Heirloom_Tomato

With a good deal of Homererotic undertones.
 
Mord.

I built this little map tonight after supper as well. It is the field beside my house shown worked on the left and then they way it looked this spring as a lush field of hay on the right. The farm has a sand ridge, several wet holes and about 4 different soil types in the 25 acres, in game 150 meters by 600 meters. The view here is from the west looking east. The first time I worked this field, I assumed it was all dry and good to go because the east portion of the field was fit. The field was covered with corn stubble after a near record harvest so there were no areas of the field that had drowned out and were without plant material, a typical giveaway of a wet hole. At the Northwest edge of the field, the sand ridge was dry but not the little hollow between the sand and the pond. The disc I was pulling got bogged down in the wet ground and I almost got the tractor stuck. Fortunately, I was able to get out without assistance but made a big mess. With the ground worked, it is fairly visible, with a full growth of hay... good luck finding it if you didn't know it was there. Can you even see the wet hole in the field on the right? I was travelling at 4.5-5 mph when I noticed the problem and still was lucky to stop in time. If you were in tank, cruising at 15 mph+ and hit that wet hole, for sure bogging is an issue.
For my two cents, I think the game give you all the details an actual trooper would have. Look at the ground conditions in the game, and then recognise any ground other paved surfaces has a chance of bogging if conditions are damp or worse. Make an effort to stick to the higher ground and ground with some sort of vegetative cover. The hay field on the right will have a reduced chance of bogging due to the root structure of the plants. But if the conditions are wet or muddy, that won't make a big difference. Remember, crew experience goes a long way to preventing bogging. Just like at work, all the new inexperienced guys seem to find the wet holes....

 
Here is a link to the file if you wish to check out the terrain types used.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4ftkpyl7j8sgbbb/Terrian Example.btt?dl=0
I would also like to add, I hope Battlefront seriously considers adding another ground condition to the game for all the upcoming modules, and that is thawing. At work today we were trying to plough some of our last soybean stubble. It has been a wet fall/early winter and we have a couple fields left to go. This morning there was a good frost in the ground and the first few hours went real well. Around 10 am the sun came out strong and started to melt the frost. We broke a chisel plough tooth and it took half an hour to fix it up. In the time we were fixing the chisel plough, the ground became to soft to continue. The reading I have been doing the last few years about the Canadians fighting in Holland, this same thing happened to them. The tanks could support them for the start of the day but as the sun warmed things up, the tanks bogged and had to be left behind. Attacks would falter and need to be tried again the next morning when the ground was frozen enough again. I would love to see the same kind of thing happen in game. Start the battle and vehicles can drive just about anywhere, but as the fight drags on more and more will be lost to bogging. It would be a great way to add a time element to the battle as a reward for those who move quickly and it would hinder those who take too long. I know the game already models this with regards to rain, so I would hope it would be easy to implement with frost.
 

That right there is beautiful!

Ok I'll meet you half way, what is out there is less than optimal and I think the manual could probably do with a little more expansive explanation of the various terrain types.
As others have said, terrain pretty much behaves as you would expect it to in real life so if you wouldn't want to walk or drive over it in real life, it will probably present the same risks in CM. For instance I've never thought to question what 'Grass Y' is because to me it is grass that is yellow in colour.
If you imagine walking down the pavement/sidewalk and you see something brown - take a closer look at it. If its dogsh1t don't stand in it, if its anything else it is probably safe to stand on. Same as CM, if the tile is brown, decide whether it is mud or not and if it is, try and avoid it. Fords and streams are also areas which should be avoided unless absolutely necessary for the same reasons that you would avoid driving over them in real life. If you don't need to drive through hedges and fences then don't because you pick up minor damage to your vehicle, as you would in real life. Off the top of my head, pretty much everything else is good to go or, if not, poses negligible chance of bogging unless of course the underlying conditions in the scenario are wet and it is raining. 
I really wouldn't stress that much about it, if you do then the only logical outcome of this is that you will find yourself plotting unit moves from action spot to adjacent action spot so as to remove any possibility of the Tac AI making a unit cross terrain that you're not sure about and that will soon end up being very tedious indeed. Herein lies a top tip though, it is worth making the effort to plot precise moves in areas where terrain is difficult or you think that the AI will do something crazy in its pathfinding.
I hope this helps and I'm sure you'll get the hang of it with a couple more games under your belt, remember that most of us are still trying to master the challenge that CM presents after years of play because it is like chess, easy to learn the mechanics but hard to master.
What is guaranteed every time you play is that one of your best/heaviest armoured/best gunned vehicles will bog and immobilise within the first ten minutes of the game, with a full ammunition load at a point on the map where it can have absolutely no effect on the battle. This of course is Murphy's Law of Combat (Mission).

