Warts 'n' all

An observation after watching Hapless's run at this last mission in preparation for reworking the finale - he seemed to think that I'd doubled up the bocage to prevent the player from making a left swing which is a reasonable assumption to make given that I'm obviously I am a bit of a sadist.  But funnily enough, I only did that because I thought those sunken lanes were cool. I liked his idea though and so I've 'opened' up the map a bit to allow the player more freedom to decide how to approach this mission as a result and so all the doubled bocage lines are now gone. As they are on most maps except for Ecoqueneuville where that seems to be some sort of creek.
But I also corrected an improperly placed bunker which would have prevented him from doing what he did with such a small force. There were a few other misplaced units which I've also corrected. I am just going to devise a better AI counterattack and then call it a day. After all, most folks are going to take a few more casualties this time around because the 2/8 INF are a mix of Green and Normal training and so won't be quite so resilient.
The player also has some air support which was absent in the original version so I think it all balances out. But beware, the alternative if you fail either of the earlier Chapter four missions is not so kind.

Well, it's funny just how much you can get done if you just focus. I'm just wrapping up work on Farmhouse and will start the final mission later today. I wasn't planning to do very much in the way of revising the chapter 4 missions but the first two are so small that they were begging for an AI rework. There are three AI plans for Ecausseville and you better make sure you win the le Ham chapter as you'll get a much tougher version of this mission if you don't (now ahistorical since the PIR and GIR did the job IRL so I can do what I like with it within reason  )
Le Ham wasn't nearly as much work to get done as I'd anticipated. It was only necessary to make the AI react more to the player's moves as far as the triggers will allow me so it was an afternoon's work only. Ecausseville has three AI plans and I'm just polishing off the attack in Farmhouse this morning and I'll get at least one variant made up.
 
There are some pretty substantial changes made to the campaign structure so I'll give you a heads-up now. As before, losing two consecutive missions ejects you from the campaign, That stays for the most part but the old 'losing two consecutive formation missions and you're out' condition  is now gone. This greatly simplifies the campaign structure with no more than one variant possible for chapter's one and three and two for chapter two.
However, chapter three is where the rules change. This contains one of the most challenging missions of the campaign and I'm sure some of you will find it too hard so instead of being ejected from the campaign for a loss, you will simply skip to chapter 4. But the chapter four opener, Ecausseville, will be much tougher as the failure to capture the le Ham area allows the Germans more time to bolster their positions. So fret not if the new chapter three missions are pigs. Let's just say though that I've given the player added incentive to try and win Hell. The following missions will be much easier if you get the win but the historical missions, especially Stalemate, will be much tougher if you lose. After the initial two missions, any loss results in the player skipping to chapter 4.
So we're nearly finished with this. I'm hoping to have the last of the real work done by tomorrow allowing me some time to revisit Turnbull and make sure the briefings and tac maps explain what the player is expected to do to win. And then I should have this up some time next week.

It's the rainy season out here but the mornings start out with glorious sunshine and it starts to cloud over by lunchtime. I've already got my morning walk in by them. Mid-January and February is when it is gloomy all day, every day with those lovely tropical thunderstorms I love so much. They're even more exciting since we moved to a house atop a hill to the south of the city just over a year ago. Oh the fun! Definitely a 'two pairs of underpants' experience every day.

Im kind of dreading the new Hell in the Hedgerows but as long as a defeat is the historical path I guess I’m ok with that. I fear there won’t be much left of the attackers at the end though - I remember many a slaughter on my previous playthroughs. 

Yes, that's one way that you can trigger an order. But this only tells the unit to go now rather than go later. So execute when an enemy unit triggers the order or at T+20. Either way, it can only perform that order.
Of course, that 'later' can be never which means if the trigger is not activated, it will stay in place. But the trigger can start a whole chain of orders which the player would otherwise not see.
 
I had a day off yesterday, not surprisingly, watching a couple of movies with the wife to relax instead, but I did some work this afternoon. Neuville is now done and I'm currently working on 'Holding Action', a late chapter 3 mission. It's a small action on a small map so it didn't take long to get a working AI plan up and running. After finishing that, tomorrow I suppose, I'll tackle Le Ham and that will complete chapter 3 which leaves the final three missions to do.
I'm not going to change very much with regards to the earlier chapter 3 missions as they are pretty substantial in size and the AI is fairly passive in them anyway so they should be fine. If I change nothing, it doesn't need further testing. 'Hell in the Hedgerows' has been 'improved' though as a loss here puts you on the historical path. Winning it has always meant an easier path to Le Ham so why not make it more historical. I've firmly placed my sadist hat on for this one change.
The chapter 4 missions might take some time to do though  - Ecausseville was another historical 'knee to the groin' for the 2/8 INF so i'd like to use all the tools I have to make that one as challenging as possible too. The Farmhouse is very small, tiny in fact so I don't think that's much more than a day's work. The finale, Eroudeville, is going to take some time to do properly as it has a BIG German counterattack so I'm hoping to get this finished first week of 2024. I could just call it a day now but I want to really polish off those final missions as they'd all benefit from some attention.
I jotted down some notes as well regarding the new structure and the VP awards earned by both sides in each mission so that the player can plan accordingly. I have also clarified the briefings so that the player understands beyond a shadow of a doubt that the friendly casualties BONUS is just that, a reward for an exceptional performance and not a punishment. I feel it is necessary to make that clear although some folks will always see it as a punishment.

