Work in progress - The Hasrabit campaign

[handihoc]

I'm really liking the sound of this, as well as the look. Great work, PT.

RvR certainly appeals - I've only touched on it so far in a couple of scenarios, as I normally play blue. And it looks like you've really put in some work to make this something special.

Don't have time to play it yet, unfortunately, but the day will come soon enough. Meanwhile, thanks for all your the time and energy.

[Paper Tiger]

handihoc:

don't worry, it's still a few weeks from completion, hopefully sometime in early March. The Red v Red allows me to make the kind of battles I'd like to play with SF. This all started as a scenario for US v Syria, a large meeting engagement between two mechanised forces but it was a total wipe-out for the US side, just way too easy for Blue to get a win. The M1 is far too tough for anything that the Syrians can field. Yeah, it can be killed with side or rear shots but on a large map with the Blue side as the AI, it's still possible to program the AI to use them effectively and avoid those side shots like I would if I had room to manuoevre. So I did the same engagement with red v Red and I had a blast. Since then, I haven't played a Blue v Red battle.

As for the looks, well, the more realistic the map looks, the more immersive the experience is for me. But it's programming the AI to attack effectively that's the real challenge in this one. I'm trying to avoid making the situation intense merely by swamping the human player with opponents that rush at you. I've got one battle at the moment where the AI has only a slight material advantage over the defender but it gives you a hell of a fight until your reinforcements arrive.

All the battles are combined arms battles although there are a couple of Special Forces situations where the human player has infantry only. The AI on the other hand always has some kind of support vehicles, tanks, BMP-1s etc. I'm even trying a meeting MOUT engagement, a first for me. That's still under development but I should be starting it very soon.

The Louch:

I'll definitely want somebody else to playtest 'Hill 142' and 'The Barrier' so if you're up to it, I'd be grateful. I finished 'Hill 142' yesterday when I got a total victory against the AI without substantial material loss so I'm very happy with that one. I'm a bit concerned about 'The Barrier' though as I think it might be a bit too difficult. It's the new version of 'Passed Off' and the new name is more appropriate for reasons you will discover if you playtest it.

Anyway, here are three new screenshots from the action in 'Hill 142' yesterday morning. as you can see, you get tanks in this one...

With the smoke screen laid down, finally, it's time to start the attack on the village.

And something a bit less exciting but just as tense...

I had to redesign the map to eliminate some of the half tile houses so that I could get the AI to deploy inside them. With the cover value of houses enhanced in 1.06, you really have to dig the rebels out of those houses. Now we just need fortified houses...

[Roter Stern]

Originally posted by Paper Tiger:

handihoc:

The Louch:

I'll definitely want somebody else to playtest 'Hill 142' and 'The Barrier' so if you're up to it, I'd be grateful.

Yep, by all means, just fire off which ever scenarios you'd like me to have a look at to my email.

Originally posted by Paper Tiger:

handihoc:

I had to redesign the map to eliminate some of the half tile houses so that I could get the AI to deploy inside them.

Try this, unless you already are of course - instead of doing this for the AI orders:

...do it like this:

A single painted square is all it takes to get the AI to set up in a house. Also note that the AI will set up in all seven buildings in the example above, not just the closest one to the edge or the top.

[Paper Tiger]

Yup, that's what I've done and it works too. Thanks for the tip though.

Having finished all the phase 1 battles for now, I decided to get started on the campaign finale, the street fighting in Hasrabit. It took a while to get the battle set up right but after a couple of hours testing, I finally found a good mix of forces for the Red attacker. I had to expand the map a bit so that the AI could set up out of sight of Blue's set up area. I revisited the google earth pic of th real world location that is Hasrabit and I was happy to see that there were feilds and orchards to the east of the town so they got added in to good effect.

I'm going to be spending a lot of time working on this one because it's the climax and I want it to be really intense. At this point, the core forces should be reduced considerably but I'm playtesting it with the full OB. If I can win regularly without having to rely on luck with the full OB then it will be balanced. Lose too much of your core force then, tough...

First, the inevitable opening artillery barrage...

and then the first phase of the assault begins...

then, the first of your reinforcements arrive and you must secure your zone, etc...

It all takes place in the late afternoon and so by the end, it should be dark. At 1hr 30mins long, I will have to see how ammo works out for both sides in this one.

[the Fighting Seabee]

WOW.

I can't wait.

[Webwing]

Paper Tiger,

I haven't been posting here but I'm reading your posts and following this one closely.

