Zveroboy1

Hmm not sure what to make of that then. I thought I had managed to isolate the problem.

Okay I think I finally nailed it. IF civilian density is set to NONE or SPARSE everything is fine : - Any unit except spies, whether the unit is regular or uncon counts for the purpose of determining both occupy and touch terrain objectives. - Spies count for touch terrain objectives like other units do but they can't occupy. So far so good. IF however you set civilian density to LIGHT or HIGHER, here is what happens : - Now combatants don't count for terrain objectives set to occupy. Test 1 - Civilian density set to SPARSE : Now same thing but with LIGHT civilian density : Just to make sure I also did these two tests with a regular Syrian unit present on the map in case it had something to do with mixed regulars/uncons forces. But it didn't affect the results. If you want to test it yourself, select the scenario under battles, pick red attacker, give a quick movement order to every group of uncons towards the terrain objectives right in front of them. After one turn, once they have all reached the objectives, hit cease fire and check the victory points. First try the scenario with SPARSE civilian density then try with LIGHT civilian density and compare the results. Uncons terrain objective test.rar

I was thinking maybe this was something that happened during development hence the reason why the SF1 manual states combatants don't benefit from stealth. Then later before the game was released they changed it. But anyway it doesn't really matter. Now I can't reproduce the bug with a test scenario. In the test I made, combatants do count for occupy terrain objectives. So I imagine it only happens under certain circumstances. combination of factors, this is really puzzling.

Spies definitely shouldn't be able to occupy terrain objectives. First simply because they are unarmed dudes and militarily you can't really occupy anything with just a cell phone. Secondly in practice it would become be like playing a game of hide and seek with gollum. Since they are almost invisible if they are not moving, you'd have to painstakingly enter and search every single building which could be quite tedious. In my experience, it happens that sometimes you don't even spot them right away when entering a building and you have to spend several minutes inside in order to finally reveal them. Re-reading the SF1 manual, it sounds as if initially only spies and probably VBIEDs could benefit from the stealth setting. Then later combatants might have been flagged with the same capacity. Perhaps this took place during development even before the game was released. But it is possible that when the stealth tag was extended to combatants, they also gained this additional feature -not being able to occupy terrain objectives- as an unintended side effect. Of course this is just speculation on my part. @IanL I only did a series of quick and dirty tests, so I'll have to put together something a bit more tidy.

Spies it makes sense. Combatants it is debatable I suppose. But yes I don't know whether it is on purpose or not.

Okay after testing this thing a bit more thoroughly I think this is how it works : - Spies and combatants do NOT count for terrain objectives set to occupy. -However combatants and VBIEDs DO count for terrain objectives set to touch. (spies I am not sure) -Fighters do count for both like normal units. So this had nothing to do with mixed forces actually like I originally thought. Perhaps this was common knowledge I don't know. I had a quick look at the manual but didn't see anything about it but maybe I missed it. It is a bit puzzling because I made a couple of scenarios with uncons before but never noticed this.

Yes good point. It could be an issue with mixed forces in general rather than something that only affects insurgents. But in case it is specifically caused by insurgents and someone else wants to test it, I used a mix of reserve Syrians and uncon combatants. I'll have a look at the two scenarios you mentioned on discord, Trident Valley and Passage at Wilcox later. Thanks for your help.

So I am working on a scenario where I have the defending AI with a mixed regular Syrians and insurgents force. I give them three different zones with occupy victory points. I play test the scenario, hit cease fire and the two objectives occupied by regular Syrian troops score VPs normally but the third objective occupied by insurgents scores zero points. If I replace insurgents with regular Syrians the third location scores VPs normally. Is this a known issue? And can someone think of an existing SF2 scenario that has both regular Syrians and insurgents on the same side? It is probable that I am not doing something right but I double checked several times.

@Erwin Thanks but I have lots of pictures really, that's not an issue. With google earth, google image, flickr and the like, it is fairly easy to find what you are looking for even if sometimes you have to sift through lots of touristy pictures. I have tons of photos of Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Hopefully that's what I'll do for my next project : an Iraq mod pack. Yeah I like dilapidated and run down buildings too actually. @Sgt.Squarehead Cheers. I thought of you (not in a homo erotic way) when making the map. I know you love playing insurgents so I made sure there were tons of sneaky spots so you can go all cheeki breeki.

Anything that divides a community and pits one group against another one is inherently stupid and harmful especially in the case of a small niche community like ours. It works both ways though. As much as having a grumpy old person raging on young people is comical, the reverse can be just as bad. Yeah you will be old too one day and it is going to happen sooner than you think, so better watch that karma. Now here is my totally in depth and unbiased take on discord. The good : - It is more casual, I mean this in a good way, relaxed and also interactive than the forums - It is good if you want to shoot the **** with other players and fans of the CM games, get to know them etc - If you have a question that needs answered right now, you can often get a reply within a minute - lots of knowledgeable people there too - the memes The bad : - the memes

This thread should answer your question :

Well since it is just role playing really you can very well decide that an infantry commander right next to a tank could order the tank to area fire at an action square even though they're not in direct C2 link. Some people use these rules in PBEMs. I don't, it is simply in games versus the AI for me. At the end of the day, the way I see it, the point is simply to impose limitations on yourself so it is less unfair vs the AI. But yeah the more you start to add rules and exceptions etc, the more convoluted and impractical it becomes to enforce. Anyway half the time I start a game telling myself I am going to use these extra rules but halfway through the game, all this stuff flies out the window and I just end up shooting wherever I like.

