PEB14

There's so much work needed to design a scenario. Even a crappy one.

Oh yes!

Lastly I had to use them in a defensive scenario where there was not much place to maneuver (Tilly Junction, I believe). They struggled to take out Panzer IVs, and it took them 4 or 5 penetrating shots to disable StuGs on the only two occasions they got. Let's forget about Panthers. They're certainly the most valuable of the British Cruiser tanks by a large margin, but this only proves that the whole concept was an utter failure… I won't trade 1 Churchill VII for 2 Cromwell. No Sir!

I'm not so enthusiast about the Soviet tanks, they're inferior in every aspect to the German in particular in term of spotting speed (bad optics?) and gunnery accuracy... You're a little bit harsh with Allied tanks. While the Americans only rely on the Sherman, the Brits have a fait number of tanks. I like the slow and cumbersone Churchill tanks, in particular the Churchill VII whose frontal armor can withstand even Panther shells... The CS version is a must against MG positions with its 94mm gun! On the other hand I really hate the Cromwell. Rolling coffin... In the infantry support role the Sherman nearly matches the T-34/76 with more than 50 HE rounds... And I like the 7k MG rounds of the Churchill as well. I think it's impossible to get out of ammo !!!

It does, thank you!

It's barber style surgery, you mean!

Hi @Butschi, Can you please remind us what profiles are now featured in CMAutoEditor ? Which, if I understand correctly, translates into: "what games is CMAutoEditor compatible with"?

Thank you. Don't worry, I'll soldier on. And thank you for the playtest offer, I file the proposal for future use! But you must be patient, I don't expect to be able to offer something for playtest before several monthes... And FYI, this campaign will be CMBN, not CMFI. I have ideas for CMFI (in particular, a red vs. red campaign...), but this is for an even more distant future...

EUREKA ! @WimO La nuit porte conseil, my friend! I'm pretty sure I found the answer. BTW, the answer, although somewhat encrypted , is written in the manual (page 116): We both started from the misconception that the Refit percentage is referring to some headcount: either the theoretical headcount of the core force, or the number of missing men (your hypothesis), or the current number of men in the core force (my hypothesis). But this is wrong. As written in the manual quote above, the Refit parameters (and probably the 4 other as well) are "percentage chance", that is a PROBABILITY, for each "individual unit", to be replaced. I'm pretty sure that "individual unit" means just that, each INDIVIDUAL - either a Pixet soldier or a vehicle. Not a squad or a platoon or a core force. So basically, at the beginning of each mission, the game rolls a die (1-100) for each and every missing soldier. If the result is below the Refit percentage, the soldier is replaced. Otherwise it is not. And it's probably the same for vehicle repair and ammo (clips) as well. Statistically, it means that @WimO approximation is correct. The MEAN replacement value is: MEAN Replacement Value = (Core unit value - End of scenario value) X Refit% The higher the number of missing soldiers, the closer to the Mean Replacement Value you'll get. On the other hand, if the missing heacount is too low, statistical aberrations will become more sensitive (hence, probably, my weird result shown in first post): Example 1: if you miss 100 soldiers at the beginning of a mission, whose Refit parameter is 60%, you're likely to get 60 men back. But there is a very significant probability that you get only 58 or, if you're lucky, 63. In all cases, the ACTUAL refit you get will be either 58% or 63%, which is still close to 60% Example 2: if you miss 5 soldiers at the beginning of a mission, whose Refit parameter is 60%, you're likely to get 3 men back. But there is a non negligible probability that you get only 2 or, if you're lucky, 4. In the first case, the ACTUAL refit you get is only 40%, while it's 80% in the latter case. And I'm pretty sure that the lightly wounded soldiers are treated along the same lines (no pun intented...). While as a designer I'd really prefer to know how many men I give back to the player as Refit, from a programming point of view the probability approach is clearly much more simple to handle, if only because you don't have to manage the distribution of Refit troops among the different sub-units: the computer only checks wether a soldier is replaced or not. As simple as that! Well, that's it And as @WimO says, that's the end of it for me! I hope that this post will be of use to some people at least...

