Paper Tiger

There is so much more that we can do with this simple binary system with a little imagination. I'm feeling the 'so little time' part too.  There reworks are taking up months of my time - I had hoped to make much faster progress with them but I just have to rework these old maps first and the AI in these two early campaigns was abysmal, basically being QB map AI plans. Although I was pleasantly surprised by what I was getting from testing the original Amarah - one sees what can still be done with the old forms by one who knows how to handle them.

Two completely contradictory requests.  Whatever I do, one of you is going to be unhappy. It's something I'm taking my mind to consider and I won't decide until a bit later, at least until testing properly starts. In favour of the consolidation option is that the average player will probably have pretty much the same head and vehicle count as they would without it. On the other hand, an experienced player who has managed to complete the earlier missions with next to no casualties would see his forces lost. My thinking on that point is that if you've already preserved your force so well, the campaign obviously isn't posing a real challenge and so you will probably find a better challenge at the end. Who knows? There's a lot to consider and sometimes the best answer is just to leave as much as possible without changing it. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
Which segues nicely to my next point. As I've said a few times already, the new engine has pretty much obsoleted the old campaign because defenders in buildings are far more resilient and even conscripts with low morale will stand and fight. And artillery doesn't do nearly as much damage to infantry in buildings as it did way back when the campaign was first devised. Add to that the near-absurd force ratios and that's a lot of rebalancing work.
I've started real work on the phase 3 missions now, Amarah, Farmers, Jameelah and Tumah,  and have decided not to make nearly so many radical map overhauls this time around apart from the Tumah Crossing map which has already been improved considerably. I am splitting up some of the massive grain fields on these maps and 'planting' different crops there to make them a little less yellow overall. And I'm reworking some of the compounds so that they're a bit more realistic but otherwise, I want to keep the flavour of these maps intact as much as possible. It will also save a bit of time.
When I was devising core units, I spent a lot of time improving three of these four maps so most of the map work is already done. Amarah is the only one that needs real improvements but I'm keeping the extreme elevation changes and the overall terrain as is. What WILL go are the AT-14 ATGM teams. The briefing is totally misleading in that respect, not to mention that they're massively lethal to both vehicles and infantry.
The initial recon phase is a bit boring so instead of having the reinforcements arrive earlier, I'm going to beef up the starting OB with some of the 'tools' that the original CMSF didn't have. These two changes alone should allow me to keep the general flow of the battle intact from the original rather than a whole new battle like Sagger Point and SAM Hill needed after the extensive overhaul.

I'll post my progress on this campaign in this thread from now on. For those who don't know anything about this campaign, it was my second Red v Red campaign made for CMSF way, way back in the days of the release of the USMC module and its setting is a Syrian civil war scenario where some Syrian generals attempt a coup. The premise is that the coup is launched with thunderclap surprise and so rebel forces are put into action as soon as they mobilise. While a good number of divisions will 'wait and see', the regime has a number of divisions that are 100% loyal so the rebels are on the clock as the more time they take to accomplish missions, the more time the regime has to assemble its own forces to oppose them.
This means that time limits will be reasonably strict to reflect that pressure and so casualties are to be expected to accomplish your goals. However, the campaign gives you quite a large core force of which one company and support (usually tanks) is drawn to perform the mission.
One point is that some of these maps are very large and so it would seem like it's a bit of a stretch just to have a single company when a battalion would be better. For example,

A single company? To take THAT?! Are you HIGH?" And this...


In both these situations, the friendly forces arrive in small packages and so the action unfolds over time. My plan is not to change the nature of the campaign too much and keep the player's forces small and have lots of artillery support as well as as many 'cool' toys as I can find in the Syrian OB to play around with.

Well, it turns out the Sagger Point rework took a bit longer than I'd anticipated. It's almost finished now but I've had to redo the map. They say a picture is worth a thousand words so here are a couple which show the old Sagger map and the new, reworked one, both taken pretty much from the same perspective.


As you can see, the new map is a lot less yellow with more realistic farmlands and completely reworked compounds. The old village has been relocated to the centre of the map and the huge hill to the north has been cut down to size a bit so that it's a less dominant terrain feature. I think I was obsessed with building them really high back in the early days of CMx1
 
The plan here is to try and keep the OB to a company of mech inf with support rather than have two full mech inf companies + support. Sorry folks but I just don't play that way anymore and since this is going to require a lot of playtesting, I need to be able to manage everything in RT. By relocating the village to the centre of the map, it fits in with my strategy of giving the player mini goals to achieve while his forces arrive on the map for the big set piece, the assault on the hill.
I'm using some UNCON units in this mission to represent small bands of civilians who are against the rebellion so the initial opposition is not too tough to manage with a small force. They are scattered around the small compounds and the villages and I'll be able to vary their set ups between AI plans so that nobody knows exactly where they'll be even if you've played it once already.
Gone too are the 'emplaced' tanks on the hill so that you will be able to move your mech inf in sight of the hill without the AI overriding n your orders with self-preservation retreat orders.
The map as you see it is relatively bare with respect to details and flavour objects - that's an evening job when I prefer to relax, listen to some old Eagles albums and do some light map work.

