Combatintman

Now to deal with force selection for my little test. Inevitably there are a number of factors I need to consider as I go through the process and this is one of the reasons for (in historical or semi-historical scenarios) to do a bit of research and to have a reasonably clear idea of your mission narrative or concept. Also, as I have already stated, I’m likely to need to compromise (no place for the dog as an example!!). By way of a refresher, the overall strength of the US force was 79 SEAL Team 6 operators split between an assault element and a backup reserve element. The assault element numbered around two dozen. So let’s start with them first … The first problem of course is that CMSF does not have US Navy SEALs so I am going to need to compromise on my unit pick and as previously stated I’m going to go with the USMC, accepting the fact that the weapon systems aren’t going to replicate those used. As this is a compound assault, I need to give the guys the tools to do the job so breach charges are a must. Additionally, although I haven’t settled on the enemy composition yet, I am considering a mechanised element so I need to have an anti-armour capability up my sleeve. Finally, I may have a sniper group as part of my force so I need to pick those as well. It is time to crack open the mission again in the editor and pick the units. Once the scenario is open, clicking ‘units’ takes you to the purchase screen. I need to ‘Purchase Blue’ and I need to select ‘USMC’ as my force and ‘Infantry’ as my branch of service. Once I’ve done that, I get a list of available units. This is what the screen looks like. At this point I can select my hard and soft factors prior to picking the unit, or I can do it later. Because my hard and soft factors are universal to the unit, I’m actually going to choose those now. The factors are Experience (soft), Leadership (soft), Motivation (soft), Supply (hard), Vehicle Status (hard), Fitness (soft), Equipment (soft). In simple terms, the soft factors will affect how your troops behave on the battlefield while the hard factors deal with their ammunition and equipment. I won’t go into the full detail (because it is in the manual which you all have access to) but here are the wavetops … EXPERIENCE – determines the experience and training level of the soldiers of the formation. I have gone with ‘Elite’ which is the highest setting. The manual describes this setting as … ‘the best of the best. Superb training, frequent combat experience, and generally all around tough guys’. Now some people get wrapped around the axle about this setting or delve too much into the wording in the manual, for me it can reflect the actual experience levels or how thee experience levels are going to affect gameplay. In this particular instance it would be churlish and inaccurate to give US Navy SEALs any other rating than ‘Elite’ so that is what they are for the mission. LEADERSHIP – (from the manual) ‘the capability and experience of the unit leader does not always correspond with the quality of the unit. This rating allows a unit to range from great soldiers and terrible leaders, or terrible soldiers and great leaders’. I’ve gone for a blanket setting of +2 which is the highest rating, again my reason, notwithstanding the spiel in the manual above, relates to the US Navy SEALs being an elite unit. I might tinker with individual values later but I very much doubt it. MOTIVATION – (from the manual) ‘determines the soldiers’ will to fight. Options range from Fanatic (soldier will never give up and fight even when facing certain death) all the way to Poor (soldier has little desire to fight and will take the first chance to rout)’. I’ve gone or ‘Extreme’ which is the second highest rating. I have chosen this rating because I don’t think it would be appropriate to describe US Navy SEALs as ‘fanatic’ (the highest rating) but, as Special Forces operators, it is fair to say that they would be very motivated to complete any mission, but particularly this one. It is worth remembering that one of the helicopters suffered problems on the approach to the target forcing the pilot to put it down quickly. Despite this setback, they completed the mission. SUPPLY – (from the manual) ‘determines the amount of ammunition and equipment available to the unit at the start of the game. Options include Severe, Scarce, Limited, Adequate and Full’. I have chosen ‘full’ which is the highest setting and again I think the most appropriate because they have just launched from their base so would have full ammunition loadouts. VEHICLE STATUS – (from the manual) ‘changes a Vehicle to be immobilized, knocked out, or burning from the very start of the game’. This value is not really relevant