Things get more complicated test after test… I'm under the impression that you are confusing WIA soldiers, that are treated the same as KIA in CM terms (the only difference being that they're shown in the WIA tally at the end of the game), and the lightly wounded ones, that soldier on with a small red cross attached to their rifle icon. These lightly wounded soldier are NOT shown as WIA at the final roster of the game. At least, this is the way that I have understood things. Regarding your testing procedure: Are all headcount figures given at mission start or at mission end? I made one additional, unconclusive test. Red Force Mission 1 All core forces used: 93 men Final headcount: 25 men (including lightly wounded) Final headcount for units involved in Mission 2: 17 men (including 5 lightly wounded) Losses: 68 men Losses for for units involved in Mission 2: 49 men Mission 2. Refit parameter set to 25 2/3 of core force used Initial headcount: 24 Replacement headcount: 7 men 7 men out of 49 theoretically missing (your computation): 14% 7 men out of 17 end of Mission 1 headcount (my computation): 41% Neither fit the 25% set parameter, yours is closer but misses the target… The 5 lightly wounded men are still here in their original squads. Blue Force Mission 1 All core forces used: 99 men Final headcount: 24 men (including lightly wounded) Final headcount for units involved in Mission 2: 20 men (including 11 lightly wounded) Losses: 75 men Losses for for units involved in Mission 2: 46 men Mission 2. Refit parameter set to 75 2/3 of core force used Initial headcount: 56 Replacement headcount: 36 men 36 men out of 66 theoretically missing (your computation): 78% 36 men out of 20 end of Mission 1 headcount (my computation): 180% Your computation clearly fits the 75% Refit parameter. Additionally 6 out of the 8 lightly wounded men (75%, exactly the Refit parameter) have been replaced. In my previous test with Refit parameters in the 20 to 60% ranges my computation was a better fit... So what should one conclude?! Modding in Combat Mission is really a matter of masochism… Why the hell these parameters are not properly documented in the Game Manuel !?

Hi @WimO, I must say I'm not sure that I understand your results. You suggest that Replacement value (that is the heacount brought back by the Refit parameter) is proportional to the theoretical headcount of the unit? I didn't check it yesterday, but I had the idea while you performed your own tests. And I disagree with your statement. The better approximation, according to my own data, is: Replacement Value of Mission A = (Number of men in Core units at the beginning of Mission A) x R% Example: Number of soldiers in all CORE Units at the beginning of mission A = 100 R value for "Refit" in Mission A data = 50 Calculation thus: 100x0.50 = 50 Wow! You mean, not the lightly wounded casualties? How were you able to track them? I never considered it possible! I was pretty sure that both KIA and WIA were out of the game as casualties. It seems to me (but I didn't check it thouroughly) that the lightly wounded Pixeltrüppen soldier on, keeping their "lightly wounded" status. One exception (that I check today): all lightly wounded Pixeltrüppen are replaced by soldiers in perfect condition when the Refit parameter is set at 100%. More tests on the way!

You are correct. My deepest apologies to @George MC. May he forgive me for my failure…

Here you can find the files related to the test above: Missions btt files, core file, campaign script and Excel result and analysis file: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a9ao9osxt0e4xel/AAAcsaZHt9zQEfPDj3AfRQppa?dl=0

@WimO I can share the Excel file showing the results above, as well as the files I used to build the campaign (so that other people can reproduce the tests easily). I'll share a dropbox link later today. Indeed, that's why I felt the need for this test... The problem with this approach is, you lose one of the main dramatic resource of the campaign structure... Not using the 4R will deprive the campaign author of a way to reward or punish players depending of their performance...

