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Updating The Road to Montebourg


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I made this post in the Road to Montebourg thread and it occurred to me afterwards that it might be better to make a thread for it all of its own. I've been thinking about updating this campaign, making a few fixes to some missions and adding air support to one or two that originally had them.

Changes I'm considering based on feedback received so far:

Ecoqueneuville: Add air support

Les Licornets: (1) Place a single hedgehog on the main road to prevent the player from scooting up the centre too quickly. (makes a change for hedgehogs to be holding up road traffic instead of becoming pancakes)

(2) Add air support to this mission

Labrynth: Quite a few of you found this mission to be too easy because of your earlier success in 'Turnbull's Stand' I think I'll beef up the German OB with some fresh units and add a bit of time to the mission.

Hell in the Hedgerows: I might give the Germans a bit more clout, i.e. give them back their Nebelwerfers. This will require some playtesting though.

Eroudeville: Add a couple of JPz IVs to the German OB like I did for the H2H version.

One potentially controversial change I'm considering is making the majority of the 2/8 INF core units Green instead of Regular. That was my original intention and a lot of the early playtesting was done with Green US Army core units and it worked (and felt) just right. Please note that I am not touching the 2/505 or 2/325 units' experience.

If you guys have any suggestions, add them here quickly as I'd like to have this done quickly before I move on to something else. Hopefully by this weekend.;) I'm not looking to make any drastic changes to these missions other than what's been outlined above.

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SPOILERS -- ROAD TO MONTEBOURG CAMPAIGN

(though given the title of this thread, this is probably assumed...)

What serendipity; I'm currently about halfway through the campaign for a second time (on Labyrinth now). I wanted to see if I had become a better player in the year since CMBN came out. :D

Don't remember my exact scores, but I did fairly well the first go-through. I definitely made a few mistakes here and there, though, which cost me. Some of my mistakes on the first time through weren't so much tactical errors as technical gameplay ones; I now have a much better understanding of how to leverage the CMBN UI to do what I want. I did definitely make some poor tactical choices in places, though.

This time around, I'm definitely kicking ass and taking names. Not surprising, given that I'm already familiar with the scenarios. Still having lots of fun with it, though.

Anyway, some specific comments:

Ecoqueneuville: Add air support

I know many other players find it fun to bring in the Jabos, so I may well be in the minority here, but I am personally not a a big fan of air support in CMBN scenarios, and especially not on relatively small to mid-size maps such as what is featured in most of RtM. I think it's pretty unrealistic for air support to be available at all as "on-call" support at the CM scale, and I think the generally quite good accuracy and spotting abilities of fighter-bombers in CMBN makes this problem worse. I wish there was a way to make air support available to the player as a pre-planned, turn 0 plot support asset *only* -- this I would find more realistic, especially if F/B spotting were also toned down a bit so that most of the time they would just bomb and/or strafe a designated area, rather than actively targeting specific units.

My personal preferences aside, if you do want to add air support, I would keep in mind that a even just a strafing-only F/B can easily wipe out an entire platoon if it gets a "good spot", so consider whether you want this big of an "x factor" in your scenario design -- if the F/B comes in on-target, the scenario may become extremely easy. If it's off-target (or worse, attacks friendlies), the scenario may suddenly become very difficult.

Another way to deal to with the air support issue would be to assume it's happened just prior to scenario start, mentioning it in the briefing and adding a couple of large craters representing bomb impacts, or a couple of clusters of smaller craters representing rocket strikes. Smart players might be able to infer where enemy resistance is probably weakened, on the basis of these clues.

Les Licornets: (1) Place a single hedgehog on the main road to prevent the player from scooting up the centre too quickly. (makes a change for hedgehogs to be holding up road traffic instead of becoming pancakes)

(2) Add air support to this mission

Hedgehogs seem a little weird here, because there Germans haven't been in the position very long so it would seem unlikely that they would have the time to set up a full-out, tank-proof roadblock. In any event, I do agree that the straight road is an obvious weakness in the defense. First play-through, I didn't figure this out until about halfway through, but was still able to win the scenario fairly handily by pushing my tanks up the road behind an infantry screen. Second play-through, I routed the Germans by using this tactic from the start, causing the AI to surrender with 20 minutes to spare, and taking only a few infantry casualties myself.

It's possible some tweaks to German set up and/or the map could make the road a less viable attack route... not sure. But maybe the hedgehogs could be justified by saying that German Pioneers have felled a couple of large trees er sumfink to block the road... too bad we don't have multiple visual options for roadblocks, rather than just the iron caltrop-type; it would be nice to have something that looks more improvised, made from materials at hand.

