Guille's PzCorps Support Base - Multipurpose Icons and more.

[Messmann]

Ok, once again I will release a few secrets.

This icon has existed before, but there were no masks. Set the offsets at (18,-38) (-18,-38) (5,-7) (-5,-7).

[Messmann]

The AT version. Set the offsets at (26,-22) (-26,-22). It is possible that you need to create an own animation.

[Messmann]

Grenadiere in fortified position. I suggest using them as a multipurpose switch for normal Grenadiere. Take the animations and sounds of normal Grenadiere, no resetting of offsets required.

I experimented with it in my own mod. I came to conclusion that it is negligent to give fortified Grenadiere a movement of zero. Since if you do that, in all cases where a normal infantry unit would retreat, fortified grenadiere would be completely vanished. However, you can use these as a "bunker" switch, but you have to know what you do.

[Messmann]

Guess no onw will buy this one anyway, but for the sake of completion, here it is. Set the offsets at (39,-15) (-39,-15).

In my own mod, I put it in the antitank branch and gave it reconmove.

[Messmann]

Sturmboote (stormboats). Offsets are (53,-8) (-53,-8). But you need to create an own animation with a machine gun and a MP burst. The tiny icon is for the movement style "boat".

Ok, I need to tell you something about those. You cannot implement them as normal transport units without problems. "Transport overrides it all", which means movement capability is pretty much determined by the transport the unit has. You can only overcome this by creating an own movement style (you would have to do this anyway), and allow the boats to move on land with -100 entry. In that case, you would be able to "transport-switch" to boats anywhere, and jump into water right away. But boats would also be able to move on land with tiny one hex steps.

Or maybe another option: You create a movement style for boats, and include the boats as a multipurpose switch for sturmpioniere, the icon above. But in the movement table for boats, you set movement costs for boats to 1000, but only when moving on land. In that case, no boats would be able to move on land, even with the most sophisticated heroes It also gives you the opportunity to switch on land and jump into water right away, totally unlike the normal procedure of "packing units" and "unpacking units"with landing crafts etc. Thus you would save at least one move.

(As far as the sturmpioniere go, it makes sense to give them the possibily to cross rivers directly. With a two or three movement points cost. So, they would not even need boats in some cases.)

[Messmann]

My movement icon pack contains movement icons for different purposes. You will find these alongside normal movement icons.

[Messmann]

I have experimented with a transport vehicle for Sturmpioniere with boats. Give it an own movement style, if you like.

In my own mod, I gave these trucks the possibilty to cross rivers at two hexes speed. It is an exclusive truck for sturmpioniere only, which cannot be bought by anyone else.

[Messmann]

My own experimentation has shown that it would be possible to give Sturmpioniere with multipurpose boats also a halftrack transportation like this. But it does not work so well.

At first, it seems a bit odd that temporary pontons would be able to carry a heavy SdKfz. But that is not the main point.

If you have Sturmpioniere with "across the river movement" on their own and multipurpose switchable boats and if you give these pironiere special halftrack transports with an "across the river movement" rate of, like in my tests, of 3 or 4, the system will somehow calculate wrong movement costs according to some principles which are unknown. On the movement screen, it creates illogical barriers. Sometimes, you would not able to move along a river in boats more than one hex, you cannot move into a direction but in another you can and similar things like that.

Maybe it has to do with the possiblity that if you move along a river or cross a river hex with Sturmpioniere, the transport units the Sturmpioniere have have to be able to reach that location as well - and only theoretically so, not even actually. What does that mean?

Let's say your sturmpioniere can cross rivers with two hexes speed without boats, but can also switch to boats who can drive along rivers with one hex speed. At the same time, they have a transport unit which can cross rivers without swiching as well, but only in a limited sense.

