Revising The Scottish Corridor

[Paper Tiger]

I've got a fairly easy three weeks ahead of me so I've decided to revise this one but it's not going to be a straight up remake. Rather, I'm going to split the campaign into two separate campaigns, one for the 9th Cameronians (9 missions) and a second, shorter one for the 2nd ASH (6 missions). I see no good reason to keep this as one long campaign as it's not for official release and splitting it up will make it much easier to manage script-wise. There will be some tweaks to how the player goes to the Veteran or Green branches but I want to get core units done before tackling the new scripts.

Although it was made prior to the 16 AI groups patch, I'm quite happy with the AI as it stands so don't expect any significant changes here. However, the most important change will be that the core units will not start at 80% strength but rather at full strength. While these units were at 80% strength historically, it's not a particularly good way to represent this in the game so I've decided that the fighting strength of these formations should be at 100% and the 'reserve' companies are seriously under-strength. That seems to be a better way to represent this. One side effect of this though is that I'm going to remove the PIAT team attached to every platoon and give 1 section its PIAT instead. This also serves to reduce the number of units the player has to manage and that's fine by me.

I made the new Cameronians core units file last night and have started importing units into the Cameronian missions. I don't expect this will take very long and so it's possible this will be finished later this week. After that, I'll do the same for the ASH missions. I don't want to make any changes that require significant play-testing either. The plan is to have this campaign 'working' again for possible future revisions. But I'm happy to 'fix' any issues you guys might have with it as long as they're quick.

If, and that's a big IF, there is the interest, I may decide to enhance one or both of these campaigns adding flamethrower units as well as further improving the AI, especially the big attacks at the end of each. Regardless of interest, the next step after this is to finish the Montebourg revision so if you have any comments or suggestions for  this one, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

 

Move it! Move it! Let's go!

[Erwin]

It's much appreciated you are doing this PT.  But, it takes time to get through a campaign and am sure many of us are going through your xnt revised "Gung Ho!" campaign.  As a result you may not hear much feedback about your other revised campaigns for a while.

[PEB14]

On 12/11/2023 at 8:04 AM, Paper Tiger said:

Although it was made prior to the 16 AI groups patch, I'm quite happy with the AI as it stands so don't expect any significant changes here. However, the most important change will be that the core units will not start at 80% strength but rather at full strength.

It may have worked in the past but I've found out that this option is broken down in present day CMBN patch. You simply CANNOT have core units start at less than 100% strength.

When I started the Scottish Corridor this summer, all my squads were indeed at full strength - whatever parameters you did set.

[Paper Tiger]

Well, I don't have to worry about rationalising it then - it doesn't work.

I could do it in the opening missions I suppose as the game will remember their strength at the end of the mission but I think it's better to amend the briefing and just go with full strength OBs.

The attached PIAT teams are gone though and the PIATS added back to section 1 of each platoon. I am toying, and I mean toying with the idea of attaching some heavier kit to the companies like I did in Montebourg just to make it a bit more 'fun'.

[Warts 'n' all]

More good news from the Tigerman. I think that splitting it into two separate campaigns is a great idea. I get my Limey arse kicked twice over.

[PEB14]

10 hours ago, Paper Tiger said:

I could do it in the opening missions I suppose as the game will remember their strength at the end of the mission.

Not sure to understand what you suggest here?

[Paper Tiger]

1 minute ago, PEB14 said:

Not sure to understand what you suggest here?

I mean if I reduce the forces imported in the unit's starting mission to 80% strength rather than having the core units in the core unit file at 80% strength and importing them that way which is how I did the Scottish Corridor. I'm pretty sure that's how I managed the PIR 'losses' on D-Day in Montebourg but since I lost the original core unit file, I can't remember exactly how it was done. I don't think this is a behaviour that was changed by a patch - it's probably just carelessness on my part.

I've been reading your other post in another thread - thanks again for the good feedback. I will add a bit more time to the Chateau mission. I had a feeling you got an AI plan that makes it more difficult as I play-tested that mission many time - I really enjoy the smaller missions with air support and never really had any problems there. But it's on the to-do list.

[PEB14]

On 12/13/2023 at 1:33 PM, Paper Tiger said:

I mean if I reduce the forces imported in the unit's starting mission to 80% strength rather than having the core units in the core unit file at 80% strength and importing them that way which is how I did the Scottish Corridor. I'm pretty sure that's how I managed the PIR 'losses' on D-Day in Montebourg but since I lost the original core unit file, I can't remember exactly how it was done. I don't think this is a behaviour that was changed by a patch - it's probably just carelessness on my part.

I get your point.

Unfortunately, IIRC it doesn't work either. I did a test a few months ago, and I found somewhere on this forum a post from a guy that already had done the very same tests: I believe it's just impossible to have core units start a campaign with less than 100% manpower strength, whatever the way you try to achieve it. Sounds very much like a bug, perhaps one introduced by a relatively recent patch.

[Paper Tiger]

It must be the compiling process that undoes the creators work in this respect. In Hapless' video of Turnbull's Stand, he has the full OB at the start of the mission but in the scenario as a standalone, they are all at about 50% strength. Well, there's not much I can do about that so I'll have to up the difficulty of the German attack to compensate for the near-doubling of the defender's strength.

[Paper Tiger]

Well, as it happens, it was a very simple fix - there were two squads accompanying Turnbull so I've just deleted one from the OB for that mission and I have the same head count, more or less. I doubt folks will be running the Germans off the map now but I'm prepared for folks to prove me wrong.

One consequence is that you'll be more wary of casualties because the VP awards to the Germans for casualties inflicted remains the same but you'll pay proportionately more for each loss. The mission was tested many, many times with the reduced OB so it's more than doable. It just won't be so easy to go toe to toe with the attackers now.