Work in progress - The Hasrabit campaign

[Paper Tiger]

Hmm, my lack of experience with MOUT operations is really showing when I playtest the campaign finale. I'm having to learn a completely different set of tactics as well as design a competent AI attack plan. In this mission, you are the defender and the AI is going to have the burden of the attack, at least for the first half of the mission anyway.

The original AI plan was very basic and I was using it just to see what the map looked like when there were units interacting on it. The only way I could keep the situation challenging was to stack up the AI groups with loads of forces and hurl them at you. Further, almost all of the action was focussed in the south west corner of the board. And finally, the AI doesn't really take full advantage of the houses in it's objective zones and this meant that all I had to do to get a win was find good firing positions and slaughter the AI as they ran/crawled down the street.

Well, all that has changed now. I had an idea for a completely new attack yesterday morning and I've been playtesting it throroughly these last two days. I won't give away any secrets but now, I've managed to script the battle so that most of the town will be fought over at some point Assuming that you survive the initial AI attack until your reinforcements arrive that is...

My initial playtest of the new attack plan resulted in the total annihilation of my start force so that meant that I was able to reduce the forces available to Red which is a good thing. Since then, I've been learning how to conduct offensive MOUT operations which has been a lot of fun. The engineers with their Blast option is really good fun and gives me more options when attacking.

Another factor I must bear in mind while playtesting is that the player will most likely have lost a significant portion of his anti tank capability before getting to the final mission.

Therefore, I have to be careful not to make the mission unplayable by giving Red too sizeable a tank force for this one. Once you've exhausted your RPGs, there's nothing left for you to do to hurt any surviving tanks. But I've decided that it's the player's responsibility to make sure he retains a significant AT force for the later missions.

Red gets a pretty big artillery barrage at the start of the game and I'd used all 20 artillery target zones so that the barrage would be unpredictable. However, since your core forces are already badly beaten up, I've decided to restrict the parts of the map the AI can attack to preotect your force and prevent an unfair wipe out due to bad luck. The player will be instructed in the briefing to avoid setting up in the eastern sections of the town. I could stop you by restricting the set up zones but I'm going to let you guys take a chance and set up wherever you want in the town.

It's definitely going to take a little while to get this one finished but as there's no sign of 1.08 yet, I think I've got until Sunday at least to work on this one. Then, it's just a matter of balancing 'Saudara' and then it's finished. Since 'Saudara' is almost finished, that shouldn't take long.

[Panzerfest]

I cant wait! Thanks so much for your dedication and hard work.

[Rokossovski]

Don't forget to also release the maps separately!

(please?)

[Paper Tiger]

The AI attack is shaping up nicely. I played the first hour of the mission a couple of times this morning and had a blast. When I hit 'cease fire' and checked the AI's positions to see what Blue was up against for the counter offensive half of the mission, I was more or less happy with what I found. Except that there is one group that refuses to move from it's base line. I can't for the life of me figure out why it's doing this but I'll check it out again tomorrow morning. Because that group's objective zone is exclusively painted over full house tiles, it's possible that there's a vehicle in the group that I haven't found yet, but I don't think that's the problem. I'm probably just going to eliminate that group altogether and give the extra couple of orders to some of the larger tactical groups.

I'm pretty sure that the final Red OB has been determined though. I have been able to beat the initial AI assault without too much trouble with a Blue OB at roughly 70% of the starting OB. Of course, this is a little unfair because although the head count might be an accurate assessment of the Blue force after completing all the missions, they're all grouped into full strength squads. And you definitely won't have the full compliment of RPG-27s in the final mission, or at least I won't.

I'm half way through my first full length playtest and so far, it's going fine. The AI is now on the defensive and I'm embarking on my counterattack. If I can get a win without too much difficulty, then I'll call it finished as few people will have as good a force in the final mission as I am playtesting with. There are simply too many variables for me to predict exactly what you'll have after completing the previous four SF missions short of playtesting all the compiled missions over and over again and there's no way I have the time to do that. But, based on the results I've had playing each mission individually and the compiled missions together a couple of times, I think it's a fair assessment to say that most folks will bring between 50-70% of their core force to this one.