In scenarios versus the AI, sometimes I do "no area fire unless the platoon commander has a line of sight to the action square AND the unit doing the shooting is in C2 of the leader." Only when there is no spotting contact at all though. It sort of mitigates the issue a little bit even though it is obviously not perfect.

So I had been planning on making this post for a while but I haven't really had time to do it properly until now. I wanted to showcase some examples of how I tried to incorporate real architectural elements into the mod to make it as true to life as possible. All the photos below are from Syria. First all of I wanted to talk a bit about mosques. Some of you probably saw the in game picture of the mosque with a greyish silvery looking dome and might have asked yourself "but Zveroboy aren't the domes of mosques all colourful with flashy teals, greens or gold?" And of course you would be right, some are just like that. But actually in Syria in particular plenty of mosques have this silvery or greyish looking dome as you can see in the photos below. But I included two alternative dome textures that you can use if you don't like the default colour. The first picture is actually located in New Aleppo, just 100 m to the west of the area I mapped, alongside that large avenue in the southern part of the map. Aleppo mosque details : A school I based an extra building on : A roll down door : Balcony and facade details : Window : Doors : (Almost all the door textures are based on real Syrian doors) That's all.

Yeah you're not wrong but to be fair if you postulate that the only chance Germany had to win the war against the Soviet Union was by having nazis not being nazis you're basically leaving the realm of plausible what ifs to enter plain science fiction. Remember why Hitler invaded in the first place : lebensraum, untermenschen, jewish-bolshevik threats etc. None of these things mesh particularly well with acting as a benevolent conqueror.

Yeah this is a good book, the ones on Kiev and Typhoon as well.

Yes the areas in between blocks of buildings are super maze like. I thought long and hard about how to best represent them in the editor. Not sure I took the right decision but from looking at satellite images and photos it soon became obvious to me that first it wasn't simply regular back alleys and that there shouldn't be unobstructed lines of fires across them. And secondly that vehicles had no way of getting there. So with that out of the way, the next decision was about infantry movement. I didn't really like the notion of making it so infantry could cross laterally and from buildings to buildings parallel to the roads unhindered everywhere. That didn't seem right. Then again not being able to cross anywhere wasn't going to work either because even though it is not easy to tell with these pictures, it is an area that is often accessible with gates as shown in the second photo. So in the end I opted more something that's not uniform everywhere and which is a bit messy and chaotic which I think might be about right for an urban setting. But yes it means that if you want to avoid streets and go from building to building you have to get down to ground level with the camera and check for doors and gaps in walls etc. Anyway this is probably not particularly interesting to anyone except me lol but maybe people might like seeing what the place actually looks like before they turn it to rubble.

At the beginning of Colossus Reborn, Glantz discusses several what ifs and historical controversies such as the myth of Stalin's preventive war, Guderian's turn south etc. Concerning the timing of Barbarossa, he claims that the weather would have hampered any major armoured breakthrough had it started at an earlier date because of the rasputitsa. Moreover he adds that the forces involved in the Balkans were just a small portion of the overall force involved in Barbarossa. And incidentally most of them returned in time for the invasion. I am not aware of the primary objective you mention so I am not sure how accurate it really is but it is my understanding that Moscow wasn't even the real objective : "The mass of the red army stationed in western Russia is to be destroyed in bold operations involving deep penetrations by armoured spearheads and the withdrawal of elements capable of combat into the extensive Russian land spaces is to be prevented." From directive 21, Fall Barbarossa also quoted from Glantz, When Titans Clashed. So it was clearly focused on the red army rather than any political or geographical objective. Now the oil fields in the Caucasus are not exactly next door from Germany. Going straight for them at the start of Barbarossa would have presented colossal logistical issues and offered dangerously exposed flanks. If you were talking about Fall Blau in 1942, that would be a different story maybe; it is still a bit iffy but debatable. Really the only way the Russians might have sued for peace would be if Germany had somehow restrained herself to the conquest of territories limited in scale beyond the border. When it became a war of annihilation or Vernichtungskrieg that possibility completely flew out the window imo.

Thanks, glad you guys like the mod. And yes it works just fine for Iraq, or even for places like Jordan or Lebanon. The only thing really missing for Iraq though would be buildings with these types of yellow bricks. They're everywhere it seems. To be honest I have been thinking of making another pack designed specifically for Iraq because there are actually a few differences in the architecture and buildings of both countries when you look closely and I am curious to know if I would be able to highlight them. But since I have spent close to 3 months working on this mod and the map, it is probably not going to happen right away. I need to let the motivation and creativity tanks refill.

