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Survey for future BattlePack projects


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12 hours ago, Blazing 88's said:

Alright I am off to my early war long desert campaign using winSPWW2.

Ironically, there were some great mods made for CM1 that enabled one to play early war like Sealion etc.  And of course CMAK gave us North Africa from the Brits defeating the Italians thru DAK counterattacking. 

Edited by Erwin
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3 hours ago, Erwin said:

Ironically, there were some great mods made for CM1 that enabled one to play early war like Sealion etc.  And of course CMAK gave us North Africa from the Brits defeating the Italians thru DAK counterattacking. 

Yes and I have all of that sitting in my games folder, I jump back to it sometimes, just not lately. I even have the CMETO mod for Europeon Theatre of Operations. I never had an interest in the Sealion stuff however.

For me, several years before jumping to CMBB, I was a Steel Panthers junkie, in my view it is a 2D top down version of Combat Mission and then some. With the updated to "modern" cpu standards of Steel Panthers (now winSPWW2), over a year ago I jumped back into again, bypassing CMx1 this time for my NA itch.
Why would I do that, 3d to 2d top down? Because I find the long auto generated campaigns fantastic in SP (kill tracking, promotions /experience tracking, vehicle /unit upgrades, expand your core or not, etc..). Any map auto generated makes sense and is very easy to make quick edits to if one wants or just auto gen again. Unlike what CMx1 can spit out for auto generated maps, that usually don't make layout sense which is unfortunate.

Yes it is 2D top down at 50m per hex and the icons are oversized compared to hex dimensions. However, the actually unit icon size would be about approx. tenth the actual size it shows and not very good for pixel artwork creation, hence the oversized unit icons.

It's just nice to click a few buttons, make your purchases and start a long campaign in a matter of minutes. No franken modding required, just war gaming.

Anyway I didn't mean to hi-jack this thread so I will stop.

I am looking forward to what Mr. X might be cooking up eventually!! 😉

Edited by Blazing 88's
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@Aragorn2002

Eastprussia is fantastic 🙏🏻 Both of my grandfathers were there at the end of the WWII. One grandfather was going to Soviet Captivity from Fortress Königsberg, the other managed to escape from the Heiligenbeil Pocket with a rowboat. 
But there are so many battles and interesting situations that I don‘t know where to start and where to end😬

As the Germans said: „Who wants to conquer everything, will conquer nothing.“ 

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Ohhh boy I was actually gonna contact you regarding ideas anyways, but since the thread‘s here for all to see might as well do it here.

Eastern front is where it’s at IMO, so another 3-5 campaigns from there would be really cool. Here’s some of my top suggestions:

1. East Prussia 1944 - Recapture of Gumbinnen & Goldap

One of a handful of instances where the Germans went on the attack in the late war period and won. I can envisage a campaign focused around the 5. Panzer-Division and how it aided in the recapture of Gumbinnen and Goldap respectively in the fall of 1944. You could also cover the same Division in East Prussia in early 1945, as it fought impressively in that time too!

2. Retreat to Silesia 1945 - Nehring and von Saucken Floating Pockets

This one would be very similar to the Five Bridges campaign from your current battle pack. Essentially, you could follow the retreat of an assemblage of German units in their desperate withdrawal from the Vistula to the Oder River. Which they did in fact succeed in doing, though at great cost. You could focus on either the 16. or 19. Panzer-Divisionen, as these both played a key role in spearheading the retreat.

3. Operation Gemse 1945 - Recapture of Lauban

This could make for a short but intense campaign that saw the Germans retake Lauban in March 1945. More research would need to be done to find the best storyline to follow, but the Führer-Grenadier Division as well as the 8. and 17. Panzer-Divisionen would be good candidates to focus on.

4. Operation Südwind 1945 - Destroying the Gran Bridgehead

Another short and sweet campaign where either the 1. or 12. SS Panzer-Divisionen could be commanded in the fight to destroy the Gran bridgehead. 

5. Budapest 1945 - The Battle for the Hungarian Capital

You could make an awesome campaign here similar to the Our Father campaign from your battle pack. As with that campaign, the focus would be on the desperate defense of the city followed by a near hopeless breakout mission. The good news is that I have a good deal of documentation regarding individuals who  fought inside, and then successfully broke out from, Budapest. There are thus plenty of candidates that could take on the same role as Major Schmidt for this campaign.

6. Warsaw 1944 - The Defensive Battles of IV. SS-Panzer-Korps

Red Thunder (and history in general) has already given plenty of attention to the fighting around Warsaw in early August 1944. However, far less has been written about the subsequent 3 defensive battles of Warsaw in August-October 1944. This is a shame, because in many ways these battles represented some of the finest hours for both the 5. and 3. SS Panzer-Divisionen. A campaign about these battles would help to fill this gap (and let’s face it, you couldn‘t resist doing another campaign about Totenkopf anyways 😄).

7. Courland 1944/45 - Last Stand of Army Group North

This one would have to be a campaign with a greater focus on defense, however there is fortunately a lot of source material available for this time. You could make an entire campaign pack out of the six battles fought here, there’s that much to unpack. If this gets your attention then let me know and I’ll try to find some more specific battles to design a campaign around. One about either the 12. or 14. Panzer-Divisionen could be especially promising.

