Operational Companion for CMBN (Demonstration) AAR

[Tank Hunter]

Here is a Demonstration of the Operational Companion that I have been trying to build using Vassal game engine. The idea was basically to create a board game that can accompany CMBN when playing against other opponents. For those of you who are not familiar with Vassal, it is a toolset that allows board games to be converted to PC world thereby allowing players to play their favorite board games through email or TCP/IP against other players.

Since CMBN does not have any board game I decided to try and use Vassal and see if I can build one that can be used when playing against other people. The general idea is to provide a larger battlefield which allows for operational decisions before jumping into the tactical world of CMBN. Once completed the board game will offer people to setup their operational battles covering everything from single Companies and Battalion battles to the entire Armies of the Normandy campaign. The first version of the board game will include US Army and Wehrmacht thereby covering the same ground as the original CMBN game. If there is enough interest I will consider adding Commonwealth Units.

For purpose of this demo I will use a beta version of my creation presenting a fictional battle within a historical context of the invasion. You will be able to follow as two Battalions of the 82nd Airborne deploy over Normandy on June 6th, 1944. Before we proceed to the battle itself I want to explain all the different letters and numbers that you normally see on the counters and how they relate to CMBN.

On the Top of Each Counter each unit has its’ characteristics, these are from left to right Experience/Motivation/Fitness/Leadership/Supply, in the middle there is the standard NATO counter explaining what type of unit it is. On the left side of the marker you can see the current headcount of the unit. On the right side a value representing movement value is shown. This value is dynamic and is decreased by the player as the marker is moved. Below the movement value is color bar showing which unit belong to the same battle echelon or unit. On the bottom of the marker is the representation of units Attack and Defense strength. These values are used when simulating battles outside CMBN environment.

As mentioned above I will showcase the 82nd airborne jumping into Normandy on June 6th 1944. The Battalions represented are the 1st and 2nd Battalion of the 508th Regiment.

The unit participated in Operation Overlord, jumping into Normandy on at 2:15 a.m. on 6 June 1944. Their immediate objectives were to capture Sainte-Mère-Église, and secure crossings at the Merderet River near laFiere and Chef-du-Pont. Like most paratroop units in Operation Overlord, they were dropped in the wrong locations and had extraordinary difficulty linking up with each other.

The opponents in this battle are parts of the 709th German Division namely 729th Fortress Grenadier Regiment supported by section of the 1709th Artillery Regiment. The German Airlanding units are unfortunately not present in the game and cannot take any part of this battle. This is my first real test of the engine so I suspect I’ll find few things that will need to be fixed. Comment, ask questions and enjoy!

[Tank Hunter]

Before we deploy the units let's take a look what we have to work with.

We have two battalions scheduled as reinforcement on turn 1. These are airborne units so they can be dropped wherever I like within the designated operational area. As you can see there are borders on the map letting me know where this battle should take place. This is up to the scenario designer to decide.

All my units are Veterans with High Motivation and +1 in leadership. All these values may change based on the battle outcomes and Headcount. The objectives are the two bridges West of Ste-Mere Église and the town itself. As shown on the map we know that some kind of unit already occupies the town so dropping the unit directly on the town may not be the best idea.

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[Fizou]

Thanks for doing this TH.. very interesting.

I have a question regarding the paradropp.. will unis end up exactly where you intend or is it possible that they will scatter?

Will follow this with much interest

[Tank Hunter]

Thanks for doing this TH.. very interesting.

I have a question regarding the paradropp.. will unis end up exactly where you intend or is it possible that they will scatter?

Will follow this with much interest

Nope, the units will in most cases scatter and split as you will see soon.

[Fizou]

Cool, thats just what I wanted to hear

[Tank Hunter]

The next step is to decide where I want to drop my units. I must be careful not to drop them on potential enemy units in which case they will suffer heavy casualties so I decide to concentrate one Battalion directly on Ste-Mere Église and the 2nd one to capture the southern bridge together with the task of blocking any reinforcements that may be coming from the west.

After the deployment it is time to Drop each unit as shown in the screenshot below. This simulates the first step of the drop where the units jumps and may split into smaller units. Once the unit is dropped each unit has to perform a scatter check to see where it will actually land.