because the Blue Force will comprise dismounts only, however I have set the value to ‘ok’ which represents fully functional vehicles. FITNESS – (from the manual) ‘determines the inherent degree of physical readiness of the unit’s soldiers. This influences on how quickly soldiers tire and recover from physical tasks, such as running or being bombarded by enemy fire. Options include: Fit, Weakened, and Unfit’. In the case of my US Naval SEALs, this is a no-brainer as they are known for their physical fitness standards. Predictably the setting therefore is ‘fit’. EQUIPMENT – (from the manual) ‘the quality of the equipment available to the unit can vary even within a formation. This option is unique in that it behaves differently depending on when you set it. If you set this option for “activated” units (i.e. already purchased and in the right-hand activated column), the available equipment is simply adjusted in its performance (accuracy, jams etc.). If you set this option BEFORE purchasing a unit, this setting determines what type of weapon or equipment the unit will be equipped with. This is explained in more detail under “Purchasing Equipment” below’. As you can see there are nuances to the timing of making this selection and it is one of the reasons why I decided to go select my values early. In this case because I am using US Marines to replicate my SEALs, it is worth looking at the module specific manual to get an idea of what effects particular values might have. Fortunately there are not too many things to consider because I am only interested in dismounted elements and equipment quality only affects the sniper squad (which I may use). ‘Good’ or above will equip the squad with the M40A3, ‘Bad’ will equip the squad with the M82A3, while normal will equip the squad with a mix of both types (page 21 of the USMC Manual refers). I have chosen the highest rating of ‘Excellent’ which means that all troops will have accurate weapons that will jam infrequently and will equip my snipers with the M40A3. With all of those settings done (although they may be revisited after testing), I now need to strip out the bits of the TO&E that I don’t want. I need to do this because of the way unit picks work in the editor. Unfortunately I cannot completely cherry pick elements of the TO&E, I have to first ‘buy’ the complete unit and then pare it down. One of the limitations is that I cannot delete the HQ elements, as an example if I delete HQ B Company, all of B Company gets deleted. Fortunately there is a workaround in that if I don’t want HQ B Company to appear during the scenario, I can set it as a reinforcement with an arrival time after the scenario time limit. That is to say that if my scenario is 1 hour long, I can set it for an arrival time of 3 hours and it will never appear. In this instance I’ve stripped out a lot of what I think will be unnecessary early. This is because I have a pretty good idea of what elements I want (about 79 soldiers) and I am reasonably familiar with the TO&E. My advice is that if you’re not sure, leave everything in and have a look at what the TO&E gives you in the ‘Deploy Blue’ screen because (unlike the WW2 titles) if you find that you have stripped out bits that you subsequently require, you have to delete the whole unit and repurchase it. Now this is not a showstopper but it just saves you a bit of work if you make a mistake. As you will see I have already stripped out all of the Battalion HQ (less the HQ team for reasons already explained), the Anti-Armour team, the third platoon of A Company, A company’s mortars, B and C companies. As seen in the graphic above, once I’ve got what I think I might need, I now need to see the detail so that means deploying the units onto the map. This is done by hitting the ‘Deploy Blue’ button which will take you to the map. At this point it doesn’t matter where the units setup, I can sort that out later, I am interested in how the numbers break down and what equipment is in each element to make up my desired force package. In the following screen I’ve arranged the units by their sub-unit components by selecting the respective HQs and grouping the elements together by selecting them and hitting ‘move’. While it is not absolutely necessary, it just makes things easier because the default unit deployment tends to make identifying individual components tricky as it is fairly random. Time now to drill in to the detail and for this mission I am first of all interested in what I can use to simulate my ‘about two dozen’ assault element. The natural place to look is the rifle platoon so all I need to do is to zoom in there and select the individual elements. I will cover this process in the next instalment of the tutorial.