There are still a couple of things that I haven't really discussed yet, such as supply and the branched missions. Because the camapign takes place within a 24 hour period, there will be little or no resupply for the core forces. the Special Forces will get full resupply after the first couple of missions and I'm still debating if I'll give them a resupply after 'The Farm'. But there will definitely be none after that. The Republican Guards will definitely get none. This will help to balance out the artillery problem.

Now, after I finish with this campaign, I'll definitely work to put together a 'Hasrabit QB map pack'. That's going to require quite a bit of work of it's own as each map will need a few attack plans for both Red and Blue.

[Schmoly War]

Its like a blog this thread...

[Paper Tiger]

LOL, I know. To be honest, more than 90% of these posts are coming from me when I'm at work with some free time and nothing better to do. The posts with screenshots come from my home computer. Then I can look at the pictures at work and develop some more ideas.

You have no idea how happy I'll be when I finally get this campaign finished.

[Field Marshal Blücher]

You have no idea how happy I'll be when you get this campaign finished.

[ChrisND]

Originally posted by Field Marshal Blücher:

You have no idea how happy I'll be when you get this campaign finished.

I know the feeling.

[Zatoichi]

So - have you tried out any of these missions in 1.08 yet? I imagine the increased likelihood of lower quality troops routing could have an impact at least? I hope it doesn't mean you need to rebalance every mission and monkey with your carefully structured AI plans!

I am looking forward to reaping the rewards of all your hard work! It's all much appreciated and long may it continue!

[Paper Tiger]

After posting this, I'm going to start playtesting all the Special Forces missions with low quality troops in them again. As it happens, I finished the 1.07 game save of 'Hasrabit' and got a victory without too much trouble so it was all balanced for 1.07. Of course, once I got 1.08 installed, I loaded it up and started another game and , WOW, the AI attack was brutal. I barely survived it. I'm not sure what change happened in 1.08 to have this effect. Anyway, it's welcome and so far, I've defeated the AI attack and am fighting back. I'll finish that game save first and if I can get a win, I'll call 'Hasrabit' balanced.

Then I'll have to look at 'Strong Stand' in particular as you really NEED those crappy conscripts to get a win. Until 1.08, you could get a win with them but you had to manage them very carefully. I don't mean micromanage here, just keep them together and not split them up into 'teams' like you would with better quality troops. Otherwise the friendly fire you'll see is AWESOME!!!

It shouldn't affect 'Buying the farm' at all as I WANT those conscripts to bug out. So far, they've been proving too tenacious and are doing too much damage to the AI attackers. And the same goes for 'Breakout' too.

[Paper Tiger]

Well, I got one good result and one bad today. The good news is that the campaign finale 'Hasrabit' is finished. I playtested it twice and on the second go I managed to get a surrender with 17 minutes of regulation time still on the clock

It wasn't difficult to get this victory either so it's definitely finished. It looks good after the sun sets too...

I like the way the moon is just peeping over the horizon.

Okay, that's the good news. The bad news is that 1.08 has really made conscripts with low motivation completely useless, as they should be. I spent the rest of today playtesting 'Strong Stand' but haven't really found a way to make it winnable yet but I'm sure it'll get fixed tomorrow.

One thing I'm worried about with this one is that, sometimes, the RPG 27s just can't get kills on enemy armour. The second time I tested it I got absolutely slaughtered. So I tried again with a different set up and managed to break the enemy attack. It might have been due to a bad set up. Further playtesting will tell. I'm SO glad 1.08 arrived before I released this one as it would have completely stuffed 'Strong Stand'.

[Paper Tiger]

Okay, that's 'Strong Stand' finished and hopefully, this time, for good. Since I needed to rework the thing, I took the opportunity to 'beef' the Red side up just a bit and then I playtested it twice. This partly offsets the advantage I gave to the Blue side when I promoted the conscripts to green troops and that makes them just manageable. On both occassions, I managed to get the AI to surrender so that seems a fair result.

