CM Times 10 - An Operational Campaign Revolution

[JAK]

Bump...

Jake

[JasonC]

Just set it up, JAK, you don't need our say-so to try anything, or need us to do it for you LOL. If it works, great. Seems like a mostly tactical game to me, but many will like that.

[JAK]

And he whips out his trusty CM:BO cd! Thanx Jason, but I was just trying to spread the idea around to see if it had any takers who might be interested. Maybe I will have the Logistics for it figured out by the end of next week.

Thanx again Jason,

Jake

[Dirtweasle]

Jason, so you are going to name the units for what they represent? such as 5./1/90th or are you making full blown units down to the squad level? Not sure I understand exactly how this works, or if I need to ...LOL.

I do want to continue on in the new campaign. If Jarmo wants somobody else to lead I'm up for that too or am just as happy with Jarmo leading.

Will you be distributing the master map, minus the opfor I would guess, to the players?

[JasonC]

The master map is done. I've asked Jarmo to post some views of it here, as I am clueless on that subject. The map has been sent to Jarmo and Leonard, and you are welcome to it too, Dirtweasel. I will send it on. The master file with all the units on the board remains in my possession, however, and I am not showing the units until we have the sides firmed up.

But in answer to your questions - yes, the units have their name slot used to identify the historical unit involved. Thus, 2/B/103 is the 2nd platoon, B company, 103rd combat engineer battalion. It is represented on the CMx10 operational map by a single squad counter. A platoon on the operational map plus 1 support weapon counter represent the HQ, 3 platoons, and weapons platoon of an infantry company. And so forth.

Compared to the operational maps we've been using, I think one can safely say, "we are not in Kansas anymore". Everything between the Our and Clerf rivers - every village, river, stream, peak, road - in CM quality 3-D camera pan mod-ed graphics. Can you see the Our river from the top of the watertower in Hosingen village on Skyline Drive? Just pop over there and look for yourself. Now that is an operational map. And the whole thing will be ready to play in 3 days. And will keep records "on its own", practically, throughout the campaign.

[Dirtweasle]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by JasonC:

...Can you see the Our river from the top of the watertower in Hosingen village on Skyline Drive? Just pop over there and look for yourself... <hr></blockquote>

And the verdict is.... Yes!

Thus eliminating 3 days real-time of arguing about LOS. Very sweet!

I hope you will have added to the rules the ability for road blocks, mines, smoke, etc... I think the defender is going to need every trick in the book.

[Jarmo]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by JasonC:

The master map is done. I've asked Jarmo to post some views of it here, as I am clueless on that subject. <hr></blockquote>

Will do when I get home.

Posting isn't too hard, the difficult thing is getting the pics on the net in the first place. Most image hosting sites don't allow direct linking to the pictures.

I use the web page space my ISP provides me (20 megs I think).

Plenty of room there for an occasional image in addition to my pages, but not enough for a more permanent solution, ie I'll remove them sometime later.

Basically you just hit the Instant UBB Code "image button" and then write up the URL for the image. I had trouble earlier when I forgot to add the "http://www" into the beginning.

[Grisha]

I'm sure someone has given thought to this already, but in an operational level setup for CM there should be the occasion when roving aircraft attack ground units on the march. For example, in CMBO there should be great occasion for a German column on the march in daylight to suddenly come under attack from USAAF aircraft. Is it possible to merely have one side setup, then base the opposing side with nothing but aircraft?

[JasonC]

On nothing but aircraft, I haven't tried. But you can give them 1 FO without ammo in a corner. Which is what I did for operational level air attacks in my last campaign, which saw several of them. One of them destroyed an armored car, another several trucks and halftracks, one missed strafing a Hummel because of the Flak it received, and several tried to bomb tanks but missed. Worked great. As the umpire I resolved them personally and just reported results to the players - with a lot of room for false claims and mis-IDs by the fly boys, for their own side.