Back again, and as promised I’ll show you how I ‘built’ the compound and to start with I have to do some more measuring. With compounds I generally just measure the perimeter points as shown … Now it is important to note that while I am trying to recreate the exact measurements of the compound, replicating those measurements in CMSF exactly is probably not going to be possible mainly because: a. Of the 8m size of the action spots b. The fact that walls will sit in the middle of an action spot c. The diagonals may not follow the exact line they do in real life d. Building sizes. Bottom line is that while it is nice to get the measurements right, in my view it is an acceptable compromise to get the thing to look right. Generally compounds in CMSF are larger than in real life because of the factors above. Another important factor is that this compound forms a key component of the mission because it is the compound that is going to be raided so we have to consider playability. In this instance, if I can’t get the dimensions right I am prepared to live with it. Next … what does the compound look like? I can check it out in Google Earth, I also have the plan schematic from the Wikipedia article and I can look at some images. One example is shown below. Again I doubt I’ll be obsessive about capturing the detail – it just has to vaguely look right and pass the playability test. So I now go back to the editor and plot the compound perimeter out …. As you can see in the image above, there are problems in using the exact dimensions of the compound pretty much as I described earlier. The issue being that I can’t get the diagonals from the bottom ‘V’ to join up with the top LH and RH extents of the compound. Time to mess around to get the compound ‘right’. The next image shows how I’ve moved the bottom ‘V’ to get the diagonals to fit making the compound 24 metres larger than its actual size. Now for the buildings which fairly predictably will be placed based on available research. If they do not fit, or I don’t think that the spacings work between buildings and walls I will test and adjust as necessary. As you can see from the image above, I have started with the main compound building first and while it fits in the area, I can see already that I will struggle to get the other buildings to fit into the compound. I could of course go for a ‘slimmed down’ version of the compound but I think it is more important to include as many structures as possible because this will create complexity for the player and gives me the opportunity to place red units in more diverse locations in the compound. Ultimately then, the design decision is to ignore real dimensions and tilt the balance to game play. So after a bit of fiddling around here is what the compound looks like in the editor and 3D preview …. So points to note are that the compound is bigger than actual size and the relative distances between walls are not totally in accordance with real dimensions. However, the compound is vaguely recognisable as the real thing in terms of buildings, entrances and walls. Hopefully you’ll agree that it also looks like as if it will be a nightmare for the men of SEAL Team 6 to clear. More work is required here because the building colours aren’t right, doorways and windows aren’t right and roofs aren’t right. These can all be fixed in the 3D preview as stated in the manual … Single Wall CTRL-CLICK on a side changes window/door layout for floor CTRL-SHIFT-CLICK on a side adds balconies for that floor Single Side ALT-CTRL-CLICK on a side changes window/door layout CTRL-SHIFT-CLICK on ground floor adds balconies Entire Building ALT-CLICK changes window/door frames for all four sides SHIFT-CLICK changes the buildings texture for all four sides CTRL-CLICK on roof changes shape/type of roof This is what the compound looks like now after lots of ALT, CTRL, SHIFT clicking combinations …. Remember that I am building this compound to conduct a viability test for the mission so I do want to put some surrounding terrain in but I don’t want to create the whole map. I will do this now before putting final touches to the compound for the purposes of the test. The latter will mainly involve placing flavour objects. That’s it for this instalment, the next post will look at force selection.

