Heirloom_Tomato
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Posts posted by Heirloom_Tomato
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RH and I discussed map choice a little bit and decided we wanted a decent sized map, with some open areas and preferably a town to fight over. We also chose to have our battle take place in Holland. The map we are fighting on is Holland Town Large Meet 049. Here are a few pictures of the map:
Here is an overhead view of the map:
From the right side:
From the left side:
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7 hours ago, Pete Wenman said:
I was hoping you were going to be sitting in a foxhole, in the rain, playing on your laptop, while intermittent mortar fire lands nearby, but your version sounds more interesting
P
I work in a barn and usually come home dirty and smelly. I promise not shower before I write up these posts. As for the intermittent mortar fire.... I live in a household with 7 females, one of whom is learning to drive. Does that count?
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In all my years playing CM games and talking about them with other players here on the forum and with friends at home, one of the subjects which comes up fairly often is the ability of the player to have a "God" like view of the battlefield. As the player, we have far more information available to us than a typical battlefield commander would ever hope to have. This thread will be all about several steps taken to reduce the amount of information you the player have and how that reduction of information plays out in a real battle against a human opponent.
@RockinHarry has made several mods to the game and we are going to showcase them here. I hope he will read this first post only and then go away as I will be talking about my side of our battle here and we hopefully have many more turns still to play. RH's mods we will be using in this battle are: Invisible enemy floating icons, Invisible sky triangles, Invisible casualty cross, invisible enemy tracers and several animation changes to lower the stance of troops while performing certain tasks. We will however be playing with friendly icons on. Having played several battles with all icons off, it is no fun losing your men in thick cover and breaking fog of war just to find your men back. While I like the game to be hard, I still want it to be fun.
For our battle we chose a medium meeting engagement between Armoured Infantry, RH as the Germans and me as the Canadians. The only rules we agreed to were: must take at least two companies of infantry and all vehicles chosen must have at least two rubber wheels. Single vehicles, specialist teams and any artillery could be used so long as it was available under the Armoured Infantry tab.
I am just finished my lunch at work now, I will post more tonight!
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Ha Ha look what I found! Check your dropbox folder shortly!
2 hours ago, RockinHarry said:I want this for sake of completeness, but it got lost with the repository. Anybody still having it load it up at CMMODS III or share via dropbox?
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1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:
Ok, I now booted up the battle, and... it's going to be a tough one. Forest, heavy snow, darkness means really poor LOS, and that retreating US units could appear anywhere means I have to be careful about overwatch.
Your men should have a serious advantage in fire superiority once contact is made, hopefully this will help to counter the effects of poor LOS.
1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:I'm itching to toggle off trees to better get an overview of the shape of the ground, but I will honour your conditions to play on Iron mode and with trees permanently on.
The battle is just for fun and if the trees on takes away the fun factor, feel free to turn them off. I only suggest playing with them on so you can get a true understanding of what your men are actually seeing in battle.
1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:One strange thing: The unit portraits for the German infantry shows a tank commander poking out of the hatch. I guess it's because they are Begleitsgrenadiere?
I would believe this is correct. AFAIK the only way to get Begleitsgrenadiere in game is through the armoured formations.
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When you select the unit calling the in the fire, what colour is the dot in the artillery panel? If it is any colour other than green, it indicates a poor line of communication between the spotter and the artillery. The colours are light green, dark green, yellow, orange and red. Light green has the best communications and red the worst. Obviously, the worse the communications, the poorer the results you will see in game.
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1 hour ago, 76mm said:
I haven't seen this feature addressed in the threads over the years, excuse if I've missed it...
One feature I really miss from CMx1 are the assault boats that were in CMBB for crossing rivers; I had some great river crossing battles back in the day. AFAIK they are not available in any of the CMx2 games, any chance they will make a reappearance?
Hopefully we will see the inclusion of the Buffalo amphibious vehicle in the Commonwealth Bundle for CMFB since they were in integral part of the Battle of the Scheldt. If they make an appearance, it may be possible we would see the Schwimmwagen,for @kohlenklau, make its way into CMRT. All we need then is for someone with sweet modding skills to make one look like an assault boat.
