Slitherine

Erik, in the Martlet folder, I inadvertently included a JPG version of this photo:


This one is PNG, as you can see. I took the liberty of swapping it for the JPG file directly in the Normandy UK 1944/Scenarios/14Martlet folder.

Operation Epsom - Attack (Epsom 1)

Comment: Remember, you said "You've probably noticed that I add a lot of primary objectives. These are the ones that turned out to be hotly contested historically. Please remove those that you find are not neccessary or move them to better locations." This will be a test of that sentiment for I did not think 33 primary and secondary objectives, seemingly sprinkled on the map, was capturing the essence. The point of Operation Epsom's Day One was to get across the Odon and establish a corridor to the Orne. Therefore,

Edit: I have removed all of those objectives. Instead, I have set primary objectives for six points of crossing over the Odon River. I placed six more as representing the corridor through which VIII Corp would advance to, and cross, the Orne. These coincide with the scenario description, the briefings, and the objective outcomes. I think this is an improvement and I fervently hope that you agree. If not, then perhaps you can use some parts of what I have done.

Edit: In place of the various secondary objectives, I have one focused on taking the Carpiquet Aerodrome. See what you think.

Edit: Accordingly, I designed new objective triggers.

Comment: Regarding the captured enemy aircraft, I hesitated to make them core units. The reason why is that I don't see any provision for air command CP's in recent scenarios; given that, the aircraft could not be used in future scenarios. I did leave them as core units, however, pending your review of CP's throughout the campaign. The details dovetail with this picture of actual captured German aircraft:


Suggestion: I am aware of the possibility that the changes that I made to your objectives may have affected how you planned for AI defenses. Generally, I moved the objectives southward. I encourage you to look at your German and Waffen SS placements and tasks to see if you need to adjust them accordingly.

Edit: Most of the German commanders were not assigned to units. I went ahead and guessed; you may wish to review my choices.

Edit: Here are your outcome images:


I'm finished with Operation Epsom - Attack (Epsom 1) and the updated version is in the "Back to Erik" folder. Remember, only "Edits" are changes that I have actually done to the scenario. They are for you to review and approve. "Comments," "Questions," and "Suggestions" are things for you to consider and act upon as necessary.

Hmmm. I believe I have painted myself into a corner.

I treated Epsom 1 as a battle in and of itself, win or lose. Now I find, however, that Epsoms 2 and 3 are continuations in a negative sense. That is, I provided for victory in Epsom 1 in terms of crossing the Odon and establishing the corridor to the Orne. Yet, I see in Epsom 2 that the premise is that the Scots have failed their objective and the battle is to be replayed on the same map as Epsom 1. The same battle continues to drag into Epsom 3, again with the same map.

I find myself reluctant to overturn what I did in Epsom 1 and repeat whatever I do there in Epsom 2 and 3. It's like fighting the same battle over and over again which would be tedious to play, much less design. My apologies for not looking ahead and seeing this but I believe my reaction would be the same even so. In my opinion, Epsom should be no more than two scenarios, Attack (Epsom 1) and Counterattack (Epsom 4), because parsing the battle over four episodes is just too much of a good thing.

Therefore, I have made these changes to Epsom 1:


And I will skip ahead to Epsom 4 and work on that as the German counterattack. That situation and map are sufficiently different to warrant interest and effort.

Remember, you are editor-in-chief. If you don't agree with what I am doing, then my advice is to take portions of what I do in Epsoms 1 and 4 and apply them to your set of Epsoms 1, 2, 3, and 4 which I am sure that you have saved the originals in your files. My heart has to be in what I am doing, else it becomes drudge work. Epsoms 2 and 3 would have been drudgery for me, indeed.

Operation Epsom - Counterattack (Epsom 4)

Edit: Heh, this time I used 36 objective points! But rather than sprinkling them around, I made them coincide with the primary objective of "Hold the salient" (20 VP's) and the secondary objective of "Expand the salient" (16 VP's).

Edit: I took a few liberties with the map, establishing the villages of Ragny, Le Haut de Grainville, and Le Bon Repos at key points and setting some decorations in Cayer and other towns rather than showing them just as smudge marks; some buildings would have survived devastation.

Edit: No supply on the map at all. The question was, whether to provide a small number of high supply hexes or a high number of small supply hexes. Judging by what you did in Epsom 1, I chose the former for the British and the latter for the Germans.

Edit: The two NebelWerfers were orphans. I assigned them to AI Team 9, in the midst of which they are situated.

Suggestion: No German commanders are assigned. If you wish to do so, I have left it to you as you may have particular historical preferences.