I'll post my progress on this campaign in this thread from now on. For those who don't know anything about this campaign, it was my second Red v Red campaign made for CMSF way, way back in the days of the release of the USMC module and its setting is a Syrian civil war scenario where some Syrian generals attempt a coup. The premise is that the coup is launched with thunderclap surprise and so rebel forces are put into action as soon as they mobilise. While a good number of divisions will 'wait and see', the regime has a number of divisions that are 100% loyal so the rebels are on the clock as the more time they take to accomplish missions, the more time the regime has to assemble its own forces to oppose them.
This means that time limits will be reasonably strict to reflect that pressure and so casualties are to be expected to accomplish your goals. However, the campaign gives you quite a large core force of which one company and support (usually tanks) is drawn to perform the mission.
One point is that some of these maps are very large and so it would seem like it's a bit of a stretch just to have a single company when a battalion would be better. For example,

A single company? To take THAT?! Are you HIGH?" And this...


In both these situations, the friendly forces arrive in small packages and so the action unfolds over time. My plan is not to change the nature of the campaign too much and keep the player's forces small and have lots of artillery support as well as as many 'cool' toys as I can find in the Syrian OB to play around with.

A quick update on last week's progress. I spent the week working on two missions, (3 and 4 in the campaign). As mentioned above, early last week, i was wanting to cut one of these two missions because they felt very samey. But i decided to rework the maps and try something different with them. I was very happy with the result in Sabatani and the force ratio is almost 1:1. Considering what you have and the quality of it, you're definitely at an advantage.
And so at the weekend, I turned to Suib. I wasn't happy with the map and the compounds so I decided to revamp the map, removing the large orchards and replacing them with fields of vegetables and grain. I also removed the poor quality compounds to the east of the river and replaced them, once again, with actual Syrian village compounds. I also reduced the height of the hills at the back of the map and gave it a whole new RED OB. I now have two AI plans and another very reasonable force ratio so I feel like I've done a good job on both of these. I enjoyed playtesting them too and had to relearn a lesson - namely that I WANT to kill the player's units. I had an impulse to quit my run and change the AI to reduce the lethality and remembered that I WANT to make the AI tough if you are too hasty.

I'm sure there are, especially on the East front but I only have CM:BN, CM:SF2 and CM:CW and I haven't done a thing for Cold War yet. I'd have to convince the wife to allow me to splurge $100+ on a new game just now as well. She'd say 'yes' because she's an angel but I'd feel like a ****.  I'd probably spend the money on CM:FI anyway as that looks more like my thing.
I've discovered that the key for me to enjoy something is to be able to use all the fun stuff and not just the vanilla formations with no air support and no proper artillery support - I like the combined arms and to have some unusual kit make an appearance from time to time, weird stuff like guns on trucks that are fragile and require some finessing to work without them being instantly wrecked.

I actually spent half an hour reviewing the opening two missions of the German NATO campaign this morning and you are correct that the ammo is restocked between missions even though there is no resupply between missions in the campaign script and they are indeed core artillery units. Since this was all tested and WAD for the CMSF campaigns, there has probably been some change made to the engine which affects this.
Anyway, the matter is moot for two reasons:
First, your point is that it was not spelled out to you how many missions the core artillery was meant to last and that's fair enough. It was an old campaign and the first I made as a beta tester so I own that error.
And second, there is no core artillery in Dinas. I stripped them out very early in development.

I'll post my progress on this campaign in this thread from now on. For those who don't know anything about this campaign, it was my second Red v Red campaign made for CMSF way, way back in the days of the release of the USMC module and its setting is a Syrian civil war scenario where some Syrian generals attempt a coup. The premise is that the coup is launched with thunderclap surprise and so rebel forces are put into action as soon as they mobilise. While a good number of divisions will 'wait and see', the regime has a number of divisions that are 100% loyal so the rebels are on the clock as the more time they take to accomplish missions, the more time the regime has to assemble its own forces to oppose them.
This means that time limits will be reasonably strict to reflect that pressure and so casualties are to be expected to accomplish your goals. However, the campaign gives you quite a large core force of which one company and support (usually tanks) is drawn to perform the mission.
One point is that some of these maps are very large and so it would seem like it's a bit of a stretch just to have a single company when a battalion would be better. For example,

A single company? To take THAT?! Are you HIGH?" And this...


