Work in progress - The Road to Dimas

[emcnally]

this looks awesome

[Paper Tiger]

Now that I've got Hasrabit finished and posted, I am free to devote pretty much all my time now to this project and it's Marines equivalant which I'm going to develop roughly side by side. Since they will be sharing quite a few of the same maps, this shouldn't slow me down much. Besides, I still haven't played a mission with the Marines in it yet. Anyways, after I finished posting about Hasrabit, I fired up the Orchard Road mission. O-M-G! Really good frames per second even on a huge map and it looks really good up close too. I'm learning a whole new set of combined arms tactics too. This is shaping up to be WAY better than Hasrabit, I kid you not.

Please note that I intend to include a single platoon of BRDM-2 ATGM vehicles in this campaign which will effectively make it a Marines campaign. There won't be any T-90s or BMP-3 though.

Expect to see some new screenshots posted here in the next few days.

[Paper Tiger]

It's been a while since I updated this as I've been hard at work playtesting the early missions with v1.10. The first mission in particular was affected by the new patch inasmuchas the conscripts were putting up a harder fight. However, I manged to force the enemy to surrender before time expired without taking casualties that would make most of you reload and start again. Then I moved on to 'Orchard Road'.

I first playtested it a couple of times without Red receiving any reinforcements and I found the battle to be fun but a bit easy. It was fairly simple for Blue to capture all the VP locations within the 2 hour time limit. So I added the planned reinforcements on Saturday and ... OUCH... I got my ass handed to me. I had to decide whether I was going to omit the reinforcements and keep the battle simple but fun, or make it a potential killer. Naturally, I couldn't accept the second option so I decided on a third solution... a prequel.

New Mission 2 - Hit and Run

This is another very large map, (2km x 1.2km) and it's going to be used twice in this campaign. You'll first encounter it before Orchard Road and you'll get the chance to kill some of those reinforcements scheduled for 'Orchard Road'. It's going to have some VERY strange victory conditions so you should prepare yourself to 'lose' this mission even though you definitely won it. You will also get to use a few of those new BRD-M 2 ATGM vehicles equipped with the AT-5. So far, I'm finding them quite challenging to use but I'm sure in the course of further playtests I'll find the best way to use them.

Since it's a large map, I really want to use it again as it looks like it will be a good map for a more mobile battle. Since this map is located to the west of the Orchard Road map, I'll probably use it again as a group 2 battle as Group 2 attempt open the road to Amarah and the 'Perdition' stage of the campaign. Obviously, this second battle will require me to make some changes to the map to facilitate a better battle and those changes will be incorporated into this battle.

[ChrisND]

I'm going to petition Battlefront to get you to design scenarios for their releases.

[handihoc]

I'm going to petition Battlefront to get you to design scenarios for their releases.

I second that.

[CogNative]

This is another very large map, (2km x 1.2km) and it's going to be used twice in this campaign.

Here is to hope that "work" buys me a better desktop for... "greater productivity"

I won't mention the 2km x 1.2km strolls in the country to them.

Looks great PT!

CogNative

[The_Red_Rage]

I'm going to petition Battlefront to get you to design scenarios for their releases.

IMHO, Hasrabit should've been included with Marines as an "alternative" persepective to give people a chance to try Syrians out in a fair environment. Quality wise, it easily tops every scenario and camapign made for CMSF so far (from extremely detailed and fun to read briefings to incredible map work).

[Chelco]

I'm going to petition Battlefront to get you to design scenarios for their releases.

Third that. Superb work.

[Paper Tiger]

Thanks for the support guys. It keeps me motivated. I've pretty much finished 'Hit and Run' now. It took a day or so to learn how to use those BRDM-2 ATGM vehicles in the role I had in mind for them but once I did, I slaughtered the AI. Now we can't have that happening so I had to SUBSTANTIALLY reduce the Blue force. It's a large map and the Red force is about what you'd expect for a map that size but you have a rather pathetic-looking Recon platoon and a couple of ATGM vehicles. And I've managed to work the AI to ensure that the action will be very intense for a few minutes and then it's 'run like hell' time. I'm not going to say much more about it for now but it'll be interesting to see how many tanks you guys get to kill before hitting the 'cease fire' button. I got four this morning with almost no loss to my tiny force. It's definitely unlike any mission I've designed or played before but it's short, a lot of fun, and very challenging (for me anyway). However, I'm finding the vehicle pathfinding in 1.10 to be less effective than 1.08 and it's significantly affecting the gameplay in both 'Hit and Run' and 'Where Farmers Dare'. Hopefully v1.11 will be out before Xmas so hopefully it'll be sorted by the time you guys get to play this.