I do wonder how often players these days go into the editor to play. You only see a few people (a.k.a. tpr) doing 'test scenarios' to test theories anymore. You certainly don't see many players excitedly uploading a new scenario they just built for everyone to try. Which is a shame. The editor is your playground.  Here's a screenshot of a scenario map I threw together just last night after supper (no, really). If you're worried that opponents will take unfair advantage of you because of their better knowledge of terrain, I'd bet most players wouldn't have a clue which terrain type was under feet on this particular map

The vehicle pack adds flamethrowers to the game and that alone is worth the purchase in my opinion. If you play Commonwealth forces, the Churchill Crocodile is a great tank to choose as it is effective against enemy armour and devastating against infantry. 

The vehicle pack adds flamethrowers to the game and that alone is worth the purchase in my opinion. If you play Commonwealth forces, the Churchill Crocodile is a great tank to choose as it is effective against enemy armour and devastating against infantry. 

Moderators, this is a general WWII interest piece. If it is not allowed, by all means let me know. 
With CM being as much of a simulation it is, many players and scenario designers probably have an interest in the nuts and bolts of the tactics, technology, and equipment in use during WWII. 
It took a long time for me to grasp the different ways in which combat units, especially infantry, communicated. Although there is a wealth of info the basics are lost in the pile of highly technical. 
I wrote up a bit of a primer for the US Army infantry commo tech and methods here:
https://battlelines.blog/2018/12/20/roger-that-army-communications-in-wwii/

I believe you talking about two different things, each of which is already present in the game. The entire enemy force will surrender when a certain set of conditions has been met. I am not sure exactly what the level is but lets go with 45%.  If we assume the enemy has 100 men, once 45 of them have been KIA or WIA, the battle is over, the enemy surrenders to your awesome playing skills. It doesn't matter if they are green or elite, low or fanatic motivation, once 45% are casualties, the battle is over. The morale ballast is used for the situations where you want those 100 men to fight to the last man, no matter what. A good example would be a delaying force, left in place to slow the enemy down in a suicide mission. Without the morale ballast, they would quit the fight after losing 45 of the 100 men. Yet in this situation, the remaining 60 enemy troops could still cause a significant threat to your men. So a morale ballast of 1000 men is added to arrive on the 4 hour mark, ensuring those 100 men will fight to the very last man.
The second part is the individual troops themselves. The can and do surrender if they are cut off from their parent unit, surrounded and facing overwhelming incoming fire. Here, experience and motivation play a significant role. Elite fanatics will fight to the last man, to the last bullet, to the last breath in their lungs. Poorly motivated conscripts on the other hand will surrender, throw down their weapons and raise their hands in the air, rather quickly if cut off and surrounded. Depending on the situation you wish to depict in your scenario, choosing the appropriate troop quality will play a very important part of the battle.
What you are suggesting here is possible to setup using terrain triggers. Set the AI plans to have the enemy troops keep pulling back every time your men reach a certain area of the map. Once the last terrain trigger has been tripped and you wish the enemy force to withdraw, set an AI movement point for the exit zone.  As more and more of your men leave the map, there will be a greater chance of individual units being cut off and surrendering. From a points perspective, the enemy force could be given a friendly casualties threshold. As the men retreat and exit the map, they will stay alive and earn points. If the player has points attached to how many casualties they cause, each man who exits will deny the player points. Again, the only way to prevent the mass surrender is to have the morale ballast, which will in turn allow for more opportunities for individuals to surrender.
If you would like to see the following in action, shoot me a PM and I will set up a battle to show you how it works. 