In both these situations, the friendly forces arrive in small packages and so the action unfolds over time. My plan is not to change the nature of the campaign too much and keep the player's forces small and have lots of artillery support as well as as many 'cool' toys as I can find in the Syrian OB to play around with.

A quick observation of how projects evolve as I develop them. I am working on missions 2 and 3 this week, Sabatani and Suib and they're both infantry-centric assaults on an urban area defended by infantry attacking across a river. The two missions were so similar that I went to bed last night thinking that I'd just ditch Sabatani. But when I woke up this morning, I decided to remove the river from the Sabatani map. Once I did that, I liked it a lot better but I took a look at the old ASL-style compound to the north of the urban area and decided that had to be redone as well. I need things to look more realistic when I play now.
Here's the OLD Sabatani map with the ASL compounds to the north of the road as well as the dry river bed and bridge.

So I went to Google Earth and scanned around and found a small but rather interesting area in the vicinity of the Golan and so I deleted the original buildings, walls trees etc to the north of the main road and replaced them with an all-new farm complex and a tiny lake which I really like the look of. So Sabatani has been saved from the chopping block by a morning's map work. This afternoon, after work, I fired up the mission and gave it a spin and it looks like it will be sufficiently different from Suib to justify keeping it in. And there's no river crossing battle here either.
Here's the reworked map with the new farm complex and the small lake. (This is a real place). I've also broken up the HUGE grain fields and replaced them with some other crops. Instead of the empty ground, there are some sheep/goat pastures as well to the front of the small town which fill the map out quite nicely.

I'll post my progress on this campaign in this thread from now on. For those who don't know anything about this campaign, it was my second Red v Red campaign made for CMSF way, way back in the days of the release of the USMC module and its setting is a Syrian civil war scenario where some Syrian generals attempt a coup. The premise is that the coup is launched with thunderclap surprise and so rebel forces are put into action as soon as they mobilise. While a good number of divisions will 'wait and see', the regime has a number of divisions that are 100% loyal so the rebels are on the clock as the more time they take to accomplish missions, the more time the regime has to assemble its own forces to oppose them.
This means that time limits will be reasonably strict to reflect that pressure and so casualties are to be expected to accomplish your goals. However, the campaign gives you quite a large core force of which one company and support (usually tanks) is drawn to perform the mission.
One point is that some of these maps are very large and so it would seem like it's a bit of a stretch just to have a single company when a battalion would be better. For example,

A single company? To take THAT?! Are you HIGH?" And this...


In both these situations, the friendly forces arrive in small packages and so the action unfolds over time. My plan is not to change the nature of the campaign too much and keep the player's forces small and have lots of artillery support as well as as many 'cool' toys as I can find in the Syrian OB to play around with.

I'll post my progress on this campaign in this thread from now on. For those who don't know anything about this campaign, it was my second Red v Red campaign made for CMSF way, way back in the days of the release of the USMC module and its setting is a Syrian civil war scenario where some Syrian generals attempt a coup. The premise is that the coup is launched with thunderclap surprise and so rebel forces are put into action as soon as they mobilise. While a good number of divisions will 'wait and see', the regime has a number of divisions that are 100% loyal so the rebels are on the clock as the more time they take to accomplish missions, the more time the regime has to assemble its own forces to oppose them.
This means that time limits will be reasonably strict to reflect that pressure and so casualties are to be expected to accomplish your goals. However, the campaign gives you quite a large core force of which one company and support (usually tanks) is drawn to perform the mission.
One point is that some of these maps are very large and so it would seem like it's a bit of a stretch just to have a single company when a battalion would be better. For example,

A single company? To take THAT?! Are you HIGH?" And this...


In both these situations, the friendly forces arrive in small packages and so the action unfolds over time. My plan is not to change the nature of the campaign too much and keep the player's forces small and have lots of artillery support as well as as many 'cool' toys as I can find in the Syrian OB to play around with.

