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Ithikial's Combat Mission Career Record System


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I've always thought there was a good correlation between wargamers also being data nerds. If wargamers can argue for days over armour angles and gun calibers, they probably also have an interest in having a record of all their past glorious victories and unmentionable defeats. Given I have the artistic ability ranging somewhere between stick figures and... well that's about it... I created a fully automated Excel Workbook a couple of years ago for the data nerds of the community.

The idea is the player enters results from the 'After Action Report' screen plus a few other easy to obtain bits of info about the battle just fought such a force selection, date, weather etc. Once entered the workbook goes away and automatically creates lots of pretty graphs and a record keeping service for all time. Over the past few weeks I've updated the WW2 version of the workbook to have it ready for CMFB. I've also taken the opportunity to throw in the following new features:

- Added a new column for Aircraft Destroyed which is now possible in the WW2 titles.

- Better filtering options for some of the automated graphs and tables.

- New CMFB relevant locations and force options.

- An automated 'Campaign Ribbon' award system. (Think Achievements - but both silly yet diverse enough to see how much of a dedicated CM player you are)

- Numerous behind the scenes bug and error corrections.

 

I hope to have this released sometime over the weekend following my loyal tester "Mad Mike" gave it the all clear. I just need to write up a new Read Me document. Anyone overly curious can find the older version (including the CM Modern Era version) over at CMMODS:

http://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/?p=134

 

And for those sending in queries about my YouTube channel, I'll get back to it when real life settles back down a bit. :)

 

Preview pics of the new version below. Thanks and hope you enjoy.

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  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, [MyIS] Buffpuff said:

Ithikial are you aware of any compatibility issues using Open Office with that spreadsheet? I stumbled on your piece of work a few weeks ago and started using it but the graphs don't seem to be working on Open Office (currently using 4.1.2 version)

Yep well aware of it and nothing that can be done unfortunately. Using MS Excel on this end.

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I know I'm a bit late, but thanks for updating this! 

I personally love using the career recorder. I find it especially useful for recording individual campaigns as well as operational layer campaigns, such as CMPzC. It really adds a lot of depth and continuity. Plus, its a lot more convenient that manually writing down all the casualty numbers and battle info. The presentation of data as graphs and charts is also very useful and really helps to visualize an operation. You can literally see the ebb and flow of the conflict.

Highly recommend it to everyone, as its very easy to use. As long as you have Windows Excel you're good to go. Thanks again!

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41 minutes ago, IanL said:

Is there a readme in the download? I seem to recall there was. If not I'll have a go sometime this week and write it up. That is only if @lthikial_AU doesn't beat me to it. :) Since I know I learned how from him.

Yes there are some PDFs attached to the download that give you a brief rundown of what it is, etc.

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There's a PDF read me that's been updated for this release. Part of that read me is about carrying over your results from the previous version. (Towards the bottom). There is also a video on my YouTube channel about how you go about entering results for the 'super-noobs' of Excel. :)

If you know how to push keys of a keyboard and copy/paste you will be fine. :P

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15 minutes ago, Ithikial_AU said:

There's a PDF read me that's been updated for this release. Part of that read me is about carrying over your results from the previous version. (Towards the bottom). There is also a video on my YouTube channel about how you go about entering results for the 'super-noobs' of Excel. :)

If you know how to push keys of a keyboard and copy/paste you will be fine. :P

Even my super-noob status figured it out! :P

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Cheers IanL, hope you enjoy.

This whole system is based around being the record from the view of one person. The next step would be to expand it out to a new 'sister product' that is an all encompassing workbook for campaigns between multiple opponents - that is popular with the CM club scene. It's doable but qutie a bit of work. It will be tough to hit that sweet spot where it's a useful aid to most campaign managers who work with different rules sets to represent operational level play.

Something that works out some key stats for each battle they can quickly edit in the Editor OOB's would be the first step. Anyway would need buy in from different campaign managers (and time) before I commit to such an undertaking. :)

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Slightly off topic but when talking about stats I wish we were given more, KIA, WIA, MIA, and vehicles destroyed stats are well and good but wouldn't you like:

 

- Artillery kill statistics (I hate not knowing if my 81mm strikes were effective)

- You had 10 killed in action but 5 were from enemy artillery, 3 were from MG bunker, 2 from a platoon HQ (more detailed casualty stats)

- The same for WIA

- Casualty/Condition percentage. This would HUGELY help when designing parameters in the scenario editor.