I believe you talking about two different things, each of which is already present in the game. The entire enemy force will surrender when a certain set of conditions has been met. I am not sure exactly what the level is but lets go with 45%.  If we assume the enemy has 100 men, once 45 of them have been KIA or WIA, the battle is over, the enemy surrenders to your awesome playing skills. It doesn't matter if they are green or elite, low or fanatic motivation, once 45% are casualties, the battle is over. The morale ballast is used for the situations where you want those 100 men to fight to the last man, no matter what. A good example would be a delaying force, left in place to slow the enemy down in a suicide mission. Without the morale ballast, they would quit the fight after losing 45 of the 100 men. Yet in this situation, the remaining 60 enemy troops could still cause a significant threat to your men. So a morale ballast of 1000 men is added to arrive on the 4 hour mark, ensuring those 100 men will fight to the very last man.
The second part is the individual troops themselves. The can and do surrender if they are cut off from their parent unit, surrounded and facing overwhelming incoming fire. Here, experience and motivation play a significant role. Elite fanatics will fight to the last man, to the last bullet, to the last breath in their lungs. Poorly motivated conscripts on the other hand will surrender, throw down their weapons and raise their hands in the air, rather quickly if cut off and surrounded. Depending on the situation you wish to depict in your scenario, choosing the appropriate troop quality will play a very important part of the battle.
What you are suggesting here is possible to setup using terrain triggers. Set the AI plans to have the enemy troops keep pulling back every time your men reach a certain area of the map. Once the last terrain trigger has been tripped and you wish the enemy force to withdraw, set an AI movement point for the exit zone.  As more and more of your men leave the map, there will be a greater chance of individual units being cut off and surrendering. From a points perspective, the enemy force could be given a friendly casualties threshold. As the men retreat and exit the map, they will stay alive and earn points. If the player has points attached to how many casualties they cause, each man who exits will deny the player points. Again, the only way to prevent the mass surrender is to have the morale ballast, which will in turn allow for more opportunities for individuals to surrender.
If you would like to see the following in action, shoot me a PM and I will set up a battle to show you how it works. 

Creating scenarios is a challenge and most of the ones I start to make are played be me once or twice and then another idea comes up I would like to try so the original one ends up being left for another day. I like the special forces type of scenarios @slysniper @Sgt.Squarehead and @Combatintman were talking about and took the time to make one I felt was good enough to be released to the community. Here it is:  http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-black-sea/cm-black-sea-add-ons/vega-force/ Give it a whirl and provide some feedback. 
I have read through this whole thread and this comment really gets me. I am curious @SimpleSimon, which scenarios have you made and released to the community? I am interested in trying out one you have made to see how it compares to other community or Battlefront made scenarios. 
 

After having vehicles become immobilized what I felt was too many times, I built a test map 2km long with a "road" of every terrain type and made five variants, very dry, dry, damp, wet and muddy. One tank for each road, and send them off to see who gets stuck first. The quick summary is if the ground is damp or worse, anything other than a road leads to potential problems. So then the question becomes, how badly do I need this tank to cross that terrain and what happens if it gets stuck? 
I also setup fences, walls and hedges to see how many times you could go through before trouble arrives. I think 5 times through hedgerows with a Rhino tank leaves you immobile. Fences and small walls are fairly similar if my memory is right.
Crew experience also plays a major role, in my opinion. I have battle going on now with a green tank crew. I avoid grapevines in CMFI at all costs but this crew took a ricochet off the turret and freaked out. Slammed the tank into reverse, straight into a vineyard and then tried to make a right turn. They got immobilized in 15 seconds. The joys of WeGo PBEM.
Create a map for yourself and see what you find. Each vehicle reacts to the different terrain tiles and ground conditions differently so try out a few of your favorites and see how they do. It will get you using the editor at the very least and hopefully spark your creativity to create a scenario for the community. 