Okay, that's it uploaded. The picture failed to load but I don't care about that too much at this point.
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-shock-force-2-2/cm-shock-force-2-campaigns/cmsf2-usmc-gung-ho/
This is a six mission campaign featuring Bravo Company of 1st Battalion 8th Marines. I should mention that it's a rework of my much earlier CMSF1 campaign of the same name but it's so reworked that it's really an all-new campaign that takes advantage of all the CMSF2 features. You'll need the NATO module to play this as the Syrian Airborne features in one of the missions. Sorry about that but I guess most folks reading here already have the full Monty.
It's designed primarily to have fun with one of the most unique factions in the game, the USMC, a light infantry formation that punches far above its weight even without the air support that you'll have in these missions. It should also be quite challenging but not too challenging. Mission 3 - CAAT among the Pigeons is intended to be very easy, to allow you to let rip with a rather unique formation within the MEU. 
I look forward to hearing how you get on. Perhaps you can tell me how many kills HITMAN got in your campaign? You're not beta testing this - I've already played this myself but that's a potential issue, it's been tested by one player with a particular play style and skill set. I try to break these missions but I'm not as creative about that as some of you will be  If you find any typos, let me know. I've been scanning the texts these last couple of days and can't see any but that's likely fatigue. Unless something egregious is found, you should be safe to complete a campaign before a revision comes up. I'm hoping that won't necessary but I've done this before and it can always be improved.
With the exception of CAAT among the Pigeons, each mission has several AI plans to give the campaign replayablity. So, if there's enough interest in it, I will return to this to make a new version featuring the German Gebirgsjagers which look like they'd be a blast to play with as well and not need much work to be done beyond making a core unit file and importing the units into each mission. And finally, I want to make a Brit forces Light Infantry version but that will need more work to do.

I'll post my progress on this campaign in this thread from now on. For those who don't know anything about this campaign, it was my second Red v Red campaign made for CMSF way, way back in the days of the release of the USMC module and its setting is a Syrian civil war scenario where some Syrian generals attempt a coup. The premise is that the coup is launched with thunderclap surprise and so rebel forces are put into action as soon as they mobilise. While a good number of divisions will 'wait and see', the regime has a number of divisions that are 100% loyal so the rebels are on the clock as the more time they take to accomplish missions, the more time the regime has to assemble its own forces to oppose them.
This means that time limits will be reasonably strict to reflect that pressure and so casualties are to be expected to accomplish your goals. However, the campaign gives you quite a large core force of which one company and support (usually tanks) is drawn to perform the mission.
One point is that some of these maps are very large and so it would seem like it's a bit of a stretch just to have a single company when a battalion would be better. For example,

A single company? To take THAT?! Are you HIGH?" And this...


In both these situations, the friendly forces arrive in small packages and so the action unfolds over time. My plan is not to change the nature of the campaign too much and keep the player's forces small and have lots of artillery support as well as as many 'cool' toys as I can find in the Syrian OB to play around with.

I've often wondered why I've never done anything with the Germans in CMBN because they're my favourite WW2 wargaming side (Japan being a close second in a strategic wargame). I really enjoy playing as the German in Panzer Corps and Unit of Command 2 up until 1943 and then I lose interest and would prefer to play as the Allies from 44 onwards. So perhaps it's just that I want to play as the side with the strategic initiative as there are so many interesting options to explore there.
I guess it's really old to say this by now but I really wish BFC had gone back to 1941 to do the Russian Front and work forward instead of 1944 (of course I understand why this was done - the ability to recycle unit models and formations for one side so that they only had to make everything for the Russians who fortunately sported some lend-lease kit which was also already done.) Had that been done, I'd probably have done nothing but German WW2 campaigns as 1941-43 is where the excitement is at for me, especially 41.
Unfortunately, I've never managed to find the enthusiasm to make a German CMBN campaign as there are severe limitations to what can be done with them and to find a situation and craft a core force which could feasibly survive several missions. Some what-ifs could be interesting - what if Rommel had had his way and the Panzer divisions were positioned closer to the beaches? But I just can't see any real chance of driving the Allies out of Normandy as their completely mastery of the air would make that nearly impossible to achieve. I'd imagine that the Allies would have responded devastatingly had an existential threat emerged to the invasion so I don't see how it could have changed much except to make the victory more costly for all parties.

