Reinforcements

In a scenario troops placed in one of the 30 reinforcements slots are represent on the map by a flag and can be activated at some point during the game, after a set turn number. Possible triggers include a chance of arrival from 1 to 100%. I usually pick numbers above 80% and they seem to have less chance of appearing that this number suggests. Fortification can be set as reinforcements in battles to represent deep defences in depth, but I would suggest that you do not do so and have them placed on the map behind the lines and fixed in position or in a limited setup area.

Have reinforcements appear in a believable place such as the map edge not in the map centre as they will appear to have matter-transported into the battle Star Trek style. If the player has troops in the area of the flag when the reinforcements arrive, they will be pushed forward. Infantry and gun reinforcements are put in available transports by the AI, but this is not perfect. Artillery spotters are never loaded in vehicles. Check this factor in playtesting and alter your troop composition if it looks silly.

 

Set-Up

You are now ready to set-up up the battle, go into the Map Editor and Preview, your troops will have appeared along the friendly side of the map as at the start of a normal QB game, with any victory, reinforcement flags and defences. Experience of actually playing the game will be an important asset to the designer here as he places the units in believable and effective positions. If in the parameters interface you chose defenders are dug in, then you can decide, which defending units are in foxholes. The designer should check LOS from diffrent positions. Do not have the attacker's units ranged into the defender's guns on turn one, as the players will not like this and expect some movement before combat occures or at least the opportunity to use cover.

I frequently find that many CM scenario designers make a good effort with the defending side but only a half-hearted attempt with attackers, try to get both right. The AI will greatly benefit from a skilled set-up and it will make the game much more challenging and fun.

Choreography - is perhaps too strong a word as to what the CM scenario designer must do, but he is picking and placing units so that the AI will be able to use effectively. You must give the player choices and options - placing a Tiger in a position were it will be almost certainly knocked out by turn 2 is not on (This is in an official CMAK scenario)! Making it appear that one player is weaker than the other is but using reinforcement to switch the situation half way through is a valid and original design technique.

In Steamroller Farm, as it was meant to be an experience I included a vehicle park which a Churchill tank found and had great fun attacking, such a feature would not go down well with the players in a scenario meant to be played both ways.

You can determine what the Allied and Axis players will see when they first enter a battle or operation. The last camera position the designer used is saved, and becomes the opening shot of the 3D battlefield for players. Use the \ hotkey to switch between Allied and Axis view as both sides views are saved independently.

 

Balance and Playtesting

You should now play your scenario and deal with any problems in the terrain, which come to light at this stage and discover if you have the game balance right. Once it is polished you should also get your friends to test it as well. It is very difficult to play your own scenario when you know all the positions. (Some testers and players will use the editor to find the enemy positions!) You should take seriously critisicms like the enemy defence was too easy on the right and set about strengthening it.

There are many things you can do to tweak the play balance apart from giving more troops, and these include placing better cover that can by used by the weaker side such as more trees or hills or by using an axis bonus, which can be negative.

After you have tested it yourself made any changes and added briefs consider submitting it to the The Proving Grounds.

 

Briefings

You need to write three briefings a main briefing and two player briefings for each side.

Main Breifing

Your research into the historical battle should enable you to write the main briefing, which should set the scene.

Unfortunately, the CM interface allows only the courier font, displays only a small section at once, and so does not lend itself to displaying long briefings very well. The bottom line is that the player can always skip through your brief, if he wants too. For a scenario, you should keep your main briefing to a reasonable length of no more than one A4 side. For an operation where you are expecting the player to invest a considerable amount of his time in playing a number of large games' then I think it is valid to give a full account of the history behind not just the battle but also its context at the theatre level.

In a designers notes section, I suggest to the player which side he should play and if he should stick to scenario default setting for the computer-controlled side. You can also suggest any play-balance bonus or deductions for differences in play for human on human or human against the AI. You can also credit your play-testers, mention sources used. I like to mention in problems I had designing the scenario, which the system does not model very well. This should interest the players as you have pushed the envelope and may make them more forgiving. I have started operations with one side starting in one side of the map and had problems with rivers not stopping set-up regions in the CM operation system. I have also-represent in depth minefields and long barrages in operations, which would only appear in the first game. These historical points generated real design problems that affected the design in a real way. Other problems/confessions could include sparse information on one side or lack of topographic details.

Player Briefs

This should be written as if the player is the actual commander on the ground of one side.

You need to write a brief for both sides that should convoy the player's objectives and any intelligence he has about the enemy's forces and possible intentions. Many players claim they are not interested in playing historical scenarios but want more than going and take the bridge with the flag on it, they want a justification that the bridge is critical to our defence or will allow the main attack to go ahead tomorrow. The best method is to do it as if you are briefing the overall unit commander of the player's forces.

