Paper Tiger

Here's an update on how this is going. I have changed the structure of the original campaign to give it a new opening mission which, together with the original starting mission, Beau Guillot, will form a new campaign prelude, the outcome of which will determine certain parameters for the three Chapter 1 - Georgian Ridge missions. 
Having revised and tested the new AI plans for both the prelude and all the chapter one missions including the variants, I'll be picking up where I left off with Turnbull's Stand tomorrow. This is one of the very few AI attack missions so it will require a bit more time to get right but I learned a LOT from making USMC Gung Ho! so I'm guessing this will be better than the previous revision I made earlier this year. I'll just have to make sure that it's winnable. It's almost certainly going to play very differently from the old version, that's for sure.
I seem to be taking about a day to revise a defensive mission at the moment so if I am able to stick with a decent schedule, I should have most of this done before Xmas. However, the two blocks to swift progress will be Le Ham and the finale, Eroudeville. Le Ham didn't have any AI plan associated with it - it was a pure set-up with no variants and I can't let that stand. Eroudeville has a pretty sizeable AI attack so that will take a few days to revise as well.
 
A few observations about the new core forces - having the US 2/8 INF mostly Green makes for a rather different experience and I nearly undid the change as it was definitely harder to manage these forces in combat. But instead I've added some extra firepower to some of their missions to compensate them for the loss. In Guillot, you get a Destroyer on call to help soften up the defenders and there is air power in a couple of the Georgian Ridge missions. In Hameau, I've added an AA Quad Half Track to provide the attacker with some extra punch as well. The defenders get a little boost too to keep things interesting - nothing massively OP of course, but after all, most of you will have already played the original campaign so these changes should make it feel fresh.
The new AI plans are a considerable improvement over the old as well and the AI is much better on the defence now than it previously was so you'll need to be a little more cautious. Except for the new opener, there are always two or more AI plans in each mission, usually five. The opener is a recreation of a certain famous, historical action which I released as a stand-alone scenario to the old repository so it's intended to be fixed.
I have also found an old mission, Maxwell's House, which I kept a back up of on the Beta boards. It was offered as a possible scenario for the Arnhem module but it didn't cut the mustard. Fortunately, it was still in my folder there so I have been able to revisit it as well. it's a German attack on a tiny but highly detailed rubbled map defended by a very small but elite force of Red Devils in Arnhem. NOT Historical at all, just 100% for fun. It's definitely NOT going to be added to the Nijmegen campaign - that one is finished and I have no plans to touch it again (play perhaps  but definitely not redesign) The Breakout from the Neerpelt Bridgehead and the Aalst missions pretty much broke me, the work that went into them was tremendous. The other two Irish Guards missions that formed that series were no picnic to make and test either.

Here's an update on how this is going. I have changed the structure of the original campaign to give it a new opening mission which, together with the original starting mission, Beau Guillot, will form a new campaign prelude, the outcome of which will determine certain parameters for the three Chapter 1 - Georgian Ridge missions. 
Having revised and tested the new AI plans for both the prelude and all the chapter one missions including the variants, I'll be picking up where I left off with Turnbull's Stand tomorrow. This is one of the very few AI attack missions so it will require a bit more time to get right but I learned a LOT from making USMC Gung Ho! so I'm guessing this will be better than the previous revision I made earlier this year. I'll just have to make sure that it's winnable. It's almost certainly going to play very differently from the old version, that's for sure.
I seem to be taking about a day to revise a defensive mission at the moment so if I am able to stick with a decent schedule, I should have most of this done before Xmas. However, the two blocks to swift progress will be Le Ham and the finale, Eroudeville. Le Ham didn't have any AI plan associated with it - it was a pure set-up with no variants and I can't let that stand. Eroudeville has a pretty sizeable AI attack so that will take a few days to revise as well.
 
A few observations about the new core forces - having the US 2/8 INF mostly Green makes for a rather different experience and I nearly undid the change as it was definitely harder to manage these forces in combat. But instead I've added some extra firepower to some of their missions to compensate them for the loss. In Guillot, you get a Destroyer on call to help soften up the defenders and there is air power in a couple of the Georgian Ridge missions. In Hameau, I've added an AA Quad Half Track to provide the attacker with some extra punch as well. The defenders get a little boost too to keep things interesting - nothing massively OP of course, but after all, most of you will have already played the original campaign so these changes should make it feel fresh.
The new AI plans are a considerable improvement over the old as well and the AI is much better on the defence now than it previously was so you'll need to be a little more cautious. Except for the new opener, there are always two or more AI plans in each mission, usually five. The opener is a recreation of a certain famous, historical action which I released as a stand-alone scenario to the old repository so it's intended to be fixed.
I have also found an old mission, Maxwell's House, which I kept a back up of on the Beta boards. It was offered as a possible scenario for the Arnhem module but it didn't cut the mustard. Fortunately, it was still in my folder there so I have been able to revisit it as well. it's a German attack on a tiny but highly detailed rubbled map defended by a very small but elite force of Red Devils in Arnhem. NOT Historical at all, just 100% for fun. It's definitely NOT going to be added to the Nijmegen campaign - that one is finished and I have no plans to touch it again (play perhaps  but definitely not redesign) The Breakout from the Neerpelt Bridgehead and the Aalst missions pretty much broke me, the work that went into them was tremendous. The other two Irish Guards missions that formed that series were no picnic to make and test either.

