A brief introduction to my previous work

[Paper Tiger]

I guess I look like the new kid in town but I used to be a bit active around here a while back. For reasons I won't go into in this post, I took a long break (10 years) and am back cautiously getting reacquainted with the new game.

First, how do I roll? I really like to play missions on realistic-looking maps. I don't like to play anything that is too easy or too difficult so I work for a challenging but fair difficulty a lot of the time and I like to play with all the bells and whistles - that means the player gets artillery, air support and any of the other things that a player would want to play with.

So what have I done? let's look at the unofficial Repository stuff first.

 

Hasrabit - 10 missions Red v Red

Player controls Republican Guards and Special Forces against Rebel Syrian army units

Road to Dinas 16+ missions IIRC, Red v Red

Player controls Rebel Syrian army forces against the RG and SF. Basically, the other side.

Right from the start, I worked with a twin-story mode in all my campaigns where you play with two (or more) formations with thair own stories, some cross-over and each with a finale for both. I've stuck with this format almost exclusively.

Road to Dinas got me noticed and I was invited to join the Beta team and from then on, most of my content was on the 'disks' that you bought. However, I did make up a short campaign for the USMC called 'Gung Ho!' which I'll talk about later. Not to be too modest but my stand-alone scenarios were nowhere near as good as my campaign stuff and there were very few of them. Campaigns are MY thing, the medium I'm most at home with. So, onto the official campaigns. There are a few of these ...

 

CMSF NATO

I was asked to head the creation of three NATO campaigns for that module. I produced the concepts and campaign plan for all three and was a major contributor to the German campaign. The Canadian campaign is almost entirely my own creation with one mission from MikeyD included so that I couldn't say that it was ALL my own work. I didn't contribute anything to the Dutch campaign other than the design. Not that there was an issue or lack of interest in the Dutch, but rather that there were other testers who all wanted to contribute.

This marks a shift as well for me as I was previously doing Red v Red where the two sides were fairly matched and casualties weren't really a thing. With the player having all the tools you'd like to play around with, I had to resort to low tolerance for friendly casualties. After all, when it's not an existential war, the Western countries tend to frown on taking heavy casualties and don't particularly like to cause civilian casualties either. Both of these strongly factor into the NATO campaigns. This was not going to be an issue for WW2 though.

 

CMBN

The Road to Montebourg - 18 missions

This was a monster but I was so excited to be playing with a WW2 theatre again that it wasn't as much work as you might think.

The Scottish Corridor - 14 missions + a hidden bonus

I started getting creative with the campaign scripting and so this has a complex structure.

The Road to Nijmegen - well, it's a long one

This was the last of my official campaigns. It's an absolute monster and pushed me to the limits. I playtest all my own content very thoroughly in Real Time and so the large battalion-sized Irish Guards missions took an age to get right. The Breakout from the Neerpelt mission was one of my personal favourites and I spent ages tweaking it to get it to where I was happy with it.

The difficulty here was mainly derived from maintaining your forces so that they were battle-worthy in future missions. While there were still casualty awards for both sides, the real problem for the player was the attrition of your forces. These campaigns were all long so husbanding your forces was very important.

With regards to difficulty, there were some real 'pigs' in the historical WW2 missions because, historically, the Allies lost these actions or were hurt very badly winning them. A good example was the Hell in the Hedgerows in Montebourg. Or the entire Scottish Corridor campaign  Otherwise, challenging and fun is my gig. Hopefully, you'll be seeing more in the not-too-distant future.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Paper Tiger

[MOS:96B2P]

Welcome back!!! 

[Paper Tiger]

BTW, a small footnote to this:

My early design inspirations were George Mc's scenarios. I always considered any scenario from him to be a master class work. Challenging but fair. Perhaps it's a Scottish thing? :D

For map design, Pete Wenman was a major inspiration and pointed me in the right direction. His map work is fantastic and I drew some considerable inspiration from his early CMSF maps.

There are others that I admire very much but I wouldn't say they inspired or influenced my work. They have developed their own distinct style and so it's theirs.

[Erwin]

14 hours ago, Paper Tiger said:

Road to Dinas 16+ missions IIRC, Red v Red

I can highly recommend Road to Dinas campaign.  I recall having a real hard time with a couple of the missions, but it taught me a lot re Red tactics and force preservation.

The fact that they were tested (and presumably ideally played) in RT explains a lot.   

It's great to have another designer with similar xnt skill set to GeorgeMC.  Welcome home!

 

Edited February 13, 2023 by Erwin

[Paper Tiger]

I might have to review Road to Dinas when I have some time. I've forgotten so much about it so I can't give you any pointers about any missions (yet). I know that there were some quite big actions in it and that it was free of the concerns about civilian casualties which meant being able to fire large quantities of HE at buildings.