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19 hours ago, mirekm61 said:
do you have something for this week?
Sorry for the delay in getting this battle posted, real life was interfering with game time. This battle is one for CMFB, yes @Bulletpoint I was thinking of you! It is meant to be played from the Axis side only vs the AI. It features an Axis platoon with some support against an unknown Allied force. Battle conditions are similar to the weather I was seeing out my window here in Southern Ontario while creating the scenario. It can be found from the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/k5v42gds4y7e2so/AADyXv9MCabs64EVeJJFv0jua?dl=0
The previous week's battle had some issues with scoring for spotting objectives. The game only awards points to you if you spot ALL the members of a unit, seeing just the AT gun or MG is not enough. You need to see the third ammo bearer as well to receive the points. Well as one can guess, in this game, by the time you have spotted all the members of a unit, odds are they have either killed all your men or you have taken them out. This was not my intention for this battle.
I am going to try to come up with a new scoring arrangement for Challenge battle #1 and will update this thread when I am done.
Challenge Battle #2 follows a more traditional scoring method. You will be required to seize objectives, destroy the enemy and above all, keep your casualties low. I hope you enjoy the battle.
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4 hours ago, IanL said:
Hummm. I followed the briefing and was not rewarded.
I moved forward with two scout teams to some high ground on the right and left at first. They spotted some targets. I moved other scouts around and used the ACs to engaged what I could from key whole positions carefully chosen. I managed to beat the heck out of several German positions and suffered two wounded - who were both evacuated successfully. Once had no contacts and there was lots of suppressive fire on the remaining known enemy I moved forward to a crossing. Now that I had seen lots of enemy and even secured a crossing I selected case fire I new I had fulfilled my mission - glorious victory was mine:
Examining the score screen only: I think it was telling me I did *not* score for spotting the enemy only eliminating them. That's not what the briefing said.
So I reloaded the same I made right before the cease fire and changed the goal to take out everything on the battlefield. That took a few more minutes and cost me an AC commander but it lead to a total victory:
Pretty fun scenario. Don't get me wrong I had a good time. My feedback would be that a total victory should have been possible by following the briefing. Up until the Minor victory I was playing like I would have approached it IRL. After that I switched to a much more aggressive posture that was not really appropriate for a scouting mission.
I played blind without reading this thread in any kind of detail and the only reload I did was just to continue and I never looked at the battlefield in between. Actually I still have not looked at the battlefield so I don't know for sure if I took out every enemy.
I just downloaded the file from the link so I had the same one you all did. Just to make sure there was nothing different on my machine than yours. When I loaded the file in the editor the parameters are still exactly as they should be.
MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW HIGHLIGHT THE TEXT TO REVEAL:
This scenario is set to score the three AT guns and two MG's as spot objectives. They are each worth 80 points for a total of 400 points, so I would assume you should have scored higher than half those points based on your statement of success. Would you happen to have a final screen picture of the breakdown of points on the targets section? You kept casualties to less than 15% so you scored the full 500 points available for success there. The remaining 100 points is awarded for causing greater than 15% casualties to the enemy. Again, based on your posted results, 11 K/WIA out of 39 or 28%, you should have scored the full 100 points. Something seems off to me. I would think you should have been awarded 600 points plus far greater than half the spotting points giving you a total of at least 900 out of 1000 points and more than enough for a major victory.
The Enemy AI scores points based on self casualties below 50% of 500 points and a further 500 points for destroying your units. Since you kept your losses very low, they should have scored minimal points but since their loses of 28% were below the 50%, they claimed the full 500 points.
What would you change about the described scoring or the briefing to better reflect the results you were expecting?
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2 hours ago, Ultradave said:
Well that was disappointing. Draw. I had troops across the river on the right, knocked out 2 AT guns, 2 MGs, and got credit for none of them. No friendly casualties. Not sure what happened, but I think I did better than a draw. Oh, well. On to the next challenge.
Based on your results, I would have expected a different outcome. I have sent you a PM to see what may have occurred.