Not yet but it's on the to-do list. The real hold-up is reworking the Le Ham mission which is a monster. It turns out that there were no AI plans for this mission and I have to remedy that.
Otherwise, most of the details are complete. I've learned how to use some of those special moves like Withdraw for example so I'd like to revisit most of the AI plans and see if they can be improved further but I'm not going to let it turn into another monster revision that will never get finished. 

This seems to be an appropriate thread to post the following musings. Obviously things didn't pan out the way I expected them to and work on both Hasrabit and Retribution has stalled.
Hasrabit is getting there but I have to admit I haven't enjoyed these missions nearly as much as I thought I would. They're just too damned hard and that's not fun for me any more. One hard mission in a chapter is fine but not all of them and that's been my problem, there are too many hard missions.
The new opener is a cakewalk if you do it right but if you don't, it's a nightmare. I'm not going to change that as it should be obvious what the commander in charge is supposed to do. However, the new 'Ambush' mission is proving really tough to win. I've added air support to the mission but it takes absolutely ages for it to come in and that's not fun. I'm losing this mission quite badly and often during play-testing so the difficulty has to come down. By how much though?
Strong Stand is finished and it's reasonably difficult but you get a LOT of fun toys to play with so I'm going to ease up the mid-game difficulty a bit and that's a day. The initial entry to the map will be challenging but that's fine by me.
The new Guards Counterattack is a beast. I've redone the AI attack plan and it's much more challenging now, so much so that I've removed a whole mech company from the AI OB but it's still very hard to get a win so I'm going to have to ease up the difficulty here.
Hill 142 is in a very strange place. The original was in a very bad condition so I've reworked it and now it's really tough to win. The trouble is that I'm struggling to find the hook for this mission, the feature that sets it apart from the others. It just feels meh to play.
The Barrier is another weird one but I have found the hook. I just need to get the AI working properly.
Now, Buying the Farm is my current favourite of the new missions but boy is it TOUGH. I really need to scale back the difficulty here but I want this one to be a bit of a stinker. But not frustratingly so. This is my chapter stinker and it's at the end of phase 1.
Silence the Guns is probably fine as is and so done but I will need to add more time as it's a bit too tight.
Heavy Metal is kind of stuck - I made an all-new map for this but that means that the original AI plans are lost so I've reverted to the old map and improved it so that I have at least the rudiments of an AI to work with.
Sadara is in a similar condition to Heavy Metal - I've improved the map considerably, especially the town outskirts which look really good now but haven't done any real testing yet. I expect it will take a while to rebalance but the original AI still works and just needs to be improved. This is the Guards finale so it can be a stinker.
Finally, we come to the finale, Hasrabit. I've greatly expanded the original map and reworked the town so that it resembles its real world counterpart. Like the previous two mission, no real testing has been done.
So there's till quite a bit of work to do on this but I'll get through it after I finish the Montebourg rework or at least while I'm doing it but Montebourg is the priority for now.
As for Retribution, we'll see. I'm finding Red v Red a bit too slow when using artillery and air strikes and I've grown to love them both in Gung Ho! and Montebourg. It's a nice idea and I've got some really good maps for this short-ish campaign and I haven't done anything with the Syrian Airborne formations so I'd really like to do this eventually.
Now, let's touch on Dinas. I'd really like to revise both my earliest campaigns to take advantage of the changes to the game engine and if I real the community correctly, Dinas is a very popular one so I really should revisit it.  That will be a massive amount of work to do so it's later next year at best. But having just finished making up an new core unit file for the Scottish Corridor and importing and placing all the units, I know how much work will be involved. Dinas has a nearly a regiment of core units and some of the actions are huge so placing is going to take a lot of time.
And that brings me to artwork - both Hasrabit and Dinas are completely fictional, as in the maps are all made out of my head (except Strong Stand and Hasrabit which are real places in Syria). I will have to redo the artwork for these campaigns completely as the original is definitely a bit naff now. Working with GIMP is okay now but it's certainly not fun for me so this is one of the things that deters me from working on this.
So that's where I am with this. It's not forgotten. I just don't enjoy playing and testing really hard campaigns any more and just want to have fun while facing a reasonable challenge. After all, the REAL difficulty comes from the accrued losses in each mission over the span of the campaign.