Edit: Here are your outcome images:


Comment: I believe Epsom - Attack (Epsom 1) and Epsom - Counterattack (Epsom 4) now complement each other; that is, Attack flows into Counterattack seamlessly. Moreover, Carpiquet - Operation Windsor will not present a problem in that I left the Carpiquet Aerodrome out of the objectives for completing "Expand the salient" objective so that however that goes, the Carpiquet Aerodrome remains a logical objective for Operation Windsor.

I'm finished with Operation Epsom - Counterattack (Epsom 4) and the updated version is in the "Back to Erik" folder. Remember, only "Edits" are changes that I have actually done to the scenario. They are for you to review and approve. "Comments," "Questions," and "Suggestions" are things for you to consider and act upon as necessary.

Re Epsom

You drew the correct conclusion on this.
My bad as I did not check all the Epsoms thoroughly before I created them.
They were originally single scenarios and all 4 should not be stringed together.

So you beat my world record of most primary VPs in a scenario.

Carpiquet - Operation Windsor

Edit: Well, I'm starting to develop a tactician's eye, I'd say! I was looking at the map and thinking that if I were General Keller, I would be looking to secure my right flank by taking the villages of Verson and Jumeaux and have the Odon as a shield. Then I read the scenario description, which said "At the same time as the Canadian attack, the 43rd Division was to attack further south down the north side of the Odon to capture Verson." So I made those villages primary objectives as well.

Edit: Since this scenario focuses on the airfield, I added a construction group and a fuel depot on the two primary VP's on either side of the runways. Just some things to look good and be destroyed.

Edit: I moved the name "Carpiquet" to where the flag is so that it shows.

Edit: The secondary objective, "Do not lose any British units," wasn't appealing at first for a couple of reasons. First, I'm sure that they cared about their ally, but why should the Canadians make a priority of preserving British units? Also, it would have been confusing because Canadian engineers are labeled "British Engineers." Then I noticed that the only British flag units in the scenario were the three Churchill tanks. That made more sense, so I edited the objective to read "Do not lose any of Hobart's Funnies" with a bit of a backstory:


Edit: While testing those Event Popup messages, I found the Germans in the front line to be strangely passive. It turns out that the four counterattack AI teams are set to Idle until the Allies take their first primary VP. I thought it would be a better idea to at least let them start on Static Defense:


Edit: Since the Wikipedia article on Operation Windsor mentioned the presence of "Two squadrons of Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers," I added them. That, of course, set off a chain of events: Created a redeploy exit hex and three air deployment hexes; set Off-map Air Supply Source for the Allies; added a Fw190A for token resistance; added an Air S&D task for that plane; moved the German Heavy Infantry off the airfield hex so that the plane could use it; bumped Great Britain income +2 and German income +1; and made the triggers serving the "Do not lose any of Hobart's Funnies" objective look for the specific tanks rather than just British units.

Edit: Here are your outcome images (in Wikipedia, the caption for the first one is "Rockets fired from a Hawker Typhoon of No 181 Squadron, RAF, at buildings on Carpiquet airfield"):


I'm finished with Carpiquet - Operation Windsor and the updated version is in the "Back to Erik" folder. Remember, only "Edits" are changes that I have actually done to the scenario. They are for you to review and approve. "Comments," "Questions," and "Suggestions" are things for you to consider and act upon as necessary.

While reviewing Carpiquet in my mind, literally at 5:30AM while trying to get back to sleep - I often do this because it lulls me - I realized with a start that I have been forgetting the "Don't use the Scenario Turn Limit condition in conjunction with sudden scenario-end conditions" rule. That was the end of sleep for me. Please hold off on Carpiquet until I have edited it accordingly. This should be quick, but I am afraid that previous scenarios may also need editing and for that I apologize in advance if, prior to moving them to your main Dropbox folder, you edited them further.

Okay, here we go. This is how it should look; instead of Scenario Turn Limit, it's timed for when the primary objective is completed including the same Trigger Event:


I think I caught this in time as 19Carpiquet is still in the "Back to Erik" subfolder. Now, though, let me look through the previous scenarios . . .

bru888 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 10, 2019 11:03 am I think I caught this in time as 19Carpiquet is still in the "Back to Erik" subfolder. Now, though, let me look through the previous scenarios . . .

Whew. False alarm. There haven't been any other instances of this oversight so far. Villers-Bocage and Epsom-Counterattack came close but in those, the secondary and the primary objectives were both set for Scenario Turn Limit. This is permissible, as you know.

Now the problem is, do I go back to sleep or stay up? Maybe I'll try that "lull me to sleep, thinking about OOB designs" trick again.

A couple of questions for you, if I may.

