Hardradi

The next video explores my attempt to gain some intelligence about enemy intentions.
After completing my METT-TC analysis, and deploying my troops, I seek to gain the one piece of the puzzle I do not have. To that end, I send my scouts out, "NormalDude Style". In proper fashion, they get brutally murdered, due to a mistake I made planning my movement.
EDIT: While my scouts may have come to grief, it did teach me one very important lesson, very early in the battle, and that is the exact amount of visibility I would be dealing with due to the prevailing weather conditions. So in that regard, their deaths were invaluable.

Here's a modification of the movie mode shader that gives it a night vision effect for those night scenarios. It's designed to be used in conjunction with the artificial brightness mode (Alt+B), so to use it all you have to do is hit Alt+B and Alt+M. Here's a link to download it right now, and I'll also upload it to the repository.
DOWNLOAD
A couple screenshots:


Thanks to SLIM for the idea and BarbaricCo for making it known it was possible to mod the shader.

The AAR
I have made an AAR for the small scenario Platoon patrol and it seems to be getting good feedback, figured I'd post it on here as well. 

Great intro. Thumbs up.

First I apologise for this delayed review! Sorry!
 
Click link to go to review of CMFI and DLC game engine 4!.
LINK
 
 

Great to see this starting @General Jack Ripper
In this particular instance, the randomness of the QB created a quite interesting tactical situation for me to deal with. The QB generator assigned me to the 1st Canadian Division, which sort of explains why were attacking with an unsupported Infantry Battalion against a well entrenched German position in rather awful weather. Defended by a Battalion of light infantry, no less. Many letters would have to be written to Canada.
From Chris' commentary I see we both read the map similarly and pretty much we both identified which were the two sensible avenues of approach. Yet I had something going for me, and it was quite big: visibility was down to about 150 meters (until the firing starts).
My experience of night battles with CMx2 is that when the balloon goes up and every body starts firing, you really want to have fire superiority on the point of contact. Being the Canadian a Commonwealth army, this posed a number of very specific challenges. The CW sections are really anaemic when it comes to direct firepower, for which they make up with their little mortars and judicious use of their HMG platoons to bolster sections firepower. Pretty much any attack plan revolves around those guys being brought forward to take potshots at the enemy positions in a timely fashion, not too early and not too late, so follow up riflemen can dash into the breach. 
As Chris says, this wasn't going to be a fast moving battle. The weather conditions are bad and the terrain is bad, with lots of linear obstacles orthogonal to my approach. Having precisely 0 knowledge of Chris' positions required caution and also a plan that allowed for maximum flexibility. I didn't really want to be hauling ass laterally, with flanks up in the air, in the snow and in the dark, creating an opportunity for an enterprising German to infiltrate and ambush my platoons with those LMGs.
I leave it there - if I have time I will be posting the odd screenshot from my POV to contrast with Chris' video exposition.
 
 

This thread will be a repository for videos showcasing a PBEM game I had against @BletchleyGeek which had finished about 4 months ago.
Do not expect quick or timely updates, this is a free-time only type of project, and is mostly me trying to shake off my lethargy after running three PBEM games concurrently, which left me feeling a bit burned out for a while.
Without further ado, stand by to receive your mission briefing!
 
 
Feel free to leave comments, or ask questions, but I would ask that ancillary discussion be kept to a minimum.

AXIS ORANGE
I have another scout team, made up of a recon team and an HQ unit (from Dog Company) deep on Axis ORANGE.  Towards the end of this turn the STuG on this axis drove straight towards them...

However, I don't think these two teams have been spotted, as the STuG appears to have turned between two buildings, appearing like it was simply trying to get a better angle on my defenders.  I could be wrong as I lost sight of this vehicle right after this shot was taken, but it looked like it was starting to turn left.
 
AXIS RED
On Axis Red I decided to try to take a long range shot at one of the STuGs to my front.  It is literally a long shot, but taking out or damaging one of these things now could really help in the long run, right Captain Obvious?
My AT Team rushed across the danger area to the hedges on the other side...

Once in position they organized to take a shot...note in the following image that the STuG's flank is facing my team.

Unfortunately... the rocket hits the trees and the STuG keeps moving.. I don't think they ever knew they were threatened...

Both STuGs ended up facing Axis Yellow and appear to be guarding the flank of the Axis RED infantry, which can be seen linking up with the STuGs on the right edge of this image:

Could we have an update on this? Do we get Moroccan Goumiers with their amazing uniforms?