Really fantastic.

This will surely be a very special campaign and the idea of Red x Red will make it even more interesting.

Great stuff.

--

[Paper Tiger]

I spent this morning reviewing the AI plan for 'The Barrier', the new name for 'Passed Off' which was just a working title. The Louch kindly playtested this situation for me and it came up wanting so I'm glad I got a second opinion. Let's just say that the AI plan would have pissed off a few folks so I've dropped it and put in a whole new one that's actually very similar to the original plan.

The original version had two full companies of mech infantry supported by a company of T-55s but even with all this force, I was able to defeat that plan without too much trouble. The 'new' AI plan made the AI attack up one flank using a terrain feature to conceal it from the other side of the board and it was so effective that I was able to cut down the number of platoons in the mech companies. It also happened to make the situation very 'frame rate' friendly. However, I was a bit concerned about this plan for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it used only about 30% of an otherwise excellent map. Now, I've reverted to the original full-board attack plan and the AI is still presenting me with a serious challenge so I might have to cut back the AI forces a bit more so that the scenario is 'likeable'. I have some more ideas to make it even more challenging but fair.

For those of you who have been kind enough to express interest in this project, I would like to warn you that there will be situations in the campaign that are designed to make you sacrifice your force to save yourself from a defeat. Some people really won't like it but it fits in with the idea of the campaign, ie a high risk military operation that will pay big dividends if successful but will require some sacrifices to be made to make it attainable. 'The Barrier' is one such situation. But if you're going to have to sacrifice your force, I want you to have some 'fun' doing it and not frustration.

Also, I'm spending a lot of time working on these situations to make them as challenging as possible for me and not just an enjoyable easy gaming experience for you. Therefore, you'll get a lot further in the campaign if you play the game as if you're playing against another human opponent. No, the AI planning is NOT THAT good but I hope that you won't think that it's stupid either. This is particularly important with respect to the AI usage of artillery.

At the moment, and for the forseeable future, the AI has to fire off everything at the start and there's no way to tie an artillery plan to an attack plan. Therefore, the AI will target locations where I think you'll set up so if you consider that I've done that, you should consider your set up more carefully. If some place looks like an excellent place to put an ATGM team, I might have thought of that too. The AI never gets an unreasonable weight of artillery but, sometimes, a battalion will get the full artillery support that it's due. So be warned, it can cover quite a few locations but it can't cover everything. Since the AI is attacking so it's reasonable to expect it to have plenty of artillery support. And of course, when the artillery barrage lifts, that perfect location will still be there.

[Paper Tiger]

Whew, rereading my last post, I think I was a bit stressed out when I posted it due to lack of sleep. We're getting huge tropical thunderstorms in the night just now and it's hard to get a good nights sleep at the moment, even with earplugs. There's a great flash of light and then whole house shakes man. It's freaking scary.

Anyway, I'm still REALLY groggy today but not so stressed out. I got a lot of work done this morning on 'The Barrier', implementing some of the changes that The Louch made to me and it's a hell of a lot better for it. I reckon one more day of playtesting and it will be finished and then I can return to developing the phase 2 battles. The new AI plan is much fairer to the player than the sneaky flank attack plan that it replaces. But you'll still have to bite the bullet and confront the enemy in this one or lose the situation. I've designed the new plan so that you'll actually have that choice.

Webwing:

thanks for the encouragement. I really am trying to make this something special. The red on red game is a very different experience for so many reasons. Perhaps the most important one is the reduced lethality of the ATGM weapons systems. A hit rarely means a 100% chance of a kill, they're nowhere near as lethal as a javelin for example. Therefore I am seeing mech forces exchanging volleys of fire but not so many kills. It makes them quite exciting and also unpredictable too. It makes some situations really hard to balance as sometimes the BMP-2's AT-5 will kill a T-55 and other times it won't, it's around a 50-50 chance. When they don't get those kills, you'll feel frustrated and the situation will seem excessively tough. Yet, when they do, and it will happen for some folks, the situation will seem to be very easy.

I guess I could have had this finished a couple of weeks ago if I didn't care so much about getting everything just right. I want every battle to be different and exciting. I think people will especially like the Special Forces missions in the campaign. I'm REALLY hoping to get it finished in the next 3 weeks but I'm not going to rush it. It'll be finished when it's finished. (now where have I heard that before...?)

