BornGinger

At the moment I'm reading León Degrelle's book Campaign in Russia which tells the story of the Wallonian Legion, which later on became the Wallonian 5th SS-Brigade, and their fighting on The Eastern Front.
So far in the book they have been fighting under the 97th Wehrmacht Division in Ukraine and Caucasus and León has mostly described the horrific conditions under which they advanced forward in rain, which kept them soaked, and snow, which kept them freezing cold, while they were fighting the Soviet forces in 1941 and 1942.
I am now to begin reading about the Wallonians being taken over by and moved to the Waffen-SS and expect that there will be more descriptions of fighting than of the rain and cold.
The year is soon 1943 and there are the Khorsun pocket, the 1944 fightings around Leningrad and the fighting in the Baltics and maybe a little bit about the fighting during the Ardennes offencive, if León was among the Wallonians from the 5th SS-brigade who fought there, and then the fightings in Germany 1945 left to read about.

Much less than yo' mama of course.

I changed the tiles and made all of those connected to the bridges into rocky red, or whatever they're called but it didn'make any difference.
The 26 meters tile and a bit above and below are ones which are under the bridge.
I had earlier made all tiles around the areas where the bridges connect to the ground having the same elevation but that didn't make any difference which is why I went back to how I wanted it to look.
I think I have found the solution to the problem.
I had earlier lowered the elevation a bit were the bridges connect to the ground but didn't see much difference so I went back to how I wanted it to be. 
But I decided to try and lower the elevation even more and made the 47 and 46 meter elevation tiles into 43 meter elevation tiles and it looks a bit better now although not perfect.
From this problem I think I have learned that there is a limit to how high up bridges can be placed. It seems that bridges, or at least the 56 meters long stone railway bridge, can't be higher above the sea level than 42 or 43 meters. If they are higher up than that we get the problem with bridges sunking into the ground.
Thank you all for your advices and thoughts about what I could try to make it work.
Now when this problem is solved I can continue with this map and also add some AI plans to it.

Which is one of the reasons why we need a new game engine which can support exactly that.

If all the vehicles are removed from that picture, it almost looks like a scene from the so called Great War.

If all the vehicles are removed from that picture, it almost looks like a scene from the so called Great War.

@Mogarthand @E5Kif you feel like having more of a challenge by playing against human opponents you can find those on this forum and on the few good men forum.
The opponent finder thread on that forum is where you find them.

I read a book in Spring about how the Special Branch were using microphones to listen in on German PoWs. And in the beginning of that book is mentioned how the Germans saw themselves and also the mindset when it comes to violence towards other people which apparently should explain why Germans treated their PoWs and the conquered people ths way they did.

Are Fire and Rubble Soviet squads changed to follow the changes that came in 1944 when it comes to the number of NCOs and riflemen in each squad?
 
 

I finaly found my notes so here is my little wishlist of changes for engine 5 or a possible future CMx3 game engine.
 
Trees could be a bit thinner and have a broader variety in general. I often get the feeling that the trees are too thick and look too much the same. Instead of only having one single tree, two trees and three trees of each type to choose from there could also be trees of different height and thickness to each type. This variety could be randomly decided by the AI. If I for example would choose to place two single trees of the same type beside each other the AI could choose two different ones. Maybe one thinner and smaller which is slightly bent towards the east and one thicker and larger which is pointing straight up.
 
Have houses sometimes being able to start burning if they have been hit by a bunch of high explosive rounds or if a vehicle has been hit close by. If a certain part of the grass close to the house burn too it would be even better.
 
It would be good to have the ability to set an AI-artillery fire order anytime in the AI's battle plans and not only for the first three minutes. The ctrl + c command is only for small arms fire, armoured vehicles and mortars. But sometimes it could be challenging for the player if there was a heavier AI-artillery barrage a few minutes before the AI-troops are sent forward to assault a position. If BFC would like to limit this the editor could require that the scenario map is either large or huge for this function to work.
 
Trenches and foxholes that are more correct. Trenches should be a bit deeper so the troops have to stand up to shoot and don't have to crawl to avoid being shot at. It would be good if the troops could crouch when they walk in those deeper trenches to avoid being shot in the head. Foxholes should preferably be single ones and more spread out instead of being in close groups of four as they are now.
 
If a hmg-team is wiped out of their pixel life and a squad or a team of other soldiers are close by it would be great if one or two of them could move to the hmg and use it instead of having the hmg being viewed as abandoned.
 
