2 New Scenarios-Hammurabi Boarding School

[PrezCartman]

Hey Guys and Girls,

Just posted two new scenarios over at CMMods. If you want to check them out just search by designer and look for PrezCartman. I have a scenario with the US as Blue Force and with Syrians as Blue Force. In both cases AI is only setup for Red, so they are only playable as Blue or 2 Player. Also in both I was unable to get the scoring setup right because of the number of objective given to the AI, hence the Blue Force score wise will almost always get a Total Victory. However, if in the score board the AI is close or has a higher point total than you, consider it a loss because the actual point values are pretty even.

Both scenarios use the same map.

Relatively small map, Blue Force starts out behind a line of hills free from observation. There is a main road, Highway Boston/63, running down the middle of the map. On one side of the highway there is a small airfield and a bombed Syrian military base. On the other side there is a decent sized family farm as well as a small boarding school, hence the title. For the blue player, the airfield, school, and farm are preserve targets and the player must try to do as little damage to those buildings as possible.

In both versions the attacking side consists of a reinforced company, obviously due to different army configurations the forces are a bit different. I have found it to be a fun but interesting challenge and hope you guys like it. Please offer any comments positive or negative as this is my first public scenarios and I greatly appreciate any complaints or compliments both to improve this and future scenarios.

Below is the tac map, basically a UAV image of the battlefield with the major areas landmarked.

[Mishga]

Cool map Should be worth a scope.

[birdstrike]

Great. I like small maps. Will try it.

And now that I see it... We need a winter mod for CMSF.

[PrezCartman]

Anybody play through either one yet?

[birdstrike]

Played through the Syrian mission - woha! It was bloody, but I liked it!

--- POSSIBLE SPOILER AHEAD---

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First: I liked the penalties for damaging civil structures. This really is the essence of this battle.

I also liked the overall opfor composition, the infantry gave me a hard time clearing out the buildings and the tanks were quite nasty towards the end of the scenario. I really enjoyed that.

Some issues you could review:

The enemy artillery at the start of the battle could be left out, I guess. Don't know it it was intentional, but it came down in the middle of the road with no effect whatsoever.

You could also consider not to bring in the mechanized reinforcement on the road, but behind the ridge like the others, or you should at least tell about that in the briefing.

And much of the attacker's artillery seemed unnecessary. No real need for all that firepower, since you should not destroy most of the buildings anyway. I'd only leave 1 mortar battery or 2 at the most and the heavy artillery.

My biggest gripe were the IEDs. There seem to be just too many for a scenario this size. And worse, they kept expoding at the same spot over and over again. Don't know if that's intentional, but it was quite frustrating to repeatedly lose infantry units when the area should be already cleared by the blast.

If you want to make it a little more challenging for the attacker, you could exchange one or two of the mech infantry platoons through motorized platoons without BMPs. I think too much armor takes away some of the fun in this scenario and I suspect you intended this battle to slightly favor the use of infantry?

[PrezCartman]

Bird,

Appreciate the comments, I will look into it when I get the chance.

The enemy arty was mainly there just to punish someone if they rushed troops up onto the ridgeline right from the start. I wish the AI could actually get some use out of arty, but I see your point and I actually considered removing it anyway and probably will now anyway.

I brought the last reinforcement on the road in the hopes by that point the player would've cleared some of the area, but I didn't get a chance to retest it before the last version, however I will consider moving them.

I gave the extra arty to see if the player wanted to bury themselves with it since most of the targets are pretty much off limits.

Lol yea I threw the IEDs in when I first created it and sadly the AI doesn't move them around so since I knew where they were from designing it I just naturally stayed away from them. I will probably just pull them out altogether since they don't do a whole lot of good, maybe toss another RPG team in to make up for it.

Keep in mind I designed the battle first with US troops and Stryker have a lot less firepower than the BMP so I'll have to do a little toying with that, but I'll look into it.

Thanks for the advice, I definitely plan on improving this one a bit and already have my next scenario design in mind.

[birdstrike]

I played the U.S. side now and it seemed to have a better balanced feel to it indeed. Still I enjoyed both variants and if you put out another version of the map I'll sure play it again.

The reinforcements on the road is not so much a problem of drawing enemy fire, but of too much traffic in one spot . By the time the troops arrived, I was advancing on the road with some troops and suddenly there were friedlies pooping up all around me, blocking paths. To keep them arriving on the road, you could enlarge the map slightly to the attackers side so the reinforcements come in on the road a few meters further in the back.

And I tried to find another use for the artillery by using it to detonate suspected IEDs, which didn't seem to work, though. Perhaps it could work with mines? You could tell about suspected mines in the briefing, so the attacker can use the artillery to clear the road or someting like that.

But you can leave one ot two IEDs in the game, just not that many .

[PrezCartman]

Lol first would have to do a test to see if arty actually helps with minefields, not sure if it has any effect yet.