Rokko

Thats exactly what I would expect. I have taken a look at the unit settings in the editor and most have "High" or "Normal" motivation, which is pretty good, only very few are at "Low" setting. On low a squad will likely rattle or break after suffering 1 or 2 casualties already. This could cause much less overall casualties and more realistic outcomes, if broken units had a possibilty to exit maps or would surrender more easily. This would also spare us much annoyance of stumbling into broken stragglers hiding in the grass who often manage to gun down someone needlesly before finally being killed. I guess my own best move was positioning the 3 Panthers near the orchard on the left flank. That saved me a lot of trouble. I suppose HE saves blood At least on your own side. Why not use when you are given it? The effectiveness of the mortars on these platoon positions with the foxholes seemed moderate at best, though (as it should be). They still managed to put up a fight afterwards. That and accidentally taking out the enemy FO. It seems their calling of artillery took so long afterwards, that they could only hit positions I had already left in forwards motion.

A barrage of 40 81mm rounds go into a position in platoon strength (formerly), that kept anoying me and hindering my advance right until the end of the battle. Since that position had already been taken under fire in the preperatory bombardment, the fire came swiftly and was spot on: In the end, I had suffered 9 KIA, 17 WIA and one tank destroyed. Several more were lightly wounded. The enemy casualties were a lot higher. In the end, the Panthers produced a real carnage on the now unprotected foxholes (One anti-tank gun in a slit trench had been spotted early on by my infantry and was knocked out without causing any damage). I believe that I already took out the only FO team they had in the preperatory bombardment, so they couldn't effectively bring their artillery to weigh and could never use their CAS (thank god). It was a really great battle and I had lots of fun playing it, but I also noted some things that somehow annoyed me: The British positions were really b**** to combat. The game can't handle foxholes well it seems. When you have foxholes, placed behind bocage, placed within an orchard, placed behind a high wheat field and placed on a slope, then you must tremble. You can never really aim at them, tanks, firing from elevated positions pump round after round into the hedges pointlessly and infantry can only target the foxholes after already being in the hedge (of course, they get butchered before). Also, I somehow think the troops (on both sides) were too firm or too motivated and experienced. The Brits clung to their positions for too long and my SS grenadiers kept attacking under fire for too long as well. This probably to make fun battles in H2H were both sides can mutually fight to the last man, but I personally prefer battles with more brittle troops (CW 18 Platoon is a great example!) But all in all, I had a blast! Thank you George MC for providing this great scenario. Some more thins I noted, that were not related to this particular scenario but to the game: Soldiers tend to move too far into openings in hedges (bot tall and low bocage) where they are very unprotected. Soldiers bunching together is still a big problem to me. To often have I seen two men going down from one bullet/ one burst. Targeting high fields and foxholes behind walls/hedges is annoying. Foxholes should be placable directly near a hedge (without work around and spotting oddities) and should be useless when placed behind it. When you are underground and there is an earthen berm or a wall in front you, you cannot look and shoot through it. Tank rounds should be able to penetrate bocage to some degree. Not the earthen berms, but the foliage above. As it is now, tanks only shoot at the berms which only causes minor suppression. I am somewhat afraid this would make troops behind bocage to vulnerable to tank HE, though.

