The next project

[Paper Tiger]

With USMC Gung Ho! up and ready to be played, I started work on Hasrabit yesterday evening. I've examined all the missions, made some notes about OBs and the over-all plan behind the campaign and initial ideas how to improve on it. It's already a fairly solid design, two core unit forces that never meet but have two interconnected missions - a pattern I've used in most of my campaigns since.

I opened up the first mission, Ambush! in the editor and changed the marsh tiles to river and used proper bridges. I can see I was a little over-zealous with flavour objects back then to but otherwise, it's clearly an old map but functional so I decided to give it a spin. A nice small company of Special Forces to work with, excellent, so I devised a plan and hit START. OMG! What a disaster.

Sorry but that's just not my style any more so I'm going to have to make an all-new map to open the campaign (Dinas got it right) and I've got a doozy of an idea of what to do for it. I expect I'll have to do this with several of the missions but what the heck, it's work I enjoy. But I like to play the game from time to time too so this is how I'm going to progress.

While getting new maps prepared for Hasrabit, I'm going to create a fresh core units file and make the German Gebirgsjager version of Gung Ho! to play at the same time. Work title is 'Gebirgsjagers Vorwarts!'. If anyone has any feedback on Gung Ho!, please let me know so that I can incorporate that feedback into the German version. I don't need to have my ego stroked (any more) or even need lots of feedback from a host of players, just one or two comments will suffice to let me know if it's up to scratch or not. I trust you guys to give me useful feedback so don't be shy.

Edited April 3, 2023 by Paper Tiger

[Paper Tiger]

Well, well, well. I just fired up the first mission of Gung Ho! with the Gebirgsjagers and holy crap! I'd forgotten how much fun this formation was to work with. So I guess this is going to get a bit more loving for the time being. And no javelins!

If anyone is able to answer, I'd like not to use the Fuchs vehicles and have a pure Infantry formation (of course, I'll be using those wonderful Weasels and the Wolves.) I can rationalise it by saying they were choppered in in the briefing if necessary but from what I recall, they're a formation that fights in all climates and terrain and is intended to operate without vehicles. I'm sure they'd much prefer to ride across the hot Syrian country but war's tough.

I might have to use some Fuchs carriers for the bigger maps like the  Chaparral map where you have a lot of ground to cover but otherwise, there will be no carriers. I don't even want to use the Leopard tanks either - they're not a part of the formation but could be attached if I really need them.

[CarlXII]

Thanks for all you work. Much apprisated.

Personally i think i would scrap the GEBIRGS part of the campaign title and only go with JAEGERS, VORWARTS ! 

[Paper Tiger]

Well, it is a bit of a mouthful if you're not German so that sounds better to me. Less chance of typos showing up in the briefings too.

[Paper Tiger]

Again, I like to muse and formulate ideas so that if I'm flirting with any ideas which are particularly outrageous, people can say so.

So I'm thinking of having two units in the German version of Gung Ho! The Gebirgsjagers are a very cool formation to work with but they're nowhere near as heavy as the USMC MEU formation and apart from the Weasels which are probably my favourites (at the moment - I also like the Brit's Jackals a lot), they're light on vehicles. Yes, there are Fuch carriers but they're a tad boring for my taste. So I'm toying with the idea of alternating GbJg with a Mech company with the Marders. With only 6-man squads, the PzGrens are a very fragile formation but perhaps having them perform two missions in this campaign, #2 and #4, might make it more diverse and even more fun while not having one bad 'turn' end your campaign run for you.

This means the GbJgs would feature in four of the missions, probably being carried in by helicopters (so no Fuchs) and the PzGrens in two. I'm trying not to have tanks because the Leopard is every bit a monster as the Abrams MBT and as I saw when testing Gung Ho earlier, one of these beasts can win the scenario all on their own (as long as there are no AT-14s of course)

[Vergeltungswaffe]

That sounds like a good compromise.

The PzGrdr's aren't easy mode at all, so it stays true to the lighter elements challenge of the campaign.

[Paper Tiger]

I was playing around with them in the Chaparral mission yesterday evening and they're very different and definitely not OP. The Marine LAR group alone is almost capable of doing most of the heavy lifting in that mission if you get the breaks anyway. The LAV's optics and their rapid fire cannons mean they can take on the tanks pre-dawn, not to mention the ATGM vehicles that can hunker down behind a hill but they're very weak against enemy ATGM teams. But the recon squads and some artillery can take care of them.

The PzGrdr's (thanks) are very, very fragile but I think they'll work very well in missions 2 and 5. I think I'll leave the MOUT to the GbJg. They're really good at it from what I've seen so far. I thought I'd need a third platoon for mission 1 to match the USMC's number but as it happens, they're doing the job very well with just two at the moment.  The rapid fire of the heavy howitzers and the heavy battalion mortars make a huge difference. Shame there's no helicopters though but the Tornadoes are doing a good job. But I miss the sound.

[Paper Tiger]

BTW, Hasrabit is still the #1 priority. I've been working on the map for the new opener all morning and it's shaping up as it wanted it. I read through the campaign and mission briefings last weekend to reacquaint myself with the backstory and it's a bit <cough> out there, as in just me making **** up. 'Hasrabit' is an actual place that I found on Google maps as the map for Strong Stand was (yes, that location looked like that back then with walls and orchards just stopping for no good reason.) The real 'Hasrabit' is a small town just to the south of Damascus International Airport but the name appears in Arabic and I'm too lazy to translate it. [lightbulb moment] Perhaps one of my Muslim students could translate it for me. But otherwise, all the maps are just my creation. You have to remember that there was no scenario overlay back when I made both this and Dinas so the maps are imaginary. Ambush!, the opener is probably the least useable so it's gone but I want to keep the rest as far as that proves possible to do. Otherwise this project will take me MONTHS!

So the campaign backstory will need to be reworked a bit. There's no Shuruk valley or river and since I'm more than capable of doing real-world locations in the editor, there's no good excuse for making it all up entirely. It's still going to be 100% fictional because the campaign is called Hasrabit although I'm picking a few choice real-world locations for the new maps. But Hasrabit will stay as the titular Governorate and it will feature a mix of locations from near Hama and Aleppo as well as the old imaginary maps. I'll try to keep it consistent, Special Forces in the greener orchards and the Republican Guards in the more open, arid areas.

And I'm going to add a new mission to it for an important campaign branch.