Broadsword56

If you liked GMT's Battle for Normandy, there's Battle for Sicily, using the same system, open for preorder, and coming out eventually. Battalion scale, really nice map, and it covers the entire island: http://www.gmtgames.com/p-354-the-battle-for-sicily.aspx The other one I have my eye on for when it preorders/publishes is Consim Press' revamping of the 1970s highly regarded monster, Avalanche, which will cover Salerno at battalion scale: http://talk.consimworld.com/WebX?8@@.1dd59cd4

This isn't to answer your question, RCMP, but... How about posting something over on the CMBN forum to share with us how your Sword campaign went? How was your experience playing with an op layer? How did you go about converting results between layers? Was it fun? Any highlights?

This might be violating BFC's principles against "design for effect," but how about a compromise on AA that would... 1. Give us the units on map, so they can play a direct fire role. 2. Omit any actual effect on aircraft, or abstract it so it can have a slight effect ( for example, presence of an AA unit with ammo that fires skyward "suppresses" air units to a certain extent and screws up their chances of firing/hitting.

@sburke: No barbed wire or fortifications at all in this Carentan scenario/map. There may have been mines --not sure -- I didn't step on any but I had a lot of Engineers in my US force. At ground level, I think it looked pretty close to the detail level that I typically have used on my historical maps. Undercovergeek had more urban terrain and buildings than I've ever done, certainly, due to the Carentan area at one end. Terrain-wise, his battlefield is just slightly better groomed and "cleaner" looking than mine usually are -- with fewer weeds and general brushy foliage around. The biggest difference I can see is in topography. Carentan is largely flat. So my maps have usually had a lot more locked elevation dots and contours on them. Also, this Carentan map has what appears to be a sunken road, but on close inspection it isn't really sunken, or not that much. On my maps I really have made some rural road segments a good 2 or 3 meters below the surrounding ground level. And, of course, my attempt at "basement levels" to two of the town buildings on my recent La Luzerne map may have made it even harder for the CM engine to digest.

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me fire became a real issue -- not just a "nice to have" -- when CMBN Commonwealth Forces came out. Flamethrowing "Crocodile" Tanks were an integral part of British armored support in Operation Epsom, and elsewhere. So for the first time we had a significant realism gap open up in the normally accurate OOBs and TO&Es for the game. The other specialized armor "funnies" like Crab flail tanks, etc., can more easily be overlooked by just having some mines pre-cleared in a scenario and pretending, say, that they were swept before the battle started. But the absence of Crocs was and is a disappointment. I don't blame BFC a bit for it, though, because I know they would have included Crocs if it had been possible to solve the issues and add them to the game in a reasonable length of time. Otherwise, we'd likely still be waiting for CMBN-CF to be released. I'm happy to think that we might yet see those fire-breathers some day.

IRL that GI would have just vanished into a pink mist.

+1 to the idea of a camouflaged model of an AT gun (even if the way it's implemented in the engine stays the same). It just would look a lot better and add realism/immersion, especially since we can't have the guns actually appear below ground level when dug in. At least a built-in covering of cammo net, etc., would let our imaginations better perceive the gun to be dig in and hidden, etc. You could just basically have a model of a foliage-covered cammo net, staked to the ground and sandbagged, with just the muzzle of the gun poking out. It would be dark inside and you wouldn't need to see the crew -- they could just be abstracted and represented man-for-man in the GUI.