The map has been 'filled out' somewhat with the second battle in mind. I will start working on the second battle at the weekend. But that's already pushed the number of missions up to 14 and some of these maps are quite big. This is definitely the most ambitous project I've done for CMSF yet.

[Wiggum]

Hi Paper Tiger !

Will the unlucky people who dont own the Marine Module be able to play "The Road to Dimas" ?

BTW, I'm not planning on putting T-90s or BMP-3s into the Red v Red version of the Dimas campaign as I figure they'd be too tough for your rebel forces in this particular situation. However, they will definitely make it into the Marines version and I'm planning a third red v Red campaign using a Syrian Mech Airborne company or two with some T-90s in support.

[Paper Tiger]

Will the unlucky people who dont own the Marine Module be able to play "The Road to Dimas"

I might be persuaded to do a separate version using the crappy old BRDM-1 ATGMs in place of the much better BRDM-2s if enough people want it. However, I probably won't be so easily persuaded to playtest that change. That's the only Marine module unit in the campaign so far so it's not a big change to make.

[Paper Tiger]

Rokossovsky

The maps look really great. I loved the maps from the Hasrabit Campaign as well.

Could I persuade you to put the maps up on CMMODs?

I'm a bit nervous abut doing this as I am concerned that someone would poach the map, make a few changes to it and do a Blue v Red mission and get everyone raving about how good his scenario was. I want to make that Blue v Red mission first so that means that you'll have to wait until I get round to doing my Marine campaign. But after then, I fully expect to release a large QB map pack with the Hasrabit maps and some of the new ones from Dimas, especially the village ones which are IMO, reaaly beautiful. So, when I'm a bit stressed out from playtesting missions, I'm going to relax a bit by converting my existing maps into QB maps and trying them out for fun.

[Paper Tiger]

New Mission 4 - Opening the road

I have been very busy this weekend playtesting all the phase one battles and I had a blast. But it became apparent very quickly that phase one needed another battle to complete it and so I have started work on a new mission 4 - called 'Opening the road'. It will now come before 'First Blood' and uses the 'Hit and Run' map. I am going to make this one mainly an infantry bash but you'll have some IFVs in support just to keep it interesting.

This means that the campaign structure has changed quite a bit since I started work on it and the story line is developing quite nicely too. There will be four distinct phases to the campaign:

phas 1 - the early morning missions where you have to clear the roads of poor quality reserve infantry, then

phase 2 - the assaults to capture the bridges over the river Tumah where the resistance will be much stiffer, then

phase 3 - the night actions where you'll encounter the 3rd Armour division and finally,

phase 4 - the 'Perdition' phase, the battles for Dimas.

The first playtesting of the early missions taught me that the Blue artillery is just right and so won't require any changes. You're going to have to use it in the early missions but just how much you use is up to you. There will be resupply but not for a while. That should make the early battles interesting.

The phase 1 battles will be very dynamic but this time, I'm going to try and keep things much simpler that they were in 'Hasrabit'. Hasrabit had a large number of branches which resulted in eight different versions of 'Buying the farm'. There's no way I want to do that all over again so I'm going to try and keep it to a maximum of four. There will have to be four different versions of this new mission ranging from fairly simple to tough, but after that, it'll be much simpler and there'll be more opportunities to get dumped from the campaign.

[Rokossovski]

I fully expect to release a large QB map pack with the Hasrabit maps and some of the new ones from Dimas . . .

Excellent news!

[Paper Tiger]

No problems. I would like to have this all finished and posted before Xmas and at the rate I'm going, that's not impossible. Then, I'll have to get the Marines campaign done and then I'll have a bit of a break by making up the QB pack.

The story line of my campaigns really get's going once I start playtesting the compiled missions as it becomes clear what's needed to fill out the story. Otherwise, it just becomes a series of dynamic or linear missions. Since I started playtesting 'Opening the road', I found it to be a very difficult and challenging mission and consequently not much fun to play. This was mainly due to me setting an hour and twenty minutes for the scenario length and that wasn't enough. So now it's up to two hours and it's much more enjoyable.