Hi everybody. I just finished a game of this awesome scenario. Played as German vs AI on Elite difficulty. As for the map: In my opinion it has the best map of all the scenarios delivered with the Commonwealth module, I also noticed some part of it was recycled for CW First Clash (Another great scenario, but a little unbalanced against the AI though). I took some screenshots and notes while playing and thought I'd share them. My force consisted of 1 Waffen-SS Grenadier batallion minus it's 4th company. Mostly consisting of regulars and veterans. As support I got 2 x 2 120mm heavy mortars and a bunch of 81mm mortars. Also part of Kampfgruppe Meyer are 3 Panther companies, though only companies in name, consisting only of 3 - 5 Panthers each, totaling 9 Panther tanks with many Green crews. To pave their way a few recon and engineer sections from the Panther batallions staff company accompany the tanks. Due to early intel of some foxhole positions and what seems a deployment line of enemy tanks these are given a preperatory bombardment. The terrain offers very good cover on the left and right flank. The center is mostly open. I divide the Kampfgruppe among these 3 sectors and press mostly on the left where the mounted recon men move fastly to find any forward defenders. Each company gets a Panther company. The strongest one with 5 tanks is held in the center as reserve. One Aufklärer section comes under fire from an enemy sniper team. They retreat into a building, take the snipers' position under suppressive fire while the second section closes in for the kill. One man gets away temporarily. The battle reaches an early climax as the Panthers, after going into a good firing position far forward on the left flank, spot the bulk of the enemy's tank forces. A vicious tank duel over 900m ensues with 3 Panthers facing 6 Shermans in total, 2 of them Fireflies. One Panther recieves a hit from a Firefly that knocks out it's main gun and panics the Green crew. Another hit bounces harmlessly off the thick hull armor. The crew abandons the tank with only 2 men lightly wounded and the tank is finally knocked out. The Company commander's Panther finally has moved into a better position and can participate in the firefight. In the end, 6 smouldering wrecks decorate the road to the village. Soon after vicious artillery barrage hits the firing of the Panthers' without any warning. Luckily, the Panthers had joined their company commander's tank in the nearby orchard and the barrage went into an empty field. The already knocked out Panther recieves several hits and starts to burn. 2 Grenadiers whose platoon was sitting in a hedge a little to close to the barrage were wounded. The line of knocked out Shermans, 6 in total. And here are their butchers, after repositioning into the orchard: The knocked out Panther after being set ablaze by several top armor penetrations from British artillery. The smoke columns in the distance give prove of the heavy battle that happened: On the right, another tank battle happens. 3 Panthers against 3 Shermans, one of them a Firefly. The Shermans are in a good position within an orchard and one Panther recieves a hit from the Firefly. The tank's radio-operator is wounded or killed and the Crew abandons the tank. Luckily, his comrades take out the remaining Shermans and the abandonned tank is occupied again essentially without any damage. Two more Shermans try to flee and consequently get knocked out from shots in the flank. With the enemy tanks done for the Grenadiers advance alongside the Panthers. I didn't take many notes or screenshots of the following close combat, but it was vicious and the British foxhole positions proved to be very tough. Grenadiers on the right advancing alongside a Panther through a high corn field: German HMGs pump countless rounds into the enemy foxhole positions.

Well IIRC 2 of the 3 Pumas are Green, which reduces their spotting ability. Plus it's very misty and raining a little. Also I noted that, often, the advancing Allies are partly hull-down. I believe the 3 starting Pumas are of most use on the hill next to the impassable forrest, but usually they don't survive the match.

Nope, not yet. There is a little programm for CMBN that can extract single scenario files from a campaign file, but there isnt a version for CMFI. But the program is open source, so with a little Java programming skills you can make your own It's called the CMBN Scenario organiser.

I don't really get how this works but I promise I'll figure it out once I upload it. I plan on first finishing the map and then uploading it plain without any battle damage, AI plans, units, objectives etc. I'll also supply an accurate OOB file of the 12th SS PD with it, so anyone who wants to make some huge H2H on it or wants to depict a battle on some smaller part of it may do so. For example, you want to portray the Canadian assault on Cussy in July 44, you cut the map down, adjust some stuff here and there, add some battle damage, import the units for both sides (I believe there are OOB files for all the Canadian divs in Normandy) and all you really have to worry about are mission objectives and AI plans. I myself consider making a German campaign about the 7th June offensive, but first things first.

Last but not least, some close up impressions (details like flavour objects are mostly missing yet):

Franqueville: Ardennes: Cussy: The village Buron is too unfinished to show, yet. I only have the roads and compound borders there. Here is a view of how it looks in the editor, note that a large section to the north is not shown, because the highest zoom setting doesn't show more. And here is my template picture in Google Earth. Although all the roads on my map are straight, I managed to keep the dimensions mostly true to the real world. In some place there are some deviation, though. The largest I think is like 80% too big, but in a place at the periphery, were no engagements happend.

Hi folks, for many months I've been sporadically working on a ambitous map project, and I feel like I have reached a state that justifies sharing and it is actually possible that I might finish it Anyways, I've made a huge map, 3728m x 3200m (though it's going to be higher in the end) depicting the area north of of the Caen-Bayeux highway, where on June 7th a half succesfull offensive of one Grenadier regiment and one tank batallion of the Hitlerjugend division against the Aliied spearheads took place that managed to throw them well back, though not back into the sea as it had been planned. Afterwards, the Allies ceased their attempts to attack Caen head on for about a month, but in July they conquered that area against stiff resistance of the now heavily depleted Hitler Youth division. On the map there are (as of now) the old Abbaye d' Ardennes where Kurt Meyer and his SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 25 had its headquarters and which is infamous for being the site where many Canadian POWs were murdered, the villages Cussy, Authie, Buron, Franqueville and Gruchy. Later, Saint-Contest and Bitot will also be featured. This is an almost complete overview of the map from the SW. The camera angle is too small to capture it entirely. Note that the map is completely flat at the moment. Elevations will follow later. The following screenshots show all the settlements from the South: Gruchy (WIP): Hameau de Saint-Louet: Authie: Authie is the largest village on the map and had a very distinctive shape, essentially strechted out along the road between Franqueville and Buron with orchards to both sides.

