PEB14

Hi @Mr.X, I made some thorough researches for my own campaign and, for sure, Pz.Ers.u.Aus.Abteilung 100 was NOT subordinated to Sturm-Bataillon AOK 7. It was subordinated to the 91. Infanterie Division, HQ Picauville, while IIRC correctly Sturm-Bataillon AOK 7 was in position close to Cherbourg. Pz.Ers.u.Aus.Abteilung 100 tanks (a couple of Panzer III and a mix of Hotchkiss and Renault 1940 vintage French tanks) never reached Sainte-Mère-Eglise; they were stopped on the La Fière causeway. But that's the matter of another campaign ( @WimO's Mission Boston).

I get your point. Unfortunately, IIRC it doesn't work either. I did a test a few months ago, and I found somewhere on this forum a post from a guy that already had done the very same tests: I believe it's just impossible to have core units start a campaign with less than 100% manpower strength, whatever the way you try to achieve it. Sounds very much like a bug, perhaps one introduced by a relatively recent patch.

Not sure to understand what you suggest here?

Yeah! I understood that losing the mission was part of the campaign basic plan when I discovered that the outcome did branch the campaign beyond Green/Insane rating. That's fine with me! IMHO there are several issues with Chateau. The first one is, given the briefing and time schedule, there is only one reasonable tactical approach to the Chateau itself - the one UH and DV followed (and so did I obviously). This is not really an issue, but it becomes one when combined with the very tight time allowance: you get no margin: no possibility to modify your approach by example, no time to rely on anything else but blind mortar bombing, no possibility to redirect the air support... After that approach phase, the scenario seems to turn into a very technical assault on the building complex (ses the escellent DV AAR) that might be fun - but I'll never know because of the second issue. I tried to analyse what went differently in my game compared with UH's and DV's. It looks like I got the less frequent AI plan, AND that within this AI plan the German 75mm IG got deployed in the right place (from the AI point of view, obviously ) to cover the main route of approach (the only reasonable one...) towards the Chateau. Combined with the above (no time for alternative approach/redirection of air attack/correct mortar barrage), it ruined my game. If I had got 20 more minutes, things may have turned completely differently: I wouldn't have called a (useless...) preplanned mortar barrage on some irrelevant hedgerow, I would have have stopped my attack until my aircraft was redirected towards the IG, etc... Yes, lot of unusual and varied forces in Mondrainville. Plus it's a meeting engagement, which adds to the fun. I remember that one of those AT gun and supporting HMG caused me pain til the very end. I didn't achieve a Total Victory but it was very funny to play. IMHO AI plans were among the best of the campaign, leading to a challenging yet realistic battle. IIRCUH screwed up Mission 4 because he failed to get from the briefing the importance of exiting that Commpany (was it B Co?). I was surprised because the briefing was very clear to me. I agree with you that having to exit one company refrains the player from using it offensively. Finally, I felt Mission 4 bloody as usual (f***g mines!) but not overly difficult in the end. I think I was lucky though, when I disabled that IG gun without even noticing... I perfectly understand why you designed the campaign as you did: basically it helps weaker player and adds chellenge to the better ones. Fine and sound. My approach to a campaign is more along the "actions and consequences" line: if you fail a critical mission, either you lose the campaign, or you shall pay a price in later missions of the campaigns. (Or the other way round, obviously.) That's how I've built the campaign I'm presenty working on. Both approaches have pros and cons: Green/Insane branches pros: campaign is suitable for players of any level; players can withstand bad luck or poor choices at the wrong time and still go on. Green/Insane branches cons: players are not encouraged to win missions (as they will get penalties if they win and no bad consequence if they lose). So it encourages procrastination and force preservation, with is ALREADY the basic premise of a campaign... Also, campaign consistency may be so-so (the forces you failed to exit on time in Mission X appear at the right place at the right moment during Mission X+1...). Actions and consequences pros: campaign consistency is good, and players are encouraged to win mission. Force preservation comes at a cost... More realistic campaign overall. Actions and consequences cons: players can be ousted out of the campaign fairly quickly; players will pay mistakes and bad luck potentially til the campaign's end; also, designer shall be able to provide coherent branching, including ahistorical paths, and shall manage the rewards/penalties associated with the successive missions' results. Regarding the Scottish Corridor: you somehow mixed both approaches. The general design is undoubtely along the Green/Insane branches way, but the outcome of "Going to Church" clearly belongs to the Actions and consequences approach. My only real clue is, you probably got too tolerant regarding defeats. I mean, there are some critical battles that you just can't afford to lose... By the way, this reminds me of an inconsistency regarding the campaign briefing. IIRC the campaign briefing states that you cannot afford to lose any of the Granville missions, otherwise the campaign would end. This is clearly not true. You might check that.