@Ithikial_AU@Mr.X@WimO (I summon you three guys, as you are the leading, active campaign designers on the forum…) This weekend I performed some tests in order to understand the mysterious Refit, Resupply, Rest parameters of a campaign. Using CMFI, I designed a 4-missions campaign featuring 1 company of Germans vs 1 company of Indians (without their light mortars), all core units. I recorded the headcount in each unit (down to squad level), both at the beginning and at the end of each mission. Not all units are featured in each scenario, except in the last one. I don't track ammo as I suppose that behaviour is similar to headcount's. The first test I performed helped me understand a few things: - parameters are applied at the BEGINNING of the corresponding mission. So parameters from Mission 1 will be applied before Mission 1 starts, parameters from Mission 2 will be applied before Mission 2 starts, etc. It seems obvious, but this is not what I thought… Anyway, as a corollary, beacause of that I see not reason why the parameters for the first mission of a campaign shall be different from 0… - parameters are applied ONLY to the units taking part in the mission. Non participating, core units will NOT benefit from the parameters. The quantitative results from this first test were unconclusive, so I performed a second test. Methodology is the same with the following differences: - All units participate in Mission 1. They are all submitted to artillery bombardment in order to inflict significant casualties. - Mission 2 involves 1 platoon from each side at start, another 1 platoon apearing as a reinforcement for each side. No combat action. - Mission 3 is similar except that the starting and reinforcing platoon are different. No combat action either. - Mission 4 involves all units. The second campaign brings the following conclusion. - In a given Mission, reinforcement units are treated the same as starting units. - Refit is treated at the scale of the whole force of core units taking part in the mission, including reinforcement. This means that the whole force will get 20%, 50% or whatever Refit you've set. Percentage of headcount in platoon and squad differ very significantly, only the whole force percentage is close to the set one. Some units will get nil, other will get a lot. Hence it appears that Refit troops are distributed randomly into the sub-units. - Percentage is based on the force size at the beginning of the mission. Let's imagine you're playing a company that started with 120 men and ended the first Mission with 20. If Refit parameter of the next mission the company is involved into is set to 20%, you'll get 4 Pixeltrüppen as Refit. If your company had less losses and ended the last mission with 45 men, you would get 9 Pixeltrüppen. Basically this means that if you suffered many losses in a campaign you'll get a double punishment as reinforcement will be lower that what you could expect… - There is a saturation effect. If your Refit brings some of your units to full strength, you'll lose some reinforcements: as reinforcement are distributed somewhat randomly, it appears that some are lost if the random numbers exceed full-strength headcount. It would be interested to test: - what happens with units down to a very small headcount, - what is the effect of a 100% Refit on forces whose headcount is below 50% of full strength: arithmetic says that a 100% Refit parameter should NOT bring the force back to full-strength in such a case… If you have more information regarding the way these parameters work, or if you have ideas for additional tests, you are most welcome to share them here!

Marshes block vehicle movement, this is very different from heath! Visually I'd go for a combination of Grass T, Weeds and Brushes.

Wind mills are buildings in CMBN. AFAIK ain't no such buildings in CMRT.

Absolutely! Excellent counter-example! In the Dompaire case, they were even more than effective, they were decisive!

From an historical point of view, the Allied Tactical air support in WW2 was more directed against line of supplies and enemy units in movement than against tactical defending positions on the battlefield. So it's not surprising that its effectiveness is not wonderful in the frame of CM WW2 games!

Hmmm… After my disastrous first employment of air support, last weekend I had a Typhoon destroying an immobilized Tiger II with its rockets in the Scottish Corridor campaign ! In the same mission another Typhoon damaged a Panzer IV enough to turn it impotent (I knocked it down easily with a Churchill afterwards). In a previous mission of the same campaign another Typhoon wrought havoc amongst a German infantry assault. Accordingly this was against the AI. But I wouldn't say Air Support is useless! BTW, thanks to @IanL and @Brille whose advices above make it possible!

So you mean lorry is modern English while truck is older language? Isn't it that "lorry" would be UK English while "truck" would be American English?

Anyway Carrier were not the primary troop carrier for British Army in WW2! They used lorries and trucks (is there a difference???)... Carriers were for scouts and heavy weapons (mortars and MG mainly).

I was aware of "Waggon", not of "Wagon". Danke schön!

Good question. The quote is from @Ithikial_AU's campaign design guide… As I understand it, it is the only way to chose wether the defeat is "minor", "tactical" or whatever. I sure don't know whether it has other consequences.

Thanks for this new video. Instructive as ever. End your video editing gets better and better! Just a minor note: SPW means "mittlerer Schützenpanzerwagen", not "mittlerer Schützenpanzerwagon". Our German native speaking Kameraden will confirm, but I do believe the word "Wagon" doesn't exist in German.