Yes, game-wise I prefer the company sized idea using just the historical map area and initial forces. As the scenario stands now, the entire US game requires that initial force to secure the bridge, Purple Heart Lane, and any places where the Germans can put direct or spot indirect fire on the bridge and lane (Command Post especially, but also Ingouf Farm). if the initial US force fails in this, the reinforcements will get killed/pinned at the bridge bottleneck and the battle is lost anyway. so why bother having the rest of the larger battle if everything really depends on what that initial force is doing? Mjkerner said I could likely have taken the Command Post and Ingouf Farm if I'd realized how few Germans were manning the forward outposts and how little they could see in the predawn turns. But did the US commander IRL know this? I didn't feel safe just charging my force into the dark across the bridge, up a straight road, into the unknown. It looked like a classic kill zone. So I followed doctrine and waited to try and get sufficient smoke established N of the bridge, sneak some scouts across, etc. The time this took meant that by the time I really had forces moving across the bridge in strength, the Germans had time to stiffen their defenses, more light to spot the crossing, and we're able to inflict serious attrition on US units by the time they ran the gauntlet up to the FEBA. In hindsight, I'd have done better just charging right at the objectives on Turn 1. So IMHO, you should change the briefing and just tell the US player to charge the objectives immediately. Or, start the US forces closer to the objectives on the enemy side of the river and make it a mop-up just to clear and hold. Then the real action once the reinforcements arrive would happen closer to Carentan and the Cafe areas.

Just an update: mjkerner and I called off our HTH game after Turn 160, due to mutual frustration and an inevitable US major defeat after German HE destroyed the stone bridge, leaving all but 2 US reinforcement platoons no way to enter the battle. I'll let mjkerner report any issues/suggested fixes from the German side, but we both agreed that this scenario suffers from a number of issues that put its playability into question -- the good news is, we had a lot of fun initially and the issues are all fixable. 1. Size. You're free to make a battle scenario as big or small as you want, but please warn potential players that it's regimental scale. Personally (and I prefer big battles/maps) I find battalion + supporting assets is the largest scale in CMBN that I can handle in PBEM WeGo. More than that is an almost impossible clickfest, especially if you split squads and want to play with realistic tactics. 2. Terrain. Fantastic map, but one thing that hugely affected gameplay: There's no LOS whatsoever across the river on the E half of the map (the half the Ingouf Farm is on). If that's historically accurate, then OK, but in the game it puts the US player at a huge disadvantage. I had MGs and artillery spotters on the US side of the river over there, looking all over for some way to get LOS and supporting fire into attacks on the farm. It proved impossible. 3. Deployment and Reinforcement zones/setup -- The battle could benefit from some more research how/when the actual units arrived in this battle area. Capturing the command post and the Ingouf Farm seem unattainable for the actual US forces that start on map. US reinforcements seem to arrive too late to contribute meaningfully to the battle, have to make a long and tedious approach march to even reach the river/bridge, and then if the bridge is still under fire/blown, the battle is effectively over. We'd suggest either scaling down the map, the force sizes, or both, to put the units closer to the fight. 4. Unit naming (this it a nitpick, admittedly, but an immersion-killer). Please revise the way US units are named, to use the actual unit designations of the units that fought here and follow the accurate organization of that army. US troops in WWII didn't name their companies 9 Company, 10 Company, etc. Maybe you can have another go at this Carentan design after 2.0 comes out, and we have FJ troops too. I'd play it again if some of these issues are addressed.

Wow! Excellent work. How big is that map? Also: A reminder -- please be sure to post the boundary of your map to the community "map sharing" site: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid...4c5d62f4&msa=0

The word "some" in your post makes me wonder: What mode do you have the game set to (Iron? Elite? etc.?) It could be that the unit(s) you're setting target(s) for aren't necessarily the same unit(s) that report the contact(s). So when you select a friendly unit to set its target, you only see the enemies that unit sees. Remember that CMFI uses relative spotting.

+1 -- Been burned by way too many other PC games that "winged it" on OOBs and TO&Es, forcing the modders and community to spend many hours figuring out and trying to retrofit more realistic forces into a game. Many, more cynical game companies probably assume the majority of players either won't care or won't notice the bogusness. I'm grateful BFC did all that work for us, and since we know they're dedicated wargamers too, we can actually trust their decisions and feel confident that they did the best feasible job on representing whatever was in a particular theatre at a particular time.

Just make a big mountain using elevations, dig a crater at the summit, texture it with dark mud, and deploy a large number of destroyed vehicles deep inside it. Voila -- an active volcano! (Was Vesuvius smoking and active in summer of '43?)

Hmmm -- those vehicles existed at the time of Sicily, right? So was their absence due to the limited number/capacity of Allied landing craft for Sicily?

