Broadsword56

A beautiful and natural-looking map. Well done! The west-looking view actually gave me a chill of recognition because I could see the buildings of what I think is La Nicollerie and Hill 108 in the distance. Those of you accustomed to the flat, watery Normandy higher in the Cotentin and around Carentan will be surprised by how hilly the terrain starts to get around this area.

A work of art!

Yes, the elevation system in the CMBN editor requires a slight learning curve, but it's ingenious in the way it automatically generates smooth and natural-looking terrain from reference points. I like to think of it as a flat and flexible bedsheet and your elevation dots are pushpins. You "pin" the higest and lowest spots, and then add whatever other pins you need.

Yes, I'm the same person! Haven't played that game in ages though. It's CMBN all the way for me now.

You're right -- and for that reason you can't be that precise when making historical maps. It's a matter of "eyballing" the overall angle the road takes, and getting it as close as you can using the existing CMBN road tiles. I try to lay in roads first, because they're the least flexible aspect of the terrain. Then the fields and other things can fit around them.

Definitely a must-have. It gives you two things that historical mappers need most: 1. A way to accurately trace your map tiles right over your GE images, aerial photos, maps, or whatever you use as a source. 2. A system for making the maps, 400m x 400m at a time, which allows you to "move" existing maps to other parts of a larger campaign map without re-drawing them every time. (You don't literally move the submaps, but if you use a 400m x 400m grid and the tool's labeling system, you can then tell CMBN where a particular submap should be drawn on a larger 4km x 4km master map area. So, for example, you could: a. Take an existing CMBN battle and open it in the editor. b "Grow" the edges of the existing map outwards to the maximum size (4km x 4km) These new areas will be blank, but the old terrain would now be a smaller area within it. c. Use the HTML tool to make the new map terrain, in 400m x 400m sections, and it will tell the CMBN editor where this new terrain should be placed in relation to the old terrain. The tool uses an x,y coordinate labeling system to tell CMBN where on the larger map the new terrain should go. Now you'd have an expanded map, without having to draw it anew every time, and the new terrain would be placed in exactly the right place. You could keep detailing additional areas and cutting other areas out, as your campaign progresses. One caution: I find it best now to make all my maps with a "top = north" true orientation. And I try to use Google Earth lat-long grids as my reference points for setting my map corners. This is important if you want to "grow" the map later in a particular direction using the HTML tool. One caution about the (outstanding and accurate) historical maps supplied with the CW module: They have all sorts of different orientations depending on the designer's preferences. So, for example, a map might have been rotated in order to make a railway line or highway run straight (N-S or E-W rows of tiles). That would make it hard to use these maps as starting points with the HTML tool to "grow" the terrain in a particular direction. In my XIX Corps master map, I rotated the terrain slightly so it would match the orientation of the boardgame I was using as my operational campaign layer. Now I wish I hadn't done that, because now it makes it harder to use the master map with the HTML tool to make new submaps from it. But for your purposes, crushingleek, that wouldn't be an issue -- your scale of battle is small enough that all you'd need to do is cut the master map into smaller pieces for whatever area you need.

StoneAge is very helpful if you get stuck -- just pm him. His instructions are detailed but very thorough and step by step. I can also answer questions to a certain extent, since I tested the tool and have used in in maps a bit so far.

Download the HTML Mapping Tool from the Repository (StoneAge made this amazing tool, and if you haven't tried it you really should if you're making GE-based maps). In the set of files is a file called help.htm. That help file has detailed, illustrated instructions on tips and tricks for Google Earth, and a complete explanation of the polygon technique for making contour maps that way.

I applaud your desire to get such detailed topography elevations for your historical maps. But I'd just say, don't write off Google Earth too quickly. By using the GE polygon technique, you can place contours on your Google Earth jpeg reference images very quickly and easily. I've found that a contour for every 5m of elevation works beautifully for CMBN and gives a highly realistic variation in terrain within the game. Frankly, at 8m per action square, there's not much point in trying to get much finer-grained with your topography than that. And in this area -- around Villiers-Fossard -- the changes in elevation were so modest that you'd go from, say, a low of 85m to a high of 110m across the entire area.

The Master Map was posted to the Repository. Discussion thread here: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=99780&highlight=XIX+Corps+master [Note the posts on that thread mention problems loading the 4km x 4km map -- this is no longer the case, since the patch has given us the ability to load and even play very large maps now] Here was a post on a different thread that shows you where this Master Map is in real life on Google Earth: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1268726&postcount=17 And here's a post showing where the specific submaps I've made are located within the overall 4km x 4km area (these have been posted on the repository as La Nicollerie, Choisy Crossroads, and Hamel Vallee -- which is the orange area in this image listed as battle 6.11): http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1334806&postcount=204

@crushingleek: In that case, consider using the XIX Corps master map that I posted some months ago as a resource -- it covers that entire area and can give you a head start as far as the historical field patterns, town locations, principal roads, elevations, etc. My La Nicollerie and Hamel Vallee maps from the Repository -- which were cut out from the master map -- are accurate maps of some areas just W and SW of Villiers-Fossard.

