Work in progress - The Road to Dimas

[Paper Tiger]

Finally, I was able to sit down for a proper play session this morning with the new patch and I can see that I'm going to have a lot of work to do with it. The patch has reduced the effectiveness of artillery v troops in buildings and as a result, 'Petani' and 'Orchard Road' became VERY tough to beat. Usually, the initial artillery barrage sent a lot of those conscript boys running but the number of MIAs has reduced in these missions by as much as 50% and I have the AAR screensaves to prove it.

I was unable to get a win in either of these missions without taking HORRIBLE casualties. Since this is a 16 mission campaign, that's clearly not an acceptable situation so I've had to substantially rework the early Group A missions. The new version of 'Orchard Road' is so much fun to play now that I just can't believe I didn't make these changes earlier.

Since I'm working with short compilations of the early missions, I've been as far into it as 'Sabatani' and I'm pleased to see that this missions won't require any changes. When I played it, I won it quite easily even though I had to work for that win. Hopefully by the end of the weekend I'll have Phase 1 completely sewn up and then it'll be time to compile and playtest all the missions up to the end of Phase 2.

[CogNative]

Thanks for the update PT. From my tiny scenario perspective v1.11 appears to be an improvement in realism. Under 200 meters action gets really intense as the fight seems tougher = a good thing.

[Paper Tiger]

I've playtested all the way through to the end of Phase one, eight battles to get to 'Sagger Point'. Everything prior to that mission is just fine now and I don't plan to make any more changes to them. But I HATED 'Sagger Point' and so it's getting a complete overhaul to make it more interesting. So, what happened?

When I first set it all up, prior to v1.11, Blue's forces arrived on a VERY narrow front in the SE corner of the map. From there, they had to fan out and move on their two objectives. There was a nice little tank battle about half an hour or so into the mission and, depending on your success in that battle, it was time to tackle the objectives. All good fun but v1.11 has made the AI so aggressive with it's artillery that breaking out of that bottleneck was proving to be a nightmare unless I nailed that FOS with the opening artillery barrage and that meant cheating. So I brought the tanks in earlier to make the breakout faster and basically 'broke' the entire mission. With the tank battle decided within 15-20 minutes of the start, Red's goose was cooked and it was just boring to play. Since this is the Phase 1 finale for Group A, I want it to be somethng special, just like Group B's phase 1 finale 'Sulit airfield'.

So, I have started reworking the map by expanding it massively in the southern direction. This will give Blue many different ways to approach the objectives instead of confining you to a narrow front at the start. It'll take a couple more days to get the map up to par with the other campaign maps but the battle itself will not require much more playtesting to finalise as it's the same battle but on a much larger map. As mewntioned earlier, I want this mission to be a bit more special than just a quick tank rumble and then a very long wait for the mission to end.

The new AI 'buggering off' routine has made 'Sabatani' a lot of fun to play by the way. I had thought of this mission as one of the 'fillers' before v1.11 but now I'm very happy when I reach this mission. It's not too difficult, there are no enemy tanks or ATGM support worth mentioning, and it looks good so you can relax a little bit and just take out your frustration on the enemy forces.

[CogNative]

Is there a sequence you developed or use to check list or script your individual scenarios for completeness PT?

[Delta228]

i am awed by the amount of effort and time you have put into this (and all of your campaigns for that matter). I am really looking forward to this when its done.

[Paper Tiger]

CogNative:

Yes, I am VERY methodical with my work but even so, it's amazing how much gets past me:o. I have to be because both 'Hasrabit' and 'Dinas' are very dynamic and that means that there are lots of branches to keep track of. But I have a system for checking that the script works as designed without having to play every possible permutation. The Dinas campaign branches have all been checked out now (it took around an hour to explore the entire thing).

I also pause and make lots of notes of anything strange I see or want to change when I'm playtesting, especially if I'm working on an AI attack. The one major flaw in my testing process is ME! Not only do I know exactly what the Red side has at it's disposal during the mission but I also have a tendency to evolve a plan for playing each mission and refine that plan without really exploring all the other possible ways to accomplish the mission. Occassionally, I do something wild and see how the scenario works but that doesn't happen as often as it should. Case in point, I am playtesting the new version of Sagger Point where you have to cross a river across one of two bridges. I ALWAYS choose bridge A and never bridge B for various (and very good ) reasons but some of you WILL choose this path and maybe it will be a cinch to win.