The player knows what kind of tactical situation he is in - attack or defence, and that his objectives are to take the flags and kill the enemy. The player also knows what his troops on the table are but not if he will get reinforcements and what they will be. The player is hoping that the sides, situation and troop types have been fairly well balanced and he will be given a sporting chance. Many designers try to mislead the player by telling him in the briefings that he will face light resistance when he is facing a stiff defence or an expected counterattack as his attack goes in. This tends to upset many players as they feel that the designer is lying to them and it also signals a warning that the playbalance might be out.

Rather than try to mislead the player, with false intelligence try to think about what the real commander's would know about the opposing enemy forces. This could be conflicting such as intelligence from high command suggests that you are guarding a quite sector but then tell the player that a patrol last night captured some prisoners from an unknown unit or it was cut short when they heard tank noises. Before Bagration, the local intelligence officers had identified almost all the Russian Divisions facing them, but Hitler and the German high command believed the attack would come in an entirely different sector. Just because the player knows what he is up against it does not necessarily do him much good.

The standard 'method' is to list out the player's forces and reinforcements. I do not like to do this as the number of troops in operations can be large and I edit them to make the formations and organizations more like the real thing. The player gets to see them as soon as he opens the scenario anyway. Many WWII commanders got a shock when they arrived and got to examine the real situation and the real troops they had available. Players tend not to like it but I don't give a detailed list of the troops on the players side. I tell him it is so and so squadron equipped with Sherman's rather than 6 x Sherman III and supported by 23rd RHA regiment with 25pdrs rather than 1 x 25pdr spotter. I may give some idea that he could get reinforcements but not exactly what they are as this defeats the whole point of reinforcements! I would also indicate that air support from a Hurricane squadron has been provided for the player's attack, rather than 1 x Hurricane 200lb bomb and 1 x Hurricane 30mm cannon. It also makes the briefing look like a game briefing and not a real one.

I sometimes add extra atmosphere to the briefings by colouring them with period propaganda, reports on real events - "you can expect your winter clothing soon", an officer giving you a real assessment of the situation on the front then contrasted that with you do know that you have to carry out Hitler order so and so.

To stop line spacing going silly when you do your briefs I find the following word setting help - Font: Courier Size: 10. Page Setup with left and right margins of 3.6 cm, top and bottom 2.54cm and header and footer of 1.27 cm. When it is finished save it as a text file (.txt).

The Load Briefings dialogue screen will ask you to locate these files, and the sequence to load them is: General, Axis, Allies. Then save the scenario.

 

Operations

Combat Mission Operations are a number of scenarios linked together and fought over a period of time, in a sort of mini-campaign. The idea was to model continuous combat over a day or a serious of days. I used the system to represent a day of combat per game and modelled the fierce combat around Le Parc de Boislande between the British 49th "Polars Bears" Division and the fanatical SS Hitler Jugend and the well equipped Panzer Lehr Division during the Normandy campaign, which lasted a number of weeks. I did it from the British point of view and only expected such a large operation to be played single player but soon found to my amazement that it was being played two player by email and that there was a demand for balanced operations to be played in this way.

Operations are more complex to get the player balance right, even for single player operations, as there are a many more variable that can have a dramatic impact on the game. If you set a percentage chance of reinforcements arriving from a certain game turn and one sides turn up before the other does by itself determine the course of the operation or can the disadvantaged player dig his heels and take up a defensive posture until his reinforcements arrive? The length of the operation and the troops already allocated will all help determine what happens in this situation.

As you can imagine testing an operation lasting many games to test to see if the attacker can get across the map in the allowed number of games is a different prospect than testing even the largest scenario.

The process to design Operations is the same as for a scenario, although there are some differences and added extra in the different editor dialogue screens. I have therefore only discussed the changed factors.

As with scenarios, I believe historical research before you begin will greatly help the process. My main source of research for the Polar Bears operation was the book by Patrick Delaforce (1995) The Polar Bears Monty's Left Flank From Normandy To the Relief of Holland with the 49th Division. The book has maps of the campaign at various times, so it not only shows the terrain but the troop dispositions over time.

 

Example Operation - Polar Bears

To start a new operation press the NEW OPERATION button, which will automatically opens The Parameters screen.

This is slightly different for CMBB and CMAK as the screen has being split into two and I have listed other differences as they occur.

Operation Type - For CMBO these were Advance, Assault and Destroy. I decided that Assault mostly closely matched the allied objectives for my Polar Bears operation.

