Salisbury Plain Training Area

[stuart666]

There was quite a bit of interest about this one, so I decided to bring it out before I consider it totally finished. Sadly it couldnt make the patch as I had hoped.Anyway, it can be found on the SB Pro PE downloads section (terrain). Any problems, dont hesitate to mention them.

[CharlieB]

Horrah,

Look forward to downloading this one tonight. It will be like TESEX all over again!

[stuart666]

Horrah,

Look forward to downloading this one tonight. It will be like TESEX all over again!


Just dont blow up Imber again, the Vicar was very annoyed last time you did it.:)

[IrishHussar]

Hi many thanks Stuart
could you please help with reference to any downloaded map. Im not sure which file I am to store these maps ie where is the destination folder.
I too am really looking forward to viewing/using this map.

Irish Hussar

[stuart666]

No problem. Basically the location is hidden by windows, but if you look in (this is my directory, obviously yours will differ)

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\

Then look in the windows tool bar at the top, then select folder options. Select view, then scroll to 'hidden files and folders'. Select 'show hidden files and folders'.

The hidden folders should then appears. In my directory, the full address is

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\eSim Games\Steel Beasts\maps\terrain

Unzip the file into terrain. I did do a couple of themes, summer and a winter one, but to be honest, you can get by using Darkangels excellent examples (which mine was a lightly modded version thereof)

No idea when/If you will get the next update. My new computer will NOT run Steel Beasts, and Ive no idea how to fix it. Ho Hum.

Please bear in mind, Boscombe down is not quite finished, and there is a couple of small areas in Bulford that I wanted to tidy up. Lastly the road in Shrewton could do with adjusting. What the hell, I did spend a year on it and it is free. :)

[IrishHussar]

Thanks again matey

Irish Hussar

[Koen]

Stuart,

What a b e a u t i f u l map !

Thanks for this year of effort of yours !

Koen

[pvtkramer]

i thought this was interesting and it is filmed at Salisbury Plain i believe.

http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=14271&where=index

[RomeoNovember12]

Stuart, do you have a conventional map (JPG, BMP, PDF, etc) of the SPTA that you can share?

I am looking forward to reliving some battles around the village of Imber.

[CharlieB]

i thought this was interesting and it is filmed at Salisbury Plain i believe.

http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=14271&where=index

A great demonstration of the MBT IMHO demonstrated by my first Sqn

[stuart666]

Thanks for the kind words guys, it genuinely makes it all worthwhile. :)

If I could get back into Steelbeasts, I would print out a JPG of the map and tag it up with all the place names. As it stands, there IS an MOD site on walks on training areas which includes a map of the place in question. Ill look it out, it may be of use. There is also an British army guide to the area in question for squaddies moving to Amesbury/Bulford area, and that may be worth reading as well. Ill look them out tomorrow.

Of course, the Ordinance survey maps of the place in question can be got on Amazon.com. The problem there is due to the fact that its US military grid, none of the coordinates will be the same. However, due to the amount of time (obsession, mania etc etc) I put into it, Im confident its still pretty accurate. You can certainly find your way about with an ordinance survey map, even if the grid is off.

Credit is due here to Paul Uglow (TA, got me some EXCELLENT British army maps of the place), Darkangel (who assisted me with getting the themes right), Sean, Crusty, Don Hawes and a lot of others who encouraged me to keep going. More thanks to them than to me I think. I just hope serving members of the British army find it of some use in training. They are the reason I did it. Too bad the Basra map I planned now has to go on the back burner. :(

[GaryOwen]

Beautiful. When I first opened it, I had to rub my eyes because I actually thought I saw sheep grazing.

[stuart666]

Many Thanks :)

Here is a PDF of walks on the land, only 225kb, and not quite as good as I remember it. You may find the map mildly useful though.
http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/63EFCE20-1035-41D6-B6C6-CBDED007B17D/0/SalisburyPlain.pdf

The army guide for the plain is here.
http://www.army.mod.uk/linked_files/ag/soldierwelfare/supportagencies/aws/pdf/Salisbury_Plain_At_Ease_2006.pdf

Looks updated from the one I looked at, not sure if its as useful.

[CharlieB]

The Beril Vally is one of those great ex play fake rivers that runs S from Imber village down to Chiterne were there is a real river.

Seeing as thought you will have predominatly have used Civi OS maps you will not have the overlay.

The river is used reasonably extensivly for Obs Xing drills on SPTA. Proves difficult at times when you cant see the Water! Very upsetting when you find the AWES gear telling you that you are bogged in or worse sunk in the river when there is no water in sight. I'll probably add the river in.

No critism meant though. The map is awsome. The detail on the plain overall is great. The detail on the barraks etc on the E side, and Boscombe down are very well worked.

