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Adriatic trilogy

Adriatic trilogy Version 1.1

Dordo

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Dordo submitted a new resource:

Adriatic trilogy - Three battles on the front of the Dalmatian islands

Adriatic Trilogy

Hello all,
with these three scenarios I wanted to recreate the most significant clashes of this secondary and little known war front.

1) Korcula (historical scenario) Operation Herbstgewitter II - One of the most effective operations of the Wehrmacht against Tito's partisans.

2) Vis (hypothetical scenario) Freischutz-II Operation - Invasion of Lissa executed simultaneously with the allied raid on Solta (Operation Detained).

3) Brac (hypothetical scenario)...

Read more about this resource...
 

Bie

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Cool, I'll take a look once I'm home. Always nice to play scenarios that take place in more obscure regions. It makes me read up into the history of it. :)

What is the scope the scenarios in terms of forces?
 

Dordo

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Cool, I'll take a look once I'm home. Always nice to play scenarios that take place in more obscure regions. It makes me read up into the history of it. :)

What is the scope the scenarios in terms of forces?

Clashes of German reinforced regiments, Partisan divisions, British Commandos and few others "exotic" units : Croatian para, US Rangers, Marine Pioners and Italian CCNN ...
More info in the Scenario briefings.
 
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Dordo submitted a new resource:

Adriatic trilogy - Three battles on the front of the Dalmatian islands



Read more about this resource...

This isn't meant as a criticism. The scenarios are well done and obviously took a significant amount of effort to detail the maps and the troop organizations involved in the battles. I likewise like the effort to portray partisan operations inside the game system. One of the traditional short comings of real life military forces is conducting or counteracting irregular combat operations. Your scenarios offer a real opportunity for players to gain insight into that type of warfare.

There is a kind of "scenario maker's" art involved in setting the game, so that players from either side discover a reason for their efforts soon after the scenario starts.

That said:

I started the Curzola scenario from the allied side, and found myself waiting long game hours for any information to emerge on enemy forces.

Meanwhile, as I checked in SceneMaker, there was a significant landing of German forces on the island, but in the conduct of the game, there is no indication to my allies of where that took place or when it was occuring.

I think the problem is associated with the at start intel settings chosen for the units -- those I selected showing "no intel" meaning the enemy (in this case the allies) are unaware of any enemy troops, their location, or potential strength as the game starts.

As a minimum, I'd suggest setting the at start intel for "Aufkl. 800th Küstenjägerabteilung" on the island at start at "minimum" so there is an indication for the allied player where the German forces might site for their effort (If you're dealing in partisan operations, the civilian community from which the warriors are drawn serves a source of intelligence -- simple neighbor gossip serving as some indication of a German presence on the island. It's an application of the idea: "Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery." — Che Guevara ).

I'm not certain whether the same intel application can be made to the landing forces, but would suggest that some of the German units designated for landing be set to "minimum intel" in an effort to designate their arrival on the map, and provide some information to shape the partisans' efforts.

Otherwise, I see the allied strategy as maintaining defenses at designated objectives waiting to be attacked with no incentive or information for the allied commander to take an active part in managing the battle.

Hope this helps.
 

Dordo

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Wonderful analysis! And in such a short time .. my best compliments.
I can only say that I played the three scenarios only on the German side and as pointed out by Kurt upload_2018-10-26_10-55-59.png the last time I'm not very good at assigning victory obiectives.

I think the first players will have to be "beta testers" and work above all on objectives and Intel.

Feel free then to modify the scenarios as you like and submit new versions, every suggestion is welcome .. even criticism.
 

Bie

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I've only played for a couple of ingame hours (first scenario as Axis). My first thoughts on the scenario are positive. I like the look and feel of the map. There are lots of positions to set up ambushes and taking a glance at the Allied objectives I see you've put several "roadblocks" in the towns along the main road.
I'll keep an eye on objectives and intel an keep you posted.

Extremely minor thing and not that it really matters for playing the scenario: I would change the symbol and color of the V SS Gebrigs-Korps counter to its Nato symbol of mountaintroops and to its black color denoting an SS unit. As said, a minor thing, but I'm stickler when it comes to visual details ;-)
 
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. . . I'm not very good at assigning victory obiectives.