As well as reassuring folks that I'm not taking a break on this project again, posting updates serves to keep me actively working on this. If I didn't post my progress, I'd probably take a break from it and 'forget' for a few weeks. I REALLY want to get this finished preferably by the end of the year but as long as I keep working on it, it will get finished either on time or a bit later. Having said that, there probably will be a short break in updates from tomorrow for a day or two for obvious reasons.
Predictably, I couldn't leave Neuville alone. I've already made some small but important changes to the German forces that will make them a little bit more effective. The defending force is TINY as well so I can assign each unit to its own AI group with some to spare so it would be foolish not to take advantage of the new tools to make the defence more responsive to the player's moves. That's the point of making this revision after all.

That's both Licornets and Labrynth completed. I wasn't planning to do a complete overhaul of these missions but I just couldn't leave them alone and so both these missions have entirely new AIs. Licornets has been particularly overhauled to create the illusion of an actual intelligent response but as usual, if you do something that goes off the plan, well, there's not much I can do about that. Triggers are a 'do this now or later' condition and can't branch so I have had to anticipate what the player might do and put the hurt on him if he's careless.
I was also a bit concerned that these two missions were samey and so I redid the German OB to give Labrynth its own unique flavour. No spoilers but it's different. But that's more than half way through the campaign now and so far, they've all been reworked quite substantially. That's far more work than I had planned to do but hey, that's just how I roll.
I have no plans to overhaul the chapter 2 finale but we'll see what happens when I test it tomorrow. I might end up re-doing it all as well. But even if I do, it's not going to take much more than a day to do.
I really won't be changing anything much with the chapter 3 missions except for Le Ham which doesn't have any AI. I'm not planning anything special there beyond having two plans and some AI reaction to player moves. And that means there's only the final three to consider.
But I really am getting impatient to get this finished asap now as I'm beginning to feel the itch to do something else.

LOL.  We still have plenty of those.

An interesting piece. I like the story of how he used to invite himself into people's houses around Westminster, if he heard music being played. And rather than tell them to stop, he'd have a beer, and a sing song with them. 
Of course, he was still a right-wing s***, who'd have had me strung up if out paths had crossed.

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/what-is-designation/heritage-highlights/did-oliver-cromwell-really-ban-christmas/
Well who could blame him (sorry, you)?

I've got an attack plan that works reasonably well now. I managed to get a DRAW by cease firing at about T+40 and I hadn't exited any of my forces so that was a comfortable win. I made a few adjustments to the AI victory conditions as a result and so I think that's enough for now. It's quite a short mission with a very low unit count for the player so I'm going to continue to test it and tweak it while work is ongoing on the next missions in this chapter. Victory point adjustments made are basically now instead of having three TOUCH compound locations, I now have three phase lines which extend about 150m on both sides of the road on the south side of the stream which award the Germans points for touching. The further they advance, the more points they earn each line hot so you'll have to work hard to keep their heads down until you think it's time to run.
I started work on Licornets this afternoon. This is one mission that REALLY needs 16 AI groups and I'm using almost all of them already. Combined with a variety of triggers, I can really make some effective AI counter moves if the player activates them. With each StuG being in its own unique group, I can use them more aggressively in my defensive plans rather than just positioning them at the start of the game. Giving a movement order to an AI group with two vehicles on opposite sides of the road isn't going to end well.
I'm not going to agonise over this and will just get two working plans and create variants and that's that for this one. I'd really like to have the chapter 2 missions finished before Christmas.
I have very few plans to change much with the Glider Infantry missions in chapter 3 but I'm probably going to put the nebelwerfers into Hell in the Hedgerows as that also happened to these poor buggers in real life. They really took a pounding and lost that mission but I shied away from it when I made the original. But war is hell so why not? I need the casualties to make their following missions more challenging. So I expect a quick turn over on chapter 3 with perhaps only the Holding Action needing any real attention.
And that leaves the short chapter 4 missions which I'd really like to have finished before New year. Yes, that'll happen.  That's my plan though. Much as I'd like to do a compete overhaul of each mission, that would take me another 4-6 weeks after the New year and I'm almost certainly going to want to move onto something else in a couple of weeks.

You're correct, we cannot do but with what we have at hand…👍
Unfortunately, information regarding German forces on the Cotentin peninsula are sketchy, mostly because they were destroyed in a matter of days and weeks — with most of their archives gone with them.
I consider Dutch historian Niels Henkemans as the main authority regarding German OOB on the Cotentin peninsula. Please find a link to a long post of his, mentioning information regarding StuG and the offensive on Ste-Mère-Eglise:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/missinglynx/panzers-on-the-cotentin-take-3-long-post-t37056-s11923620480.html)
Here's the part of the post dealing with Stugs:
That's the most up-to-date research I'm aware of regarding this topic. But I may be wrong!