Let's have a little chat about where everything is at the moment with me and my work. As you've noticed, Hasrabit has not been completed yet and no progress has been made. I've been working on Road to Dinas instead and am beginning to encounter some of the issues that delayed Hasrabit. Namely that these two campaigns are OLD, and I mean really old. They were made when I was still in love with the European theatre in WW2 and many of my map designs were influenced very strongly by ASL scenarios. The inexperience really shines through with these two. Don't get me wrong, they both were innovative in some respect (Hasrabit used core artillery and Dinas had Red core units too.)
Like pretty much everybody else who wasn't on the Beta team, I didn't really know how to make a good AI plan back then and I spent a lot of time making Quick battle maps which I used for Hasrabit. Almost ALL the Hasrabit missions have QB AI plans, namely that I painted large set-up zones for a group and let the AI deploy the units in the group according to the desired parameters. AI attacks used these large blocks as well. I was still using this in Dinas as well so you can imagine that this is completely unworkable now. This all started to change when I joined the Beta team to work on the CMSF Brit module and I was no longer working alone on projects. I got a LOT of very useful criticism from an Australian captain which really shaped what I was to produce in the future. By the time I was developing the NATO campaigns, I had evolved an entirely new system of making AI plans which I still use today. And I started using more sensible force ratios.
The second thing these two campaigns have in common is that you're often attacking at ridiculous odds - attacker v defender ratio is 1:3. While I don't like making them like this anymore, I'm going to stick with it for these reworks because the REDFor is defending the entire map which means you'll always have a local superiority unless you are really far too aggressive. While AI triggers may alleviate some of these issues, overall, the AI is unable to react properly to the player's moves. In addition, your firepower is almost always greater so these numbers are not so much of a problem for me.
As a player, I've slowed down quite a bit and am no longer able to manage much more than a company and some support assets comfortably in Real Time. I also don't particularly want to play a 3+ hour mission either. And Dinas in particular had missons with 2+ mech inf companies with armour in support. This is affecting testing as I just can't motivate myself to manage such monsters in RT. Which brings me to my next point.
A fourth issue is the presence of MOUT elements in most missions which is not always enjoyable and can be a bit repetitive. Dinas has quite a few missions with small MOUT elements - for example, Sagger Point which features a very large hill with emplaced tanks and ATGM teams dug in with great LoS. But there's also a small village at the foot of the hill. Now, with two mech inf companies and tanks in support, this is doable. But I don't want to manage two companies + support anymore so am thinking about having the infantry clear the village and the tanks and support with artillery clear the hill. That's a rather long-winded way of saying that I want to tone down the difficulty of each mission and am concerned about the overall same-ness of many of the missions. A bit of MOUT is a good thing but not everywhere, all the time.
A last point, but an important one, is that these are essentially fantasy campaigns. While a few of the maps are based on real world locations (Strong Stand and Hasrabit in Hasrabit), almost all of them are just made-up. In Dinas, I seemed to be obsessed with river crossings, for example and many of the missions are fights for control of such objectives. This was me still under the influence of some ASL scenarios I played with friends in the 90s. Dinas and Hasrabit are both completely fictional locations and the maps are just a product of my imagination and not on any geographical reality. For example, Lakes in Dinas might work in a northern Syria setting but anyone with Google earth can see that no such feature exists between the Golan and Damascus. There's absolutely nothing I can do about that so I'm just going to remake them and hope that folks just enjoy them for what they are.
My plan is not to change very much with Dinas - I had already reworked some of these maps for Gung Ho! and I have expanded and redeveloped two of these maps for the opening two missions (Petani - Flintstones and High Chaparral - Orchard Road) so that they're not the same. But have resorted to the old Dinas maps for Sabatini (not Detectives) and Where Farmers Dare - (not Bridges) to preserve the feel of the original campaign. Besides, Red v Red is a bit better on smaller maps, especially with Infantry which doesn't spot nearly so well as Blue forces do.
I have redesigned the villages and compounds on the maps to get away from the ASL blocks I used back then. I've found some real world villages in Syria as templates and you'll really see this when you play Petani, Orchard Road, Where Farmers Dare and The Tumah Crossing missions.
For the time being, there will be no core artillery in the campaign and will instead give the player what he needs to get the job done. I might reverse this decision at some point.
I've also replaced the T-72Ms with T-55MVs which, in spite of being older, are just better tanks to work with. Plus I like the look and sound of them.
And that's where I'm at just now. Dinas will get finished first, then I want to rework the Scottish Corridor and then finally finish Hasrabit.