[Tank Hunter]

Here is the result of the Drop and Scatter. As you can see the units have mostly divided into Platoons and have also suffered in Headcount loss to simulate the confusion the Allies suffered during this night Drop. Some have dropped to 50% of the original headcount!! The platoons can be recombined into Companies again if a player wishes to do that.

This concludes the first US turn.

[sburke]

Just out of curiosity, what did you use for a factor for scattering? Also what is the scale of the map?

(and this does look very cool)

[Tank Hunter]

Just out of curiosity, what did you use for a factor for scattering? Also what is the scale of the map?

(and this does look very cool)

The scale is: 1.2 km/hex or rougly 0.75 miles/hex

Each Day turn represents about 6 hours. Nights are considered as one turn.

Weather conditions change between Night/Day shift (Night/Day weather).

Scattering may change the landing zone up to three hexes in each direction (x,y). There is ofcourse a chance that no scattering will occur for a particular unit.

[kipanderson]

Tank Hunter,

Congratulations... as with others, great to see this .

Off to work now but look forward to a good read this evening....

Good to see all the interest in operations by Tank Hunter and others...

All the best,

Kip.

[Tank Hunter]

Turn 2

Finally the Germans appeared and attacked one of my scattered platoons. The battle suggested was a simulated one and I chose to fight it which in reality was not a very wise decision since I’m heavily outnumbered and have not yet established any formations.

As you can see the marker deployed by the German player suggest 2:1 in favor of the Attacker or 66% chance of him winning. The attacker basically updates the simulation marker according to the situation and the terrain attacked. The module then calculates the probability of a victory. I could have opted to Retreat and fight another day but I chose to simulate and the attacker got a Major Victory as indicated by MV on the marker.

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Next Step is to Apply Major Defeat to my unit in which case headcount needs to be adjusted by -40% and characteristics are automatically changed to reflect the battle result. Since the unit dropped to 40% headcount which it 10% less of minimum required in CM it automatically went into Reorganization mode which makes it useless until the unit is brought back to strength.

One other thing that appeared from the simulated battle are the losses of Attacking and Defensive units. As you can see below the Attack counter it says AL:8 / DL:8

These represent the unit and equipment losses for the attacker and the defender. I have to update my unit Properties to reflect these losses, HQs and heavy Equip are valued as 2p and Squads and light equip are valued as 1 point. Deducting all 8 points from this unit makes it practically destroyed so I can just remove it from the board all together.

A better option would have been to retreat since the unit was not surrounded.

[Tank Hunter]

The battle between the scattered airborne platoons and the Germans has started.

One of my squads run into a wall of fire with devastating consequences

I also learned that QBs don't support Headcount. This can either be ignored for CM battles or the players can use the scenario editor to setup a battle including the headcount.

[Fizou]

Very interesting Tank Hunter. Im following with great interest. I have a question regarding battle results, Im missing total victory/defeat in the dropdown menu. Why is that not a electable result?

[Tank Hunter]

Very interesting Tank Hunter. Im following with great interest. I have a question regarding battle results, Im missing total victory/defeat in the dropdown menu. Why is that not a electable result?

That's actually a mistake from me side. It is going to be added for the next build. I've actually been able to identify several issues during this demo, some of them are already fixed. I appreciate all the questions and comments. The whole idea behind this demo was to run a game and see how the different rule settings hold up. I'm trying to make it as easy as possible to run an operation using Vassal by trying to minimize the manual bookkeeping as much as possible.

[kipanderson]

Tank Hunter, hi,

Yes... very intriguing stuff. I look forward to see this develop over time. If you do produce a manual one day I will be first in the queue .

Look forward to the game becoming available.

All the best,

Kip.

[Fizou]

Thanks Tank Hunter. Im very happy you are doing this presentation. Looking forward to your next post

[Tank Hunter]

Thanks guys! The goal is to complete this project. I actually feel I have a pretty decent foundation in place right now. I have also started with the manual which of course will be required otherwise noone but me would probably understand what to do with the module. =)

What I have left is fixing some logic. Currently if a unit drops in Headcount it will also drop in experience and possibly leadership. This is to simulate that replacements have less experience hence the whole unit will drop in experience. The problem right now is that the experience drops as soon as the Headcount drops to a certain level. It shouldn't do that, it should drop only when unit is resupplied with new men.

