Working on a new scenario

[snake_eye]

Here is the first shot of the landscape of the new scenario I am working on. It should use the Marines addon, but I might switch to the Brit one (that I have not yet bought !), since I am reading pretty good books about the brits fighting in Afghanistan Hemland country and Green Zone area doing OMLT for the ANA.

At the least, it should figure US Army and or Marines doing mentoring to the ANA and securing with them areas around FOB, villages, bridges and roads. Lot of IED or PPIED (pressure plate IED) on the roads. They should protect an airfield, secure the grounds around it and maintain open the MSR. They should secure the villages and impair the Taliban's free move they have had in the Green Zone (agricultural area). It should be a very hair raising tactical combat operational area, that I shalll try to keep as close as to the real ones.

Cheers

[Jonny(FGM)]

How are you going to do the PPIED? Do it with AP mines?

Personally I have designed an afghan style scenario and I decided to take out the IEDs that were along the infantry's route of advance after i playtested it and a small IED took out almost an entire section (6 men). The bunching up of men means that things such as IED's become considerably more deadly in CMSF than they would be in afghanistan, as a result if you have them in your scenario expect much higher death tolls than would be achieved in real life.

Also as for OMLT units, i've been wanting to do a scenario like this for a while, with the rigid TO&E i think it's quite hard to do, might be possible to do some of the higher intensity stuff such as the stuff around (i think) Lashka Gar where there were Plt and bigger sized british forces working with the ANA, whereas some of the stuff that was going on around Musa Qaleh where you had single british soldiers virtually working as squad and platoon HQ units, integrated into the actual ANA formations (btw i might have got those locations the wrong way round, look for a book called task for helmand, i can't remember the authors name and i gave the book to my friend)

[snake_eye]

How are you going to do the PPIED? Do it with AP mines?

(btw i might have got those locations the wrong way round, look for a book called task for helmand, i can't remember the authors name and i gave the book to my friend)

Task Force HELMAND by Doug BEATTIE MC (Military Cross). is one of the book I am reading right now. A fantastic book, I recommend to all.

PPIED will be infantry and tracks mines used alone or together.

The casualty figure with an IED or PPIED is not wrong in CMSF Today an IED killed 1 Danish, 1 French 2 ANA and wounded more of them 5 or 6, if I recall it well. In the book, BEATTIE write about IED and or IED doing about the same. Usually these are the figures you get unfortunatelly. A very close relative got killed in an Ops with another mate in a car IED. they were, happily (if I might say that) the only one since nobody else rode with them.that was fortunate for the others. The civy's 4WD was a wreck.

To get back to the scenario, it should be a cat and mice game; the clever one will win and all the Air assets and artillery won't make a huge difference to the ending. That without counting on the difficult management of the AI which can't break a fight at a given time after having started an ambush. That should be a thing that seems easy to think about, but that BTF can't imply for very good technical reasons that I am not aware off.

As for the mentoring (OMLT)of the ANA job, it does not put on the ground more than an ANA squad with 2 OMLT at the least and a platoon or two of them at the most. A platoon will have 30 or so ANA and 5 to 7 OMLT. These can rely on other friendly units for support on the ground and from the air. These figures are always different depending of the area and or of the Afghan Kandak being mentored.

Here after are other shots of the landscape around the airfield, with a bridge along the MSR and different types of bunkers.

Cheers

[snake_eye]

The last shots here after.

The small compounds as the one found in the Green Zone are yet to be made. the same for the small FOB or strongpoints found on higher grounds doing survey of the areas.

Cheers

[Jonny(FGM)]

The 6 men that were killed in my scenario were dismounts and not in a vehicle, but on foot, and the section had been split into 2 fireteams and were 10m apart from each other, the small IED took out one fireteam completely and killed 2 men in the other fire team. I'm not saying that IEDs never cause multiple casualties in Afghanistan but 6 men in one go? I think thats pretty rare.

Probably the reason for this is that the "small" IED in CMSF is probably bigger than the small IEDs that are found in Afghanistan, by the looks of the CMSF ones they appear to be 155mm arty shells, whereas the most common IED in afghanistan tends to be just explosives with various bits of shrapnel attatched, generally smaller than a 155mm arty shell. I think the main reason the casualty rate will allways be higher in CMSF than in RL is that you have no way of detecting mines/IEDs without setting them off.

Having said that i'll probably still give your scenario a go but i expect the death toll to be much higher than anything seen in RL. I suppose this isn't too unreasonable seeing as after all this isn't CM:ISAF, but with a good amount of thought a decent approximation can be made : )

[snake_eye]

Well, Jonny(FGM) you surely got a point. It is easier somehow to detonate a wire or radio control IED under a vehicle, when you think that the time has come than to rely on a pressure plate mine or shell. Yet, if you observe a road you can choose a predictable spot, where every vehicle has to go through or close to and use a PPIED. More, you can lure a team toward one of them by not hiding it too well and have small IED's sown around with PPIED. PPIED are meant for men and or vehicles; You can see an Afghan riding is bike and going along the road and your car will be blown at the same spot he has been minute earlier, since he was safe from the pressure plate meant for a vehicle heavier than the bike.

IED's are a pain in the a.... the Taliban's are always changing the way they are using them and that without counting the mines (in the country side) left from the previous battles and not removed.