Thanks for the support and suggestions guys. I am looking forward to CMSF2 for sure, lots of good potential for scenario/campaign designers there. I am leaning towards not using the SK's but keep the story line around the US response. Core US units will be the 2nd Infantry Division (Indian Head) (uniforms done) and the 1 Bn 2nd ABCT (Black Knights) which I can now model their uniform insignias. If my research is correct the 2nd ABCT is the next rotational team in Korea (they may be there now).
The idea behind this is North Korea takes advantage of certain "situations" and attacks across the DMZ. They have upgraded some of their military abilities (how is outlined in the storyline) but due to limited resources (fuel, supplies, etc) they are on a tight timeline to secure specific objectives or they know the invasion will fail. It will be the US resopnse to prevent them from reaching said objectives.
Ive tried to model their vehicles and armor based on research I have been able to dig up so hopefully their TO&E will be somewhat realistic. They will lack the experience levels of the US forces but will have large numbers of troops and especially lots of artillery. Hopefully when its all said and done it will be a fun play through.

Looking forward to this.  Looks like an interesting scenario and an interesting test for your defence guidelines Bill.
Reviewing the map looks like a good way to figure out where those obscure 'gap-tiles' are amongst other things.

This is a true After Action report (AAR).  I played this game last year against one of my most skilled opponents (ScoutPL).  The scenario was Green Hell, my goal was to protect the Farm and Cafe objectives, and if possible, try to take the la Madeleine objective.  Simple no?  This was the first time I had played this scenario and the scenario and sides were chosen by my opponent.
I will give a general overview along with a quick and dirty METT-T analysis, then I'll get right into the action.  A word of warning though, there will be no long range tank fights in this AAR, it will be a tough costly mainly infantry slug-fest for both sides.  I do hope however that I can at least show my philosophy when on the defense.  I will be honest, I struggle the most with the defense, I am very offensive minded and just can't help myself sometimes and overextend, right Baneman? 
MISSION
The mission is simple, hold the enemy at bay and force him to waste his combat power on the drive to my objectives, so that when he arrives he will have a spent force.  My main goal is to protect the two objectives in my zone, and preserve my force as much as possible.

ENEMY
I have been told to expect German FJ troops in unknown strength, though if I go by the tactical map above I can expect a combined force of infantry and armor.  All I really know is that they should be entering around the a Madeleine objective area... if the tactical map above is correct.
TERRAIN
My force is sitting on a ridge-line, so I should have good lines of sight across the entire map.  Whether that means I will be able to spot much is another matter.  The map is also broken up by bocage lined fields.  However they are easily penetrated, so will be easily flanked, also those fields will mask movement wonderfully, for both sides.

TROOPS
I command Baker Company, with a weapons company (Dog) in support.  I will get into my initial plans for this battle in a future post.  Initial deployments are shown below.. Baker is spread across the entire ridge-line and Dog has been broken up evenly to support Baker's Platoons.


TIME
I have 1 hour and 20 minutes to hold off the enemy.  That is a long time, but will also mean that ammo supply could be the deciding factor at the end.

I did some digging around reading forum posts, looking in the Editor and looking at mods at CMMODS III.  The below is what I have found so far.  I think the below is correct but i'm still trying to understand it.  So any correction / guidance would be useful and welcomed.  Also, I'm going to tag @umlauthere since my research indicates he may be able to shed light on the mod tag issue. 
Mod tags first came out with Engine 3.0 in August 2014.  Since engine 3.0 all the games (except CMSF1 & CMA) have had the mod tag selection added in the editor under Mission.  CMBS and CMFB were released after mod tags were added and as a result make more use of them in scenarios than the earlier titles.   Information on stock mod tags are included in the game manuals for CMBS & CMFB, not the engine manual (as far as I can tell).  CMBS game manual page 143.  CMFB game manual page 125.       
The below in italics is from the CMFB game manual:  
Mod tags are used by scenario designers to force selection of textures tagged with the appropriate label. For example, a scenario that has the "[whitewash]" mod tag will always attempt to use any textures with a file name containing "[whitewash]" (without the quotes) when the scenario is loaded. Mod tags are also used automatically by the game when certain conditions are met; for example, if the Region of a scenario is set to Germany, the game will automatically load textures with the "[germany]" mod tag in the file name.
CMFB stock mod tags:
Note: Ardennes region art is used by default for environmental art, if no mod tags are selected.
[germany] - German environmental art.
[france] - French environmental art.
[holland] - Holland and northern Belgium environmental art.
[autumn] - Autumn environmental art.
[winter] - Winter environmental art.
[snow] - Snow unit and environmental art.
[cold] - Cold environmental art.
[muddy] - Muddy unit and environmental art.
[whitewash] - Adds whitewash camo to vehicles. Whitewash tagged art is used automatically by the game when the date is January or later, and there is Light Snow or heavier on the ground.  
[whitewash snow] - Combination of Whitewash and Snow mod tags.
[rubble] – Heavy Rocks terrain tiles will now resemble piles of urban brick rubble.
[rubble snow] – Same as the [rubble] tag above, but snow is mixed in with the rubble.
I think the mod in the mod folder gets the [tag] and the scenario gets the tag in the mods txt document eg: [snow] goes with the mod at the end of the mod’s file name.  In the scenario the word snow goes on the txt document under Mission – Mod Tags.  Or the mod might also be made to appear if the conditions of the scenario is set to light snow, heavy snow or blizzard. So maybe two different ways of making some mods appear? 
In addition terrain tiles can be used for a second purpose if the tag is placed in the txt file in the scenario Editor. 
Tile Tag                       Notes
lawn = Dirt red tile changed to lawn 
rubble = Heavy rocks changed to pile of bricks
rubble snow = Heavy rocks changed to pile of bricks with snow
trash = Hard changed to pile of trash
trashsoft = Sand changed to pile of trash   (trash & trashsoft look exactly the same to me) 
In addition the tag night on the txt file gives troops camouflage faces. 
I also found tags on txt documents that seem to be related to the scenario: meijel, stoumont, hatten, wingensurmoder, sessenheim, Bastogne, wiltz, herrlisheim, singling, stoumont.  Not sure what these do or how they do it yet..............
                                                                                                                                                

