Combatintman

Given that I use CMSF to approximate Afghanistan and Iraq (for which the TO&Es for the NATO nations are in the ballpark) I would love to see some work to tailor CMSF to those conflicts (MRAPs, Iraqi and Afghan armies - a better way of doing IEDs and looking for and clearing said devices).

Falklands as a standalone game would not work as sburke said in his opening statement. When it boils down to it you have the initial Argentine invasion and then half a dozen battles after that - Goose Green, Longdon, Mt Harriet etc. The final battles (eg Longdon, Mt Harriet) were essentially fought over similar terrain with similar forces (a UK bn versus a similar sized Argentine force). I would love to see the Falklands done but realistically and rightly BF would charge about 45 bucks for it and for that you would get about 3 Brit TO&Es, about the same number of Argentine ones, a very small number of vehicles (which had little impact at the pointy end of battles which is what the CM series simulates), a single campaign of about 8 missions and maybe a handful of standalone missions (capture of Stanley by the Argentines, same for South Georgia, recapture of South Georgia by the Brits and perhaps the Pebble Island raid). I doubt many folk would pay that amount of money for such limited content. If the Falklands is going to be done it would need to be a module of a post colonial wars series.

That overlay feature for mapmaking would increase my scenario output exponentially - really pleased by this news.

Erwin - no worries and thanks for your comments and suggestions.

Erwin - thanks again for the comments. AFAIK the Pink Palace had a low wall - therefore that is how it is modelled on the map as I have said in various threads I tend to stick with the ground as is rather than massage it to generate tactical advantage or disadvantage for the sake of playability. My playtests were slow because I am a cautious (and not very good) player and I took the long way around which requires at best suppression of enemies overwatching the route thus slowing progress. In terms of casualties yes I generally suffered fewer than you did. 1-2 Warriors killed, 1 x Challenger with some form of damage (either armament or mobility) and about 3-4 dismounts were my averages. Regarding red attacks - I have explained the rationale behind the design decisions. If you replay this scenario try following the tarmac and see how it affects things - you may find that some of what you wish for will actually occur. No v2 is planned at this moment because I have a fair amount on my plate. Regards Combatintman.

On my hard drive - it ain't released yet ... testing the thing as a whole is ongoing and unfortunately isn't going brilliantly. The endstate may be that I release it as a series of standalone missions.

Erwin - thank for your comments mate - to address some of the points you raise: More IEDs to encourage taking the road route - I tend to agree with you there. Enemy positioning in the Pink Palace - Deliberate design decision not to put the enemy there as in reality it was a Govt location and in full view of CIMIC House - had insurgents occupied it they would have been turfed out so it would have been historically inaccurate to put enemy in there from the get go. It also gives the player choices - you know from the briefing that it should not be damaged so you have to go through the process of deciding whether to occupy it or not. Of course this means weighing up the factors of denuding CIMIC House of its defences and depleting the resources required to move East from CIMIC House to link up with the resupply force. SPOILER ALERT ******** This is an enemy 'secure' VP objective worth a fair amount of points so had you not opted to keep the enemy out of there you would probably have suffered a defeat. SPOILER ENDS Enemy locations and attack plans in the BUA between CIMIC House and the bridge to the East - Some of the things you discuss as options (continued below the spoiler alert) SPOILER ALERT ******************* Are actually part of the enemy AI plan but they don't kick in until about the last half hour or so. The fact that you got there before means that they didn't kick in. This comes down to the limitations of the AI editor in CMSF - mission designers have to make a best guess in terms of how players will play the mission IOT present problems for them. In my case because all of my playtesting involved working to a longer and slower approach than yours - I sequenced the timings accordingly. Had I been able to trigger events then of course you would have been in a whole World of hurt but unfortunately I had to go with the best guess. SPOILER ENDS *********** Attacks on CIMIC House - Given the besieged nature of the place in reality some form of attack on the place had to feature in the scenario. The design decision was to create a balance of focussing enough enemy on the place and giving them a remote chance of getting close versus not making CIMIC House feel like Rorke's Drift (depicted in the immortal film Zulu) and chucking ' 'undreds and thousands of 'em' ' at the objective. SPOILER ALERT ************** The neglectful player will come a cropper if they do not take CIMIC House seriously it is worth 50 VPs to Blue and the same to Red - so taking your score of 412 v 320 if any red element gets to stay there at mission end you would have ended up with a much closer result - if you combine this with not denying the enemy the Pink Palace you would have ended up with a score of 362 v 370 which would have been a draw or minor defeat. SPOILER ENDS Overall (and I've said it before) my main issue with mission design is getting the VPs to stack up properly and unfortunately I struggle to get it right which is why a few of my missions have had riders saying something along the lines of 'It is very difficult to achieve more than a tactical victory' or suchlike. Unfortunately - while I love designing missions onve you have hit your tenth playtest With this mission I wanted the player to have to tick off every terrain objective while taking as few casualties as possible. This meant that I had to give red quite high bonuses to ensure that if blue called it a day just shy of all of the objectives that they would suffer a minor defeat or it would be a draw. Delays in releasing this mission were wholly related to running playtests to get this balance right but I could not find a way to manipulate the VPs to give greater margins of victory which I would have preferred to do. I also wanted to time to be a factor and to create a sense of tension towards the end which I think I was successful at in my Zumbelay Mission and thought I had achieved here. You have proved me decisively wrong in that regard!!! Anyways that's all from me for the moment.