In this case, the unit may be transported with a truck, but it might occur that your sturmpioniere on foot (not on transport) are not able to cross the river - although they should be able to do so, since that is their movement type. But sometimes they would be able to cross, but only, and that is somehow strange, only if the "Sturmbootwagen" truck would be able to reach the targeted destination as well, but only theoretically, not actually. So it means for example that there must not be enemy units in the way blocking the "theoretical path" of a truck across a nearby bridge, where it would be able to theoretically move to the destination the normal sturmpioniere want to reach. So far it goes, the higher math of game modding...

Puzzled? For me, the truck has worked without major additional glitches, but the halftrack has not. At least not with movement 3 or 4 across rivers. However, I leave it to you.

[Horst]

Nice units. I see you are also an ambitious movement type gadgeteer.
My bridge engineers basically use their boats too, but only on non-frozen swamps, lakes and shallow sea tiles where they can move unhindered their 2 tiles. On rivers, I’ve changed it to use all movement points because it was rather silly that they could build their pontoon bridge for other units quickly on each turn in a 2-hex movement range.
I’m no fan of switch modes for infantry units as far as the AI is too stupid to use them anyway. Best the main function of unit types stay always available. I was already disappointed enough that my train mode for railway guns was impossible for the AI to use too.

If you feel motivated, I’m still looking for Sherman units with cutters or amphibious support (DD), including a proper movement icon.
As movement icon, I’m also still missing a Tracked-Bridge, All Terrain-Amphibious (Type 166 Schwimmwagen), Mule, and Naval-River (landing crafts). I also lately added Tracked-Road for Panzer/Marder IID/E as I couldn’t come around it if their performance is supposedly fast on road but poor off-road.

[asuser]

Hello Messmann,

your icons are really nice!

I made also Sturmpioniere in my thread "Pimp..." with a rubberboat as a transport vehicle over water. It's also switchable, but do you defined this also as a ship class in the eqp file? I don't know if that is the right way...I experiment still with it...

[rezaf]

Last online Aug 26.

At least guille has proven his good taste by moving on to modding OpenXCom.

@Messmann - maybe you should start your own thread after all. Both in volume and quantity of your contributions, I think it'd be well deserved.
_____
rezaf

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Last online Aug 26.

At least guille has proven his good taste by moving on to modding OpenXCom.

@Messmann - maybe you should start your own thread after all. Both in volume and quantity of your contributions, I think it'd be well deserved.
_____
rezaf

What do you mean "OpenXCom"?

- BNC

[rezaf]

What do you mean "OpenXCom"?

OpenXCom.
_____
rezaf

[Messmann]

Thank you for the appreciative comments.

Although it is possible that I will generate movement icons, right now it is is unlikely that I will generate other than German icons. I still have my own mod to complete, the Amulet mod, and if don't finish that, it's just one of many projects like many others out there, ambitious, but only half-ready, and I will go down in eternal dispairs of never-ending depression. (A brief ad: A upgraded download of the amulet mod version 1.2 should be available in a couple of days at designmodproject.de)

I could give you a complete overview of what I am about to do, but for the sake of memory loss and being mysterious, I'll just explain that I will focus on infantry units and at unit masks of self-propelled anti air units.

I agree with the notion that the AI is too stupid to handle multipurpose units, apart from being too passive in the first place. My solution: None. Except for creating a multipurpose mod for single players, and raise the difficulty to Manstein and above. With softcap, of course.

And an own thread? Please, come on... It's too much of a hassle for an old man like me to handle more than one thread. I already have one at designmodproject. The problem is that there are people who are used to this thread, come here on a more or less regular basis, and I do not have the same across the board design capabilties of guille (yet).

I just hope that he will return at some time, summarizing all the units with base icons and masks in one big file. To be downloaded at the beginning of this thread.

P.S.: OpenXcom is old ufo xcom.

[Messmann]

Hello Messmann,

your icons are really nice!

I made also Sturmpioniere in my thread "Pimp..." with a rubberboat as a transport vehicle over water. It's also switchable, but do you defined this also as a ship class in the eqp file? I don't know if that is the right way...I experiment still with it...