I can't get it on the Repository though as the link is broken. There'a absolutely no rush though as I want to rework 'Gung Ho!' first.

[Chibot Mk IX]

Although I haven't finished the Road to Dinas (I am halfway through it, and CMSF 1 has been uninstalled from my disk, unfortunately), I must say this is one of my favorite campaigns in CM! 

 

Wondering if this masterpiece can be updated into CMSF 2 standard in the future?  And adding some more flavor, extra missions focus on BRDM recon company for some deep reconnaissance tasks, that would be fantastic. 

[Paper Tiger]

I'd say the chances of it getting updated are very high indeed.  But I'm going to have to find a copy of the campaign first as I can't download it from the Scenario Depot. It's an old campaign and so all the files were lost when my computer crashed a few years back. But the campaign extractor is my new best friend which has allowed me to return to my CMSF work.

There appear to be a lot of new features in the v2 game, including water, fortifications, more AI groups and on-map MORTARS. (I always wanted those) so it would be a lot of fun to rework this monster campaign to bring it up to date. More AI groups is not a trivial improvement either, having only 8 meant that I couldn't refine the AI as much as I was able to in CMBN.

[Shady_Side]

Well I have played every one of these multiple times except Hasrabit which I don't recall ever seeing. The Road To Dinas is the only one I did not complete. I really liked the first few missions but before I could finish the campaign I switched over to only playing H2H. They are all very well done though I do have some criticisms I am sure you have heard before. 

The Road To M-burg is my favorite out of these. It has some missions that are pretty easy and some that are very hard to win and a lot of them fall somewhere in between the two.

The Road To Nijmegen would be next though I have to say there is a lot of very difficult missions in it. I did not beat it my first go around. The ideal of adding time and I think full reinforcement to a player after getting on a losing track is a unique way of helping a player along that at least wants to see all the missions but every time it happened to me I stopped the campaign and counted it lost and restarted. 

The Scottish Corridor is a downright ornery campaign from the first mission to the last and the bonus mission. This is one that probably put you in a tough spot considering it was a real life losing campaign. It is very well done but it is not for beginners and not for those prone to rage quitting lol...

 

What I appreciated most about your campaign scenarios was that even for the very hard almost forced losing missions you did not resort to just giving the A.I. seemingly unending amounts of forces or put the player in the absolute worst terrain possible or take any other "cheap" outs. Hell In The Hedgerows for example, sure the enemy has the high ground but you gave the player enough forces to be able to win it. Though it will for sure be an expensive and painful win it is possible. 

Anyways based on your past work I am very excited to see that you are interested in making content again and very much looking forward to seeing what you come up with!!

 

 

 

[Paper Tiger]

It's always good to get feedback. Thanks for taking the time to post it. A few thoughts before I start work...

That's why I've never played H2H. I doubt I'd enjoy the game nearly so much against the AI if I had because a human is going to use the forces given in a much more effective manner than a devious AI scripter ever could. I enjoy playing against the AI because when I started playing computer games back in the 80s, the AI in wargames was rudimentary at best.

I actually started out designing missions for CMSF by cramming the objectives with massive AI forces because Blue v Red was such a mismatch, or at least it appeared to be that way coming from a CMx1 perspective.  When I was invited to join the team, there was an Australian Major on the team who remarked that the attacker was supposed to attack at 3:1 odds and not 1:3. I took his advice to heart and worked hard to create better AI behaviours as well as just learning how to best utilise the stuff the AI already had. In almost all my campaigns, you'll find you outnumber the AI by at least 2:1, often 3:1 and sometimes even more. He also helped me to understand how to use combined arms effectively in my missions which changed the way I played and designed.

 

Montebourg was designed to be as you described it. The Hell in the Hedgerows mission was a catastrophe for the GIR and the 2/8 INF took a big hit at Ecausseville as well so those missions needed to stand out. But otherwise, it was designed mostly to be fun.

The Scottish Corridor was a challenge to make as they were very hard battles which the Scots barely pulled off, often at great cost. It wasn't intended to be so brutal but I suppose it reflects the reality better. Like the actual action, it wasn't a lot of fun for the participants involved. The battles should get easier once you've broken through the German defences though and there was one, 'Ten out of Ten' ,which was fun to play. When I read an account of the advance into Grainville, 'Going to Church' and the storyteller said that he turned his Churchill tank round the corner and saw the church was right in front of him, I checked my map and found that it that happened as he described it too. The graphics might not be spectacular but the editor does allow us to recreate the environment pretty well. I also made the mistake of giving folks on the Expert track an additional challenge which was 'unkind' of me. It also had a Green track which allowed you to see through most of the campaign but without the extra time IIRC

Nijmegen was a mix of very hard and not so hard. There was a mission in that campaign that I considered to be my best, 'Breakout from the Neerpelt'. I spent absolutely ages trying to get that one as near perfect as I could.

