Allied Campaign - Feedback *spoilers*

[Erwin]

Just completed Mission #1 - Best Laid Plans.

It is a good scenario. I won a Minor Victory first time (no restarts) by capturing the LHS objective. But, while I made it to the 2nd RHS objective, there were still German units surviving there even at 5 minutes overtime when the scenario ended.

I was disappointed with my bloody performance. Lost the valuable 95mm Churchill early on thanks to an ATG.

With 2 mins left on the clock I had captured the LHS objective since that's where the road went. And we are warned about bogging offroad in the wet weather. So, then I took a risk and basically raced several platoons over to the 2nd objective during the last 6-7 minutes (incl the 5 mins overtime).

I figured there would probably be an enemy ambush and that would be that... I would restart.

However, I had cleared out the mortar trench at the rear and was able to get to the 2nd objective area intact with maybe 3 depleted platoons. However, even moving in the surviving Churchill for support was too late. There were about a dozen German survivors. And my guys took horrible casualties... which just doesn't sit right with me since this mission does not seem to be a "do or die" mission.

To be able to play it "carefully", do recon, and minimize casualties I think this mission is at least 15 minutes too short.

We'll see what state my guys are in for Mission #2.

In terms of gameplay I really didn't notice much difference from base CMBN. Yes, the graphics/uniforms etc are different, but re the weapons and reduced firepower compared to the US... well... Am so used to playing with depleted US squads, that one automatically takes into account the reduced MG's or SMG's and play accordingly. So, it didn't make a discernible difference to me.

I get worried about this eking out of modules that are very little different from each other, as whatever may be boring/irritating about base CMBN is going to get similarly boring/irritating with the CW module quickly. Essentially it's exactly the same game but with different uniforms...

I think I would prefer to pay significantly more for a significantly different/improved experience.

[Paper Tiger]

...this mission does not seem to be a "do or die" mission.

Hi Erwin.

No, it's not a Do or Die mission. When I craft them, you must win that mission or the campaign ends. Instead, what you're seeing is something that I've been doing from my very first campaign, 'Hasrabit', for CMSF. Basically, you are playing a single action that is divided up into two or more, intimately linked scenarios. If you played Hasrabit, you will remember that the Republican Guards are tasked first with destroying the spearheading Syrian rebel forces. If you complete that mission in good time, then you go on to Hill 142 which you must capture before dawn. If you fail to win the 'Counterattack' mission, you start the 'Hill 142' mission 20+ minutes later but the sun still rises at 06:10 so you have less time to get the rebel FOS before he can pinpoint Special Forces positions in the valley. The whole series of 6 missions at the start of Hasrabit were very intimately connected. Same went with 'Dinas' and the Canadian campaign for the NATO module, not to mention 'USMC Gung Ho!'.

In 'The Road to Montebourg' there is another very fine example of this in missions 2 to 4, the assault on the Georgian Ridge. It's one big battle broken into three parts. The same applies here. It's not "finish this mission in 1 hour 10 minutes with some extra time or your ass is on the line". You're just late for your next mission and that has real consequences, like the enemy having more time to react to your attack, etc. These are not stand alone missions and there is only one possible branch from each mission so it's better not to pay too much attention to the result of each individual mission but focus on the campaign as a whole.

To be able to play it "carefully", do recon, and minimize casualties I think this mission is at least 15 minutes too short.

Considering that the Brits were advancing under heavy artillery fire directed by German spotters on the Rauray spur, the Cameronians don't really have the luxury of being able to hang back doing a bit of recon. When I played this mission, I had plenty of time to do a quick and dirty recon before launching my attack and I usually got a surrender well within the official time limit. And then I added about 10+ extra minutes before letting other folks have a go at it

[Erwin]

"When I played this mission, I had plenty of time to do a quick and dirty recon before launching my attack and I usually got a surrender well within the official time limit."

Um... you wouldn't be the scenario designer would you? (Cos that could be described as "a conflict of interest" lol.)

I don't remember Hasrabit anymore, but Dinas was and is wonderful. Am stuck at "Where Farmers Dare" as for some reason I started to get weird text descriptions of the units - just like what was happening in CMBN until the "Animated Text" mod was updated. I have to try and get rid of the Animated Text mod from CMSF and see if that solves the problem.

What is strange is that when I restarted the previous CMSF scenario to check if I had inadvertently buggered up my Z folder before starting "Farmers", there was no problem. The problem seems to be specifically with the "Farmers" scenario. Was that map/scenario designed with a different version of CMSF I wonder?

Coming back to the CW campaign: I have learned that sometimes you can move a few meters and get ambushed and sometimes, you can move halfway across the map before encountering the enemy. It depends on the designer. The other annoying item are briefings that tell you to "Move swiftly..." to do whatever. Yeah right...

How many of us have found that "moving swiftly" just runs us into nasty enemy ATG's? I do not trust briefings that tell me to move fast, or that "the enemy has no tanks and is demoralized and have all but given up, all you need to do is run an unarmored jeep into the victory location to win" or similar instructions... We have all been burned by that nonsense. While YOU may be an honorable honest designer who doesn't give false info in the briefings, unfortunately there have been enuff (esp CM1) designers who deliberately mislead.

And I think that the commander in the field, unless he is a green incompetent moron would also be more careful with the lives of his men than to do what the briefings sometimes tell one to do. The problem is that to be "smart" you have to assume that the enemy has keyholed ambush positions a few meters ahead of your units (as I recall in dismay in the otherwise fun CMA "The Road of All Fears"). But, that means a lot of cautious movement with scouts.

And that takes time. And I still have the CMSF philosophy of minimal casualties - even though sometimes in CMBN it doesn't seem possible... With the smaller maps and closer ranges it's easy to lose a lot of units very fast with one error. (And that error may not even be the player's fault, but the game system screwing with you, like weird pathing that doesn't make sense etc.)

Hence caution is ALWAYS called for.

And hence my plea for more time, please...