Thanks, but I defined an own movement type. It's called "swimleg" and gives them the opportunity to cross rivers in one move, two point for each river hex. (lakes and shallow sea -100, which means all movement points are necessary). For the boats, I use the multipurpose switch button. They have "boat" movement with one movement point for each river, strait or lake, and even shallow sea and sea. (The latter is disputable, I admit. But the movement rate is only four.)

Please bear in mind that you need to be able to switch to boats on land, without being able to move with boats on land. I recommend creating a boat movement table where you insert 1000 in each land location where switching should be possible, but movement on land should not be possible.

And when you drive the boats on sea, your sturmpioniere should have swimleg movement with -100 in all shallow sea locations. Otherwise, you won't be able to leave the boats in sea hexes, which means you won't be able to switch back to sturmpioniere on foot. Of course, this enables your sturmpioniere to move across the coast in tiny one hex steps without boats, but I think this is bearable.

[T2_2112]

10.5cm leFH18(Sf) auf Geschützwagen B2(f)

[captainjack]

the AI is too stupid to handle multipurpose units

Shortly after I started modding, I had a huge surprise playing AC when I got hit by defensive fire from some switchable Panzergrenadiers in artillery mode. It might have been random rather than planned, but it couldn't have been a better time and place for the AI to act randomly.

[Horst]

Switch-modes that can attack work fine, but the AI don't seem to handle transport modes with no or passive attacks. For instance, my train mode for the railway artillery is ignored by the AI, so it's stuck with Movement 0 in artillery mode and will never switch to move to a better attack position. Such modes are unfortunately not handled like transport attachments by the AI. I don't want to have railway artillery to attack and move away on the same turn, so I guess it leaves me no choice but to accept that these units should rather be only used under players' control.

[captainjack]

I agree that AI and transport isn't as good as it could be.
I had a few too many artillery units arriving in their trucks in the midst of a mass brawl, so I now rarely give the AI artillery units transport. When AI attacks, the arty gets placed quite far forwards during deployment so that they trudge forwards at move 1, and get overtaken by the infantry near the objective (credit is due to the early versions of BiteNibbleChomp's WW1 mod where artillery didn't have transport for improving my 1-move planning skills). As an alternative, I set a trigger so that when the ground troops reach a certain point the artillery gets placed close by, so that it is available within a turn or two.

Unfortunately that wouldn't help much with your rail gun where movement is important. Could you get a tolerable alternate move/fire behaviour by limiting ammo to a single shot (and restricting fuel to a move or a move and a half). That way it moves and fires then reloads. Not quite what you were after, but it might be close to the effect you were after. The other possibility would be to have a rail gun with move 0, and allocated transport "Gun Train", and a special train with transport type "Gun Train". It then acts as if towed artillery but its transport is restricted to rail movement.

Even if these, don't help solve your problem, at least thinking about it has given me some ideas for my next scenario!

[guille1434]

Hello to all!!!
Good thing to return here and see that the thread is very much alive and kicking! Thanks to everyone who gave input of new stuff here...

Forgive me for my disappearance, but I had several reasons:

- I got a little saturated with iconwork... you know, it was becoming almost and obsession, and the "to do" list never stopped growing, and as a result I felt a little worn-out. But this was not the biggest problem...
- I had a very difficult time with my personal economy...
- And above all, I managed to break down my old faithful netbook, which I used as a tabletop computer (yes, my stupid fault)

At present I could build a new tabletop PC, a rather capable system, and my personal finance are looking a little more in the black numbers, so I am feeling a little more "free" to return to this wonderful community...

As it was pointed out here, in the meanwhile, I discovered Open X-Com, which is my other love from my youth years (you know, I mostly played X-Com and Panzer General those times) and I started to mod that wonderful game (but I did not invest as many time and affort as I did here).

So, people, thanks again and I will be here, slowly integrating myself again in the community, and giving a hand with some new stuff...