Omaha Beach West

[Heinrich505]

Pete,

  I just dusted through some of that amazing collection of stuff you put together for that potential HASL.  Got all misty-eyed imagining how cool it would have been pushing cardboard counters across the beach.  There is a crazy amount of detail in those items, not to mention the scenarios you were putting together.  It is a potential gold mine for use in this project.

Heinrich505

[carcer]

Thanks Rocketman I was actually looking for a full text version of that article without luck. I've been trying to get the basic layout of wn73, but again elevation makes it a pain to do. If my map ends up good enough for that section feel free to use or modify it if you want. A fortified house , idea, layout, or example would be really helpful; so far I have this (spoilers):

https://goo.gl/photos/kZYLS268oke9bE6P8

and this is what it's looking like from the draw:

https://goo.gl/photos/qF9g4A7jx3aixdDs7

seems I may have been wrong on the short barrel 75mm tank turret from earlier and it was probably a 37mm gun instead. I have four actual AT bunkers laid out for the map as encasements. WN70 had one encasement without a finished roof and a 50/50 chance there was a leIG18 in there. Will probably go for the 50mm AT bunker option since I'm guessing the infantry gun didn't have a high armor penetration value? WN72 had an 88mm AT gun and a 50mm. The 88mm is a hard choice between just the 75mm or the Russian conversion. Russian conversion to go in line with the war booty items the static divisions had; or the 75 for that little bit more of an AT value. Lastly on WN73 there was an updated Belgian/French (?) FK 97(f) which luckfully matches the values of the German 50mm AT gun. For gun turrets I'm thinking of just going with caliber/barrel equivalent, but for that route I would like to cut out the special round attachments some of the German guns have. I have no idea how to do that. Ammo quantity? Another historical accuracy issue to deal with later is that it seems a majority of the 50mm AT guns on Omaha had longer barrels (Navy gun version?). Might not really be a difference.

Edited June 9, 2017 by carcer

[JonS]

The only modification you can make to ammo is the total count - you can't edit the mix of rounds.

 

edit: have you had a look at the aerial imagery available here:

https://ignrando.fr/boutique/patrimoine/espace-photo.html

It's a while since I used it, I don't speak French, and it looks like they've changed the layout, but! They have aerial imagery covering all of france from about the 1950s, and particular locations from earlier. It's likely you'll be able to get aerial imagery of OMAHA from not too long after the war, before substantial changes were made. IIRC, they also have very good topo maps available as one of the layers.

 

Also:

http://ncap.org.uk/search/archive/1?free-text=yes#free-text=yes&zoom=2&lat=6566017.18158&lon=1350895.91756&layers=BT

although because they're trying to milk a public resource, unless you pay through the nose finding anything can be a bit hit-and-miss

Edited June 9, 2017 by JonS

[JoMac]

On 5/10/2017 at 10:07 PM, carcer said:

.......so....college semester finally finished. Been working on an Omaha Beach map. The western sector. Curious what some people's thoughts and opinions are on invasion maps and what can potentially make them fun and tactical- contradictory to the idea of flood rush the dead space. I'll throw up some screens in the next couple days. I found a neat way to have an invasion fleet horizon texture and an even more cool, plus convincing way to have landing craft. You all will love it. Might have to go texture hunting though as the Higgins steel plates are from Men of War. Any help with reference photos and force compositions will be greatly appreciated. Dog Red - Charlie (maybe Fox Green?). I've already mined Steven Zaloga and critical hits board game. I'll provide more details when I can such as goals and ideas for balance.

Levi

Proper Landings wont work in CMx2...MG's & HE are way Over-Modeled and your troops, well, will literally die to the last man within an hour...Your better off playing it in CMx1, 

[Bulletpoint]

2 hours ago, JoMc67 said:

Proper Landings wont work in CMx2...MG's & HE are way Over-Modeled

I believe they actually toned down the effects of HE compared to how deadly it is in real life. Because the troops tend to bunch up for technical reasons.

