Vietnam theater v1.0 - BMS
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Have fun attacking or getting attacked by Nove’s SAM sites!
Thanks Nove!
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“Wolf Pack” ready to launch from Ubon airbase of Thailand with some F-4C of 555th TFS.
Great 3D model and skin by Manos “Manos1981”. Thank you my friend!
And a big Thank you to the rest team for their hard efforts to achieve this release. Well done guys!
Nikos.
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Fantastic work gentlemen, it’s always pleasing to see new theaters showing up!
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Great work, I’m impressed with the level of detail you’ve put into this map!
I’ve got a few (well, a LOT) of suggestions on OOB for campaigns however - there’s a few odd choices in there, historically-speaking (like Nakhon Phanom being a Red base in 1965… hmmm?)
I’ll be happy to list them down and/or put up alternate .cam files if you’d like (will just do a quick pass via Mission Commander myself) I’m not well-versed with Falcon editing in any way, but I have become a bit of a “Vietnamologist” over the last few years (and am working on Vietnam air-related content for another commercial game).It would also be neat to see interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh trail implemented - the installations for it are certainly all there!
Looking forward to enjoying this for a long time to come, in any case
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It was a real pleasure working in Buster’s Team. I want to give a really big shout out to Demer928. It is his scratch built Add-On Nam theatre map that we used for the base of this project. Dave maintained it was free for all to use. Which allowed our project move along much faster.
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A very nice release out of the blue.
Congrats to all involved !!!
Cheers, :yo:
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What is it with me and new theaters and finding issues lol. CTDs the second I tried to launch any of the three campaigns.
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Thank you guys for your work. I have been waiting for this theater for so long.
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It was a real pleasure working in Buster’s Team. I want to give a really big shout out to Demer928. It is his scratch built Add-On Nam theatre map that we used for the base of this project. Dave maintained it was free for all to use. Which allowed our project move along much faster.
+1 Thanks Demer928!
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What is it with me and new theaters and finding issues lol. CTDs the second I tried to launch any of the three campaigns.
Hi Char0093, we tested the whole thing inside and out; no issues. PM me maybe we can help?
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Great work, I’m impressed with the level of detail you’ve put into this map!
(….) are certainly all there!Looking forward to enjoying this for a long time to come, in any case
Hi CCIP,
List 'm and mail 'm if you’ve got 'em. We are bringing in new campaigns an iterative additional content. And with regards to the red base; well we went ‘as accurate as possible’ but it is still BMS so campaign balance was also needed. Hope you don’t mind & enjoy the theater. -
“Wolf Pack” ready to launch from Ubon airbase of Thailand with some F-4C of 555th TFS.
https://i.postimg.cc/Y0F4L66f/Ubon-555th-TFS.jpg
Great 3D model and skin by Manos “Manos1981”. Thank you my friend!
And a big Thank you to the rest team for their hard efforts to achieve this release. Well done guys!
Nikos.
There’s gonna be more efforts by me soon for this theater stay tuned still have to give the E’s
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Congratulations to team behind this theater. Well done guys.
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Thanks for this release men.Just a heads up. This installer will install into the existing KTO vietnam add-on.Saw this too late and had to reinstall.Cheers Obi1
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Hi CCIP,
List 'm and mail 'm if you’ve got 'em. We are bringing in new campaigns an iterative additional content. And with regards to the red base; well we went ‘as accurate as possible’ but it is still BMS so campaign balance was also needed. Hope you don’t mind & enjoy the theater.I hear you I noticed this yesterday, when I “rebuilt” the save2.cam (the Rolling Thunder campaign) a bit and realized that, well, a purely realistic take on it would be a little unbalanced if played as a classic BMS campaign. For one, the fact that you can count offensive missions by the VPAF before 1975 on one hand kind of covers that!
I’ll do some last touches on it after work tonight and put out up - I think it’d take someone with a bit more Falcon campaign editing skills to take it further, but if there’s anything you like about it, you’re welcome to use them by all means! And I’ll be glad to do things like dig up mostly-realistic OOBs for things like squadrons and bases.
A couple of general suggestions on the campaign structure:
-I really recommend against making China “at war” with the blue side by default. China should start out hostile or even neutral at the start of all the campaigns - and it would be neat if there could be an event where China enters the war if blue forces advance into North Vietnam’s heartland.
-Laos and Cambodia should not be hostile in the campaigns, particularly the early ones. Laos should be “Friendly” throughout - albeit with large portions of its north and east occupied by North Vietnam and China. Laos should not have SA-2 SAMs. Laos should be hostile to or even at war with North Vietnam, and neutral to China. It could be neutral in 1975.
-Cambodia should be neutral in the Rolling Thunder campaign (with much of its border with Vietnam occupied by the North Vietnamese). It should be friendly in the Linebacker campaign. In 1975 - depends on the concept! It could be modeled as friendly and under assault by Red team (Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge 2 weeks before Saigon), or it could be hostile but disengaged from the conflict.
-It might be interesting to have Thailand become neutral in 1975 (with the US still retaining some bases). By the 70s, Thailand became increasingly unwilling to cooperate with the US.
-China and North Vietnam should be allies, but China should not be an active belligerent (unless Blue forces invade far into North Vietnam), and be at worst hostile or even neutral by default. (China did make a guarantee to defend North Vietnam, but was absolutely horrified at the prospect of actually being dragged into this war, and actively tried to hold North Vietnamese offensive plans in check, even going as far as occupying part of northern Laos to keep the North Vietnamese from taking it). China should definitely be neutral to Thailand, Laos and Cambodia in particular.
-I’m not sure having Burma occupied by China is a good idea - I’d suggest making the west side of the map neutral territory if possible.Some suggestions on air defenses:
-As mentioned, Laos should not have SA-2s. AA guns at most.
