New large WF scenario to test

[Dan Caviness]

Hello to all:

I finally tracked down jb....sorry guys....bear with an old fart!
I only know our H2H custodian as jb, and just tracked his forum posts down as Von Luck.
My thanks for all of Von Luck's help.
While I've been playing and designing for some years, I am new to the Blitz and negotiating the forums.

As the designer of the Longest Day scenario I really appreciate any and all input on it. As noted here and in several other forums I've browsed, it is really big, and your PC may appear to lock up at the beginning of a turn. This is especially true when playing Fog of War, which I believe most of us are. I've got an average speed machine, but when I open Von Luck's moves I usually walk away and give it 5 minutes.

I can answer some of the questions I've seen below:

1. There is a glitch on the German reinforcement entry hexes. I design (and play) with my forces on the bottom of the map whenever possible, and having rotated the map prior to placing some of those German reinforcements in the scenario editor appears to have caused this problem.

For those who didn't notice, when you bring on some German reinforcements, they appear with the correct entry hex in the dialog box, and appear on the correct hex on the map, but the display coordinates (small display bottom right bar of screen) gives you inaccurate hex coordinates. My bad, won't do that again! I'm checking out the fix but I hope I don't have to redo all those reinforcements.

2. It does work well for team play. Actually, with it's size, it's probably best for teamplay. Unless your a very patient player, you'll be overwhelmed and just start moving and dying for no purpose. The Allied forces can easily be partioned into 2 to 5 players. For 2 players you can play Yanks and Brits, or you can divide them into up to 5 players with Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword beach assignments. Axis players will find easiest to simply assign divisions and keep them geographically contigous (sp...is that a word?). Besides your static beach divisions remember a lot of the German forces (and the best by far) come on as reinforcements and you should divvy those up as well. Again, Divisional divisions work best. Divvy your divisional divisions....say what?

3. FYI to everyone...the Allies come on the beaches in three waves. The First Wave initial onslaught, which is almost invariably decimated, should concentrate on trying to make the next wave(s) able to negotitate the beach.

Here are some of my concerns/possible changes I'm considering at this point. I've played this hot seat twice, and PBEM once, and my new game with Von Luck is my 4th time through it.

a) Allies....too much smoke? 225 smokes seems like a lot...but if you burn them like I do...trying to get up on the beach...you'll be out in 6 to 8 turns. You have a lot of beach to cover, but I'm concerned a skilled Allied player could saturate certain areas and make it too easy. Against Von Luck? No worries mate....your going to get dead in a hurry....lol...

b) While this is not obvious from looking at the map, the entire Omaha bluffs are almost impassable to vehicles. I used a large elevation delta to do this rather than miles of cliffs, in order to allow infantry to get up some of it in areas the tanks can't.

c) Point du Hoc What can I say? It's suicide. I tried to get it right, and I believe I did, but I've never gotten any Rangers up that area. Makes you wonder just how tough/crazy the real ones were.

d) I believe the Brit 6th Paras need to be cut back a bit. They end up scattered all over behind Caen and behind Sword/Juno and can make it a fight for the 21st Panzer and Panzer Lehr reinforcements to get to the beach. I'm interested to see other opinions. The airborne drops are supposed to do this...but only to a point.

Once again my thanks for all your help and interest.

Dan