Combatintman

Yes - lots of quirks like that across the British Army and the Household Division in particular.

I'm going to have to make some more scenarios at this rate mate ...

Well put it this way - this mission has an AI bombardment plan set up and the air assets are available at mission start. However the AI bombardment plan has no action squares painted dead centre of the map area where the centre of the blue circle is plotted from the observing unit during execute. As there is no other way for for a scenario designer to hard code strikes by off map indirect fire and air assets, my educated guess is that this is just what the Tac AI does when it has a combination of a unit eligible to call air in and air assets available. I will add that no units on the opposing side to the air controller and aircraft presented themselves anywhere near the targeted action spot that is the centre of the blue circle.

Hmmm - FIBUA does not = "Fyboo" FIBUA is pronounced "Fibyoua."

If the building is the dutch style building about four storeys high, it could be that. That building was bugged in the past and I don't know whether it was ever fixed. The other common reasons could be that the door is one elevation level lower than the ground on the tile at the doorway or the other might be the presence of a flavour object close to the doorway which causes troops to look for another door. If it's not any of those then I don't know.

I appreciate that this is stating the bleeding obvious but if you're looking at a particular area then find period photos or maps. The maps should tell you what type of surface and width the road had. If not looking at anywhere in particular and you're in the game of making a generic map then go with percentages of rough vs paved in the general area you're trying to recreate.

@WimO - looks fairly serviceable from the screenshot.

Doesn't look like it - spotters need to be able to see the thing they that you want to drop indirect fire onto. I seem to recall that Turn One might be an exception to this rule but haven't played anything not of my own design of late so cannot confirm. TRPs also allow you to target areas you cannot see but if they've not been provided by the scenario designer then clearly you cannot take advantage of them.

Some clearly love it but I'm not a fan to be honest so don't feel alone - give me armour and a lot of room to play around with and I'm as happy as a happy thing.

Some fairly recent testing of a CMCW AI plan suggests that if air is available, an eligible spotter automatically targets the middle of the map with the target circle covering the whole map area on turn one, or whenever they rock up. The aircraft then just zap things they can see. This is what I think is happening based on the original description. As @MikeyD has pointed out, it certainly is not due to any triggers.

Or borrowed them from our US allies, who almost certainly acquired them from the Israelis, for the training video ... I used to work for the unit that did all of this sort of threat briefing stuff and, although this film predates my army service by a year, I don't recall ever having to guard or check that nobody had stolen the BMP-1, BTR-60 or T-62 from the vehicle sheds. The uniforms and bang sticks were definitely held by the unit though.

And probably breaks down at 7 minutes (insider British Army of that era joke ...)

No problems for sharing - I make no claim to the scheme of manoeuvre as a special editor overlay idea though, I think folks like myself, @George MC, @benpark and @Pete Wenman sort of stumbled on variations of this idea at around the same time. One thing is certain though - it makes punching your AI plans into the editor a whole lot easier and probably cuts the time taken for the process down by about 75%.

Basically what @George MC says towards the latter end of this is perhaps the key piece. To knock out a decent AI plan you have to have a fairly good appreciation of time and distance - eg, how long does it take for a dismounted unit to move from one end of the map to another, when is it likely/feasible for it to arrive at objective X etc etc. Then you test the hell out of it and adjust as you go. I rarely use triggers due to the combination of struggling to get them to work and because there is huge potential for them to have unintended consequences which then become a sh1t fight to unsnarl. I'm actually in the early stages of an AI plan right now in between checking in on the forum. To get to this stage, I've listed all of my AI groups and their individual components, drawn a scheme of manoeuvre for them and that scheme of manouevre graphic is now my Special Editor overlay. I've painted out the full move sequence for half of the AI groups and am plugging away at the rest. Next step will be to assign a couple of timings for those groups and then hit play in Scenario Editor mode. I will then see what happens and firm up the move timings, adjust any that are wonky and add more move timings further down the orders sequence. Then ... I'll test again, then I'll see what happens when I properly lay out the defender's forces. Then I'll test again. The image below is the scheme of manoeuvre - I've stripped out the underlying base map that it has been drawn on in order to avoid any spoilers ...

@NamEndedAllen - glad you found the tutorial useful. I don't have blank examples of the tools, if ever I plan something I create stuff as I go. The example you linked to I think I knocked up on a PowerPoint slide. As with all of these things, tools can be useful but I often found in my military career that some of them actually constrained me. I'd start off with the things that you feel are important to be recorded, either because it is the type of information that you easily forget (for me it is anything associated with numbers), or is important because it is key to the mission/plan. Once you know all of that you can then knock an aid or a series of aids to record that data.

@MikeyD's Between two Fahrbahns is the first one I tested in the heady days of 'wow - Battlefront are doing the Cold War' - it is a fun scenario for sure and proves the point that so-called historically accurate scenarios are absolutely not the be-all and end-all.

I seem to trot these out fairly regularly in other similar discussions: My Ap Bac Scenario graphics for the Heaven and Earth mod. All done with Powerpoint and Paint: Strategic Map Operational Map Tactical Map Now I admit that the black and white 'aerial reconnaissance' photography isn't great but on both the tactical and operational graphics I was looking to create that 1960s feel so on the 'imagery' the image tints were similar to 1960s aerial images and the annotation style and fonts were similar. Likewise for the Mission and Tasks statements on the operational map - 1960s-style fonts were used.

