Utah, Omaha in CM:BN?

[Waycool]

OK - I am calling TROLL on this guy.

DFTT!!

Was thinking the same thing.

[JonS]

Hadn't played nearly as much CMBO as most of the people here, but I do vaguely remember a beach landing scenario, IIRC involving the Rangers.

You probably did, and I probably played the same one or ones. But, CMBO was not set up or intended for it, and I doubt that scen was a release scen (as opposed to an after-market, independant creation). Heck, I'm pretty sure that CMBO didn't even have Rangers - in that scen they were just paras or regular infantry standing in.

[ZPB II]

I feckin' hate Omaha Beach. Numerous interpretations of that place taint WW2 shooters across the spectrum. I can understand the interest in a psychological sense, but it's never any fun. It's just 30 minutes you spend stretching your balls into funny shapes while waiting for the next map.

I'm just glad BFC isn't wasting any time on that crap that has me traumatized. I'm fairly certain this omission means this forum will be a slightly better place in the end.

[permanent666]

it will be very easy to create a beach landing scenario the way close combat models them. maybe even better because in cmbn you can simulate waves of reinforcements.

the only thing which makes close combat so attractive for me is the (multiplayer) meta-campaign and the individual soldiers who can earn medals and their dynamic stats - but that is another story

[Barkhorn1x]

I took a look at thread starters posting history. A handful of negative posts from 2005, one from 2007 and a few today.

Guess he rises from the dead every few years or so.

[Other Means]

No thanks, I'm not a good scenarios maker. I will save my 60$+ and play Close Combat while waiting for new Achtung Panzer. RIGHT?

Does Achtung Panzer do beach landings? But sure, spend your money where you want.

[Vark]

Omaha, beach as a scenario? Let's see, most of the first wave faces so much firepower they decide to ditch their equipment (to stop drowning) and play dead, advancing only as far and as fast as the incoming tide washes them. The second wave is so badly disorganised, ad-hoc groups cower for hours in cover before weight of numbers allow them to advance. SPR's opening scenes might be viscerally realistic but the rest is deceptive tosh (sorry, edited for maximum excitement).

As for airdrops, simple. If they are glider borne, then small clumps of men roughly scattered close to the DZ's, if regular paratroops, all over the map, intermingled and if the editor allows suffering from 0-90% casualties. I'm sure they will be marsh tiles to simulate flooded fields, just make sure very few Paratroops who land in it survive! There was a very good CMBB simulation of a Soviet night drop, half the fun was seeing how scattered the units were. You then had to rapidly regroup, avoid a small garrison and fight off a counter attack, no discarded chute animations, but it gave you an inkling how vulnerable such troops are. The Maleme campaign in CMAK was too flawed, but there were some small sceanrios, post landing, that I enjoyed.

[Kilgore]

Everything that happened on those beaches and getting off them could be represented; bombardments, wire, mines, obstacles, the escarpments, marsh, trenches,foxholes, bunkers, the valleys/ draws leading of the beaches, engineers, AFVs. It's all in.

As for the actual surf, you'll have to use your imagination because

'Charles don't surf!'

[Michael Emrys]

Battle for Normandy was one day fight on the beach and three months fight on the rest of the peninsula. Would be nice to have a beach but it is not a show stopper imo.

I think that's the key. Some day in another kind of game I'd love to see the beach and airborne landings recreated, but in CM it wouldn't be worth the work. Think of it: Omaha was the only beach where the issue was ever in doubt, so that is the only one (IMHO) worth simulating in CM. And even there, once the Allied player figures out not to land directly in front of the strongest German positions, but opposite the bluffs, which he then scales in order to take the draws from behind, there wouldn't be a lot left to explore tactically.

The Atlantic Wall turned out not to be all that much of an obstacle. Even on Omaha where it extracted the highest cost in blood, it was breached in hours. And even there, if the planning had been a little more astute it would have been broken sooner at far less cost.

Michael

[DaveyJJ]

I want a simulation of a bunch of drunk American and British Soldiers getting in a bar fight somewhere in England in the months leading up to the Normandy invasion.That would be an awesome game.

That's the special extra in the OSX version. Worth the extra few weeks wait, I say, watching the last standing Yank snort, stagger out of the bar, and then step into the road looking the wrong way. :eek:

[Magpie_Oz]

I think that's the key. Some day in another kind of game I'd love to see the beach and airborne landings recreated, but in CM it wouldn't be worth the work.

I think that is the key to it. D-Day introduces so many different things to be simulated for a very short period of time that the amount of work put in doesn't really yield a good game result.

It would be difficult to have balanced scenarios that involved one side running across and open beach, or being scattered far and wide across the countryside.

Gliders are only ever really used in a tactical sense at Pegasus bridge and even then not really.

If it was a PTO module then that would be a different story altogether

[LJFHutch]

There's not a lot to say really, even if BF magically managed to put the same amount of effort as the whole game so far into the single beach scenario in the next few weeks and it was the best beach landing scenario/game on the market for years to come you might play it twice at most, then you'd play the rest of the game.

