[Blue and Gray]

That's for you to decide!

although you'll probably find covering fire pretty fruitless esp w/ raining artillery on the beach

[Blue and Gray]

from a campaign design standpoint, I included mission #3 for a few reasons. first, i wanted to provide a break from the relatively larger scale beach scenarios in #1 and #2. I am a big small scale scenario fan. Even with the large scale battles, I try to make them play out and feel smaller.

Second, #3 is sort of a set-up for the main St. Laurent battle of #4. The idea was to make players appreciate the struggle that the town would be. Ideally, the difficulty encountered in #3 would make the victory, if you achieve it, in #4 more gratifying and that much sweeter. I'd like to hear if it succeeded in producing these effects for you...

[Blue and Gray]

in essence, i try to incorporate some missions that are virtually impossible to "win" from a tactical standpoint, but if you make the right decisions according to the briefing - ie, in this case, don't get your squad killed - you achieve a victory as a leader. think of your score from this perspective, not necessarily always from a greater tactical/strategic standpoint. I think I make it clear in the briefings; let me know if any don't.

[Blue and Gray]

Valid thoughts/criticisms. I pondered this myself; I knew it was not going to be a "roam freely through the town and dominate commando style" type of scenario.

As is the case in the majority of the decisions I make when I have a choice between history and gameplay, I veered toward the historic story I understand. St. Laurent was held pretty resolutely by 352nd elements.

I tried to foreshadow and downplay any "gung-ho" player expectations by including that bit about "no heroes on this mission. heroes go home in body bags." which I learned is an anachronism.

[Blue and Gray]

The patrol mission (#3) is kinda ridiculous.

How is it scored? I just end up in a shooting match with the Germans in the field and behind the hedge. It never ends.

try to avoid a shooting match, it's a scouting mission with very low acceptable casualty rate because reinforcements are continuously coming off the beach.

disengage before you get killed.

you get points for spotting enemies (not for killing them) but the enemy gets a lot of points for killing your troops

this sets up mission #4

[Blue and Gray]

Mission 3: "Heroes go home in bodybags" is an anachronism.

oops. i'll change that to boxes?

[Blue and Gray]

Second battle, US Major Victory via German surrender with 24mins remaining. US lost another 210 men KIA and WIA. A reasonable number of those were to friendly artillery fire, especially from the BB. I basically conducted a right-flanking move - I smashed the right flank with DD and mortars and tank fire, then finished it off with BB fire before moving up the bluffs, then left wheel, and advance along the ladder with a platoon(+) while the remainder cleaned up all the dead bodies.

Are those four a-tk gun ammo teams supposed to be skulking away in the back corner? They look a little odd there.

Because of the way the map is set up, there is an unusual dynamic that comes into play. IIRC, this company - C Company - wheeled right towards the Vierville Draw, but the way this may is set up the trend, at least as I played it, was to wheel left away from Vierville. I only sent a two man patrol over towards that corner of the map.

thanks for the summary! I think you are right, C company, along with Dutch Cota went toward Vierville. damn BB friendly fire!

what you say must be true, I did the same thing you did. right flank --> left sweep.

those ammo teams were supposed to just keep anyone who got sloppy towards the end on their toes... ie not major resistance, but scare you if you only approached with a broken scout team. looks like i should have done the same for the vierville side, at least for you!

[Blue and Gray]

will do, thanks!

[Blue and Gray]

Excellent suggestions. I will look into this re-organization when RL permits. Thanks for all the info.

and... NICE JOB! That major victory is more than I could ever muster up in my play-testing. But I knew I wasn't the best CMBN player; I imagined it'd be do-able, and it's great to hear that it is.

[Blue and Gray]

I think marsh would be the best choice. That definitely doesn't have any LOS effects on the volume above it.

maybe. in certain areas, that could be devastating to a potential infantry exploitation where getting up the bluff fast means life or death.

this in the briefing: "Vierville Draw was surrounded by steep bluffs impassable to vehicles; thus, the narrow lane that split the bluffs was an immediate objective beacuse it was a passage way for vehicles coming off the beach." C'mon! follow directions!

if someone really wanted, they could move their limited tanks to the bottom of the bluffs and try to go up them, provided no ATs, mines or artillery crush them first. still, as ian pointed out, it may not work!

[Blue and Gray]

No!! Not trees -- just the heavy forest terrain tiles with no foliage on them. Or, for variety use the swamp tiles with no foliage on them for the same effect and a greener, grassier look. When you use them that way, they look very close to normal terrain (only slightly gnarlier and browner) but block vehicle movement and slow troops down just as if they had trees on them. Yes, they confer a defensive benefit, but that's actually good since the real ground would have had little undulations and dead spots to shelter defenders -- plus you aren't able to give defenders the Tobruks and other fortifications that they actually had on those beaches. They wouldn't block LOS though, as we've seen in battles where toops can pretty easily shoot into and out of forests (unless the mapper adds some LOS-blocking elements to the edges of the forest like hedge, low bocage, lots of bushes and brush, etc.)

interesting, i thought forest terrain did shorten LOS; i don't remember if I had hedges at its border though.

[Blue and Gray]

LOL fair enough. I have to say though since the game does not give me feedback that the bluff is un-scalable by a Sherman I like @Broadsword56's idea of putting enough heavy forest on the slope that a player can tell their is no way up.

This is going to suck for the Rangers. The engineers already know they are on their own but the Rangers thought they had tank support:)

IMHO the game should be telling me I cannot have a vehicle drive up that slope. A tank commander should be able to look at a slope and say "There is no way" or "Yep no problem" - for the most part. I realize there would be some ground close to the max traversable slope where the TC could make the wrong choice but hey the game already tells me if I can and cannot go over marsh or heavy forest. Having said that I rather doubt that this would rank high on the "fix list" since it does not come up very often.

yea, I definitely thought about exactly that. I contemplated putting trees on the slope for the very purpose of axing any ideas about rolling armor up the slope. the problem I conjured up was that it gives the troops a form of LOS cover from fire that they didn't really have.