Erwin - I'd hit 'cease fire' now mate - you've done better than I did in the multiple play tests I did. At that point in time I thought I was making good progress if I was anywhere between Green 5 and Green 4. Reference the AI being poor in attacking - I will confess that despite having come up with vaguely justifiable tactical plans the execution as you say is a bit rubbish. The only surprises I am capable of generating are in terms of timing, location and strength - how other mission designers get it to work so well is beyond me. SPOILERS ********************************************************* There are still dice to roll for the enemy but they are not for a while yet - if you keep playing you are probably going to waste your valuable gaming time sitting on the objectives which is no fun. As I have not 'baked' the file you should be able to go into the mission editor and have a look at how it might all pan out - but there is definitely no gaming value based on your description of where you are in the scenario in seeing it through until the timer runs down.

George's stuff is all good - challenges aplenty in his missions.

Here is the thread about it: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=106745

The map is in its final stages of construction now although it took scaling down the dimensions slightly from the original intended area. Don't worry though it is still a reasonable sized map. I should have it finished today.

Erwin - still pretty stunned at the speed of your progress - my testing was conducted at a much more ponderous pace meaning that I would achieve the terrain objectives in the last 10 minutes or so. You seem to be way ahead of me. The enemy has still a few dice to throw yet though!!!!

Not hull down is it ... I'll get my coat.

Erwin ... when you posted earlier I thought: SPOILERS .................................................. Just you wait ... and then stroked a white cat sat on my lap etc. I did actually think you might come a cropper with the CIMIC House defence based on your description of the resources you said you'd allocated to it.

Fizou I wouldn't say that my missions are completely realistic ... For one it is very difficult to accurately simulate dismounted patrolling in these environments. I've got another map that I'm working on that I just can't get to replicate dismounted patrolling well enough. That said I think it might be because the map is quite a small one but I haven't explored all of the parameters yet (I need to check civilian densities). I may have this same issue with the Green 9 map I'm working on although that is a large map (about 1km x 1km) so an easier workaround might be possible. Secondly insurgent strength has to be really bumped up in the interests of play value, although I am less concerned about that aspect of mission design. ROE and collateral damage issues are hard to get right although clever use of known to neither 'Preserve' objectives can mitigate this to a degree. All of that said - I take pride in my research and mapmaking and having served in both theatres of course has provided some good insights.

So they have - try this one ... let's see how long this lasts!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6927CLI9J4U

Green 9 was where CP Haji Alem was located - Green 5 was 500m or so further north.

The more I think about this, the more I'm convinced that you would be better off modding CMBN for the Falklands than CMSF. No body armour in CMBN, weapon calibres equate better .303 and 7.92 are a better match for 7.62mm. Given that the SLR was semi-automatic I see no reason why the .303 could not be substituted for it. Both the Bren (rebored to 7.62mm) and .303 sniper rifle were in service which would save some work. The Argentinians could be modded from the US which would save work on the helmet and the M3 grease gun. BARs and semi-automatic M1s would be a good match for the two variants of the FN that they used. The building set for CMBN is a better match for the Falklands as well.

Sorry for being a bit needy but any chance of adding this to the Repository with a rating ... it may encourage others to give this scenario a spin and possibly reinforce the case to BF for a 3.0 upgrade to CMSF.

As I've alluded to the fact I'm working on some other stuff in another thread and by coincidence I inadvertently found a documentary about it on Youtube I thought I'd post the linky now before I forget it and can't find it again: Here is the linky: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyGhLTs0mFw The mission will be loosely based on this action on 09 May 2009 in which sadly Lieutenant Mark Evison subsequently died of wounds inflicted on this day. For anybody interested in reading up on this I recommend the book 'Dead Men Risen' by Toby Harden. Beware, that the book in particular is pretty harrowing. The documentary is mostly helmet cam footage from the day so expect plenty of swearing and images of the effects of war. This mission will be a while off yet as I'm still only about half way through the map.