But one other thing that emerged from my first compilation is that I'm going to need another mission for the phase 3 battles. Rather than create a whole new map from scratch, I decided to update one of my earliest maps and include it in this campaign.

And here it is. For those of you who haven't played it, it's an adaption of my first ever scenario, 'In Harm's Way'.

To make it appropriate for this campaign, I had to completely redo the textures to make it took a bit burned out and massively expand the number of buildings. I should have the first five missions all finished and ready to go by the weekend and then I'll be working exclusively on the phase 2 and 3 battles. There will be three phase 2 battles, of which two are almost finished, and now 2 phase 3 battles. It's not impossible that I might do another phase 3 battle. Phase 4 consists of the three Perdition battles (already finished) and Dimas Parts 1 and 2. The part 2 map is still under construction but it will be a small very dense urban map and hopefully very detailed.

[Paper Tiger]

No matter how much work I have to do playtesting missions, I always like to have a new map on the go and this is the latest one. After playtesting the hell out of the two new mission last weekend, I got started on this one last Monday evening and, after a LOT of editing and reworking elevations (always fun!) I finally arrived at something close to my original conception. It's not that big at just around 1.8km x 1.2 km.

I figured that phase 1 needs one more battle to crown it so this is initially slated as mission 6, at present with no name, not even a joke one. The government forces have a strong prepared defensive position on that hill in the background and I'm working on two iterations of it at the moment: the first, a blue attack from the west and second, a blue attack from the south. I playtested the first version yesterday and found it to be very easy. That was because the defending troops quality is conscript and so they spot poorly and react even more slowly. But it doesn't make much sense story-wise to make them better quality. However, I am hoping that the southern attack route will prove to be the more interesting option and that's what I'll be doing this weekend.

Here's one little anecdote I can share with you here about mission design. When I set this mission up for it's first playtest I found that the game froze up at the briefing screen. In spite of the total unresponsiveness of the mouse, I managed to get the game to start by hitting the Enter key. But it just got worse. The game was completely frozen up, not even 1 frame per 10 seconds. So I went to the task manager and found that CMSF had stopped working. Boy, was I pissed. I was all ready to post something about this in the tech forum but I opened it up in the scenario designer first to check that everything was in order and got a big shock. I had omitted to delete all the unwanted Blue core forces from the OB and so Blue had a full regiment with support elements on the map at the start. :eek: No wonder it gave the game a heart attack. Happily, after deleting almost all of those forces, it all runs super smoothly and I'm contemplating increasing Red's OB to up the challenge in this one.

One unexpected result of all the recent playtesting is that I've substantially reduced the number of tanks in Blue's OB in some of the missions. For example, in the opener, 'Petani', Blue received a full company of T-62s with good crews. But, because I play Real Time all the time, more than half those tanks were just sitting in overwatch positions and doing nothing. I figured that I was using about half of my forces during the mission so I removed two platoons of T-62s, reduced the quality of the defendng tanks and voila, it was perfect. I still got my win easily and only lost 1 tank in the process. (I was unlucky but it felt fair)

That means that I will be making some serious changes to the 'already finished' Perdition missions before the campaign is finished. That full strength T-62 company in the Road to Amarah mission is the same as in Petani so you'll only have a maximum of four tanks available for that mission (and 'Perdition's Flames' too for that matter) now. The battery of howitzers has gone too. Instead, you will have a single module of heavy rocket artillery which is a lot of fun to use.

I have also decided to keep Blue's OB in all the missions, (with ONE or two exceptions only, 'Flames' being one of them), to about one infantry company with support elements rather than have almost a full battalion onboard. I just get a headache playtesting these monsters and frankly, I no longer find it fun. This will also be my mission when I am working on my Marines campaign. A single infantry Marine company is enough for me. And the Syrian forces that would be required to give a full Marine Battalion a challenge in a mission make me shudder. And my CPU doesn't relish that particular nightmare scenario either.

[Paper Tiger]

Well, just a quick update after today's shortish playtesting session. The new mission is now called 'Sagger Point' and I'm definitely going with the southern board entry version. It's MUCH better. I have to confess that I found the western board entry version really boring to play as it was way too easy. With the southern entry, I'm not going to have to add any force to Red to keep it interesting. Indeed, Blue might even need a little bit of help. It also brings the whole map into play, and some of the most scenic bits too. That ALWAYS makes me happy as I often spend quite a bit of time crafting these special areas. I'm not going to post screenshots of any of these spots until after this campaign is finished though.