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6 hours ago, slysniper said:
So As you can see, I played it three times.
Anyone can dissect a situation until its not a challenge at all.
In my world, only the first score matters, because there is no do overs.
The second score is playing it again without trying to risk my units for the sake of a score.
The third time was with the knowledge of your AI plan and scoring from the first two effort and then going in with the intent to get a perfect score. And it was done.
Not wanting to be a jerk about it but the format lacks a way to be a good challenge for comparison, there will always be someone that will do what it takes to get such a score.
Just showed you how easy it could be done and there is plenty of ways to even make it easier. but I was not going to mention all the cheap methods to take the challenge out of it.
I see your point, it is a flaw I overlooked while thinking of this idea. Thanks for your honest feedback.
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There was some discussion about a daily challenge and it was suggested to try a weekend challenge instead. So here is the first weekend challenge battle. It is for CMBN, will require the Commonwealth module and the Vehicle pack. The battle is to be played as the Allies against the AI. This battle features a recon element scouting out a potential route for a major assault. It requires the player to be very conscious of their own casualties. It is 40 minutes in length and features a Canadian Recce Troop.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/k5v42gds4y7e2so/AADyXv9MCabs64EVeJJFv0jua?dl=0
The goal will be for players to have 72 hours to post a screen shot of their results, so 9 pm EST Monday, Feb 4th is the deadline. For your results to count, the battle must be played WEGO and in Iron mode.
If there is a active participation of these challenges, the player with the highest combined score at the end of February will receive a package of heirloom tomato seeds (subject to international agricultural export rules).
Good Luck!
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This system will indeed run the games and allow you to enjoy many hours of armchair generalship. I am sure there will be others who come along and offer up some suggestions on how to get the best out of your graphics setup.
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On 1/31/2019 at 10:26 AM, RockinHarry said:
Didn´t take me much work to make invisible floating unit icons for all CMX2 WW2 series games (CMBN; CMFI; CMRT and CMFB). Although I do neither have CMFI nor CMRT, I was able to pull required file names and folder structure info from the demoes or icon mods over at CMMODS III. For anybody like giving it a try, here´s the link (check the incl. readme for more detailed info). The archive contains seperate files to be unpacked into corresponding games data/z folder:
You Sir have saved a bunch of time and hassles. Well done!
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3 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:
Hm... I suspect it would be the starting player sending the first PBEM file deciding on the calculating machine then? Would make sense.
I just figured out I can actually PBEM myself through pushing files from outgoing to ingoing.
Not sure If I can do a reasonable test by swapping the mod in and out at certain steps. I´ll investigate, but still would prefer some real PBEM test on two different machines. So clearing the question on potential misuse should be very close now.
Pm sent.
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4 hours ago, RockinHarry said:
5. Just experimented with icons some and these files also using alpha layers lead to the following file set (icons invisible). Should work in CMFB and CMBN. US and germans only. Contacts and shared icons are not affected. From USA and german sub folders unrar the file you want invisible icons. IE if you´re playing US and like german opponent icons becoming invisible, unpack invisible.rar in german sub folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rwwrx17842offty/no icons.rar?dl=0
Maybe some of you like to experiment with the files, so it is less of theory to talk about.These are EXACTLY what I have been looking for! I have been waiting for exams to end before asking my oldest to use her photoshop skills to do this same idea. Do you by chance have them the other nations/ WW2 titles?
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7 hours ago, Badger73 said:
For another place to solicit scenario feedback, you might try The Proving Grounds although it has grown pretty quiet there lately - FGM - The Proving Grounds II
Just uploaded them there now.
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On 1/25/2019 at 7:42 AM, RockinHarry said:
A further unit icon mode would be nice as well. Just show friendly unit icons in any case. In my current test plays I found it quite interesting to play without unit icons, tracers and bullet impact explosions, when it just comes to small arms battles. While the AI does its job (spotting, shooting) as always, as a player I find it raises tension and realism quite noticable as I have to watch out more for tiny muzzle flashes, dusty and smoke impacts and enemy movements generally. So while I can mod various things to my taste in the game (also counts for infantry stances like non suspicious cowering, first aid and mag/belt reloading), off course I´d rather have things like that configurable from the options screen (or via press).