I think the first players will have to be "beta testers" and work above all on objectives and Intel.

Feel free then to modify the scenarios as you like and submit new versions, every suggestion is welcome .. even criticism.

I found this on Page 54 of the SceneMaker manual: "Objectives or Side Tasks drive the AI’s planning. The type location and other properties of objectives will determine how, when and where the AI controlled side conducts its operations. They also serve as the goals for the human player."

A large aspect in determining objectives is built around the history of a specific battle, or in the case of "what if" scenarios, forcing the use of the tactics, techniques, and strategies for the era of the battle.

As I mentioned earlier, your scenarios offer a relatively unexplored perspective regarding partisan warfare by the allies and securing hostile territory by the Axis forces.

Essentially, the Axis forces are concerned with seizing and holding geographic positions on the island while the partisans are focused on making any Axis efforts to control their island too costly to pursue while living to continue the fight.

Axis conditions should be focused on taking and holding objectives and the allied conditions should be focused on delaying, inflicting casualties, and escaping before being destroyed by the superior force.

Axis objectives are largely road crossings, communities, and ports of entry. Allied objectives are at choke points for ambushing the Axis before it reaches those road crossings, communities and ports of entry..
 

Bie

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Update on playthrough: Just past noon on day two

On day one I took Pupnat without much trouble and sent I Infantry Bn to Curzola to secure the Curzola supply point and objective to the east. Curzola itself was quite lightly defended. I displaced a couple of infantry companies and pursued a brigade base unit all the way to Lumbarda. For the moment I've taken up defensive positions in the town and let my infantry companies comb out the woods to the south/west of the town, as multiple units have been spotted trying to get back to Curzola.

Curzola 2.jpg

In the central portion of the island things are also going well. At the moment I'm taking the town of Smoquizza. Most of the woods between Pupnat and Smoquizza should be clear of enemy forces. So I'm going to concentrate in making a push to the west once Smoquizza falls.

Corzola 1.jpg

More to come later.
 

Bie

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I played through the scenario and managed to get a draw.

Curzola 3.jpg

I managed to get all of the objectives (both occupation and completion) and I got most of the destroy the enemy objective. I would suggest looking over the values of the objectives for the Axis. Though they are all very high, they don't seem to register as all of the game the win/lose needle was kept squarely in the middle. The destroy the enemy objective has a value of 20.000 and the other main objective values are 6000 each. I'm not sure the game was meant to handle objective values so high and I would suggest not giving them such high values. In game terms it doesn't make sense to be awarded a draw when all of the objectives were met.

Curzola 4.jpg

The playthrough of the scenario itself was quite fun, though I feel that the Axis have a definite advantage in terms of firepower (which I would guess is deliberate). The enemy units, even when pushed out of the towns kept roaming in the woods and would try to return to them when they could. It also felt like they were ambushing me out of the woods while I was moving op to the west. So that was quite nice to see.
I didn't notice any problems with the map or with the units (didn't check the estabs though).

All in all a good experience.
 

Dordo

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I recognize that I'm not strong in awarding victory points, I've never understood well how CO2 works scores.
If you can suggest the values to insert I would be immensely grateful.
I managed to get a complete victory the third time I played on the axis side, and I had the advantage of knowing the position of the enemies ... but I believed that a marginal victory was possible to obtain.
My strategy was :
1) to divide the island (Babina-Zavalatica) into two and to avoid any passage from west to east.
2) Occupy Curzola for supplies and destroy any enemy units in the eastern part before advancing towards Luka bearing well in mind that west area is without artillery support.

Immagine.jpg
 

Bie

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I would suggest keeping the total of your objective values equal to (or under) 100. That way it is easy to manage them and see what objectives are important. Either way victory points are also awarded up to a value of 100, which means (under my interpretation) that the total of all the objective values will be computed to that value anyway.

The managing of objective values is quite important as it will dictate how AI handles itself. I'll let the AI do its thing in the dev build and I'll get back to you.

Edit:
After an all AI runthrough I noticed that the Axis are almost completely static. They only take some initiative when the brigade lands in Curzio, at which point they bunch up around the supply point. Even though they didn't take any of the other objectives and didn't seem to eliminate or even want to engage enemy units they still got a draw.

I'll do some more poking around to figure out why that is.
 
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