Battle for Caen scenario - XXX Corps' Right Pincer

[Bie]

After a bit of a hiatus from the game I thought it would be nice to get start making some scenarios again. As the title suggests I'm going to try and make a couple of historical scenarios that are related to the liberation of Caen. In that sense it should link up nicely with my previous Pegasus Bridge scenarios.

The first map is almost done. Just need to fill in the bottom right corner and do some more detailing/retouching across all of the map. It is a 19 X 18 km map with quite a lot of rolling hills. As you can see the colour scheme has been changed. I used the excellent work of Ubiquitous (from his DDay scenario) for this and am probably going to use the same scheme in my Pegasus Bridge scenario pack.

Have a look and tell me what you think. Props to anyone who can identify the operation or battle I'm going to recreate in with this scenario

 

[col.sanders]

The map looks great,could it be Wittman's stand at Villers Bocage?

 

[Bie]

The map looks great,could it be Wittman's stand at Villers Bocage?

You are correct, it is Operation Perch. Where the 7th Armoured Division tries to flank the Panzer Lehr Division, only to be confronted by the 101th heavy Panzer Regiment near Villers-Bocage. So props to you for guessing it correctly

I thought it might make for a nice scenario. Let's see if I can actually pull it off.

 

[col.sanders]

Sounds like a really good one,looking forward to it.Still playing sword to Caen when i get the time.

 

[Bie]

Update on the Operation Perch scenario:

The map is done. I will probably do some more detailing when I do playthroughs of the scenario. But that is after I sort out the order of battle, which I'm doing at this moment. Looking at the map I intend to put in the following units:

Allies (British):
- 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division: The division that went first on Gold Beach. A veteran unit that fought in many campaigns
- 7th Armoured Division: The famous Desert Rats
- 8th Armoured Brigade

Axis (German):
- Panzer Lehr Division: One of the most wel equiped and manned divisions in the Wehrmacht.
- Heavy SS Panzer Battalion 101: An elite tank battalion equiped with Tiger II tanks. The unit of panzer ace Michael Wittman.
- 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend (elements of)
- 2nd Panzer Division (elements of)

Just looking at the units involved you can see that it will be a hard fought battle.

Still reading up on the backstory and history of it all. Came across this theses about the 50th concerning their actions in Normandy. Have only skimmed it, but it looks really interesting. On internet you can really find just about anything

 

[col.sanders]

I spent some time reading about Operation Perch last night,This looks like it could be an interesting scenario.

 

[Bie]

Operation Perch is coming along nicely. The order of battle for both sides are done and apart from some estab tinkering they should be ok. I must say there are some rock hard units in the roster, most notably in the Panzer Lehr Division.

I've now moved on to AI testing and trying to get the AI to pull off the flanking maneuver. So far it's been hit and miss. The Allies (mostly) keep charging straight at the dug in Axis units. Some tinkering with the objectives is in order, but I think I might pull it off in the end.

I'm estimating a couple of more days of work and I'll put it up for download for you guys.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

Bie, looks nice. One concern I have is the amount of tracks you have in close proximity in the middle section of your map. It may be fine but without a grid showing it's a bit hard to tell. One thing you have to keep in mind is that placing a road or track effectively creates a 100m wide clear zone in the map data. You don't see it unless you use the MapMaker tools. But having these too close to rivers and streams can null and void their effects. So you need to be careful. But as I said it may be fine.

 

[Bie]

You might be right. In haven't done a thorough check of the map in that sense. I remember I had loads of issues with the smaller maps of my Pegasus Bridge scenarios, John helped me in pointing out those. This map is way less detailed though. But I'll take a look this afternoon and check for inconsistencies.

 

[Bie]

Just wanted to show you all some comparisons between the default graphics and the "bocage" graphics I'm using at the moment. When creating the map I found that, due to the height, the map became very dark and "dry". So that's why I started tinkering and using Ubiquitous' excellent map graphics. It also allowed me to use the dikes as bocage, as they are now coloured green.

Check it out:

 

[col.sanders]

I like the new bocage graphics,looks more realistic the default looks more like desert terrain.The default has more clear elevation levels, I still like the bocage much better.

 

[Bie]

Some screens from the gameplay trials:

101st Heavy Panzer Regiment entering Villers-Bocage

Heavy fighting around Tilly-Sur-Seulles

The AI is starting to react how I want it to react.

 

[J. van Limpt]

Looks very interesting, Bie. Can't wait to play that.

 

[Rob]

Looks very interesting, Bie. Can't wait to play that.

me too!!

 

[Bie]

A first release candidate has been posted in the resource section. Check it out here.

