theforger

Oh my god this is INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How did I not see this ?????
Can you please make a video tutorial. I was always a hardware guy A+ certified, and github was still one of the most confusing websites on the whole wide internet for me.
This is incredible. Please make a video asap and spam it, this will blow up.

I wrote a little python script to set the elevation in the editor according to a digital elevation model. Those come in various resolutions, for instance, in Germany data for the whole of Northrhine Westfalia is available for free with a 1mx1m granularity. I then use PyAutoGui in order to automate setting the correcting height and clicking/scrolling in the editor. The script currently sets the height information for every square in the editor, not just contours.
An example height map:

The resulting terrain in the editor (3328mx1920m):

Vista somewhere in there.

The script is not terribly fast, making this map took about 7h, but it beats doing all the clicking yourself. The limitation, btw., is the editor, the script could go faster. The advantage is that you can do much better micro-terrain, I think, the disadvantage is that you can't just use an old topographical map and draw the contour lines. It would be possible to do contour lines but you'd need to have those in a machine readable format.
Anyway, if people here are interested, I could polish the code a bit and make it available to everyone, e.g. via github. If there is additional interest, I could imagine doing other stuff that way, like, for instance, drawing roads from Open Street Map.

Hi everyone! I've put out a new video where I compare a combat mission scenario to both the historical events that are portrayed and the actual real-life location. I thought I'd post this on the General Discussion board as it's also kind of about Combat Mission scenario design and research in general.
As it's about a Market Garden scenario, I've slept a quite few hours less the past few nights in order to get this video done in time for Operation Market Garden's 78th anniversary on saturday the 17th of september. I hope you'll find it interesting; spending the day basicly giving myself a battlefield tour and filming the locations of the scenario that I just played was amazing. Geeky, for sure, but amazing 😁.
Props to @Pete Wenman who is the author of this scenario for his excellent research and scenario design.
 
 

If anyone not sure this is a link to a diary about one of the (largest) scenarios in the pack. 
 

Ok, so on to "Cold Hearts at Froidcourt".
It's a nice break with a small battle, and one where I'm on the attack again.
I also liked that I could do some mounted infantry combat. I like the German halftrack infantry tactics, but it's rare that scenarios let me do that without having the map infested with AT guns and enemy tanks etc.
It would have been nice if I had fewer support vehicles though. I feel I have too much firepower for such a small map. Get rid of the AA vehicles for example.
The biggest problem I had with with the mission was that my setup zone went all the way to the church, and I actually put a team in there - the Amis set up in the same place so I was basically deploying right on top of them.
All in all, it seems as if i'm supposed to go along the road and then through the forest, but i went the opposite direction, so when the mission was over, McCown was actually one of the few teams I had not encountered. He was surrounded though, so I consider him captured.
 
 

Some words about Lyman. UKR troops reportedly still to hold SE part of the town and the area close to NW outskirts of Lyman around Blue lakes. On this axis Russians have 3-4 BTGs based of 80th tank regiment of 90th tank division, 15th motor-rifle brigade and 30th motor-rifle brigade + battery of 2S7 Pion guns and platoon of TOS-1A
From Kreminna in area of Bilohorivka (yes, again) moved "shortened BTG", probably of 35th motor-rifle brigade - 8 tanks, 12 BMPs, 4 2S3 SP-howitzers. Also 6 PMP sections and two tugboats already there in the forests - Russians again thinking about river crossing

It's excellent, been playing it with my buddy

I am late to the party on this campaign, great feedback so just getting it up and started.  Wish me luck 😀

This was Rollbahn A on Saturday. Just returned from my first tour of the Ardennes provided by Leger, with the highly knowledgeable Paul https://www.legerbattlefields.co.uk/guides/paulerrington
It was fantastic for me to experience some of the battlefields first hand and compare with the scenario landscapes in Combat Mission. Will attempt to walk the ground before releasing campaigns when possible.

