Holiday Project - MP Scenario - Battle of Raseiniai

[Shards]

Hi!

Link to current version: (1.0.0) https://www.dropbox.com/s/x8tfljpo4994q ... 0.zip?dl=0

After finishing off Tallinn, I'm in the mood to try and make a new MP map that's quite tank focused to go along with Panzerkrieg.

So, I'm going to have a go at documenting here my thought process and progress with this map!

A bit of background on the battle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Raseiniai

I'm actually going to use a slightly cropped version of the map on that page to act as my template for the battlefield.

These are my general initial thoughts on what I'm trying to achieve:

- Medium size MP map, encouraging armoured conflict between German and Soviet forces
- Main focus is around the Town of Raseiniai and the bridges over the Dubysa
- I'd like the forces to reflect the order of battle, with the Soviet player having a larger armoured force, but the German player having access to Luftflotte 1
- I'm going to try a bit of shenanigans with the Victory conditions to see if I can make then somewhat hidden from the opponent

This is where I've started:

https://imgur.com/a/xvGh2

I've cropped the map to a vaguely square shape and overlaid it over a 30x30 empty map in the editor. (Tip, save an image as "template.jpg" and put it in the same folder as your scenario to get this overlay).

[Shards]

And the first step, plotting out the Towns, Villages, roads and rivers

https://imgur.com/GQzqCS5

I'm gone a bit maximalist here, I suspect I'll remove some of the minor roads and streams, but it's enough to plonk down a tank and drive around to get the feel.

https://imgur.com/2HuwzM7

This is a good spot to set up the basics of the scenario settings as well. Setting the appropriate Date will means that the appropriate units are filtered and adding German and USSR forces to the Alliances tab lets me plonk down a couple of test units. Note, even though this is an MP scenario, you can only play as one side in the Editor, so one team has to be AI temporarily.

And the first think I forgot is that I need to add Supply nodes if I don't want my little tank to be instantly out of supply!

https://imgur.com/5hYXTJL

This is also a good point to remind myself that OoB doesn't like forking roads on top of rivers (the bridge pathing gets a bit confused!)

[Shards]

So, a quick distance test (Where can the two forces get to in a headlong rush at the start of the game)

https://imgur.com/mCbtMPp

Currently, the Germans can get to the Third Bridge first, but that's all. I'd ideally like the Russians to be able to get to the Central two bridges and the Germans to be able to get to the outer two bridges first (at a headlong tilt with good speed tanks). I think that this will mean that I'll have to add in some more width to the scenario to the East to push a Russian deployment zone further to the North East and either split the German deployment zones between South and West (rather than South-West), or possibly take out a bridge in the south-east to force them to drive around.

Whatever the solution, in an ideal world Raseiniai should be reachable on the same turn by both side and the teams should be able to weight their deployments to push on a particular bridge should they choose.

[Shards]

Before I get any further with that though, I need to get more detail into the terrain to figure out where some additional natural difficulties might come from.

Google Maps is great for getting an idea of what the general terrain is like

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/%C5 ... 4447?hl=en

It also gives me the correctly accented place names!

This is a bit of grind work, so I'll leave this here for now

[DetlefHarbemeyer]

Nice idea - I googled this battle and found this on yotube

Its also your battle but I dont know if that is also for Order of Battle or for an other game - the map looks similiar but the units are completly others.
I support your project - if you need any test players.

[Shards]

Hi,

Thanks for the support

That's quite an achievement to find that video that used a very different spelling of a small Lithuanian town! Also, it's clearly labelled OoB and is, sadly, by someone who is banned from this forum for their past behaviour. I've removed the link.

Thanks,

[DetlefHarbemeyer]

OK no problem - let me know - if you need some test players !
For now I test the scenario in the link and its real good - but I like to compare with your work later !

[Erik2]

Interesting project.
I noticed on the steam forum that some players are looking for more small-medium multiplayer scenarios (that kind if excludes mine ).

[Shards]

Got back to this for a little while today, filled the terrain out more now

https://imgur.com/XFQwtMn

I've also started thinking more about deployment zones. I'm going to have the German zones at the top of the roads that lead back to their historical crossings on the Neman river (so, mid-left and bottom-left) whilst the Russians will have to have more game-balance led zones back in the top-right to try and set up early clashes at the river crossings and in the farmland around Raseiniai.