I spend a LOT of time 'finding' the right battle for each map and that's where 'Sagger' is just now. I have played through several iterations in the last 24 hours and had to abandon the version with the Special Forces ATGM teams; the AT-14 is just TOO tough for this mission. I have also cut back the Red OB quite substantially and had to play around with the Blue's reinforcement schedule to get everything just the way I like it. In my current playtest, I made the crossing with ZERO casualties, due to a particularly methodical assault, woo hoo! but the real work is still ahead. If things continue to go well, I'll stick with this version. BTW, the Sagger teams in this mission are DEADLY! I've never seen them used so effectively before and they're proving very difficult to deal with.

The good news is that you guys won't have to wait much longer to get to play this. Once Sagger is finished, I just have to check the Group A mission through to 'The Lakes' mission and then it's 'develop the finale' time. It's already started but I really need to see how much of your core force you can reasonably expect to have to finish it. Since the first few missions are actually very easy for a Red v Red scenario, the REAL challenge will be to complete them with as few casualties as possible, just like you do as Blue, and I have to make that doable for all of us. So far, with careful play, it's looking like your core will be reduced by between 30-40% for the finale.

[Mikkey]

thanks for update PT!

[CogNative]

Yes, I am VERY methodical with my work... Clearly methodical PT. Thanks for the process explanation. I am futzzing around with a single scenario and I am sometimes flummoxed with what next. Having fun as that is what my goal is but having a method to produce results and fun is my goal.

[Paper Tiger]

(in game action shot from the mission 'Sagger Point')

FINALLY, that's the new version of Sagger Point finished. I playtested this version agan this morning and won without too much trouble and with very low casualties. That was with the core forces at full strength so that means that it should be a bit more difficult when it's played compiled. The map's not quite finished yet as the south eastern quarter is pretty bald, just grass. But that's work that can be done in an evening sometime after I return to work next week. (I don't 'play' CMSF at night, just work on maps.)

The new version is quite a large battle. You get two BTR Infantry companies and two platoons of tanks to do the job. I had originally planned to take out the rides to keep everything tidy but that was more trouble than it was worth. Think resupply and you'll get the picture. You're gong to need a TON of ammo to do this one. I had also intented to include an entire company of tanks for this mission but I came up with a little addition to the campaign story line to justify excluding four of them. So now it's quite nicely balanced.

Oh, and by the way, that's Sagger Point in front of that tank. It's a huge feature.

I will give all the Phase 1 missions another run through starting tomorrow and hopefully, I'll have that part of the campaign solid by the weekend. Since the Phase 2 battles have been thoroughly playtested as stand alone missions, I don't expect them to require more than one compiled playtest.

The second shot comes from one of last weekends playtests of the 'Orchard Road' mission. I'm looking forward to playing this one again tomorrow.

[Paper Tiger]

(in game action from the mission 'Jameela')

Sometimes, when you're working on a very large and ambitious project like this, you just hit a wall and feel like giving up and today was one of those days. I've just played some of these missions to death over the last few months and I just don't enjoy playing them anymore. I was playing my way faithfully through the early Group A missions earlier today and just felt sick of the whole thing. Of course, I can't quit because I've been posting regularly here about this project and I'd look like a complete jerk if I just gave up. (Incidentally, that's one of my main reasons for posting in this thread: it REALLY does keep me working flat out.)

Anyway, I had a bit of a revelation this afternoon about how to get this thing finished a.s.a.p AND make sure that it's thoroughly playtested. I had to change the OBs of a couple of missions around and amend the briefings and I've changed the campaign script to make the phase 2 battle 'Burning Bridges' appear ONLY if you lose the 'Farmers' mission. These small changes will simplify everything and allow me to use what time is left of the holiday to get to work on the last couple of missions and start work on the finale.

(in game action from the mission 'Jameela')

So, I got back to work on 'Jameela' and 'The Lakes' mission later this afternoon and I feel fresh with the whole thing again. I really want to make that Lakes mission something special and since v1.11 has drastically reduced loading times, I was able to test the AI set up out a couple of times this afternoon.

