Afwaterings Canal Mini Scenario

[Chief Rudiger]

Yes, wrong map packaged with Zip file. Will upload itended one later tonight.

[simovitch]

Yeah, try some "quickest motorized" pathing along the south side of that canal. I'll guarantee that trail is wiped out. Same with your roads over the minor rivers.

I doubt that dikes will block LOS regardless of height. Neither will embankments. This is on the wishlist.

[Lieste]

He is using hills as dykes, but with only 2 contours (0,10) there isn't enough 'step' between the high and low areas. (2,6,10) for example would explicitly give *at least* 4m prominence to the narrow 'hills'.


I've attached the 'current working' version of my fiddlings so far. Not changed any Estab/terrain values at all, just moved some units, tinkered with the 'assault' set-up and replaced the not-working as designed static engineers. Note that I've explicitly chained each engineer to the local crossing by spawning the crossing task and engineer at the same time and place. With both on map at start the AI was mucking about, and not getting on with building efficiently.

The German objectives seem reasonable*, but I would consider making at least some tasks 'secure' rather than defend. The Allies need some work on the objectives, as I've yet to see the AI secure a single point. What he does seems reasonable, he just gets no credit for it.
The best way to check the scoring is to make the AI follow a reasonable plan/schedule ~ which is near ATM, and then ensure that 'normal' play by both sides gives a draw/minor victory - excellent or atrocious play should be needed to obtain major victories, or auto-end victories.

This scn is being worked on right now, with the assumption that the AI is attacking/Allied, as the original scenario had no working Allied attack and needed most adjustment.

[Chief Rudiger]

ORIGINAL: simovitch

Yeah, try some "quickest motorized" pathing along the south side of that canal. I'll guarantee that trail is wiped out. Same with your roads over the minor rivers.

I doubt that dikes will block LOS regardless of height. Neither will embankments. This is on the wishlist.

A lot of the detail is just eye candy - there's no significance to it.

The "dykes" themselves do not block LOS, as i learnt from Huib's Woensdrecht Isthmus scenario thread, thats why i drew a 10m high hill under each. As you can see in the above screenshot it does block LOS although because of the interpolation between the contours the differences are not that big - it still does work though. As Leiste points out, adding more layers to the hand drawn dyke ridge should even this out but is a bit labout intensive.

ORIGINAL: Lieste

Still tweaking. I think the static engineers are why you aren't seeing bridges - possibly the AI is wanting to swap them over, and they never get 'there'. I saw similar problems (ie a long delay before starting), when both engineers were 'live' but the initial fuel level was low enough to prevent movement. Both then built the same crossing, so the finish time was normal-ish.

Well, yep, I see the 10m height on the dykes.. problem is the ground 'nearby' is 9m, rather than ~2-4m so the dyke has no LOS effect. You'd need to have 'enough' contours to fix the low ground 'low' and still have prominence for these 'major' terrain features. This means at least 3. 1 'low' 1 'mid' and 1 'high' - to get the full prominence might even need 2 'mid' layers, but might be uneccesary

Anyways. The last AI attack kicked me out of the villages (more-or-less) and had cut supply to most of my forces, so it is definitely heading in the right direction. Losses are still rather one-sided ~700/60 and objectives are giving ~87/0 but an improved AI attack certainly
I could hold him where I had forces, but not prevent him slipping through/by, and the reserves were committed and used up just stemming the tide. Another 5-6 hours and I would have been in severe trouble. Without the 12cm tubes at the start, he would have probably reached the village line at dawn, rather than dusk of D2, but I would have probably formed a better defensive line in the village, rather than holding at the tip of the Drunen outskirts and Sempke.

I fiddled with the engineers too and they built the Western bridge on schedule. The allies probed Groenwoud in the evening of D1 with Inf and then assaulted during the night, gaining a toehold on the highway between there and Drunen. The Fire Brigade kicked them out but then the second Bn assaulted Drunen in the morning of D2. While these attacks were holding me down the 3rd Bn flanked to the West and over ran the Base and nearly the Regt HQ but I redeployed a single coy from Groenwoud to hold Elshout cross roads while a Coy from Drunen followed up the 3rd Bn and disturbed that Bn's HQ and Mortars - which made them abort their attack as the sun went down.