[Blue and Gray]

i think it's pretty awesome what I learned empirically through trial n error turns out to match what you guys provided about the historical limitations to tank angle of incline.

[Blue and Gray]

don't tell him!

[Blue and Gray]

That is the conclusion I am coming to as well. So the question then becomes how can I tell what slope the tank can go up? How can I tell it cannot make grade. The game is not giving me feedback to indicate it cannot climb.

Tonight I'll re-plot my way points perhaps just one or two close to the tank and see what happens but does anyone have any suggestions for how to determine if a tank can traverse a slope or not in game?

I'm glad you are having trouble. you're not supposed to drive your tank up the bluff:D:D

that's why you need the draw

[CM:BN Screenshot Thread #2]

yea, agree, i sort of like the night missions, which means I can see everything perfectly

[Blue and Gray]

do you want to know before you've played it?

[game bug or realistic?]

Did he mention using wooden fences to throw tracks ?

Please don't get this too serious . I have my own opinion about this model of damage and about tanks vs wooden fences and will defend it, but it's not a game breaking issue .

The real question, Amizaur, is: How did they get that giant "This is Russia" flag in?

[CM:BN Screenshot Thread #2]

Remnants of 2 Platoon of the 145th engineers breach the wire and head up the hill.

bangalore! Fire in the hole!

[Blue and Gray]

While true the getting slaughtered from the start part is no fun the tactical challenge lies in figuring out how to get over the sea wall and up the hill towards the objectives with the men that make it across the beach.

Normally we know what our resources are and can create a plan. Here we have to roll the dice to see who will make it to the sea wall and then we have to see what we have and figure out how to make something happen with the men that survived.

In my game A company and the engineers are the ones that were chewed to bits and the Rangers are my units in the best shape. Heck first platoon of the Rangers even has their Lt with them and the Company 2IC is there too.

I had a blast with the trench fights myself. so much so that, i made the mop-up scenario, which depicts more trenches of stubborn resistance along the bluffs. which weren't major skirmishes, but a pain for some tired and stressed 29ers anyhow.

[Blue and Gray]

Crushingleek,

Since your Omaha map seems so popular and is working so well for players, can you post some insights and tips about how to make a good historical beach map? I mean the technical aspects like getting the beach, water, and terrain to look and play right, etc., types of tiles for specific types of ground, how you made the defensive positions, etc.

to be honest, it was just a matter of diggin up some old photos, combined with watching some youtube videos to see the seawall and some reading and a lot of trial and error.

for example in this sector, the bluffs are reported to be about 120 ft high, and the beach about 400-500 yards from the seawall at low-tide.

starting from the top: water, shallow ford is probably what everyone uses. not much to that.

beach: sand, with gentle incline generously littered with obstacles

seawall: i don't remember, but some kind of pavement. (this was news to me.)

elevations: pretty key. a good tip to remember is that the steepest angle the pixeltruppen can traverse is an increase of 4 meters per action spot (unless you use the pointe du hoc secret!). just some trial n error.

the defensive positions were chosen based on the picture posted earlier in this thread. some modifications were made to adjust the attrition level to be more realistic for an intermediate-advanced player. one struggle I had was getting mg42's to open up big-time with the same efficacy as their historic counterparts at the range of 400-600 yards. In CMBN they are a bit more shy about it, which is fine; this type of killing zone wasn't too common. Tweaked the AI behavior to be as active as possible, and setting their ambush range to 1500m helped a little bit.

[Blue and Gray]

You know I was a bit skeptical simply because the landing itself never seemed to me a good topic for a scenario. Not much strategy and you are getting slaughtered essentially right from the start..... That was until I managed to get two almost complete platoons over to the left side away from the draw, blew the wire behind the sea wall, rushed up the hill, blew the wire in two more places and forced the MG team there to withdraw. I have a foothold on the hill now and damn it feels good. My Rangers aren't doing so well and the guys in the center got cut to pieces... but just getting some of my force off the beach feels pretty damn good.

Nice job Crushingleek, you changed my mind about a beach assault scenario. Looking forward to the rest.

I appreciate it!

I totally know where you are coming from; what appeal does a slaughter-fest in CMBN have? I saw some of those comments before I started the vierville project, and absolutely agreed.

But I also thought it could be modeled to some degree of accuracy with the tools in CMBN, and was surprised that no one had yet made that particular sector of omaha (dog green). It's too important to not have a rendition of it.

As for the strategies, it definitely took some hours and hours of tweaking and play-testing. I love that you and Ranger33 and some others have found different strategies for making some "progress." Some of the specifics sound awfully similar to my experiences!

[CM:BN Screenshot Thread #2]

yea, shouldn't come out as night time.

6:30 AM, overcast on june 6 on normandy beaches, visibility was good; Ike and SCAEF wanted it that way, much to the chagrin of Dutch Cota...

agree that it is a little darker than I imagine (imagination probably skewed by hollywood, who knows if reliable), but it doesn't seem like night time. By 8:30 it's pretty light too.

[Blue and Gray]

You caught me. As I was posting the screen shot I realized I had failed to note which platoon it was and I knew I should have. I am going to have to check next time I fire up the game.

based on the location directly opposite the draw, it is probably a 116th regiment unit (ie not rangers or combat engineers).

They don't appear to be a weapons company so not D.

And B and C companies (and D) arrived later than A, so if this is at the beginning of the scenario, it should be A company.

[Blue and Gray]

coooool. doesn't get old to me.

was that an A Company platoon?