The death toll in the game should be higher, probably because we are just playing and not walking in a place with booby traps probably around. We can become careless, move quickly and sip a cup of tea whenever we fill it necessary. In a real road or country side probe, we sweat a lot, every move is thought off and done with care, every sound make you jump and make your heart jump. In another word you are scare, and because of that you might stay alive a bit longer than other that were careless. As, I said it is a cat and mice play.

Just reminding, that after a mine had blown, the worst thing to do was to run and help the injured. First, you were told to probe the area, secure it and only then take care of the wounded. that was a long time ago and yet nothing has changed besides the use of cells phones to trigger the IED and or mine.

Cheers

[Jonny(FGM)]

How big is this map?

I'm working (in drips and drabs) on a a new campaign, it's all going to take place on sections of a 4k x 4k master map, it's taking me forever to build it however as i made a scenario map and decided to extend it. As a result it takes about a minute to add just 8m to the edge of the map : (

[snake_eye]

How big is this map?(

1136 meters by 2256 meters exactly.

The length of the airfield is parallel to the 1136 m width.

The shots seen previously represent about a third of the total area.

BTW have you use the shift key while clicking on the map size wether to increase or decrease its size by 160meters. without the shift key used, it is normally 32 meters. Have they changed the setting from 32 m to 8 m ?

Cheers

[Jonny(FGM)]

Yes i meant 32m, i got confuddled lol. Thanks for the shift and click tip, it doesn't save me any time (takes about 5 minutes to add 160m) but reduces the amount of clicking i have to do.

I may have to wait until i upgrade my rig to finish this one off, at 2.6k x 3k and only half of the current map filled in I still sometimes get out of graphics card memory error messages lol

[Alex]

Cool buildings ideas

But I don't understood how 'bunker3' is working?

[snake_eye]

Cool buildings ideas

But I don't understood how 'bunker3' is working?

Hi Alex,

Well, if I do remember it well, I have the front and side walls removed and have put high stone and or cement fences along the former.

If the building a 2 stories (but a 1 story is good enough - yet all depends of the elevation to bury in the house) is well located the fences follow the walls.

That way you can also reinforce your walls and even have fences inside as seen in another bunker. For that one let's hope that the troops using it will fight from behind that fence and not in front of it. I have to try and see what comes.

Cheers

[Eagle2]

That without counting on the difficult management of the AI which can't break a fight at a given time after having started an ambush.

While I know it wasn't large scale I've seen AI, especially insurgent teams, break from combat after firing a few shots and run away from my main body of troops.

[snake_eye]

While I know it wasn't large scale I've seen AI, especially insurgent teams, break from combat after firing a few shots and run away from my main body of troops.

Hi Eagle 2,

I have seen that, but what I would like BF to implement is the time scale that we could be set and have it starting at the first shots being fired.

That way you could have an ambush being triggered to last no longer than three or five minutes. After that time the troops could retreat to a second base fire being held by another team and they would leapfrog away from the ambush site in an orderly fashion.

This is quite difficult to set right now, since we can't know exactly when the fire fight will start. The guys might leave the ground site of the ambush, before it did happen, revealing themselves at the worst time.

Cheers

Cheers

[Paper Tiger]

Yes, the event trigger would allow us to create far more challenging AI opponents, wouldn't it?

[snake_eye]

Yes, the event trigger would allow us to create far more challenging AI opponents, wouldn't it?

You bet, it will ! That would bring a tremendous change in the AI script that could be done.

To come back to the scenario underway, I might be able to post shots of the villages compound and of the dam (with its near bridge) today.

I have try a fight in one of the village and it was real fun. I shall polish it a bit and I shall perhaps keep it.

There will be a lot of overwatch and leapfrogging squad and or platoons size, besides some recon that will have to be made in order to avoid ambushes in the green zone being along the river

Cheers

[snake_eye]

Shots from the dam (the mosque domes are in fact the turbines !) ,the bridge with the highway and the village compound with its peculiar U shape

Cheers

IMG]http://i940.photobucket.com/albums/ad250/cateye_2009/defence%20in%20depth/CMShockForce2010-05-2622-50-55-19.jpg

[snake_eye]

Last picture of the dam.

Cheers

[snake_eye]

Here after the latest shots of the airfield after its completion.

A winding road going uphill has been added. It goes to a strong point from which you can over watch the area of the airfield, but see as far away as to the dam and the strong point near it. That way, a FO or JTAC team will be able to give support to the squads and or platoons venturing into the Green Zone compounds or along the highway on their way to the dam.

Cheers

[souldierz]

Very nice work Snake eye and I like the Dam, very creative.I will give this one a good try when it's released,and I also like the look of those bush areas with the ditches, looks like good terrain that would be able to preserve and mask Infantry in a fire fight,red or blue.Also I like the look of the bushes near the houses,gonna be tricky to get eyes on the enemy when they start shooting from there, if they are there.

Keep up the good work,

[snake_eye]

Very nice work Snake eye........Keep up the good work,

Glad you like it. So, all I have to do now is to work on the Blue and Red A.I and that means quite a lot of testing to insure that the fights are as realistic as they could be. Besides,the balance of the forces and the objectives points have to be done rightly to avoid a too quick surrender from either side.

Hope it won't take too long. Thanks for your comments.

Cheers

[snake_eye]

I am doing right now an AAR about the scenario A Taliban's Tactical Assault. It takes time and I clearly see that way, the hard work that others have done previously in theirs AAR. I shall try to follow their way and to be at the least as good as they have been. For that reason I don't do any testing at the moment. Keeping the forces alive is sufficiently hair raising and I won't make any bet on the ending issue at the moment.

Cheers