I look forward to shooting up the OPFOR once again. At least this time they won't be FV432s pretending to be T80s T72s BMP etc etc.

Good work!

[TopKick]

That's a very good map. I'm very impressed with it. You must have spent untold hours making it. Do you have some sort of application that helps you draw in the shape or outline of forests and fields, or is all of that done by hand? Great work though.

[KevoM1]

How can I view, or even better "drive-fight" on this map? I've downloaded as per instructions very interested in viewing!

[stuart666]

The Beril Vally is one of those great ex play fake rivers that runs S from Imber village down to Chiterne were there is a real river.

Seeing as thought you will have predominatly have used Civi OS maps you will not have the overlay.

The river is used reasonably extensivly for Obs Xing drills on SPTA. Proves difficult at times when you cant see the Water! Very upsetting when you find the AWES gear telling you that you are bogged in or worse sunk in the river when there is no water in sight. I'll probably add the river in.

No critism meant though. The map is awsome. The detail on the plain overall is great. The detail on the barraks etc on the E side, and Boscombe down are very well worked.

I look forward to shooting up the OPFOR once again. At least this time they won't be FV432s pretending to be T80s T72s BMP etc etc.

Good work!


Thanks Charlie. I think part of that river is in there, to the east of Imber last time I visited there was a bloody great trench with a bailey bridge over it. Ive put that in as best I can, and it does have the very minor stream that runs through imber. But I agree, primarily its based on the google imagery and ordinance survey maps. Feel free to add in anything you like on your version, though I would prefer to keep this map as a baseline to be updated. Ive ordered a new dongle, so hopefully I might be able to add to it in the future. You may be better off adding it as a penalty area for entering during a mission, I dont know.

Topkick this was all put together with a standard edition of SB Pro Pe. I think it would be easier with SB pro, since it had a different map editor, but Im not military and it was free as a beta tester, so I cant complain. :) Its almost all done by hand, just fragments of the forests might be original from the original sat map I was given by Dark angel. If you want to see what I had to work with, look at the outer lying areas around the area I painted in. It was all like that at one point.

Kevo, you can either load it into the mission editor and make a mission on the map, or download my Battle of imber mission you can find somewhere in the download section.

[Jester_UK]

Just had chance to have a look at the map, and Stuart you sir, are an artist! Brilliant work.

The only problem I have with it, is the lack of power in my PC (P4 2.4gig CPU and a 9800Pro 128MB GFX card). The urban areas, even with only one unit on the map drop my FPS into single figures.

Would you know offhand, what GFX settings do I need to reduce to improve matters. I tried messing around with the settings via Alt-D on the fly but saw little improvement.

[stuart666]

Actually you have a similar spec machine to that I made the map on. I too had large frame rate drops when operating in some areas. There is no really good answer other than to make sure you have the latest drivers for that 9800. I noted that my frame rate went up quite significantly after I got the latest drivers. It also seemed to make the detail control with the latest patch more effective.

Again, many thanks for the compliments. You guys better stop or Ill start getting an ego or something. :)

[Kingtiger]

Love the map, but could someone that have a good map of SP sitt down, create a scenario where he just adds the names on the areas. Training field borders and so on, just like the real british army map looks like?

that would be great...

/KT

[jimcarrel]

How can I view, or even better "drive-fight" on this map? I've downloaded as per instructions very interested in viewing!
KevoM1, heres a link to a .sce I quickly threw together, nothing special. Its about a 6X9 KM grid of the lowere SE corner of Stuart666's map. You'll have a platoon of M1's, a few PC's, refueler, FISTV, 3 companys of our beloved grunts, and 2 platoons of Leo's for reserves. I'm a complete noob, oblivious to everything correct. Somebody please take this and do somehthing with it. Map should be imbedded in .sce

Thanks to all for the privilage to use this program, and Special thanks to our young guys who put it on the line for us. (well they are young from my standpoint,lol )

http://www.tbcokc.org/DOCS/Airport Recon M1A1(HA).zip
i'll leave it up untill next wednesday the 11th.

Semper Fi, JimCarrel

[stuart666]

Love the map, but could someone that have a good map of SP sitt down, create a scenario where he just adds the names on the areas. Training field borders and so on, just like the real british army map looks like?

that would be great...

/KT

If I can get back into the programme I will do just that. I think it might be a better idea to break it up into sections (maybe 4?). The full training area might be a wee bit big if you are just doing company manoeuvres.....

Anyway, I have a series of British army maps with the scheduled areas on, and its certainly doable. The question Is, do we really want to have Stonehenge as an area to keep out of. Using it as a defensive position is part of the maps charm I think. :)

Jim, I think I made a scenario set in the same place you did. I called it the Battle of Amesbury and had a Leopard2a5 comany defending against a mixed battalion of Abrams and Bmp2's. Fun scenario that was!