Same comments re air support apply here as for Encoqeneuville.

Labrynth: Quite a few of you found this mission to be too easy because of your earlier success in 'Turnbull's Stand' I think I'll beef up the German OB with some fresh units and add a bit of time to the mission.
Ah. Just getting started on this one for the second time, but this does explain why it was relatively easy for me the first time -- I did OK (but not spectacularly) in Turnbull's Stand the first time around. I did manage to KO all of the German Armor, though, and this probably explains why Labyrinth was relatively easy for me. When considering what German units to add to Labyrinth, I would keep in mind that the American force has very few true heavy Anti-armor assets. I can see how, if one of the PzIVs had survived Turnbull's Stand, it could have given me fits in Labyrinth -- Bazookas and 37mm guns can penetrate PvIV sides (easily), and even front (marginally), but their behind armor effect is very limited, so it can take a lot of penetrating hits to get the kill; I've seen PzIV take over a half dozen penetrating 'zook hits without getting KO'd. So even a small addition of heavy armor to the German side could have a large play balance effect.

One way to deal with this might be to increase the reinforcement/resupply % for the existing forces from Turnbull's Stand, rather than adding new units outright. This would ensure that a player who does not take out much of the German force in Turnbull, does not end up facing an insurmountable force in Labyrinth.

Hell in the Hedgerows: I might give the Germans a bit more clout, i.e. give them back their Nebelwerfers. This will require some playtesting though.
Don't remember this fight very well from the first play-through, and haven't gotten to it yet this time... IME, when the AI has heavy arty assets like Nebelwerfers, it's a very hit-or-miss thing. I try very hard to keep the main body my attack force concealed for as long as possible, and then maintain a rapid pace of advance once I go "over the top", so the AI rarely manages to get heavy arty targeted on me in time to do damage -- it usually falls where I *was* a turn or two ago. But Nebelwerfers have a large enough area of effect, that they'd probably do a fair amount of damage, even if they did land a bit behind... combine them with a TRP and it would be absolute murder.

Eroudeville: Add a couple of JPz IVs to the German OB like I did for the H2H version.
Could work. JPz IVs are an interesting challenge -- very strong frontally, but weak laterally and very slow to rotate.

One potentially controversial change I'm considering is making the majority of the 2/8 INF core units Green instead of Regular. That was my original intention and a lot of the early playtesting was done with Green US Army core units and it worked (and felt) just right. Please note that I am not touching the 2/505 or 2/325 units' experience.
I think this could be a fun and challenging change; I enjoy the challenge of playing with Green troops.
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Can't remember if Hell in the Hedgerows was the one with a touch objective on the ridge at the end of the map or it was the one with the complex of bunkers in the middle of the map with a minefield on the player's right. In either case, I think those two are tough enough as it is. The rest sounds fine.

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Good points raised here. I will get to work revising this later this morning and get the revised campaign up on the Repository as quickly as possible.

I'm going to have a look at Licornets and see if I can block up the road with destroyed German vehicles instead of having to resort to using a hedgehog. I just want an anti-tank barrier of some sort to prevent the Allies from driving up the road and taking the German defences apart too easily. The road is a long straight one, even in WW2, so I can't introduce any kinks to place an AT asset behind to deny the road to the Allies. Besides, it would be too obvious a spot to resist hitting with a pre-planned strike from one of the onboard 60mm mortars .

I will think about the air support carefully. If it does go in, it will be Green and it will arrive as a reinforcement. I would imagine that it would be quite hard to use in Ecoqueneuville as there are so few good LoS postions in the US sector. And by the time you've captured one or two of them, the scenario clock will be ticking down... We'll see.

No nebelwerfers for Hell in the Hedgerows then. But I will give the Germans a wee bit more artillery support. I did make a heavy mortar asset available to the Germans during testing but I must have deleted it along with the Nebs. So I'll probably reinstate it.

I am toying with the idea of adding a bonus mission to this campaign using my Brecourt map. But we'll see as that would require a bit of work to create and playtest. If I do add it, it will be a simple fun mission so it might be quick and easy to do as most of the work is done already. And it's a nice little map too.

One final point. I will also revise the campaign script so that Replacements are handled in a similar fashion to the Commonwealth campaign.