[Paper Tiger]

Once again, my entire CM session this morning was spent developing and playtesting 'The Barrier'. This has easily been the most difficult situation to design in the campaign so far. The reason I used the sneaky AI flank attack was because the AI otherwise has to attack across some very exposed terrain as well as cross some crest lines. Without either more orders or more groups available in the scenario editor, this is a very challenging thing to do.

I was massacring the AI this morning and I was tempted to give the AI more tanks to make things more challenging for the human player but I hit upon the simple expedient of delaying the human player's reinforcements. What a difference that made. Before, the reinforcements arrived just as the AI attack was starting to develop and 5-10 minutes later, the terrain was littered with burning wrecks and the AI was finished. Now, with the reinforcements arriving later, the AI attack has a real chance to develop and become a challenge for the human player. I played it once this morning and it was much tenser but I still won easily.

Before going to work I tweaked the terrain to help the AI attack a bit so I'll playtest it again tomorrow morning to see if that helps.

I have also added a new victory phase line to the game that will make the situation more challenging for the human player. Namely, an invisible phase line that the human player must stop the AI forces from touching at all costs. Whist this sounds massively unfair, there is a really good reason for using it this way but I'll save that for the briefings. Needless to say, it's placed so that it's very hard for the AI to touch and so far, in all the last couple of days playtests, they haven't come close to touching it once. But then, I aggressively use my assests to prevent them from doing so. If you play more conservatively, the greater the risk will be.

[the Fighting Seabee]

Paper Tiger, you're making me nervous. When am I going to be able to sleep? With this campaign coming out, Webwings improved campaign, the TF Narwick campaign, and all the other great scenarios, I'm going to have to break up with my girlfriend, quit my job, and spend my savings on coffee and redbull.

Seriously though, with the amount of work and detail your putting into this, I can tell it's going to be great. Thanks for the hard work! I can't wait!

[Paper Tiger]

Well, Mr 'CB', you could try marrying that girl of yours and that way, she just might be happy to have a husband who stays at home at nights instead of disappearing off to the pub for a few beers with the boys. That's how it works for me. Sleep? I'm even dreaming about the campaign when I sleep at nights.

Almost the whole morning was spent refining the AI attack plan for 'The Barrier' and I think it's nearly there. The idea is sound but I just have to tweak the timing of the orders to co-ordinate the attacking groups for the maximum effect. If I can get this just right, it should be scary. I 'synched' two this morning and together, they nearly got to the phase line.

I've spent so much time developing this one attack plan that I think I'll keep it at just one for the time being. I REALLY want to do some serious work on the two climactic battles this weekend so if I make really good progress with them, I'll maybe return to this one and develop a second attack plan before I finally release it.

As for balance, I think you'll just have to trust me that most of the time, I slaughter the AI so I've given the Blue side enough AT assets to stop the AI in it's tracks. But Red equipment isn't a sure thing so sometimes, the AI will seem unstoppable and you'll be yelling "BOO!" at the monitor (or something worse). The scenario designer will probably play the situation more times than any other single player so he sees the average outcome. Right now, I think this one is slightly weighted in the human player's favour. It will be interesting to see how people feel about it when you finally get to play it.

[Paper Tiger]

I've been hard at work with this campaign over the last two days trying out the older scenarios to see how they play with 1.07. The good news is that I haven't found any bad effects from the patch but I am definitely going to have to rebalance some of the pre 1.06 as the AI vehicles seem to be moving much faster.

Other than playtesting the old scenarios I have continued working on 'The Barrier' and it's nearly finished. I am very happy with the way this one is turning out. Needless to say, the faster pathfinding meant that the pre 1.07 plan needed a bit more tweeking. I also moved that hidden phase line back a bit because the AI managed to touch it today and it really shouldn't be able to as long as you hold nothing back. I've pretty much synched the attack so it's not going to get any tougher now short of adding more forces to the AI and I'm definitely not going to do that. The mission must be both winnable and exciting. At the moment, it's almost as good as I can make it.

I also started work on a new phase 2 battle for the special forces called 'Breakout' and it's shaping up to be a very nice battle as well. The map is still under development but it's looking good. It's located in the valley and it's very hot and hazy taking place around the middle of the day. This one is a meeting engagement and so far, it's very challenging. The Rebels have managed to outflank your special forces and threaten to encircle your forces. The two special forces companies are supported by a reserve mech company with some crappy T-55 1974 model tanks.