For the moment it includes the scenario XXX Corps' Right Pincer. Any testing of and feedback on this scenario is highly appreciated as this is still a work in progress. Still, I'm quite happy about how it turned out already. But it still needs some polish.

Next up is the actual liberation of Caen. Time to start doing some reading again!

 

[J. van Limpt]

Great map, Bie. I won't have time to try this before the weekend, but I'm looking forward to giving it a go. Thank you.

 

[Bie]

With the first scenario done I'm going to turn my attention to the next scenarios. I'm thinking Operation Charnwood and Goodwood are both prime candidates. But I'll have to do some reading to get a feel if they are doable in Command Ops 2.

Lastly I came across an interesting concept for a hypothetical scenario when I was reading up on Operation Wild Oats. Basically they were planning of dropping the 1st Airborne Division in between the pincer that was provided by I Corps and XXX Corps. The para's were to secure the area around Evrecy and make the encirclement complete. This never happened because of a veto by the Air Chief Marshal and by the fact that neither of the corps ever managed to get where they were supposed to go.

Right, I'm already thinking of three scenarios. We'll see how far I'll manage to get, won't we ;-)

 

[J. van Limpt]

With the first scenario done I'm going to turn my attention to the next scenarios. I'm thinking Operation Charnwood and Goodwood are both prime candidates. But I'll have to do some reading to get a feel if they are doable in Command Ops 2.

Lastly I came across an interesting concept for a hypothetical scenario when I was reading up on Operation Wild Oats. Basically they were planning of dropping the 1st Airborne Division in between the pincer that was provided by I Corps and XXX Corps. The para's were to secure the area around Evrecy and make the encirclement complete. This never happened because of a veto by the Air Chief Marshal and by the fact that neither of the corps ever managed to get where they were supposed to go.

Right, I'm already thinking of three scenarios. We'll see how far I'll manage to get, won't we ;-)

Music in my ears, Bie. That hypothetical scenario sounds intriguing too.

 

[john connor]

Playing and loving it, Bie. Some queries on the map, inevitably. As Dave warned, roads overlapping can have unpredictable results. I have found that in particular your thick hedges alongside roads cause a patchwork of unpredictable and often counter-intuitive terrain effects. Two examples below.



In the above wheels can go faster down the road (at 40%) than in the pic below:



But they should, of course, be able to go faster down a minor road than a track. The hedges and bocage proximity have confused the engine, I fear. In general the hedges next to the roads seem to leave infantry free to roam at 100% whilst severely reducing wheels. Whilst this would be almost valid for moving across the hedges and roads (almost, but not quite, since infantry should be impeded in this direction also), it doesn't work for the vehicles using the road. There's no reason why hedges should reduce movement on roads, yet they have this effect.

Somethign for you to consider. I would think you could dramatically reduce (or just get rid of) the presence of your thick hedges, especially bordering roads, as, pretty though they are (and give a real visual sense of the normandy countryside) they actually confuse things at the level of the engine. I have noticed also that even having 'bocage' overlapping with the roads produces the same unpredictable effects across the map. I guess this is what Dave meant.

As a quick fix, I wonder if you could keep the hedges as visibility modifiers only, by making their movement effects the same as the base layer (or even just zero)? Would that work? Then they would be there to add immersion, but also to impede visibility, but you would get rid of their impact on movement, hence not confusing the engine? Might work. Means you can leave them all in and just change their properties. Dealing with areas where bocage overlaps would be harder, and might mean having to move bocage edges away from (at least) the major and minor roads (maybe tracks don't matter so much, since armour on tracks is pretty impeded anyway). But the change to the hedges would already clarify a lot, I think (if it works - haven't a clue, as haven't tested it).

John

 

[Bie]

As a quick fix, I wonder if you could keep the hedges as visibility modifiers only, by making their movement effects the same as the base layer (or even just zero)? Would that work? Then they would be there to add immersion, but also to impede visibility, but you would get rid of their impact on movement, hence not confusing the engine? Might work. Means you can leave them all in and just change their properties. Dealing with areas where bocage overlaps would be harder, and might mean having to move bocage edges away from (at least) the major and minor roads (maybe tracks don't matter so much, since armour on tracks is pretty impeded anyway). But the change to the hedges would already clarify a lot, I think (if it works - haven't a clue, as haven't tested it).

I hadn't anticipated that it would effect the road layers like that. I've taken a look at some and didn't immediately find any discrepancies. Though after creating the map and the scenario itself one becomes (or I at least) quite overwhelmed by all of it. Good that there are people willing to test my scenarios else these things would probably never be found.

Anyway, the fix you suggest would definitely work. I would have liked to keep the higher movement penalty for the hedges though, but the engine doesn't seem to implement it that way. I'll try it and if it works I'll include it in the next update.