I've got a fairly easy three weeks ahead of me so I've decided to revise this one but it's not going to be a straight up remake. Rather, I'm going to split the campaign into two separate campaigns, one for the 9th Cameronians (9 missions) and a second, shorter one for the 2nd ASH (6 missions). I see no good reason to keep this as one long campaign as it's not for official release and splitting it up will make it much easier to manage script-wise. There will be some tweaks to how the player goes to the Veteran or Green branches but I want to get core units done before tackling the new scripts.
Although it was made prior to the 16 AI groups patch, I'm quite happy with the AI as it stands so don't expect any significant changes here. However, the most important change will be that the core units will not start at 80% strength but rather at full strength. While these units were at 80% strength historically, it's not a particularly good way to represent this in the game so I've decided that the fighting strength of these formations should be at 100% and the 'reserve' companies are seriously under-strength. That seems to be a better way to represent this. One side effect of this though is that I'm going to remove the PIAT team attached to every platoon and give 1 section its PIAT instead. This also serves to reduce the number of units the player has to manage and that's fine by me.
I made the new Cameronians core units file last night and have started importing units into the Cameronian missions. I don't expect this will take very long and so it's possible this will be finished later this week. After that, I'll do the same for the ASH missions. I don't want to make any changes that require significant play-testing either. The plan is to have this campaign 'working' again for possible future revisions. But I'm happy to 'fix' any issues you guys might have with it as long as they're quick.
If, and that's a big IF, there is the interest, I may decide to enhance one or both of these campaigns adding flamethrower units as well as further improving the AI, especially the big attacks at the end of each. Regardless of interest, the next step after this is to finish the Montebourg revision so if you have any comments or suggestions for  this one, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
 
Move it! Move it! Let's go!

It must be the compiling process that undoes the creators work in this respect. In Hapless' video of Turnbull's Stand, he has the full OB at the start of the mission but in the scenario as a standalone, they are all at about 50% strength. Well, there's not much I can do about that so I'll have to up the difficulty of the German attack to compensate for the near-doubling of the defender's strength.

It must be the compiling process that undoes the creators work in this respect. In Hapless' video of Turnbull's Stand, he has the full OB at the start of the mission but in the scenario as a standalone, they are all at about 50% strength. Well, there's not much I can do about that so I'll have to up the difficulty of the German attack to compensate for the near-doubling of the defender's strength.

I've got a fairly easy three weeks ahead of me so I've decided to revise this one but it's not going to be a straight up remake. Rather, I'm going to split the campaign into two separate campaigns, one for the 9th Cameronians (9 missions) and a second, shorter one for the 2nd ASH (6 missions). I see no good reason to keep this as one long campaign as it's not for official release and splitting it up will make it much easier to manage script-wise. There will be some tweaks to how the player goes to the Veteran or Green branches but I want to get core units done before tackling the new scripts.
Although it was made prior to the 16 AI groups patch, I'm quite happy with the AI as it stands so don't expect any significant changes here. However, the most important change will be that the core units will not start at 80% strength but rather at full strength. While these units were at 80% strength historically, it's not a particularly good way to represent this in the game so I've decided that the fighting strength of these formations should be at 100% and the 'reserve' companies are seriously under-strength. That seems to be a better way to represent this. One side effect of this though is that I'm going to remove the PIAT team attached to every platoon and give 1 section its PIAT instead. This also serves to reduce the number of units the player has to manage and that's fine by me.
I made the new Cameronians core units file last night and have started importing units into the Cameronian missions. I don't expect this will take very long and so it's possible this will be finished later this week. After that, I'll do the same for the ASH missions. I don't want to make any changes that require significant play-testing either. The plan is to have this campaign 'working' again for possible future revisions. But I'm happy to 'fix' any issues you guys might have with it as long as they're quick.
If, and that's a big IF, there is the interest, I may decide to enhance one or both of these campaigns adding flamethrower units as well as further improving the AI, especially the big attacks at the end of each. Regardless of interest, the next step after this is to finish the Montebourg revision so if you have any comments or suggestions for  this one, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
 
Move it! Move it! Let's go!

This seems to be an appropriate thread to post the following musings. Obviously things didn't pan out the way I expected them to and work on both Hasrabit and Retribution has stalled.
Hasrabit is getting there but I have to admit I haven't enjoyed these missions nearly as much as I thought I would. They're just too damned hard and that's not fun for me any more. One hard mission in a chapter is fine but not all of them and that's been my problem, there are too many hard missions.
The new opener is a cakewalk if you do it right but if you don't, it's a nightmare. I'm not going to change that as it should be obvious what the commander in charge is supposed to do. However, the new 'Ambush' mission is proving really tough to win. I've added air support to the mission but it takes absolutely ages for it to come in and that's not fun. I'm losing this mission quite badly and often during play-testing so the difficulty has to come down. By how much though?
Strong Stand is finished and it's reasonably difficult but you get a LOT of fun toys to play with so I'm going to ease up the mid-game difficulty a bit and that's a day. The initial entry to the map will be challenging but that's fine by me.
The new Guards Counterattack is a beast. I've redone the AI attack plan and it's much more challenging now, so much so that I've removed a whole mech company from the AI OB but it's still very hard to get a win so I'm going to have to ease up the difficulty here.
Hill 142 is in a very strange place. The original was in a very bad condition so I've reworked it and now it's really tough to win. The trouble is that I'm struggling to find the hook for this mission, the feature that sets it apart from the others. It just feels meh to play.
The Barrier is another weird one but I have found the hook. I just need to get the AI working properly.
Now, Buying the Farm is my current favourite of the new missions but boy is it TOUGH. I really need to scale back the difficulty here but I want this one to be a bit of a stinker. But not frustratingly so. This is my chapter stinker and it's at the end of phase 1.
Silence the Guns is probably fine as is and so done but I will need to add more time as it's a bit too tight.
Heavy Metal is kind of stuck - I made an all-new map for this but that means that the original AI plans are lost so I've reverted to the old map and improved it so that I have at least the rudiments of an AI to work with.
Sadara is in a similar condition to Heavy Metal - I've improved the map considerably, especially the town outskirts which look really good now but haven't done any real testing yet. I expect it will take a while to rebalance but the original AI still works and just needs to be improved. This is the Guards finale so it can be a stinker.
Finally, we come to the finale, Hasrabit. I've greatly expanded the original map and reworked the town so that it resembles its real world counterpart. Like the previous two mission, no real testing has been done.
So there's till quite a bit of work to do on this but I'll get through it after I finish the Montebourg rework or at least while I'm doing it but Montebourg is the priority for now.
As for Retribution, we'll see. I'm finding Red v Red a bit too slow when using artillery and air strikes and I've grown to love them both in Gung Ho! and Montebourg. It's a nice idea and I've got some really good maps for this short-ish campaign and I haven't done anything with the Syrian Airborne formations so I'd really like to do this eventually.
Now, let's touch on Dinas. I'd really like to revise both my earliest campaigns to take advantage of the changes to the game engine and if I real the community correctly, Dinas is a very popular one so I really should revisit it.  That will be a massive amount of work to do so it's later next year at best. But having just finished making up an new core unit file for the Scottish Corridor and importing and placing all the units, I know how much work will be involved. Dinas has a nearly a regiment of core units and some of the actions are huge so placing is going to take a lot of time.
And that brings me to artwork - both Hasrabit and Dinas are completely fictional, as in the maps are all made out of my head (except Strong Stand and Hasrabit which are real places in Syria). I will have to redo the artwork for these campaigns completely as the original is definitely a bit naff now. Working with GIMP is okay now but it's certainly not fun for me so this is one of the things that deters me from working on this.
So that's where I am with this. It's not forgotten. I just don't enjoy playing and testing really hard campaigns any more and just want to have fun while facing a reasonable challenge. After all, the REAL difficulty comes from the accrued losses in each mission over the span of the campaign.