By the way, I'm finished with 'Jameela' now. I've playtested it both stand alone and compiled. As a stand alone mission with your full OB, it's ridiculously easy to win. However, after the changes I made this afternoon, I think it will end up being quite a challenge for what's left of your core forces.

[Paper Tiger]

Since my last post I have worked exclusively on the 'Lakes' mission and it's been quite a struggle to find the right battle for this map. It's the biggest in the campaign and it's a stonker. The v1.11 patch has made playtesting this monster a much easier affair and so I've been able to jump in and out of it in the scenario editor without having to wait for 10-11 minutes, (now it's slghtly less than 3 minutes). However, my first couple of days work didn't produce much in the way of a result as the mission was just too difficult. It's a night scenario and Blue's tanks (T-72Ms and T-55MVs) just couldn't spot anything at night without a long delay and that was proving lethal as the much better quality Red tanks were able to spot faster and kill them. 'Death in the dark' would have been an appropriate name for this unenjoyable pile of sh*&e!

But the map is so good to play on I wasn't deterred and stuck with it and yesterday evening, I had an idea that has transformed it. It now starts just before dusk so there's enough light for your tanks to spot really quickly. This actually swung the battle the other way and it was now proving impossible for red to get his tanks onto the battlefield. I spent the whole afternoon today tweaking the reinforcement settings and finally, I think I've found the battle. However, be warned, some of you are going to HATE it with a passion. Why? Because it seems to be a REAL slow-burner. I'm already an hour into my current playtest and only the occassional exploding vehicle tells me that there is enemy anywhere on that battlefield. But it really works for me. The really good news about this is that I'll be able to reduce red's OB by nearly 50% as a result of the changes.

I really want this mission to be one of the best in the campaign so I'm going to take my time with it so I expect it won't be finished before next weekend. Then, there's just the finale to do and that's pretty much it finished.

[CogNative]

(in game action from the mission 'Jameela')

Sometimes, when you're working on a very large and ambitious project like this, you just hit a wall and feel like giving up and today was one of those days. I've just played some of these missions to death over the last few months and I just don't enjoy playing them anymore.

PT, Sorry I missed you notes on The Road to Dimas. Away from CPU 'fun time' for work. Hang in there. We do enjoy and appreciate you craft. Keep it fun and healthy for you. We need creative campaigns for nourishing pleasure time in CMSF.

Peace,

[Paper Tiger]

Ach, thankfully, I'm well past that creative bottleneck now and playing the newer missions has injected fresh blood into this project. It's been a long time since I've had as much fun developing a mission as I've had working on 'The Lakes' mission. It's a cracking tank battle and it's difficult but definitely doable. All this week I've played and played and played it and I've finally got it balanced. In the end, it came down to getting the VP awards for both sides just right rather than making adjustments to both sides experience levels and quality of equipment. Although it's a tank battle, it will be your infantry that will win it for you so it's not like anything I've done before. It's not the perfect 10-10 mission that I'd hoped for but it's 9-10 for me. I suspect some of you will hate it though.

That means that I'm able to get started on the final mission later today and I have some good ideas to take to it from my experiences developing 'The Lakes'. It looks like the finale will be a much more intimate affair than I'd originally envisaged and I'm quite happy about that as it'll be easier to playtest. I would expect the finale to be finished before the 18th Jan and that means I should have the whole thing finished sometime before the end of this month.

That means that it will arrive just in time to be overshadowed by the arrival of BFC's Brit Pack sometime early in February. But I really couldn't care less as I'm anxious to get to work creating missions for the Brits to play on some of these maps. While I see me doing a lot of work in future for Brits v Syria, I want to do something with the Syrian Airborne and some T-90s as your core forces before WW2 comes along.

BTW, I've already experimented substituting Blue forces on these maps and the missions still work. I've done Stryker Infantry in 'Road to Amarah', Stryker MOUT Infantry in 'Sabatani' and US Marines in 'Flames' and they all worked just fine, EXCEPT for the armour part of the game and also the presence of javelins. Those are two real game breakers for me. AND I gave them the full panopoly of US support goodies too, air support and artillery and the missions had enough challenge without raising the experience levels of the Syrian side (Conscripts). V1.11 has really improved this game in that respect.

[Clevinger]

Before the end of the month...

