Ivan Zaitzev

Ivan, could you send me the files? Not saying I can fix this but can see what I can do.

(I'm starting this as a new topic since the links to even the old pdf files will be changing.)
I just finished the pdf which shows all QB maps for CMBN. It is a huge file -- nearly 400 pages and 330MB -- and is HERE. (A smaller, lower quality version for CMBN is HERE.) Since Assault, Attack and Probe versions of the various QB maps usually vary only slightly, I only included Assault in these pdfs. Those and (I believe) all Meeting Engagement maps. 
Also, the old dropbox links for the other 3 titles will be expiring, so I'm moving everything to this newer account. Here are the new links for pdf's for the other 3 WW2 titles:
CMFB is here.
Here is Red Thunder.
And here is Fortress Italy.
 
 
 

War Diaries are always a good place to start. The link below takes you to the 2nd Battalion, Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry's War Diary. Have a look at the account and Annexes of the battle for Manneville La Raoult on 25-26 August 1944.
http://www.pegasusarchive.org/normandy/war_2ndOxBucks.htm
Here is the contemporary 1:100,000 scale map to help you follow it:

The Easting part of the Grid References are not on the image. To help you, the first Easting you can see is the 60 Easting, then 61 Easting, then 62 Easting, then 63 Easting.
The 13 Northing is shown, so the one below is the 12 Northing
Here is a 1950s Aerial Photograph of the same area:

Bumping and tagging @BFCElvis.

Aquila-CM's excellent work motivated me to release the metadata update. The infantry file format is different than static objects, and though I made some progress reverse engineering it I would like to finish up mdr first. 

In the course of dozen playthroughs and experiments with Blender/CM2 Tools (http://community.battlefront.com/topic/118928-combat-mission-modding-tools/) several assets were created which I want to share with the community:
Big Cargo Ship

 
BF109

 
Radar Station

 
Downed Blackhawk

 
Fire Truck

 
Ambulance

 
Barricade + optional Smoke/Burn Stash (Wreck, an invisible alternative is created by 37MM)

 
Barricade (three sizes)

 
Humvee V3 Woodland (Randomized Gear)

 
Humvee V3 Desert (Randomized Gear)

 
Humvee V2 Geardo Desert (Permanent Full Gear) 

 
AFRICAN UNCON (now also including conventional African Forces conversion by 37MM, original work by MikeyD) 

 
Falklands War Scorpion, Scimitar, and Argentinian LVTP-7 conversion

 
Makeshift VBIED

 
Humvee Wreck

 
Uncaged M2 Stryker

 
Marines to Army Special Forces or Navy SEALS conversion skins (including work of mjkerner, Combatinfman, Blimey)

 
BMP1/2 to BMD1/2 conversion (with corrected hatches)

 
Desert KAMAZ Skin

 
Marines frankensteined Armored MTVR Skin

 
New Syrian Special Forces and Woodland vehicles (based on the work of various modders)

 
Syrian Winter Mod (just terrain and partial "winterization" of vehicles, created for a Hasrabit Campaign playthrough)

 
PK Pickup to PK UAZ conversion

 
Russian Forces (original work Euroscape + various modders)

 
US Army & Marines Woodland Forces (original work Euroscape + various modders)

 
All these mods and many more can be found in this Dropbox:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1tviryry89g6py7/AAAJpSvGH6u1iEx4WzwVLSnJa?dl=0
Credits to modders, 3D-Artists, and Battlefront.
For better quality footage and more information about 3D custom models check out the recent videos & descpriptions here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeK7fSyoEE8aorVLlVfNcAQ
The custom flavor objects have a "crate1" box placed into their center. Click it to interact with its placing. Zoom into the model if difficult. There are some FOV issues with bigger flavor objects can perhaps fixed by making the original "crate1" box bigger in Blender/CM2tools. Combine flavor objects with "visible/invisible" wreck objects to give them obstacle characteristics.
Good free library of 3D models you could use for importing. .max does not work with Blender. There are others.
http://www.cadnav.com/
Tutorials on Blender and CM2Tools can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkbTOSIrNV0&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXVAMaELSao&feature=youtu.be
The main intent was to explore the possibilities of this method. As I see this as accomplished I´ll step back now and hope it will motivate others to get into it. Prior getting into custom CM models I had absolute zero experience in 3D modelling, Blender or whatever but found my way into it in a short period of time and once you figure out the specifics it is not that difficult. Give it a try.  Anyone interested in custom CM models can reach out on Discord.
Happy wargaming.

It's great to see some news about this module! I would love to see a screenshot of the Spahis and the Indians, I think those are the most interesting factions in this module. A bit disappointed the Italians are not getting anything new. Or even Italians on the Allied side.

It is very much a well crafted campaign , albeit one based on a myth. The Ike said to Monty etc etc never happened.
It actually went like this.
Pip said to Jorrocks :- "My boys are champing at the bit. I think that we can make Amiens tonight."
Jorrocks said to Bimbo :-  "11th Armoured will be in Amiens tonight".
Bimbo said to Monty :- "Brian reckons that XXX Corps will have advanced as far as Amiens by tonight".
Monty said to Ike :- "2nd Army are telling me that they are going to Amiens tonight".
Ike said to Kay :- "Who is Amy Enns?"
Kay said to Ike :- "Dunno, must be another one of those Limey warblers, like that Vera Lynn, that they made us go and see at Christmas".
And I know this to be a fact cuz my Granddad Paddy was delivering a case of knocked off Gordon's to Jorrocks' HQ when it happened.