First question. I've been waiting to see what you intended to do about Operation Goodwood. I see that you had templates for five (5!) separate scenarios based on Goodwood:


and I have been hoping that you will consider consolidating Operation Goodwood into one scenario, for the reasons that we discussed for Operation Epsom (unless there is a good reason for having a couple of them, as I believe we had with Epsom Attack/Counterattack).

Now that you have loaded only the two highlighted scenarios in the "Ready for Bru" folder, does that mean 20GoodwoodOA is the sole scenario to deal with Operation Goodwood (and, I see, Operation Atlantic)? Will we skip ahead to Verrieres after that? I'd like to know this before I tackle 20GoodwoodOA so that it turns out to be a comprehensive treatment and not a lead-in to a mini-campaign.

Second question: Have we skipped over Operation Charnwood or is that yet to come, even though Charnwood preceded Goodwood? Believe me, I'm just curious; I am not advocating including every minor operation, or multiple treatments of the same operation, in this campaign. My concern is that it will be fun to play, not repetitious or tedious.

There will be only one Goodwood/Atlantic scenario. The next is Verriers. The other Goodwoods are small-scale versions of the big one concentrating on the 3 Royal Tank only.

Charnwood is not part of my source material, so it will not be included.

Operation Goodwood and Operation Atlantic

It took me a while, but I finally figured out that this expanse of charred earth and grassland is the city of Caen:


It reminds me of Carthage when the Romans were done with it.

Question: How open are you to my editing this area and filling in the actual city? In scorched areas, some decorations of surviving buildings. In open terrain, town hexes with a sprinkling of city decorations. For, as devastated as Caen was at this point, it surely would not have disappeared altogether. How do you feel about this?

Bruce

Please feel free to 'restore' parts of Caen. I was thinking along the same lines, just didn't have the time at this point.
Adding decorations should work well.

I like that you guys are just aiming small y'know

Making a campaign of the Dieppe raid was on the table, but we decided to increase the scope a bit

Okay, now that I have short-circuited my career as an independent scenario designer, I will be able to spend more time in this studio!

Things should move faster now on my end. I have resumed work on 20GoodwoodOA.

By the way, as of Epsom 1, 4 and Carpiquet, the Allies had not taken Caen as of yet. Now, in Goodwood and Atlantic, they already have taken Caen - much of it, anyway - and are kicking off from there, southward. For continuity's sake, I feel the need to mention in the narrative what has happened.

Okay, so this is how I handled the segue in the scenario description:

From 8 to 9 July, the 2nd Canadian Corps attacked southwards through Caen to the Orne river in Operation Charnwood. A preparatory bombardment by Allied strategic bombers was meant to assist the Canadian advance and prevent German reinforcements from reaching the battle or retreating. The bombing has destroyed much of the historic Old City of Caen. In the face of this onslaught, the 12th SS Panzer Division has withdrawn to the south bank of the Orne.

In a meeting with Montgomery, Bradley has proposed Operation Cobra which calls for a major breakout from the American sector in the west. Montgomery has approved this plan and British Lieutenant General Miles Dempsey is tasked with mounting an operation to finish the conquest of Caen, pin down German forces in the area, and possibly achieve a breakout in the east as well.

Thus now come Operation Goodwood and Operation Atlantic. In Operation Goodwood, the 1st and 8th British Corps will launch a major attack east of Caen toward Bourguébus Ridge. Operation Atlantic, in conjunction with Goodwood, will see the 2nd Canadian Corps, supported by elements of the 12th British Corps, finish seizing Caen and then head south for Verrières Ridge.

The Wikipedia articles about the various operations conflict to some extent as to forces and positions. I used this map as an arbiter:

Operation Goodwood and Operation Atlantic

So, this looks like a more realistic depiction of Caen, I think:


Liberties taken:
- As discussed, filled in the gaps of Caen with town hexes.
- Sprinkled decorations in devastated areas and around city edges.
- Pinned a few more location names here and there on the map.
- Connected the Orne River to run continuously through the city.
- Moved and built the Chateau de Caen (I still have castle-building on my mind).
- Added some "Difficult Terrain" to represent the ridges of Verrières and Bourguébus.

Operation Goodwood and Operation Atlantic

Edit: There was the same "Air Supply Limit Exceeded" issue with this scenario, which I fixed by turning on "Off-map Air Supply Source."

Edit: There was confusion about the secondary objective of "Capture/hold all 12 objectives" because there were only 9 on the map and the trigger was set for 9. I went for the 12 but first I rearranged the 9 primary objectives so that they form an arc of advance that encompasses Verrières Ridge and Bourguébus Ridge. The 12 secondary objectives are key points in support of that advance. They do not include six capture points which are the goals for another secondary objective to "Finish the capture of Caen by Turn 8."