I mean if I reduce the forces imported in the unit's starting mission to 80% strength rather than having the core units in the core unit file at 80% strength and importing them that way which is how I did the Scottish Corridor. I'm pretty sure that's how I managed the PIR 'losses' on D-Day in Montebourg but since I lost the original core unit file, I can't remember exactly how it was done. I don't think this is a behaviour that was changed by a patch - it's probably just carelessness on my part.
I've been reading your other post in another thread - thanks again for the good feedback. I will add a bit more time to the Chateau mission. I had a feeling you got an AI plan that makes it more difficult as I play-tested that mission many time - I really enjoy the smaller missions with air support and never really had any problems there. But it's on the to-do list.

This seems to be an appropriate thread to post the following musings. Obviously things didn't pan out the way I expected them to and work on both Hasrabit and Retribution has stalled.
Hasrabit is getting there but I have to admit I haven't enjoyed these missions nearly as much as I thought I would. They're just too damned hard and that's not fun for me any more. One hard mission in a chapter is fine but not all of them and that's been my problem, there are too many hard missions.
The new opener is a cakewalk if you do it right but if you don't, it's a nightmare. I'm not going to change that as it should be obvious what the commander in charge is supposed to do. However, the new 'Ambush' mission is proving really tough to win. I've added air support to the mission but it takes absolutely ages for it to come in and that's not fun. I'm losing this mission quite badly and often during play-testing so the difficulty has to come down. By how much though?
Strong Stand is finished and it's reasonably difficult but you get a LOT of fun toys to play with so I'm going to ease up the mid-game difficulty a bit and that's a day. The initial entry to the map will be challenging but that's fine by me.
The new Guards Counterattack is a beast. I've redone the AI attack plan and it's much more challenging now, so much so that I've removed a whole mech company from the AI OB but it's still very hard to get a win so I'm going to have to ease up the difficulty here.
Hill 142 is in a very strange place. The original was in a very bad condition so I've reworked it and now it's really tough to win. The trouble is that I'm struggling to find the hook for this mission, the feature that sets it apart from the others. It just feels meh to play.
The Barrier is another weird one but I have found the hook. I just need to get the AI working properly.
Now, Buying the Farm is my current favourite of the new missions but boy is it TOUGH. I really need to scale back the difficulty here but I want this one to be a bit of a stinker. But not frustratingly so. This is my chapter stinker and it's at the end of phase 1.
Silence the Guns is probably fine as is and so done but I will need to add more time as it's a bit too tight.
Heavy Metal is kind of stuck - I made an all-new map for this but that means that the original AI plans are lost so I've reverted to the old map and improved it so that I have at least the rudiments of an AI to work with.
Sadara is in a similar condition to Heavy Metal - I've improved the map considerably, especially the town outskirts which look really good now but haven't done any real testing yet. I expect it will take a while to rebalance but the original AI still works and just needs to be improved. This is the Guards finale so it can be a stinker.
Finally, we come to the finale, Hasrabit. I've greatly expanded the original map and reworked the town so that it resembles its real world counterpart. Like the previous two mission, no real testing has been done.
So there's till quite a bit of work to do on this but I'll get through it after I finish the Montebourg rework or at least while I'm doing it but Montebourg is the priority for now.
As for Retribution, we'll see. I'm finding Red v Red a bit too slow when using artillery and air strikes and I've grown to love them both in Gung Ho! and Montebourg. It's a nice idea and I've got some really good maps for this short-ish campaign and I haven't done anything with the Syrian Airborne formations so I'd really like to do this eventually.
Now, let's touch on Dinas. I'd really like to revise both my earliest campaigns to take advantage of the changes to the game engine and if I real the community correctly, Dinas is a very popular one so I really should revisit it.  That will be a massive amount of work to do so it's later next year at best. But having just finished making up an new core unit file for the Scottish Corridor and importing and placing all the units, I know how much work will be involved. Dinas has a nearly a regiment of core units and some of the actions are huge so placing is going to take a lot of time.
And that brings me to artwork - both Hasrabit and Dinas are completely fictional, as in the maps are all made out of my head (except Strong Stand and Hasrabit which are real places in Syria). I will have to redo the artwork for these campaigns completely as the original is definitely a bit naff now. Working with GIMP is okay now but it's certainly not fun for me so this is one of the things that deters me from working on this.
So that's where I am with this. It's not forgotten. I just don't enjoy playing and testing really hard campaigns any more and just want to have fun while facing a reasonable challenge. After all, the REAL difficulty comes from the accrued losses in each mission over the span of the campaign.