My preference is for a 3.0 upgrade over the Black Sea scenario - not saying I won't get the Black Sea game but the TO&Es and terrain picks in CMSF do allow the Iraq and Afghan campaigns to be recreated while I'm not convinced the same will be true for the Black Sea game.

Erwin reference your last: The IEDs are from the Syrian Army force pick rather than the UNCON force pick as I find triggermen difficult to behave in the way I want them to. Regarding direct orders and player choice about using the roads - I took the route (if you forgive the pun) I did to give the player some choices as a deliberate design choice. Having had mission command beaten into me for years I don't like putting too many prescriptive instructions in the 'Execution Basic Plan' paragraph in any of my missions as I feel that after all this is a wargame that the player is playing for their enjoyment and one of the reasons that people play them is to come up with their own plan in order to see if they can beat the enemy. Reference the bridge - it is unclear why the bridge close to CIMIC house was never used. At some point in the book 'Dusty Warriors' reference is made to a relief in place of troops at CIMIC House which involved blokes running across that bridge to Warriors parked on the other side of the river/canal. This suggests to me that the bridge infrastructure was not strong enough to take the weight of Warrior but it is not explicitly stated. As I wanted to represent the ground to the best of the editor's ability I therefore put the bridge in and denied it by sowing it with IEDs. Given the difficult fights 1 PWRR BG had to get into CIMIC House to resupply it and the prevailing Mahdi Army uprisings at the time, I do not for one minute think that these resupply runs were in any way intended to draw the enemy into a fight deliberately. The force structure was determined by the prevailing threat and also explains why FV432s and CVR(T) rarely ventured into Al Amarah at the time. At the time the enemy was willing enough to show himself without any provocation. Also while I never served in Iraq at this time, throughout my Afghan experience, any resupply operation was simply an exercise in getting CSUPS to the place they were needed. One of the reasons CIMIC House was later evacuated was because of the extreme difficulty experienced in resupplying it - the same was true of the factors in play leading to withdrawal from Musa Qal'eh in Afghanistan in Sep/Oct 2006. Throughout both the Afghan and Iraq campaigns the availability of helicopters to move troops and supplies (or lack of) became a highly politicised issue in the UK because ground based resupply tasks absorbed large amounts of combat power and were run at considerable risk and in many case loss of life and equipment. The geography of CIMIC House makes helo resupply nigh on impossible so ground resupply was the only show in town. While some of this is 'World according to Combatintman' I hope it goes someway to answering your questions.

Erwin - based on your clarifying information, it would have been an IED that took the Warrior out. Here is the relevant hint in the Designer's Notes part of the briefing: 'To most accurately replicate 1 PWRR’s actions on the day, the player is advised to follow the instructions given in the Mission and Execution paragraphs of the Operation Order, ultimately of course, how you play it is up to you. Should you decide to go cross country to cut out Red 14 you will miss out on 50 VPs and may come to grief at the hands of an IED, again this is done to encourage historical behaviour'. Regarding British AFV loadouts in CMSF (not the first time I've heard the observation made!!!!!) - they may suck but they are correct.

Fizou - I was part of the team for the British Module - I did the Border Crossing, Crossroads and Qutaife missions for the Campaign although it was Paper Tiger who made the Border Crossing mission playable. I did a lot of work on the TO&Es as well and some voice acting. I am no longer involved because real life got in the way (marriage and moving to Australia). I must admit I had no idea how much work it would involve when I got involved but am really grateful I was given the opportunity and it was a very worthwhile experience helping bring the module to fruition. Now I just do scenarios and campaigns for my own interest and enjoyment and for the pleasure of others. I've been away this week for work so will get back on this fairly soon. This final mission in the LOAM Campaign is causing me some issues right now in terms of VP balance. Hopefully I will solve them this weekend and then I can compile the thing and give it a play through. I've got two other maps I'm working on concurrently (both Afghan maps based on 1st Battalion The Welsh Guards Helmand tour of 2009). Of course there is still the TELIC Campaign sat on my hard drive which I keep picking at and my Op SILVER Campaign which I want to make some progress on at some point. I suspect the focus will be individual missions once Op LOAM is done mainly because with single missions you can always see the light at the end of the tunnel!!!!

Erwin - there are no ATGMs in the scenario, however there are IEDs as stated in the briefing. Given your description of events my assessment is that you got whacked by an RPG of which there are plenty!!!! Glad you are enjoying the scenario.