We also had operational level artillery attacks, aka "prep bombardments", done in the same manner, basically. The barrages were unobserved and thus "open sheaf". German 150mm rockets blew up a couple of halftracks, a few trucks, knocked out an antitank gun, and hit the commander of a Hellcat TD. US 105s gun-damaged a Panther, knocked out a Flakwagen, a couple of platoons worth of infantry (gradually) and a number of trucks. The limits on such attacks were the practical ones, time and ammo.

[Jarmo]

Let's see if I get the pic posted with the first try.

These are "a bit" large in size, but I've compressed them as much as possible. Downsizing doesn't work well if you still want to be able to read the text. It's amazing how good quality you get after jpegging a 3,3 meg picture into 60K.

A bit got clipped from the edges of this one, (didn't fit into my screen) but it's still plenty large...

This one is from the southwest corner looking northeast.

[Wreck]

So far I have five responses from my emailed poll, which is also serving as the signup for this new campaign. (From Laakso, Yeoh, Morton, Landsbergh, and Campos; thank you!) If you played in the first campaign, but did not get my poll (sent two days ago), please let me know. Email me.

If you sent me your response but are not listed above, please resend. If you have not responded, MOVE IT! We are ready to start just as soon as we have the teams squared away.

[ 10-31-2001: Message edited by: Wreck ]</p>

[JasonC]

Thanks Jarmo, the pictures look great. Can you send me the marsh mod you use, if you now what it is?

On players, we should have enough with those that have already responded, and a couple of alternates I've already talked to. We don't want to have too many like last time, and then see people idle.

Chris Campos, if you are in we have to do something about mail, because everything I send to battlewarmechbot@crosswinds.net gets bounced. Apparently you have my whole domain (ameritech.net) blocked for spam or some such. At any rate I can't reach you by email. Perhaps you just need to change blocking settings, or at the worst use hotmail or something, but relaying through Leonard is not a realistic option.

If you could send your "poll" to the following two alternates it would help. I am sure the second has the time, as I spoke with him about such things myself, but go ahead anyway. The first of them wanted "in" last time around, but we ran out of room. I don't know his current level of interest.

Benjamin Donaldson - benpark1@hotmail.com

Jake Kapplan - BKapplan@aol.com

We should probably do the rest of this stuff in email, rather than here (unless some prefer hearing about all of it - speak up if so).

[Redwolf]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by JasonC:

Chris Campos, if you are in we have to do something about mail, because everything I send to battlewarmechbot@crosswinds.net gets bounced. Apparently you have my whole domain (ameritech.net) blocked for spam or some such.

<hr></blockquote>

Not to nitpick, but if your domain is blocked for spamming, it is very likely that it is for a reaon. Often, a domain corrects the errors that got it on blocking lists, however, someone needs to tell the blocking site that things were corrected. If you like, please mail me the bounce message and I see what I can do, if it is an entry in a multiple-domain database I know how to handle that.

[if you can reach cons.org, it can't be that bad, though, my spam filters are already quite paranoid...]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>

We should probably do the rest of this stuff in email, rather than here (unless some prefer hearing about all of it - speak up if so).<hr></blockquote>

I'd say posting the experience here, since that method of doing a campaign will probably be picked up by other groups, maybe in a year or so when noone can dig up the email anymore.

[Jarmo]

I'd prefer posting it all here (except the secret stuff later on). I have plenty of good surfing time at work and my emails are a huge mess. I regularily delete 2/3rds of my mails just to keep Eudora from crashing.

[Jarmo]

I've no idea what mods I have, but they're all from CMHQ or Combat Missions.

I trashed about a quarter of my mods a few days ago, as my resurce files were getting too big. I'm thinking of trashing it all and starting from scratch, but I'm probably too lazy...

[JasonC]

The briefings are away, to the respective side commanders...

[JasonC]

"it is very likely that it is for a reason"

In the sense of having a determinant cause, that is obvious. The date on the message is before I even used the ISP, so anything else is pretty far fetched. I don't think I am responsible for anything ever done by any customer of one of the baby bells. If your mailer or ISP thinks so, the problem is yours or theirs, and certainly not mine.