When I started this one, there were lots of walls but it was proving too difficult for the pathfinding AI to move it's vehicles around so they had to go. Here's an early screenshot with the walls.

The reserve units are very poor but I'm getting really good battles with them. The tanks are rubbish when pitted against the US or even the Republican Guard but against other earlier tanks, they're good enough for an exciting fight.

Smoke seems to be denser with 1.07 and I'm seeing the AI use it a lot in this situation to very good effect.

And out of this smokescreen come the attackers.

Then the special forces arrive and move towards the battle. I'm using The Louch's special forces mod. It looks much better than the stock black uniforms.

This situation is benefiting from my experience with developing the AI attack in 'The Barrier'. In fact, after I finish this one, I'm going to return to the older ones and rework the AI attack plans. It means that this definitely won't get finished for at least another 2-3 weeks but hopefully it should get finished before the end of March.

[Paper Tiger]

Hurrah! I finally finished 'The Barrier' this morning and it's just what I wanted it to be. I managed to get the AI groups co-ordinated for the maximum effect and I got slaughtered twice in a row. So I moved the phase line back even closer to the friendly board edge and replayed it and voila, it was winnable. After two more playthroughs I managed to get two Total Victories but I had to work to get them.

Since I got it playtested almost everything except the two forces has been changed. There will be no more changes or tweaks to this one as it's as close to perfect as I could possibly make it. And that means that I can now concentrate exclusively on the phase 2 battles from now on.

The six phase one battles are all finished but I still want to return to some of them and enhance them a bit further before the campaign is released. There are three phase 2 battles at the moment, 'Heavy Metal' which is finished, 'Breakout' which should be finished next weekend, and 'Saudara' which is about 50% there. Then the finale, 'Hasrabit'. I might possibly develop another Republican Guard mission for phase 2 but I before I do, I want to do another test compile of the RG situations and see how badly my core forces get hit. If they are still largely intact in phase 2 then I'll need another one. Otherwise 'Saudara' will be an unplayable monster. I can't really run a battle with each side fielding a full battalion with support elements onboard without a serious performance hit. Actually, I'd like to keep the AI force down to around two reinforced companies if possible.

I'm hoping designing another scenario to do this won't be necessary though. As it stands, 'The Barrier' will really hurt B Company and 'Murder in the Night' can be pretty hard on A Company too, at least the first couple of times you play it. 'Hill 142' is a bit of a holiday for the Republican Guards though but make a mistake and it can quickly put the hurt on you.

'Heavy Metal' is INSANE. If you thought B company had it tough in 'The Barrier', wait 'till you see what's waiting for them in this one. I'm going to leave it as it is because I have never seen any scenario like this done yet, at leat not outside WW2. I have beaten it a couple of times with minimal losses but I had to be REALLY careful.

Then, what's left after these four battles is what you take with you to 'Saudara'. Hopefully (from MY point of view) you should have the equivilant of a little more than a reinforced company and that would be just perfect for the planned AI OB. More than that and it would be quite an easy finish for the Guard and we can't have that can we? >fiendish cackle<

[Paper Tiger]

Actually, I missed this before this morning. It's taking a lot longer for Red artillery to arrive after 1.07. It's a very welcome change and it has really helped to make 'The Barrier' a tough mission. I was considering removing the artillery support from the Blue OB but now, that's not necessary as it takes around 23 minutes for the artillery to arrive.

After all the work I've done on the Barrier and 'Breakout', I absolutely HAVE to redo all the old AI plans to make them more effective. I might even be able to downscale some of the AI forces too. I replayed the campaign opener 'Ambush!' this morning and it was MUCH tougher to beat with the new AI plan. I still won but my casualties were much higher so I'll have to rethink my strategy when playing this one.

And the same applies to 'Buying the Farm'. I'm currently playtesting it with a new AI plan and it's definitely different. The effect of the new ELOS is definitely noticable in this one. I'm developing a whole new set of tactics that would never have worked before ELOS.

[Paper Tiger]

It appears that I'll have to devote a bit more time to rebalancing the earlier scenarios after all. I just finished a full playthrough of 'The Farm' and I won it easily with almost no core force casualties. The introduction of ELOS allows the player to use far more detailed tactics both on the attack and defence, at least for those of us who play RT anyway.

