointed. I'd rate the current standard as unplayable but it's definitely fixable. The maps are actually quite good although a few of them would benefit from improving and expanding, particularly the armour clashes. I used to think anything over 1km in one direction was H-U-G-E.  And back then, it was. Computers are just so much more powerful nowadays that I can manage the massive firefight that results in the first five minutes of the Gung Ho finale without so much asd a hiccup. That would have dropped to about 2-3FPS on my old rig.
So, once Gung Ho is finished, I plan to get to work on Retribution and Hasrabit together. Red v Red is where the real fun is at for me so I'm excited to revisit the latter and to start work on the former. I expect the Brit version of Gung Ho won't take too long to finish though but no promises. I don't want to fight 'Meet the Flintstones' again for a L-O-N-G time.

Be warned that I spent rather a lot of money trying to find a game that fulfilled all the itches that the CMx2 engine scratches. There really is nothing like this game - there are better games/sims but they don't have editors that allow you to recreate real world locations and then fight on them, to script the AI rather than have a generic AI that just rushes at you.
However, if you are looking for games that are 'better' in some respects, Microprose's Regiments is the biz. Less work to get into than the Eugen series of games as you don't create 'decks'. And I'm waiting for 'Age of Wonders 4' to drop in a few weeks time. I expect I'll spend some time each day playing that.
Creating maps, missions and campaigns with all the associated artwork and research is an enormous amount of work for one guy. Thank God I never tried modding as that sounds like a major time sink in itself. It's good to take a break from time to time and play something else - I'm feeling the burn as I playtest the final mission in my 'new' campaign because I haven't played anything else since  getting back into this - not even Mah Jong. However, my 'burn' is an impatience to get started on a new CM project.

Be warned that I spent rather a lot of money trying to find a game that fulfilled all the itches that the CMx2 engine scratches. There really is nothing like this game - there are better games/sims but they don't have editors that allow you to recreate real world locations and then fight on them, to script the AI rather than have a generic AI that just rushes at you.
However, if you are looking for games that are 'better' in some respects, Microprose's Regiments is the biz. Less work to get into than the Eugen series of games as you don't create 'decks'. And I'm waiting for 'Age of Wonders 4' to drop in a few weeks time. I expect I'll spend some time each day playing that.
Creating maps, missions and campaigns with all the associated artwork and research is an enormous amount of work for one guy. Thank God I never tried modding as that sounds like a major time sink in itself. It's good to take a break from time to time and play something else - I'm feeling the burn as I playtest the final mission in my 'new' campaign because I haven't played anything else since  getting back into this - not even Mah Jong. However, my 'burn' is an impatience to get started on a new CM project.

Be warned that I spent rather a lot of money trying to find a game that fulfilled all the itches that the CMx2 engine scratches. There really is nothing like this game - there are better games/sims but they don't have editors that allow you to recreate real world locations and then fight on them, to script the AI rather than have a generic AI that just rushes at you.
However, if you are looking for games that are 'better' in some respects, Microprose's Regiments is the biz. Less work to get into than the Eugen series of games as you don't create 'decks'. And I'm waiting for 'Age of Wonders 4' to drop in a few weeks time. I expect I'll spend some time each day playing that.
Creating maps, missions and campaigns with all the associated artwork and research is an enormous amount of work for one guy. Thank God I never tried modding as that sounds like a major time sink in itself. It's good to take a break from time to time and play something else - I'm feeling the burn as I playtest the final mission in my 'new' campaign because I haven't played anything else since  getting back into this - not even Mah Jong. However, my 'burn' is an impatience to get started on a new CM project.

All true. I really don't like being misled by briefings except when it was the historical norm to do so - i.e. every German tank was reported as a Tiger. The mission itself is all that really matters and no briefing or artwork is going to make the experience of playing a stinker any better. But a bad briefing or artwork can diminish the experience of playing a winner. The briefing and the artwork helps build up a sense of anticipation in some readers and helps them to immerse in the scenario while others just want to get into the action NOW! 
Edit to add:
I also don't like the lack of control I have over what the Early Intel parameter reveals to the player - even on 10%, it sometimes shows too much. Using that setting also 'fixes' the AI plan before the player hits 'Start' whereas it is randomised without any Intel setting. The briefing and artwork can do the intel reveal for me rather than the game settings most of the time.

