Content Question

[Empcoth]

Is the Normandy beaches landing included in this game?

[Sequoia]

Welcome to the forums. The short answer is no.

Discussion of this question can be found here:

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=95646&highlight=beach+landings

[Empcoth]

Thanks for that. You saved me $55.

[JonS]

The longer answer is "it's not excluded, but you'll need to either wait or learn to use the editor."

[Waycool]

Empcoth missing a superb war-gaming experience for the want of beach landings would be a great loss IMHO. For those wanting a WW2 battalion/company/platoon game this is the quintessential one. CBMN has loads of detail and re-playability it is an amazing piece of development.

[LJFHutch]

Why must you do this, Saving Private Ryan, whyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeee!?

[MikeyD]

The answer of course should be "Wait a couple weeks/months and the Repository storage site will be flooded with 3rd party beach landing scenarios". There's probably some new owner in the editor as we speak (type) busily combining water, sand, and low sea wall into an excellent assault scenario. CM:BN isn't just what you get in the download, its what keeps coming and coming afterward too.

[Volodnikov]

I guess the game would be worth it if it just had the beach landings and nothing else?

[WineCape]

I guess the game would be worth it if it just had the beach landings and nothing else?

And simulate/represent/abstract 1 single day of Normandy fighting instead of the 3+ months searching for real Calvados and Camembert cheese?!!

[Loaf]

Beach landing scenarios are a bit dull IMO... You are under fire right from the outset, which I tend to dislike in any scenario. You have no choice over how to move to contact. If played realistically a beach scenario would be more of a platoon-level than a company-level game, since there was very little large-scale coordinated effort involved in getting off the beaches from I have read - just small bands of soldiers using their own initiative to get out of the kill sack and move inland.

I played some of the CM1 beach landing scenarios (including a HUGE one that had all of Juno beach, and included a sprinkling of British Commandos along with the Canadians) and I always found that the actual get-off-the-beach part was not as fun as I expected. And once you're off the beach, then you're playing standard CMBN scenarios anyhow...

Many people over the years have come to the forums and asked for landing craft, DD tanks etc. so they can get the full beach experience. But until they disembark, the troops are cargo - what would the player do? Give orders to landing craft and swimming tanks that can't fight? Sounds underwhelming... Not worth the enormous programming time.

[Cull]

With all due respect:

This is a massive game with all sorts of tactical possibilities, running the gamut of operations in Normandy. Why you'd skip it because it doesn't reenact the landings themselves is beyond me.

Actually, why you'd want to reenact the landings is beyond me. There's no tactical interest to be had really----it's run/crawl for your lives while experiencing a shooting gallery from the German side.

That said, if you're talking about reenacting say D+3 hrs then sure, I suppose you could simulate the push off the beaches and whatnot. Still, not much tactical interest, but it could be done with the scenario building tools.

edit: beaten, obviously. Had to say it anyway.

[JonS]

Beach landing scenarios are a bit dull IMO...

That depends. I suppose if you like to pretend you're The Beast of Omaha, getting off on gunning down wave after wave of hapless Amis floundering up the beach, I imagine beach landing scenarios are a great deal of fun.

That said, I did think some of the CMBO landing scens were passably enjoyable. I remember the JUNO one, and thought it ok. Losses on the beach introduced a large random element (which I'm ok with), and recovering and regrouping from that before going on to clear the beachfront hamlets then pushing inland was an interesting challenge. That is; the actual landing was just the first phase, which set the scene for phases II (clear the beachfront) and III (push inland), all in one scen. I think it helped - a lot - that it was on a very well made map. But you're right - it was a massive scenario. IIRC it consisted of the entirity of one flank of the Canadian assault - that is a brigade frontage (rather than the whole two bde frontage), although the actual forces were probably 'only' the lead wave consisting of an inf battalion, most of a battalion of tanks, a big chunk of AVsRE, a company or two of engineers, a commando, and a battery of Centaurs Or something along those lines. But I think landing scens kind-of do need to be that big, since the 'edge effects' of a smaller map with smaller forces in such open terrain would be too marked. A smaller map would also cut down or eliminate enfilade fire, which was a big feature of many of the German positions.

I don't remember if I played that one against the AI or H2H ... AI I think.

[MikeyD]

In my fevered imagination I've always pictured getting around the more-or-less unplayable part of a beach invasion by starting the scenario at the sea wall. The men are hunkered down, the enemy is being bombared with artillery, and... the scenario begins. There's nothing I can really think of to keep that from workng in CM:BN. Heck, make the sea out of shallow ford tiles and you can even have erzats DD Shermans wading ashore! :S

[JonS]

replace "seawall" with "low tide line" and I agree.

[Peregrine]

I played an Operation in CMAK that had the beach landings on the British flank.

The start was by far the dullest part of the whole operation.

Zero tactics. Virtually all beach scenarios will be like watching a movie and however the forces are laid out at the start by the designer will govern exactly how it plays out with not much impact from the player.

[Michael Emrys]

CM:BN isn't just what you get in the download, its what keeps coming and coming afterward too.

They say that about Mexican food too.

Michael