So, I spent the rest of this morning's session tinkering with the AI plans again and made a new version. I will give it a full playthrough tomorrow morning. The little that I saw of it this morning should significantly up the challenge level for your core forces. This morning, the first Special forces company arrived just on time to save the day in the battle for the workhouses victory location and that meant that the other two were easy. Given that the AI has no ability to react to the players actions, I'm going to program the AI to 'anticipate' your actions. It would be nice if casualties somehow affected the group's AI plan, example, move to the next order if the group's casualties exceed 60% whatever.

I also wish there were some ability for the campaign designer to specify auto-save for the player to overwrite his campaign game save when he completes another mission in the game. At the moment, it's possible to just reload a mission if you're not happy with the result and try again until you get a better one. It's a lot of work creating a dynamic campaign and most of that work will be wasted if the player cheats and reloads until he gets the optimal result. I know that I will play the game the way I intend it and there are others who will too. I want this to be a story or an adventure and it will be scripted to be like one as much as it's possible to do so. If a player chooses to reload and stick to the optimal path through the campaign then I guess it's his loss.

[handihoc]

Some very atmospheric screenshots there, PT. I really do like the way your campaign is unfolding.

[Paper Tiger]

I haven't been able to post for a while 'cos the ISP I use has been down for the last 36 hours. But I have been hard at work on this project nevertheless. I finished the new version of 'Buying the farm' yesterday evening. It is now significantly more challenging without being unfair. I got a total victory but I had to WORK my ass off to get it in the last few minutes so it's finished. I actually thought I was heading for a draw but I managed to get enough force into the last VP location to neutralise it for both of us. Since I controlled the other two the victory fell to me.

That's a screenshot from the final moments. That's also one of the reasons why I wouldn't want to disable the smoke effect.

The time I had remaining I used to beautify the 'Farm' map and also replay the campaign opener 'Ambush!" and it is more challenging too. Because 'Strong Stand' and 'Breakout' are post 1.06 babies, they won't require very much tweaking to get finished so, except for 'Hasrabit', the Special Forces missions are finished.

The same goes for the Republican Guard situations. I am going to complile them all later this morning and do a run through to see how much of my core force I lose in the four missions. I just can't get a force balance that's right for 'Saudara' until I have a good idea what the player'll be bringing to this one. I don't want it to be impossible to win, just BLOODY hard!

I don't want to have to create a new mission at this stage of the development project. It feels like I'll finally get it finished in another 2-3 weeks, certainly before the end of March. I'm quite anxious to get it finished so that I can play some of the other campaigns/scenarios that have been released. I haven't played ANYTHING at all other than these missions since I started work on this project.

[Paper Tiger]

Groan... it looks like I'm going to have to completely redo 'Murder in the night'. I compiled all the Republican Guards situations this morning and started up the mini-campaign and I massacred the AI in the first scenario. So I quit the campaign and tried again and slaughtered the AI without loss once again. Clearly, the so-called killer AI attack plan has now become a pussy. And the strange this is that the only units in the Blue force that see any action are the three T-72 TURMS. They truly are the kings of the night against other Red tanks.

So, I've decided to move the campaign forward in time a few days so that the moon is full. That should help the AI spot better at night. It also makes the map look beautiful too, just as I'd intended it to look. I absolutely don't want to give the AI more force. Instead, I'm going to try and find a way to make the most of what they've got at the moment. But if they have to have more, they're going to get more.

I've also renamed it 'Three Kings' because it sounds way cooler than 'Murder in the night' even if the old title is a more appropriate name for this situation as it stands at the moment. I know that the T-72 TURMS received a spotting upgrade in 1.06 or 1.07 so that probably explains why the balance in this one has swung so much in favour of the human player. Also, my experience both as a player and a designer has grown through the creation of this campaign so I'm using the assets I've got in a more efficient manner. Also, the previous plan was a bit basic compared to the plans that are in some of the other situations. It's a night combined arms meeting engagement so I'm going to have to organise the AI to attack more effectively. Looks like this will be my project for this weekend. If I get get this one up to scratch then I won't need to create another Republican Guard situation before 'Saudara'

[Paper Tiger]

When I said that I'd have to redo 'Murder in the night' I had no idea just how much I was going to change it. Apart from the map and the night setting, absolutely everything has changed. It's no longer a meeting engagement but now, first a Red Assault and then a Blue Counterattack. And Red has a reinforced battalion to play around with too. As Blue now has two Republican Guard companies and a platoon of T-72s AND there is a reinforced fortress company onboard at the start, it's definitely the biggest OB I've worked with so far. And I'm getting really good FPS. The map's no titch either at 1400m x 800m. Perhaps it's the night setting that keeps the frames up.