- A highlight for the friendly unit with the highest casualty count

- Medals awarded to friendly units based upon preset scenario conditions. Just another way to immerse the player and give them a nod for a job well done

- Fun stats like least distance traveled by unit X, sprint distance by unit Y, 

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11 hours ago, [MyIS] Buffpuff said:

Slightly off topic but when talking about stats I wish we were given more, KIA, WIA, MIA, and vehicles destroyed stats are well and good but wouldn't you like:

 

- Artillery kill statistics (I hate not knowing if my 81mm strikes were effective)

- You had 10 killed in action but 5 were from enemy artillery, 3 were from MG bunker, 2 from a platoon HQ (more detailed casualty stats)

- The same for WIA

- Casualty/Condition percentage. This would HUGELY help when designing parameters in the scenario editor.

- A highlight for the friendly unit with the highest casualty count

- Medals awarded to friendly units based upon preset scenario conditions. Just another way to immerse the player and give them a nod for a job well done

- Fun stats like least distance traveled by unit X, sprint distance by unit Y, 

Simply not possible until BF makes that kind of information avaialble to the player post battle. I remember seeing the artillery one being mentioned a number of times on the forums but the others not so much.

My little tool relies entering data regarding whatever info is at the players finger tips once an engagement is over.

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31 minutes ago, Ithikial_AU said:

Simply not possible until BF makes that kind of information avaialble to the player post battle. I remember seeing the artillery one being mentioned a number of times on the forums but the others not so much.

My little tool relies entering data regarding whatever info is at the players finger tips once an engagement is over.

I think that was the intent of BuffPuff's 'off-topic' comment; it was a request directed at BF, rather than you.

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OK I finally got to this today over my lunch hour - shhhhh :)

First This new version is 20Mb while the previous version was just over 1Mb.  Is that expected?  At first I thought it was something that happened during my data migration so I looked at the original - nope its is that big.

Second the WWII version has the PDF for the Modern game so there were no data migration instructions.  Since I did it before I tried it my self - got a ton of really cryptic messages about columns and data cell values that already existed and did I want to use the exiting ones or ??? I did not understand the other option.   Things looked OK once I was don but then I realized there were new data columns so I throw that first attempt away and started again.  This time copy and pasting the data areas where the columns match. So, that meant one copy for the basic scenario data (date, forces etc) one copy for the allied casualty data and one copy of the axis casualty data.  I got the same errors that made not real sense to me.  After it was all done the data looked OK and the sums were correct.

PasteMessage.jpg

 

Third: Since things on the data tab looked OK I started looking at graphs.  Some had a strange mix of date by year and by month in the axis but I figured that out and got it consistent.  Most things looked fine.  The one exception is the Casualties Caused by Country graph.  For that tab two of the graphs are empty but the other two are fine.  What are you using for the data table that the graph is based on?

GraphsMissingData.jpg

Before I enter any new data I just want to clear my questions above up.

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47 minutes ago, IanL said:

PasteMessage.jpg

I had the same error there on my 1st Excel-noob try. Taking a note from Ithikial's read-me file:

 

I’m a loyal customer! How do I copy over data from a previous version?

1.       Open a copy of both the old version (with existing game results) and the blank new version in Microsoft Excel.

2.       On the older version with your existing data, click and drag to select all cells starting at cell ‘B22’ and down to ‘J1300.’ (Don’t worry if most of these are blank).

3.       While the cells are selected copy these cells. Top right in the menu bar or ‘ctrl-c’ shortcut.

4.       In the new workbook select the cell ‘B67.’ Click on the arrow under ‘Paste Button’ and go to ‘Paste Special.’ In the pop up window, ensure you are only going to paste the values of what you have copied and then hit OK.

5.       Repeat the process from Step 2 onwards for the cells ‘K22’ for every column out to ‘AI22’ (and down to 1300), but excluding the columns with italicised numbers.

6.       Save the new workbook. Close and reopen it to populate the graphs and tables.

These extra few steps are because there is a new column topic! ‘Battle Location’ to record the country you fought the battle in. Should be easy at the moment to go back and fill in. CMBN = France or Holland. CMFI = Italy. As the CMx2 series expands to other theatres, like the Eastern Front, this topic will become more of an interest and allow you to divide up your results by theatre of operations.

The paste special is what I was screwing up and the important thing is to just paste the values or you get the error messages and the graph results like you've had. 

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