So … building the map … First select your area … now you know I’ve already got a rough idea of the area but I need to refine that into a box that I can use to generate the map. This involves a bit of fiddling in Google Earth but basically I don’t want the map to be huge (I’m aiming at 1km x 1km). It needs to be centred on (or nearly centred on) the compound and I want to include my two potential infil/exfil sites. I also want to make map making as easy as possible which means avoiding as many angled roads and buildings as possible. To do this you box off the area by using the Polygon tool and rotate the map to your desired orientation (eg one with the minimum number of angled roads/buildings or your key terrain feature (in this case the compound)). To generate the image above I rotated by rotating the compass in Google Earth. I then (not shown) drew a box using the measuring tool set on ‘path’. Once that box was drawn I created the box (using the polygon tool) by drawing over my measured path ensuring that the fill of the box is clear and the lines are clear enough to see. This then should be named and saved as shown in the image. So before jumping into the editor I just need to use Google Earth to measure the dimensions of my Polygon and the dimensions of the centre point of the compound from the polygon edges. I need to do the latter because CMSF doesn’t have the overlay feature so generating accurate maps is a painful process of endless measuring. So the horizontal dimension is 989 metres and the vertical dimension is 934 metres. The centre point of the compound is 680m from the bottom edge of the box and 367m from the left hand side of the map. Note that it is important that you measure from the bottom and left because this is how distances are expressed in the CMSF editor. So into the editor – and I’ll say straight off that I won’t cover blatantly obvious steps because this thread will become enormous. Basically go into the scenario editor, click new and you’re this far … Now strictly speaking, at this stage you don’t have to do anything here because while it is important later, nothing you do here really impacts on game play it is just information for the player (befitting the name ‘description’). However I have typed in my mission name just because I like to do it at this point but nothing is irreversible so if I want to call my mission ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ later on I can by amending the text. To go to the map editor I select ‘map’ as per the image above. In the image below I have clicked the plus and minus buttons to create my desired map size (note for big increments do shift click). It is probably difficult to see but the map measures 992 x 994 metres which is larger than the real world measurements but is unavoidable due to the fact that the CMSF map increases or decreases by increments of 8 metres (the size of an action spot). It is better to make your map slightly bigger by a few metres rather than smaller by a few metres to give you ‘fudge factor’. I have marked the compound centre point by moving the cursor until it reaches the desired spot (680 metres from the bottom and 367 metres from the left) as shown by the X and Y coordinates at the bottom of the screen and painting a ‘hard’ tile at that point. The ‘hard’ tile is just so I can find it – I could have used ‘grass’ or ‘gravel’ or whatever. This will get changed later on to a more appropriate tile type … at this stage it is just a marker. Although a digression, it is good practice to save frequently so let’s do that now … As you can see from the image, saving is pretty easy, click save and you’ll be pointed at the ‘Game Files’ directory. Type in a name (I have used the same name as in the description screen but it is not mandatory it is just good practice) and click the tick icon. Note that to test and play this mission you will have to move the file or save a copy of it to the ‘Scenarios’ folder but there is no need to do that yet. As this is a natural pause I will finish for now. The next post will cover off on more map techniques relating to the Compound.

