Campaign Series East Front III 1939-1941 - scenario question

[Crossroads]

ORIGINAL: Crossroads

For the Operations Reindeer (Rentier) and Platinum Fox (Platinfuchs) I've got less original material, but there's a few high level books I've got, also from online materials there's the Ziemke books (Ziemke, Earl F.: The German Northern Theater of Operations 1940-1945. (1959)) and then the US documentation on RKKA's Kirkenes Operation (Gebhardt, James F.: The Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation: Soviet Breakthrough and Pursuit in the Arctic, October 1944. (1989)).

Here's the links for the Ziemkeand Gerbhardt books referred above:

Ziemke, Earl F.: The German Northern Theater of Operations 1940-1945. (1959)
Available online for free, - note that there are two parts. A must have!
http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cdm/compoundobj ... 729/rec/88

Gebhardt, James F.: The Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation: Soviet Breakthrough and Pursuit in the Arctic, October 1944. (1989)
Available online for free, but the link seems to be dead now?
http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cdm/singleitem/ ... /331/rec/1.

Link to Gebhardt's Petsamo-Kirkenes on-line book seems to indeed have moved.

Until it's new location's been found, meanwhile, here's a LINK to a copy I downloaded.

I am assuming it is legit to share it here, as it was part of a free on-line dictionary. Any information otherwise and I will remove the link.

EDIT: Found it, HERE it is:

[*] Click View Online
[*] Click at PDF url in the html page that opens.

[berto]

ORIGINAL: Deepstuff123

For map making and scenario creation, any plans for more terrain variety, or more town / village structures to choose from?

Would you believe ~12 new hex terrain types? And for many of the existing types (like town/village structures), an effective doubling of the available variants? More finely grained per region, per biome, and per game control and customizations too.

[Deepstuff3725]

Continuing on the theme of snow, I was checking out some of the Winter Wars, Finland vs Russia scenarios in Campaign Series and found one I liked. I was thinking it would be fun to edit the visibility to simulate the battle starting with clear weather, but soon dropping in later turns to low visibility because of a snow storm.

With this happening, I had some other ideas. In future releases could the game explain the reason for the change in visibility? Maybe the game can show "clear" at the start, then "snowing" after a few turns, then "heavy snow" when the visibility gets really low?

Also, when this occurs, can the game lower movement allowance for units because of the snowing conditions? Perhaps any air support can become unavailable when the visibility gets down to a certain number of hexes because of bad weather?

One other cool thing, and it's snow related, is having the hexes able to change during a scenario based on the weather conditions. Say a scenario starts in the winter with normal conditions, but snow begins the fall on turn 3. By turn 10 the hexes change to a partly snow covered look. By turn 16 the hexes turn to fully snow covered. Understand, of course, this may not be possible, and a stretch.

Likewise in non-winter scenarios, say a battle starts in the dry. Heavy rain begins, and later in the scenario movement gets slowed if traveling off road with units and there is a potential of armor units getting stuck in the mud.

Fog could be part of a dynamic weather change. A scenario could be going a long but visibility drops and air support becomes unavailable because of fog. Or the scenario starts with morning fog and low visibility but the fog gradually lifts as the battle goes on, and the game will describe how the fog is lifting.

In future Vietnam scenarios, perhaps movement and visibility can be affected by heavy rain that can happen in Southeast Asia. Air strikes and Air Cav get delayed because of weather.

On more thought on weather effects and scenario creation. How about an option to assign many different visibility setups to one scenario, instead of just one? For example, the ability to set 5 different visibility setups, some with low visibility at the early part of a scenario, some with bad visibility in the middle, and others with good visibility most of the way through. Then assigning a percentage to each one for the probability the computer will use it during the scenario. This way when someone plays a scenario with this in effect, they won't know which of the 5 weather setups they'll be dealing with.

Sorry to ramble on. Just a fan of the game and offering up some ideas.

Jeff

[jamespcrowley]

Quite anxious as to how this particular title is progressing.
I know it is not due until much later in the year but some more news would be very welcome.

[Jason Petho]

Soviet OOBs are completed for the time frame for the first release.

