Broadsword56

I see. What if the unit does not have point value assigned, but you paint a friendly exit zone for it? It will still escape off the board, but the enemy scores no points if it doesn't. This has use in HTH games where there's a need to retreat forces or pull something back out of the way. It still penalizes the owning player, though, because once you exit a unit it's safe, but because it disappears from the game you won't have it to use anymore. As long as point objectives are territory and other parameters, not points for units failing to exit, I think this can be useful.

It won't naturally have snow, but I seem to recall someone (mjkerner?) making an earlier CMBN mod that simulated winter on that terrain.

Does it screw the scoring even if there's no point value assigned to the exit objective? I thought a zero-value friendly-side exit zone could simply allow forces to get off the map into a safe place and avoid destruction in situations like the ones Noob describes.

Just curious. Do you think this Bulge mod would also work in CMBN 2.1, a.k.a. Market-Garden? I ask because it would seem a closer fit for Bulge units and time period to use the mod there rather than in CMFI-GL. If Market-Garden adds the StG 44 to the small arms arsenal, then that makes simulated Volksgrenadiers possible, for example, And some of the new "Dutch" buildings would look better in the Ardennes than the CMFI ones.

It could be something like "The Train," with Burt Lancaster -- one of my all-time favorite war movies.

I'd definitely vote for cobblestone texture on the RR tile. That way you can still have plain cobblestone streets on the same map -- which I think would be necessary. And I don't think it would not look bad or unusual, either, to have a cobblestoned tram route running down the middle of a paved city street.

Those who have tried to use the CMBN RR tracks on urban streets say it doesn't work -- the sleepers and ballast of the rail tile look too much like regular railways to double as tram tracks in a European city. But trams were/are everywhere in urban Holland, and they'd appear increasingly as the action moves into Germany and the cities of the Soviet Union. Maybe this mod has been tried and abandoned already? Perhaps the skeleton of the rr bed and sleepers, etc., make it impossible to simply re-skin them as urban tram lines. But it would add a great dose of realism and immersion to city maps -- which we'll all be seeing more and more of, now that urban combat in CMx2 will be benefiting from a number of game engine improvements. I'm imagining the same rails as the railway tile, but re-skinned so that the ballast is simply a paved or cobbled flat surface without ballast or sleepers. It would be interesting to see how this looked in-game, running along a broad urban boulevard, with streetlights, trees, etc. Perhaps the existing telephone poles could be creatively placed to look like the overhead electric trolley wires, or reskinned into metal or concrete if that made them work better. Of course you'd only want to load this mod when it's an entirely urban map, and even then only if you don't have a train station or a real railway running through some part of the map.

Yes Daglish does an extraordinary job too with his Operation Epsom book -- loaded with maps, then-and-now comparisons, and an overview that tells the broader story but keeps you right down with the small-unit and individual stories at the same time.

Agree with both of you on Tout's book about Tilly. I couldn't believe how he managed to make the thing so dry and boring. I think he was best when he stuck to his first-person accounts of being a tanker in Normandy, and not trying to be a historian telling the bigger story of a campaign.

Here's another sign idea for you. --- This town LIBERATED Courtesy of 2nd Infantry Division (or whatever division you want to use) --- I've seen signs like that on the Remagen Bridge and other places in newsreels and photos.

Great turn. I live for these.

How about one of those hand-chalked Allied signs that says, "DUST IS DEATH" ? Good for Italy and Sicily roadsides in summertime.

Looks awesome! Agreed about the too-bright effect and needing more stripes. A more faded look with some dirt would be help too, I think.

No it's just a concept-in-progress that we've been kicking around. Sburke and I have already played with the "optional reinforcements" arrangement in CMBN and it was an excellent addition to our last op-tac battle. But there were a number of things that got us thinking about this use of the campaign tools: As master maps become more widely available, and as the series moves to epic urban settings like Nijmegen, Stalingrad, etc., we wanted to experiment with some other ways to play operationally over those large areas and have things carry over. Also, I had bought Ardennes '44 and because it's regimental scale, I'll need a different system for setting up battles than I've used in op games where the counters have been battalions or companies. I don't like to play with forces of more than a battalion-plus at a time, and nobody enjoys the body-counts and bookkeeping required to track a large battle for an operational campaign.