Also, while MGs are quite effective in the game, I noticed they tend to shift the target point around between bursts, instead of becoming more and more accurate as they zero in on the target (talking about aimed fire at spotted targets here, not area fire).

So actually, with a bit of luck and distance, a target can survive for a surprisingly long time even in the open, whereas in real life, it would be a matter of adjusting the aim until the tracer was on target.

To observe this effect in the game, go down to ground level at the MG's location and zoom in on the target (4-500m distance) using the X key. You should be able to observe that the MG shifts the aiming point around in an apparent random manner. To me, it looks like it's just trying to saturate the square the infantry target is in, rather than to hit individual soldiers. Maybe it's supposed to model aim being thrown off slightly by the recoil of each burst?

In any case, I personally don't think MGs are overmodelled currently.

But, that being said, I am not too keen on WW1-style "run into the machinegun fire" scenarios either. This map looks like it will be very well done, but how the gameplay will be depends on much more than just the terrain.

Edited June 9, 2017 by Bulletpoint

[A Canadian Cat]

Indeed you will not likely want to play multiple beach landings. I did the first few missions of the blue and grey campaign and one was enough.

@Bulletpoint is spot on for HE. As for MGs he might even have a point there too but they are much better than they were. In the original game you could put a HMG behind some bocage and then run a platoon across 600m of empty field and always take out the HMG. That is under modelled. After BFC tweaked the MG effects it became impossible to run a platoon across and an empty field and take out the HGM. So, much better.

To succeed you need to combine the straight running across the open with taking advantage of any little terrain feature you can and doing some suppression and concentration of fire on key points of the defence to support those guys running in the open. It is challenging and draining.

[slysniper]

46 minutes ago, IanL said:

To succeed you need to combine the straight running across the open with taking advantage of any little terrain feature you can and doing some suppression and concentration of fire on key points of the defence to support those guys running in the open. It is challenging and draining.

Yes, a beach landing scenario is not one to try every day, it should be a challenge. And with the present way the game is working. It can be made to be just that, a very hard task.

Not sure, but the last time I played one I believe it was after the above corrections. So I recalled it was very pressing to advance even vs the AI.

But I remember, every unit was important to me that was packing smoke. I had to shift all my forces to a very small area of the front to manage to punch through and that I used a ton of ammo to try and keep the few units I needed to on defense, pinned or suppressed. And every shell hole and shallow change in terrain becomes critical to moving of troops.

personally I enjoy such a challenge, but even for me I only like to play one once in a great while, sure is not enjoyable to do a bunch in a row.

The other factor, many players really do not have correct game play skills for such a task, so they find it impossible. (But it has always been a task as to how hard to design a game to be. What is perfect for one person can be to hard or to easy for other players.)

So as a designer of a scenario, getting it right is all a matter of opinion. design it for what you feel is right and don't take to much out of what others say.  Its a talent to learn what and what not to use from input from others. Gamers can give you some of the best advice and the worst. So you need to judge it also. 

 

Edited June 9, 2017 by slysniper

[Pete Wenman]

 

Just putting this out there, as I'm not sure it was ever otherwise released - Fox Green - Easy Red - Collville sur Mer including WN61 and WN62

This map is 2256m wide, 2000 deep (but this includes a chunk of the English Channel) and covers inland for just over 1k from the the bluffs, and so includes the villages of Collville sur Mer and Cabourg. 

colleville_rc2.btt

This is not my map. but rather one made by Marc Brergman and so he deserves all the plaudits.

P

Edited June 9, 2017 by Pete Wenman

[carcer]

Only have a second but I'll definitely check out those aerials and look up that Blue and Grey campaign to see how that author did things as well as the map above, sounds pretty cool. During brief testing it seemed the US side was the one that's overpowered because of the tank support. The MG's seem to work pretty well on the map as most of the fire is angled and long distance. Bunkers that had MG's I was going to have as just shelters with an unsupported mg inside for further weapon inaccuracy. The majority of machine guns the Germans had appear to be mg34's though and the bunkers apart from the inside draws were made for artillery observers.