This seems to be an appropriate thread to post the following musings. Obviously things didn't pan out the way I expected them to and work on both Hasrabit and Retribution has stalled.
Hasrabit is getting there but I have to admit I haven't enjoyed these missions nearly as much as I thought I would. They're just too damned hard and that's not fun for me any more. One hard mission in a chapter is fine but not all of them and that's been my problem, there are too many hard missions.
The new opener is a cakewalk if you do it right but if you don't, it's a nightmare. I'm not going to change that as it should be obvious what the commander in charge is supposed to do. However, the new 'Ambush' mission is proving really tough to win. I've added air support to the mission but it takes absolutely ages for it to come in and that's not fun. I'm losing this mission quite badly and often during play-testing so the difficulty has to come down. By how much though?
Strong Stand is finished and it's reasonably difficult but you get a LOT of fun toys to play with so I'm going to ease up the mid-game difficulty a bit and that's a day. The initial entry to the map will be challenging but that's fine by me.
The new Guards Counterattack is a beast. I've redone the AI attack plan and it's much more challenging now, so much so that I've removed a whole mech company from the AI OB but it's still very hard to get a win so I'm going to have to ease up the difficulty here.
Hill 142 is in a very strange place. The original was in a very bad condition so I've reworked it and now it's really tough to win. The trouble is that I'm struggling to find the hook for this mission, the feature that sets it apart from the others. It just feels meh to play.
The Barrier is another weird one but I have found the hook. I just need to get the AI working properly.
Now, Buying the Farm is my current favourite of the new missions but boy is it TOUGH. I really need to scale back the difficulty here but I want this one to be a bit of a stinker. But not frustratingly so. This is my chapter stinker and it's at the end of phase 1.
Silence the Guns is probably fine as is and so done but I will need to add more time as it's a bit too tight.
Heavy Metal is kind of stuck - I made an all-new map for this but that means that the original AI plans are lost so I've reverted to the old map and improved it so that I have at least the rudiments of an AI to work with.
Sadara is in a similar condition to Heavy Metal - I've improved the map considerably, especially the town outskirts which look really good now but haven't done any real testing yet. I expect it will take a while to rebalance but the original AI still works and just needs to be improved. This is the Guards finale so it can be a stinker.
Finally, we come to the finale, Hasrabit. I've greatly expanded the original map and reworked the town so that it resembles its real world counterpart. Like the previous two mission, no real testing has been done.
So there's till quite a bit of work to do on this but I'll get through it after I finish the Montebourg rework or at least while I'm doing it but Montebourg is the priority for now.
As for Retribution, we'll see. I'm finding Red v Red a bit too slow when using artillery and air strikes and I've grown to love them both in Gung Ho! and Montebourg. It's a nice idea and I've got some really good maps for this short-ish campaign and I haven't done anything with the Syrian Airborne formations so I'd really like to do this eventually.
Now, let's touch on Dinas. I'd really like to revise both my earliest campaigns to take advantage of the changes to the game engine and if I real the community correctly, Dinas is a very popular one so I really should revisit it.  That will be a massive amount of work to do so it's later next year at best. But having just finished making up an new core unit file for the Scottish Corridor and importing and placing all the units, I know how much work will be involved. Dinas has a nearly a regiment of core units and some of the actions are huge so placing is going to take a lot of time.
And that brings me to artwork - both Hasrabit and Dinas are completely fictional, as in the maps are all made out of my head (except Strong Stand and Hasrabit which are real places in Syria). I will have to redo the artwork for these campaigns completely as the original is definitely a bit naff now. Working with GIMP is okay now but it's certainly not fun for me so this is one of the things that deters me from working on this.
So that's where I am with this. It's not forgotten. I just don't enjoy playing and testing really hard campaigns any more and just want to have fun while facing a reasonable challenge. After all, the REAL difficulty comes from the accrued losses in each mission over the span of the campaign.

