Combatintman

Terkin - well that seems to have closed the other half of the question off. I think I have more than enough to be going on with. Thanks for your help!!

Brilliant - thanks mate, just the sort of stuff I'm after.

Regimental Cannon Company is where you will find the IG75 and Grille. I've not looked too hard for the Wespe but it certainly appears in the artillery menu as an off-map asset.

This thread is both an announcement and a plea for assistance ... so here goes. I am knocking together a potentially large mission based on the breakout of Gruppe Tolsdorf in July 1944 in the vicinity of Vilnius. The start point of my research was an account of the action in Hans-Jochim Jung's book 'History of Panzer Regiment Grossdeutschland' (pages 284-285 refer). I've looked at the place on Google Earth and grabbed the contemporary 1:100,000 map and have the basis of a map using the special editor overlay. In terms of the basis of the map (which is just over 4k x 4k), I'm well on the way with it but still have a bucket load of work to do on it. Like I said the battle will be large involving as a minimum on the German side: 1st battalion, Panzer Regiment Grossdeutschland. 1st battalion, Panzergrenadier Regiment 14. Gruppe Tolsdorf. So here goes the plea for assistance ... What was the identity and strength of the Soviet force? What formation was Gruppe Tolsdorf from and what was the strength of the organisation. Whilst knowing the above is not a showstopper, because I have an idea as to how I want this to play out, the more detail the better is my preferred option. As to how this will pan out, it will be a German player versus the AI scenario and will involve rescuing an encircled force with some bells and whistles. Thanks in anticipation.

Yes there are

Or go through the Beta AAR threads where Bill and Elvis played out a game - lots of woods there and work out what worked and what didn't.

Or make your own - the overlay feature in the map editor means that you can knock out maps in very short order.

All a bit flawed really because you're working off the assumption that the game will portray events that are happening right now. Given that BF's announcement about the setting preceded these events and the fact that the modern title that we now know as CMSF was set in a fictional Syrian setting to steer clear of ongoing conflicts, I wouldn't infer too much about what is going on now in relation to how the game may look.

Pretty sure it is as I described - it took me a while to learn this trick with some of my earlier CMSF scenarios resulting in AI surrenders before I really wanted them to before being made aware of it. My Taliban enemy in most of these were 'fanatic' and had some reinforcements arriving late in the game. Basically when the AI gets below about 40% CE a surrender is triggered.

The scenario designer will likely have allocated the AI player reserves that never arrive to ensure that the AI does not surrender prematurely. By that I mean, if it is a 2 hour scenario, there will be 'reinforcements' due to arrive at the 3 hour point. In my opinion there would be little value in you going into the editor and extending the time because the 'reinforcements' will likely just arrive in a clump at one end of the map.

Interesting discussion - I am a plodder and have knocked a few scenarios together myself. As a scenario designer it is bloody hard to work out how your scenario is going to be played and I have been surprised by some of the feedback I've had about how people have played the scenario. One of my CMSF scenarios I probably spent the equivalent of a two days tinkering around with timings - a mission I wanted to last an hour ended up being a 3 hour mission with extra time added. In all of my playtests (and there were lots) I struggled to hit the objectives. Feedback from one player went along the lines of ... I'm an hour in and I've secured all of the objectives ... difficult ain't it?

