Broadsword56

How about sandbag walls (although I guess that would protect only against small arms)?

Now I'm really convinced this is a significant improvement -- upload it and let's give it a spin!

Good work Flesh! Looks so much better. How do troops look on it? Please share.

Don't know if this helps, but I saw one of my split teams "slow" crawl up to a low hedge where there was known enemy, my team had a "target" order to the other side of the hedge, and after a turn or two of firing, they lobbed grenades over the hedge. Maybe it could also be a range issue? The distance between my team and the enemy was very small.

I've just loaded them up in the Fauville training battle for TF Raff campaign, and they look spectacular. Thanks Vein! I dunno if you're entertaining any requests, but some day a 29th ID skin that has their little blue & gray helmet logo on it would be a great thing to have in the game.

So cool, Longleftflank! And with those vertical paved/cobbled riverbanks CMBN has the makings for the Seine in Paris (for those R&R scenarios).

+1 to this, although I have no idea whether it's feasible for the engine or would be too much for most computers to handle. A bit of haze and fade in the distance would greatly increase the sense of perspective. Although everything looks sharp and fantastic close-up, things continue to look a bit too crisp at a distance. OTOH, the pleasantly "gauzy" look of TOW Kursk probably contributes to it being such a graphically demanding (unplayable for my system) game.

Don't let the age of the game dissuade you -- the system was ahead of its time, and its fanbase has wished for years that it had also been used to make additional WWII games of this scale. It's also a very clear and logical system and easy to learn. As for aethetics -- well, now we have CMBN, so we can see the battles in all their tactical splendor. Where did you find the Vassal module, RCMP? I had looked for it and only managed to get the Cyberboard version.

I didn't really notice much difference from the pics. Maybe in-game it would be more evident. Anything adding to visual realism is a +1 in my book.

I don't know the solution to that Vire River problem, but for brooks and streams, it looks like marsh tiles are a good way to go. And due to the color contrast, it looks a lot like a streambed anyway. Enough, at least, to be a visible clue to low/boggy ground while in game, and to help visualize the topography better on a map without resorting to gridded terrain (horrors!)

Awesome -- can you tell us a bit more about what you changed/added, and why? Just curious to know. I'm not a uniform grog, but overall the new Germans look a little more badass and varied and dirty, less of the parade-ground look the game shipped with.

Looks fantastic using the shallow ford. But one question: It was my understanding that water can only exist at one elevation (the lowest one on your map). Is that correct? So if your lowest elevation point is 10m and you try to draw a stream that flows down toward it from the opposite edge (65 m), you'd end up with a Grand Canyon at the opposite edge because the editor would put all the water at 10m.

How about modding one of the tiles (like one of the plowed field ones, since summer was not plowing season) into a fake water tile that looks like a stream or brook, but can be placed at any elevation and has no actual water terrain effect (ie, it's crossable and just slows units down like marsh or mud).

Looks great -- as long as the edges are close, no worries. I don't have anything made in the CMBN editor yet, so can you explain to me what my "20m default level" is? The contour lines I made on Google Earth are every 5 meters, starting at 5m and ending at 140m. The entire AO, including your map, has its lowest point just NW of La Meauffe in the Vire valley, and rises from there to the SE. In my upper right 4 x 4 map, the lowest contour line is a 15m one that loops around just a bit of the NW corner. But my 20m contour for that map looks like this -- just a bit up in the NW part of it: Everything else on that map is higher and it peaks out on Martinville Ridge with a 140m contour. So, to clarify: I'd probably start my top 4x4 map with a base elevation of 10m in the NW corner point and then let the editor slope it up to my first contour (15m.) The actual water on my map is minimal - just a few small ponds and brooks -- are all way higher than 0 or 10m, so I plan to use marsh terrain for those. On the bottom St Lo 4 x 4 map, the 20m contour is right near the river. But the area up in the NW corner bordering your map is all in the 65m - 85m range. At its lowest point, the Vire river hits the W edge of that map at about 10m. So that's a good default base elevation there, too.

Recon units carry demo charges, too, I've noticed.

I appreciate your warnings, Pete -- the reason I'd like to do it my way is that I'm intending to use it in conjunction with a campaign (using a board wargame as the op layer). So battles could be fought anywhere in the area -- I'd wait until an interesting situation develops, then just make a battle/scenario map in detail for that particular sector. I probably never would map the entire 4x4 area in detail, but at least each smaller maps I'd make would add more and more pieces to the overall project.

The whole point of a TRP is that nobody has to see it in real time -- it's a set of coordinates that were pre-registered before the battle started. Now, to adjust rounds once the firing started, a spotter would need to have eyes on the TRP.