It shouldn't require much more than a day or two to get the basics all nailed down before working on a couple of extra AI plans.

[dan/california]

Amazing work, can't wait.

[Paper Tiger]

Mission 6 - Sagger Point

After a lot of fiddling around with it today, I think I've finally found the optimal version of this scenario. Gone are all the BRDM infantry carrier vehicles and in go B Company and the remainder of Group A's supporting tanks. This will make it a much more infantry-centric bash and it'll probably get a tweak after I've playtested all the Phase 1 battles together later this week.

That means that you'll have around two companies of infantry to handle in this one but you're going to need them all. Playesting today revealed that Company A just didn't have enough bodies to do the job, or tanks for that matter. And the IFVs are just in the way so, apart from their ability to resupply their troops during the mission, you won't miss them. It's just too dangerous for them out front and they just clutter up Blue's entry point making it hard for you to get the tanks into action.

Now that I've got all the phase 1 battles that I want, I can now return to playtesting the compiled missions again and see what's necessary to make Phase 2 work.

[CogNative]

"It's not that big at just around 1.8km x 1.2 km."

PT, I am now able to load and play "not that big" maps thanks to Plain Jane & 177.79 drivers with INF for the MacBook Pro! Looking forward to attempting your Campaigns. It may take me a while to get through them but that is fine. Keep up the great work.

Thanks,

CogNative

[Paper Tiger]

Well, I am hoping to have this finished sometime around Xmas but I'm having so many new ideas for this campaign that it's possible that it might slip into January. Since phase 1 culminates in a two-part battle for a particular objective, I am thinking of doing the same for phase 2. That will require at least a couple more maps but I seem to be able to get a new map up and working (certainly NOT finished) within a week so that shouldn't take too much time to do.

If this project is going to end up spilling into early next year, I will make a Brit v Syria campaign out of it rather than a Marines campaign since I expect that module to be released sometime very early next year. Seeing as how I'm Scottish, I have more 'interest' in playing the Brits as Blue rather than as the US and I'd definitely enjoy doing it. In the meantime, I can sculpt each mission playing as the US and then later, swap the units and make any necessary, or desirable, changes to the campaign OB and tah dah!, a Paper Tiger Brit campaign.

[Paper Tiger]

As the weekend approaches, I have started playtesting the first six missions compiled into a mini campaign to see how it plays and to wrinkle out the errors. The new version of Petani is proving to have real teeth now and I took a couple of screenshots of the action from this morning's playtest of the campaign opener.

It's still a hugely violent start to the campaign:D. I only managed to get a draw this morning but I was playing too conservatively. I've usually been VERY aggressive when playing this one.

Hopefully, more screenshots will follow this weekend.

[CogNative]

Great looking PT. Brits v Syria campaign = fantastic!

I tried your "In Harms Way" yesterday for a quick play and got thumped. If your campaigns are like this, it may take me till past the Brits Mod. to advance through them.

Good Work PT

CogNative

[Paper Tiger]

There are definitely one or two 'Harm's Way' difficulty level missions in 'Hasrabit' but 'Perdition' was quite easy as I just wanted to have fun on those maps. However, those three Perdition missions are all being overhauled for the full length campaign to make them more challenging. It's possible that one or two of them may become night missions too but that's still to be decided. It's true that they don't look as good at night but I'll just have get past that if it makes them better battles.

Speaking of which, the Orchard Road map is definitely by far the most beautiful map I've ever played on. I was playtesting it yesterday for the first time in about a month and I was surprised by how good it looks. Screenshots just don't do it justice so you'll just have to wait until the campaign comes out to see it for yourselves.

[Paper Tiger]

A bit of bad news for you guys who don't have the Marines module yet: I have started building a new mission for this campaign that features a Syrian Airborne company. Since this will be a lot harder to work around, it's possible that this will only be playable by Marines owners. However, don't panic. I will try playing it with Special Forces and see if that works. But I can't see how it could be the same. The Airborne unit is really different. The map is under construction just now but I might be able to get an early screenshot for you soon.