I've done a pretty substantial rework to mission 4, "Detectives' so I think I'll wrap this one up and upload the revision to the FewGoodMen site.
You'll be pleased to note that I've added a Grenade launcher Team to the OB for mission 1 only as you recommended.
A full but short list of changes will accompany the post I make when it is available. I could have made much more substantial changes but until I hear ANYTHING AT ALL from folks about missions 4 and 5, I don't feel encouraged to put in a lot of further work to improve these. As a result of these changes, personally, I enjoy playing mission 4 much more now and mission 5 is still my favourite of them all.

Not yet but it's on the to-do list. The real hold-up is reworking the Le Ham mission which is a monster. It turns out that there were no AI plans for this mission and I have to remedy that.
Otherwise, most of the details are complete. I've learned how to use some of those special moves like Withdraw for example so I'd like to revisit most of the AI plans and see if they can be improved further but I'm not going to let it turn into another monster revision that will never get finished. 

I've got a fairly easy three weeks ahead of me so I've decided to revise this one but it's not going to be a straight up remake. Rather, I'm going to split the campaign into two separate campaigns, one for the 9th Cameronians (9 missions) and a second, shorter one for the 2nd ASH (6 missions). I see no good reason to keep this as one long campaign as it's not for official release and splitting it up will make it much easier to manage script-wise. There will be some tweaks to how the player goes to the Veteran or Green branches but I want to get core units done before tackling the new scripts.
Although it was made prior to the 16 AI groups patch, I'm quite happy with the AI as it stands so don't expect any significant changes here. However, the most important change will be that the core units will not start at 80% strength but rather at full strength. While these units were at 80% strength historically, it's not a particularly good way to represent this in the game so I've decided that the fighting strength of these formations should be at 100% and the 'reserve' companies are seriously under-strength. That seems to be a better way to represent this. One side effect of this though is that I'm going to remove the PIAT team attached to every platoon and give 1 section its PIAT instead. This also serves to reduce the number of units the player has to manage and that's fine by me.
I made the new Cameronians core units file last night and have started importing units into the Cameronian missions. I don't expect this will take very long and so it's possible this will be finished later this week. After that, I'll do the same for the ASH missions. I don't want to make any changes that require significant play-testing either. The plan is to have this campaign 'working' again for possible future revisions. But I'm happy to 'fix' any issues you guys might have with it as long as they're quick.
If, and that's a big IF, there is the interest, I may decide to enhance one or both of these campaigns adding flamethrower units as well as further improving the AI, especially the big attacks at the end of each. Regardless of interest, the next step after this is to finish the Montebourg revision so if you have any comments or suggestions for  this one, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
 
Move it! Move it! Let's go!

I've done a pretty substantial rework to mission 4, "Detectives' so I think I'll wrap this one up and upload the revision to the FewGoodMen site.
You'll be pleased to note that I've added a Grenade launcher Team to the OB for mission 1 only as you recommended.
A full but short list of changes will accompany the post I make when it is available. I could have made much more substantial changes but until I hear ANYTHING AT ALL from folks about missions 4 and 5, I don't feel encouraged to put in a lot of further work to improve these. As a result of these changes, personally, I enjoy playing mission 4 much more now and mission 5 is still my favourite of them all.

I have posted a new version of the USMC Gung Ho! campaign I updated earlier this year. Here is a link...
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-shock-force-2-2/cm-shock-force-2-campaigns/cmsf2-usmc-gung-ho-v2/
 
What's changed?
 
The campaign script - winning a mission will guarantee that any vehicles that are immobilised or damaged will be repaired for their next mission.

Mission 1 - a Grenade Launcher Team is temporarily attached to 1st Platoon.
Mission 2 - an extra 30 minutes added to both versions
                    all mud tiles removed
                    Syrian Grenade Launchers replaced with MMGs and a Recoiless Rifle team
Mission 4 - an extra 30 minutes added to the mission
                    helicopter and air support assets are doubled (the second Cobra arrives as a reinforcement with a full load)
                    added transport vehicles to 1st Platoon and the engineers.

Briefings clarified for artillery assets shared between missions (hopefully)
Missions 4 and 5 are now must-win scenarios to progress.
 
Many typos fixed as well but I'm sure you'll find some new ones.

I've got a fairly easy three weeks ahead of me so I've decided to revise this one but it's not going to be a straight up remake. Rather, I'm going to split the campaign into two separate campaigns, one for the 9th Cameronians (9 missions) and a second, shorter one for the 2nd ASH (6 missions). I see no good reason to keep this as one long campaign as it's not for official release and splitting it up will make it much easier to manage script-wise. There will be some tweaks to how the player goes to the Veteran or Green branches but I want to get core units done before tackling the new scripts.
Although it was made prior to the 16 AI groups patch, I'm quite happy with the AI as it stands so don't expect any significant changes here. However, the most important change will be that the core units will not start at 80% strength but rather at full strength. While these units were at 80% strength historically, it's not a particularly good way to represent this in the game so I've decided that the fighting strength of these formations should be at 100% and the 'reserve' companies are seriously under-strength. That seems to be a better way to represent this. One side effect of this though is that I'm going to remove the PIAT team attached to every platoon and give 1 section its PIAT instead. This also serves to reduce the number of units the player has to manage and that's fine by me.
I made the new Cameronians core units file last night and have started importing units into the Cameronian missions. I don't expect this will take very long and so it's possible this will be finished later this week. After that, I'll do the same for the ASH missions. I don't want to make any changes that require significant play-testing either. The plan is to have this campaign 'working' again for possible future revisions. But I'm happy to 'fix' any issues you guys might have with it as long as they're quick.
If, and that's a big IF, there is the interest, I may decide to enhance one or both of these campaigns adding flamethrower units as well as further improving the AI, especially the big attacks at the end of each. Regardless of interest, the next step after this is to finish the Montebourg revision so if you have any comments or suggestions for  this one, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
 
Move it! Move it! Let's go!