Now, bear in mind that if you’re prepared to cover purely defensive campaigns then the possibilities really are endless. Lmk if you’d be receptive to that and I could probably come up with more suggestions. Or, if you’d rather release another themed campaign battlepack (focusing on a certain theatre/timeframe) I could help flesh that out too. If you want to go down that route then I’d recommend a battlepack focused on either:

a) Courland

b) East Prussia

c) Hungary

Your skills as a campaign designer are impressive in any case, so I look forward to seeing whatever does end up shaping up!

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@pintere:

Great suggestions ! 👍🏻
I would love to see a BattlePack dealing with Hungary 🙏🏻
 

Battle of Budapest                                      
Part of Operation Konrad                      
Gran Bridgehead                                          
Part of Operation Spring Awakening    
Desperate defensive battles during the retreat in late March and April 45

5 Campaigns 😎

This is definitely one of my favorites 👍🏻
 

 

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ok Frank, here goes!!

Western Front

East Front

  • Operation Doppelkopf
  • Operation Solstice
  • Operation Spring Awakening

About half the operations are with the Axis attacking as you mentioned you wanted to to do Axis 😉

Thanks, Frank, take care and good luck, I will look forward to whatever you release though

kind regards

 

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Maybe a good compliment to the upcoming Utah Beach Battle Pack would be to cover Gold, Juno, or Sword beaches? I'm always happy to see a bit more representation of Commonwealth forces. I know you said you wanted to do German campaigns, though honestly I think I'd prefer to play these from the Allied perspective. Maybe split it with a couple Allied campaigns and a couple German campaigns?

Edit: Nevermind. I just reread the initial post and you said no Normandy in addition to no Italy.

Edited by Centurian52
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@slippy and @StieliAlpha:

East Front vs West Front 🙏🏻😎

If there wasn‘t the release of Downfall, it would be easier 😉

Thanks for your suggestions - I will collect them all👍🏻
 

@Bearstronaut

A Soviet Campaign would also be very very interesting BUT I don‘t have enough sources and for such a project, you need Info down to Company level. The research probably would cost endless time…

Regards 

Mr.X

 

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Finger in the air suggestion, but I was always struck how the actions described in Kamen Nevenkins' 'Take Budapest' (Take Budapest!: The Struggle for Hungary, Autumn 1944 - Kamen Nevenkin - Google Books) - the first Soviet attempt to take the city on the run - could form the basis of some good CMRT scenarios/ campaigns (if executed by someone with more talent and time than me....🙂). Two (increasingly depleted) Soviet Mechanised Corps pushing forward against German counterattacks by Panzer Divisions with a few dozen AFV's a piece, and the whole thing compressed into a week or so.

Anything East Front would be appreciated!

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1 hour ago, Warhead_100 said:

Finger in the air suggestion, but I was always struck how the actions described in Kamen Nevenkins' 'Take Budapest' (Take Budapest!: The Struggle for Hungary, Autumn 1944 - Kamen Nevenkin - Google Books) - the first Soviet attempt to take the city on the run - could form the basis of some good CMRT scenarios/ campaigns (if executed by someone with more talent and time than me....🙂). Two (increasingly depleted) Soviet Mechanised Corps pushing forward against German counterattacks by Panzer Divisions with a few dozen AFV's a piece, and the whole thing compressed into a week or so.

Anything East Front would be appreciated!

Great book!

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On 1/8/2024 at 10:09 PM, Mr.X said:

@slippy and @StieliAlpha:

East Front vs West Front 🙏🏻😎

If there wasn‘t the release of Downfall, it would be easier 😉

Thanks for your suggestions - I will collect them all👍🏻

Yep, of course. I come from Paderborn and lived there half of my life. That’s why I am extremely interested to see the Battle in CM. Especially the famous encounter with the King Tigers. 🤓

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Talking about Hungary: Operation "Frühlingserwachen" (the Balaton offensive) would form a nice environment for a campaign, including the fighting back into Austria, in and around Vienna. There is a lot of competent books covering these events (I can provide titles if wished). And Red Army partially used Shermans.

Edited by wolfgang500
Typo
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What I find interesting is the fact, that up to now nobody mentioned the battle for Berlin with all its great possibilities for campaigns:

Army Wenck

The Halbe Pocket

Oder Bridgeheads (ok, Fortress Kuestrin was mentioned before) 

Battle between the Oder River and the outskirts of Berlin 

Counter attack Army Steiner

 

 

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18 minutes ago, Mr.X said:

What I find interesting is the fact, that up to now nobody mentioned the battle for Berlin with all its great possibilities for campaigns:

 

 

DolfyWantsYou.jpg

Edited by Rob2020
There is a fine line between a numerator and a denominator, and only a fraction of people find this funny.
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4: North Africa 41-43  (We have desert from CMSF2)

5:       "               43  (Patton and Monty)

3:  Eastern 41-42  (How can one not like Barbarossa?)

3:       "       43  (Balanced)

1:  Western 40  (Least interesting units)

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