I've done quite a lot of research on the Sicily campaign (mainly focused on the Commonwealth effort though). You can find a list of books in the second post in this thread (https://forums.lnlpublishing.com/threads/the-battle-for-catania-primosole-bridge-sicily-july-1943.5326/).
For tactical, "Combat Mission" purposes, the "Lessons learned from the campaign in Sicily" might be of particular interest: https://archive.org/details/LessonsFromTheSicilianCampaign/page/n21 (A similar thing exists for the campagin in mainland Italy, but I couldn't find it on the internet). I found p.13-14 particularly interesting (infantry failing to deliver a sufficient volume of fire because they would only fire at enemies they could see)

No, as a test this was as sophisticated as we wanted to go... however I do like the idea of limiting control based on national doctrine.  You would have to be careful though to make sure it didn't start to bog down game-play.
I would however like to add one more layer of complexity for the next time: 
Only a command element (Platoon Leader or higher) can designate fire controls (Cover Arc)  .. so a unit would have to be within C2 in order to assign cover arcs... or even that a Squad Leader can set only a basic cover arc and only a Platoon Leader (or higher) can assign anything more sophisticated, i.e. timed CA, armor CA You could get even more sophisticated and control that by doctrine (i.e. WW2 German can assign these at the squad level, however only a WW2 Soviet Platoon Leader can assign Cover Arcs) Bil  

One of the guys over on the CoC FB group just built a 40 mm Bofors and crew. This tripped a synapse to my RoW fight "Tiger Valley" in which I M-Killed a Tiger 1 from the flank, unfortunately stranding it on the somewhat elevated railway, thus giving it excellent fields of fire for the duration of the scenario, since the crew didn't bail out but stayed and fought. That led me to this great Axis Forum thread where I was fascinated to learn the Germans classified it as DP (flak & ATG) and that the CW trained to use the Bofors against armor. Not only is there great info here on the Bofors vs armor but also new to me info on the 3.7-Inch vs armor.

https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=194230&fbclid=IwAR3F41uFV9_6jy_va8AzPBMzBuiAVMjZb7aRGW5YmVA-Qku5nepW92E8W-E
Regards,
John Kettler

I finally got a good job (for me) 15 mkn walk frm my house. I start next week.  Ill message relevant parties but I have a list of those who helped.(Nidan1 RIP buddy I wish I could get you back.) Ill also help as much as I can anyone whose struggling. People did it for me.

@Sgt.Squarehead  Demo teams clearing a room en-route to a Heist. 

Thought I'd open a new thread for previews of Steppenwulf's modded flavour objects for SF2. I'm going to open one for Black Sea also, over time I'll cross port all stuff (where applicable) for both games. These packs will become available for download as soon as CM Mods IV becomes active. 

Those flavour objects sure would look great here:

Nice. Blimey had a some rusted BMP and soviet truck hulks made a long time ago but they never got released. Problem is they don't function like real vehicles for blocking incoming. I've made a few suggestions for BF to give us a fifth vehicle state, "Parked". It would just be a stationary vehicle with no infantry, it would block line of site and take damage and catch fire when fired on. One can dream. Anyway, good work, man.
 
Mord.

The map looks beautiful. Would love to see a campaign from you, that would rekindle my interest for this whole series.

The map looks beautiful. Would love to see a campaign from you, that would rekindle my interest for this whole series.

So close I can taste it:

PS - I've adjusted the rocks since this screenie was made (again).....Didn't like the floaty ones in the right background and two (horror of horrors) were oriented the same way!   
Map-making.....If you aren't mad already, you will be soon! 

Why didn't you hand down the TO&E with timeframe as it should be in a PDF and have the testers check against that? Someone must be using a master at some point, I can't believe you are creating the formations as you go.

If you have all this complicated changes, and they are trying to implement them in the game, then the logic thing is to write it down, get it approved and then implement it according to the approved document. I can't see why this isn't the logic way. It doesn't have to be a single document, you can create one per force or per year, I don't know. Then have testers check the units against those documents. Lack of knowledge by the testers can't be an excuse, you have to give them the tools to know if something is wrong. That or hire professional historians as testers.
But I'm a bit confused about what the standardization that has been thrown around means? Is it that units where created using different methods in each game and they have now decided to use a single method across the games even tough units are composed differently in terms of men?

If you have all this complicated changes, and they are trying to implement them in the game, then the logic thing is to write it down, get it approved and then implement it according to the approved document. I can't see why this isn't the logic way. It doesn't have to be a single document, you can create one per force or per year, I don't know. Then have testers check the units against those documents. Lack of knowledge by the testers can't be an excuse, you have to give them the tools to know if something is wrong. That or hire professional historians as testers.
But I'm a bit confused about what the standardization that has been thrown around means? Is it that units where created using different methods in each game and they have now decided to use a single method across the games even tough units are composed differently in terms of men?

There were a lot of steampunk games - look at the quality of the terrain building!

Why didn't you hand down the TO&E with timeframe as it should be in a PDF and have the testers check against that? Someone must be using a master at some point, I can't believe you are creating the formations as you go.

One of the CoC guys posted what he thought wasn't all that useful, but he apparently didn't bother to zoom, which provides a grid box about 4" wide. Shows contours, peak elevations, ground cover, buildings and all sorts of other good stuff. Happy map crawling!
https://www.loc.gov/resource/g6000m.gct00040/?q=geldrop&st=gallery&fbclid=IwAR3-yzH0_KD2glMElZ7_ERY25VEykjFOTB6_XfRIt98VopOWlHLXTbXN1FU

Regards,
John Kettler