No worries mate - I always had one of these tutorials in me - I just had to make a bit of an effort to grab screenies and write as I put the thing together.

That is exactly what I did - they've been sat on my hard drive ready to go since I finished the mission ... apart from some finishing touches at the end which I still have to write. I held off starting this thread until folks had a chance to DL and play the mission so that is why I haven't kicked this thread off until now.

I ended the last post talking about compromises, you will see that I will bring up compromises and workarounds in most of my posts rather than devote a whole section or post to them. The ability to adjust when making missions is a key skill in mission design and I hope that you will see things throughout this tutorial that will assist you in the process. This post will mostly deal with the geographical area in which the mission is set and the ‘frame’ for the mission. Obviously then it would be helpful if we identified the terrain over which the mission is to be fought. This means going back to some research and cracking open your mapping application(s) of choice. Fortunately again, Mr Bin Laden’s notoriety means that some helpful person has actually plotted the compound in Google Maps here … https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Osama+bin+Laden's+compound+in+Abbottabad,+Abbottabad,+Pakistan/@34.1688404,73.2420684,273m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x38de31bac2c3add9:0x8243435e0624afa9!8m2!3d34.1693431!4d73.2424638 This is extremely useful but I prefer to use Google Earth as my programme of choice so I need to do a bit of imagery analysis to find the location Having found it I have place marked it so I can find it later as shown in the screenie above. Also note that I have used the historical imagery tool to show the place as it looked in 2010 because if you look at current imagery the place has changed dramatically …. So time for more map study. The initial thought is that this could be a bit of a tricky one to pull off as a workable mission mainly because of the proximity of civilian buildings which could complicate Blue player options or make the narrative unbelievable. But rather than give up yet I need to zoom out to see whether I can fit something workable into the CMSF playing area (max 4km x 4km) and I am also looking for the Pakistani military facilities which I know from my research to be in the area. So here is what I found … This is a bit rough and ready but if you zoom in on Google Earth you can see that it is a huge military facility. For the purposes of the mission, because we’re not going to storm the facility it is unimportant, what I am looking for is something to support a narrative of the Pakistani Army reacting to the US raid which was the contingency planning insisted on by President Obama. So I’m just confirming its existence and how far away from the compound it is. I have also highlighted two areas as ‘Possible Infil/Exfil Locations’. Here I’m thinking about a concept of the SEALs, having executed the mission being required to withdraw to an LZ for pickup. The two highlighted areas are fields surrounded by trees which tactically would support helos landing in the middle and provide a defensible perimeter. I may not employ this in the final mission but I want to examine the possibility. It also helps frame the size of the map I will need to create in the editor. The deduction is that I can probably work with something in the 1km x 1km range which means that this is eminently achievable mapping-wise without compromising too much on cropping distances or replicating the real ground. This is a key point for me when designing ‘historical’ or ‘semi-historical’ missions (this one will be what I call ‘semi-historical’). Having ticked the ‘doable’ box for ground, let’s return to wider feasibility issues … Force ratios are about 1:1 which works. As you can see from the above graphic of the raid, the Blue force insert is a problem because I have no helicopters to play with so I will have to just put Blue in suitable starting locations and configurations to simulate exiting the helicopters on the LZ. I may have to compromise on historical accuracy and have the Blue Force setup as if it had been inserted by helo a few hundred metres away (this is where my ‘Possible Infil/Exfil Locations’ come in handy). My nearest match for SEALs is going to be USMC and I have to accept that I cannot model the actual weapon systems and the dog is going to be a non-starter. Neither are deal breakers. I also need to include breaching charges in the Blue Force composition. The PAKMIL facility is about 2km from the compound by road which works (when reaction times are factored in) in terms of a ‘fight their way out’ scenario. The proximity of civilian houses presents challenges in terms of collateral damage for the Blue Player and also provide potential escape routes for Osama Bin Laden should I choose to have ‘escape’ as one of the Red AI Plans. Both ‘Possible Infil/Exfil Locations’ are approximately 600m from the compound making both infil and exfil aspects of the mission workable. There are no Pakistani forces in CMSF but I can use Syrians to simulate them. Overall the ground offers sufficient cover and concealment and routes to give the Blue Player flexibility to adopt multiple COAs (Courses of Action). The 30 minute flight time from the remote LZ for the Blue QRF is a workable factor if I want to include this element in the mission. The compound is an irregular shape, made up of many structures and measures roughly 90 x 50m. I might have to play around with the dimensions a bit but the takeaway is that it will provide assaulting challenges to the Blue Player. So the sum of the parts is that potentially this is doable but I need to work out how the infil and assault are going to play out. I would like to replicate a direct insert onto the target but need to know if it will work. This means I will have to test this early on in the piece and as a result I can do this by building the compound and immediate surrounds. If the test works I can continue building the rest of the map. The next post will show some of those map creation steps.

I have just kicked off a thread showing how I made this mission here ... As the title suggests it contains spoilers so don't read it if you haven't played it.