When talking about machine gun teams I'd like them, and all other troops as well, to be able to move backwards instead of having them turn around before they move to another position and that way avoid to get shot in the back.
 
Have the ability to use triggers without a timed move order, The way it works now we use a trigger, for example trigger by enemy, and a timed move order. This timed move order seems to work as an insurance that the AI-group will move. And the AI-group will later on move even though no enemy has touched the trigger. This behaviour could mean that the AI-group moves away from its position to the new position and thus opens up a hole in the defense line. 
 
If there could be triggers without a timed move order. The AI-group will stay in position and move only when an enemy has touched the trigger. If the AI-groups could be connected to not only one trigger at a time their ability to defend could be better. An AI-group could for example be connected to two triggers which would mean that group 3 stays in the position where it's been placed. But if the enemy would enter any of the trigger areas it moves to the position for defense which the scenario designer has decided for the group to move to in cases of necessity.
 
If both triggers areas would get activated at the same time there could maybe be another string of code, or strings of codes, which would make group 3 move to the position where the threat seems to be the most severe.
 
For this to work It would maybe be helpful if the trigger areas were able to count the amount of enemy soldiers that enters them so scenario designers could decide in advance how many soldiers that are needed to enter to be counted as a threat and cause the AI-group to leave its position to move towards the threat. It would probably have to work a bit differently when it comes to trigger by enemy armour as one or two armoured vehicles can cause a lot of damage.
 
But for this to work we would need to be able to paint more trigger areas and we would need more AI-groups.
 
I would like AT-guns and tanks to be able to hide behind buildings with large holes in the walls so they can stand on the side of the building facing away from the enemy, see the enemy through the ruined house and shoot at them from the other side. The way it works now the inside of the house is a blocking entity with some kind of invisible wall so the direct fire line gets blocked as soon as it enters the inside of a building with large holes in the walls.
 
I would also like to be able to position AT-guns inside large enough houses and barns with parts of the walls missing so they can shoot from there. The Germans and Russians, and probably the Brits and Americans too, used this way of positioning AT-gunss. They seem to often having had the doors to the barns not completely closed or the holes in the walls covered a bit to conceale the AT-guns.
 
I sometimes feel that it's a bit strange that units without a binocula often can stand quite far away from a house and see enemy soldiers inside it from that long distance. It's usually only possible to stand outside a house and from a distance see someone inside it if it's the evening and at least one lamp is lit in the house or if someone inside the house is standing in front of the window and gawking on birds or something.
 
During daylight it's more often that the only thing visible from inside a house, when standing further away outside of it, is darkness. For the people inside a house it is of course not dark at all because of the daylight brightening up the rooms. But that daylight doesn't effect the ability to see whether someone is inside the room if he is further away from the windows.
 
I wish vehicles wouldn't get stuck in a splash of mud as easily as they do now when the weather isn't wet. Dry weather, damp weather and cold weather would most likely not have the mud sticky and deep enough to cause them to get stuck, especially not if the splash of mud is by the road. Mud on the fields on a day with wet and rainy weather or after a long period of rain would more likely be more treacherous and cause vehicles to get stuck and immobilised. 
 
Units who are using the slow movement (crawling) are often not aware or their surroundings but only aware of what is on the ground. I have read on the forum that units see what the animated troops look at. As the troops who are crawling always have their eyes on the ground by their chest, they often miss to notice enemy vehicles and troops being fairly close.
 
If an AI-tank with AI-tankriders get bogged down and immobilised the result is that the AI-tankriders sit on that AI-tank throughout the scenario. It would be preferable if tank riders could jump off a tank by themselves if it has become immobolised, or been standing still for too long, and later on follow their AI-groups following orders to make the battles more enjoyable. It isn't fun to have a look at the map after a battle is over and see a large bunch of soldiers sitting on vehicles that have got stuck in a splash of mud in the beginning of the battle.
 
Campaigns (most likely for a CMx3 engine): It could maybe be fun if a campaign could start with a recon team/platoon going out on a large or huge map to find out about the opponents troops. Depending on how well the player does his recon/probe and how well he manages to return his recon team/platoon by exiting them from where the recon scenario started, he will in the next scenario, the battle scenario, of the campaign get the amount of troops seemed necessary to take on the enemy on the same map as in the recon scenario. 
 
This could be done by using a system where the player must spot enemy troops. When the player spots enemy troops he gets points and those points can be used to aquire the amount of extra troops seemed necessary based on the recon points.
 