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I should get this finished quite quickly. Then, I'm thinking of having a look at the 'Scottish Corridor' campaign. I'm thinking of breaking it into two seperate campaigns, one for the Cameronians and the other for the ASH. I'd like to finish off the three bonus missions that I was working on but didn't have enough time to finish before BFC released the module. I'd also like to present the player with a decision at the very start of the campaign, to play 'All-Green' versions of the missions or play the standard campaign with the variable difficulty. I'd make the Green missions much easier to win too. That would give me two eight-mission campaigns with one extra Cameronians Bluecoat mission and two extra ASH missions, one huge tank battle on Hill 113 and the ASH Bluecoat mission that never made it.

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I've made all those changes already and have started playtesting a quick and dirty version of 'The Guns of Brecourt' to be the new mission 2 of the campaign. It will feature two platoons of 2/8 INF attacking the 'Brecourt' gun position with two light ACs in support and some artillery. I want to put this is because, so far, it's proving to be a lot of fun to play. And I'm getting ideas on how to develop it into an even more fun mission. ;)

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Paper Tiger would you mind sharing a bit of information on how you make scenarios and campaigns? Especially concerning historical accuracy. The maps you make often resemble real locations very well without trying to be 100% correct. Thus they look natural (no yiggly roads, etc.) and nice at the same time.

But how do you approach the part where it comes to units and fighting?

For instance, I've read the online version of Utah to Cherbourg, but found it totally vague. Way to few information to get information about small unit actions from it. So just how much imagination is involved in your missions?

Then again you must have some pretty good sources. I've noted for instance that the German units in the first missions are from 6/26th SS (IIRC). I looked it up (I have the magnificent history of the 12th SS) and it was correct. But most sources, especially internet sources are way to vague concerning the Axis forces. When reading Utah Beach to Cherbourg I sometimes got the impression there weren't any Germans involved in the fighting, only in a very abstract way: A Company got to village XY, E Company took village YZ, was shelled by some artillery, etc.

Very discouraging to me.

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I loved this campaign and would give it a go again with some updates. I think it would be nice to add some air support.. its far to little in the game so far in my opinion. Maybe BF should nerf air support a little but Ive seen so litle of it that I would just love to get the oppertunity to play around with it in a campaign.

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The 'Brecourt manor' mission is now completed and playtested and good to go. It's going to be a 2/505 mission in which a single platoon from Dog Company 2/505 will perform the assault on a German artillery position on the morning of D-Day. It's going to be called 'Where all the Glory Lies.' because Brecourt was a 101st mission (don't we all know it) and they're not in my campaign, but it is Brecourt in every other detail. It would be an understatement to say that I have really, REALLY enjoyed playing this one and I know that I will play it again and again as a stand-alone. I hope that it's worthy of standing along side 'Turnbull's Stand'.

Now, here's a funny thing. I am considering adding a further 2/505 mission to this campaign. I have a few maps that I've never used. Before I started work on the Montebourg campaign, I was preparing a fictional campaign featuring US Airborne fighting on D-Day near a fictional French village called Remarque (Of course, it was Ste Mere Eglise' but using a fictional name would allow me to play fast and loose with history and craft it as I liked). I created three maps for the 'Rue d'Remarque' campaign and I think I'll use the map intended for mission #2, 'Crossroads'. The map is the second map I tried making for CMBN so it's not quite up to the standard of the other Montebourg maps but I'm sure I could lick it into shape quite quickly and create a further fictional mission for the 2/505 on D-Day.

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Then again you must have some pretty good sources. I've noted for instance that the German units in the first missions are from 6/26th SS (IIRC). I looked it up (I have the magnificent history of the 12th SS) and it was correct.

Missed this earlier. Sorry I didn't reply sooner. I did a search online for Operation Epsom and one of the sites I found was a tabletop wargame AAR that had a very detailed OB for Epsom. Just a very lucky find for me. I also used info from other wargames to flesh out the details of the German OB in Montebourg. And sometimes, I just made stuff up...

A couple of comments on a further 2/505 mission for this campaign. I was a bit surprised to find that there were only four 2/505 missions in the campaign (Turnbull's Stand, Les Licornets, Stalemate/Breakthrough, and Holding Action.) I don't recall anyone having any real difficulty with any 2/505 mission except for 'Holding Action' which can really bite you if you get AI plan #2. So a sixth 2/505 mission, this time featuring Easy Company might be a very good idea. (And I like the US Paras. They're right up there in my 'favourite-to-play' formations.)

Now, I have a map all ready for this but it's not any location near Ste-Mere-Eglise (It's not set in France at all, actually but in Suffolk!) But it's a beaut and it's never gotten to see the light of day. So I might use it and then call it a deal. I'll get cracking on it this morning and we'll see how long it takes to get a viable mission up and running with two AI plans.

