Matrix Games Forums

Hi all

I've pretty much finished my Sealion scenario depciting events around Hythe and Folkestone during the first wave of a German invasion of Britain in 1940. I'll do some final testing later today, then I'll upload it somewhere.

The map is 15*24km and drawn from 1940 Ordnance Survey maps.

I previously did a scenario for HTTR, 'Crossing the Moselle', but apart from that I have no experience with COTA scenario design, so please be gentle


Brief to both sides:

What-if scenario

Operation Sealion is underway. Arguably the biggest gamble in military history is about to unfold.

The premises for this what-if scenario are: 1/ Luftwaffe have fought the Royal Air Force to a stalemate in the air over the Channel coast, 2/ The Royal Navy Home Fleet, basing mainly out of Scapa Flow, will be at least two days before it makes its presence felt in the Channel. When it arrives, Kriegsmarine will have to fight and win a decisive battle to keep supplies flowing into the beachheads.

The Wehrmacht have landed with six infantry and gebirgsjäger divisions (not nine as originally planned, there wasn't enough transport) in different beachheads along the English channel coast with support from the Luftwaffe Fallschirmjäger and various commando units.

The situation on the ground is dire for the British. After the very recent debâcle in France, Army forces on British soil number just 22 divisions. Actual historical sources indicate these were at about 50% strength during the summer of 1940, and that they were almost completely de-motorised. The vaunted Home Guard, although numerous (at about 1.5 million men at its height), had almost no weapons at this time, only 1 in 20 men were armed, and no training to speak of. Coastal defenses were, according to Fieldmarshal Alan Brooke, scattered and mostly for show and morale purposes.

This scenario describes events around Hythe and Folkestone during the initial landing. At the start of the scenario, the German 17th Infantry Division is landing south of Hythe, and German Fallschirmjäger are parachuting in to seize the high ground north of Folkestone. The British will have to scramble everything to contain the beachhead with their limited ressources. With only 22 regular Army divisions, and six beachheads to cover, they will be thin on the ground.

The vital prize in this sector is Folkestone harbor - without it, the Germans will not be able to land vital heavy equipment, supplies, artillery, panzers, and the invasion will ultimatively fail.

Sounds very interesting!
Looking forward to play it.

Best regards...

Wow that really sounds impressive.

Regards,

Grell

Looking forward to it. Sounds like a tough battle from either side.

I used to play, and enjoyed, the SPI Sealion game, which covered three invasion plans at a larger scale. You have my attention.

Count Sessine,
 
If you like we can add your scenario to the downloads section of the official COTA website. In any event I would also recommend you upload it to the Wargamer's Hames Depot site:
http://www.wargamer.com/gamesdepot/

Arjuna: I'd really appreciate it if you would host it on your site. I can email it to you if you like. I haven't had too much luck with the Gamesdepot.

Re the scenario, I'm obviously having trouble with the gamebalance. I could just keep tweaking it, I think [:)] But I guess that if you guys play it, we can adjust it based on your input.

Here's a screen of the map:

Also, I really miss some HTTR-like colors for this terrain (the old mod doesn't work because it misses some height layers). The british countryside just doesn't look right with the sunburned look

Re playtesting. Yep ask the general community for feedback once it is out, then tweak it until it gets right.
 
Re map patterns. Just duplicate the existing COTA ones and play with the colours and patterns in a paint program. Then in the ScenMaker link your map to these new patterns - it's easy, have a go.[:)]

Just did a search on my hard drive here and found the following HTTR map patterns that purport to work in COTA. I can't recall where these came from. But try them out. The file has an "txt" extension. Just change this to "zip" and unzip it.

Arjuna: that HTTR file is the one with the letters A, B, C instead of the top five height layers, so it doesn't really work. Anyway, I'm not much of a graphics guy, so that'll have to wait
 
 

Count Sessine

Your map looks good to me; England is gray most of the time anyway, isn't it?[;)]

If play balance is all that's left for you to do on your scenario, go ahead and upload it. Balancing a scenario is a lot of work for one guy-there are plenty of players out here that will be happy to help out.

Ok, I will.

Here is the updated map, with british colors:

Ok, file is up on Wargamer, http://www.wargamer.com/gamesdepot/details.asp?sid=4605&u=1
 
Pending approval...
 
 

Ok, discovered the first error, the bridges unprimed themselves at some point, they're supposed to be PRIMED
 
 

This scenario is now posted at: http://cota.matrixgames.com

Thanks Rooster. The scenario that Rooster has uploaded is the most recent, map updated with new colors, and a few errors corrected (like the bridges and a couple of towns that had disappeared ).
 
 

Dowloaded scenario into my scenario file. Moved the Folkestone map to the map file but I still can't get scenario to work. Can you give me step by step directions. Thanks.

The AAS file goes into the 'scenarios' folder, the AAM file goes into 'maps'.
 
 

Count Sessine:

Copied map file into map folder; scenario file into scenario folder and still get error message and CTD. Other scenarios work fine.

Any ideas ?? Is it working for others ??

I do notice that no "AAM cache" file has been created for the new scenario.