I also need to finish the map, only 1/4 of it is currently done. Then I need to add all the formations and test Mechanized Infantry. They have the ability to leave their vehicles completely or 50% of them before they engage.

Once I have everything setup I'll need couple of people to test it before it can be released to the pubilc.

[The Steppenwulf]

I'm interested to know about game saving for this. This process is surely facilitated by vassal itself and outputted in a standard format for all vassal modules. Actually, I'd really like to examine the save data format for myself, would you be kind enough to post a game save file (from your module) here on the forum so I can download it and take a look.

Thanks in advance

[kipanderson]

Tank Hunter, hi,

I am amazed that you are able to do all this within Vassal. You must be taking it to the limit and in fact beyond.

Looking forward to the next instalment .

All interesting stuff,

All the best,

Kip.

[Tank Hunter]

Tank Hunter, hi,

I am amazed that you are able to do all this within Vassal. You must be taking it to the limit and in fact beyond.

Looking forward to the next instalment .

All interesting stuff,

All the best,

Kip.

Vassal is pretty flexible actually. First time I opened it I was completely lost. Over time you learn how the functions work which opens up the design possibilities. Everything I’ve done so far is made of built in Vassal functions, no external coding has been made.

[Tank Hunter]

While the CM battle is fought I decided to simulate another battle. As you can see above I've engaged 2 German companies from 4 sides, a German artillery platoon is occupying the same hex which provides the Germans with direct support. Note in the picture above how red arrows indicate which units are part of the attack. The attacker sets up the simulation marker by entering the attack and defense values of all engaged units. The attacker also selects the terrain modifier. In this case the German get a defense bonus by defending in Bocage Hex. Depending on type of terrain either attacker or defender may get a bonus.

Once all the factors are entered the defending side executes the simulation or retreats if that is a selectable option. As you can see the marker provides the players with rough estimate of success of the attack. In this case the dice must be higher than 5 if this attack is to be considered successful.

Here is a closer look of the German forces.

Note the red bar on the units. This shows that these units are cut from their supply. I will show supply in future posts. What happened in this case was that the Airborne units cut the supply lines by occupying surrounding roads. Roads are crucial for receiving supplies from the supply depot. In the latest build all units that are out of supply will suffer a motivation penalty for each night turn that they are out of supply. Units are always supplied during night turns. Players decide how they wish to distribute their supply points.

This post will actually conclude this part of the demonstration.

Over the last couple of days I have done some major changes to the module. Since the beginning of the design one particular thing bothered me and that was how to represent the different squads/teams/mmgs etc. The first design incorporated properties sheet for every unit where all the parts of the unit were listed. THis can be seen in on of the posts above. After each simulated or CM battle players had to update these sheets manually. This was a manual boring work. It also required that players looked at these sheets prior to each CM battle in order to select the correct number of squads, vehicles and so on.

This has now radically changed since I’ve removed these sheets completely. The latest version incorporates these factors directly on the markers which allows me to manipulate these values directly in simulated battles. That saves a lot of time for the players involved. It makes it also easier for the players to setup CM battles since they can see all the values directly on the markers. This radical change has pushed me back a bit since it requires update of all units and some rigorous testing. Next part of the demo will be more focused on normal units and showcase the supply procedure.

[Fizou]

Thanks for sharing TH. Its great that the system is evolving and it sounds really interesting. Looking forward to learning more about the supply system.

[Fenris]

Vassal is pretty flexible actually. First time I opened it I was completely lost. Over time you learn how the functions work which opens up the design possibilities. Everything I’ve done so far is made of built in Vassal functions, no external coding has been made.

VASSAL is awesome, I think the fact there are hundreds of board game conversions available attest to it's flexibility.

My speck of advice... Use template pieces as much as possible! Updating dozens and dozens of game pieces when you work out a better way to do something is mind numbingly tedious

Keep it up, this looks very nice.

-F

[noob]

Does Vassal have hidden movement ?

[Fenris]

Does Vassal have hidden movement ?

Yes it can IIRC.

-F