1.08 has radically changed the way you handle low quality troops. You really need to manage them VERY carefully otherwise, you'll lose control of them and probably lose the mission too. I had to experiment a bit to find the best way to handle them and in my last playtest, everything worked just fine. I think the REAL challenge in this mission will be to handle the reserves effectively. Screw up and you'll just watch helplessly as they rip themselves apart with friendly fire.

The concern I had with the RPGs yesterday was entirely due to bad set up positions. In my two playtests today, I had no problems eliminating enemy armour with them

Anyway, there's the proof that it's doable. That was done with light core force casualties AND with 15.07 left on the clock too.

I'll continue to work on the remaining Special Forces missions over the next couple of days and get them sewn up. 'Hasrabit' and 'Strong Stand' are definitely done now. Tomorrow, I'll see how 1.08 has affected 'Buying the farm'.

I guess I don't care too much about making the missions as difficult as I can possibly make them anymore. When I started out with this project, if I'd managed to get the AI to surrender twice in a mission and with time to spare, I'd have said it was too easy. But it's just one mission in a 10 mission campaign. It also means that the later missions will still be fun to play too.

But to prevent it from being a cake walk for Blue, I've decided to restrict the ammo resupply to just one mission in the campaign. Since the Republican Guards carry quite a bit with them, there shouldn't be any ammo problems for them so, consequently, they get none. However, there aren't any resupply vehicles for the Special Forces. I've found a work-around that will take care of this problem so that you shouldn't run out of small arms ammo. However, you won't get any reloads for your RPG-27s or artillery modules. They are incredibly powerful weapons and used together, it's not too difficult to take the Red side apart. But with no resupply, this means you'll have to husband both your RPGs and your artillery carefully.

I will , off course, playtest this to see if it makes the later Special Forces missions too tough. For what it's worth, I managed to get that 'Surrender' result in 'Hasrabit' yesterday without using any artillery at all. I'd rather you didn't have any either.

[Paper Tiger]

I playtested 'Buying the farm' (again!) this morning and it needs to be reworked like 'Strong Stand'. Once again, it's the conscript's role in the mission that has to be reassessed after the changes introduced in 1.08. However, instead of just 'upping' the experience level of the conscripts to green like I did in Strong Stand, I have made some pretty substantial alterations to the mission to even things up a bit.

I have given Blue a single Apache helicopter instead of the two Kiowas. In the playtest this morning, it was much more effective against armour and buildings than the Kiowas. Just how effective will take a bit more playtesting to figure out. Because they don't have any dedicated air support observers, the Syrian helicopter support is not hugely accurate and so you have to ensure that there are NO friendlies within 300 metres of the target.

Secondly, I have deleted one platoon of Reserve tanks from Blue's OB to make the mission a bit more challenging. In the last 1.07 version playtest I did, I seem to recall that I didn't lose any tanks although I think a couple got immobilised.

I have also changed Blue's reinforcement schedule to help the player to make some 'wiser' choices with his forces seeing as how I'm not going to give the Special Forces a resupply option in most of their missions.

I also substantially reduced the amount of artillery support that Red gets at the start to compensate for the reduction in quality of the conscripts. I also tweaked the timing of some of the AI groups to make the attack more effective and to take advantage of some of the terrain features that have been as yet undeveloped. I was really happy with what I was seeing this morning during the playtest sessions. The different groups were supporting each other as they advanced across the board instead of acting independently of each other.

Obviously, these changes will require a little bit more playtesting to ensure the mission is still winnable and challenging. But nothing too serious, one or two days more hopefully. And I suspect that 'Breakout' will require a couple of small tweaks too as it has conscripts in it as well. But there's not much left to do after that. Since all but one of the Republican Guards missions don't have any 'extras', they shouldn't need any real changes to get them finalised. Now that I've got 1.08, this means that these missions are in their final stages of development. I think it's reasonable to expect this project to be finished before 20th April.