If I can get my hands on the original 'The Road to Dinas' cam file, I'll unpack it and make a new core units file and rework it over time. But I'm going to finish Montebourg first and get to work on a small campaign for CMSF2 at the same time. I wasn't thrilled with Shock Force when it first came out as I prefered the CMx1 WW2 setting but I wanted to support the team and so gave it a try. It grew on me and now, I have to admit, it's probably the best of the CM series of games I've played so far. Modern Era is just so much more interesting, not to mention cool. And Red v Red is about as good as it gets for me.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Paper Tiger

[AlexUK]

Lots of people have commented that the Road to Dînas is a great campaign, so it’s good news that you are thinking of reviewing it

[Shady_Side]

Sorry it has been a couple years at least since I played single player so I could not remember the names of most of the missions. I have to agree with you about the modern titles being a little more interesting. CMBS was my first CM game and I guess will always be my first love but once you get a little better at the game you realize just how wide the gap is between the US and Russia. It makes getting a fair game in a quick battle next to impossible without adding a lot of force restrictions to the US side.

I had forgot to mention much about SF2 though. I remember being a really big fan of the NATO campaigns in that game. Given what you have to work with, the gap in the quality of forces they were all pretty good and all had some pretty tough missions, again without piling masses of forces on the map and trying to make the blue force drown in the red force's blood.

I have dabbled quite a bit with the scenario editor myself and trying to design a battle from the ground up gives me a whole new appreciation for those of you that do it well. I have at times made a map I like. I have at times got a mix and match of forces I like. Even harder to believe I have at times came up with an A.I. plan that would put up a descent fight, even a reasonably good attacking plan. What I have failed to do is get all those elements right at the same time lol.

Again I am very much looking forward to seeing what you come up with. I was thinking the other day I would like to play a good campaign like i did in the old days. One advantage single player will always have is being able to finish a battle within a week or so, instead of the 4to8 weeks a h2h game will take assuming your opponent does not bail on you.

 

[Paper Tiger]

I've pretty much erased my Steam library from my hard drive to make way for some CM titles so I am planning to spend a LOT of time working on campaigns for these titles. I've gotten the bug again and I've already started zooming around in Google Earth for some interesting locations to have a fight.

One of the best things about the modern era game is that you're not constrained by history. My Syrian Civil War scenario for Hasrabit and Road to Dinas was pure baloney but who cares? Some of Hasrabit's maps were based on real world locations, especially Hasrabit itself. (It's not called Hasrabit IRL). Dinas has a mix of some maps based on real world  locations and some fictional. I prefer real world now as it helps to guide me. So, once I found a few good looking locations for a series of actions, I'll start producing maps. I already have the germ of an idea for a new Red v Red campaign but it's really just an idea right now. But it's certainly going to happen.

[chuckdyke]

1 minute ago, Paper Tiger said:

I've already started zooming around in Google Earth for some interesting locations to have a fight.

Try North West Australia. During the 80's the US and Australia held some war games there. My scenario would be a Chines Trojan Horse Operation. Their 250000 tons bulk carriers have been disguised as troop transports. They take over 5 major ports and the offshore natural gas platforms. See how to get it back, the fastest method Imo would be a US Stryker Brigade. M3 Abrams are somewhere in Southern Australia and takes time. The Strykers travel like motorcars, they can cross the continent in three days. Chinese government blames a rogue element of their armed forces but don't lift a finger. Farfetched but it is after all a wargame. 

[Paper Tiger]

Blue v Blue wargames is an intriguing idea I've played around with especially since we got Brits and NATO forces to play off against each other. 

[David Jaros]

i am quite new to combat mission,but i really like your campaings paper tiger happy to see you back

[David Jaros]

i am quite new to combat mission,but i really like your campaings paper tiger happy to see you back maybe you could make new campaign for Italy in the future 

[Bulletpoint]

I'm old enough to remember you from back then. Time flies eh?

Your campaigns are very good. Some of the very best I played.

Back then, I cut my CM teeth on Montebourg, which I completed twice (the standard version and the revised version), and later played through the Scottish Corridor as well.

Welcome back.

 

[Warts 'n' all]

22 hours ago, Jarosak said:

i am quite new to combat mission,but i really like your campaings paper tiger happy to see you back maybe you could make new campaign for Italy in the future 

So new, that you told us twice. Don't worry we've all done it.