Scenarios you play...and the others

[Childress]

Not mentioning any names and I salute the designers. But...

1- Heavily wooded infantry battles, as in 70%+ of the map. (personal preference)

2- The units are not faced correctly, for example facing the rear as in the one I d'loaded yesterday.

3-  Formation elements like infantry squads that are dispersed over the setup zone for no tactical reason and have to be re-grouped into platoons.

4- The entire force is graded as Crack or Elite. With rare exceptions, these battles get deleted immediately.

5- Reinforcements not mentioned in the Briefing.

Anyone else with pet peeves?

 

[RockinHarry]

Glad, I didn´t kept working on my Todtenbruch scenario, which makes about 95% heavy forest and pure infantry!

Oh...I do not really like briefings and notes, that go beyond single page and any other textual overkill.

[Childress]

'Glad, I didn´t kept working on my Todtenbruch scenario, which makes about 95% heavy forest and pure infantry!  '

No, go for it! Les gouts and les couleurs ne se discutent pas.

[mjkerner]

Yes, go for it, Harry. I'll even playtest it for you.

[Ithikial_AU]

9 hours ago, Childress said:

5- Reinforcements not mentioned in the Briefing.

Anyone else with pet peeves?

 

Agree with all your comments except this one. Depending on the narrative the scenario designer is trying to weave, sometimes it makes sense not to outline the plan/reinforcement schedule down to the letter - particularly if your battle is admist a chaotic situation such as a retreat or or dependent on other actions outside of the scope of the player.

Additional pet peeves:

6 - No briefing or a minimal briefing that is out of character for the setting/narrative.

7 - Weird and unrealistic force compositions. (Yeah we'd all like a company of King Tigers on the field but...)

[Ithikial_AU]

9 hours ago, Childress said:

5- Reinforcements not mentioned in the Briefing.

Anyone else with pet peeves?

 

Agree with all your comments except this one. Depending on the narrative the scenario designer is trying to weave, sometimes it makes sense not to outline the plan/reinforcement schedule down to the letter - particularly if your battle is admist a chaotic situation such as a retreat or or dependent on other actions outside of the scope of the player.

Additional pet peeves:

6 - No briefing or a minimal briefing that is out of character for the setting/narrative.

7 - Weird and unrealistic force compositions. (Yeah we'd all like a company of King Tigers on the field but...)

[RockinHarry]

14 hours ago, Childress said:

'Glad, I didn´t kept working on my Todtenbruch scenario, which makes about 95% heavy forest and pure infantry!  '

No, go for it! Les gouts and les couleurs ne se discutent pas.

Oh...then you´d likely just beeing part of a very small bunch of players, who would´ve fun with something like that.   Would´ve revolved around the actions of the 60th Infantry Regiment, (9th Inf. Div.), between 22nd to 25th of september 1944, as described in this AAR:

http://home.scarlet.be/~sh446368/60th-inf-siegfried-line-3.html

With oncoming CMFB, I decided to work on actions of the same unit, starting in october 6th, 1944 instead.

http://home.scarlet.be/~sh446368/60th-inf-siegfried-line-5.html

That could include the well known SL battle "The clearing", which wasn´t modelled realistically in any the CMX games yet. But first lets see what will be among the CMFB stock scenarios. Who knows....

11 hours ago, mjkerner said:

Yes, go for it, Harry. I'll even playtest it for you.

Thanks Mark!  Noted...

7.a Zig Zag roads. I oftenly wonder even some the old hand CM map makers do not attempt to work around that ugly stuff, when making historical maps.

7.b Improperly used diagonal road sections and transitions, causing cut out edges and other ugly effects. (blame the manual for not telling the user how to set up roads properly with given tile sets)

[RockinHarry]

17 hours ago, Childress said:

3-  Formation elements like infantry squads that are dispersed over the setup zone for no tactical reason and have to be re-grouped into platoons.

I could imagine something like that comes with a mission that has setup zones and AI plans for both players and the particular side is actually meant to be played by the AIP (which does not care about orderly placed OOB´s and rips formations apart anyway).

[Bulletpoint]

"Turd forests".

It's a term I've come up with for those maps where the designer believes forests are made by painting a turd-like area with 100% heavy forest tiles, then adding maximum number of trees for every tile.

Because to do a forest you need to paint it with forest tiles right? That's what they are there for? And forests have lots of trees, right?

The result is a ridiculous, impenetrable and ugly thing to look at. In real life, even the heaviest forest terrain has some patches of less density, some open areas, and they don't just stop at an arbitrary border. Rather, there will be some smaller trees, some bushes, etc.

(this is a pet peeve of mine, but fortunately it's rare - I've also seen many designers doing great looking and very believable forest terrain)

[Childress]

'Would´ve revolved around the actions of the 60th Infantry Regiment, (9th Inf. Div.), between 22nd to 25th of september 1944, as described in this AAR: '

'Would've'? Do it, RH. Lots of CMers will dig it. Just that infantry slogs under forest canopies are not my cup of tea (as indicated*). Go full Monty and make a Hurtgen Forest campaign once the Bulge game is released.

[mjkerner]

But Harry, take into consideration Bulletpoint's comments about forests (I know you would have anyway...just showing support for Bulletpoint's...er, bulletpoints.)

[kohlenklau]

Making a scenario or campaign is a lot of work. I took a huge break and now am splashing around in the shallow end.

I guess it would be good to send the scenario author a PM with the feedback, maybe he/she can improve for the future or possibly do a revised version.

Maybe feedback was sent already. But it takes effort from someone looking at the scenario to do that and I can see if the scenario looks so "primitive and poorly done", that you delete the scenario and move on quickly and don't worry to pass on feedback. Maybe leave a short basic comment "bad briefing, turd forests" (or in code? "bb&tf") at the download site so others know the issue? And that step reminds yourself not to download it again later on when you forget you tried it the first time!