Here is the error message -

<mpdr0.chicago.il.ameritech.net[206.141.239.142]>: Client host rejected: Spam Block 1999-10-20

Note the date. I began using Ameritech as an ISP when I got DSL in October of 2000, a year after the date listed.

I only post this here because I can't reach you by email. If you can't fix it so your incoming mail doesn't bounce at that addie, then get a hotmail account. Or drop the campaign. I can't have a player I can't reach.

[ 11-01-2001: Message edited by: JasonC ]</p>

[Jarmo]

*poit*

How far are we now?

How many players still in, are the sides set?

(I do know my side )

[Redwolf]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by JasonC:

"it is very likely that it is for a reason"

Here is the error message -

<mpdr0.chicago.il.ameritech.net[206.141.239.142]>: Client host rejected: Spam Block 1999-10-20

<hr></blockquote>

Sorry, Jason are you talking to me (cons.org) or the other guy that had the spam protection rejecting you?

[JasonC]

To redwolf - I am trying to talk to Chris Campos, but whether he is listening is another story altogether LOL.

To Jarmo - the sides are set and a mail was just sent announcing all the ground rules. Those who haven't seen the operational map yet just got it. I haven't yet sent the "populated" version and briefing to everyone on the two sides, just the operational commanders, pending acknowledgements and "gos" from all the assigned players that they are ready to participate, on the designated side and terms, etc.

As soon as I have those acknowledgements, it will be time to set up. You should start thinking about your set up phase already, if you haven't yet. And when you get the message mentioned above, you will have the list of your players to discuss things with. I hope to have the set up and first op move done in time for the first tactical fights to occur next weekend. (This weekend would be a bit steep, methinks).

[Jarmo]

How fast do vehicles and infantry move?

And are vehicles tied down to traveling through roads?

[JasonC]

Vehicles are largely tied to roads, yes, but not absolutely for all of them. They can move across open ground and farmland areas if tracked or half-tracked. But the ground is wet. They are liable to bog if they make any regular practice of it. A modest "detour" through open ground is possible, but succeeding at anything more is unlikely. Ordinary wheeled vehicles like trucks wouldn't get much of anywhere without bogging - within about 200m of a road is about the limit for them (one tile).

On the improved road, vehicles can go pretty much where the wish in one op move. On the secondary roads the going is slower, but they can still move 10 km in one op-move if unopposed, if the traffic isn't too heavy. If the road is churned to mud by too many vehicles using it, then the speed will fall to more like half that.

As for infantry speeds, as a general rule you can count on leg units moving 2 km per hour in daylight (=op move) if not opposed (200m on the CMx10 map provided). If the terrain is bad or they are going uphill a lot, only 1 km. On a road they can make 3 km per op move. If completed unopposed and able to walk along the roads, an infantry column could walk from the Our on the east side of the map to to the Clerf on the west side and over it, in 7-8 op-moves - or more realistically, 8-10 with a break or two to rest, especially after climbing the ridge. Between dawn and dusk, though.

As the above probably makes clear, and I also explained in my email on ground rules, the op moves per day are 12 for this campaign. An after midnight night turn, dawn, 8 day turns for the hours from 8 AM to 4 PM, dusk, then another night turn until midnight.

Fine questions BTW.

[Wreck]

On the German map as I currently have it, there are no setup zones for either side. How is setup going to work?

[JasonC]

The details of the German set up options will be provided to you privately, along with a new file with set up zones where those are appropriate. I don't want to say more within hearing of the other side.

[JasonC]

Awaiting confirmations of willingness to take part from 3 players - Thermopylae, Iron Duke, and James Morton. When we have those, the briefings and force info can go out to all - so far only the operational commanders have all of it. Can't send it sooner to the rest in case someone needs to switch sides, if some drop.