Depends on your definition of historical I'm afraid - to me they're not historical at all but are very good suggestions for scenario designers or potential scenario designers to create something that would fit. They are great suggestions and it is good that you are encouraging people to dip in and have a look. Scenario designers and players for that matter all have their own preferences. As a scenario designer billing something as 'historical', for me it means that it has to be as close to the ground, weather conditions and orbat as it can be. As a player, I'm quite happy to play something that has an interesting narrative, map and mix of forces but I don't want it to be labelled 'historical' if it isn't. Taking suggestion two about 4 Armee, fine as far as it goes but where is the detail? Where is the northern flank? What date? Which corps/division/regiment/battalion/company? Who are the Soviets - again which corps/division/regiment/battalion/company? Wilkowischken was mentioned earlier in this thread (August 1944 btw) which is a seemingly well documented battle of this period. The fact that it was mentioned in this thread flags it a more well-known than most of what went on at that time. Like most places it looks different in Google Earth today than the sketch maps and earlier maps I have consulted. An account (The History of Panzer Regiment GD by Hans Joachim Jung) devotes a mere 7 pages to the activities of that organisation in that period under the title 'Fighting in East Prussia and Kurland 1944). Those 7 pages and their accompanying maps make absolutely no reference at all to any Soviet formation involved in the battle. This is not the only source I have consulted - I've rummaged around Glantz's stuff, Erickson, Werner Haupt's Army Group Centre and Newton's Retreat from Leningrad. Orbat books I've got buckets of and have done some serious looking on the internet as well as what follows ... If you research it on the internet - generally what you get is: Two Bundesarchiv pictures of a half track next to a road sign saying 'Wilkowischken'. A couple of Wikipedia articles A translated account of a German tank crewman who took part in the battle. And not much else at that level. If you look further by using different search terms relating to dates and units and using 'translate' for non-German or Russian speakers, you get not much more apart from the usual bland fluff. I'd love to do Wilkowischken as a scenario but based on the above I don't think I could ever call it 'historical' beyond: Getting the dates right. A map that would be a best guess of what the place looked like in 1944 derived from what I can see on Google Earth and cross referenced with some sketch maps/schematics. Having German units that might be close to the original (subject to the TO&E picks). Getting the weather in the ballpark. Best guess at the Soviet forces - I think I was able to narrow it down to the individual corps at the point that I was looking at this (not much help if your Soviet Force is bn-sized and you want to name the unit and any support assets accurately in the scenario editor). Related to the above - Operations Doppelkopf and Caesar which took place in the area of the Baltic States around the same time. Potentially great scenario material given the terrain and unit types that could be employed ... try finding anything detailed enough to knock out an 'historical' (my definition obviously) battalion sized scenario related to those operations. A bit of a grumpy post I know but while there are people on here who will whinge about the number of rivets on the glacis plate of a Pz IV, I am one who will whinge about ... well I think I've probably made my point. The suggestions are great and I agree with most of them in terms of flavour. Representative is the term I would prefer because they are not historical without the detail.

I agree - it is frustratingly difficult to identify sufficient information to knock up historical scenarios. Place names alone cause my head to explode depending on the origin of the account. The other factor is that most of the stuff I've read either has great orbat stuff on the Germans or great stuff on the Soviets but great stuff on both rarely come together in the same account. So far my research involves having about 20 tabs open on the internet and about a dozen books scattered around open at various pages ... seriously painful.

Erwin - annoyingly neither did I which exposed my testing as pretty below par. The red AI player has a number of occupy objectives (some of which he suicidally attacks) which he doesn't get credit for if he is in them at the end of the scenario.

Sgt Joch - hope you enjoy it, however the bug I noticed with red 'occupy' objectives is present in this scenario so you may win when actually you haven't!!! Hopefully when this gets fixed I'll be able to make it work properly. WRT CMSF I'll probably hold off on doing more scens until we get the engine upgrades. Having now played with the new map editor elsewhere, I would rather wait to create new maps using the overlay feature, rather than painfully flick from screen to screen and endlessly measuring x and y distances. As you know I am busy elsewhere right now!!!!

Leaping in and just having a go has always worked for me. I tend to favour historical actions and so the ground is already a given. You just have to work out a method for 'copying' the real ground in the editor. This does involve some compromises for road alignment but once you make your design decision it is then a fairly easy process. I derive my real ground view from Google Earth so it is a case of marking off your ground and going from there. Due to a lack of fidelity around elevations I have a couple of my own rules. Rivers are 1-2 elevation levels below the ground terrain (this is for CMSF - I have no idea if this would work in the newer WW2 titles) and embanked roads sit 2 elevation levels above base terrain. Other than that I just see what looks right based on tilting the Google Earth view and comparing it with my CM map in 3D preview. If you are interested in some of the results, have a look at some of my threads in the CMSF forums, many have 'real World' and 'CMSF World' comparisons.