Now I'm knee deep in German infantry formations.

[jamespcrowley]

ORIGINAL: Jason Petho

Now I'm knee deep in German infantry formations.

Watch out for those jackboots!

Good to know that progress is being made.

[Jason Petho]

It's insane how often the organizations changed between 1939 and 1941, let alone how many different formation waves there were.

Of course, I have been creating them all.

[Rosseau]

I was going to say - forget the terrain - the OOBs have got to be a bear. Especially as the OOBs in the original game were so detailed and complete.

Fortunately, many weapon systems were not serving in enough numbers to deserve to be included. My old book "Encyclopedia of German tanks of WWII" is exhaustive, but many entries are prototypes or less than 100 built.

[derosten]

Hi together,
my name is Mark. I play EF/WF/RS for more than half of my life.
For first I am unhappy with some things:
career mode:
-always and ever too much substitution after a battle..360, or 180 units on corps level. But I never loose more than app 120 units although:

I write down my corps small to dvision or Brigade level and exchange the artillery (example German 105mm to 75mm batteries), play with 41V German Inf all time to 1945 or reduce tank regiment to batallion level with PIII for whole war! So I create tank batallions with Hotchkiss38f integrated in Inf Division to simulate realistic tank support for a Veteran Unit in the East for example.

--> I can never loose a battle or a campaign cause of unrealstic subs!
--> In too small scenarios too less AI armies fight against too many player´s units (what I bolsterd with the reduction of own troops as written)
--> I miss commanders for all! units (cannot programmize that myself, I am a teacher
--> I miss historical time long campaigns for Italy 19136-43 (Option to 45) or Croatia (fighting 1941-45 even against Tito troops and Red Army), FF campaign 1940-19345, British 39-45 and so many others
--> alternative linkin between short campaigns ---why my trained good unit is gone when a 1939-40 campaign is done!!?
--> I miss something like: Tanker campaing from 1939-45 with realistic AI odds
and etc etc

!!!I tilt JTCS from my computer for first time with all my creations, I am sad about. But run in á circle if I want to play realistic, mostly cause of extreme player substitution[/b] that does not chose between tank or infantry (!!no consequence loosing 10 inf but 50 PVI Tiger when able to substitute all of at once, you know). Rest of dishamrony is not nice, partially I can programmize that myself down.

But the toooo massive support with any rules for the player is the extreme boring problem for career playing.

I want to write you that, maybe there are some guys outside with same matters. Maybe Jason might read my lines.
I am no native Englishspeaker, so I hope my message out of is recognizeable

Mark

[Crossroads]

Hello derosten, your post reads very well! I am not a native in this strange language either

As for your questions, many of them refer to campaigns, and to dynamic campaigns, in particular. Or that is how I understood them.

Dynamic Campaigns were a feature of John Tiller's Campaign Series, and under the hoods, were actually not part of the game engine programmed by John Tiller but a part of the old front end done by an unknown Talonsoft programmer so I can't credit him here.

How it works is the old front end code dynamically created maps, organizations, saved them to disk, then called the game engine to begin the game it had just come up with. This meant the front end had a lot of hard coded assumptions about platoon data, it even included hard coded Platoon ids for any aircraft out there.

As we developed the Modern War series, organizations evolved, platoon data was redone, and the old front end got out whack expecting the JTCS format instead. So it was not supported any more at all for Vietnam, while for Middle East for a little bit we managed to have it along in form of Linked Campaigns and Battle Generator.

Anyone wishing to use Battle Generator with the Modern Wars engine I believe Middle East 2.0 was the last version to have it. Or was it even an earlier version. Those will play without an accompanying CSEE Lua file, so there is that, too.

With old front end gone, with the new Scenario Browser front end out soon with the next Update, old campaign code is not there any longer. I have a wish list item to have Linked Campaigns making a return at some stage, but that is it unless we get another programmer.

Once we have the Cold War game out, it is back to WW2 era, likely with a single WW2 title to cover all the fronts. It should look and feel like the current Modern Wars games, except with WW2 features. And with CSEE Lua for scripted AI, it should prove to be quite a competent computer opponent.