Scenario: *WIP* Campaign "Freyberg's Left Hook"

[Ts4EVER]

Hi,
after a long hiatus, I am back. This campaign is a bit shorter than my previous ones, with only 4 scenarios. However, all scenarios are pretty big and I used the venhola site to get very accurate maps!

"Freyberg's Left Hook"

New Zealand Campaign

March 21st 1943 - March 27th 1943

After their defeat at El Alamein, German and Italian forces pulled back to the French colony of Tunisia, hoping to use the French "Mareth Line" to stop the allied advance. With American forces landing to their west and the British advancing from the east, their position had become desperate.
Still, there was some fight left in Rommel's soldiers and the position was strong. A plan was devised to assault the Mareth Line frontally, a risky prospect.

However, Montgomery had an ace up his sleeve:

In addition to the frontal attack, he had planned an outflanking maveuvre through the "Tebaga Gap" south of the Mareth Line. This gap between two mountain ranges would allow the British to get behind the defenses and potentially cut off the whole axis force by seizing the coastal town of Gabes astride the main highway. This would trap the Germans and Italians in a cauldron that would be difficult to escape.

The task for this outflanking movement was given to Lt.Gen. Freyberg and his 2nd New Zealand Division, reinforced by the tanks of 8th Armored Brigade and a regiment of armoured cars from 1st King's Dragoon Guards. Redesignated the "New Zealand Corps", this force had to make the complicated outflanking maneuvre and reach the Tebaga Gap in time to coincide with the main attack on the 20th of March. However, on the 19th of March the Axis spotted the New Zealand column...

In this campaign you will command the 6th New Zealand motorized infantry battalion, supported by artillery, mortars, pioneers and antitank guns.

Outside of your core force you will receive support from British armor, consisting of Sherman, Grant and Crusader tanks. It is possible to be more successful than the actual operation, unlocking a final "what-if" type mission.

[SaS TrooP]

Perfect, gonna try it out as soon as I can. If you still have your sources, I would gladly accept some, there is an Italian scenario from that battle on my to-do list.

[Ts4EVER]

I used the Osprey Book on the Mareth Line campaign.

[DRG]

There is a problem with this campaign I have not been able to solve. It gets to the end of the fourth battle and the experience increases are shown and the game crashes in a way I have never seen before. I have checked other existing campaigns and some other new ones and they do not do this. I have tried it in it's original slot and a renumbered slot and I have ScenHack checked the extracted scenarios for problems and everything looks perfect except it shuts the game down COLD in the middle of the final experience review and never makes it to the " Your campaign is over " screen so I regretfully have to pull it from the patch files which is too bad, I liked the number of units and the maps were superb. It would still be playable to anyone who wants to give it a try and who knows maybe your machine will not crash but mine does so it's not making it into the next upgrade

Don


EDIT: I did save the maps though. They will be included with the upgrade

[Ts4EVER]

Hmm weird. I wonder how to approach this... a first step would be maybe looking if there is a unit in the core force that is not used in other campaigns? That being said, since there is no other NZ campaign it would be a long list I suspect...

[DRG]

I tried it with an older EXE, last years EXE and this years EXE and every time it gets mostly through the final experience reports then shuts the game down in a way I have not seen before. The three scenarios before that all end perfectly so from my POV the only way to fix that for sure would remove every unit and start again but *I* simply do NOT have any time to do that. As it is now I'm sitting here 12-14 hours a day getting the last minute details done becasue this next upgrade is going out at the end of the month and as of two days ago I am not adding anything new to either game

[Ts4EVER]

Ok, fair enough. I will try to fix it for next year (assuming there is another patch). Of course it would be helpful if someone else could play through the campaign and report any crashes.

[Ts4EVER]

On a different note, could you check which is the last unit shown in the experience review before the crash? that could be a first lead.

[DRG]

I cannot say for sure but I can say it seem to vary but it did seem to get well into the last run through when it crashed the game but I simply do not have time to go back and test it again.

[RetLT]

Working my way through this campaign. No crashes so far.

I did notice the following issues however:

1. In the first scenario there are NZ unit flags at 15,6 15, 7 and 16,8 but no units

2. In the 3rd scenario the reinforcement ammo lorries arrive at hex 0,0 off map.