For the battle scenario in the campaign, the scenario designer prepares the minimal amount of troops the usual way. Then he prepares certain batches, for example three, of additional troops that the player can receive depending on how many points he got from playing the recon scenario. Batch one could require 200 to 500 points, batch two could require 700 to 1000 points and batch three 1200 to 1500 points.
 
Reinforcements (most likely for a CMx3 engine): It could be fun and maybe interesting if reinforcements arrived only if the AI calculated that there was a need of them. The scenario designer would set up troops of reinforcements the usual way. If the AI's calculations reached a certain value during the scenario it would send in a batch of reinforcements. This would of course have to be limited so that the player or AI didn't get more than one batch of reinforcements unless a certain critical values was met and also if the scenario time was the correct one. If the scenario is close to the end the reinforcements wouldn't maybe make much of a difference and are therefor canceled by the AI.
 
There is of course from me also the usual rambling about how line of sight works. But I'm sure the people in BFC read about that subject often enough so I won't say more about it now.
 
This was my little list which I have written down while playing and making scenarios for Final Blitz.
 

Are Fire and Rubble Soviet squads changed to follow the changes that came in 1944 when it comes to the number of NCOs and riflemen in each squad?
 
 

In 1944 the German authorities called up those Estonians borned 1920 to 1922, if I'm correct, to get prepared to join the Police Battalions, Border Guard Regiments, which served under the Special Purpose Battalion 300 (z.b.V 300), or the Waffen-SS.
As my dad had the correct age but didn't want to serve the Germans, he did what other Estonians had done before him and crossed the Finnish Bay to fight the Soviets in the Infantry Regiment 200 with the other so called Soomepoissid.
I have been searching personal reports from Scandinavian Waffen-SS volunteers to get a glimpse of their motivations to join up and also to read about their experiences from the training and fighting on the front.
In one of those from a Swedish volunteer is mentioned a soldier with the union jack on his sleeve he noticed in a trench in Ukraine, if I remember correctly. This surprised him very much as he was convinced no Britt would fight for the Germans.

Some people seem to think that all of those who joined the Waffen-SS were nazis or people sympathising with them.
Many of those who fought in the Waffen-SS were just young men who didn't have much to do at home and had listened to the words about the Red Threat. As they wanted to stop that threat, and maybe have some adventures too, they joined up. Some of them were soldiers who wanted the chance to do some fighting and with the experience from how Finland had been attacked by Soviet Union they felt that the Red threat was greater than the Grey one.
Most of the Estonians, or maybe most of the Baltic men in the Waffen-SS, hoped to stop the Soviets from being able to control their country again. And as they weren't allowed to have their own army they signed up for the Waffen-SS. That did of course mean that they weren't only a defensive armed force but were sent away to fight in the Soviet Union.
But there were of course also those who were sympathising with the Nazis and wanted to help in spreading the Nazi sphere of control.
While you're at it you could also make a mod about the Brits who joined the Waffen-SS and in that way joined the side they were supposed to fight.

I finaly found my notes so here is my little wishlist of changes for engine 5 or a possible future CMx3 game engine.
 
Trees could be a bit thinner and have a broader variety in general. I often get the feeling that the trees are too thick and look too much the same. Instead of only having one single tree, two trees and three trees of each type to choose from there could also be trees of different height and thickness to each type. This variety could be randomly decided by the AI. If I for example would choose to place two single trees of the same type beside each other the AI could choose two different ones. Maybe one thinner and smaller which is slightly bent towards the east and one thicker and larger which is pointing straight up.
 
Have houses sometimes being able to start burning if they have been hit by a bunch of high explosive rounds or if a vehicle has been hit close by. If a certain part of the grass close to the house burn too it would be even better.
 
It would be good to have the ability to set an AI-artillery fire order anytime in the AI's battle plans and not only for the first three minutes. The ctrl + c command is only for small arms fire, armoured vehicles and mortars. But sometimes it could be challenging for the player if there was a heavier AI-artillery barrage a few minutes before the AI-troops are sent forward to assault a position. If BFC would like to limit this the editor could require that the scenario map is either large or huge for this function to work.
 
Trenches and foxholes that are more correct. Trenches should be a bit deeper so the troops have to stand up to shoot and don't have to crawl to avoid being shot at. It would be good if the troops could crouch when they walk in those deeper trenches to avoid being shot in the head. Foxholes should preferably be single ones and more spread out instead of being in close groups of four as they are now.
 