Advance meant that the attacker had to advance to the end of the map before the operation ended. The game ends early if he achieves this. For Assault, the attacker is facing heavier resistance and is expected to only go a percentage value across the map. I set Expected Progress to 80%. For Destroy, the attacker is judged on destroying enemy units not territorial gains against the Max Atk: Def Casualty Ratio. The designer can use a non-rolling map by setting the Battle Window Size to the same size as the setting for the operation map length.

For CMBB and CMAK, things changed slightly for Advance operations, it is the same as before, but the manual notes that if the attacker reaches the end of the map before the end of the game the victory level for the Defender will depend on how far the attacker came. Units that end the last battle in no man's land are automatically shifted back to their own front lines. In Assault battles, no mans land is not necessarily a straight line down the two sides but can be irregular shaped and include padlocked areas. Units are not moved back between battles, but may be cut off when too far forward and will be padlocked during the next battles setup phase, and will not be resupplied. (Annoyingly, troops left in top floors, vehicles or too close together at the end of battle are moved out for the next battle.)

Destroy was changed to static and the battle map covers the entire operational map and does not scroll. The number of Victory flags are chosen and placed by the designer. The Attacker Casualty Point Factor, determines how many victory points are awarded to the defender for destroying attacking units - 100% is the standard setting. If set high, the attacker has to be very careful about losing men, as the defender will gain more than the usual amount of victory points. Set low, and taking victory flags is paramount, and the attackers forces are expendable.

Advance operations are best used to represent fluid battles of manoeuvre. Assault represent assaults on fortified positions but the more flexible use no-mans land will help with many design problems such as rivers. Static operations are essentially a series of connected battles on the same map such as an urban area like Stalingrad, which was fought over many times.

Size of No Mans Land - this sets the size of no mans land from 0 - 800m with 80m increments. If it is basically an infantry operation you can keep them close together or if armoured make them further a part, or close range tank duels could erupt on the opening game turn. If you want to make rivers less passable you may want to keep no mans land very short or at zero as you will find the attacker can cross them with ease without even having to move troops close up to the river, but could also result in the two sides find themselves at point blank range.

Attacker - there has to be either the Axis or Allied side on the attack. There are no meeting engagements in operations.

Weather Pattern - the weather can be set to good, mixed or bad but even on good it can rain, especially early in the morning. The designer must remember that it only takes cloudy weather to render one sides expensive ground attack aircraft useless and they do not appear again only in the first game that they become available.

Operation Length - the length of the operation in games from 1-20. It is important to give the attacker enough games to make his way across the map, but not so many that he is not under pressure. Each Battle last sets the number of turns per game. For CMBB and CMAK I have found that the player can achieve a lot in 20 turns, unlike Quick Battles and you can add a random element for extra turns. The designer will probably not have to go over 30 turns per game.

Time separation in operations was meant by battlefront to model a few minutes or hours separation in the gaps between battles. Therefore, you could have a battle in the morning/ afternoon/ evening/ then night. The system factors in the different light conditions as time changes. This is set by the number of turns in a day which is set in turn by when Night Falls. Which is every fourth battle for Polar Bears, which has 10 battles ands starts at dawn on the first battle, which is set by the Opening Battle Time Slot.
This means that there will be three battles during daylight, with a dawn, mid day, dusk, then night. A six-battle operation with no night models six battle fought on the same day.

The designer can decide if either side May Initiate Night Combat. If you decide that neither side could fight at night the game will still take the players to a night set-up and then take the players to a dawn set-up, so you may want to warn them in your briefing.

The designer can set Supply levels from severe to Ample but be warned that on the lower settings one sides troops will be next to useless after a few games. Vehicle Recovery & Repair can be set from None to Excellent, in CMBO you had to have a night turn but in CMBB and CMAK this occurs randomly after a few battles and is rarely an important factor.

Battle Window Size sets the size of the map that the players will fight over, in a large Advance operation the map could be many times this size and the map would scroll from game to game if the attacker makes his advance successfully. In CMBB and CMAK it is only applicable for Advance and Assault operations and the minimum is 1200m, the maximum depends on the overall length of the operation map.

Dug in With fallbacks setting means that the defender gets his troops entrenched in game one and a number of extra fallback entrenchments. These have to be placed in the set-up of game 1 and if the map is large and scrolling may be of little use later in the operation. You should warn players if you use this setting in your briefing. This setting models a fighting retreat from an entrenched defence line.

 

Map Design

 

Maps are created in the same way as for a scenario. I have shown my Polar Bears operation map and one of the original source maps. Operation maps for attack and assault operations this will want to be much longer than what the player will see during a single game. After you have set the Battle Window Size run the scenario and check to see what the players will actually get.