 

Edited March 30, 2016 by kohlenklau

[Childress]

'Turd forests.' LOL.

Men! Put on your galoshes!

[RockinHarry]

1 hour ago, mjkerner said:

But Harry, take into consideration Bulletpoint's comments about forests (I know you would have anyway...just showing support for Bulletpoint's...er, bulletpoints.)

Yep, no turd forests please. lol

Forest tiles (particular the heavy one) is good for blocking out vehicular movements at parts of a map, when needed, but beside that, I make my own forest and underbrush tile substitues (as you know). Also I don´t want the hurtgen forest to blow up my crappy computer and GFX (see my sig).  

[Vanir Ausf B]

7 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

7.a Zig Zag roads. I oftenly wonder even some the old hand CM map makers do not attempt to work around that ugly stuff, when making historical maps.

This

[G. Smiley]

13 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

This

What is the work around for this?

[George MC]

5 minutes ago, G. Smiley said:

What is the work around for this?

The designer has to use straighter roads - what i do is draw in the road "as is" then using "sand" tiles I draw a straighter road line approximating to the drawn in one that straightens out the zig zags. thereafter it becomes an artistic representation if the original road line but one in which in game it a/ looks more pleasing b/ is easier for the player to plot vehicle's movements.

I dislike zig zags with a vengeance and go so far as to say I tend to exit out of a scenario if I see them. they make plotting vehicle movement a mare and I just can't be arsed with that!

[G. Smiley]

Just now, George MC said:

The designer has to use straighter roads - what i do is draw in the road "as is" then using "sand" tiles I draw a straighter road line approximating to the drawn in one that straightens out the zig zags. thereafter it becomes an artistic representation if the original road line but one in which in game it a/ looks more pleasing b/ is easier for the player to plot vehicle's movements.

I dislike zig zags with a vengeance and go so far as to say I tend to exit out of a scenario if I see them. they make plotting vehicle movement a mare and I just can't be arsed with that!

Thanks, interesting, will test it in the Editor to make sure I understand what you mean.

[George MC]

6 minutes ago, G. Smiley said:

Thanks, interesting, will test it in the Editor to make sure I understand what you mean.

You'll find you have to fudge placing buildings etc especially if you are using an overlay based on a map. So it can take some time to sort so your CM map is a reasonable representation of it's real world counterpart. In an ideal world we'd have curvy roads!

I've also used the hard dirt tiles to paint a curvy road (the hard dirt tiles flatten the surface) - this is good is you are making maps in CMRT where often roads were little more than hard packed earth. You can see this in my scenario Carius at Malinova where I used this so i could accurately create the key terrain, roads and buildings.

[Bulletpoint]

5 hours ago, George MC said:

You'll find you have to fudge placing buildings etc especially if you are using an overlay based on a map. So it can take some time to sort so your CM map is a reasonable representation of it's real world counterpart. In an ideal world we'd have curvy roads!

I've also used the hard dirt tiles to paint a curvy road (the hard dirt tiles flatten the surface)

I also love real curvy... roads. On huge ... tracts of land.

Seriously though I'm surprised you say hard dirt tiles flatten the surface. I never noticed this. How does it work - you mean it changes the elevation of that point?

[landser]

Rep for the Python reference. But the fourth one stayed up. An' that's what your gonna
get, lad -- the strongest castle in these lands.

Edited March 31, 2016 by landser

[George MC]

8 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

I also love real curvy... roads. On huge ... tracts of land.

Seriously though I'm surprised you say hard dirt tiles flatten the surface. I never noticed this. How does it work - you mean it changes the elevation of that point?

Sorry my bad - I meant dirt lot - it flattens the ground every so slightly bit like roads do.

Edited March 31, 2016 by George MC

[Childress]

' Forest tiles (particular the heavy one) is good for blocking out vehicular movements at parts of a map, when needed, but beside that, I make my own forest and underbrush tile substitues (as you know). '

Reading accounts of the Hurtgen Forest campaign you encounter the frustration of mortar teams finding it difficult to find open spaces under the heavily wooded canopy from which to lob their shells. It seems that the CM engine cannot account for this limitation.

[A Canadian Cat]

Sure it can. Mortar team will not fire if they are too close to a building or under too much tree cover.

[General Jack Ripper]

On ‎3‎/‎30‎/‎2016 at 9:37 AM, Bulletpoint said:

"Turd forests".

Dear god do I agree with this 100%. If you're going to represent terrain, at least go outside and look at some terrain first.

As far as scenario pet peeves go:

• "You are allocated all of our available artillery," the briefing says, while the scenario designer gives you a half-empty battery of pack howitzers.
• "You will receive tank support," the briefing says, and ONE SINGLE tank shows up, even though the smallest tactical unit of tanks is the Platoon.
• Scenario Briefings that go on for more than two pages. I want to play a game, not read a novel. If you want to include a huge background information dump, put it in a .pdf or word document, then I'll happily read it while eating breakfast.
• Maps the size of an entire county. If you can't cram your scenario into a 2x2km square, then make it a short campaign. I have no desire to play with single-digit frame rates on a 9km² map.
• Handing two entire battalions to the player and saying "sort this mess out!" No offense to huge scenario makers, but I never even bothered playing "To The Volga", yet someone is always trying to build it again. If it takes me longer to set up the battle than what is on the game clock, I'm not even going to try.
• Finally, my biggest pet peeve of all, microscopic setup zones. If you don't trust the player to set up their own troops, then don't allow any setup zones. I especially hate having something like a single squad in a separate setup zone from the rest of it's platoon, or having a unit in a setup zone that is only 4 action spots. Why bother?