And also (I don't know if this would make a difference, but it should) -- my plan was to get the basic 4 x 4 area contoured and then lay down just the basic land pattern (water, various colors of land tiles, roads, forests, major landmarks like churches with tall steeples) and omit all the detailed and flavor stuff. I'd save that as the basic starter template. Then, for specific scenarios, I would open the template, define a smaller battle map from that larger one and really get it fully detailed, as needed. Does that seem feasible, Longleftflank and Pete?

Longleft, We should definitely cooperate, because we share exactly the same philosophy about mapping and historical fidelity, etc. My longterm project fits pretty well alongside yours, because here's the AO I had marked out to work on: I found that the area from the Vire River east to the St. Lo-Bayeux highway falls pretty well into a 2km x 4 km map and two 4 x 4 maps. Your Carillon area would be within that 2 x 4 km area, so I'll concentrate on the 4x4 areas. That gives us the entire area where the 35th ID (and a little of the 29th) faced the German 352nd ID from July 11 until St. Lo fell. If you're interested and want to try and have your E edges match up (at least approximately) to my W edges, the GPS coordinates of my map boundaries are as follows: For the 4x4 map on the upper right: NW corner: Latitude 49.180033 Longitude -1.086301 SW corner: Latitude 49.144603 Longitude -1.100560 For the 4x4 map at the bottom (the one with St Lo in it): NW corner: Latitude 49.146944 Longitude -1.114207 The corner where the N edge joins the SE corner of skinny map: (same coordinates as SW of previous map) Like you, I may be ready for eldercare by the time it's finished -- especially because I see I'll be enjoying just playing CMBN for quite awhile. I may also wait a bit for some tips and tutorials to come out to make the map editor a bit easier to use -- I'm sure the community and BF will explain a lot more about how to use it as time goes on. Finally, please let me know of any other good mapping resources you find for these areas. I've already used the French 1947 aerial photos, and found some AAR maps, but it's always good to share sources.

True enough (although I'd have loved a 500 page manual!). That's why the forums are such a great resource.

Yes, I ran into the sneaky scout team, too! While I enjoyed the nasty surprise, this is supposed to be a training mission. So IMHO it would have been a good "teachable moment" for the manual to show new players how to cross an open area into a "danger area" (a treeline or any other area where bad guys might be lurking in ambush. Rule 1 is to avoid crossing open areas at all costs, but when it can't be avoided, here's an example if you have 2 squads (assuming the third is in reserve or rearguard), using the proper tactics just in case you really want to do it to prevent casualties. This is probably too boring or time-consuming for a game (the process normally takes 3-5 minutes IRL even for a single squad) but in case you're interested, this is how it's supposed to be done, according to the book Light Infantry Tactics for Small Teams, by Christopher Larsen (adapted into CMBN terms): 1. Stop your squads inside the safe area (near treeline), out of LOS from the danger area. 2. Split Squad 1 and send the leader element forward to the forward edge of the treeline to oberve the danger area. Along the near side, send another element 2-50 meters to the right of the leader, and the final element 20-30 meters to the left of the leader. Set their fire arcs to cover the danger area. 3. Split Squad 2. Send the scout element across to the danger area (using Quick, Hunt or Slow, depending on the situation). This becomes your far side security team. The scout element should pause there for a listening halt to make sure the coast is clear, then... 4. Send the rest of your force across, using the same path as the scouts did, but leave the leader and those left and right covering elements from Step 2 behind to cover everyone. 5. Send the left and right covering elements across. 6. Send the leader across.

This is the absolute beauty of CMBN -- you can take eons in WEGO and replays to savor a turn or two, or blaze through it in real time play. But....It occurs to me that for PBEM, I'll need to be careful to look for opponents to share my tastes and have a compatible style of play. Because otherwise, I can forsee lots of players getting irritated when their opponent gets bored and goes "MIA," just because the other player is playing more deliberately or using historical tactics instead of just charging ahead, or vice-versa. So we should all try, when seeking opponents, to be up-front about things like our preferred pace of turn exchanges, preferred scale of battle and maps, and anything else that might improve the chances of a happily completed battle. After all, a PBEM at battalion scale could take a really long time to play -- you're going to get to know that opponent really well by the end of it, so it's probably better to either play only with trusted friends, or make sure you can trust and enjoy playing with a new and unkown opponent.

In one of the recent screenshots someone posted (I think the one where a German grenade lobbed into a haltftrack made the Americans' helmets pop off their heads) I noticed there's even variation in the soldiers' hairstyles -- some even have a little bald patch in the back!

I noticed this and it seems realistic. Sometimes a squad will be moving along, I hear a single "crack!" and down goes the sergeant. The enemy definitely aims for the leaders first.

Yes, Task Force Raff is teaching me a lot of lessons, some of them hard-earned. I realized (a bit late) that the recon teams in the Greyhound scout cars also carry demo charges. So the stupid lieutenant who sent 1st Platoon through the existing gap in the farm hedgerow will now be writing about 4 or 5 more letters to next-of-kin...