Let's have a little chat about where everything is at the moment with me and my work. As you've noticed, Hasrabit has not been completed yet and no progress has been made. I've been working on Road to Dinas instead and am beginning to encounter some of the issues that delayed Hasrabit. Namely that these two campaigns are OLD, and I mean really old. They were made when I was still in love with the European theatre in WW2 and many of my map designs were influenced very strongly by ASL scenarios. The inexperience really shines through with these two. Don't get me wrong, they both were innovative in some respect (Hasrabit used core artillery and Dinas had Red core units too.)
Like pretty much everybody else who wasn't on the Beta team, I didn't really know how to make a good AI plan back then and I spent a lot of time making Quick battle maps which I used for Hasrabit. Almost ALL the Hasrabit missions have QB AI plans, namely that I painted large set-up zones for a group and let the AI deploy the units in the group according to the desired parameters. AI attacks used these large blocks as well. I was still using this in Dinas as well so you can imagine that this is completely unworkable now. This all started to change when I joined the Beta team to work on the CMSF Brit module and I was no longer working alone on projects. I got a LOT of very useful criticism from an Australian captain which really shaped what I was to produce in the future. By the time I was developing the NATO campaigns, I had evolved an entirely new system of making AI plans which I still use today. And I started using more sensible force ratios.
The second thing these two campaigns have in common is that you're often attacking at ridiculous odds - attacker v defender ratio is 1:3. While I don't like making them like this anymore, I'm going to stick with it for these reworks because the REDFor is defending the entire map which means you'll always have a local superiority unless you are really far too aggressive. While AI triggers may alleviate some of these issues, overall, the AI is unable to react properly to the player's moves. In addition, your firepower is almost always greater so these numbers are not so much of a problem for me.
As a player, I've slowed down quite a bit and am no longer able to manage much more than a company and some support assets comfortably in Real Time. I also don't particularly want to play a 3+ hour mission either. And Dinas in particular had missons with 2+ mech inf companies with armour in support. This is affecting testing as I just can't motivate myself to manage such monsters in RT. Which brings me to my next point.
A fourth issue is the presence of MOUT elements in most missions which is not always enjoyable and can be a bit repetitive. Dinas has quite a few missions with small MOUT elements - for example, Sagger Point which features a very large hill with emplaced tanks and ATGM teams dug in with great LoS. But there's also a small village at the foot of the hill. Now, with two mech inf companies and tanks in support, this is doable. But I don't want to manage two companies + support anymore so am thinking about having the infantry clear the village and the tanks and support with artillery clear the hill. That's a rather long-winded way of saying that I want to tone down the difficulty of each mission and am concerned about the overall same-ness of many of the missions. A bit of MOUT is a good thing but not everywhere, all the time.
A last point, but an important one, is that these are essentially fantasy campaigns. While a few of the maps are based on real world locations (Strong Stand and Hasrabit in Hasrabit), almost all of them are just made-up. In Dinas, I seemed to be obsessed with river crossings, for example and many of the missions are fights for control of such objectives. This was me still under the influence of some ASL scenarios I played with friends in the 90s. Dinas and Hasrabit are both completely fictional locations and the maps are just a product of my imagination and not on any geographical reality. For example, Lakes in Dinas might work in a northern Syria setting but anyone with Google earth can see that no such feature exists between the Golan and Damascus. There's absolutely nothing I can do about that so I'm just going to remake them and hope that folks just enjoy them for what they are.
My plan is not to change very much with Dinas - I had already reworked some of these maps for Gung Ho! and I have expanded and redeveloped two of these maps for the opening two missions (Petani - Flintstones and High Chaparral - Orchard Road) so that they're not the same. But have resorted to the old Dinas maps for Sabatini (not Detectives) and Where Farmers Dare - (not Bridges) to preserve the feel of the original campaign. Besides, Red v Red is a bit better on smaller maps, especially with Infantry which doesn't spot nearly so well as Blue forces do.
I have redesigned the villages and compounds on the maps to get away from the ASL blocks I used back then. I've found some real world villages in Syria as templates and you'll really see this when you play Petani, Orchard Road, Where Farmers Dare and The Tumah Crossing missions.
For the time being, there will be no core artillery in the campaign and will instead give the player what he needs to get the job done. I might reverse this decision at some point.
I've also replaced the T-72Ms with T-55MVs which, in spite of being older, are just better tanks to work with. Plus I like the look and sound of them.
And that's where I'm at just now. Dinas will get finished first, then I want to rework the Scottish Corridor and then finally finish Hasrabit.