Once I hit on the idea of a Red Assault on a fortified line with bunkers (not many) and those unbelievavbly crappy emplaced T-54s I just had to find an OB and an AI attack to go go with it. After playtesting most of the day today, I have both but it's now just a question of tweaking the arrival times of Blue's reinforcements to prevent it from being an easy win. A Company got slaughtered the last time I played it and I even lost two of my T-72s but I think that was more down to my sloppy handling of the mech units before the armour arrived. As for the armour losses, I got overconfident as they went on their killing spree.

I have been trying to give each battle in this campaign it's own particular flavour and this one certainly is different from the others. If I can just get the difficulty level right, I won't need another RG scenario to cull the player's core units before the final battle. It's been a long journey creating this campaign but the end is definitely in sight now. The maps for the final two battles are finished and I've even pretty much finished 'Hasrabit' too. Once this new "Three Kings' situation is finished, there's just really 'Saudara' to work on.

[Wiggum]

Great work !

I cant wait...

[Paper Tiger]

I think I've found my final version of this scenario now. It's getting yet another new name as there are now six 'kings' instead of three so that title is utterly inappropriate now. Since the player receives two Guards mech companies and two platoons of T-72's, it's going to be called 'The Guards Counterattack'. The time limit is now 2 hours and it will have to start earlier in the morning. Otherwise, their next scheduled battle will take place too quickly after this one finishes. However, that's not a bad idea to play around with. I'll think about that problem later. It is nice watching the skyline turn red as the battle reaches it's conclusion. I'd like to keep that. Perhaps, I could have this particular task group as the 'fire brigade' rushing from one hot spot to another.

So far, it's a very challenging opener for the Republican Guards units. But I'll have to play it through a few more times to see if I can find an easy way to win this one. I was consistently losing two T-72s each time I played last night and this morning so therefore, I added another platoon to help out. Finding that fine balance of forces between Blue and Red is the challenge left to me now. After that, I'm going to get this one playtested and see if there's something I'm missing.

[Paper Tiger]

Whew, this one really is a toughie, both on the player and the frames! I played the situation three times (albeit, not all the way through) this morning and it was extremely tough to recapture the fortified position from the AI side, never mind capturing my own objective. So, instead of cutting back the AI force, I added the remaining Tank platoon to the OB making 10 in total. The ensuing battle was extremely violent and I lost a few tanks but the map was littered with around 40 burning wrecks and the frame rate plummetted to 3-5 fps. That's barely playable for me although I can tolerate it if it's only for a short period of time. Since the extra tanks arrived with the first set of reinforcements, by removing them altogether this situation can be deferred until later in the game. So, I'm either going to have to cut back Red (very likely) or keep the extra tanks in the player's OB and get a performance hit from the burning wrecks.

Playtesting this one has been a real education for me regarding the use of combined arms. It's simply useless ordering infantry to assault an enemy held position without some sort of support vehicle in this one, even with lots of suppressing fire. On my last playtest, I hit upon an idea how to use my tanks to better effect. It required a lot of micromanagement but it was very exciting and highly effective too. That's how I got all those burning wrecks on the board.

Since I was only focussing on one platoon of tanks at a time, this new tactic makes me think that the situation will be winnable with just six tanks and two mech companies as long as I reduce the number of Red vehicles. I think I have a nice solution to the frame rate problem but I'll have to wait until Thursday to try it out.

Because I always play RT, I have a tendency to leave certain parts of my force inactive for a short period of time while I concentrate on one particular aspect of the battle, the assault on a bunker, a flanking move or whatever. Most of the battles in this campaign are quite large, this one easily being the largest, and so I'm playing most of them this way. I'd imagine that the WEGO players will find these situations much easier to manage as they'll be able to concentrate on each part of the board each turn. The downside of WEGO however, is that you won't be able to micromanage your ATGM teams or tanks to their best effect so perhaps it will all balance itself out.

[Paper Tiger]

My monitor is in the workshop being serviced today so I haven't been able to do any playtesting but I have been working on the briefings on my laptop. However, I just wanted to add something about how I am playtesting these missions.

I have exclusively playtested each situation in Real Time and in one sitting. I have NEVER once created a save point in the game and gone back to it until I got a win. Instead, these are all 'honest' playthroughs. I have to confess that I'm not a brilliant tactician, although I'm definitely improving, so if I find a situation challenging, most of you guys will probably find it much easier. For example, that new tactic I mentioned in my last post about tank handling is just simply 'shoot and scoot'.