If a hmg-team is wiped out of their pixel life and a squad or a team of other soldiers are close by it would be great if one or two of them could move to the hmg and use it instead of having the hmg being viewed as abandoned.
 
When talking about machine gun teams I'd like them, and all other troops as well, to be able to move backwards instead of having them turn around before they move to another position and that way avoid to get shot in the back.
 
Have the ability to use triggers without a timed move order, The way it works now we use a trigger, for example trigger by enemy, and a timed move order. This timed move order seems to work as an insurance that the AI-group will move. And the AI-group will later on move even though no enemy has touched the trigger. This behaviour could mean that the AI-group moves away from its position to the new position and thus opens up a hole in the defense line. 
 
If there could be triggers without a timed move order. The AI-group will stay in position and move only when an enemy has touched the trigger. If the AI-groups could be connected to not only one trigger at a time their ability to defend could be better. An AI-group could for example be connected to two triggers which would mean that group 3 stays in the position where it's been placed. But if the enemy would enter any of the trigger areas it moves to the position for defense which the scenario designer has decided for the group to move to in cases of necessity.
 
If both triggers areas would get activated at the same time there could maybe be another string of code, or strings of codes, which would make group 3 move to the position where the threat seems to be the most severe.
 
For this to work It would maybe be helpful if the trigger areas were able to count the amount of enemy soldiers that enters them so scenario designers could decide in advance how many soldiers that are needed to enter to be counted as a threat and cause the AI-group to leave its position to move towards the threat. It would probably have to work a bit differently when it comes to trigger by enemy armour as one or two armoured vehicles can cause a lot of damage.
 
But for this to work we would need to be able to paint more trigger areas and we would need more AI-groups.
 
I would like AT-guns and tanks to be able to hide behind buildings with large holes in the walls so they can stand on the side of the building facing away from the enemy, see the enemy through the ruined house and shoot at them from the other side. The way it works now the inside of the house is a blocking entity with some kind of invisible wall so the direct fire line gets blocked as soon as it enters the inside of a building with large holes in the walls.
 
I would also like to be able to position AT-guns inside large enough houses and barns with parts of the walls missing so they can shoot from there. The Germans and Russians, and probably the Brits and Americans too, used this way of positioning AT-gunss. They seem to often having had the doors to the barns not completely closed or the holes in the walls covered a bit to conceale the AT-guns.
 
I sometimes feel that it's a bit strange that units without a binocula often can stand quite far away from a house and see enemy soldiers inside it from that long distance. It's usually only possible to stand outside a house and from a distance see someone inside it if it's the evening and at least one lamp is lit in the house or if someone inside the house is standing in front of the window and gawking on birds or something.
 
During daylight it's more often that the only thing visible from inside a house, when standing further away outside of it, is darkness. For the people inside a house it is of course not dark at all because of the daylight brightening up the rooms. But that daylight doesn't effect the ability to see whether someone is inside the room if he is further away from the windows.
 
I wish vehicles wouldn't get stuck in a splash of mud as easily as they do now when the weather isn't wet. Dry weather, damp weather and cold weather would most likely not have the mud sticky and deep enough to cause them to get stuck, especially not if the splash of mud is by the road. Mud on the fields on a day with wet and rainy weather or after a long period of rain would more likely be more treacherous and cause vehicles to get stuck and immobilised. 
 
Units who are using the slow movement (crawling) are often not aware or their surroundings but only aware of what is on the ground. I have read on the forum that units see what the animated troops look at. As the troops who are crawling always have their eyes on the ground by their chest, they often miss to notice enemy vehicles and troops being fairly close.
 
If an AI-tank with AI-tankriders get bogged down and immobilised the result is that the AI-tankriders sit on that AI-tank throughout the scenario. It would be preferable if tank riders could jump off a tank by themselves if it has become immobolised, or been standing still for too long, and later on follow their AI-groups following orders to make the battles more enjoyable. It isn't fun to have a look at the map after a battle is over and see a large bunch of soldiers sitting on vehicles that have got stuck in a splash of mud in the beginning of the battle.
 
Campaigns (most likely for a CMx3 engine): It could maybe be fun if a campaign could start with a recon team/platoon going out on a large or huge map to find out about the opponents troops. Depending on how well the player does his recon/probe and how well he manages to return his recon team/platoon by exiting them from where the recon scenario started, he will in the next scenario, the battle scenario, of the campaign get the amount of troops seemed necessary to take on the enemy on the same map as in the recon scenario. 
 