 

 

Some designers reduce the detail level of their operational maps, compared to scenarios but I would suggest that it is an opportunity to show detailed and subtle changes in landscapes such as a movement from wood to hilly grasslands or an urban centre.

Warning, get your map size, orientation, and other map parameters sorted before you buy and position units as these changes can remove positioning and send them back to the base line.

 

Troop Choice

Troops are bought and edited in the same way as scenarios using the Unit Editor. For Operations, I think it is even more important to edit the troops to represent combat depleted organizations.

The CM system is slightly different from other wargame campaign systems. In Steel Panthers games you get a core force and buy or are given extra troops for each game, so if in assault you would buy extra-engineers and heavy artillery and in attack extra tanks or halftracks. With CM, the player gets his starting troops in your first game and adds to these with any reinforcements. This can cause design problems with my CMBB Operation The Road To Minsk, I wanted to portray the massive opening barrage for the Bagration offensive, but in the following games, the heavy artillery would have being left behind. The solution was to start the game near the end of the barrage and I cratered the map, put casualties on the German starting troops.

In operations reinforcements arrive at the start of game and can be setup by the player where he wishes. They do not arrive at some point such as a road in the middle of game as can happen in a scenario. Reinforcements in the same way as scenarios can be given a first game to arrive and a probability of arrival. However there are other different types to consider.

CMBB and CMAK introduced Link To Map reinforcements for advance and assault operations. When a reinforcement slot is given this status, a reinforcement flag will appear on the 3D map that can be placed as normal. When the part of the operation map with the flag would appear in the game then the reinforcements are triggered and appear in that sides setup zone. I have used it to make troops appear in their historical locations instead of guessing when the player would arrive at that point. Could also be used to trigger certain troops types to deal with certain terrain types such as assault guns or engineers for a town fight. The manual suggests that it can be used for defences in depth to match the speed of the attackers advance. The manual warns that fortifications should not be used as scheduled reinforcements or reserves as they could appear in places where they were not there in previous games. As reserve, status is only triggered after heavy losses it would be normal for the defender to have retreated back and have had no problems in using fortifications such as trenches or daisy-chain mines that could be rapidly placed in this way.

The other type of reinforcement is Reserve status with three levels of Battalion, Regimental and Divisional level. If the player takes heavy casualties, these are released to the player in this order to help him make up his losses. This is an excellent device to keep the operation going if a game goes badly for one side. The designer can skip a reserve type or can have more than of these types such as two Battalion reserves but only the first one will be released at a time. The manual suggests that only one type will be released at once but the CM staff on the forum have suggested that this could happen if a player took extremely heavy losses in a game. I have seen reserve status reinforcements arrive together with scheduled reinforcements.

It has unofficially being suggested on the CM Forum that reserve reinforcements will appear for the attacker if relative strength to defender is below 1.8:1 for Battalion, 1.4:1 for Regimental, 1.0:1 for Division. Defender gets reserves if relative strength to attacker is below for 1:2 Battalion,1:3 for Regimental and 1:4 for Division.

As this type of reinforcements are to make up losses the designer should think about what the player could require if thinks go badly for him. Super heavy tanks and heavy artillery could be placed in the divisional reserve as most players will never see them. Placing reserves is a skilled part of making operations as these can keep the tension going in the operation as the advantage swings between the players as it did in real wartime operations and theatres.

 

On Troop Choice

Polar Bears was partly very popular because I used the editor to form real British Army organizations such as one Sherman Firefly in a troop of three Shermans. Some tank types appeared much later in the game but was used in Normandy such as the Archer, which would have been referred to as SP 17pdr at that time. The trick to get them in the operation is to move the date in the parameters screen to when it will appear in the game buy it and then move the date back to the required historical date. I used this technique in Return to Borisov to use the Su-76i in the Bagration campaign. There were two types of Su-76i - converted Panzers IIIs captured after Stalingrad and the game gives them the correct in service date for this type but portrays them as converted Stug IIIs, which is what were used at the time of Bagration.

 

Testing

Testing is very important for operations, as it is even easier to make the operation unwinable for one side than it is for an operation. However, due to their length it becomes harder and even more difficult to get two player testing done in any commercial time frame. Consider issuing your operation as a test version and ask for constructive comments and be prepared to update it beyond version one. As the players will be putting in a considerable amount of time to play your operation so try to make it as playable and polished as possible.

 

 

Mod Corner

Mod School

Mod Levels Part 1

Mod Levels Part 2

The Mod Files

 

© Mark Gallear 2004