That's great news PT!

[Mikkey]

thank' for update PT!

can you release as single scenario some battles between USArmy/UCMC and Syrian Force?

[Paper Tiger]

It's funny but the first thing I did today with the finale was to start redrawing the map. I think you'll find a picture of the original map on the first page called 'Dimas Part 1 Agony of Doom'. What I have in mind for this battle is a pretty intense MOUT operation, rather like the way I finished 'Hasrabit' although this time, you'll be doing the attacking. If you look at that map, you'll see that it's about 90%+ farmland and forested hills. Definitely not what I need for the finale. However, I did spend a lot of time working on the village and that's the work I'm going to expand upon. I'm going to build up the village and make as realistic a small town as I can by this weekend and then get started on the playtesting.

This will free up the original map for the purpose I'd originally intended it for, a Red v Red ASL Hill 621 style mission. I guess as soon as I finish with 'Dinas' I'll get cracking on finally doing this as a stand alone mission.

Mikkey:

Although those missions play fine with US units, they would require a bit more work to bring them up to the standard where I could release them as stand alone missions. I REALLY want to use Brits in these missions too. But yes, it's going to happen sometime... just not with Marines or US Army as Blue.

[CogNative]

"Although it's a tank battle, it will be your infantry that will win it ... I suspect some of you will hate it though."

Hate it! Not me. Not folks who enjoy what I consider one of CMSF's more enjoyable features. The games CQ unit fire fights and tactics with the AFV / CAS as A factor but not THE factor.

OK, I admit I enjoy CAS but that is my personal peccadillo

Thanks PT.

[Paper Tiger]

OK, I admit I enjoy CAS but that is my personal peccadillo

Yup, I have that one too. I really like playing missions with air support. Unfortunately, I don't see how I could justify the Rebels having control of the air in my campaign since they didn't have it in 'Hasrabit'. But it's in the early missions and it's fun to use.

I really don't much care for playing Blue missions without CAS either as they should almost always have some available. My Brit campaign will definitely have a LOT in it.

[Paper Tiger]

Hmm, my preliminary run through of the final mission this morning played like a dog frame rate wise so it might take a bit longer to get this finished than I thought. I was playing it with your full OB and there's NO way in hell that you're going to have anything like your full cores for this mission. But even with one full company on the board, it was only running at between 5-10fps. Strangely enough, the solution to this problem lies in tweaking an earlier mission to make it a bit more difficult and I've already started work on that. The map for the finale does look good though...

[Paper Tiger]

One of the nice things about creating a long campaign is that you can include a few 'easy' missions that are simply good fun to play. This morning, I had a quick run through of the opening mission 'Petani' once again and I managed to force the AI to surrender with only 1 KIA and 6 Wounded which is a record. It didn't feel easy though and I got a bit confused once the shooting started as to where it was coming from but otherwise, it was a very enjoyable 35 minutes. As a stand-alone mission, folks might enjoy it but never play it again as it's very easy but as a campaign opener, it's just perfect.

Convinced that this mission is now 100% finished it has been transferred into my 'Final' folder. Once they go in there, they're ready for the final compilation. Presently, there are only 3 missions in that folder (the first three) but I expect to have the vast majority of them in there by next weekend.

I also changed the OB of a few group B missions to make the 'Jameela' mission a bit more exciting. I played that mission all the way through again this afternoon for fun and had a blast. I have to confess that I really like playing these single company sized actions. As it stands, there are only three missions that have more than one infantry company in them and they are all finales, 'Sagger Point', 'Perdition's Flames' and 'Dinas - the Agony of Doom'. The rest all have one Mech Infantry company with support elements attached and it's quite manageable in Real Time.

It's quite likely that I'm going to drop the 'Bridges' mission from the campaign in order to keep one Group A mech Infantry company in reasonably good strength for the finale. The Phase 1 finale and Phase 2 battles are proving to be quite tough on your cores and I'd like to have a fighting chance in the finale (Hey, I DO have to playtest this monster and it's hard to stay razor sharp all the time). Anyway, 15 missions seems long enough for a campaign.