This could be done by using a system where the player must spot enemy troops. When the player spots enemy troops he gets points and those points can be used to aquire the amount of extra troops seemed necessary based on the recon points.
 
For the battle scenario in the campaign, the scenario designer prepares the minimal amount of troops the usual way. Then he prepares certain batches, for example three, of additional troops that the player can receive depending on how many points he got from playing the recon scenario. Batch one could require 200 to 500 points, batch two could require 700 to 1000 points and batch three 1200 to 1500 points.
 
Reinforcements (most likely for a CMx3 engine): It could be fun and maybe interesting if reinforcements arrived only if the AI calculated that there was a need of them. The scenario designer would set up troops of reinforcements the usual way. If the AI's calculations reached a certain value during the scenario it would send in a batch of reinforcements. This would of course have to be limited so that the player or AI didn't get more than one batch of reinforcements unless a certain critical values was met and also if the scenario time was the correct one. If the scenario is close to the end the reinforcements wouldn't maybe make much of a difference and are therefor canceled by the AI.
 
There is of course from me also the usual rambling about how line of sight works. But I'm sure the people in BFC read about that subject often enough so I won't say more about it now.
 
This was my little list which I have written down while playing and making scenarios for Final Blitz.
 

Much less than yo' mama of course.

In 1944 the German authorities called up those Estonians borned 1920 to 1922, if I'm correct, to get prepared to join the Police Battalions, Border Guard Regiments, which served under the Special Purpose Battalion 300 (z.b.V 300), or the Waffen-SS.
As my dad had the correct age but didn't want to serve the Germans, he did what other Estonians had done before him and crossed the Finnish Bay to fight the Soviets in the Infantry Regiment 200 with the other so called Soomepoissid.
I have been searching personal reports from Scandinavian Waffen-SS volunteers to get a glimpse of their motivations to join up and also to read about their experiences from the training and fighting on the front.
In one of those from a Swedish volunteer is mentioned a soldier with the union jack on his sleeve he noticed in a trench in Ukraine, if I remember correctly. This surprised him very much as he was convinced no Britt would fight for the Germans.

So there aren't only videos of the Fire & Rubble module to look forward to on Youtube but also videos of this new Cold War game.
Interesting.

Sound like this could be Chaumont First Round where the US player has 22 tanks against the Fallschirmjäger player who has 1 Stug III, two AT-guns and troops with panzerfausts and panzerschrecks. A fun scenario.

You're probably correct chuckie. But with my post I meant to say "why is the game made that way that infantry can embark a halftrack and drive it to the closest beerhut but they can't borrow a lorry to do the same? If they can drive a halftrack they should be able to drive a lorry".

You could take a screen shot (you can use irfan view for this if you don't have anything that works) of the battle scene and write down the distance from the mortars to the enemy soldier and other info that could help.
If your mortars and FO are nervous or worse, that can be a reason to why they don't shoot as shooting could reveale their position to the enemy troops.

I actually think they are blankets. But I don't know.

Those encircled in the picture are bodybags they wear on their shoulders just in case they get shot. They can then crawl into the bodybags to make it easier for the medics to remove them from the battlefield.

The destruction of the bridge was one of the objectives during this battle in 1944 and will give the German player the most points. But if he doesn't succeed, he is hopefully going to be able to stop the Allied player from crossing the bridge and that way prevent him from getting the points for holding and securing his both bridge objectives.
I'm not very fond of using TRPs as it might make the battle a bit too easy for the player having them. The only reason to have TRPs is if the player needs to defend a well prepared defense line. I don't think this battle was so very well prepared as the German forces starting position was a few kilometres away from the bridge. To have the artillery fall randomly is also more fun. But in this case a linear target over the bridge, from one river bank to the other river bank, will destroy it.
Artillery support from a 150mm howitzer can be requested by an officer so I'll need to use a 170mm cannon which requires an FO. And it will be necessary for the German player to clear the two smaller villages on the road towards the bridge before the FO can move down. But I might add another FO a bit closer to the end of the scenario just in case.

You're probably correct chuckie. But with my post I meant to say "why is the game made that way that infantry can embark a halftrack and drive it to the closest beerhut but they can't borrow a lorry to do the same? If they can drive a halftrack they should be able to drive a lorry".

That's the reason to why some people put a gun crew on top of a foxhole. When the enemy is sending their hard rain the gun team can seek cover in the foxhole below them and jump back up when the barrage is over.