Oh I just saw it's a Marder III in your picture. Forget what I said, that concerned the Marder I.

I believe that happens when you apply the 2.0 update without having the 1.11 patch installed BEFORE. Yep that's when I noted something was awry. I had forgotten to install the patch and only installed the upgrade ( I think they should have just made the update include all patches). Anyways, I simply installed the patch and then the update again and it was fixed. I am not certain, but if your Marder doesn't have dark yellow camo with vertical brown stripes and looks like a turd, you forgot the patch.

Where did you all get these backgrounds? Photoshopped or a mod?

Well it's copious, comes with some great maps, covers the fighting on an almost daily basis, gives detailed casualty figures, goes into more detail on the opposing forces than many other works. Besides it is well written and structured. Also, you're wrong, there is mention of war crimes, just none that were comitted by themselves. What do you expect? It was written by veterans, and their intent was not to please some grogs 40 years after but to give a memorial to themselves and clean their own names. And if the authors can be believed also reconciliation with their former enemies. I also noted a tendency to push all blame for failure away from Hitler. Did I like that or the omitting of the Hitleryouth's own war crimes? Not at all, but it's still a great divisional history, despite not being completely objective.

"The Russians? They're subhumans! They sent unarmed soldiers against our well armed positions, they didn't have a chance!" "No, we always had our Panzers close by." Talking about veterans, I just read that Hubert Meyer, last CO of 12th SS Panzer-Division and last living division commander of the Waffen-SS died last month. He was the author of the really good divisional history of that division. I wonder if he stayed a stubborn nazi to the end like so many others or not.

I played 18 Platoon after what I read here, and boy, what great scenario! Very realistic and very thrilling. I managed to achieve total victory, but took some quite heavy casualties. 10 WIA and 1 KIA plus the platoon commander was lightly wounded. All Germans wiped out, none surrendered. I guess 18 Platoon did not participate in the attack that they made possible. One squad was broken (although they were the ones with the fewest casualties), one rattled and one nervous. Ironically my only squad that wasn't made up of green men was the first one to get mauled and get rattled, probably because I couldn't keep them in contact to their platoon HQ. The Germans even ordered a violent Broken Arrow style mortar strike on their own positions as they were about to be overrun which pretty much wiped out my assault section. I've definately never seen anything like that before in CMBN! What took my by suprise was how brittle my British troops were. That in combination with some very close combat and a determined enemy with many many automatic weapons made for a really entertaining and also scary scenario. I looked at it afterwards in the editor and now I wonder: How did the platoon get an assault section? It's not in the standart TOE and there is no such specialist team. Could it be that this is some pre-game-release sorcery?

Does this mod still work with 2.0? I really miss it. @ Rambler: Could it be that the 1st and the 2nd LOD for the type D trees are interchanged? Somehow, the D-trees become less dense when looked upon from a little farther.

I swear, before the patch the 88mm (Both in the Tiger and Flak36) couldn't reliably penetrate any Sherman's frontal armor at ranges beyond 1600m. Now Shermans aren't even protected at 2200m+ I just wonder, did ther Sherman armor get nerfed or did the Tiger gun get boosted?

Actually you're right. I wonder if that was a change in the latest patch, because I recall that Tigers often had problems penetrating Shermans at +1500m.

Are ground tiles in CMFI of a higher resolution than in CMBN? I'm not sure but I had the impression they were. Anyways, are trees not supposed to have shaders like the bocage for instance? it looks a litte bit weird since there's very stark contrast on the hedges but none on the trees.

Ironically, at that range the Tiger can't harm the Firefly in any way (frontally at least).

If you want to change a unit's appearance, there's a new field called like that in the space where you can adjust experience, motivation, leadership, etc. (in the editor.) In case anyone wondered.

Has anyone else noticed strange behaviour of Stummel crews, too? When unbuttoned the loader just stands in a heroic pose making a perfect target. Maybe it's supposed to be that way, but I don't see why.

Looks like all the helmet mods are now obsolete but glad that that's fixed. The updated look much better as well.

"In the editor, hedges allow co-placement of trees like bocage does." This is a good feature. I will use hedges more often now in the editor.

http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods/4795/details