After having vehicles become immobilized what I felt was too many times, I built a test map 2km long with a "road" of every terrain type and made five variants, very dry, dry, damp, wet and muddy. One tank for each road, and send them off to see who gets stuck first. The quick summary is if the ground is damp or worse, anything other than a road leads to potential problems. So then the question becomes, how badly do I need this tank to cross that terrain and what happens if it gets stuck? 
I also setup fences, walls and hedges to see how many times you could go through before trouble arrives. I think 5 times through hedgerows with a Rhino tank leaves you immobile. Fences and small walls are fairly similar if my memory is right.
Crew experience also plays a major role, in my opinion. I have battle going on now with a green tank crew. I avoid grapevines in CMFI at all costs but this crew took a ricochet off the turret and freaked out. Slammed the tank into reverse, straight into a vineyard and then tried to make a right turn. They got immobilized in 15 seconds. The joys of WeGo PBEM.
Create a map for yourself and see what you find. Each vehicle reacts to the different terrain tiles and ground conditions differently so try out a few of your favorites and see how they do. It will get you using the editor at the very least and hopefully spark your creativity to create a scenario for the community. 

OK, I'm done.
I played it on elite and wego. (I always feel the best judge of a scenario is playing it once and being truly blind as to what to expect.)
I can give this a very high rating.
I liked your briefing and the situation you created.
good force selection and the map you selected did a good job ( If I have any complaint, the stock maps lack a little flavor and don't use some of the accent items that make it feel a little more realistic. So the map could be dressed up, but that has nothing to do with gameplay.)
Without giving anything away, it was great gameplay. gave me a real challenge.
I achieved the main objectives without many losses but was given a nice surprise that really screwed me up as to keeping my losses low (you likely know what I am referring to.)
Anyway extracting from the map became a nightmare and only a few of my most valiant survived to fight another day. - but I enjoyed that the best to tell you the truth
 
So end result, scored 1143 to 945 (which gave me a draw)
(I fulfilled the mission but at way too heavy of a cost, 7 killed , 19 wounded and only 6 to escape)
But I did take out 3 to every one of men, so I felt their sacrifice was not in vain.
 
So your elite goal of fulfilling the mission with losing no one was not achieved by me, that is for sure.
 
Now, playing it multi times I know I could get those results much better, but that really is not a fair test is it.
Also playing real time can help you score also, but I think the AI is already at a disadvantage as it is. So having to suffer through one minute periods before I can adjust commands just seems fair to me as a little bit of a leveling device when playing the AI
 
Any way, excellent job, felt the scoring was fair and a good result for what happened.
So all in all, I would give you a score of 9 out of 10 in this design with the 1 point loss for not dressing the map up . 
Its like a Christmas present but with no wrapping paper. (its your baby, give it some finishing touches and make it perfect) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Creating scenarios is a challenge and most of the ones I start to make are played be me once or twice and then another idea comes up I would like to try so the original one ends up being left for another day. I like the special forces type of scenarios @slysniper @Sgt.Squarehead and @Combatintman were talking about and took the time to make one I felt was good enough to be released to the community. Here it is:  http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-black-sea/cm-black-sea-add-ons/vega-force/ Give it a whirl and provide some feedback. 
I have read through this whole thread and this comment really gets me. I am curious @SimpleSimon, which scenarios have you made and released to the community? I am interested in trying out one you have made to see how it compares to other community or Battlefront made scenarios. 
 