I will second the friendly icons only option request. It takes away so much information from you the player, yet changes nothing in how any units react in battle. In my opinion, icons off adds the much sought after command delays many seem to be after. With the option to have friendly icons only on, it will help the player not to lose his forces in deep woods or urban settings.
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CM Sandbox. I would love to be able to have ALL the units, buildings, flavor objects, terrain tiles, bridges, you name it, available in one title. The possibilities for letting your imagination run wild would be awesome. Russians vs Italians in bocage country. Modern US and British forces vs modern German forces fight it out over the Nijmegen bridge.
Realistically, I would like to see as much content as possible for the WW2 titles, from the invasion of Poland in '39 to the wonder/super weapons of '45.
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My vote would be for CMFI+GL bundle as it will allow you to do Monte Cassino and winter battles. The only thing it is missing off your list is Russians.
The upcoming Rome to Victory module will add the Free French troops and many others, extend the timeline of the game from July 43 to May 45, the longest timeline of any CM game. There are so many unique vehicles and units in CMFI, it is my favourite game in the series.
I would wait to buy Red Thunder until the new module for it comes out. This bundle will give you the winter battles on the East Front you are after.
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It sure did not take long for this thread to get way off track. Has anyone attempted to play the scenarios I posted? Any further feedback on the idea?
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51 minutes ago, MOS:96B2P said:
Judging from @Heirloom_Tomato avatar, I'm guessing tomatoes ...........
And it is southern Ontario so he probably has 4 1/2 to 5 months.
The main source of my farming activities is raising pigs to satisfy all your ham and bacon cravings. We also grow corn, soybeans and wheat to feed all those hungry pigs.
My wife and I also grow a large garden every year to feed our brood of kids. All the extra produce we have gets sold at our local farmers market. If you have ever eaten an heirloom tomato you will know why we only grow them.
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1 hour ago, sburke said:
Heirloom Tomato does not sound like the kind of farmer with a shotgun. More like some tie dyed stoner. Hmm maybe I should go hang out there...
Best picture I could find of me on Google Images
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14 minutes ago, sburke said:
Well he is Canadian. An American would be more apt to go directly to fire arms.
I have a shotgun and he has heard all about my shooting skills. So far the rumors have been enough to keep him in line. And my mustache scares him so no need to jump to straight to the guns.
Not sure If I can do a reasonable test by swapping the mod in and out at certain steps. I´ll investigate, but still would prefer some real PBEM test on two different machines. So clearing the question on potential misuse should be very close now.
And it is southern Ontario so he probably has 4 1/2 to 5 months.
The Truelife* Mode PBEM DAR
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
Before I get into my force selection and battle plan, I want share a few thoughts on this battle. The biggest concern I have without any icons visible, is the complete lack of notice I will receive of where enemy units might be. I will only know where they are once I can see them, hopefully before they start killing my men. I think it will be key to try to get as many eyeballs as possible into an area and try to patiently wait to see if any enemy units are present. I also think it will be very important to craft a solid plan for my attack, and then stick to it as much as possible. Keeping my forces together, in communication and mutual support, will be the only way I will be able to get fire superiority once contact is made.
Knowledge of C2 sharing is going to be impossible in a battle with no icons. My plan to counter this challenge will be to attempt to follow a small command delay strategy. Members of the same platoon, who are in C2 will be able to respond to enemy units within the same turn. If they are out of C2, they will need to make contact with their platoon mates before they can respond. Platoons in the same Company, again in C2, will be able to respond to enemy units one minute after contact has been made. Company to Company communication will be assumed to be 2 minutes. There is one caveat to this rule, if two platoons are in contact with each other, information sharing will be assumed to be instantaneous. Since we are playing in Iron mode, it will be very easy to determine which units are in contact with each other.
I hope to be able to put up my plan for this battle tomorrow night. It is Valentines Day though, so it will depend on how my night goes...