[Paper Tiger]

That's 'Buying the farm' finished too. I played it through this morning and got a tactical victory when time expired and that's good enough. It should have been a total victory but I was sloppy and didn't finish clearing out one of the victory point locations.

It was a very bloody win but that's because I made a couple of BAD mistakes which ended up badly hurting one of my companies. But it was done with only one platoon of Reserve tanks, one helicopter and I didn't have to blow all the artillery to win either. And finally, the other company was just fine with very few casualties as well.

The two hour time limit is just fine for this one. I was thinking of cutting it back a bit to make it more challenging but I needed every minute to capture all three of the victory locations this morning. The Apache helicopter is just perfect for this mission too. Its heavy strike is heavy enough to hurt but not enough to break the game for Blue like the F-15 heavy strikes did. And one is definitely enough. So, apart from some graphical tweaks I want to make to the map, that's 'The Farm' finished too.

Tomorrow, I'll try out 'Breakout'. No doubt it will require some tweaking too but perhaps nothing that can't be fixed very quickly as the Reserves don't play too crucial a role in this mission.

[Paper Tiger]

I playtested 'Breakout' this morning and 1.08 doesn't appear to have hurt this mission as badly as it did the other two so it's nearly finished too. However, it really needs to be playtested as part of a compiled campaign as playing with one full strength company instead of two half strength companies isn't really the same. I'll start doing that tomorrow.

When I playtested it this morning, I was trying to minimise my artillery usage to see if it can be won without the anti-personnel barrages I usually use to soften up the enemy positions. I really don't want anybody to have any artillery to use in 'Hasrabit' but I don't want to do it simply by depriving the player of using it by removing it from the final mission's OB. So, I want to make the player decide whether he wants to keep his core force casualties quite low OR bring artillery to the final mission but lose more of your core force in doing so.

Anyway, my attempt to minimise artillery useage was a failure. I tried using shorter strikes on the key AI positions but I ended up having to repeat them as they weren't as effective as a medium length strike

I am also considering adding a single Apache to this mission too as it was a fun addition to 'The Farm'. However, I don't want to spoil the player by giving him too many AT assets in this mission. Part of the excitement of this one is locating and destroying the enemy tanks. I don't want to make that part of the mission too easy. But then again, as it is a phase 2 mission, you will have lost some of your RPG-27 teams either to casualties or to lack of ammo and you will need to bring some to the final mission. So, a proper compiled playtest with no resupply will be necessary to see if this is a good idea.

I'll play the compiled SF missions tomorrow and Friday so that I know what needs to be done to finish them this weekend. Then I'll return to the RG missions. It's getting close...

[Paper Tiger]

So far, playtesting the latest compliation of the SF missions is going really well. I have started adding pictures and briefings to the missions so it's already looking much better. I'm more than half-way through the first mission so I should be able to finish it tomorrow and go through 'The Farm' as well. The only possible 'tweak' I might have to make to this one is to delay the arrival of the Reserve groups for another 5-10 minutes. This morning, they arrived while the firefight between the Special Forces and the Rebels was at it's height and it slowed down to about 4fps until the fight was resolved. That's not going to affect the gameplay in any way as you shouldn't need to get the Reserves involved in breaking the initial attack.

It's looking really good for the 'no resupply' option in the campaign. I was consciously trying to preserve my RPG-27 ammo thsi morning and so far, I've done very well. You really won't have to worry about small arms though as you'll be able to resupply small arms from some of the Reserve units in the later missions.

I have only one real reservation left at this point and that's that I'm overly-familiar with the missions I'm playtesting. I know exactly what I have to do and my timetable is already set and so, I'm doing quite well in the playtests. However, most of you will have no idea what you're up against when you play it, at least for the first time anyway. So let me reassure you, I've definitely given the player enough to do the job at hand, and a bit extra just to make sure that it's still doable if something goes wrong. You just have to take your time and don't rush into things.

