New file at the Repository: Purple Heart Draw (2011-05-23)

[Battlefront Repository]

The 2d Infantry Division had been trying to take St. Lô, a major communications hub, since June. On July 11th, the Indian Head Division launched another attack towards Hill 192, a major obstacle on the way to the city. The 23d Infantry Regiment's task was to secure the eastern flank of units attacking up the slope of the hill. Just a couple hundred yards beyond the line of departure lay a deep gully that became known to the GIs as Purple Heart Draw.

More...

[Rake]

Michael, thanks for posting this scenario. I look forward to playing it. I’ve downloaded the file and opened the map in the scenario editor just to look around at the terrain. I had planned (and likely still will at some point) to build a map of this area once my enthusiasm for playing has tempered somewhat… this could be a while.

My first impression upon opening the map was “nicely done”. My only question is in regard to the depth of the draws. I understand that “Purple Heart Draw” was a deep ditch, but it appears to be more of a small canyon in your scenario. OTOH, I have no detailed information that would indicate that your portrayal is incorrect, either.

All of the information that I have is the map that you use for your tactical map, some aerial photographs from the ‘40’s and Google Earth. Nothing has detailed contour information that would show an approximate depth of the ditches.

Aerial photos show the “scar” along the top of the ditch and I would venture that, at their widest, the ditch is the width of the roadways shown in the picture, or roughly 6 meters (20 feet). As the action tiles are 8 meters, I understand that it’s not possible to accurately model this in the game and that some license has to be taken. But, in looking at the elevations in the editor, the bottom of the ditch as you have it modeled is approximately 6 meters below the adjacent ground and as much as ten or eleven meters (33 – 37’) in some places.

My sense is that this is far deeper that the actual ditch, but again I have no firsthand knowledge. I’m curious if you have some information that shows the draws to be as deep as you show them or if you’ve actually been on the ground to verify their depth. Beyond that, is there anyone else on the forum that can help clear this up for me?

Thanks in advance,

Rake

[lookeylou]

I got plenty of purple hearts and i got a draw

Georges d' eile was a quagmire. and on the other side of the map, heavy trench warfare. to top it off both areas have optimal overwatch positions with loooong LOS to call in bombardments that will reach out and TOUCH you. Never got close to Lo-Berigny Rd objective and was puling up to St. Lo when time ran out. Time seems to be a big factor. You cant be too safe. Ya got to get going. this is also a big battle, so you have to have a set it and forget it mentality. Call in a bombardment no time to watch. You got to get back to the other side of the map. they need ya! As you can tell. I play RT, Turn based may be less chaotic. All in all,I like it. It took me out my comfort zone. Multitasking is a must.

oh yeah this worked my pc out. It's a hog. it took 3 1/2 min to load alone. one in the game it ran well but on occasion it stuttered.

[FragerZ]

So I played US vs AI, and I've got to say that the scenario has it's ups and downs, and the opening part of the town was really fun. But there were some problems that made the game quite frustrating.

-The mines that you placed in front of the choke point on the western most point of the map where Echo(?) company comes in as reinforcements later were incredibly annoying. The problem is that the infantry can't jump over the bocage, so to head off to St. Lo, you have to go through that one choke point. But you can't, since there are mines there. If you try to move the company that arrived over the mines, the trucks will be destroyed. So you have to dismount all of the infantry, and manually make all of your units take the long way around through the trees, which is tedious and requires lots of micro management.

- The AI is really bad at handling tanks. I would always recommend not ever giving the AI turret-less tanks.

- The area on and beyond purple heart draw was completely empty. Having to move an entire battalion through half a kilometer of woods and open fields is VERY tedious and boring, especially since I didn't know that it was empty. I went to the extent of having my infantry clear the wooded areas before I moved my Shermans up, which wasted a lot of time.

- You set up a lot of ambushes in front of the draw, all of which I didn't realize existed until I was reviewing the map. The ambushes didn't defend anything important - they were just sitting between the bocage in front of the cliff (which you can't traverse over). So I never encountered them.

- I beat the AI with 1000 points against 0 point. You should really give the AI partial points for destroying some of my forces. I lost just under 100 men, and it didn't get any points for that.

- Since the map has two choke points, the bridge and the western path, the actual "battle front" is quite small. You can't really cram a lot of infantry into the small choke points, and this lead me to simply leaving and ignoring a lot of my troops, since I wasn't about to cram two companies of infantry into a 50 meter front. I ended up never moving Echo company or their trucks the entire game, and ended up taking LOTS of casualties through negligence. I'd leave a platoon sitting in some woods somewhere, not paying attention to them since there was nowhere where where I could use them. Then suddenly I'd notice them again once artillery started landing ontop of them.

- I couldn't really use the mortars in the town, since they usually take 6m to call down, and aren't that great against tall structures. So when I got to the road to St. Lo, I nuked it with all 300 81mm rounds and all of my 300 60mm mortar rounds. It provided me with some good screenshots I took the road to St. Lo with only 3 casualties, even through I literally ran my troops right at them