This is the last substantial barrier to reworking my old CMSF campaigns - the artwork was terrible (done with MS Paint and Picture Manager) and has to be redone and I have to learn how to use GIMP to make new artwork for the missions.
Of course, it also allows me to make all new campaigns as well. 
I'm going all in with getting 'Gung Ho' ready for next month. This is my entire focus just now.

That's a really nice looking format. I was thinking along those lines for WW2 missions, for the tac map at least. I find heavily de-saturated works nicely for modern era for my taste. Operational maps come in handy for folks who know very little about the conflicts covered - the old grog breed seems to be dying out nowadays so it's not a given that folks will know the history. But that's along the lines of what I was considering - 50-50 op map and the rest used for the OB reinforcements. Or even just what is necessary for the Operational to use in the Strategic box instead. That would work for Montebourg. If the player doesn't know where Normandy, Luxembourg or Italy are, well, I'm not overly concerned about informing them
A lot of my early works just have nice pictures in those boxes. They don't even look good nowadays, especially 'Hasrabit', some of which are absolutely ghastly. My old campaigns badly need an update.

All true. I really don't like being misled by briefings except when it was the historical norm to do so - i.e. every German tank was reported as a Tiger. The mission itself is all that really matters and no briefing or artwork is going to make the experience of playing a stinker any better. But a bad briefing or artwork can diminish the experience of playing a winner. The briefing and the artwork helps build up a sense of anticipation in some readers and helps them to immerse in the scenario while others just want to get into the action NOW! 
Edit to add:
I also don't like the lack of control I have over what the Early Intel parameter reveals to the player - even on 10%, it sometimes shows too much. Using that setting also 'fixes' the AI plan before the player hits 'Start' whereas it is randomised without any Intel setting. The briefing and artwork can do the intel reveal for me rather than the game settings most of the time.

Interesting observation. Unpacked campaign missions are purposefully not as difficult as stand-alone missions because, unlike the stand-alone, the consequences carry forward after the mission. And the German Panzergrenadiers were a particularly fragile unit to work with in a campaign - (only 7 men but still a fun formation to work with.) I purposefully dial down the difficulty a notch or two when making campaign missions, particularly the missions that come later in the campaign because, inevitably, a lot of the actual testing of any mission is done as a stand-alone, the complied testing coming towards the end of development.
I'm actually testing missions 5 and 6 of Gung Ho just now like this and need these missions to be reasonably easy to beat with the full core force because the campaign player won't have anything like a full roster when he plays these missions. At least Gung Ho! is not an official, paid-for campaign so customers can't (reasonably) complain that 'they paid for this content, that it's their hobby that they should be able to complete it without all the stress', so I can get away with making it tougher this time.
Otherwise, if it's an engine comparison, I'm actually finding CMSF2 more difficult to manage because units no longer utilise cover as effectively as they did before. It's been 10+ years though so it's likely it's me that sucks.

Doh! I thought I'd be able to delete the original post. I was just trying to see if I could link screenshots with this site.
In case you're curious, I've been learning how to use GIMP to create the artwork for an upcoming campaign and that's the basic format I've arrived at today. It's still a WIP.  I expect screenshots of the new campaign and an announcement will follow shortly now that I know how it works.

Doh! I thought I'd be able to delete the original post. I was just trying to see if I could link screenshots with this site.
In case you're curious, I've been learning how to use GIMP to create the artwork for an upcoming campaign and that's the basic format I've arrived at today. It's still a WIP.  I expect screenshots of the new campaign and an announcement will follow shortly now that I know how it works.

Their MG ammo is bugged? Since I'll be using both, I checked both the mech and the non-mech airborne and you're right - 100 rounds each.   I guess I'll have to work around the issue then. I'm not sure I want BMP-3s in all my missions so those little cars will have to do when they're choppering in. I guess it's not too much of a fantasy to say that they were choppered in. The 'why' is obvious.
Yup, 'Carry On Up The Khabour' would really be in very bad taste for a Syrian Civil War campaign but with our British tongue-in-cheek humour, it's not actually bad for a British Forces campaign. I probably won't do that now as I'll be using the Khabour maps for the Syrian airborne campaign instead.
Red v Red is where the game really shines for me too. I've got a system for keeping Blue v Red 'interesting' but sometimes, you just want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of their women.

