New Scenario "The Farm" Mk II

[birdstrike]

Updated Scenario "The Farm"

Blue vs. Red, approx. 1 CO for each side, time limit: 1h 40 mins.

U.S. Rangers and Stryker Assets must rescue 3 captured scouts.

I tried to give this map a slight "WWII/U.S. airborne in Normandy" feel. But see for yourself.

Download The Farm Mk II

Some quick changes I made:

- Added VPs for casualties/unit condition

- Rangers get a M107 .50cal sniper rifle instead of the M110 7.62

- Slightly reduced ordnance for air support.

- Changed ground of ditches from marsh to tall grass, this should get rid of pathfinding problems.

- And in best WWII tradition: added 60mmm off-board mortars.

Preview:

[ September 11, 2007, 06:58 AM: Message edited by: birdstrike ]

[Meach]

looks good. How do you get the screenshots and text briefings?

[Mord]

Looks good Birdstrike.

Have you considered uploading your stuff to CMMODS? Columbus Ohio Gamer has provided a spot to have everything in one place. Or are you just waiting until it's been tested?

Mord.

[birdstrike]

Thanks guys.

Actually for the pics, I'm simply using the most basic tools I got. I take screenshots with Irfanview, also use that for some basic editing like B&W and resizing, use paint to arrange things and to add some text and that's all. Nothing really fancy. To be honest, I have gimp, but I'm too stupid to be able to use it.

I intend to upload my scenarios to CMMODS, but I want them to be somewhat tested to be in a playable state first.

[Cpl Steiner]

birdstrike,

I hadn't realized you could have Red and Blue forces on the same side. I'm guessing you set the mission data to Red vs Red, picked the spies for Blue, then switched back to Blue vs Red for the rest of Blue force.

I just tried this in the editor and it opens up many interesting possibilities. I'm thinking in particular, Afghanistan, where you have NATO troops acting as advisers for Afghan Army units, and Iraq, where you have US troops accompanying Iraqi Army patrols. How about US special forces leading Afghan Warlord armies! The possibilities are endless.

P.S. Your scenario looks very good but I haven't got the time to play it right now. I'll get back to you once I've played it.

[Mord]

Originally posted by birdstrike:

I intend to upload my scenarios to CMMODS, but I want them to be somewhat tested to be in a playable state first.

Good deal. Yeah, I pretty much figured that. Not as simple as putting a couple flags on the map anymore. And that is not a bad thing!

Originally posted by Cpl Steiner:

birdstrike,

I hadn't realized you could have Red and Blue forces on the same side. I'm guessing you set the mission data to Red vs Red, picked the spies for Blue, then switched back to Blue vs Red for the rest of Blue force.

I just tried this in the editor and it opens up many interesting possibilities. I'm thinking in particular, Afghanistan, where you have NATO troops acting as advisers for Afghan Army units, and Iraq, where you have US troops accompanying Iraqi Army patrols. How about US special forces leading Afghan Warlord armies! The possibilities are endless.

Wow nice work around. Good find guys. I was just thinking last night how it'd be kinda cool to have Northern Alliance/US force mix.

Cpl Steiner, Shootout on the History Channel had a good episode with a couple US soldiers fighting Taliban while commanding some NA guys.

Mord.

[molotov_billy]

birdstrike - I haven't completely finished it yet, but it has been really fun so far. This is the first scenario I've played without any real armor to use - having only light infantry forces you to play a completely different way. Without javelins to solve every problem, there have been some nice long firefights where I've had to coordinate MG fire, smoke, and rifle assaults very closely.

Some 81mm mortars for the rangers would be nice, for a bit more of a 'combine arms' feel to it. I'd highly suggest a scenario like this for some sort of infantry training scenario.

[JohnO]

Scenario looks great and the map looks great as well. But how would it look if the mission was done at night

JohnO

[birdstrike]

Steiner & Mord:

I had the idea of purple troops (red&blue ) when I saw the pic with the U.S. soldiers in a Syrian taxi - I remembered that you could switch the date in CMAK after buyng troops, so I just tried it with the sides and... it worked

I reckon that is a result of spending too much time in the editor and too few time with the actual game.

