Combatintman

We Sydneysiders aren't all a PITA.

The teaching point is the gun depression (or lack of it) and the BMP's inability to effectively fire hull down - that is what the diagram is illustrating.  It is not illustrating the journeys each respective vehicle took to their initial positions or when they may or may not have arrived there.

This is a pretty good free online tool which requires no downloads for those wanting to create great tactical maps for their scenarios:
https://www.map.army/
Example graphic that I knocked up in half an hour using it:

 

This is a pretty good free online tool which requires no downloads for those wanting to create great tactical maps for their scenarios:
https://www.map.army/
Example graphic that I knocked up in half an hour using it:

 

This is a pretty good free online tool which requires no downloads for those wanting to create great tactical maps for their scenarios:
https://www.map.army/
Example graphic that I knocked up in half an hour using it:

 

The teaching point is the gun depression (or lack of it) and the BMP's inability to effectively fire hull down - that is what the diagram is illustrating.  It is not illustrating the journeys each respective vehicle took to their initial positions or when they may or may not have arrived there.

People will only whine when the untrained driver crashes the wagon ... @IanLis right - this is something that isn't worth the headache.

Well go find them smarty pants - I spent two weeks on a course studying railway yards in the European theatre and had to endure a 30 minute Deutsche Bundesbahn video on how shunting yards work.  I travel on trains frequently and because I am a trained imagery analyst - I look at stuff and how things should look like and what looks out of place.

People will only whine when the untrained driver crashes the wagon ... @IanLis right - this is something that isn't worth the headache.

If you don't like the rules.. don't use them.
Any argument you may have to make is just getting lost in the noise of your rudeness.
Bil

It is a thing that crops up across most of the titles - certain pieces of kit that are in the editor aren't available for QB.  Even though I go nowhere near QBs It is something that needs a fix for sure.

Graveyards up until tonight have been giving me a hissy fit - in particular, lining up the graves.  I think I've found a solution ...
Step 1
Make your graveyard boundary and select your grave flavour objects.  My cemetery is a German military one so we need gravestone 4.  Pick as many as you need and them plonk them on the map in the area of your cemetery.
Step 2
Make a grid in your cemetery using the cross shape fence tile.  Top tip - use a wire fence or one that you can see through rather than a wall or hedge.  I have used a wire fence.

Step 3
Go into 3D view and line up your gravestones.  This is still fiddly, but I find that having the grid gives a better alignment and when you look to check the alignment you have a reference point.

Step 4
Go back to the editor, delete your fence grid and go back into 3D mode and wonder at your awesomeness ...

Clearly, I have just done the one row in the image above - but you get the picture.

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.
 
 

People will only whine when the untrained driver crashes the wagon ... @IanLis right - this is something that isn't worth the headache.

Haven't got time to test this - but as others said, the map looks good, I might have a look at how you've done the terraced cultivation as I could think of a couple areas in which to set scenarios where that would be useful.  The screenshots seem to show that you've made a pretty good job.
As to Parameters - @Ithikial_AU has done a brilliant VP calculator which is really good for sorting your VPs and Parameters out.  The mechanics of them are simple enough and fairly well explained in the manual that even a sums dummy like me understands them.  I use them a lot more than I used to balance scenarios and they are very effective for that purpose.  Any questions just ask mate.
Congrats on your first scenario.

Everyone who has a copy of the game has access to the tools, including yourself.

I suspect that you won't get a response - he's not been around for a while.
Otherwise, I've only vaguely tinkered with QBs.  The way I find stuff out about the editor is to go in and look at things.  Crack open any of the QB maps that bundled with titles that came out after triggers were brought in.  If any of the plans have triggers then it is clearly possible.  If not I would suggest that it isn't possible.
Alternately create a simple test QB and see if you can get triggers to work.

@IanL has compiled a listing here:
http://www.combatmission.lesliesoftware.com/RedThunder/Scenarios/index.html
@Erwin is generally the go to guy for user made content.

@Sgt.Squarehead - presumably all of the action on this map will take place on a Friday or Saturday night from anytime after 2330 hrs outside the Fire and Fury Persian Kebab House? I'm thinking that the bus shelters and the front window of the Kebab House are 'Destroy' terrain objectives. Now if the Target Light command covered urination, then there are all sorts of opportunities for that fountain.

Another failed joke ... maybe my wife is right as she keeps telling me I'm not funny.

Agreed that the AI is painful when you're assigning platoon-sized or larger units to AI groups, their movements are illogical.  In both of my scenarios for Fire and Rubble that I'm putting together I have had examples where the extreme left hand unit on the previous waypoint wants to become the extreme right hand unit on the next waypoint while predictably the extreme right hand unit on the previous waypoint wants to become the extreme left hand hand unit on the next waypoint, despite the distance between waypoints being less than 100m and there being no intervening terrain features, or any enemy activity that would cause the Tac AI to kick in that would prevent them from just moving directly ahead from their last waypoint to the next waypoint.

The essence of warfare is friction. You're the commander so you want to reduce friction so go and look at the map, work out where you want to look to support your scheme of manoeuvre and assign assets accordingly. Read my planning tutorial or Bil Hardenberger's blog or any of his AARs.

To be fair they were probably more concerned about getting shot at.

It is 2IC (Second-in-Command) not 21 C which would be an entirely different C/S.

Ok folks - so I have been vaguely busy of late.  No target date for this scenario yet but the map is done.

Actual ground in Google Earth.

The above as modelled in CMSF.
This is based on a real action by B Company 1 PWRR which took place at the date and time stated.