Gabr Saleh map and new scenario

[Prince of Eckmühl]

I've done a map of the area around Gabr Saleh in Libya. I've also created a scenario for it called "First Clash of Armour." It depicts the fighting between Kampfgruppe Stephan and the 4th Armoured Brigade, mostly the 8th Hussars. Although the art/science of assigning "Achievement Points" and other victory conditions still (largely) eludes me, I'm relatively happy with how the scenario is playing.

I got the idea to do this scenario when I was sifting through some erata/scenario notes for Frank Chadwick's Operation Crusader boardgame. The notes included a scenario between the "Black Rats" and KG Stephan. In investigating the fighting however, I found Chadwick's portrayal to be flawed in that the brunt of the German incursion was borne by the 8th Hussars, rather than the brigade as a whole, which was quite badly dispersed.

Enter Panther Games' scenario maker. I constructed the battle in such a way that AI/0-point and AP objectives would pull the 4th Brigade apart, and give KG Stephan a crack at an isolated 8th Hussars. The regiment gets pulled off toward a "sighting report," and then is sucked into KG Stephan itself. Meanwhile, 3RTR is led even farther astray by more "sighting reports, and the 5th RTR camps-out on Gabr Saleh, itself.

The map itself may seem larger than necessary, but I made it in anticipation of doing a much larger scenario for the fighting on Nov 20th. Thus, the extra real-estate.

[simovitch]

One trick with the AI objectives is to set them at high priority for a while to draw the AI towards them, the replace these with low priority objectives or none at all.

This is kind of the "bread crumb" approach but the AI may not always act the way you want it to because it is somewhat proactive with the battlefield enviornment. i.e. it may not secure an objective if it percieves a threat that should be dealt with first.

In the desert where there is no real front line, I found it difficult to script the AI, as you too seem to be discovering. That doesn't mean that there won't be some interesting engagements during the course of the scenario.[8D]

[Prince of Eckmühl]

ORIGINAL: simovitch

One trick with the AI objectives is to set them at high priority for a while to draw the AI towards them, the replace these with low priority objectives or none at all.

This is kind of the "bread crumb" approach but the AI may not always act the way you want it to because it is somewhat proactive with the battlefield enviornment. i.e. it may not secure an objective if it percieves a threat that should be dealt with first.

In the desert where there is no real front line, I found it difficult to script the AI, as you too seem to be discovering. That doesn't mean that there won't be some interesting engagements during the course of the scenario.[8D]

It might be that the UK tank regiments are cooperating so well in this situation because they're all set to uber-aggressive (they are imported from the stock Sidi Rezegh scenario, btw), and there's no intel on the real enemies to the North.

Thanks for the tip on the priority settings, I'll have to experiment with it some more. [:)]

[wodin]

Any chance you cans end me the sceanrio to play aorund with?

Thanks

j__rimmer@hotmail.com

[Prince of Eckmühl]

Hi Wodin,

I've got a new scenario, Battleaxe, that needs a good going over.

Please let me know if you're interesting in testing it for me.