Idea forming for my first attempt, looking for comments

[Shosties]

Thinking of making my first CM scenario (CMBO... despite my .sig my heart is still in the ETO). I won't have the opportunity to seriously work on it immediately but as the germ is loose in my head I figured it would be good to get the preliminaries down and off my chest and see if other people think the outline is interesting or not.

Intended first as Allied vs. AI, maybe PBEM if it works well. American cav/armor/armor inf. attack. Late August 1944. Central France. Daylight.

General situation (fictional, but I would like it to have a very realistic feel to it):

Your parent unit [combat command of xth (?) Armored Division, 3rd U.S. Army] has just had a bridge blown in the face of its spearhead. A hasty attack is being mounted to secure an intact road bridge to the north along this generally north-south flowing river. There's an additional incentive driving us too. A KG staging a troublesome fighting retreat with some armor has this road bridge as it's sole ticket of escape back to Germany. Sieze the bridge and this lot is in the bag. However, there is a problem related to why this particular bridge is still intact in the first place: there is a nest of 88s and light FLAK nearby that have protected it from our bombers and they are sited so as to provide the meagre security force for the bridge with effective fire support. Oh, one more thing: your parent unit is strung out on the roads due to the speed of advance from Brittany, so there's little in the way of arty for you. Plus the FLAK concentration means no flyboys over the area.

I envision a large rectangular map with the N-S axis being the long one. The N-S flowing river is close to the East map edge until about halfway up where it bows out to the West at the base of a broad hill rising from the Eastern bank. This hill overlooks a small town divided in two by the river where the road bridge is. This hill harbors the FLAK position. The E-W road has a split junction with a N-S road which the Americans will be driving up on the West side. The terrain on the West side of the river is relatively flat farmland with scattered farmhouses and copses of trees (no bocage).

There is a suprise element to the scenario which I'll leave out for the moment, but it shouldn't be too hard to guess what it might be (hmmm, he mentioned a KG with some armor on our side of the river didn't he?).

Suggestions, comments?

Oh, any links to resources for the beginning scenario designer would be appreciated.

[klapton]

Certainly quite interesting on paper, but I will add some comments:

88's are not so good, unless they have a restricted field of view, because they rotate very sloooooow. Over that hill they may be in real trouble when facing two or three afv at different angles.

Taking a bridge is hard against a human opponent, but not against the AI. I have seen the AI launching counterattacks across the bridge it was supposed to defend.

Keep us informed of your progress. If you make a map, consider posting a picture here.

Regards