It's funny ww1 style combat is mentioned since that is what Rommel was going for and why he got so much flak for his defense plan. I suppose it was insane for the German Western command to want to do the same thing in Italy for beach defense (mobile reserves) expecting different results and insane for the Allied command to think that the German military wouldn't change tactics. I'll be trying to avoid the complete meat grinder concept (pre-sighted artillery is/was the biggest killer though) and instead I'll be going for a compressed timeline version with historical forces about halved with the focus on capturing points beyond the beach. That way in theory and under time constraints there should be a good amount of variance and sweat for trying to put together surviving ad hoc groups and deciding which objectives to go for based off those compositions to win.

major spoilers:

-the only group that should really be decimated are those landing right in front of dog green but at the same time that allows other units to advance almost without taking fire. So far my plan is to have St Laurent be worth the most points (stretch goal for mission), but with a decent defense, and then have the D1 draw and Vierville worth a little more or same combined. For points the strong-points would be in the 3rd tier and maybe a 4th tier for misc bonus stuff. With possible counter attacks from south the player will really have to balance out the ad hoc groups for where to push and where to defend once off the beach. My goal is to have a total victory pretty hard (skill plus good luck) with a good fight in-between achieving a victory or draw (skill) and a loss if things really go bad (skill plus bad luck or just really bad luck).-

[Bulletpoint]

5 hours ago, carcer said:

Only have a second but I'll definitely check out those aerials and look up that Blue and Grey campaign to see how that author did things as well as the map above, sounds pretty cool.

A player's perspective: I really don't like to bash the creator of the Blue and Grey, it surely was a lot of work to do that campaign, but I must admit I was not a fan of it.

It started with two beach landings, of which the first one was designed to be impossible (I believe). Failing that, the player then goes to a second massive beach assault, which is extremely hard, but winnable. I ended up getting a win after assaulting 3-4 bunkers with a couple of broken half squads of engineers - the only ones to make it off the beach alive, and only because I ran them up along the left edge of the map. Needless to say, winning was only possible by lots of saving and loading, which I don't think is much fun.

One could say it's realistic, as some sectors of the beach were utter disasters. But I don't particularly feel like playing battles that are unwinnable. I guess they might serve as a history lesson, but then I prefer watching a documentary.

Also, I felt the beach maps looked quite bland and uninspired. I think your map looks a lot better already.

Did you consider focusing the battle on the second or third wave of attackers? Then the burning tank wrecks and shellholes would be natural to have in place a the start of the mission, and you could focus on expanding the small breakthrough already achieved by the first waves.

Edited June 10, 2017 by Bulletpoint

[JoMac]

3 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

 

Did you consider focusing the battle on the second or third wave of attackers? Then the burning tank wrecks and shellholes would be natural to have in place a the start of the mission, and you could focus on expanding the small breakthrough already achieved by the first waves.

This is a far better way of designing the Scenario/Campaign as it will give you a better chance for a win.

Edited June 10, 2017 by JoMc67

[Bulletpoint]

Another way of doing it could be to have a lot of troops pinned down on one stretch of the beach, placing them so that they will get machinegunned if they advance, but get slowly destroyed by mortars if they stay put. And then have some other platoon start the game on the bluffs, safe from the beach but then having to proceed and destroy the resistance nests as quickly as possible, to let their comrades advance.

In that way, the focus would be on the tactical combat of that single platoon (or company), but the guys on the beach would serve as a kind of "living clock", counting for victory points, so depending on how fast you did the mission, you would get rewarded with more points for doing it faster and saving more soldiers.

Just an idea of course.

[Heinrich505]

Bulletpoint,

  Very interesting twist.  I like it. 

Heinrich505

[Erwin]

+1   An xnt way to provide the player with motivation to move as quickly as possible and make a difficult challenge entertaining and winnable.  