The preferred option was not to dismount at all - it is one of the reasons the BMP series was developed. So the answer would be in the event of having to dismount "as close as they could get away with." Faced with the cold hard fact of bumping up against an organised defence the dismount point would likely be on or close to the defensive obstacle plan - which is (to use a sweeping statement about obstacles because there are nuances) generally the point of an obstacle plan.

No worries @WimO - VPs can be a PITA to get right. Whenever I test anything I do a save every 15 minutes and after saving, hit ceasefire and take screenshots or notes of the number of dudes, equipment that have been whacked. Of course, if you've already assigned VPs early on in the scenario construction process then you take notes of those as you go along too. This data helps inform you where the tipping point in the scenario is and how each side is likely to look casualty and points-wise. It makes the process of using some of the parameter victory conditions a lot easier and how unit objectives are shaping up points-wise or will shape up points-wise if you haven't allocated them at that point in your testing cycle.

You need to adjust the enemy VPs to compensate for it. Let's assume in this instance that the player is Allied. The Axis AI player needs to start with some points to make the Allied player work for their victory or whatever threshold you have determined for the player progressing to the next mission. For the sake of simplicity let's say there is only one Allied objective which is the Occupy objective they're sat on and that it is worth 100 VPs and that to advance to the next mission the Allied player needs a draw or above. The Axis side therefore needs about 130 VPs at the start which would give that side a minor victory on a turn one surrender. The way I generally do this is to use the friendly force casualty parameter. Again in this simple example, set it at 130 VPs but with an Axis friendly force parameter (number of casualties suffered) at a percentage that you know from your testing that the Axis Force will suffer at about the half way point in the scenario. Again keeping this simple - let's say the Axis force has 100 soldiers and you know that the Axis consistently loses 30 of them by the half way point. Set the parameter at 130 VPs for 30%. Obviously more complex if you've got a whole mix of parameter, unit and terrain objectives but testing will solve the problem along with @Ithikial_AU's excellent VP calculator. There are other ways to crack this nut of course, but friendly force parameters are usually my go-to solution for this dilemma.

That's what your flank guard is for. Typically for a MRR in the advance that would be made up of elements (or all) of the anti-tank battery, counter mobility assets from the engineer company, a motor rifle platoon and possibly elements of the reconnaissance company. About a company's to company plus worth of stuff. I get the impression that your original scheme of manoeuvre has focused on the big handfuls (the MR and tank battalions) without really looking at what else is available. If you look at the division as a whole, it will give you an idea of the divisional assets that would be in your sector, then look at the regiment as a whole which will achieve the same effect and then look at the manoeuvre piece, you will come up with all sorts of potential COAs and opportunities.

Horses for courses mate - if that's your thing then fine but there's a whole bunch of other folks who play this game because of its attention to detail and accuracy and complain volubly when those standards aren't met. C2 is one of those important game mechanics that works better and more realistically when you've got the TO&E right.

Hi @Butschi - I keep looking at this thread and thinking ... must help - but have been a bit overwhelmed by RL stuff. This is a shorter answer than I'd have liked but something's better than nothing. First up, your MRR does have four battalions but once you task organize them by giving a tank company from the regiment's tank battalion to each of the three motor rifle battalions you end up with three manoeuvre elements. Advancing three-up with all three of your battalions would; therefore, be extremely unusual. There's no mention of reconnaissance elements in the scheme of manoeuvre - if the finished campaign thing is going to do the whole regiment's advance, rather than just the southern axis you have scope for a series of recce battles employing elements of the divisional reconnaissance battalion and the regimental reconnaissance company. In fact, even if you only stick with the southern axis you can still have some reconnaissance battles using those elements. I absolutely wouldn't stretch your narrative to include T-80s in the ORBAT of a Cat III division. This type of division would be rounded out by reservists who had probably finished their conscription period years and years before - it would be hard enough for them just to recall their skills and drills on the equipment they had used during their service, let alone learn to operate a newer piece of equipment. Not only that, even Cat I divisions were not fully equipped with T-80 by 1980. We don't seem to know what 50 GMRD was equipped with in 1980 but we know it had T-62, BMP-1, BTR-60 and BTR-70 in 1985. I would suggest that in 1980, 69 GTR would have had T-62 and BMP-1, while the three MRRs would have had T-55 and BTR-60. You can see how far down the food chain it was by looking at its artillery allocation in 1985, the 152mm D-1 which is a towed gun dating back to WW2. Regarding the US - I can't give a huge amount of detail but you'll see that the US 5th Division of which 256 Brigade was a part only had 3 tank battalions and 3 mechanized infantry battalions in 1978 - it was therefore massively understrength and I doubt that situation would have rectified itself much before 1980. Link below, Table 35, page 38 refers: Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and Separate Brigades (army.mil) I hope this helps.

Stop being so damned obstinate - no one but you thinks the FO thing is a bug which should have been a sufficiently obvious combat indicator that you not getting a new FO after the original got killed is the game functioning as it should. Added to that we have confirmation from @George MC the campaign designer that there are no reinforcements and limited refits due to the short 72 hour span of the campaign, which by the way is entirely realistic. Campaigns work on a pretty simple premise, which is that you get given a bunch of forces at the start and you have to achieve your missions with that core force. Any casualties to that force mean that subsequent missions get harder. In this instance, you took casualties in an early mission and your subsequent missions are now harder. This was a point helpfully reinforced by George in his campaign briefing. Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

Yes, that's essentially the so-called "issue."