Got from another board.  Was posted as a response to us wondering how did it come to this.  It's a lecture about the evolution and nature of what you could I suppose call the russian national psyche and how that is playing into the decisions that have been made to get us to where we are today.   I don't know enough to critique his analysis but I will say I found it quite interesting.
Evaluation of Russia by Finnish Intelligence Colonel (subtitles) | December 3, 2018
 
 

Irpin' yards now..

Well the first thing to remember when looking at UKR forces is that there are layers here.  Unlike the Russian forces who, for the most part, try to control where they are with LOCs back to Belarus or Russia, these are horizontal forces and relationships.
The Ukrainians have vertical forces and relationships in addition to horizontal ones.  So take any map of the conflict:

This one from wikipedia - So the interplay of red and yellow with tac signs is horizontal.  And from this it does look like the Russians are trying to do some operational pinching which would normally point to some trouble for the UA.  The reality is though that the map is really three dimensional.  Vertically there is a foundation of local and regional support and combat power in the form of an ever growing resistance (I hear a lot of western experts say "insurgency", I think I even used the term early once and this is inaccurate, a resistance is really something else from a lot of directions).  Further, for every day that the Russians bog down, that vertical resistance gets better armed, better organized and better prepared. 
So what?  Well from a Russian viewpoint that vertical layer underneath means two very bad things: support and friction.  Ukrainian force will be able to draw support from that layer in the form of manpower and logistics.  This means the Russians are now force to make those "pinches" air tight, which is extremely labour intensive.  For example, locals can push fuel and ammo into a pocket, through all the backroads and farmers fields, which they know very well, and continue to supply fighting power to seemingly cut off troops.  The level of control required for that is extreme, as the US learned in Vietnam.
Second is friction.  Having even low tech resistance everywhere is exhausting in terms of constant attrition and morale.  Every move you make is watched and reported on, every road move is like the freakin Memphis Bell mission over Germany - someone is going to get killed and we are all hoping it isn't us.  Logistical lines need to be iron-cladded.  And this will inevitably lead to over use of force on civilians which does nothing for the information war.   
So in this sense it is really hard to judge where the Ukrainians stand by using the pins on the mapboard.  They have already gone hybrid.  For example, how many major tank battles have we heard about?  There have no doubt been clashes but the Ukrainians are already fighting like Comanches with drones right now offensively and it is working for them.  Defensively, again layers, they can dig in and be very difficult to dig out, and even if you do, you still have a deeper resistance to deal with in the civilian population.
My assessment matches what we have been seeing all over mainstream.  The Russians have stalled...bad.  This was not a consolidation or re-org or clever trap, it was a significant stalling an a systemic level going all the way back through those LOCs.  The Ukrainians have created so much friction on the Russian advance that the war machine looks like it broke.  They are now staging local c-attacks and very visible attrition actions from what I can see. 
The question the remains is "can the Russians re-org/re-boot and somehow regain the operational offensive?" This, particularly around Kyiv.  Or are we going to see what I call "zombie muscle twitches" as formation commanders try and look busy to get the heat off them that is coming from Moscow?  These can even seem dramatic but they do not translate into any real operational gains.  Don't know, a lot of opinions out there for either side.
Few things I do notice:
- Russians are not even talking about Western Ukraine anymore.  If the aim was to take the whole perogy, Kyiv is more symbolic.  In order to do that "entire Ukraine" thing, one has to cut off support from the West.   Which really means that all this prom-night groping in the East - so sweaty but not really going nowhere - is missing the point entirely once we accept that Ukrainians will very likely keep on fighting both conventionally and unconventionally even after Kyiv falls.    Why there was not a very sharp attack from Western Belarus at what it the real strategic Center of Gravity in all this, Lviv, to seal up the western end of Ukraine, including the Carpathians, was the first sign that the Russians did not think this through.
- Operationally, the Russians have still not established pre-conditions and we are over two weeks in.  Air, info, electronic, cognitive/decision and logistical superiority have all been a hard fail.  For example, Russian Air Forces should be hitting logistical resupply from the west 24/7 - an air campaign for the history books- and they are largely tepid and absent.  They need to work on that or this grind is going to be much longer, to the point they very may well not be able to sustain.
- Operationally, the Ukrainians are not showing signs of buckling in all those pre-conditions areas. There is no doubt erosion but they still can find, fix and finish Russians and even do local offensive actions. All the while they coordinate and communicate effectively and are still able to push support in from the West as they get better and better prepared. 
So in summary, keep an eye on that vertical Ukrainian dimension because it is decisive and something needs to demonstrate the Russians are even able to set what should have been initial conditions and I may start to buy in on the "Russian Grind" strategy.  Until then we are at Balkan-No-Step, everyone digs in and tries to influence the negotiation table, or Death March to Moscow as the Russian military simply quits.  I mean the Russians do have the numbers for the Russian Grind but that is on paper and looking at the horizontal dimension only.  This is unfolding like a European version of that anecdote from Afghanistan, "Russians have all the fancy watches but the Ukrainians have all the time".      