It's way too late to start getting people to playtest things for me now as I'm really hoping to get it all finished sometime next week. Depending on the feedback I get, I'll probably tweak the missions after you guys have played around with it. But I really hope I don't have to do that as I think 'Hasrabit' is almost finished as it is. I really want to move on to do something very different after this but I can't get started on anything concrete, (ie maps etc) as I'm SO focussed on getting this one finished a.s.a.p.

[Paper Tiger]

I've finished with the Special Forces missions now. They're done. Now it's time to finish the Republican Guard missions. I spent most of today reworking 'Heavy Metal' before compiling all the RG missions. It has a new map and OB for Blue and it's looking like a beauty.

That's the view from the primary objective towards Blue's set up zones.

and that's the view from the eastern side of the map.

It's been playtested and it all works fine. It's also one HELL of a battle, way better than the older versions. Don't worry, you won't have to wait very long to see this. I really want this up on CMMODS by next weekend.

[Paper Tiger]

I have been playtesting the hell out of the Republican Guards missions over the last couple of days and they're mostly fine, except that it's actually been quite easy to complete the first two with almost negligible casualties. That's not good enough. Like the Special Forces missions, I want to cull your core force down to about 60-70%. (Not because I'm a sadist, but because I'm thinking about CPU performance.)

There's no way I want to start dickering around with 'The Guards Counterattack' again so I decided to up the difficulty level of 'Hill 142'. (Louchy, if you're still reading this, you won't recognise it since you playtested it.)

I have decided to have a one time resupply mission for the T-72TURMS as they don't carry very many AT shells! Tons of HE though but it's useless against tanks. So, at the moment, they've been removed from 'Hill 142' so it's just the infantry and their rides and TONS of artillery. I'm in the middle of a second playtest and it's looking like a really tough mission to do so I might have to put back one platoon of T-72s.

Other changes, the mission is now 1hr 50mins long and it starts earlier in the morning about an hour before the sun rises. But it's the map that's been altered the most. No screenshots just now, maybe tomorrow, but the changes I made today make this map even more beautiful to play on.

Hopefully, this will be the only change I have to make to the RG missions. Since 'The Barrier' and 'Heavy Metal' are both finished, I just need closure on the revised 'Hill' and then I can finish 'Saudara' and get this baby finished.

[Paper Tiger]

I had abit of a sleepless night last night but while I was lying awake, I had an epiphany about how to finish this campaign off. I've been stressing over the amount of force that the player will take with him to 'Saudara'. Simply put, with light casualties, Blue will have the equivalent of five slightly reduced companies as his OB, and that's a frame rate killer no matter what I give Red. So, instead of trying to make the earlier missions more difficult and, consequently, less enjoyable, I've decided to split the Republican Guards Battalion group into two battles, a rearguard action and the assault on Saudara.

My first idea was to remove two of the companies from Blue's OB but then I thought, 'Hey, what about an 11th mission so that the player can see what happens to his core forces?'. So that's where we're going, two final RG missions instead of one. I already have a map for this rearguard action and I know which forces are going to go to it. I just have to script the battle and then rework 'Saudara' with the new OB. To save a lot of time, I'm going to playtest these missions with the 'full' OB. They should both be reasonably easy to beat with the full OB.

Okay, time to get started. Hopefully, there will be some screenshots to post later today.

[Wiggum]

Excellent work Paper Tiger !

[Paper Tiger]

Finally, I think I'm finished. I spent most of yesterday and today working on 'Saudara' and I've found my final version. It's both more and less than I was hoping for. Less, because I had a vision to create a meeting engagemant between two large mechanised forces for this map. But, even with adding to each sides OB incrementally, after about an hour of game time, it's seconds per frame time so that idea wasn't going to fly. Once I got over my initial disppointment, I had a second idea that turned out to be even better but I'm not going to say anything about it. I've playtested it a few times to get the timings just right and now it's all working just fine. And it's exciting as well.

