Scenario WIP: Return to Castle Wolfenstein

[Pandur]

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Description: One suicidal Yank took Castle Wolfenstein, AGAIN!

you are to get it back and as always do a bunch of other stuff while you are there, capture various stuff and destroy guns for example.

its fictional Axis assault and since its fictional battle and i was in the mood for it, this is quiet the bier and pretzel scenario, with some references to different other stuff.

also the briefing will feature some comical pasages, if i can make it work with my english. i see that when i get there.

features combat in fields, some open, med to hvy urban, rough and forrest. (NO Bocage country)

rough size guesstimation; huge

planed player forces; 1 to 1 1/2 battalions planed, armored and mot mix with engineer support, depends on how first playtest goes.

dont try to remember the gun position on the screens they will change, this is just for WIP shots

and sorry for the quality, somehow the distant landscape is blurry i dont know why so much quality was lost when converting from bmp to jpeg.

klick and klick again for full screen pictures.

[Pandur]

2 more shots

[Pandur]

just quick update here, things progress nicely more or less. more in a way as the map is finished to 98% or so. its good for my first play test when i finished build defensive works and placed troops and made up "basic" ai plan for defender. ah well yes, i need to look up every house on the map and micro manage walls and windows, only done that for a few so far.

it progresses less nicely in an area i was thinking that i would get problems. FPS

after placing an armored and mot PzGren battalion and going in axis deployment i couldnt look down the 3200m length of the map without some FPS hick ups so to speak.

however Red Stream was grinding FPS to a halt at times so i dont care, i knew FPS will be bad, was just a question of how bad.

anyways, this in turn limits me in some ways now. placeing more foliage is a no go, more flavour objects, well some maybe but i have to watch what i do or this has written OOM error all over it. great to have exit objective now where you can dump unneeded forces from the play field, maybe its use was not intended that way but it sure will earn its glory.

further i just found out that there are "breach teams" in the specialized teams section. i can get around adding some engineers as own formation by attaching these breach teams that will come in extremely handy.

and if you get the feeling i go with the unpopular joice most of the time you are right. but i know at least a hand full of people will like it and its made for them and me ovcourse

more to come soon;

[necramonium]

I haven't played RTCW in a long time, so what missions are we gonna do?

[Pandur]

you need to take the name more literally. your overall mission is to return to the castle and its area after it was cleared of the nazis by some maverick dude(in this case the 2nd time), and the nazis are pissed cause Heinrich the 1st was killed, goal is to get it back to continue thzeee evil research.

now that is the setting and the overall goal and what not but we know CMx2 is no action FPS and i can not place any SiFi units and stuff(glad about that) nor can i make objectives that are closely related to the game.

however the regular army comes into play. after the castle was taken, again, americans moved into the area, placed troops to stay, and study the research of the evil SS scientists and salvage what seems salvageable.

since the nazis are not happy about that they want it back, they have no über-soldier(anymore, you killed the prototype in the game) so the army chimes in to do the job.

actual objectives are not 100% final so far but from what i know right now;

Occupy; Church of Despair, fortified by the yanks, its a place of evil power and needed for research, take and clear all defenders.

Touch; seek and destroy defensive positions to the left and right of designated landmark "The mouth of madness"

Unit Objective; destroy 3 to 4(ill see how many) arty pices randomly placed in the 3 farms on the upper portion of the map, they can either be in or around the farms or in the logging forest around

Unit Objective; get a 3 man group of prisoners that managed to escape detention after a recon earlier this day. they should have been brought for questioning into the castle but managed to escape after some driving accident on the road up to the castle. the group of 3 will start at the road leading up to the castle, and are believed to have some interessting information. get them back 3000m to your exit zone.

this will obviousely not work in the beginning, you can only get em back very late in the scenario but i plan to do a little cat and mouse with this guys, not sure if i can spare a AI group for this, i not though.

anyways, this 3 guys will be verry valuable per head, so player should be verry carfully with them.

Touch; Center of Castle Wolfenstein, if you can reach the center and touch it its good enough of a foothold to send in specialized teams, flamethrowers and what not. this depends on how much time will be left roughly when one reaches the castle. if you got plenty of time mabe i do a occupy objecive, if time is tight it touch.

Occupy; establish a defensive line on east wast axis in the logging forrest to seal off the area behind from possible reinforcements and keep the way to the castle open to vehicles.

possible objectives, not sure about them now.

prepare defenses on upper/northern end of "Germantown"(thats the city/town in the map )to fend off possible reinforcements(similar to defense line in forrest obj).

Touch; kick yanks out of the Germantown Bräu(Germantown brewery), possible lots of drunken yanks there(conscript+ low motivation).

thats about it for objectives.

[Sgt Schultz]

Nice! I like it.

I still have a test castle with something similar in mind.

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[Pandur]

figure while i am posting i give it a quick update to.

i roughly micromanaged 1 million walls and windows yesterday, only about 2 million to go today. this takes a lot longer then i have thought. wraping up loose end takes a long time, dont blame BFC for takeing that long with modules

@Sgt Schultz

nice but how did you get destroyed roofs? did you cycle through damage stages?

i kinda hate that the took out the flat CMSF roofs, its kinda backwards. i wanted to do some industrial and grain silo stuff, but no go, grain silos have roofs of normal houses, looks butt ugly.

[Pandur]

another update; the scenario is progressing full steam ahead again after the hick up i had with the armored inf battalion for the US defender.

the whole urban area in the lower parts of the map eats a whole battalion, out of this i can see that in total i will need at least 2 or 2 and a 1/2 battalions to have the key locations reasonable defended. on top of that comes armor and stuff.

i guess by that, that i probably have to increase player force as well. 1 and a 1/2 battalions will not be enough i guess, even with good amount of arty.

i try to stay with 2 battalions as core force for the map for the player though, more is maybe a little much to handle even for enthusiasts let alone newcomers.

i absolutely underestimated the fact that in CMBN with the needed foliage for it to make sene, the map eats up a lot more force in order to cover the map. this map i do is smaler then red stream if i remember right, but i need about double the amount of forces in it to make it work.

this is all progressing down the slippery path towards OOM error. however i got a decent PC at least and still no single error or crash so far in the editor

however there is a lot of time investment+tears, sweat and blood in the map already, i will make it work some way or another.

[Sgt Schultz]

Hehe. I learned the lesson of a MOUT environment as well. It will soak up troops like a sponge. Anything more than 5-6 city blocks with associated suburbs is pushing it for troop numbers imho.

Destroying most of the buildings, and putting a lot of craters in, can help a bit. It hurts to do that to your baby, but better than having people crash.

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[Pandur]

no i cant pre demolish the city thats what the turn one rocket barrage is good for and the rest of the arty the player has. and not to forget 14(severe supply for battleship) shots of railroad cannon

nah at least in my first play test everything will be in like new condition. i have one tile of rubble where i have a AT gun in it but in a not rubbled city this is to obviouse, same goes for bunkers in rubble, id liked to have placed some stuff in rubble but it did not fit.

i will delete the gun and rubble today, the battalions inherent guns are enough actualy.