It may have worked in the past but I've found out that this option is broken down in present day CMBN patch. You simply CANNOT have core units start at less than 100% strength. When I started the Scottish Corridor this summer, all my squads were indeed at full strength - whatever parameters you did set.

I see your point. I enjoyed missions 1, 3, 5, 9 and bonus a lot. Great fun. Missions 7 and 8 were slightly below, but still very enjoyable to me. I played badly Mission 2 but that was 100% on me. i was lucky on Mission 4 and achieved a good result, but that was certainly not the funniest of them all. Mission 6 was VERY frustrating. The briefing called for a cakewalk but I ended pinned down and decimated by well sited HMG and mortars (those cooks are definitively well armed... ). Frustration was enhanced by the fact that I only achieved a draw for one casualty... Damn thresholds... And add to it the fact that, whether you exit troops or not, your situation is the same at the beginning of the next mission... Mission 10 was also very frustrating. Just look at Double Vision and Usually Hapless AAR's and you'll get the point. You can play it the cheesy and lucky way (UH) - and score a win, or deploy treasures of imagination and lose in the end (DV). This is the only mission is ceasefired - and considering the tactical situation I never regretted. I was pleased to see that the following mission was highly influenced by this decision, though: good point IMHO. Missions 11, 13, 14: you said everything: variations around a theme. Repetitive, but it taught me to defend with tanks. I fell in love with those Churchill VII... Mission 12: as I said, I don't believe it offers much in terms of tactical options. By far the least interesting mission of the campaign. I remmeber that Double Vision played it very skillfully though. You're perfectly correct. In Mission 1, I chose a different approach from DV and UH, leading a two-front attack. The one on the right was heavily supported with smoke (artillery and light moratrs); it achieved excellent results. I missed Total Victory only because I screwed up a couple of attacks on the left front. My bad. By the way, there is an issue with this Mission 1: the balance of German forces is so that you can have the whole German force surrender without even attacking the left flank objective. That's something you could enhance. Nearly all offensive missions (including the bonus one) could do with some more time! You're really harsh with time allowance. Weird issues? AI offensive attacks may lead to some weird behaviours, but I think it's unavoidable. As already mentioned, some missions scoring is sometimes weird IMHO. And the lack of consequences for some missions failure lead to weird situations sometimes... But that's a matter of general campaign design, not of the single missions. Thanks for taking the time to listen to feedback!

Elite (I only play at that level) and WEGO. And thanks for the kind word!

@kohlenklau Your energy is unbelievable… While I struggle to scrap three missions together into a campaign, you manage to build whole mods, showing BFC what they could achieve… Don't you consider to push a tender offer over BFC? More seriously, this sounds a realistic project. CMFI as a base. Blue vs. Blue scenarios with the Indians or the Brits as the Arabs and the the US, Brits or South Africans as the Israelis. I don't remember that either side ever used postwar tanks in the 1948 ar so everything shall be available in CMFI…

@Paper Tiger Since the post you've quoted, I've finished the campaign, achieving a Tactical Victory. This was my first "serious" campaign so I'm pretty satisfied with the result. Therefore I'm a little surprised to have the campaign rated as "too difficult"! I suffered only two defeats and one draw as a newbie… (And the scoring leading to the draw is highly debatable! ). Isn't a campaign too difficult when it's simply hard to achieve a final victory? Regarding the JgPzIV in mission 2: I personnally met a StuG, which probably means that the JgPzIV is only for the "elite" mission path… I also achieved Total Victories in the last two Grainville missions, so I don't feel you need to tone them done — except perhaps those from the "elite" mission path… but isn't it supposed to be challenging? On the other hand I agree with you that splitting the campaign in two (Cameronians/ASH) would have made it more enjoyable to me, as both focus and overall stakes would be clearer. I enjoyed the first half of the campaign very much. Fun missions of very different kinds with different tools at hand. But the whole Grainville affair sounded too repetitive to me. More generally, while defensive missions lead to some epic stories to tell, I feel there are too much of them in the Scottish Corridor. Whatever the author's gifts, I think the AI scripting is too basic to produce varied and convincing attacks; assaults generally turn into bloodbaths, during which a brainless AI attacker tries to submerge the human side with hordes of infantry and tanks (and artillery). Enjoyable once but not in the long run… The amount of work you needed to manage campaign's branching must simply be astonishing. The choice to have different levels of missions obviously helps the weakest players while providing more challenge for the better ones; but it also leads to some frustrating results, as it significantly lessens the impact of successes and defeats. You can fail to take a key position, or to exit troops as requested: you will progress to the next mission anyway, and the tactical situation at the beginning of the next mission will generally be the same whenever you won or lost the previous one. So the message delivered from this design might be understood as: forget the mission and spare your men, wether you achieve your assigned objectives or not, the results will be the same in the long run. I was also frustrated by scoring sometimes. By example, in mission 2: I achieved all assigned objectives, except my own force preservation ratio. Our friend Usually Hapless deliberately stopped his effort to spare his forces for the next missions: doing so he scored better than I did ! My preferred mission? The bonus one. You've got pretty much all toys available to do the job: Churchill of all brands, SP guns, tank destroyers, engineers, artillery (from mortars to heavy howitzers), planes). And those Tiger II… How enjoyable to knock them out… The one I disliked the most ? Grainville Château. You don't have many tactical choices (only one, obvious one…), the time allowance is ridiculously short (a general issue with most of your Scottish Corridor scenarios IMHO)… and in the version I played, the German IG gun was in position to cover diagonally the British approach to the Château's southernmost border hedges: I was butchered. (Interestingly, none of the players who published AAR on Youtube faced this German deployment). Terrible and not funny at all, as you can do nothing against it (no time!). All in all I learned a lot thanks to this campaign; I'm certainly a better player after playing it, so I MUST thank you for designing it !