I've got a fairly easy three weeks ahead of me so I've decided to revise this one but it's not going to be a straight up remake. Rather, I'm going to split the campaign into two separate campaigns, one for the 9th Cameronians (9 missions) and a second, shorter one for the 2nd ASH (6 missions). I see no good reason to keep this as one long campaign as it's not for official release and splitting it up will make it much easier to manage script-wise. There will be some tweaks to how the player goes to the Veteran or Green branches but I want to get core units done before tackling the new scripts.
Although it was made prior to the 16 AI groups patch, I'm quite happy with the AI as it stands so don't expect any significant changes here. However, the most important change will be that the core units will not start at 80% strength but rather at full strength. While these units were at 80% strength historically, it's not a particularly good way to represent this in the game so I've decided that the fighting strength of these formations should be at 100% and the 'reserve' companies are seriously under-strength. That seems to be a better way to represent this. One side effect of this though is that I'm going to remove the PIAT team attached to every platoon and give 1 section its PIAT instead. This also serves to reduce the number of units the player has to manage and that's fine by me.
I made the new Cameronians core units file last night and have started importing units into the Cameronian missions. I don't expect this will take very long and so it's possible this will be finished later this week. After that, I'll do the same for the ASH missions. I don't want to make any changes that require significant play-testing either. The plan is to have this campaign 'working' again for possible future revisions. But I'm happy to 'fix' any issues you guys might have with it as long as they're quick.
If, and that's a big IF, there is the interest, I may decide to enhance one or both of these campaigns adding flamethrower units as well as further improving the AI, especially the big attacks at the end of each. Regardless of interest, the next step after this is to finish the Montebourg revision so if you have any comments or suggestions for  this one, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
 
Move it! Move it! Let's go!

That was helpful, thanks. Perhaps I'm not phrasing it properly but my concern is mostly about the 'fun' aspect of the campaign - it's hard and (IMO anyway) mostly fair but it's not always fun. I'm not sure how much 'fun' I can create from such a campaign as the weather was appalling at the start and when it cleared, they ran into a tidal wave of SS counterattacks as we see at Grainville. I intend to leave the difficulty as is though. Defensive missions are the hardest to do well because the AI just follows orders blindly regardless of what is obviously happening around them.
I tried to vary the Grainville missions so that they're all distinctly different, attacks coming from different directions, new areas of the map exposed,  but you're right, it does get a bit repetitive.
With regards to scoring, I really don't want to tinker with that as it would require new artwork and I'm trying to avoid that. The VP conditions in the Road to Cheux mission encourage you to contest the VP location and keep your casualties below 20% while killing the enemy units for VPs.
IIRC, watching Hapless' videos of the two opening missions, he didn't use smoke very much at all. The Brits have the ability to generate a lot of smoke on the battlefield which allows them to infiltrate enemy positions and I used it ALL THE TIME when playing as the Brits. It's like their superpower.  I suspect if you use smoke more frequently, it's not so hard to get good results when you're on the attack.
The reason why you don't see others get the same set up in a mission is that most, if not all missions have at least 2 distinctly different AI plans. Chateau is a very small mission so it's probably got more. It's been SO long since I played any of these missions that I can't remember what it's designed to do but I'll have the last of the new core units imported into these last three missions later today and I'll give that one a spin first to see if there is anything wrong. I don't like forcing one approach to win at all - thus the different AI plans which usually counter one approach hard but are weak against others.
I'm thinking about what to do with this revision - it seems a bit pointless to just remake them and post them as you can just play the Scottish Corridor from the 'disk' and it will be the same, only much longer. I already have some ideas about using triggers to make AI attacks more effective and to add some new AI groups to the larger attacks. I enjoy scripting AI attacks and I remember enjoying these as the Germans get the fun toys to play with. In the end, the real fun in the The Scottish Corridor belongs to the designer who gets to 'play' around with some of the coolest WW2 kit. I'll see what i can do to improve these AI plans.
If anyone has noticed anything weird, let me know. I tried reading one of the longer, old threads on the campaign here but most of the 'feedback' in its 10+ pages is just embarrassing to read now. I am more than open to adding a little extra time to certain missions for starters - perhaps the first two ASH missions need a bit more time? Let me know what you think.

This was fixed in a patch earlier this year. However, you have to restart the new, revised campaign from scratch as older campaign saves have this bug baked into them. To benefit from the fix, you need to start it all over again. Not ideal, I know but that's how the engine works - it's not a fix that a patch can make alone.

I have posted a new version of the USMC Gung Ho! campaign I updated earlier this year. Here is a link...
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-shock-force-2-2/cm-shock-force-2-campaigns/cmsf2-usmc-gung-ho-v2/
 
What's changed?
 