I'm not planning on releasing the campaign until all the briefings are written and tactical maps and pictures are inserted. I've already scripted the campaign but I suspect I'll have to make some changes as now, ALL of the phase 1 battles have branches. (That means eight versions of 'The farm'!) The phase 2 battles have branches too but they're much simpler to follow than the phase 1 group. But since doing that's a bit boring, I will continue to playtest and tweak the missions until it everything else is ready. Unless something utterly unexpected crops up, it's not unrealistic to say sometime on Saturday this weekend. Since I live in Indonesia, that means early Saturday morning for most of you.

A word about 'the 11th mission'. I decided not to do that as it would require at least another week of playtesting and work to get it up to the standard of the other missions. Yes, it's got a really nice map but I just don't 'feel' anything for this battle and so there's nothing exciting about it. It would simply be a 'Stop the Rebel rush' mission and that wouldn't fit in with the other missions which are, hopefully, better crafted. We'll see very soon.

I'm hoping to include a small Word document with the download that will include details of Republican Guard and Special Forces units and their capabilities. However, I'm not going to hold up the release merely for something so trivial.

I have no doubt that the release of the campaign won't be the end of the story. It will probably need to be revised after I've read some of the feedback. However, I am really looking forward to starting work on something new. I'm a bit fed up hearing 'Harap, harap, harap' and am excited about getting back to using the US forces. Definitely something MUCH smaller, and MOUT to boot. I really am a novice with MOUT so before I do some serious Red on Red MOUT in a future campaign, I'd like to learn the basics by working on something very small with the US forces as the Blue force.

[Field Marshal Blücher]

Great news, Paper Tiger! Clearing my weekend for action!

[Paper Tiger]

It's still looking good for a release later tomorrow afternoon, (Indonesian time). It's taking a bit longer than I expected to write up all the briefings and get the tactical maps done. When I stopped last night, I had four of the ten missions completely sewn up. However, there are a LOT of branched missions and they'll need adapted versions of the briefings at least. Right now, there are 34 missions of which you'll only see 11, if you're lucky.

No, that 11th mission is not a new one, it's a resupply mission where I can resupply certain units. you'll know when you hit the 'Depot' mission, just hit Cease Fire and you're onto the next mission.

However, I have made some SUBSTANTIAL alterations to the campaigns architecture and some of the individual mission OBs to make the whole thing work. I have decided to make 'Heavy Metal' my rearguard action so the forces that are used in that one will not be available for Saudara. This means that Saudara won't be the apocalyptic clash of mechanised forces that I'd envisioned, my computer just couldn't run that. But I really LOVE what it's become and I can't wait to play it as part of the campaign.

I have also decided to lessen the impact of losing the airfield so that that particular branch isn't unattractive to the player. There will be both good and bad effects to bugging out of 'The Barrier' so it will give the player an important choice to make.

Syrian air support is basically just a way to make things go bang. They don't have a 'Mission type' option available to them, ie General, Armour and Personnel so you can't use the Apaches to take out enemy armour with atgm missiles unfortunately. I am going to post something about this in the main forum later. Therefore, losing the airfield in 'the Barrier' means losing some assets that are fun but not essential to your success.

I have made an huge alteration to the 'Hill 142' mission and a major change to the 'Farm' mission. The Hill mission wasn't necessary but you'll be glad that I made it. the Farm changes are only terrain alterations but they needed to be made before I started making the alternative 'Farm' missions, at the moment, there are 8 of them.

To keep things simple later in the campaign, the Phase 2 battles don't have any branches. Instead, failure in a mission results in an early exit from the campaign and you'll have to reload/restart if you want to see the Saudara and Hasrabit battles. But don't despair, I think I've managed to keep the whole thing doable. Obviously the more core forces you lose, the less chance you have of success in the later missions. I am actually concerned that I have made this campaign too easy but if I have, so what because I've really enjoyed playing them.

I'll post a message on the main forum when it's finished.