One final point. There were supposed to be two really difficult missions in this campaign, 'Hell in the Hedgerows' (where I think I succeeded) and 'Ecausseville', a 2/8 INF mission which was a terrible defeat for the Allies. I think I might try and up the difficulty of this mission as it should be a real toughie. It was also a good fun fight so that might be time well spent.

After this is done, I think I'm going to call it quits for doing CMx2 stuff from the Allied perspective, (at least no more 16+ mission campaigns anyway) and concentrate on my favourite WW2 side, the Germans.

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Here are a couple of screenshots. First, the AAR screen from my last playthrough. Not a bad result, I can tell you...

BrecourtAAR.jpg

The time on the game clock was -0.53 (that's 53 seconds of extra time) of the potential 10 minutes available.

The mission is 15 minutes long. Yes, 15! That's probably about as much time as Messrs Winters and Co needed to do the job in real life and you're packing a bit more of a punch than the real life Paras were as well. It plays out in remarkably similar fashion as the real life action too.

Brecourt4.jpg

And here's the Company HQ hitting the last VP location. Still just over 4 minutes of game time left.

BTW, after a few more minutes, I'd figured how to do the assault and keep my guys in the trenches while doing so ;)

Brecourt5.jpg

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Right, this is where we are on this. I am not going to add a second mission to the campaign as it will take too long to do and I want to have this finished this weekend. It's not just the time to develop and test the mission but the increased complexity of adding it to the campaign script. It took me quite a while this morning just to add the 'Brecourt' mission to the script in a meaningful way and I'd rather not have to do that again. Just too big a chance that it will stuff something up. Besides, the map just doesn't look 'Montebourg'-like. It might fit in the 'Scottish Corridor' though but I think I'll just create a stand-alone from it as I did with 'USMC Second Storm'.

Here's a quick photie...

Newmap.jpg

So there will be an new mission #2 prior to the Georgian Ridge series of missions. Later today, I want to concentrate on amending the briefings and then I'll get it posted up at the Repository with a list of the changes made.

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How long? Weeks by the sound of it?

I am really hoping to have this up on the Repository before next weekend. That could mean tomorrow or sometime mid-week. I would have it up earlier if I had more time but I'm busy at the moment and can't spend quite as much time designing stuff as I'm accustomed to. I'm hoping to get started work on something meaty in July but for now, I can only do one smallish project. I honestly thought that I'd have it up tonight but there's too much checking to do. 'RtM' is a very complex beast and while I've finished changing the master missions, I have to create all the variants from them once again.

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I'm uploading the revised campaign at the Repository as I type this so it will probably appear sometime later tomorrow. If you guys want to keep the old file, I'd recommend that you make a back-up of it somewhere else or rename the original file before copying the revised version into your campaign folder.

I would have liked to do more but the more I change, the more I have to test and I don't really have the time to do that. I might return to this and create a FINAL version when BFC finally include the captured French tanks. I'd have prefered to use them in 'Turnbull's Stand' and in 'Labrynth'.

As mentioned earlier in this post, the revised campaign contains one new mission. I will probably release a slightly tweaked version as a stand-alone if folks would like that as it's good fun for me to play like that. I deliberately kept the campaign version reasonably easy to win as the player can't afford to sacrifice too many of his core forces pursuing a victory. The stand-alone will be tougher, but not much as it's supposed to be fun.

Next up will probably be the revisions I'd like to make to the Scottish Corridor campaign, i.e. breaking them up into two seperate campaigns and adding the extra missions that I'd originally planned to include but didn't have time. I don't have any plans to change the existing missions though but I will include an option for the player to play them withgreatly extended time limits if that is how they like to play them.

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I just played my way through the first two missions of the new revised 'RtM' and had a blast. The Green troops make quite a difference to the way you play the missions. I added an extra 10 minutes to several of the 2/8 INF missions to allow the player to take things a bit more slowly. As a result, I'm feeling rather generous this morning. The good news is that I've uploaded the extra mission as a stand-alone as well. It should be available for downloading sometime tomorrow. I made almost no change to the campaign version as it is really good fun to play the way it stands. I guess I'm looking to have fun just now rather than playing too carefully.

The stand-alone version is for Single Play v Axis AI only. There is only one German AI plan as it's a recreation of the Brecourt mission so variable German set-ups are not necessary. I don't think anyone would play this H2H as it would be ridiculously easy for the German player to turn his guns at the start of the mission to face the US attack and blast the crap out of them. Same goes with no US attack AI plans. What would be the point?

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