Slitherine

guille1434 wrote:In my opinion, the best looking of those three is the icon made by DMP... which is the one I am using as a base (plus some internet images and a profile drawing) for making the new base icon for a "skinnable" Fw-200...

Yeah, I think you're right. Here's some internet art that looks similar to the DMP icon... She's a real beauty... If only I could 3D model.

While waiting for the proper Condor to leave its nest, I realized that I was massively unfair with our Italian allies. The Germans and Finns get camo starting from 1943, and the Hungarians from the beginning, but the poor Italian tanks had to finish the war with the vanilla sand yellow skin. Even though it seems that they had started to apply some camo by this point, too:






So I made a new camo skin for DCS software using this image:





And the result:




Thus, from v1.2, Italian AFVs available from 1943 will come with this camo. This might give them the much needed boost in confindence to repel all the Allied offensives aimed to penetrate into the soft underbelly of Europe.
And, hopefully, I can have my weekly dose of Spaghetti Bolognese without a bad taste in my mouth.



In case someone need it to transfer more units to this standard here is the new skin for DCS:
and the thumbnail to make it appear in the software:

McGuba: Excellent job making that new italian camo skin!!! Thanks for sharing!

McGuba wrote:And the result:

Wow! Big improvement. And you're right, the Italians need all the confidence they can get. So looking like you belong with the big boys is a good first step.

Very nice addition. Well done.

They look like a coherent, well organized fighting force!

Could you share please the DCS masks for the vehicles? Or are these already included in the latest version of the tool? My P30/43 surely not.

OK here is the whole pack:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/62cxs ... ITcamo.zip

Tanks! Mmm...thanks!

McGuba wrote:OK here is the whole pack:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/62cxs ... ITcamo.zip

I just wanted to make a quick suggestion about the map.

Not sure how much work it would be, but it would improve the historical accuracy quite a bit. I'm thinking about Saint Nazaire in France. Here it is on Google Maps, just west of Nantes at the mouth of the Loire river:



During the war, it housed a U-boat base and full port facilities (including the only viable Axis dry dock on the Atlantic). Here's a look at the layout in 1942.



When the Bismarck was damaged in May of '41, they radioed in they were headed for Saint Nazaire. It was so important that the British even launched a Dieppe type raid against it in March of '42 (Codenamed Operation Chariot).

You can read more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Nazaire_Raid

and here:

http://www.historynet.com/raid-on-st-na ... war-ii.htm

So anyway, I was just thinking it'd be cool to have it on the map. It'd make the Bay of Biscay feel a lot more authentic with a port there. Just something to play with if you're feeling bored some day.

Oh no.... Commandoes

iceFlame wrote:
I just wanted to make a quick suggestion about the map.

Hm... It was mentioned a few pages earlier:

LandMarine47 wrote: And if you can you should add in Allied raids (St. Nazaire, Dieppe etc....) to keep the German player frosty! Dieppe and St. Nazaire can be mini invasions in retrospect.

McGuba wrote:
Dieppe is in, St. Nazaire is too small for this scale, IMO, with less than 1.000 Allied soldiers involved. Remember, in this mod an infantry unit represents two inf divisions or 20-30 thousand men. Even Dieppe is a bit too small with 6.000 Allied soldiers involved. And St. Nazaire is not on the map, only Nantes.

Still, St Nazaire had more decisive effect, so it could be there. What I could imagine here is to add St. Nazaire as a port, assign a zone to it, and if the raid is successful, add a hex action and change its terrain type to a town. The only problem is that I ran out of AI zones, and the other is that there are several other ports on the French coast, such as Bordeaux and Brest, so losing a port would not be so decisive for the player to make it worth using up an AI zone for it.

I would only add that currently there are four ports on the French coast with a view to the Biscay Bay and if I added St Nazaire it would be on the adjacent hex to Nantes and then there would be just way too many cities close to each other. And the more ports I add the less important each will be.

Other than that it would be nice to play around with it - but then again, we would need some more AI zones to make it worth the effort...

McGuba wrote:Hm... It was mentioned a few pages earlier:

Geez where have I been, I totally missed that...

I would only add that currently there are four ports on the French coast with a view to the Biscay Bay and if I added St Nazaire it would be on the adjacent hex to Nantes and then there would be just way too many cities close to each other. And the more ports I add the less important each will be...

Other than that it would be nice to play around with it - but then again, we would need some more AI zones to make it worth the effort...

I wasn't thinking about trying to script it in in terms of commandos, especially in light of the AI zone crunch, but rather just as a port... I totally understand what you're saying about too many ports in Biscay, it's just that Nazaire is arguably THE most important port outside of Germany and as a result should likely be one of the first on the map.

(To be honest, it just doesn't feel right to not have it there... It was just too important historically to be lost in the shuffle)...

So if it's a case of too many ports in the same area, (which it probably is), I'd include Nazaire and remove one of the others. Just my two cents.

The only question is which one? Brest, Lorient, La Rochelle or Bordeaux? All these were important U-boat bases with their own U-boat flotilla, if I am right.

I would go for either Lorient or La Rochelle as these two would be the closest to St Nazaire.

Oh, and I just see that uboat.net lists Lorient being the most important U-boat base outside Germany:
http://uboat.net/flotillas/bases/

Maybe I should not remove any, just add St Nazaire anyway.

Or, take Bordeaux out as it at the bottom of that list.

McGuba wrote:The only question is which one? Brest, Lorient, La Rochelle or Bordeaux? All these were important U-boat bases with their own U-boat flotilla, if I am right.

Yeah, they all had U-boat bases, so if we go by the numbers it would look like this:

Brest: 2 Flotillas

Lorient: 2 Flotillas

St. Nazaire: 2 Flotillas, (plus that all important dry dock).

La Rochelle: 1 Flotilla

Bordeaux: 1 Flotilla (plus Italian subs)

So if we go by the numbers, it should likely be La Rochelle.

But just looking at the map (in terms of proximity and balance) it seems to make the most sense to drop Lorient. That way things will still look fairly even, which in this case is probably more important than just the historical numbers.

Unless of course Nantes could be removed. Not sure if that's a possibility though. Would Nazaire have to be adjacent to Nantes? Or could it be two hexes to the west?

McGuba wrote:Oh, and I just see that uboat.net lists Lorient being the most important U-boat base outside Germany:
http://uboat.net/flotillas/bases/

Maybe I should not remove any, just add St Nazaire anyway.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. They list it as the number two base just ahead of Nazaire at number three. Bugger. They're so close together... Don't want it to get too crowded but they're both pretty important.

Okay, final thoughts on the subject...

In real life, Brest to Lorient is 135 km, while Lorient to St. Nazaire is 145 km. So this image is relatively accurate in showing all three as almost equally spaced apart.



This being the case, it seems to me the only way to emulate this on the map is if Brest could move up one hex to 37,46 while Lorient also moves up one to 40,48. That way St. Nazaire could slot in at hex 41,49 and all three would be an equal two hexes apart.

Now whether that's possible or not I can't really say, as you're the expert when it comes to that.

Good suggestion, I will try to rearrange those towns a bit. Now I feel a bit like Albert Speer:

'What do you want me to do? Move away a few towns? ... No problem at all, just give me a couple days!'

McGuba wrote:Good suggestion, I will try to rearrange those towns a bit. Now I feel a bit like Albert Speer:

'What do you want me to do? Move away a few towns? ... No problem at all, just give me a couple days!'

Ah yes, the demands of war.

Fortunately I have complete confidence in your abilities. No doubt the civilian population will soon be thanking you for their new scenic views.