Well, don't know if this helps, but I learned this from StoneAge's help.htm file that came with his HTML Mapping Tool: A Google Earth image shot at 1599 pixels x 1599 pixels @ 72 dpi with the ground scale set to 95m will be the correct scale when imported into CM when the Map Editor scale setting is at its second-largest size button. [stoneAge, if you're lurking, please chime in here and help us!] I also recomment you download this useful file because it has an appendix that describes several useful tips and tricks that CM mappers should know when using Google Earth. For example, you can use the free software GE-Path to automatically draw a precise grid of any size over your GE imagery, simply by specifying the SW and NE lat-long coordinates. Then any screenshot you capture will have the grid already on it for scaling purposes.

What additions/changes would CMFI need to make to bring the game to accuracy for the Salerno campaign on mainland Italy (September 9-20, 1943)? It seems so close in time period to Sicily that the equipment and vehicles and uniforms would be identical. To make the entire Operation Avalanche playable in CMFI, we would of course need to have Commonwealth troops added to the game for the N half of the operation. But if one wanted to play out just, say, the US VI Corps sector at Salerno, we've already got all the US infantry and airborne troops needed. On the German side, the 1943 Heer formations are all set for the 26th and 29th Panzer Grenadier Divisions and the 16th Panzer Division. The Italians are out of the picture. Naval gun support is already in the game, as is airpower for both sides. So it would seem that, TO&E and OOB-wise, there's really nothing in CMFI as it stands now that would be lacking for this part of the Salerno campaign. Is that right? I guess there's nothing in the terrain and map part of CMFI that would be missing, either. The medieval Norman watchtower on the beach doesn't exist, but probably could be represented by a partly rubbled church steeple. Existing Italian buildings could re-create the Tabacchificio Fioche (what a great scenario that was in CMAK) tobacco factory, it would seem to me. Just wondering, since this is the period that interests me more than Sicily.

Also: Given the daunting challenge of attacking up some massively steep hills in CMFI, are you finding the "canned" maps give you sufficient variation in the terrain, boulders, scrub vegetation, etc., on the slopes to make it less than suicidal? I hope the slopes aren't too "clean."

One of the most striking features of Sicily and Italy fighting is the rough and steep terrain -- indeed, Allied soldiers often say they fought the entire campaign "uphill." How are CMFI players finding and accommodating to these very different elevation differences on battlefields? How do you find the CM 2.0 engine is handling this? Do the combats uphill and downhill feel about right? Does being uphill confer the defensive benefit you would expect? Since CM still seems to be limited in the area of modeling gun elevation, does this affect the way direct fire is turning out in battles (for example, forces at the foot of a mountain being able to elevate their guns to an unrealistic degree)? Are your troops taking much greater fatigue hits now, due to all the hill-climbing? Do they seem to preserve a lot of energy going downhill? And does this make you change tactics to try and use roads/trails more, or to look for paths across slopes, draws and valleys, etc.?

Ahhh, I must have been watching too many reruns of "The English Patient." Any possibility that these trees can make it into a later addition to the CMFI "family" when it has moved up to the north of the Boot? If so, please take this as a wishlist request.

Has anybody tried Vein's tracers on 2.0 yet? That would be my immediate first priority if I were to install a mod for CMFI.

Cool! Does that make placing wall posters any easier? (And did they give you Italian posters too?) Every attempt I ever made to place a wall poster in CMBN ended up with the poster either floating in space or inside the building, or endless nudging that never quite seemed worth the time and frustration.

Did CMFI give you Italian Cypress trees (you know, the ones like this): Next to vineyards, it's probably the most essential foliage/veg object for a proper Mediterranean environment (more than cactuses or palm trees, and for olive trees the "D" tree would be fine already).

Mamma Mia. Much more detailed and dense than I thought. You could really get some serious concealment in there. Makes me think of the Crete stories where the Maori troops mercilessly hunted down isolated German FJs in the vineyards...

What do vineyards look like? Do they have little grapes and stuff on them (don't care if they do, just curious)?

REALLY well done once again. Looks like the (excellent) map is from The Scottish Corridor, but anybody know which one?