Very similar difficult terrain in the Baltic States too - I had a look around there last night and it confirms that this map is pretty spot on as an example of much of the ground that was fought over.

This is very impressive, I love the way you execute recce pull and that you are well balanced to switch the main effort to gain most advantage. The way this AAR is presented is just brilliant, it has taken me a while to fully appreciate your scheme of manoeuvre but now I fully get it. While I'm sure there are challenges ahead, if you lose, it won't be down to poor planning and execution but fortunes of war. This truly is a master class as well as a brilliant showcase of CMRT.

Yep - I remember Bosnia and an unconfirmed sighting of a ZSU 23/4 came in - cue gazillions of phone calls from AFSOUTH or whoever was in charge of the shiny expensive aeroplanes at the time. Nobody wanted to fly until we could tie it down as a misreported ZSU 57/2. Then everyone was happier and our gallant aviators decided that they would play war (ok peace enforcement) again with us brown jobs.

Which indicates the Brits don't get much value for money, but yes the Turkish Armed Forces are pretty large, although of course they do have more uncertainty on their borders.

JonS - Glad it was a misunderstanding but wanted to make sure. Thanks for getting back and keep up the good work. Regards Combatintman.

What evidence are you going to present that suggests that I deserved to be on the receiving end of that comment? I highlighted it on this thread and it is being looked at: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=113568 I've owned up to my mistakes about inadequate testing on my part so reference the above ... your turn.

Sgt Joch, thanks again for looking at this, I fully appreciate that this isn't top of the to do list and I can do other things while it is being looked at.

Costard - sure I accept it is a wish list. Your comments about collaboration in mission making are certainly valid though. I have helped a couple of non-native English speakers write briefings for their missions so there is scope for people asking for a bit of help and I have seen such a dialogue somewhere in the CMBN forum. The thing with it is, have the manual to hand and then just leap in really, I learnt as I went along largely by referring to the manual if I had a drama. For things that I couldn't resolve from the manual I either looked or asked the question on the forums for suggestions or clarifications. My preference is to go with historical scenarios because I enjoy the research and of course down the track it makes putting the thing together pretty simple. The map is real so you can generate it from either an existing map or Google Earth rather than agonise over whether to put a river here, or a road there. Although map making is time consuming in CMSF without the benefit of the overlay feature, I derive real pleasure from map making and like to think that I'm vaguely competent at it. Whichever way you look at it, I am either blessed or cursed with the benefit of military experience which I admit does give me an edge in generating realistic briefing graphics and briefings. When I started out I had real problems getting the briefing graphics right just in terms of getting things the right size. Through trial and error I came up with the simple solution of doing it all in Powerpoint first before then selecting the images and sizing them in Paint. I really don't know why it took me so long to come up with this simple solution but once I did, I find it generally takes me about 15 minutes to edit and size the images and about another 5 minutes to save them and move them across to the relevant directories. Because I have done more than one mission now, I already have a stock of briefing documents in the template format. So all I do is take the last one, overwrite it with the new briefing in Word and then save as txt before porting it across. The mechanics are quite easy, especially once you've got a few under your belt. The tricky bit is to ensure that what you write makes sense to the player to enable them to compete the mission. Also important is to ensure that the verbiage matches what is going to happen and this can take a bit of time when you are flicking between the game and your document. To speed this up, if the mission is complicated I just put the data onto slides as I am designing the mission (eg if I set a Blue reserve to arrive in an hour, I record that data as I do it). I find it easier for instance to flick between a slide with the game data on rather than rummaging around the different screens required to marry all the important info up. I'm not saying this is the perfect way to do it but it works for me. If you haven't seen it, have a look at JonS's thread, which I think is a sticky in the CMBN forum. It is full of great tips and taught me a few things even though I had a few missions under my belt by that time. Anyway - I've probably dragged this thread a little off-topic so I'll close here.

Thanks mate - although I have just discovered a possible bug in CMSF which to my horror is present in two of the scenarios I've released and did not pick up at all in my testing routine. It has certainly taught me a lesson about increasing the scope of my testing!!!!