Let's have a little chat about where everything is at the moment with me and my work. As you've noticed, Hasrabit has not been completed yet and no progress has been made. I've been working on Road to Dinas instead and am beginning to encounter some of the issues that delayed Hasrabit. Namely that these two campaigns are OLD, and I mean really old. They were made when I was still in love with the European theatre in WW2 and many of my map designs were influenced very strongly by ASL scenarios. The inexperience really shines through with these two. Don't get me wrong, they both were innovative in some respect (Hasrabit used core artillery and Dinas had Red core units too.)
Like pretty much everybody else who wasn't on the Beta team, I didn't really know how to make a good AI plan back then and I spent a lot of time making Quick battle maps which I used for Hasrabit. Almost ALL the Hasrabit missions have QB AI plans, namely that I painted large set-up zones for a group and let the AI deploy the units in the group according to the desired parameters. AI attacks used these large blocks as well. I was still using this in Dinas as well so you can imagine that this is completely unworkable now. This all started to change when I joined the Beta team to work on the CMSF Brit module and I was no longer working alone on projects. I got a LOT of very useful criticism from an Australian captain which really shaped what I was to produce in the future. By the time I was developing the NATO campaigns, I had evolved an entirely new system of making AI plans which I still use today. And I started using more sensible force ratios.
The second thing these two campaigns have in common is that you're often attacking at ridiculous odds - attacker v defender ratio is 1:3. While I don't like making them like this anymore, I'm going to stick with it for these reworks because the REDFor is defending the entire map which means you'll always have a local superiority unless you are really far too aggressive. While AI triggers may alleviate some of these issues, overall, the AI is unable to react properly to the player's moves. In addition, your firepower is almost always greater so these numbers are not so much of a problem for me.
As a player, I've slowed down quite a bit and am no longer able to manage much more than a company and some support assets comfortably in Real Time. I also don't particularly want to play a 3+ hour mission either. And Dinas in particular had missons with 2+ mech inf companies with armour in support. This is affecting testing as I just can't motivate myself to manage such monsters in RT. Which brings me to my next point.
A fourth issue is the presence of MOUT elements in most missions which is not always enjoyable and can be a bit repetitive. Dinas has quite a few missions with small MOUT elements - for example, Sagger Point which features a very large hill with emplaced tanks and ATGM teams dug in with great LoS. But there's also a small village at the foot of the hill. Now, with two mech inf companies and tanks in support, this is doable. But I don't want to manage two companies + support anymore so am thinking about having the infantry clear the village and the tanks and support with artillery clear the hill. That's a rather long-winded way of saying that I want to tone down the difficulty of each mission and am concerned about the overall same-ness of many of the missions. A bit of MOUT is a good thing but not everywhere, all the time.
A last point, but an important one, is that these are essentially fantasy campaigns. While a few of the maps are based on real world locations (Strong Stand and Hasrabit in Hasrabit), almost all of them are just made-up. In Dinas, I seemed to be obsessed with river crossings, for example and many of the missions are fights for control of such objectives. This was me still under the influence of some ASL scenarios I played with friends in the 90s. Dinas and Hasrabit are both completely fictional locations and the maps are just a product of my imagination and not on any geographical reality. For example, Lakes in Dinas might work in a northern Syria setting but anyone with Google earth can see that no such feature exists between the Golan and Damascus. There's absolutely nothing I can do about that so I'm just going to remake them and hope that folks just enjoy them for what they are.
My plan is not to change very much with Dinas - I had already reworked some of these maps for Gung Ho! and I have expanded and redeveloped two of these maps for the opening two missions (Petani - Flintstones and High Chaparral - Orchard Road) so that they're not the same. But have resorted to the old Dinas maps for Sabatini (not Detectives) and Where Farmers Dare - (not Bridges) to preserve the feel of the original campaign. Besides, Red v Red is a bit better on smaller maps, especially with Infantry which doesn't spot nearly so well as Blue forces do.
I have redesigned the villages and compounds on the maps to get away from the ASL blocks I used back then. I've found some real world villages in Syria as templates and you'll really see this when you play Petani, Orchard Road, Where Farmers Dare and The Tumah Crossing missions.
For the time being, there will be no core artillery in the campaign and will instead give the player what he needs to get the job done. I might reverse this decision at some point.
I've also replaced the T-72Ms with T-55MVs which, in spite of being older, are just better tanks to work with. Plus I like the look and sound of them.
And that's where I'm at just now. Dinas will get finished first, then I want to rework the Scottish Corridor and then finally finish Hasrabit.

I'm not planning to make it easier overall but there were one or two missions (Fair and Square [veteran] comes to mind) where the AI forces need to be toned down a tad. I would like to add a flamethrower tank to the mix in the opener only but otherwise, the plan is simply to update the AI where it is needed. Some of the missions have very small AI forces so 8 groups is already fine but I'm sure some triggers would make the missions a bit more challenging. Where the real work lies is in improving the AI attacks, of which there are quite a few when the SS counterattacks come in. 

