Campaigns

[bodkin]

PT I wasn't directing my rant at you as I feel most of the time your reasonably fair -albeit with a slightly cruel streak. But some designers give huge bonus points to the enemy so that you cannot win even if you achieve all your objectives with about 15% casualties.

I feel in a campaign if a player loses too many men then they will be punished regardless if they have to play through the whole campaign with the same core units. Losing too many men should incur some sort of penalty, if your reckless with your mens lives then it's inheritantly going to be harder to get through later missions, which is fair enough and rewards good tactics. My main point which I may not have explained that well, is why give the enemy huge bonus points (that negate any points for wiping the enemy out and achieving all objectives) for losing say 10-15% of your force?

I think I'm more of a Patton than a Montgomery, I just see the objectives and go for them with geniune caution but without micro-managing to nth degree. Bring on Normandy.

[ChrisND]

I've received permission to post my campaign battles as standalones on the Repository, so you will see them there soon. They will not be playable by Red however, since I don't have the time to re-jig all of them for that functionality.

The missions are:

Dutch:

Trial by Fire

Over the Hill

Kameshli Airfield

German:

The Factory

Jabul-Zayn

A Night at the Sheraton

[HintJ]

Are you playing WeGo or RT?

I have found that one can get better vehicle / troop placement (like hull down, etc) and better fire control by micromanaging matters in RT. Granted, not everyone plays RT or likes the work required by micromanaging individual vehicle / troop placements.

I play RT and I don't mind the level of micromanagement to get the level of precision I want. I have finished all campaigns with Total Victory as a result.

I have yet to try a campaign doing WeGo but my suspicions are that it is much harder because the lack of precision compared to RT and alot can happen in the one minute turn that you have can't react in a timely fashion to - like that BMP opening up on your troops 10 seconds into the turn, leaving you at the mercy of the tactical AI to handle your reactions for the remaining 50 secs.

My two cents.

I thinks this is good advice. My playing style is evolving a bit. I actually try to do everything in 15 second runs lately using a simple Autohotkey script, but, of course, it comes w/the price of losing the replay.

I also would like the ability to access the individual missions of a campaign.

[Lethaface]

I've received permission to post my campaign battles as standalones on the Repository, so you will see them there soon. They will not be playable by Red however, since I don't have the time to re-jig all of them for that functionality.

The missions are:

Dutch:

Trial by Fire

Over the Hill

Kameshli Airfield

German:

The Factory

Jabul-Zayn

A Night at the Sheraton

Ah very nice!

[bodkin]

Paper Tiger,

I really don't understand what is going on with the points scoring in mission 5 'Charity' of the Canadian campaign.

**spoiler warning**

I achieved all my objectives except the secondary one of wiping out the enemy but I suffer a minor defeat and got bumped from the campaign because I didn't achieve enemy casualty bonus, and the enemy got a wopping 500 points for their freindly casualty bonus!

If I knew it was so important to cause more enemy casualties I would have attempted to do so, but considering I was up against special forces troops I wasn't prepared to risk more of my mens lives on an objective that wasn't essential. Just think the scoring is a bit skewed.

Luckily I reloaded a recent save and wiped out a couple more squads with the loss of 3 men and an LAV to get me a victory.

[Apache]

I am currently playing the German campaign and, due to my newly acquired desire not to lose ANY troops KIA (and certainly no vehicles) because I am not entirely sure of what the consequences will be for the next mission, I find myself doing countless reloads. Probably more than I'd like but it's OK for now. For me though I think part of the problem centres around the modern warfare setting, the chosen theatre of operations and the protagonists. As the Germans I have all this modern kit and firepower yet spend maybe 80% of my time skulking around trying to avoid something being KOd by various ATGM systems. The desperate need to identify these systems demands that much of your force spends probably an equal amount of time watching. The infantry I tend to use for checking empty buildings as I find that's the safest thing to do with them and I ALWAYS avoid rooftops!!!

My feeling is yes the campaigns are not easy and you have to preserve your men and equipment to not impact your force for the next mission all of which is very realistic. The preservation issue is something which I understand as being needed to balance the firepower problem, and the ATGMs as a requirement to stop it being an AFV walkover. I understand it all (albeit sometimes the time limits I find a bit tight given the need for force preservation). Is it interesting though?? For me I'm not so sure. I'm playing it to blazes now in readiness for CMBN and am enjoying it but the excitement wanes a little when I start each new mission, see the objectives and my forces arrayed and then think "ah here we go, dodge the ATGMs again". So this is why I've always avoided the modern warfare era (I do in table top gaming too) and certainly any kind of uncon setting like this. Sure WWII also has to be watched, you can't just drive vehicles about with wanton abandon or they die fast but it's all just more balanced IMO.