OK I see the point. Thank you.

Victory Point based?? A campaign result? You've lost me!…

@George MC@Ithikial_AU A campaign draw??? How possible? I thought it was only possible to end a campaign with all degrees of victory or defeat, but not a draw! I mean, there is a text for a win or a loss in the header, but nothing for a dra?! /* Campaign Header */ [PLAYER FORCE] Blue [HUMAN OPPONENT ALLOWED] no [BLUE VICTORY TEXT] Victory [BLUE DEFEAT TEXT] Sadness [RED VICTORY TEXT] unknown [RED DEFEAT TEXT] unknown And in the last battle, you can certainly put a "_draw" instead of "_total victory" or "-tactical defeat" as below, but does it work? /* Battle #3 */ [BATTLE NAME] ACRDV3 [WIN THRESHOLD] minor victory [NEXT BATTLE IF WIN] _total victory [NEXT BATTLE IF LOSE] _tactical defeat [BLUE REFIT %] 0 [BLUE REPAIR VEHICLE %] 0 [BLUE RESUPPLY %] 0 [BLUE REST %] 0 [RED REFIT %] 0 [RED REPAIR VEHICLE %] 0 [RED RESUPPLY %] 0 [RED REST %] 0

I definitively need to play PBEM against you as the German player!

@Brille And you maybe forget: dedicated order to turn turrets independantly of covered arcs and vehicle direction.

IMHO @Centurian52 is right: it's so difficult to play reliably against humans in PBEM... I'm engaged into three PBEM games at the moment: one of my opponent struggles but manages to throw 4-5 turns a week; another one dropped from 1 turn a day to one turn a week. And the last one disappeared without a word with only 5-10 game turns remaining. We all have RL issues that are obviously than CM games, but such slow games make it very difficult to keep focus and enjoy the game for its real value...

Hmmm… Criticism was not directed towards lack of marketing, It was against the lack of COMMUNICATION towards the fanbase… Getting announcement only once a… YEAR, it's really not much…

In my CMFI install, the Z folder is in the data folder as for all other games. You can put your mods safely into data\z, it will work nicely.

AFAIK Frank is not affiliated to BFC by any mean. And his communication regarding his great work is more or less what @CarlXII is suggesting to BFC...

gochujang is no brand, it's the name of the main type of Korean pepper paste (gochu = pepper and jang = paste)!

In fact, it is not Telegraphpoleland, it is Barrentreesmodland...

Well, they have no explosive (no bazooka, no demo charges) before and after the explosion! Plus, they're really too far to blow a hedge with a demo charge... Looks like I've discovered a new German Wunderwaffe: the hochexplosive Hecke !

Thanks for the update. The real problem, now, is to get the AI units on the right side of the hedges and walls…

I'm surprised by this statement. I've just worked an AI plan and I found that the face command (Alt+click green painting) working pretty well, as my troops end facing the desired direction. Is this tip obsolete?

Another bizarre thing. I'm playtesting one of my creations in author mode. Suddenly… a hedge exploses with no one in the vicinity !!? See below: As you can see on the clock, there are less than 15 seconds between the two pictures. There is no squad with a demo charge nearby. No artillery nor tanks in this scenario. No mines either. So what ?!

The maps (terrain) would take no time at all for BFC. Korea is a temperate country so every type of terrain is already available, save perhaps rice paddies.