I agree with you totally as to your view of these types of request and as to how well they would work as to creating new scenarios and content.
I like to play around with the editor myself and am always looking for different types of tactical situations to set up.
So I have found it possible to set up pretty much any of these types of missions to some extent.
Now did I find these interesting - yes.
Did I find it hard to get the game set up to mimic realistic results from real life events. (very hard at times, but generally it was possible)
Would many of these battles make a good scenario. No - seldom and getting victory conditions that make it a challenge and possible victory for both sides  is really a hard task to achieve.
 
 
Personally, I think the magic to scenario design and battle building is looking for ways to create and reflect different battles and somehow show or reflect a direct challenge in that situation. There really is no one type of design that is better than others, so when people ask for scenarios be designed a certain way, I see that as their preference, likely because it matches their style of game play. But I don't think designers should think they need to restrict themselves to such request.
 
I do think designers should stretch themselves and try to create unusual battles, just for the sake of providing distinct tactical situations. As for having the game model the units for those limited situations, its not a good usage of the companies time. 
But the game can do it,  I wish I had the time where I could provide some quality scenarios in some of these type of situations. But I find I don't have the time or desire to do it.
 
But anyone who own the game can learn to create their own wishes with some effort. and when you are doing it for yourself, it takes much less time. because there is so much more that does not need to be done to meet expectations of a scenarios to release to others. I find I can create a map and get troop types to reflect what I want pretty easily. I don't care if the troops don't look correct or wear the right clothing, I care about their setting so they act appropriate for the abilities that I think they have. I don't need to worry about AI limits or programming it. I either play both sides or I find someone to play one side and off we go.
The game is a excellent tool for reflecting combat - learn to use the tool and you don't need to hope others provide you the battles you want to play, its within reach of your own finger tips

Yes, we hates it, yes we do. It steals our Precious, yes it does.

Works every time

I see the following in 4.0
P-47D 32 points 96 rarity
P-51B 30 points 150 rarity
P-51D 35 points 175 rarity
All three require an FO to access them while in battle.

The H2H Campaign has been completed. It will be on the Scenario Depot soon. A special thanks to Rocketman and BobWillett for all their help. Rocketman also devised the briefing setup and completed the hi res maps.  I thought I'd let you all see what the briefing paper looks like.
To get the proper lighting and ground conditions for a fall battle, the scenarios are set in September 1943. Once Rome to Victory is released I will change that to September 1944.
 

Ohh man wouldn’t that be a scenario to piss people off.  The briefing tells you a platoon of tigers is expected in 15 minutes. At the 20 minute mark you get a reinforcement notice that the tigers are bogged and all that shows up is a kubelwagen messenger.  LOL

I agreed with everything you were saying up until this point.  

I think this guy might have been the inspiration for the scene at the end of Saving Private Ryan! @MOS:96B2P did a plane save the day?

I learned a trick from someone on these forums for using Blast.  Get the Engineers into position for where you want them to blow the hole. Using the Blast command, place the way point to the action square or two immediately to the right or left of where you want them to Blast. They will set off the demo charge and then move to side, instead of charging through the opening.

You can do this already with the existing orders. MOVE : 10 Second PAUSE w/ Anti-Armor Cover Arc: MOVE You can do this already, just place the BLAST waypoint in the action spot the engineers are already located, they will blast the wall and then stay put. Group select all units, place a cover arc. Done. Granted, a Shift-Click combination would be nice, but it's not a critical piece of the puzzle. Adjacent units share ammo already. If you need to resupply a squad, split off a scout team and run them over to an ammo source. Acquire ammo and run back. That's how it works in reality too. For machine-gun teams, use the ammo bearers to run and get extra ammo, that's why MG teams use the ammo bearers ammo first, and the native team ammo second. OR: You could stop using so much ammunition. OR: You could pass out extra ammo at the start of the game, especially for HMG's and SMG's. I don't want to be a dink about this, but by far the most common complaints I've seen on the forums have long since had answers to them.