Ithikial_AU

What he said. Distracted in a good way at the moment with Fire and Rubble but this will be finished. Final three sections will be: 5 - Campaign Briefings (drafting now) 6 - Campaign Scripts 7 - Testing and Balance (Dad is also out of hospital doing well) Cheers Ithikial

Just prior to the Courland Pocket being formed actually but broadly in the same vicinity. The Soviets cut off Army Group North twice. The first (and somewhat less well known) occurred in late July 1944, with a land connection re-established mid-August. Rather than bulling back to a more defensible position, Hitler ordered the Army Group to hold firm which in part led to them being cut off and trapped again soon after in what became to Courland Pocket. Pub trivia - the number of troops trapped in to the first pocket in Estonia and eastern Latvia was larger than what was lost at Stalingrad.

Apologies if there are still typos and flow problems in the post above. It's been a work in progress in drips and drabs over the past week both in and out of hospital. My Dad had an operation last week so there have been constant visits. Will review again after the holidays before the next part.

4 – Creating the Core Unit File “I am the vanguard of your destruction.” Sovereign Before we begin, a recap from Part 1: Core Unit File - A master file that is the central collection point for all campaign level elements. It is also the file that is used to compile and create the final campaign. Will include all Core Units, the Campaign Briefing, Campaign Briefing Imagery, the Campaign Script (sort of we’ll get to that). The Core Unit File is the glue that holds all the campaign specific elements together. At this point as you start to pull individual

Tip to make maps a little less daunting. At least what works for me. - Do the nature stuff first. Elevations, ground tile coverage (map out forests etc) and water. - Roads and rail next as they are the most trickiest to match up to a pre-existing map given the 45 degree limitation. Also bridges. - Everything else. I like to focus on pockets at a time and build it up to near completion before moving on. Stay out of the 3D preview mode until a batch of work is done in a pocket and review all at once.

There will be a delay on the next part of this series. Need to work on the campaign itself this weekend and then dissemble my home office. I'm getting a custom designed home office installed on Monday. Hopefully back with you late next week.

@Bulletpoint - Combatintman has it pretty much covered. The main 1930's era map in high resolution I'm using does place individual large buildings and based on that source there were alley ways between the buildings. Most of the town was rubble after the war so was rebuilt and changes were probably made by the new Soviet authorities. I did refer to some 1930's photos and basically drew from that most buildings should be between the two and three story levels in terms of height. The modular buildings give it an urban look but in reality Tukums is still a smaller country town rather than a

https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cm-battle-for-normandy-campaigns/the-lions-of-carpiquet/

Next up is core units. I may need to clear this next part with Battlefront before release.

3 – Map Making for Campaigns “Geographers never get lost. They just do accidental field work.” Nicholas Chrisman Talking about mapping for campaigns this early is because it is one the major time sinks for any campaign development, but can begin to occur while you are undertaking your research. This is also advised as many of the following steps really can’t occur properly until the maps are ready. So, you have your reference files, had some fun in a paint program to create BMP files for your overlays and have started the long task of creating maps inside the edito

A point that will be touched on in an upcoming part. There's a lot of unknowns in the TOE that gives you some artistic license. The excel table is also quite old so has since been tweaked in game.

<Sigh> Fixed.

Sorry for the length and text. Promise we are finally launching the game itself in the following parts.

Formations & Units The Combat Mission scenario editor has a lot of customisation for formations and units built into it from the get go. Morale, experience, fatigue, ammunition, headcount can all be set to meet your requirements. Then there’s the ability to tweak formations themselves by deleting and adding single vehicles/infantry teams. It’s a boon for a historical scenario maker. Much of the hard work has already been done for you prior to a game or module being released. The amount of effort that goes into ensuring the Tables of Equipment are as accurate as they can be

Geography As mentioned previously your research will likely bring up names of towns and other landmarks that are regularly repeated across sources. These become your first homing points to work out what you need to map out. Initially I use something accessible like GoogleMaps to work out where everything is in correlation to everything else. I think pencil in some rough map boundaries (rectangles given shape of Combat Mission maps), in a simple paint program over the top of some screenshots. When it comes to setting up the map overlays for the editor itself, I don’t lik