[jimcarrel]

I was thinking in the back of my hazy mind that there was one in similiar area, didn't know it was there. That area of map is really interesting, I've been messing around with defensive points, If enemy follows ground, there really are only two major areas to defend.
The good approach on the west side, coming from the north, appears to get sqeezed thru bridges, easily defended. If you can keep all enemy north of township, they havn't much chance for direct lines of fire to airport.

Appreciate you work, Jim

[Froggy]

I Love the map, but could someone that have a good map of SP sitt down, create a scenario where he just adds the names on the areas. Training field borders and so on, just like the real british army map looks like?

that would be great...
began to do so for my Centac map, but rapidely, you can't see anithing on the map due to text, either not reducing, or too big.
I finaly just note the roads number.

[stuart666]

I was thinking in the back of my hazy mind that there was one in similiar area, didn't know it was there. That area of map is really interesting, I've been messing around with defensive points, If enemy follows ground, there really are only two major areas to defend.
The good approach on the west side, coming from the north, appears to get sqeezed thru bridges, easily defended. If you can keep all enemy north of township, they havn't much chance for direct lines of fire to airport.

Appreciate you work, Jim

In real life its even easier to defend. North of the town you have a duel carriageway right? East of the roundabout (and just after crossing the river) the road goes into something like a cutting. You could (maybe) still go up the slope in an Abrams but it would be a lot harder than in the map. There are also a couple more buildings there on the right edge of the town which are not there yet. The reason for that is the maps I had didnt show them yet (most recent dated 2003) and the google earth map dated 2005 shows them just being built.

So many things left to add.:(

[RomeoNovember12]

Perhaps no news for the British contingent of SB-fans but, I found an excellent site: Multimap.com (http://uk.multimap.com/map/photo.cgi?client=public&X=404000&Y=148000&width=700&height=400&gride=405000&gridn=147500&srec=0&coordsys=gb&db=hcgaz&pc=&zm=0&scale=25000&multimap.x=365&multimap.y=226)
West Down Camp is in the middle of the photo, a training camp built in 1943, IIRC, it's more or less in the middle of the SPTA, IIRC.

/Mats

EDIT: As far as I can tell, Stuart you have done an excellent job! Thanks!

[ShotMagnet]

Stu,

Got the map, and the rest. Let's talk turkey. Or salisbury.


Shot

[tarball]

A great demonstration of the MBT IMHO demonstrated by my first Sqn

Additionally, the video bears partial justification for Greevil tactics - circling and toying with a slower tank can work. Definately need to keep a tank's wingman with him at all times.

[IrishHussar]

Fact is to shoot someone with either coax or main you have to bring your main tube to bear on the target. In Canada or other Tessex exercises it is a valid tactic to get inside an MBT's turning circle in order to escape being shot.
I would say this though, it would take a very, very brave person to do this for real when hot lead is being spat at you. I suppose its the same as firing hand held AT weapons at tanks who are assaulting, its easy in simulation but it would take VC holders to stand up during an arty barrage and do it for real.

Irish Hussar

[stuart666]

Perhaps no news for the British contingent of SB-fans but, I found an excellent site: Multimap.com (http://uk.multimap.com/map/photo.cgi?client=public&X=404000&Y=148000&width=700&height=400&gride=405000&gridn=147500&srec=0&coordsys=gb&db=hcgaz&pc=&zm=0&scale=25000&multimap.x=365&multimap.y=226)
West Down Camp is in the middle of the photo, a training camp built in 1943, IIRC, it's more or less in the middle of the SPTA, IIRC.

/Mats

EDIT: As far as I can tell, Stuart you have done an excellent job! Thanks!


Thank you! Incidentally, if you look that camp up on Google Earth, you can clearly see a Company of Warriors about to go out on Exercise. (you can see some about to do it for real parked on the runway of the old airport at Basra)
This site has some shots on it as well.

http://www.sphf.se/MHalbum/

Roger, Salisbury plain doesnt have any Turkeys, only Bustards, which one must admit looks rather the same. :) A campaign is an excellent idea, though at the moment with the dongle hors d'combat, I wont be able to do much scenario design. Got a couple that ive done so far, do you want me to email them to you? They need scoring and briefings though.

Dancing round an MBT in something like a Salamander sounds like a real good idea until you might have to do it in real life. Canadians were told to fire their 75mms at the curve of a Panthers mantlet, and that didnt work too well either.

[ShotMagnet]

Copy all, Stu. I'll make like a whore and 'get cracking'.


Shot