Don't give up -- You can use some of the aspects of the campaign-making tools in the editor to create some excellent operational/tactical scenarios for HTH play, without AI or having to make a full-fledged CMx2 campaign in the original sense of the word. The idea is this: A regiment or brigade task force gets a mission to accomplish something -- an attack, let's say -- and let's say in an 8-hour window. That's your operation cycle. Using a master map and the campaign tool's ability to carry a regimental OOB across linked battles, you could cut out the submaps map for some shorter (4 hour), battalion-level scenarios and then have them branch to new scenarios with new frontlines/other submaps depending on how each of the two lead battalions fared in their initial attacks. Using the campaign OOB eliminates the bookkeeping. You can have the third battalion + additional assets of the attack force be an optional reinforcement. You can set it up as a reinforcement on *both* of the initial battle submaps. Set up a protected/screeened area for the reinforcement to arrive in, with very tiny cover arcs. You and your opponent have to agree to pretend it's not really there until it's commited to the battle. The owning player can then commit it (or elements of it) to either battle -- once it's moved or shoots, it's considered committed and then can't be used in the other battle. Your arrival time for the reserve/reinforcement force on either submap is a function of how far it would have needed to travel to reach the jumpoff point. You could even set up both of the initial battalion battles and play them at the same time (alternating turns between the scenarios) to get that feeling of events happening simultaneously. That would also give you more flexibility in committing all or parts of your reserve to either battle as it develops. Depending on which territory objectives get captured by either of the front-line battalions, the campaign tool can be used to branch the action to other submaps and import campaign units to reflect the evolving positions of the regimental-level battle, as you set up the subsequent scenarios. This way, you could still get the ease of playing smaller, battalion-scale battles but have them happen in the wider context of the regiment/brigade's operation. It's not as comprehensive or detailed as the PzC method of ops, but can work to make HTH scenarios more linked and "operational," and/or become a mechanism for setting up CM battles generated by a boardgame/Vassal module that uses regimental scale and hexes too large to be comfortably played within CM (for example, in the Bulge I'd highly recommend Ardennes '44 second edition -- that's the one I have and plan to use when I get around to the Bulge some day.) Sburke has suggested an innovative way of arranging the territory objectives on each of the submaps like this, with these point values: Obj 3 40 Pts ................................ Obj 2 30 pts ................... Obj 1 20pts................. "The battle rages for as long as the attacker feels capable of pushing forward. Their goal would be to achieve as many of the objectives in the 4 hour window as they think they can at as low a cost as possible. When the point comes that the attacker feels they have achieved what they can, both sides ceasefire. The campaign is branched based on the point value they achieved from the various objectives. Plan the points well enough and you could have a number of possible alternatives with the ground taken reflecting them. "If you ceasefire and get 20 points your frontline is at objective 1. "If you get 60 points you go to map 2 and a frontline that includes 1 and 3. "If you get 50 pts you go to map 3 and a frontline that includes 1 and 2. "If you get 90 points your frontline is all the way to objectives 2 and 3. "Your forces would carry over and the assumption being you had to regroup, replenish etc and the next battle is say in the afternoon, another 4 hour scenario. Theoretically you could do this and create a fairly large campaign. It may become an accelerating loss for the defender, but that is actually fairly realistic and could reflect what little reserve the defense has or not. The upside of doing this is your forces can automatically carry over with incurred losses, supply issues and so on and you don't have to track them."

BTW I *really* like the effect you got in those screenshots -- something about the sharpness of the models and the blur around them makes them hyper-realistic and look as if they were shot in the chaos of combat. What effects did you use and how did you use them?

This is just what we've needed for years, and you're just the man to do it. Bravo!

Also, if you draw the shading of the cloth folds on the texture (can you?) then it will perhaps give the illusion of not being painted on and skin-tight even though it's just wool-textured skin (I hope).

Just curious: How would posting the turn on Google Drive be different from, say, Dropbox?

Whoa, once that smoke gets built up it would really be a total white-on-white whiteout in there.

Sorry -- I missed that post! Yes, more than OK. Gotta have em! Nice work.

OMG -- I'd been checking and checking for it and then missed the post! Thanks mj and excellent work. And yes, the Brit paras are of no use in 1941 Crete, so might as well draft them into the Luftwaffe. Is it ready to post?

Reminds me of from Monty Python! Similar British ingenuity at work...

Something else I remembered about Bulge troops from seeing the old newsreels: The Germans wore a kind of hoodie or balaclava under their helmets. So their faces were visible, but the area from the back of their heads to about halfway between their ears and face was covered by the hood -- gave them a cool kind of "Death Comes to Call" appearance. I know you can't change the 3D model, so this would be a matter of applying a new winter skin texture that has hooded faces. The texture could be identical to the one for gloves. The hood would look skin-tight, unfortunately, so the effect might just look weird and not have the bit of droop that a real hood would have. But it would be interesting to see.

LOL - well, there's a great screen name just waiting to be taken: Sancho Panzer.