I wasn't around for all that past history -- but I noticed that just this past week, MD posted a useful and much-needed CW uniforms mod that gives us the entire British 44th and 46th brigades with accurate unit patches, etc. It's curious why he would go to all that trouble and upload it to the Repository if he hates CMx2 and BFC so much.

Fixed it myself. Diagonal orientation works as long as you make sure to sink all the tiles whose corners protude into the central action squares of the building.

Some wooden shoes and tulips would be nice, too.

I've tried to duplicate the trick I've seen on the forum to make a buried ammo dump out of a vehicle that's placed in a lowered AS and then covered with a building. But the vehicle pops out of the building as soon as the game is launched. Specifics: Basic area elevation is 119 Dug 3 AS to 112 or so. Placed the truck on one AS Placed 1 modular 8 story building next to 2 modular 6 story buildings ( it's a chateau with a tower and one end). Placed modular 2-story buildings in front of the main buildings, at normal ground level, and rubbed them to just 1 story, to give troops a ground level entrance and connect to the sunken building behind them. A couple of thoughts: The chateau has a SW orientation, and I sank the elevations on only the 3 AS directly under each of the sunken buildings. But because of the diagonal orientation, some corners of higher elevation jut into the sunken ones and the bottom of the basement is unevenly sloped instead of flat and square. Do you think I need to make the chateau orientation N-S or E-W for a cleaner set of elevation tiles? Has anyone got a formula on how deep to dig for what height of building to make it sink and have the ground floor entrances line up with ground level? In other words, how many meter deep is one building story in the game? I'll try and post pics later if/when I can, if I don't come across a solution in the meantime.

Plus, I think we'd have a player revolt if we get to Holland only to discover the hated bocage on the maps again!

Also possibly by running wire fence alongside the ditches (as in your Holland photo) that will also make the troops go along it instead of taking shortcuts out of the ditches and into the fields.

Definite must-read: http://www.amazon.com/HELLS-HIGHWAY-Airborne-Battleground-Europe/dp/0850528372/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1337722561&sr=8-2-fkmr2 Not only is the book a great summary of the small-unit actions specific to this sector; the author includes a lot of then-and-now photos and detail about the locations that I haven't seen anywhere else. It's also a travel guide for those who want to visit the sites today.

From what I've read about the US airborne AO in Market Garden, the drainage ditches were prevalent and a big headache for vehicles -- which is what tended to keep vehicles so road-bound. The small-scale maps will tend to show the field patterns as lots of little elongated strips of cropland, with frequent ditches between them as field separators. Great thread here where mappers have discussed this in detail: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2633506

Nice pics. Looks more and more like BFC will need to give us new house models to get the built-up zones and farms looking properly Dutch. Dikes themselves should be no problem with the map editor we have. The other key thing is raised roads, where those existed. We can manually create them by running a road along a narrow line of 10m higher action squares. But it would be important to underlay them with heavy forest tiles to keep vehicles from being able to enter/exit them at will. That was the tactically significant thing about raised roads in Holland -- that vehicles using them couldn't get off them due to the steepness/height of the embankments, they forced units to stay in column, and they skylined the vehicles as targets for the enemy. One dead or immobilized vehicle on a raised road like this would make the road useless for that entire CMBN battle -- which would be realistic IMHO. Dozer tanks or other vehicles would have eventually been able to push or tow the dead vehicle out of the way to reopen the road, but only later and not typically under enemy fire in the midst of the battle.

That's excellent -- Which part of the 29th operations is your campaign focusing on? The July battles interest me most, but they remain problematic until we get FJ units, since they represented most of the opposing forces against the 29th in that time/area. One exception is the 115th Infantry, which fought just west of the Isigny-Saint Lo highway on the far W end of the 29th's line. I'm currently finishing an 800 x 1200 map of La Luzerne, where the reinforced 3/115th is about to try and blow a company of the 352nd ID out of a village strongpoint. It's the next battle in the operational-tactical campaign I've been fighting with sburke. I'll post the map/scenario setup on the repository when it's done, as a HTH-only game.

I'd watch each turn's replay several times for fun and insight, then one final time I'd zoom way out with the icons turned on, and watch for flashes of red. Whenever I saw one, I'd pause the replay and zoom in to see the actual KIA/WIA and enter it in the appropriate place on my Excel table. Works fine -- not in 100% agreement with the game's tally, but close enough. (And I think the game adjusts casualties anyway depending on who received medical attention.)

"Gimme that Bren, eh?"

I still think breaking off the attack was the right decision, as it preserved the battalion for the campaign and I was still able to eliminate the rest of KG Lang with the follow-up airstrikes. (The command failures that made the American units fail to exploit that opportunity are another matter...) Now that Hamel Vallee is again occupied, and by a fresh German battalion, the action has shifted elsewhere. It's now the following day -- July 17, and the 29th ID has sprung a hasty -- but huge --attack on a fortified -- but tiny -- German company in the village of La Luzerne, just E of the Isigny-St Lo Highway...

I think Sniper Molek should be presumed to have escaped and found a way back to Division after the airstrike...He's already proven how wily and quick-thnking he is...and sniper teams were attached from higher HQ after all, so not totally implausible that he might appear again in a future battle.