It's like being angry that the projectiles are "faked" and that they should use real physics calculations in real time for the powder, barrel, air moisture, dynamic fluid simulations of the air to simulate wind etc Cool for a few seconds? Yes certainly, utterly pointless in the grand scheme of things? ...

[Pvt. Ryan]

One problem with the CMBO beach scenarios was that the defenders eventually ran out of ammo, and then it was a cake walk for the later waves of American reinforcements.

[Paper Tiger]

I am actually quite tempted to try my hand at an Omaha beach mission as a prelude to a larger campaign. It would need to focus on a very small section of the beach and the casualties your core units took in the struggle to get off the beach would play a large part in what followed. We've already got mostly everything we need to make a good Omaha beach mission except for the boats. It would imagine that such a scenario would only be 'fun' to play as the US v the German AI side though.

Anyway, there will be a 'off the beach' mission in my first WW2 campaign, just after te landings on Utah. It might be fun

[LongLeftFlank]

As for the actual surf, you'll have to use your imagination because....'Charles don't surf!'

For lulz, I once did a CMSF mashup map with grajn at one end in a 2m dip blowing in a high wind. Looked pretty good for surf even though I didn't mod the grain. I also modded the engine loop on a GAZ jeep (immob and hidden in a gully "offshore" to provide an ambient surf .wav It worked pretty well IMHO. It's at GAJ's site for those interested.

I think Steve once said a placeable sound Easter egg (continuous loop or one off) was on Charles "one of these days" list. I'd have loved to start a Ramadi scenario off with the eerie cacophony of 3 overlapping muezzin calls (adhans) wailing from different minarets. Or church bells in Europe.

[panzermartin]

Aahh positional ambient sounds. What a great addition this would be.

[MikeyD]

In my imagination the most logical place to start a landing map is at the sea wall, not back at the low tide mark. The men have already made it ashore, made it to a relatively sheltered spot after suffering high casualties, and then... the scenario begins. The point would be how to push forward from there. Sounds like that could be 99.44% handled by the game engine no problem. You know, the same as we do with glider infantry and paras. The men first fall from the sky, and then... the scenario begins.

[Medex]

I always enjoyed Clubfoots D-Day Mod and the "Hastings Howards" Scenario.

[Michael Emrys]

The Omaha game I would like to see would allow the exploration of "what ifs". What if UDT teams snuck in at night and set explosives to clear lanes through the beach obstacles? Then they could be blown at daylight and the landing craft could safely bring their loads in at high tide (all this presupposes a different date had been chosen). They would have been unloading in front of the bluffs instead of 200 meters out.

Michael

[Peregrine]

Somebody made a scaled down but still very large pair of Operations that covered the British push to Caen and then conversely the second was the German counter-attack for CMAK.

I think they did an excellent job simulating the beach portion but frankly it was the most boring part of the battle. The ops weren't particularly well balanced but frankly I think it would be impossible to make ops that big with good balance as the testing would be ridiculous. Also the British "won" sort of and the Germans lost so a historically accurate result.

Absolutely ZERO imagination is involved. On the attack your units are not mobile sideways so what happens is they appear at the map edge where they "land". At that point they start shooting and attempt to move forward. If there is heavy opposition they get shot up. If not they start going inland.

Defensively you are also static as you are basically one relative thin line of defense (except for Omaha). Your units just shoot until they die or retreat.

While it might be great to have the visuals of landing craft etc they would be at best very average scenarios. Alot of extra effort to make some bad scenarios.

[Sergei]

Alot of extra effort to make some bad scenarios.

That's always been my motto!

[Peregrine]

I am actually quite tempted to try my hand at an Omaha beach mission as a prelude to a larger campaign. It would need to focus on a very small section of the beach and the casualties your core units took in the struggle to get off the beach would play a large part in what followed. We've already got mostly everything we need to make a good Omaha beach mission except for the boats. It would imagine that such a scenario would only be 'fun' to play as the US v the German AI side though.

Anyway, there will be a 'off the beach' mission in my first WW2 campaign, just after te landings on Utah. It might be fun

Sounds hard because for it to be balanced and playable after battle one you would have to have a relative consistent amout of casualties to your cores units.

Also leads to gameyness in that if the player knows what their core units are he would probably be using everything else as meatshields.

[Michael Emrys]

Also leads to gameyness in that if the player knows what their core units are he would probably be using everything else as meatshields.

One reason why I've never liked the whole idea of "core units". Anyway, they usually end up becoming a gross distortion of history.

Michael

[Peregrine]

One reason why I've never liked the whole idea of "core units". Anyway, they usually end up becoming a gross distortion of history.

Michael

Core units can work as long as it is the bulk of your force and the additions are just specialist vehicles platoons or sqds to help you along so the battles can have differing flavours.

[Tux]

A quick question for someone in the know: Do 'rivers' in CM:BN maps have to have two shores, or can one shore coincide with the map edge? If the latter then we can quite easily have a perfectly workable Omaha shoreline depicted, no?