Had a presence on all 4 VLs at 0000 D3 so didn't loose, to put it one way.

Was impressed with the AI, especially its obvious find, fix, flank pattern!

[Chief Rudiger]

ORIGINAL: Lieste

He is using hills as dykes, but with only 2 contours (0,10) there isn't enough 'step' between the high and low areas. (2,6,10) for example would explicitly give *at least* 4m prominence to the narrow 'hills'.

Have just redrawn a section of Dyke with 2,4 & 10 metre contours and it does make quite a difference (flat farmland either side). If one were conscious of this when drawing the dyke in the first place it would be relatively easy to draw linear sections and then duplicate and offset them and then cut and paste more duplicates to higher layers.

I'll spend a bit of time redrawing the "dykes".

If anyone can help me out with details of the German OOB for this area i'd appreciate it - will be searching in "Monty's Highlanders" by Patrick Delaforce and "None Bolder" by Richard Doherty tommorrow evening.

[Lieste]

FWIW, you might not even have to offset, - as the slopes and heights are low, (+8 m in 100 is going to cause no problems), you could just copy the 10 m contour into a lower/intermediate layer.
Obviously, if you have lower prominences that cross this contour, then you can add these too.
Be aware that 2,6,10 is equal steps of 4 m from a base of 2m. 2,4,10m is unequal, so you will also have 6,8m intermediate contours to 'deal with' as well.

[Chief Rudiger]

ORIGINAL: Lieste

He is using hills as dykes, but with only 2 contours (0,10) there isn't enough 'step' between the high and low areas. (2,6,10) for example would explicitly give *at least* 4m prominence to the narrow 'hills'.

I was looking at the new Edinburgh Tram dyke/embankment near the airport today and suddenly realised that 10m is way too high for a dyke (the Tram looks more like 3-4m). The source said 9 feet but I think I just drew it on the first layer to hand and have never thought any more about until now!

Anyway, going on a dyke height of 6m (since I like arbitrariness) I've been testing this idea out to see whether stacking multiple layers one on top of another actually helps confine the ridge to a smaller footprint, i.e. reduces its cross section. So, in the style of a scientific report I would ask you to consider the following


Null Hypothesis: Adding Multiple Layers does not change the cross section of a dyke

Test 1 -

Method: I made multiple flat test maps and drew an EW dyke using a 2,4 & 6m layers, stacked directly onto of one another, then another map with only 2 & 6m layers and finally a third map using a single 6m layer. I generate a cache for each map.

Result: See "test example.jpeg"

Analysis: All three have the same cross section when viewed using the scenmaker LOS tool.

Test 2 -

Method: I did the same thing with my afwatering map by duplicating, cutting and pasting the same altitude polygon from the 2m layer onto the 4 and 6m layers in one map and made another map with just a 6m layer on top of the base layer, like my original.

Result: See "2 4 and 6m layers.jpg" & "one 6m layer.jpg"

Analysis: You can see that the LOS tool shows no difference in the cross sections of 3 identical dykes between the two different maps.



Conclusion: Results show that constructing a dyke of more than one layer does not change its cross section therefore the Null hypothesis, "Adding Multiple Layers does not change the cross section of a dyke" cannot be disproven... or something like that...


...so yeah, unfortunately I don't think it works. However, the 6m dykes, however drawn, don't seem to cause great interpolation anomalies in the lower lying areas between them.

[Lieste]

Uggh. It does work but you need extra prominence, as the Mapmaker smears the heights excessively in a defile - the 'minimum' height between your 4m contour isn't nearly 2m, but 3.9999m. As the maximum height on the map is +13.x m you could use 1m contours to get enough separation, or cheat by using a deeper 'channel'

Sometimes the height map generated has very little to do with the drawn contours


Oh, and did you remember to recalculate your terrain tables, and recalculate the cache before making your tests?

