An Appeal to Scenario Designers

[Philippe]

In a very short while CMMOS is going to be able to present people with an even more mindboggling array of choices than it does now. But to make full use of these capabilities, it is necessary to have a couple of pieces of information immediately available when you fire up a scenario.

1)Physical environment. Is this a snow scenario (start pushing buttons in Winter Wonderland) or a non-snow scenario (run to Field and Stream)? Should the terrain be muddy, dry, or lush (more Field and Stream, and there are several terrain sets for each of these). What style of buildings should get used: Magua, Magua Normandy, Panzertruppen, or Ed Kinney (each one is a little closer to a particular geographical style of architecture)?

2) Order of Battle. At a minimum, we should be told the name of the division that each side belongs to, and told this up front. CMMOS is going to give people the capability to use their unit's divisional emblem or flag as the unachieved objective marker. Not much use if the division is never mentioned. I've gone through a lot of scenarios looking for this kind of information lately, and it's almost never easy to find. Sometimes you have to actually start the scenario to find out from the second briefing, and sometimes the information is even wrong.

As a final remark, the next CMMOS release is also going to include extensive capability for unit shoulder patches, lanyards, and collar tabs. Once again, there's no point to having correct uniforms for the Americans, Canadians, Brits, Poles, Dutch, Czechs, and Belgians if you don't know exactly what unit was involved in a battle.

So please try to include this kind of information up front in bold letters in your scenario description. It's a real drag to set up the flags and the uniforms, start the scenario, and then discover, after you've gotten a spoiler peek at the battlefield, that you have to start, reconfigure, and start all over again.

And it would also be nice to know if there are any particular uniform selections that are recommended. This doesn't have to be a spoiler. You can mention one uniform type from each group every time, regardless of whether that type shows up in the scenario or not.

[Panther G]

Well, you can try Bruneval - A Quick Visit, my latest scenario. It's non-snow with British Airborne and Heer at nighttime. I believe I mentioned all these things in the General Briefing, though not exactly for that purpose...

Ryan

[MGONZOM]

This a good thing! I like it and will make sure weather is in General briefing..

BTW I still have not got CMMOS... point me in the direction... still playing with some of the old mods...

[Sgt. Schultz]

That is an excellent idea. Maybe designers can agree on some sort of standard CMOSS info format to put all that stuff right at the top of the briefing.

Short, sweet and to the point info that applies to each applicable CMOSS section.

[Harv]

Good idea Philippe. A semi-standardized layout in the briefing would be perfect.

In the meantime, and for all the older scenarios that probably won't get updated, hop over to the Scenario Depot and select the scenario there to see all of the necessary information (with the exception of Units/OOB).

This was one of the main reasons I built the original database as the info was not always easily accessible. This idea would have made my life a lot easier then too.

Harv

[WWB]

I know we over at Boots & Tracks use a pretty standard format in the general briefing, which should convey all you need to know. If one of you CMMOS types wants to have a look at one and get back to me if anything is missing, feel free.

WWB

[Panther G]

What exactly are the needed factors in this "standardized" info? It wouldn't be that hard:

Bruneval - A Quick Visit:

June 44, non-snow

dry, night, overcast

Allied: British 1st Parachute Brigade

Axis: Heer (not sure of division)

Is there anything else that's needed? otherwise I might post an update...

Ryan

[Philippe]

Originally posted by Panther G:

What exactly are the needed factors in this "standardized" info? It wouldn't be that hard:

Bruneval - A Quick Visit:

June 44, non-snow

dry, night, overcast

Allied: British 1st Parachute Brigade

Axis: Heer (not sure of division)

Is there anything else that's needed? otherwise I might post an update...

Ryan

That's essentially it. In the case of the Americans and the Germans it would only be necessary to identify the division, but with the Commonwealth the shoulder patches and collar tabs are available for each regiment (so in this case there are three different possible regiments).

[Philippe]

Originally posted by Mr_Gonzo_The_Rooster:

This a good thing! I like it and will make sure weather is in General briefing..

BTW I still have not got CMMOS... point me in the direction... still playing with some of the old mods...

The main repository of CMMOS is in the CMMOS section of CMHQ. Go to combatmission.com and look about a quarter of the way down the menu on the left-hand side of the page. Be prepared for a lot of downloading. The terrain section is encylopaedic, the vehicle section is getting that way, and the uniform section is about to become that way.

The only downside to CMMOS (apart from promoting obsessive behavior when it comes to mods) is that we haven't yet figured out how to adapt it to the MAC. This is mainly because our tecnical minded people aren't that familiar with MACs, and we will eventually change that, if we ever figure out how.

[Panther G]

Originally posted by Philippe:

Ah, yes, us Mac users have the misfortune of not being able to use CMMOS, and a lot of those PBEM helper applications. However, I think CMMOS has been out for a while, and still no mac, so maybe it isn't coming out... As of now I don't mod anything, because of the hassle involved and my problem with pinkies...

[Panther G]

Updated now...

[Olle Petersson]

Generally a good idea!

However, regarding OOB;

- For totally fictional scenarios only troop type may apply. The player can then pick division freely.

- For some (historical) battles even getting the oppositions troop type might be too much of a spoiler. (I've been working on such a scenario for a while (not even being close to finish yet).)

For example; Allied attack against AI. The "intel report" (briefing) rates the defense as "Volkssturm company". The scenario OOB listing says "Volkssturm, 12th SS, 2nd Fallschirmjäger". In that case I would not be surprised if there were some German paratroopers and armour around...

It might, of course, be proper to state that the OOB is not listed for spoiler purposes.

Cheers

Olle

[Philippe]

Originally posted by Olle Petersson:

Generally a good idea!

However, regarding OOB;

- For totally fictional scenarios only troop type may apply. The player can then pick division freely.

- For some (historical) battles even getting the oppositions troop type might be too much of a spoiler. (I've been working on such a scenario for a while (not even being close to finish yet).)

For example; Allied attack against AI. The "intel report" (briefing) rates the defense as "Volkssturm company". The scenario OOB listing says "Volkssturm, 12th SS, 2nd Fallschirmjäger". In that case I would not be surprised if there were some German paratroopers and armour around...

It might, of course, be proper to state that the OOB is not listed for spoiler purposes.

Cheers

Olle

You only need to know the exact unit identity of your own unit so that unachieved objective markers will be transformed into your own unit's flag or symbol (wherever you see your unit's flag, that's where you go).

Because there are so many different styles of German uniform options, you just need something that is more akin to a reminder to use certain camo types, or not to use any at all. The remark can be made relatively spoiler-proof by always listing all of the categories of uniform style (there are only three or four). Note that some of these may actually appear in the game even though they aren't involved in the scenario since the program intentionally misidentifies units. An example would be Heer: no camo; SS: summer camo; Fallschirmjaeger: anything but dress uniform; Volkssturm: non-military; Panzer crews: anything but Assault Gun crew uniforms.

Since the game misidentifies units with delightful abandon, one approach is to specify camo on the Heer units in SS-based scenarios, and SS in Feldgrau in Heer based scenarios. Or the reverse. The one uniform you have to be careful with is the Luftwaffe Field Division uniform, because that is not supposed to get worn by Fallschirmjaegers.