Ok a couple of people (yes you @Borg ) have been screaming out for a ‘Special Ops Mission’. So I thought – hell why not? But there is a twist to this … it is sort of a scenario design tutorial to encourage new mission design within CMSF. As I hope to show, this isn’t difficult ... although this will be a long journey for sure. First up it is worth quoting the great JonS in his scenario design manual … ‘Scenario design is an intensely personal and creative activity, and these posts are not in any way intended to be prescriptive, or a set of rules that must be adhered to. Instead it's an outline of how I go about this, and some guidelines that you might choose to follow. To misquote German doctrine; scenario design is an art, a free and creative activity, and each designer needs to find their own way of skinning these cats’. So first up is the scenario concept or the narrative. You’ve already got the concept … I thought ‘hell why not?’ to doing a Special Ops Mission. Well if you’re going to do one, you might as well do a famous one so we’re going to do the kill/capture operation against Osama Bin Laden by US Navy SEALs on 01-02 May 2011. The advantage here is that unlike most SOF operations, this one is pretty well documented which makes the research easier. Whatever the concept or narrative it needs to be a fairly strong one but open to adjusting as you go through because as we will no doubt see, there is only so much you can do with the mission editor so compromises ultimately have to be made. Basically then my narrative is that I want to create an approximate representation of the events of that night and throw in some plausible challenges along the way. At this point it is probably worth stating roughly what happened and this is a Segway into the next step which is research (although there is an argument that the research quite often drives the original scenario concept – neither is right or wrong and the process isn’t entirely linear). Here is the summary view from Wikipedia ‘Osama bin Laden, the founder and head of the Islamist group Al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1:00 am PKT (20:00 UTC, May 1) by United States Navy SEALs of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (also known as DEVGRU or SEAL Team Six). The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was carried out in a Central Intelligence Agency-led operation. In addition to DEVGRU, participating units included the United States Army Special Operations Command's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) and CIA operatives. The raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was launched from Afghanistan. U.S. military officials said that after the raid, U.S. forces took bin Laden's body to Afghanistan for identification, then buried him at sea within 24 hours of his death in accordance with Islamic tradition. According to a Pakistani official, the United States had direct evidence that Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, knew of bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad’. So from the above I can draw out a couple of pointers which will become useful when I’m constructing the scenario. Time 0100 Date 02 May 11 Location Abbottabad Blue Force SEAL Team 6 Rather than quote the whole Wikipedia article (you can read it here … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden) I’ll just extract some other snippets that may be of use. Overall Force Strength was 79 operators and CIA personnel 6 helicopters and a dog. The raid was carried out by two dozen operators with another two dozen operators waiting at a deserted LZ to act as a reaction force if the Pakistani Army intervened. Inside the compound were 22 residents. Further quote from Wikipedia … ‘When the National Security Council (NSC) met again on April 19, Obama gave provisional approval for the helicopter raid. But as he worried that the plan for dealing with the Pakistanis was too uncertain, Obama asked Admiral McRaven to equip the team to fight its way out if necessary’ The raid launched from Jalalabad in Afghanistan with a flight time of 90 minutes to the target and a QRF was positioned 2/3rds of the distance away (ie 30 minutes flight time away). And more from Wikipedia about the execution of the mission ‘As they hovered above the target, however, the first helicopter experienced a hazardous airflow condition known as a vortex ring state. This was aggravated by higher than expected air temperature ("a so-called 'hot and high' environment’) and the high compound walls, which stopped the rotor downwash from diffusing. The helicopter's tail grazed one of the compound's walls, damaging its tail rotor, and the helicopter rolled onto its side. The pilot quickly buried the aircraft's nose to keep it from tipping over. None of the SEALs, crew and pilots on the helicopter were seriously injured in the soft crash landing, which ended with it pitched at a 45-degree angle resting against the wall. The other helicopter landed outside the compound and the SEALs scaled the walls to get inside. The SEALs advanced into the house, breaching walls and doors with explosives.’ Other useful bits and pieces from the article … A rather fancy schematic of the compound So this is all great stuff and I could take the research to deeper levels but before I do it is worth taking a moment to see if this passes the feasibility test as a mission. Knowledge of the editor helps at this point so if you are unfamiliar you just have to kick things around and setup little tests. It might be that those tests rule out the mission altogether because it is not achievable in the editor or that the mission is unlikely to be a fun experience for the player. JonS frequently says that many historical missions do not make fun CM missions. It is also worth thinking about what compromises or adjustments may be required to make your concept a workable mission and I'll discuss these as I go. Next time around I will cover the ground and some other factors in a bit more detail.

Although of course sides are Blue and Red in CMSF not Allied and Axis. The other part to this is the number of Victory Points you allocate to your high ranking officer target who based on your first post would be a 'DESTROY' objective in accordance with Pete's post.

I can't speak for Mac users but the scenario should be perfectly functional based on MOS's play through and my fairly extensive testing. There is no trigger for the agent and handler by the way - they just arrive at their setup zone because CMSF doesn't have those new-fangled trigger things.

Shouldn't be anything wrong with it - @MOS:96B2Phas played it through with no dramas. I never had any issues with the source and agent in testing. The only thing I can think of is that that this is due to your difficulty settings which would mean that the source and agent are out of command (because they have no radio) and this is why you can't see them if you are on a high difficulty play mode. I'd PM MOS because he's an expert on how the command settings work in game and from his AAR screenies he played it on the Iron Mode difficulty setting.