[Chief Rudiger]

ORIGINAL: Lieste

Oh, and did you remember to recalculate your terrain tables, and recalculate the cache before making your tests?

Yup, did this.

Attached is the map with a two layer dyke, 1 layer at 1m and the other at 6m. I've done the same but with the top layers at 5 and 4m and am still not seeing any difference with the LOS tool. Am i doing this right? If not, can you have a fiddle and send it back!

[Chief Rudiger]

Have been to the Library to look at a good range of Highland Division books and Patrick Delaforce's "Monty's Highlanders" says "The German High Command orderred the bulk of their forces back accross the Maas but the Fuehrer personnally orderred the 59th Division to stay South of the river behind the Afwaterings Canal plus one Regiment of the 256 [Volksgrenadier] Division to make a stand at Keizersveer Bridge [outwith map extents @ bridge over R. Maas @ Raamsdonksveer?]." (p182)

From what i remember of the map in Tom Renouf's "Blackwatch" (scanned in waterstones) the 59 ID were shown on the island with the 256VGD downstream, which corresponds to the above text.



Details of 59. Infanterie-Division (or 59th Infantry Division to the frustrated googler):

http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=1453


Part of LXXXVIII Corp (88th) of 15th Army:

http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=1951
http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=2084


The following website gives massive amounts of info on the Corp, including the 59th Division.

http://maddog.gionpeters.com/welcome.html

And this spreasheet in particular gives strength details:

http://maddog.gionpeters.com/linked%20f ... eports.xls

You can see the losses suffered on the Night of 4/5 November.

http://maddog.gionpeters.com/linked%20f ... 01944).pdf

Looks like a translation of the Corp war diary / campaign summary.

Jack-pot!


I think i'll buy the best books and expand the scenario to include the 153 Bde pushing from s'Hertogenbosch (the Duke's Wood - what can't learn in libraries?) based on "The Fuehrer" demanding more of the division stay "concealed" behind the dykes, on the island.

[Lieste]

Couldn't do what I wanted, but had some modest success with shaping the battlespace.

Give the attached map a try - it isn't pretty, and might be somewhat away from your original source, but it has a more - "flat with lumps on it" feel to the height map. The southern 'rise' could do with some additional contours to define the slopes - the underlying terrain has slope between the canal and the contour. Uses my defaults for terrain cover and visibility - these mightn't be to your taste feel free to modify, but give 'em a whirl first.

Had an interesting platoon-based action on it, which lasted most of a week, going badly for me, before the attacking AI pushed just a little too hard and got cut off
End result was bloody but indecisive. [:D]

[Chief Rudiger]

I've been unable to find much on the other Bde's involved in the operation - Martin Lindsay of the Gordons ("So Few Got Through"), who until then is an excellent commentator, drove over a mine on the eve of the Op and only witnessed his hospital ward filling up with the wounded.

Other sources (on the Div as a whole) don't give much info on this particular battle (as it was a bit of a walk over really) and concentrate instead on events before and after, especially the redeployment to the East of the Nijmegen salient.

The German Korp commander's report in the US document linked to previously are pretty interesting - particularly on 88mm Flak batteries being easily nuetralised in the AT role - and he is pretty scathing of the allied performance during these months - "hesitation and step-by-step attack tactics" (sounds pretty true, but not necessarily wrong since we won!).

What might be interesting, but on too big a scale for me, might be a courses scale scenario on the general cleaning up of the South bank of the Maas with the German's scoring VP for just delaying the Allies.


Anyway, the website i linked to has many excel tables giving manpower and material strengths but i don't know exactly which units opposed the 51st HD, other than their division, so naming the 59th I.D Bn/Regt would just be an educated guess.

59th division
I./Gren.Rgt.1034
II./Gren.Rgt.1034
I./Gren.Rgt.1035
I./Gren.Rgt.1036
II./Gren.Rgt.1036
Fus.Btl.159
Pi.Btl. (Stab+2Kp.)
FeldErsatz Btl.159
I./Arty.Rgt.159
II./Arty.Rgt.159
III./Arty.Rgt.159
Pz.Jg.Kp.159
Fla-Kp.159

attached
I./Gren.Rgt.723
II./Gren.Rgt.723
III./Gren.Rgt.723
F.E.B.347+ KG Stens
FJ.Btl.Balzereit
I./Pol.Sich.Rgt.3
KG Gramse
KG Bloch
KG Diedrich
FJ.Kp.Schneider
Fj.kp.Brehms


Leiste: would you like to post your version of the scenario as the final version?

