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WIP - The Road to Carpiquet Campaign


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Heh, it's been a while since I've had the opportunity to do this. I am in the process of putting together a short-ish campaign for uploading to the Repository. I've got five maps more or less finished and I expect to start work crafting the AI plans later this weekend. The campaign will follow two companies of the Canadian North Shore Regiment from the landings on Nan Red through to the inferno that was Carpiquet. This is intended to be a hard campaign. The North Shore Regiment suffered badly in these actions and took very heavy casualties. To do some justice to it, this will be a HARD campaign. The player must expect to take lots of casualties in the course of playing the missions and there will be time limits. If time limits are not your thing, forget it now. Go and play something else.

First Mission - Nan Red

Carpiquet1.jpg

Beach Landing and it will be bloody. One company with DD tanks arriving as reinforcements will have to get ashore and take out the German defences. The Germans have had plenty of time to demolish buildings to create good fields of fire.

Mission 2 - Tailleville

Carpiquet2.jpg

Moving inland from the beachhead, the second company with some tanks will assault the village of Tailleville. This might not be a particularly difficult mission.

Mission 3 - Carpiquet

Carpiquet3.jpg

This will be an appallingly hard mission, just as it was in real life. I am going to pull out all the stops to make it as hard and as bloody as possible. And you're not getting four hours to do it in either. The SS defenders will be very, very determined from now on.

Mission 4 - Franqueville

Carpiquet4.jpg

Night mission with a strong german attack with tanks in support coming from the north.

Mission 5 - Never their Like

Carpiquet5.jpg

The finale and it will be a monster. Large German counterattack on the south of Carpiquet. This will be the longest and toughest of all the missions and once again, I'm going to put all the experience I got developing AI attacks in the Scottish Corridor campaign to good use in this one.

It's quite possible that I'll add at least one more mission to this campaign - perhaps an attack on the radar station to the south of Tailleville? But extras will be ahistorical.

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Fantastic news! I'm really enjoying what you have done with Scottish Corridor....although bloody. As usual, your map making skills and use of more appropriate Normanday buildings are a 10+

Would be nice to see that smoke covered charge over the airfield though...or was that a different unit?

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On a side note, have you had any thoughts on a german campaign?

Abso-frikken-lutley :D I'd LOVE to do a German campaign. They are my favourite side for playing in WW2 (Russians 2nd. Brits 3rd although US Paras are really good too) However, considering that there are precious few opportunities for what I'd like to do in the time span covered by the game, I haven't felt inspired to do one yet. But I want to! I'm trying to see if the Market Garden module will lend itself more towards a German campaign that suits my own particular style of campaign designing but I suspect I'll have to wait for either the Bulge title or... the Eastern Front before I can really go to town with them.:cool:

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BTW, this is slightly further along than I hinted at in my original post. This project was intended to be part of the Commonwealth module package and I had the maps for these done first before I even started work on the Scottish Corridor. But the Scottish Corridor just grew and grew and grew and there was no time left to get this one finished. So, I've already created the German defences at Saint-Aubin-Sur-Mer for the first mission and have playtested one AI attack plan for the Franqueville mission (It's really tough too.) I'll post more as work progresses and I'll also put up some more detailed shots as well. Those shots are all zoomed out and the Carpiquet maps are still quite 'pretty'. I'll definitely dirty them up with battle damage before I finish with them, especially the first of them. It should look more like a WW1 battlefield by the time I'm finished with it.

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Very impressive work I like following a unit history !

BTW, I'll be very willing to listen if anyone wants to direct me to any particularly good online resources for researching this. I've got a copy of Marc Milner's 'D-Day to Carpiquet' at the moment and I've used it to get the OBs for the battles.

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Abso-frikken-lutley :D I'd LOVE to do a German campaign. They are my favourite side for playing in WW2 (Russians 2nd. Brits 3rd although US Paras are really good too) However, considering that there are precious few opportunities for what I'd like to do in the time span covered by the game, I haven't felt inspired to do one yet. But I want to! I'm trying to see if the Market Garden module will lend itself more towards a German campaign that suits my own particular style of campaign designing but I suspect I'll have to wait for either the Bulge title or... the Eastern Front before I can really go to town with them.:cool:

That sounds great. It would be nice with a German campaign that covers a major german operation. So I hope to see a bigger campaign covering more missions in the Bulge game and if you are the composer, all the better.