Battlefront is not a big company with a lot of resources and employees.  One of the best ways they can support the citizens of Ukraine is by helping to facilitate the truth about the current situation.  They allow a very informative topic on their forums (see below link) which provide fantastic information often with links to sources, photos and videos.  It has reports from Ukrainians, who are forum members, that are actually in Ukraine.  This information is usually several hours ahead of the main stream media and IMO often more accurate.  It would be nice if everybody did their part according to their abilities.  Battlefront, through the Battlefront forum, is proving awareness of the situation in line with their abilities.  Help do your part and spread the below link so people will know the truth.  Slava Ukraini!!!!       
 
 
   

https://militaryland.net/ukraine/invasion-day-15-summary/
Good maps, detailed layout. If anybody gained ground today it was the Ukrainians.

LOL!
 
 

Grill bars didn't help... Ideas?
The big nest like a stork?
Take a cookie!  

Ok, time for a stupid question:
Why do we need to increase NATO budgets?
Even now, NATO is vastly more powerful (and funded) than the Russian Army, and given their miserable performance so far, it doesn't seem like Russia could even take on a single NATO country in a conventional war - let alone the whole bloc. And that's before we even bring nuclear deterrence into this.

Besides moral, which can be edited by everyone himself, I´d rather see some russian units added to CMBS. T-80 family just as an example or "older" T-72s. We now know that this gear is still used in different configs as you can see from this site:
Attack On Europe: Documenting Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine - Oryx (oryxspioenkop.com)

Some interesting situational maps in this thread:
 

Trent is a great source for low level info
 
 

Pressed into service because of lack of reliable armour support for the Paras. 
Page 126/196/197 Duel In The Mist volume 2 has some good pics too, "under new management"
 

Pressed into service because of lack of reliable armour support for the Paras. 
Page 126/196/197 Duel In The Mist volume 2 has some good pics too, "under new management"
 

Ukrainian aviation hit this night Chornobaivka airfield near Kherson, occupied by Russians. The enemy deployed there many helicopters and troops. UKR claimed 30 helicopters hit, also three Russian columns around Mykolaiv were bombetd
Close to the morning, Russians shelled Mykolaiv with Smerch MLRS. They targeted "Zoria-Mashproekt" factory (design&manufacturing of military ship engines), but most of rockets hit residential ares. 
Mykolaiv during and after the strike

About hour ago Russian troops attacked Mykolaiv again and entered in city airport. The city mayor Vitaly Kim claimed, UKR forces launched counter attack

Looks like you were unlucky there. During testing at best it took out one vehicle. 
Glad you are cracking on, very much respect your opinions and observations.

Well I did, but of course I reloaded my savegame and gave the mission another go.