I find in WWII that I'm involved in much more, and a much greater diversity of, 'activity' with constantly checking an avoiding LOS (to ANYTHING) probably taking about 20% of my thought process with each move. In the CMSF setting I find that rises to about 50-60% with much of the rest centering around getting troops/vehicles into positions where they can watch, and watch and watch and............. Hard to put a finger on it exactly but those are the kind of feelings I get with CMSF. Long term it would not be 'entertaining' enough to keep me coming back whereas CMBO was, and I'm sure CMBN will be. Couple that with a greater feeling of 'attachment' to playing WWII and yes I will be very very happy to return to the WWII setting for CM.

As it is I think the scenario designers do a grand job of making campaigns challenging given the restrictions of the setting and BF have done a grand job with the game engine and the game in general. A lot of this will of course be tainted by personal preference but that's life. I'm happy to have bought CMSF and the NATO module, I may well play the Canadian, Dutch and Stryker campaigns if I finish the German one and if there is time before CMBN comes out. I won't be adding more modules though. With the return to WWII there would be no doubt about those issues, it would be a certainty for all of them, all campaigns, all missions and all modules!!

[Paper Tiger]

Bodkin:

the RED side has to have a large force preservation bonus to prevent BLUE from winning the mission at start-up. Your main objective in this mission is to PRESERVE the WMD site (200 points) with secondary objectives being to occupy it (100 points) and to destroy the REDFor (100 points). You also get 100 points if you do it with less than 10% casualties.

RED has a force preservation bonus of 500 points to counter the 300 BLUE starts the mission with (PRESERVE and Friendly Casualties) and it's lost when RED loses 60% of his force. That's not really a high threshold IMO. It's just high enough to ensure that BLUE has to commit enough force to do the job and not sneak a win by blasting the crap out of the RED side with the formidable artillery assets at his disposal and then hitting CEASE FIRE.

You were just a few points shy of inflicting 60% casualties. If I set that threshold at 50% then the same thing would happen to someone who completed the mission and only killed 49% of the enemy force. It's going to happen and I thought 60% was fair.

[Sakai007]

The Canadian campaign has been very enjoyable for me personally. I took the advise Paper Tiger gave a while ago when this topic of preserving buildings and keeping friendly casualties down at the same time came up. True, you will lose points for killing building you shouldn't, but you will lose more if your boys get all shot up. If I take fire from anywhere, it get a healthy dose of whatever can get an LOS on the target, and then some arty as soon as it starts to fall, which is when I slack off the HE from IFVs, Recce, Leos, Infantry squads, ATGM vehicles, and the kitchen sink. In a certain mission, I ended up wasting two of four preserve buildings, but passed my friendly casualty requirement, so it was a Major Victory, and on the first play through I was stoked. I say, the order of priorities should go like this:

1. Preserve friendly forces

2. attain objectives

3. Destroy enemy forces

4. Preserve infrastructure in the battle area

This formula has worked well thus far, and can be a ton of fun too!

[Russkly]

The Canadian campaign has been very enjoyable for me personally. I took the advise Paper Tiger gave a while ago when this topic of preserving buildings and keeping friendly casualties down at the same time came up. True, you will lose points for killing building you shouldn't, but you will lose more if your boys get all shot up. If I take fire from anywhere, it get a healthy dose of whatever can get an LOS on the target, and then some arty as soon as it starts to fall, which is when I slack off the HE from IFVs, Recce, Leos, Infantry squads, ATGM vehicles, and the kitchen sink. In a certain mission, I ended up wasting two of four preserve buildings, but passed my friendly casualty requirement, so it was a Major Victory, and on the first play through I was stoked. I say, the order of priorities should go like this:

1. Preserve friendly forces

2. attain objectives

3. Destroy enemy forces

4. Preserve infrastructure in the battle area

This formula has worked well thus far, and can be a ton of fun too!

Abso-bloody-lutely!

Can you imagine saying to your platoon: "Right, guys, we're going to take that village over there. We have arty support, but we can't use it, because of the ROE. So, instead of wiping out any buidings in which we have identified the enemy, we are going to FIBUA our way around the whole village, during which process we will probably take 30-40% casualties. Sound good? Or shall we just bugger the bloody buildings and save some lives?".

R