------------------------------------ The Map : New Aleppo District ----------------------------------- Located just to the west of Aleppo proper in Syria, it is a dense residential area built in the 80's. Map size : 1200 X 900 m This is just a raw map, no setup zones, objectives or anything. Probably requires some cropping to make it suitable for a scenario or a PBEM. Install : Extract in my documents/Battlefront/Shock Force 2/Game Files/Scenario Download : https://www.dropbox.com/s/1xg16nl6esiays5/SYR - New Aleppo District.rar?dl=0

Some more pictures :

--------------- DESCRIPTION --------------- This is a modification pack designed for the Battlefront game Combat Mission Shock Force 2 which replaces the textures of buildings and walls. This pack draws its inspiration from the Syrian city of Aleppo. While it is probably suitable for any area in the Middle East, it is specifically based on pictures of Aleppo and the surrounding region and tries to capture the particular architecture, building materials and colour palette of this city. Almost all the textures are twice the size of the default textures, except building interiors, floors and minor details. It includes twelve new buildings; eight that replace the default ones and an extra four as a bonus. These four extra buildings shouldn't appear in any existing scenarios. They are designed to be used by scenario designers or map makers in their future projects and will require the players to also have them installed in their mod folder to be visible. Otherwise they will just be replaced by the game with a random building texture. The four extra buildings are : building n°9 : an affluent residential house cleaner and less derelict looking than the rest. building n°10 : a school or an official or governmental building. building n°11 : an extra sandy coloured house that doubles up as a mosque. building n°12 : an additional dirty white greyish building. -------------- MODTAGS -------------- There are two modtags: [aleppomosque] This modtag modifies the building n°11 to make it look like a Syrian mosque. [alepposhop] This tag replaces the facades of four of the single storey buildings with shopfronts or garage doors. It only replaces single storey buildings and doesn't affect multi-storey buildings at all. It is best used to represent bazaars or small shops placed in between taller buildings. Indeed, since the shopfront texture will show on all sides of the buildings it is preferable to place normal buildings adjacent to the left and right of the shop(s) to get a better visual effect. The other downside of this modtag is that you automatically get four less single storey buildings to use for normal purposes but I felt it was worth including because it adds a nice touch to towns and cities if used right. -------------- INSTALLATION -------------- Extract the mod in your Documents/Battlefront/Combat Mission/Shock Force 2/User Data/Mods. If there isn't already a folder named 'Mods' just create one. For Steam users, extract the mod in your Shock Force 2/Data/Z folder. -------------- OPTIONS -------------- There are two sets of options : One for the colour of the mosque dome, please consult the separate readme located in the 'details and others' folder. One used to add or remove propaganda posters and flags on the facade of some buildings and shops to add a bit of local flavour. There are three options available : Syria, Iraq or generic. There is a readme included inside the 'Building Options' folder for details. -------------- CREDITS -------------- I took the liberty of adding a slightly desaturated version of Pete Wenman's rural wall, included in the SF2 Squalor mod, to make it blend in a bit better with the rest of the mod. I hope he doesn't mind. --------------- DOWNLOAD -------------- https://www.dropbox.com/s/ep5yue290qn9jfw/Zveroboy's Aleppo Buildings Pack.rar?dl=0 Zveroboy July 2021

Way to go!

Well you have to search for a good picture of the patch on google image or elsewhere. It shouldn't be hard; I bet there are lots available. Since it is going to be quite small on the uniform, the image doesn't need to be particularly high resolution. Just make sure the colours are neutral, not too dull and not too bright. Then save the image and open it in the image editing software of your choice. Then select the outline of the patch with one of the selection tools, either quick select, one of the lasso tools or whatever method you prefer then copy and paste it over the uniform. Now this is probably going to be the hardest part if you're not familiar with image editing. If there isn't a uniform with no patch available among all the bmps, then you're going to have to first erase or hide the existing patch. First never touch the source texture, always do each edit on a separate layer. I haven't unpacked the right brz but looking at my mod folder, it looks like the patch goes on the sleeve and the sleeve pocket has a plain dull grey non camo fabric, so that makes it easier. You can use the clone stamp tool first to hide most of the existing patch and then if necessary paint with colours directly sampled from the sleeve pocket itself to hide the remaining bits. Use different colours; different brush sizes and different opacity levels for the brush to it doesn't look like a single unique colour. If you do it right, you'll get a blank sleeve pocket. It doesn't have to be perfect since most of it will be hidden by the new patch. Then resize the patch, position it properly over the sleeve fix you just created in the previous step, make sure when you resize it that the proportions are not messed up. In Photoshop you do this by holding down SHIFT when doing free transform to resize the image. Finally if you want to do it properly, you should try to match the saturation and brightness levels of the patch and of the uniform. Here it is probably not essential. A quick and dirty trick is to make the layer with the patch slightly transparent, say 90 or 95% opacity to make it blend in a little. This is just a quick job using one of the uniforms in my mod folder, I think it is CptMiller's but not positive and a random ranger patch I found with a quick google search. I didn't touch the airborne bit. If the patch has to go on a bit with the camo pattern, it is automatically a lot trickier but it is the same principle.

You mean how you apply it to the uniform texture in Photoshop or Gimp ?