[A Canadian Cat]

The first beach landing is definitely winnable in the blue and grey. I won it - I managed to force a surrender after taking the beach defenses. It was very difficult for sure. And my casualties were heavily. I played it in version 3.x. BTW.

[Bulletpoint]

7 hours ago, IanL said:

The first beach landing is definitely winnable in the blue and grey. I won it - I managed to force a surrender after taking the beach defenses. It was very difficult for sure. And my casualties were heavily. I played it in version 3.x. BTW.

I tip my hat to you

[carcer]

No new work to show but really love the living time clock idea. Number of casualties should be an important part of the points/objectives system. If I go a somewhat different route please feel free to make missions off the map. Pete, really appreciate that you put that Collville map out there. I've gone through it and got some great ideas from it. I especially love the gun bunker design in it which would be perfect for the unfinished bunkers in the sector I'm looking at and maybe even for the 88 if that caliber of pak is in CMBN. One of the issues I already know I'm going to run into for this project is software and design limitations. The collville map lags down my machine pretty good. One of the ways I was going to try to compromise for mine was by going light on the trees for density, trenches/tank traps, and cutting the force pools down. My graphics card is up there (gtx 970 or something- 4GB) and same with ram (16GB), so I think the bottle neck for large maps is a processor issue? I have an AMD(?) 6 core running around 3.6 + GHz but read somewhere that combat mission only uses one processor? Not sure if it would be worth it to get a better processor like a 4 GHz Intel or if that GHz range is what most players have that play this game.

[JonS]

3 hours ago, carcer said:

Number of casualties should be an important part of the points/objectives system.

Actually, in the context of Op NEPTUNE, not really. Remember that note Eisenhower had in his pocket?

He thought that losing the five or six assault divisions and the three airborne divisions, plus whatever other reinforcements had landed, was a realistic probability ... and went ahead with it anyway. The senior commanders on D-Day weren't really that concerned about casualties, but they were terrified of failure.

That said, tracking FF cas is always a good idea IMO, and in this context I think it can usefully be employed to discriminate between levels of victory.

 

[Erwin]

On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 8:26 AM, IanL said:

The first beach landing is definitely winnable in the blue and grey. I won it - I managed to force a surrender after taking the beach defenses. It was very difficult for sure. And my casualties were heavily. I played it in version 3.x. BTW.

Was that WEGO or RT?  What level difficulty?  Any restarts?

When giving victory results it would be helpful if players gave this info at the same time as it can make a big difference.

[A Canadian Cat]

Sorry left out possibly important details - I always play WEGO (except for testing), no restarts, I always play on Elite unless a human opponent wants to play Iron.

[Erwin]

Then very impressive... 

[A Canadian Cat]

More hard work - it was pretty draining and kinda depressing. Which is probably fitting. There ware defiantly moments where things looked pretty bad and in the end the casualty level was atrocious. It felt very much like a pyrrhic victory

[Sgt.Squarehead]

That TBH sounds about right for Omaha. 

[Ts4EVER]

Interesting stuff! I actually made the same map for Forgotten Hope 2 a few years back:

 

[carcer]

dang that Forgotten Hope 2 map is spot on and really helpful for redesign when I go back for touch ups like direction the tank turret was facing and mg tobruk that would work better as a sand bag position. I was using a forgotten hope 2 map as a reference actually, I wonder if it was your map Ts4Ever. Thanks again for posting. I found that Blue and Grey campaign forum which has useful info in it like JonS's suggestion for boat team make-up using combat mission teams. Tried the campaign which is fun in it's own right and no offense to the author (mission and map making is a pain in the butt and it's stated only based on), but historically way off. Not that many mg's, tank guns, front facing tank guns, bunkers, 81mm mortars and all of that. For mine I'm using a google earth overlay, aerial recon photos, and the polygon elevation method for the map with minor adjustments here and there.