I'm not planning to make it easier overall but there were one or two missions (Fair and Square [veteran] comes to mind) where the AI forces need to be toned down a tad. I would like to add a flamethrower tank to the mix in the opener only but otherwise, the plan is simply to update the AI where it is needed. Some of the missions have very small AI forces so 8 groups is already fine but I'm sure some triggers would make the missions a bit more challenging. Where the real work lies is in improving the AI attacks, of which there are quite a few when the SS counterattacks come in. 

I'm not planning to make it easier overall but there were one or two missions (Fair and Square [veteran] comes to mind) where the AI forces need to be toned down a tad. I would like to add a flamethrower tank to the mix in the opener only but otherwise, the plan is simply to update the AI where it is needed. Some of the missions have very small AI forces so 8 groups is already fine but I'm sure some triggers would make the missions a bit more challenging. Where the real work lies is in improving the AI attacks, of which there are quite a few when the SS counterattacks come in. 

I've been considering splitting this one up into two, shorter campaigns- one for the 9th Cameronians and the other for the 2nd ASH. There's no real overlap for these two stories. No promises but I would like to drop the difficulty down a notch. I watched Hapless' video series on this campaign and it did make me reconsider the difficulty. After all, not many of us are lucky enough to get out work played like this and I would like to encourage it rather than 'embarrass' the good folks who do. It was meant to be a HARD campaign, after all, it was a very hard operation but I think the last two Grainville missions need to be toned down and that JgPzIV in mission 2 subbed for something a little less intimidating.

https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cm-battle-for-normandy-campaigns/the-road-to-montebourg-revised-for-v4-0/
Don't worry, this won't overwrite or otherwise delete the original campaign that came on the disk. IIt's a completely different file. This is substantially different from the vanilla campaign and the number of changes made is huge but the most important one to note is that you will need both the Market Garden module and the Vehicle Pack to play this.
 
Other important highlights are that the 2/8 INF core units are now mostly Green with High morale which means you'll need to manage them more carefully in a firefight.
All-new AI plans using triggers and most of the tricks that came with later versions of the game.
Flamethrowers are included in some missions.
Some maps have been revised, most notably the map for Turnbull's Stand which veterans of the original campaign will probably notice quite quickly.
A 'new' mission has been added although those of you who found and played the earlier revised version that was uploaded to BFC's old Scenario Depot will recognise it. The campaign has a prelude phase consisting of the new mission and then the old campaign opener Beau Guillot. You should notice quite a few changes made to that mission as well - some extra help to make up for the drop in experience.
There is air support in quite a few missions now and less artillery, at least the bigger guns anyway.
 
Anyway, let's post this and then I'll see what needs to be 'fixed' or not in good time. This is an old campaign so i'm not expecting a ton of feedback for it for quite a while but let me know and I'll fix things. Now I'm taking a break from CMBN. I haven't quite decided what comes next - finishing Hasrabit or a new version of Gung Ho! for the German forces. Later, I'll get to work on the two Scottish campaigns I'd mentioned elswhere.
 
Have a Happy New year.

I've never been comfortable with praise and have issues accepting compliments when offered but I'm learning.  Thank you. Feedback on the other hand is very welcome. 
I'm actually semi-retired now and have much more time on my hands than I did ten years ago. I did spend the whole day on Sunday getting the entire campaign story worked out, organising it into four phases rather than two and tracking the consequences of a loss through the script until its resolved. An enormous job but I did that while listening to some classical music and prog rock albums from the 70s so it was pleasant. But that's an outlier. Usually, it's 1-2 hours a day, most days which is a good pace. But I am playing Dominions 6 just now so I'm not going to burn out. I am in no hurry to finish Dinas and I want to enjoy the campaign creation process as much as possible.
This game is a game for all moods: I enjoy making and improving the maps, I enjoy scripting AI plans and testing them and I enjoy just playing the game, seeing it all come to life. I even enjoy creating the artwork necessary and writing the briefings when I'm in the mood. They're all different types of activities so when I don't feel like 'working', I just improve the maps.

I will be reducing the defending force considerably too so the balance of forces will be more in your favour than the 1:3 you faced in the original. (That seemed to be my preferred attack-defence force ratio back in the early days of CMSF1 rather then 3:1 that is the norm.) Now it will be much closer to 1:1. Of course, the numbers are not the whole story as the firepower ratios are in your favour.
Plus there are a lot of new tools provided to the player in the shape of temporarily assigned assets that were not in CMSF. They're brutal when used properly.
And there will be proper AI this time around too.
But if playtesting makes the mission even more implausible, adding a second company to your OB is not an issue. I'll do what needs to be done to make sure the player enjoys a favourable firepower ratio.