The maps for TRtC looks truly stunning!

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A quick update on the weekend's work. I've been playing (and playing, and playing...) the opening mission, Nan Red, this weekend. Beach landings are so bloody and so unpredicatable. It's going to have to be a bit longer than I'd like because it's proving to be very difficult to get off the beaches, secure a lodgement and then attack the main town to the east of the map. I had hoped to keep it to around an hour but it looks like I'll need at least another 20-30 minutes. But you'll have something to do in all that time, that's for sure. I've also upped the amount of firepower you'll have drastically. I've also added a couple of Centaurs to the Canadian OB. Well, okay, Cromwells with the 90mm gun as the Centaur variant isn't in the game. But it means that you'll have a lot of vehicles at your disposal later in the mission but very little room to deploy them. Should be interesting. Perhaps adding an important dimension to the early part of the mission when you have infantry only.

As usual, serious playtesting means that the map gets a huge make-over and this one has been no exception. The finished map will look a hell of a lot more interesting than that preliminary screenshot on the first page. There was a 'chateau' down on the beach near the N7 exit which is not there today. I did a bit of guesswork and plonked down a compound on the sea-front which isn't in that screenshot.

I also got to work expanding and improving the Tailleville map. I somehow screwed up when I did the initial elevation work for this map. The village is sitting on top of a hill which dominates the surrounding terrain. I'm also extending it considerably to include the northern fringes of the Tailleville forest as well as to the west. I made these maps before I started on the Scottish Corridor maps and I learned that I could place a LOT of trees on the maps without ruining performance. (You should have seen the original Tourville map. It was tiny compared to the final version) With Tourville firmly in mind, I'm happy to include some densely forested areas on this map.

It will still be a company-sized action as it was historically. But it might not be quite as easy as I'd thought it would be. ;)

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I've been quiet this week because I've been working flat out on expanding and improving the Tailleville map. I'm going to post some new screenshots of the map later this weekend. It's now massive and it looks absolutely gorgeous too. Right now, I'd say it's the best map I've produced to date. Most of the time was spent getting the elevations just right and the finished product looks very natural and realistic. I have to stop myself from just aimlessly moving the camera around in 3D mode admiring the scenery.

The map expansion became necessary after further reading about this action. The unit densities are surprisiingly low for both sides. A single infantry company with support for both the Canadians and the Germans. And I've got the battle covered from its opening stages so it will have to be a long battle. The map has been extended far to the north to cover the battle's earlierst stages and far to the south to cover the potential battle for the Tailleville forest. The latter will probably require a second battle using the same map.

I doubt that I will be able to do the Radar Station any justice as the current stock of fortifications won't cut it. There are no fortified gun positions and that will just make it too easy for the Canadians to take the position down with artillery. Sneak an artillery spotter into position. Kill the guns with the artillery then bring the tanks up to kill the MG bunkers. Game over. Easy win. Absolutely NOT historical at all. However, there will probably be an extra mission after the initial landing to cover the mopping up operations. A small battle on a small map so it shouldn't take long to get it up and running. It will also be neceesary to allow me to string thse four missions together in a very meaningful way. ;)

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Here are three screenshots of the new, revised Tailleville map. The first is of the village from the north, just left of the St Aubins road. The village is behind that copse of trees. It became necessary to expand the map a considerable distance to the south of the village to allow the early stages of the battle to be represented.

Tailleville1.jpg

Compare with the original screenshot. Especially to the dramatic changes in the elevations on the new map.

Carpiquet2.jpg

As you can see, the map terminated just at the back of the village. Now, it's been extended to include the forested ridge behind the village.

Tailleville2.jpg

And again, from the SW map corner.

Tailleville3.jpg

I'll probably have two battles fought on this map. Although the Germans will have units placed on the forested ridge, there won't be nearly enough time on the clock for you to get at them. Your priority in the first battle will be to clear the village of German forces and that should be a tough call. Then we'll have a second battle to clear the forest on the 7th June.

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