The campaign script - winning a mission will guarantee that any vehicles that are immobilised or damaged will be repaired for their next mission.

Mission 1 - a Grenade Launcher Team is temporarily attached to 1st Platoon.
Mission 2 - an extra 30 minutes added to both versions
                    all mud tiles removed
                    Syrian Grenade Launchers replaced with MMGs and a Recoiless Rifle team
Mission 4 - an extra 30 minutes added to the mission
                    helicopter and air support assets are doubled (the second Cobra arrives as a reinforcement with a full load)
                    added transport vehicles to 1st Platoon and the engineers.

Briefings clarified for artillery assets shared between missions (hopefully)
Missions 4 and 5 are now must-win scenarios to progress.
 
Many typos fixed as well but I'm sure you'll find some new ones.

I've got a fairly easy three weeks ahead of me so I've decided to revise this one but it's not going to be a straight up remake. Rather, I'm going to split the campaign into two separate campaigns, one for the 9th Cameronians (9 missions) and a second, shorter one for the 2nd ASH (6 missions). I see no good reason to keep this as one long campaign as it's not for official release and splitting it up will make it much easier to manage script-wise. There will be some tweaks to how the player goes to the Veteran or Green branches but I want to get core units done before tackling the new scripts.
Although it was made prior to the 16 AI groups patch, I'm quite happy with the AI as it stands so don't expect any significant changes here. However, the most important change will be that the core units will not start at 80% strength but rather at full strength. While these units were at 80% strength historically, it's not a particularly good way to represent this in the game so I've decided that the fighting strength of these formations should be at 100% and the 'reserve' companies are seriously under-strength. That seems to be a better way to represent this. One side effect of this though is that I'm going to remove the PIAT team attached to every platoon and give 1 section its PIAT instead. This also serves to reduce the number of units the player has to manage and that's fine by me.
I made the new Cameronians core units file last night and have started importing units into the Cameronian missions. I don't expect this will take very long and so it's possible this will be finished later this week. After that, I'll do the same for the ASH missions. I don't want to make any changes that require significant play-testing either. The plan is to have this campaign 'working' again for possible future revisions. But I'm happy to 'fix' any issues you guys might have with it as long as they're quick.
If, and that's a big IF, there is the interest, I may decide to enhance one or both of these campaigns adding flamethrower units as well as further improving the AI, especially the big attacks at the end of each. Regardless of interest, the next step after this is to finish the Montebourg revision so if you have any comments or suggestions for  this one, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
 
Move it! Move it! Let's go!

I have posted a new version of the USMC Gung Ho! campaign I updated earlier this year. Here is a link...
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-shock-force-2-2/cm-shock-force-2-campaigns/cmsf2-usmc-gung-ho-v2/
 
What's changed?
 
The campaign script - winning a mission will guarantee that any vehicles that are immobilised or damaged will be repaired for their next mission.

Mission 1 - a Grenade Launcher Team is temporarily attached to 1st Platoon.
Mission 2 - an extra 30 minutes added to both versions
                    all mud tiles removed
                    Syrian Grenade Launchers replaced with MMGs and a Recoiless Rifle team
Mission 4 - an extra 30 minutes added to the mission
                    helicopter and air support assets are doubled (the second Cobra arrives as a reinforcement with a full load)
                    added transport vehicles to 1st Platoon and the engineers.

Briefings clarified for artillery assets shared between missions (hopefully)
Missions 4 and 5 are now must-win scenarios to progress.
 
Many typos fixed as well but I'm sure you'll find some new ones.

I've got a fairly easy three weeks ahead of me so I've decided to revise this one but it's not going to be a straight up remake. Rather, I'm going to split the campaign into two separate campaigns, one for the 9th Cameronians (9 missions) and a second, shorter one for the 2nd ASH (6 missions). I see no good reason to keep this as one long campaign as it's not for official release and splitting it up will make it much easier to manage script-wise. There will be some tweaks to how the player goes to the Veteran or Green branches but I want to get core units done before tackling the new scripts.
Although it was made prior to the 16 AI groups patch, I'm quite happy with the AI as it stands so don't expect any significant changes here. However, the most important change will be that the core units will not start at 80% strength but rather at full strength. While these units were at 80% strength historically, it's not a particularly good way to represent this in the game so I've decided that the fighting strength of these formations should be at 100% and the 'reserve' companies are seriously under-strength. That seems to be a better way to represent this. One side effect of this though is that I'm going to remove the PIAT team attached to every platoon and give 1 section its PIAT instead. This also serves to reduce the number of units the player has to manage and that's fine by me.
I made the new Cameronians core units file last night and have started importing units into the Cameronian missions. I don't expect this will take very long and so it's possible this will be finished later this week. After that, I'll do the same for the ASH missions. I don't want to make any changes that require significant play-testing either. The plan is to have this campaign 'working' again for possible future revisions. But I'm happy to 'fix' any issues you guys might have with it as long as they're quick.
If, and that's a big IF, there is the interest, I may decide to enhance one or both of these campaigns adding flamethrower units as well as further improving the AI, especially the big attacks at the end of each. Regardless of interest, the next step after this is to finish the Montebourg revision so if you have any comments or suggestions for  this one, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
 
Move it! Move it! Let's go!