Of course, I have also been doing a lot of work on the finale as well. The map is looking really good and playtesting is properly under way. However, these preliminary playtests are pretty useless from a balancing point of view as there are Red core forces in it as well and I'll have to play the relevant missions compiled before I get an idea what's going to happen with this. I hope to post some screenshots of the new map in action before next weekend.

[CogNative]

CAS... I really like playing missions with air support. Unfortunately, I don't see how I could justify the Rebels having control of the air in my campaign since they didn't have it in 'Hasrabit'. But it's in the early ...

Hey PT, Not in your campaign but I was thinking what if the rebels snagged a eggbeater(s) in their insurgency? An idea.

"I have to confess that I really like playing these single company sized actions. "

Sounds like a winner PT.

Some screenshots of the new map in action?

[Clevinger]

So, has your "Final" folder gained some news files ?

I have to admit, I'm very impatient about this campaign

[Paper Tiger]

So, has your "Final" folder gained some news files ?

I guess the answer to that qusestion would be 'yes' but not many. That's because I'm testing some of the separate 'threads' in the campsign and when I'm satisfied that they're finished, the whole batch get's moved into the 'Final' folder. there are only 4 in there just now but two more will go in tomorrow and then I will 'finalise' the last two phase 1 battles. Yes, almost every mission has been tested as a stand-alone mission but it's only when you compile them and play them that way that their true difficulty level is determined.

With that in mind, I compiled the 'Sulit' thread and found that the Sulit mission was just WAY too difficult for a campaign. I could JUST scrape a victory from it but I'd take 90%+ friendly casualties doing it and that's just a joke if it's part of a campaign. I tried playing it several different ways to see if it was my tactics that were at fault but it didn't matter how I played it, it was almost unwinnable. It's actually very EASY to do make difficult campaigns but not so easy to ensure they're balanced. I really could just compile everything right now and post it on the Repository before the weekend but it would be impossible to win it. So I spent the last three days getting the missions in that thread rebalanced and now they're all just perfect and ready to be transferred.

The map for the finale is still being 'drawn'. There are a large number of flavour objects in this one as I have a very clear idea of the look I want it to have. When you finally see it, you'll understand just what a lot of work it was to create it. But everything is going to schedule.

[Paper Tiger]

Quick progress report. ALL the phase 1 and phase 2 battles are now finalised and I'm currently trying to get the 'Tumah Crossing' mission from the Perdition campaign balanced. Since it's been changed to a night battle, Blue's tanks are at a severe disadvantage spotting and so far, after three attempts today, I got slaughtered by the AI every time. And the best kill total I got in any single mission was 1 Red tank. I will give it one more go and if I still can't get a win, I'm going to have to rethink the campaign structure to make it work, probably by shifting the time of the missions to make it a late afternoon mission instead. Anyway, once this is done, it's just the finale to go and that's coming along nicely.

[Paper Tiger]

Okay, I got that problem sorted very quickly. The 'Tumah Crossing' mission is now a late afternoon mission and it plays just fine... again. When I made the 'Hasrabit' campaign, I was playing the game with Syria's finest, the Republican Guards T-72M1V-TURMS and the Special Forces, both of which spot well at night. And the Perdition mini-campaign was designed primarily to take advantage of the game's dynamic lighting effects to make the maps look good... superficial? Yes, I am. But in this campaign, your core forces are ...ahem... not very good... or, to put it another way, crap. The T-55MV is the tank of choice for YOU in this campaign, and you get some poorer quality stuff to play around with too... actually, it's proven to be a lot of fun making and playing these missions with less than optimal equipment on either side.

Anyway, Blue's tanks couldn't spot anything better than a ? marker at ranges of 1km+ at night and they just got picked off one by one as I attempted to manoeuvre them closer to the enemy positions. I guess some of you could pull this stunt off and get a win but it's not really my 'thing'. This meant having to substantially rewrite the campaign script to accomodate the new structure and that means I'll have to test all that again to make sure it works as designed.

But the good news is that now I have nothing left to do except get the two finale missions done. The 'Perdition's Flames' mission is getting a bit of an overhaul to take advantage of the new Facing fix that used to turn your units to face some point in the centre of a large map. I originally wanted this battle to be between two Mech Infantry forces so I'm going to give it a shot this time. And the map for the other finale is now finished and I'm going to start serious playtesting on it tomorrow. Hopefully, this should be finished VERY soon...