-I’ve not seen any information about Nike batteries in the theater. I would instead put in Hawk batteries (which were indeed deployed), in larger numbers, for defending Blue assets.
-In North Vietnam, I would suggest thinning out the SAM density outside of the lower Red River valley (i.e. Hanoi-Haiphong), and especially down south close to the DMZ.
-On the flip side, I would recommend greatly increasing AAA defenses. I notice the North Vietnamese order of battle doesn’t have any KS-19 batteries, even though historically those were there and in quite large numbers, too. AAA should be a more persistent threat over NVN than SAMs as such - the main role of SAMs is to force aircraft down into deadly flak range.
-It’s also worth adding lots of lighter AAA (S-60 batteries will do) to occupied areas of Laos. Historically, these were mostly radar-less but deadly and often unexpected within visual range.
-I’d also suggest thinning out the SAM coverage in the northwest of North Vietnam for routing reasons - right now I notice that USAF flights from Thailand like to go out over water and then inland to Hanoi, when in reality they ingressed over Laos. I have a hunch that reducing the SAM coverage in that area will make the ATO frag these packages much better…Some suggestions for units:
-F-105Fs should be turned into a Wild Weasel platform - right now if added into the campaign, they have an odd habit of doing CAP and other irrelevant duties. Hopefully an easy change!
-O-1E’s and OV-10A’s role should be overwhelmingly tasked as FAC aircraft, which they were historically.A few suggested airfields:
-In Laos, there should be air bases at Vientiane (Wattay), Xiengkhouang (red-occupied) and Savannakhet - plus airfields at least at Pakse, Seno, Long Tieng, Na Khang, and Luang Prabang. I bring up these specifically because they were used extensively by friendly forces (though only covertly by US units), and would make handy divert airfields.
-In Cambodia, at least Phnom Penh should be added as an airbase (again, used extensively by US units, albeit mostly non-combat).
-In South Vietnam, it would be great to have some historical airstrips north of Da Nang. I particularly recommend Phu Bai airbase, and airfields at Khe Sanh, Quang Tri, Dong Ha. The Hue citadel airstrip would be neat as well, if you could cram it into being surrounded by the city somehow!
-One very notable omission in North Vietnam - Yen Hai airbase. It was an important MiG base throughout the war - hopefully an easy addition!A couple of notes on graphics:
-I would suggest using a bit more forest/jungle/mountain tiles versus farmland, outside of totally flat areas away from the coasts - the theater, and particularly the highland areas of it, look far more “wild” and desolate in real life than in game!
-The coast tiles seem to have this weird grid overlay on them. Is that possible to fix?Just my two cents
I’ll be happy to put up my alternate Save2.cam once I’ve had a chance to do a last check! -
“Virochey was recaptured by German forces”
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“Virochey was recaptured by German forces”
yeah i saw it… anyway the release is a good start.
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Very good start indeed! Seriously, I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time - and just as I started getting back into BMS, there it is I really hope this is something that can be built on. Thanks again for all your work on that, I know this is not an easy thing to put together!
Meanwhile, here’s my contribution!
Realistic 1960s Start (campaign+save)
As promised, this is just my quick take on a relatively realistic OOB (as in, real air units, but with a non-specific timeframe), a reworking of territory control, and a North Vietnamese air force with a purely defensive stance (which you can change if you wish). It doesn’t represent a specific point in the campaign, and doesn’t quite fit with 1965 - but it’s a pretty good representation of typical operations between late 1966 and early 1968, more or less. Could be a good Tet Offensive stand-in!
The download contains a new “save2.cam” (Rolling Thunder campaign file) and a safe file called “(realistic 1960s start).cam”, both of which must be copied to your Falcom BMS 4.33/Data/Add-on Vietnam/Campaign/ folder. Overwrite the existing save2.cam - don’t worry, if you want to go back to the original campaign, there’s a clean backup in my zip file that you can just copy over it anytime!
For technical reasons (mostly my own limited knowledge of campaign editing), you should NOT start the campaign the usual way (selecting from the 3 choices). Instead, please load the provided “(realistic 1960s start)” save file to start campaign - just pick your squadron there and you can then play as normal. Yes, starting the campaign the “normal” way will work, but a bunch of Blue air units will be wildly misplaced at wrong bases and the red side’s ATO will not be defensive, so I don’t recommend it.
I designed this mainly with a Blue player in mind and have no idea how it would do the other way!
For Blue, the campaign might be a bit easy if you’re an avid SAM hunter and airfield bomber. For extra challenge, though, I recommend turning off airfields in target priorities (as airfields were indeed off-limits for much, though not all, of Rolling Thunder).Note:
More realistic doesn’t necessarily mean better or more fun! But this might be pretty appealing to certain kinds of players, of which I am one.
If you don’t want the North Vietnamese air force to be purely defensive, you can of course go and change its PAKs and Mission Priority by hand.See readme for more details!
DOWNLOAD: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1igfUj1Pw9Y4mjmlHXY3WCDdL_bvuWnC6
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On another note: I found what may be a bit of a bug!
After midnight on Day 2, the campaign (at least for Rolling Thunder) starts throwing up “news updates” every 5 minutes which read “NOT IN GAME”. It makes the screen flash - and also crashes the game if you start running it at a high time compression.
Is it possible to remove those news reports? It will loop infinitely otherwise, or so it seems.
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On another note: I found what may be a bit of a bug!
After midnight on Day 2, the campaign (at least for Rolling Thunder) starts throwing up “news updates” every 5 minutes which read “NOT IN GAME”. It makes the screen flash - and also crashes the game if you start running it at a high time compression.
Is it possible to remove those news reports? It will loop infinitely otherwise, or so it seems.
where you n SP campaign or MP campaign?