Ithikial_AU

What he said. You may need to manually update the pivot tables as well to read the new dates. Excel can be a bit funny in that area. There is an update planned a little while from now that has the real world date extended to 2030.

5 – Campaign Briefing and Narrative (Making Me Care) “Words are how we think; stories are how we link.” Christina Baldwin Campaign briefings are a unique part of a designer’s arsenal to provide additional information and narrative to the player. Campaigns are fundamentally larger affairs either in units, terrain and/or time. There should as a result be more information to impart to the player to provide them with context, purpose and information. The only physical difference between a campaign briefing and regular scenario briefings is that a campaign briefing will

*Cough* https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/cm-mod-warehouse/uncategorized/ithikials-combat-mission-victory-calculator-version-2/ *Cough*

I haven't been on YouTube for years! I think Josey Wales, DoubleD and Hapless have the honour of carrying the torch now.

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

Timelines The timeline is what it says on the tin – a timeline. A chronological listing of all events and other important information that pertains to the outcome of what you are simulating inside Combat Mission. I like to build out a timeline of events as I read source material usually down to the hour. Yes, there may by gaps when everything seems to stop for an extended period, for instance as both sides hunkered down for a night of rest, but this inaction is still important information for the purposes of campaign design. Different sources will usually tell you different

2 – Plan, Plan, Research, Plan “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” Dwight D. Eisenhower In the first part we talked about having the idea, working out what is included and then narrowing it down to something manageable for you as a designer. We have a rough idea of a start and finish and what is going to be included. So, what do we do next? Be flexible and ready to tweak that initial idea because it won’t work out as first intended. Be prepared to change as at least one of the following will happen throughout the planning and design pro

Part 2 is taking a little longer than expected. But in good news what was going it be part 3 is now rolled into part 2.

*Cough* German Reinforcements *Cough*

Seems a bit redundant with CMFI fleshed out now. Without looking at the files/textures but have a silly idea... why not mod tag all the textures with a common mod tag and there you have a southern France / Operation Dragoon look and feel to the game. Well still no French forces but still.

Yes, that all comes down to victory point allocations and degrees of victory, so yes non-core units still certainly have an influence here for sure. Another part of this write up will be on Victory Point allocations for campaigns. Yes. Will be addressed in a future part. Need to start in the conceptual and planning stage and move through to how the game handles these things. Partisans are not part of this campaign. Traditional fight between both armies. Exactly. Just they will never appear again in the campaign and condition is not tracked. For those still a touch conf