From some quick tests, the Russians will do best to take the crossings early and then look for opportunities to cut over-stretched German Forces, Whilst the German player will want to grab ground early and may want to ensure they take tertiary VP's to reduce the chance of getting their supplies cut.

[Erik2]

Tertiary VPs...?

[DetlefHarbemeyer]

I took some screens from my hotseat against my brother from our holiday gameplay - its really a violently challenge to play this scenario - you have to see and test this. Hopefully you can take some details like unit names for your own scenario.
If you need also some screens from the soviet side - my brother can upload them to help you out with some views.

[Moderator Action: removed banned content]

[Shards]

Tertiary VPs...?

VP flags that are neither primary nor secondary? Tertiary seemed appropriate as a term

[Shards]

Vaguely happy with the terrain now after tweaking a few forest and swamp tiles that were proving to be irritating rather than challenging.

So started on the victory conditions!

https://imgur.com/DE18KPG

At the start of the scenario, the USSR player should be able to grab all VP's other than Raseiniei first. But to counter any unfortunate newbishness, I'm not going to allow victory before the start of Turn X (currently 5).

Also found a bug in the Random Selection trigger. If you ask it to pick 2 from 4, it will never pick the last one (so I've temporarily doubled up on the last one, so it's 2 from 5 and works properly for now).

Nearly ready for a first Alpha test game I think

Ta

[Shards]

New discovery, The "Random Trigger" action doesn't just one-shot fire off a trigger (as I thought), it sets that trigger's status to Active.

This was causing me some serious confusion with a repeating trigger that was going off all over the shop!

Also found out that a trigger can't deactivate itself and that if you re-activate a trigger after it has fired it's preset number of times, then it stays deactivated...

[bru888]

New discovery, The "Random Trigger" action doesn't just one-shot fire off a trigger (as I thought), it sets that trigger's status to Active.

This was causing me some serious confusion with a repeating trigger that was going off all over the shop!

Also found out that a trigger can't deactivate itself and that if you re-activate a trigger after it has fired it's preset number of times, then it stays deactivated...

Heh, it's good to know that even the master must learn something new once in a while.

[Shards]

v0.1.0

Uploaded to dropbox for an MP alpha test :

[Deprecated]

I've hosted a PBEM challenge

I think that the key triggers are working properly now. No idea on the balancing though

One thing this has taught me, the Light Tread trait on the BT7 is very valuable!!

[Shards]

v0.1.4

Thanks for the test games of 0.1.0!

A few changes:

- Increased starting RP and CP for Germany
- German Air CP removed and replaced with a spawned flight of Aux Bombers on Turn 5
- Modified starting RP and CP for USSR to allow for awarding of reinforcements CP and RP on Turn 5
- Added Briefing
- Added triggers to "Fail" the USSR objectives if the German's win (just for tidiness)

And a new link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1qj9rl54qg3jj ... 4.zip?dl=0

[bru888]

v0.1.4

Thanks for the test games of 0.1.0!

A few changes:

- Increased starting RP and CP for Germany
- German Air CP removed and replaced with a spawned flight of Aux Bombers on Turn 5
- Modified starting RP and CP for USSR to allow for awarding of reinforcements CP and RP on Turn 5
- Added Briefing
- Added triggers to "Fail" the USSR objectives if the German's win (just for tidiness)

And a new link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1qj9rl54qg3jj ... 4.zip?dl=0

Shards, I don't play MP so I will not be able to help you in that manner. I could still do a "forensic" pass, though. Care to allow me? And is it too soon? Not design critique but typos and stuff like I normally do.

[Shards]

Go ahead

This is a much simpler project that Tallinn but I'm sure there's things to find!

[bru888]

Go ahead

This is a much simpler project that Tallinn but I'm sure there's things to find!

Four eyes are better than two, except if you are referring to glasses, and even then they are a blessing! I discovered this myself the hard way when my own latest creation was "scrubbed clean" out there in the cold, cruel world.