Suggestion: You may want to review your Axis troop placements and tasks to see if they need to be adjusted in light of these changes to the objectives. Also, does Turn 8 sound right for that new secondary objective?

Edit: To spice things up a bit, I clarified the names of all chateaus in German hands at the beginning of the scenario and I created concrete bunkers at all seven of those locations. I named the bunkers the same as the hex names and I assigned them to AI Team 15, Local Defense. I figured each chateau would naturally be defended in any fighting retreat from Caen and the Orne River. Delete the bunkers if you don't approve of them.

Edit: No supply on the map at all. I applied enough to cover units currently on the map with a surplus for units to be spawned, based on the position of the front lines at the beginning of the scenario.

Comment: I remember in Epsom 4 and Carpiquet, in each of which there was also no supply on the map, that I had given the Allies a few ample supply points where roads and railroads ran off the edge of the map. For the Axis, on the other hand, I gave a larger number of smaller supply points in town hexes that they owned at the beginning of the scenario. As I mentioned at the time, it seemed to be what you did for Epsom 1, perhaps with the thought that the attackers (Allies) would have lines of supply leading back to the beachheads but the defenders (Axis) would benefit from having stockpiled supply in French towns for a number of years. It has occurred to me, however, that this arrangement may in fact be an unfair advantage to the Allies. All they need to do is to be able to trace lines of supply to the edges of the map while the Axis suffers with every capture point lost in terms of supply. In this Operation Goodwood and Operation Atlantic scenario, I placed supply on the map edges for both sides.

Question: What is your opinion of that? Do you want to review those other two scenarios and apply map-edge supply for both Allies and Axis? If so, do you want me to do it or will you handle that editing yourself?

Edit: In the "2 SS Pz Gren-1" and "1 SS Pz Aufkl" triggers, for the "Check Unit(s) near Hex" condition, I noticed that the wrong alliance was selected. I changed it from light blue/Allies to dark gray/Axis. As I said above, however, you may want to revisit Axis unit placements and AI tasks according to the revised objectives.

Edit: I worked this into Turn 1 to explain the widespread devastation of Caen:


Edit: I didn't know what to make of this trigger. The number of primary objectives, nine, has not changed from when you created them. Yet, this trigger is labeled "All 10 objs" and is set for "VP Type: Primary / Value >9." Even if it was properly set for 9 primary objectives, it would not make sense because the scenario ends at that point:


So I guessed. Instead of arbitrarily picking a primary VP count of, say, 5 or 6, I made it coincide with the secondary objective to "Capture/hold all 12 objectives":


Suggestion: Please decide what you want to do with this trigger. If you do want it to be 5 or 6 primary objectives, then edit the trigger accordingly. Don't forget to change the VP Type back to "Primary."

Edit: Here are your outcome images:


I'm finished with Operation Goodwood and Operation Atlantic and the updated version is in the "Back to Erik" folder. Remember, only "Edits" are changes that I have actually done to the scenario. They are for you to review and approve. "Comments," "Questions," and "Suggestions" are things for you to consider and act upon as necessary.

Great work, Bruce. You are now appointed City Zone Commisioner with a special 'beautify-rubble' order.

I'll check the German AI orders.
I remember early on in my campaign designer career I used a lot of map edge supply. It then became apparent that AI units tended flock to these supply points like moth to a flame. When we come to the actual scenario play-testes need to keep an eye on this.
I have no issues with your other flights of fancy

Thanks, Erik. If I overdo the building rubble enhancements, merely appoint me as Street Cleaning Commissioner, too.

Regarding supply, you be the expert. Where supply is missing (or lacking), I will continue to apply the map edge technique with a particular twist: Take a look at how I did it in this latest scenario. Not massive amounts in just a few hexes, but smaller amounts, evenly divided, placed on multiple entrance/exit roads all around the map. Spreading it out thusly may overcome the AI tendency to "flock to these supply points like moth to a flame."

So far, I have had a free hand in supply management only in the last three scenarios: Epsom 4, Carpiquet, and now Operations Goodwood/Atlantic. You may want to review these now, briefly, even before future scenario play-testing. I believe the overall supply levels to be adequate, given additional spawns, but perhaps something about the array will jump out at you. I looked at them myself and they didn't seem inappropriate but we must rely on your expertise with the ebb and flow of resources and supply.

Onward! As I said previously, you will see a somewhat faster pace now but my plan is to finish Verrieres and then take a break in order to do the CSI sweep that you requested on the other campaign. Verrieres should be ready in a day or two.