At the moment, most of the situations have just one AI plan and that's probably not going to change very much before the campaign is released either. I can't imagine how to 'top' the attack plan in 'The Barrier' and if I put in another less effective plan, even with a 'use rarely' order, some of you won't see the primary plan. But even with just one plan, I rarely see the situation play out in exactly the same way. For example, I've seen the AI do some pretty clever things in one playtest of 'Ambush!' but not repeat that action in the next. Besides, I just don't believe that there are many people who will play this campaign more than once so what's the point of having 2 or more plans?

I have created a number of different versions of certain scenarios so that the game is dynamic. The alternative missions will definitely be tougher than the optimal version but still winnable, perhaps except for one iteration (of 5) of 'Buying the Farm'. But you're going to have to stuff things up really badly to find that one.

Fortunately, I've got the monitor back so I'll be able to implement those changes to 'The Guards Conterattack' tomorrow morning and see how it plays. When I was riding home in the taxi yesterday evening, I had an idea how I could take advantage of these changes to make it even more challenging.

[Paper Tiger]

Well, I tried my new situation this morning and I got a total victory after 1hr 20 mins without suffering unacceptable losses to my core units so I guess the situation is almost balanced. The game length is currently set for 2 hours but it will probably come back to 1hr 40mins to give the player some time pressure. If I can do it in 1hr 20mins with my crappy tactics in Real Time, then 2 hours is WAY too much time. With 1hr 40mins, there's more than enough time to get a total victory and still allow you to do it carefully. It's easy enough for me to justify it in the storyline too for that matter. Failure to accomplish the mission within the specified time simply means that those units will be unavailable for their next scheduled action and that will have consequences.

However, I still found that the frames dropped to around 5-6 after I managed to kill the BMP-1s that accompany the infantry assault. I've already reduced the number of vehicles on the Red side by more than 25% and reducing that further will alter the balance of force too much in favour of the human player

After a few minutes, the FPS did start climbing again as the body count soared and there were less units spotting. I think I'm going to leave this one as it stands and just warn people that this particular situation is heavy on your CPU for a short while. For most of the time, it plays just fine at around 12-16 fps. It's actually a very interesting situation and I don't see how I could reduce the forces or the map without seriously affecting the challenge and the feel of the battle. As it stands, it's a real combined arms mission and I want to keep it that way.

I've also removed the minefields from the game as the AI just walks right into them and gets slaughtered. In the playtest this morning, one of the fortified hill positions managed to hold out for the entirety of the situation and that really shouldn't happen. It was definitely the minefield that was responsible for that so they're gone. Removing the mines will certainly make the game slightly tougher for the human player but I think it means that it will just take longer for Blue to recapture the fortified ridgeline. Hopefully, it will be ready for playtesting this weekend Mr Louch...

[Paper Tiger]

No screenshots this weekend as my monitor is buggered and I've had to alter the grahics card settings drastically to see anything. So I'm pretty sure any screenshots would look pretty crap just now. Hopefully, I'll get a new monitor on Wednesday.

Anyway, I think I've finished 'The Guards Counterattack' now and I'm hoping to get it playtested later today. I think I've taken care of the frame rate issue. I further reduced the number of enemy vehicles and broke the Blue reinforcements into smaller packages, some of which arrive much later in the game. Anyway, I played it twice this morning and it stayed in double figures throughout the mission. It's certainly not an easy situation to win without taking lots of casualties but I did it this morning without taking unacceptable losses. And that's the point of it. Winnable without being excessively difficult.

However, I test compiled the first two Republican Guard missions 'The Guards..' and 'Hill 142' and found that the Hill scenario was way too tough with the reduced core forces. So now, Blue carries his entire OB from 'The Guards...' into this mission. I tried again and it was just perfect. At first I thought it was way too easy but that impression soon got corrected and I lost 3 tanks. I'll see how my playtester gets on with these two together. Hopefully, this will be the end of the work on the phase 1 scenarios.

I got back to work on the phase 2 battle 'Breakout' and found that there were some problems with the AI plan where one AI group didn't leave it's set up zone. I reworked the AI plans and tried it out a couple of times and it seems to be pretty good. Since I've been playtesting it with the Special Forces core units at full strength it has to be easy for Blue to win it. Later I'll try again with a test compile and see how Blue fares.