[Chief Rudiger]

Am going to rebuild this with the Beta Patch and re-post.

[Chief Rudiger]

ORIGINAL: Lieste

Couldn't do what I wanted, but had some modest success with shaping the battlespace.

Give the attached map a try - it isn't pretty, and might be somewhat away from your original source, but it has a more - "flat with lumps on it" feel to the height map. The southern 'rise' could do with some additional contours to define the slopes - the underlying terrain has slope between the canal and the contour.

LOS wise I don't see any significant difference between your map and mine, based on elevation alone. I did notice however that the linear towns don't reduce LOS at all. I therefore bumped the "LOS reduction per 100m" values for Town up to ~50, like forests. This prevents you seeing "through" the villages, which you wouldn't able to do if the surrounding land was flat (or the village was on a slight sandy rise [another poster in a thread i can't find had knowledge of the geography of the area]). This should have a significant effect on the scenario.

ORIGINAL: Lieste

Uses my defaults for terrain cover and visibility - these mightn't be to your taste feel free to modify, but give 'em a whirl first.

What specifically are your cover and visibility value differences?

[Chief Rudiger]

ORIGINAL: Chief Rudiger

Am going to rebuild this with the Beta Patch and re-post.

@ Anybody:


How do you change the estab in a scenario? You can change the map just by clicking on that box but not so with the estab...

Little help?

[Arjuna]

You can't change the estab of a scenario as the forces within the scenario use it.

We do not have any functionality to try and map estabs from one estab file to another, nor to handle the cases where it doesn't find a corresponding estab entry. I agree that would be useful but until I can find time to address this you will have to redo your scenario using the new estab file.

I also agree with your suggestion to have a feature that would allow you to import/export an estab item. Now that we have a number of users actually developing scenarios I think we need to move this up the list of priorities. I need to discuss the mechanics of this with Paul and see what we can do. However, being realistic, I doubt this will happening in the very near future.

[Arjuna]

Chief,

How many estab items by type ( unit, vehicle, weapon, ammo, formation ) are you talking about?

[Arjuna]

An alternate approach maybe to support multiple estab files for a given scenario ( well two at least ). In other words it would look inside any custom estab file first and then in the default BFTB estab file. This may slow the game. I need to check.

[Chief Rudiger]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Chief,

How many estab items by type ( unit, vehicle, weapon, ammo, formation ) are you talking about?

My question is really related to the French and Australian units i made for my Merdjayoun Scenario. You can see, in the attached screenshot, how many unique units i've made (though the Australians are shamelessly copied from COTA). The two french units open show most of the weapon types i've made. Each obviously has its own ammo. Most are simply renamed stock items (how different is an 8mm rifle round vs. a 7.95mm?) As for vehicles, i've only made one or two tanks. I've made no changes to the formation values.

So, its not an awful lot, to be honest, and it'd pretty rapidly recreate it all if I had too, but if i can't change the estab that the scenario uses then i'll have to scrap the whole thing and start that part again too!

[Chief Rudiger]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

You can't change the estab of a scenario as the forces within the scenario use it.

We do not have any functionality to try and map estabs from one estab file to another, nor to handle the cases where it doesn't find a corresponding estab entry. I agree that would be useful but until I can find time to address this you will have to redo your scenario using the new estab file.

I also agree with your suggestion to have a feature that would allow you to import/export an estab item. Now that we have a number of users actually developing scenarios I think we need to move this up the list of priorities. I need to discuss the mechanics of this with Paul and see what we can do. However, being realistic, I doubt this will happening in the very near future.

It seems other users have similar questions. Might you make a dedicated, stickied topic of your own and outline how the patches effect pre-patch scenarios and estabs?