@MOS:96B2P sorry it has taken me a few days to respond to your AAR - I have been having internet issues and RL is pretty intense at the moment. I wondered how this would play out for you because it was clear from your comments dropping out of IPB and your 09 and 10 Sep posts that you weren't leaving the compound in a hurry and (although I may be wrong) that you did not send a SEAL element out to RV and provide protection for the CIA the agent and handler. This was not a COA I had really bargained on when I tested it. I'm guessing therefore that the patrolling enemy must have given the Handler and Agent a bit of a fright and you probably wished that you had scooted from the compound earlier. I'm glad that it all worked out for you and that you enjoyed playing it. As I think I said earlier in this thread - CMSF is not really optimised for SOF missions so I'm just pleased that I was able to create tension, enjoyment and playability. Thanks for playing it and your comments.

Pretty impressive going - you look pretty well-balanced so far. You've certainly got far more SMAW rounds left than I had at that point during testing mainly due to me using them as a prelim to room/building clearances. And the intelligence is good (obviously ) - that compound has had ISR soak on it.

What play mode are you using for this one RT or WEGO? If the latter I'd be interested to hear the detail (Blue casualties and ammo expenditure) on the compound assault.

Great news - once you've played it through I will start a mission making tutorial thread showing everyone how I put this together. I basically recorded everything I did when I designed it so it is sat on the hard drive waiting and, apart from some editing and a proofread, is good to go. I look forward to your AAR and I hope you enjoy the mission.

Pretty good result there mate - you pulled it out of the bag after your IED and mortar troubles. With regard to the enemy surrender, that is pretty much how it worked out in most of my testing and to be fair you were 2 minutes away from time up. While I could have added some more enemy that never appear to keep the scenario running until the clock ran down I decided against it. The main reasons being: a. There is no way to award VPs to getting the convoy to the right place. b. Once you've fought your original skirmishes, cleared the road and got in amongst the compound you've pretty much beaten the enemy. c. I didn't want to add any time to the mission because it is long enough and balanced to put the player under pressure to clear the road to ensure the safe arrival of the convoy. Glad you enjoyed it anyway and thanks for a great AAR and recommendation.

@MOS:96B2P - I guess from your last update that you had no real dramas clearing the compound complex. It'll be interesting to see how the last 15 minutes pan out for you but so far you seem to be on track to grab all the objectives.

Tracking well now by the looks of it and your scheme of manoeuvre is eerily close to my first full test - don't get complacent though ....

Really enjoying this, needless to say this is a pretty important turn for you with the arrival of the lead element of the combat logistics patrol (1 Platoon).

Situation dependent my friend but generally if you're in contact you either win the firefight or get out of the contact zone. Care of the battle casualty training emphasises protecting the casualty from further injury but there is always an element of preventing further casualties. These are the hard choices that the local commander (generally a corporal in his early 20s) has to make in an instant.

Another great update - although your scheme of manoeuvre is slightly different - the pain that the enemy is inflicting is reminiscent of my first full scenario test for this one.

This is a great AAR mate, absolute top drawer. ********************SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T GOT THIS FAR IN THE MISSION******************************************************* Bad luck with the IED on the crossing, in my proper playtests it never went off although I did check that it would detonate by setting up a specific test for it. ********************SPOILER ENDS SPOILER ENDS SPOILER ENDS ******************************************************* I guess you're feeling the pressure now ... although I also hope you're enjoying it.

Like the cliffhanger mate ... really interested to see your next update.

Ok folks - I have submitted it to the FGM for upload. Hopefully @Bootie will come along and let you guys know when he's done his magic there. Finally a small announcement - I need to do real Army stuff until at least the end of the year so I won't be around these forums for a while and clearly won't be cranking out any CMSF missions. So, either make this one last or have a go yourselves in the editor. Thanks for your support and feedback on my missions.

@Bootie thanks for the mention - I like the added footage of RL operations. With any luck your next update will feature a mission called Operation NEPTUNE SPEAR. This should hit you in the next 24 hours.