Edit to add:
I was responding to Warts and All's post above...
What an ungrateful bastidge - it would take me less than 30 seconds to count 50+ coins and I'd be grateful for the sale.  Not to mention the free space the box would give me in the shop.
My crush was on Anne Wilson but that's an earlier time, back in the Heart - Little Queen - Dog and Butterfly - Magazine era.
 
Now a few comments on my OB for Turnbull's force. Most of the sources I've read agree that he had a team of 42 men including himself. This included two BAR teams and a Bazooka team. There is some disagree ment on the number of AT guns though, some say two but having read Keegan's account of the morning, I've made some assumptions - the paras jogged to Neuville from Ste Mere Eglise. They found a .30mm machine gun along the way. Vandervoort arrived in a jeep with a 57mm AT gun which was given to the Bazooka team in a building near the road. He sent a runner to communicate with Turnbull from which I infer that he was near the orchard and not on the east side of the road.
I'm going with Turnbull's HQ (5 men), 2 squads (24 men - 2nd squad w Bazooka)), two BARs (4 men), 1 Para LMG (2 men),  57mm AT gun team (7 men) reduced strength for a total of 42 men. (The AT gun team is not core so should be okay when the mcampaign is complied. However, sometimes the reduction rounds up rather than down and you can occasionally get 43 men. But they're AT gunners so it's not going to break anything. And that's the best I can do with the way the game engine is.
I'm glad the French tanks and one of the AT teams are gone because this is how playtesting went:
First tank shows up - one shot - one kill.
Second tank shows up - one shot - one kill
Marder shows its face (MGs can take it out but again, one shot - one kill.
Leaving my two AT guns with about 12 rounds of ammo left to rip the German squads apart. They are very effective when used against infantry. Easy win for Turnbull.
 
So that's my OB for this mission. I have approximately two companies of German infantry with two StuGs on the attack so I've made the infantry Green and Low morale so that they're not too much for the defender. You'll need to keep them suppressed so that they don't overwhelm you with machine gun fire. Now it's the mortars which will kill you which is how it went down that day.

You said Cocteau Twins, you are my friend !
 

Hi @Mr.X,
I made some thorough researches for my own campaign and, for sure, Pz.Ers.u.Aus.Abteilung 100 was NOT subordinated to Sturm-Bataillon AOK 7. It was subordinated to the 91. Infanterie Division, HQ Picauville, while IIRC correctly Sturm-Bataillon AOK 7 was in position close to Cherbourg.
Pz.Ers.u.Aus.Abteilung 100 tanks (a couple of Panzer III and a mix of Hotchkiss and Renault 1940 vintage French tanks) never reached Sainte-Mère-Eglise; they were stopped on the La Fière causeway. But that's the matter of another campaign ( @WimO's Mission Boston).

@thilio:
It‘s the Sturm-Bataillon AOK 7 (Assault-Battalion AOK7). Every German Army had an own motorized Infantry-Batallion, so did the 7th German Army. These battalions usually consisted of combat experienced soldiers and were used as a kind of reserve units for critical situations. They had no own armored sub units. During these battles, Stugs and captured French tanks of Pz.Jg.Abteilung 709 and Pz.Aus.u.Ers.Abteilung 100 were attached/subordinated to the Sturm-Battalion AOK 7. 
Regards
Mr.X

Steven Zaloga suggested it was Sturm-Abteilung-AOK.7
https://www.ospreypublishing.com/uk/osprey-blog/2019/utah-beach/

Two JS2 get ripped apart as they switch their position in the scenario "Cat and Mouse". One even received a catastrophic hit in the ammo racks.
 
 

 
 


Anything else is really frightening: My Panthers roll forward and get shot up by hidden JS 2.

It must be the compiling process that undoes the creators work in this respect. In Hapless' video of Turnbull's Stand, he has the full OB at the start of the mission but in the scenario as a standalone, they are all at about 50% strength. Well, there's not much I can do about that so I'll have to up the difficulty of the German attack to compensate for the near-doubling of the defender's strength.

Not yet but it's on the to-do list. The real hold-up is reworking the Le Ham mission which is a monster. It turns out that there were no AI plans for this mission and I have to remedy that.
Otherwise, most of the details are complete. I've learned how to use some of those special moves like Withdraw for example so I'd like to revisit most of the AI plans and see if they can be improved further but I'm not going to let it turn into another monster revision that will never get finished. 

@Brille is spot on. Al the time they've got their hands up, and no white flag appears, it means that they have mates lurking in the shadows.

Nothings worse than your boys getting mowed down by the lone mg42 gunner who refused to cower/surrender with the rest of his squad.
Timing definitely seems related to nearby friendly/enemy units. I've seen surrenders happen in 1-2 turns from hands up to a white flag if they were out all alone and surrounded by a lot of enemies.

IIRC, it's just the two battles.

I'm not sure Combat Mission and its mods were part of the syllabus back then? 😉

In fact, it is not Telegraphpoleland, it is Barrentreesmodland... 😎