Special meaning? Check back in 2020. Go right a head - see ya in a few years
*Quality* has a special place in this company. They like to make sure things are right. And before you ramp up the sarcasm that includes fixing their own mistakes. What would the point in throwing a "fix" out there for you to test?

if one thing is consistent with this site, its the announcement that something is coming out soon and it seems to come out way later than what everyone is hoping for.

noticed and tested this back in november, yes it is the case when passed through visual also, its also the case for friendly contact information in iron mode
the age of the contact is being updated but not the location
it also seemed to be the reason you sometimes see contact icons darting between different locations when no units are selected
but I've presumed its just an user interface problem and that behind the scenes the units are aware about the new location improving the spotting time anyway
 
 
 
 
 
 

Summary:
Units share information on the location of enemy units through radio.
But if those enemy units then move, their new location is never updated through C2 - even though friendly platoon HQ is actively spotting the enemy.
 
Test:
I set up a test playing against myself in hotseat mode.
I had 5 Panthers separated from 1 Sherman by a ridge so no unit could see the other side.
The Sherman started on the left.
First I took 1 Panther up to the hill, and it spotted the Sherman.
The contact info about the Sherman's location was correctly shared to Platoon HQ by radio from there to the rest of the platoon. Soon all the Panthers had the location of the Sherman.
I reversed the Panther again so that no Panthers could spot the Sherman.
Then I drove the Sherman to the right side. All the Panthers still believed it was on the left.
Then I moved the Panther HQ up to take a look. It spotted the Sherman in its new location.
However, this updated location was never shared with the other Panthers through radio. They stil kept the old contact marker on the left, even though the Sherman is now sitting on the right.
I let more than 15 minutes pass, and the updated info was never shared through C2.
But the Panthers did get a solid colour contact marker for the Sherman, showing that they kept getting updates from HQ about the enemy unit's existence. (if no updated info about a contact is received, the contact marker will fade and become translucent as time goes by)
 
Panther HQ actively spotting Sherman in new location:

 
The rest of the Panthers' contact markers remain on the old location:

 

 

 

 

Hello this is an AAR of my quick battle with @Oleksandr  It's a Russia vs Ukraine medium size meeting engagement. 

I haven't played much Black Sea (I mostly play Final Blitzkrieg) and I went with what I figure would be a standard force.  I have four platoons of mounted infantry, 5 T-90AMs, six mortars, a mounted grenade launcher platoon, and an igla platoon and a Tunguska for AA.  

I don't have a very advanced plan.  Essentially move forward and see how the match develops from there.  But I assume the major objective will be the main contest and the minor objectives won't be very contested.  I send two platoons of infantry, the T-90AMs, and the grenade launchers to the center.  I send a platoon of infantry on each flank, one to secure my minor objective, the other to contest his minor objective if possible.  I dismount my platoon that is securing the minor objective since it is rather exposed, the BMP-3s will be first to the objective.

Damn!  I lose two BMP-3s at the same time and I don't even know what killed them, looks like tank rounds though.  Good thing I dismounted.  This doesn't change my plans but I do am now aware of how dangerous the area around the minor objective is.  Going to move my infantry platoon in the forest next to the minor objective.  I spotted a Tunguska while the rest of my units move forward uneventfully. 
Next post will be soon, either tomorrow or the day after.

How can I unsee that video. Please remove it from my mind.