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.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. After reading my concept, I think it's a really good idea and also have identified the first two missions in the campaign (Suburban Hell and Al Hasakah). So I have created a new folder called 'Retribution' and shifted in five maps for the time being. I think this will indeed be my next project after 'Gung Ho!' and it will consist almost exclusively of Red (player) v Uncons missions, at least in the first two stages.
I put an enormous amount of work into creating those maps and it would be nice to get a bit more mileage out of them and to use the Syrian Airborne, a formation I haven't done anything with.

Another incipient campaign? Yikes! I have completely forgotten about that one as well as that flu. That was nasty - three visits to the hospital before a doctor finally got the diagnosis right. I was also a tad sensitive back then about PC which I've since learned to give the middle finger to. A lot has changed in the last 11 years. That seems to be something I had planned after work on the 'Scottish Corridor' was finished and indeed, something 'new' for BFC came along shortly afterwards which would demand my attention for a while afterwards.
I'm glad to see I posted a fairly good concept for it as it looks like a good one and it will help reconstruct the idea in my mind. I've been looking at the maps I did for the NATO campaigns and it would be good to revisit them and do something Red v Red with them along those lines. The map I made for 'Charity' was a real labour of love. There are two maps that nearly 'broke' me, 'Charity' and 'Brew Up'. I still have the Charity map but the Brew Up map was a new final bonus mission for the Scottish Corridor campaign which was lost in the crash as well as that Dinas map and the German map mentioned that never made it to the campaign. I can't even remember what those latter two looked like. 'Brew Up' I will never forget though. It was so much work to do and the 'right' battle was proving equally challenging to find.
Right now, I am fully at work on a rework of the 'USMC Gung Ho' campaign which is almost an entirely new beast from the original as I've reworked the maps and massively expanded three of them and thrown out the original CAAT fight mission which I just don't get. How did I ever think that was fun?  I spent the entirety of Sunday and yesterday afternoon developing the new 'CAAT among the pigeons' mission which is both in line with what I wanted and is also a lot of fun to play so I really want to finish this before moving on to something new. What that might be though will be decided later, an update for Hasrabit was the most likely bet because I wanted to do something with the Republican Guards but this discovery might change that. 'Carry On Up The Khabour' sounds like something I might do though

Well, sensitivity about PC issues aside, this has been brought to my attention again and I've identified some of the maps I was using and have opened a new folder. I expect work on this will begin quite soon. Of course, it will be for CMSF2 and not the CMSF1 game. I really couldn't go back to that again. Too much has changed for the better IMO.

Another incipient campaign? Yikes! I have completely forgotten about that one as well as that flu. That was nasty - three visits to the hospital before a doctor finally got the diagnosis right. I was also a tad sensitive back then about PC which I've since learned to give the middle finger to. A lot has changed in the last 11 years. That seems to be something I had planned after work on the 'Scottish Corridor' was finished and indeed, something 'new' for BFC came along shortly afterwards which would demand my attention for a while afterwards.
I'm glad to see I posted a fairly good concept for it as it looks like a good one and it will help reconstruct the idea in my mind. I've been looking at the maps I did for the NATO campaigns and it would be good to revisit them and do something Red v Red with them along those lines. The map I made for 'Charity' was a real labour of love. There are two maps that nearly 'broke' me, 'Charity' and 'Brew Up'. I still have the Charity map but the Brew Up map was a new final bonus mission for the Scottish Corridor campaign which was lost in the crash as well as that Dinas map and the German map mentioned that never made it to the campaign. I can't even remember what those latter two looked like. 'Brew Up' I will never forget though. It was so much work to do and the 'right' battle was proving equally challenging to find.
Right now, I am fully at work on a rework of the 'USMC Gung Ho' campaign which is almost an entirely new beast from the original as I've reworked the maps and massively expanded three of them and thrown out the original CAAT fight mission which I just don't get. How did I ever think that was fun?  I spent the entirety of Sunday and yesterday afternoon developing the new 'CAAT among the pigeons' mission which is both in line with what I wanted and is also a lot of fun to play so I really want to finish this before moving on to something new. What that might be though will be decided later, an update for Hasrabit was the most likely bet because I wanted to do something with the Republican Guards but this discovery might change that. 'Carry On Up The Khabour' sounds like something I might do though