I always liked the Syrian tanks better than the Abrams anyway, so I figured it would be best to use the best of both sides, peace and fraternization and all... work together for the common good.

Actually I'm currently working on a joint forces mission against insurgents, hope it will be finished soon.

molotov_billy:

Concerning the mortars, I'd like to have on-map mortars, but maybe I'll exchange some air support for 60-mm mortars... I am concerned that the air power is too much, anyway.

JohnO:

I wanted to make the map a SpecOps night mission at first, but decided to go with more units in the end. Well, I think I can easily put together a night variant of the map, if people like that.

Thanks all for the feedback, so far.

[JohnO]

Don't know about everybody else, but I would like to see a SpecOps night mission. Seems to be too many scenarios for daytime and not nighttime operations.

JohnO

[Cpl Steiner]

JohnO,

I've been reading about the "Battle of Fallujah" recently and one thing I read was that the Marines attacked in daylight because night vision goggles destroy your depth perception, which makes MOUT warfare particularly more hazardous.

So, whilst I agree that there aren't enough night missions, they should probably be restricted to rural maps rather than cities.

[molotov_billy]

Originally posted by Cpl Steiner:

So, whilst I agree that there aren't enough night missions, they should probably be restricted to rural maps rather than cities.

Very interesting. Though this one in particular is very much a rural map.

[molotov_billy]

Played this one again tonight - very challening! I'm too embarassed to mention the final results, and don't want to post any spoilers, but this is indeed the first mission where the mission time limit isn't just an arbitrary number.

It's a very tricky trade off of speed vs caution, and it looks like it will take me a couple of playthroughs to achieve even a minor victory. Very cool.

[birdstrike]

Oh well, I once blasted two of my own captured scouts to oblivion. So there's nothing to be embarrased.

I am a little concerned that the victory conditions are too difficult.

You think they are all right as they are?

[birdstrike]

Updated scenario uploaded.

[molotov_billy]

Birdstrike, sorry about the late reply.

I do think it's fine as is. I'm just running into a lot of bugs (not your fault) that this scenario tends to bring out, and I think it's making things more difficult than they should be.

The biggest one for me is that whenever I get into a firefight, my rangers throw out their AT4's almost immediately, even when I use "target light." Obviously that doesn't work out very well when I have to engage armor later on.

Two other movement bugs that aren't necessarily crippling, but certainly annoying - for some reason, I'm getting the split squad bug very often, which is when half of the squad ignores a movement order while the other half does as I say. The squad icon ends up floating somewhere inbetween the two, and it's difficult to get them back together again.

The second squad bug is the infinite planning bug, where a squad will not listen to a move order because the "team leader" never finishes his "planning" activity.

Anyway, once those things are cleared up, it'll be a challenging scenario, but not impossible.

[lannes1809]

hi,

I have finished the scenario with a syrian surrender, thought I lost all 3 prisioners ( an F16 bomb landed just in the middle of the farm killing everyone). The odd thing is that it gave me a total victory, having only 250 points and thorically the syirian had 1000 points for the prisioners... another bug?

[Cpl Steiner]

If the enemy surrenders you always win, i.e. victory points are ignored. I don't think there is any way around this at the moment. Perhaps a future patch could have an override for certain objectives to force a win or a loss regardless of other conditions.

[lannes1809]

Thanks Steiner, yes, it would be good this thing be solved in a future patch. I will repeat the scenario trying to rescue all three prisioners...

[birdstrike]

First, thanks to all of you for your positive replies.

molotov_billy: I assume you have used the MkII map, right? Do you remember if the squad issues were related to a specific map area?

The automatic victory if the enemy surrenders is someting which cannot be helped as for now. A possible workaround could be to place some more enemy units unseen (possibly spies?) to the enemy somewhere that are likely to survive until the end, so the enemy does not have to surrender when the farm is taken.