I've been working on a mod, mostly covering the pacific. So far I have updated US and Japanese carriers to increase the size of the air wing they can support. Since I have not yet modified any scenarios to include these changes it would certainly be a one sided mod with only the player getting access to the changes.
I've also added a seaplane tender, currently limited to the US. This is mostly for testing purposes at the moment, but if it works as expected I'll add it to the other factions. In conjunction with this I've also increased how many seaplanes cruisers and battleships carrier for the US. Again, mainly for testing purposes. My eventual goal is to remove the unlimited nature of the seaplanes / flying boats, however these do need a support infrastructure.
Additional areas I will be looking at include aircraft performance (speed and range adjustments), ship speeds, and adding a submarine transport for Marine Raiders. These are things mentioned by several users on the forum as well as some of my own. If I am able to incorporate changes credit will be given to the person who had the idea. If anyone else has any ideas please let me know.
Mod
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Navman2854
- Sergeant - 7.5 cm FK 16 nA
- Posts: 231
- Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2014 5:09 pm
- Location: Wilmington DE USA
Re: Mod
LadyLex, looking forward to your mod! A suggestion and it's not really mine is for fighter and tactical/strategic aircraft essentially having unlimited ammo/bomb loads, torpedo aircraft aside. Would rather see "one and done" for bomb loads and maybe 2 at most 3 engagements for fighters. Another is time scale for battles that only lasted days. Would rather see hours and night involved somehow. I don't mod and I'm not a programmer so I don't know the difficulties involved and I'm certainly not knocking the game designers/admins, just stating a couple "wishes/likes". I could probably come up with more but getting late here. Will post more if/when I think of them.
Re: Mod
It's a pity that the single-shot trait of the nuclear bomber makes the plane vanish forever. That would have been such a pretty ability to allow unloading the bombs and forcing to return.
At moment, you can either modify the game to reduce the fuel and most likely get trouble on large original campaign maps or you just accept that aircrafts can park for a while over the battlefield.
Theoretically, you could give every plane only 1 fuel, so after taking off they can fly somewhere to strike afterwards, and need to return on the following turn. This would be like the simulating the Me 163 rocket plane with 40 km range. Instead of converting the flying speed of aircrafts, you can convert the real range as movement speed to give each plane an indivual operation range.
That would be too much work for me to test at moment with my current conversion-calculations, but feel free to try it yourself if you dare. I don't know if this can really work well, like on the Jap Pearl Harbor mission, where you need to bomb and strafe all the time several targets. As compensation for a single strike, you possibly have to increase the ground/naval attack values.
Increasing the speed (as range) of aircrafts can turn the AI thinking-time to a crawl what isn't such fun either anymore. Decide for yourself if such issues are worthy for more fun in the game.
At moment, you can either modify the game to reduce the fuel and most likely get trouble on large original campaign maps or you just accept that aircrafts can park for a while over the battlefield.
Theoretically, you could give every plane only 1 fuel, so after taking off they can fly somewhere to strike afterwards, and need to return on the following turn. This would be like the simulating the Me 163 rocket plane with 40 km range. Instead of converting the flying speed of aircrafts, you can convert the real range as movement speed to give each plane an indivual operation range.
That would be too much work for me to test at moment with my current conversion-calculations, but feel free to try it yourself if you dare. I don't know if this can really work well, like on the Jap Pearl Harbor mission, where you need to bomb and strafe all the time several targets. As compensation for a single strike, you possibly have to increase the ground/naval attack values.
Increasing the speed (as range) of aircrafts can turn the AI thinking-time to a crawl what isn't such fun either anymore. Decide for yourself if such issues are worthy for more fun in the game.
Re: Mod
I also would like to see limited bomb loads. Pretty unrealistic to have aircraft rearm while in the air.
Don't know if this is generally known, but I'll share what I have learned through some experimentation. Torpedo settings can be changed in the units.csv file. The column contains 3 comma separated values. The first is the cool down in game turns, the second is range in hexes, and the final is "power". It would seem like a simple "fix" to limit torpedo bombers to a single attack per turn by changing their cool down to match their fuel rating, thus preventing them from rearming until after they have landed at an airfield or on a carrier. Unfortunately it appears the cool down timer is not reset after landing. I haven't done a lot of testing on this, but it seems to limit the effectiveness of this "fix".
The nuclear bomber disappearing after use is just as troubling as the fact that aircraft seem to be able to defy the laws of physics. I can understand only allowing the nuclear weapon to be used once, but the aircraft should be allowed to return to base and then used as a "normal" bomber.
It appears we are at the "mercy" of the developers with these issues.
Limiting the aircraft to a fuel rating of a very small number, while also a possible work around isn't the direction I want to go just yet. As Horst points out there would be some significant issues with that route.
Don't know if this is generally known, but I'll share what I have learned through some experimentation. Torpedo settings can be changed in the units.csv file. The column contains 3 comma separated values. The first is the cool down in game turns, the second is range in hexes, and the final is "power". It would seem like a simple "fix" to limit torpedo bombers to a single attack per turn by changing their cool down to match their fuel rating, thus preventing them from rearming until after they have landed at an airfield or on a carrier. Unfortunately it appears the cool down timer is not reset after landing. I haven't done a lot of testing on this, but it seems to limit the effectiveness of this "fix".
The nuclear bomber disappearing after use is just as troubling as the fact that aircraft seem to be able to defy the laws of physics. I can understand only allowing the nuclear weapon to be used once, but the aircraft should be allowed to return to base and then used as a "normal" bomber.
It appears we are at the "mercy" of the developers with these issues.
Limiting the aircraft to a fuel rating of a very small number, while also a possible work around isn't the direction I want to go just yet. As Horst points out there would be some significant issues with that route.
Re: Mod
The torpedo CD reset while landed is indeed another bummer what I'd also like to see changed.
I think it's okay that you can't spam nuclear bombers or better nuclear bombs on several trips that often. They were still rare at this time and are pretty much overkill anyway.
Don't forget that the game has never been advertised as being historical, authentic and realistic, so most things will stay as simple and practical as long as they aren't any gameplay issues, like the paratrooper effectiveness before they got this fuel-CD.
Every mod starts with little tweaking and fixing here and there. No need to totally revamp the system right from start.
I think it's okay that you can't spam nuclear bombers or better nuclear bombs on several trips that often. They were still rare at this time and are pretty much overkill anyway.
Don't forget that the game has never been advertised as being historical, authentic and realistic, so most things will stay as simple and practical as long as they aren't any gameplay issues, like the paratrooper effectiveness before they got this fuel-CD.
Every mod starts with little tweaking and fixing here and there. No need to totally revamp the system right from start.
Re: Mod
I have been experimenting with marine raiders and submarine transport. I'm close, but not able to move them to shore from the submarine just yet. More tweaking, more testing. I haven't given up on this yet. Marine Raiders did historically deploy from submarines and amphibious transport. They were not paratroopers. There was a separate group of Paramarines. Both groups were relatively short lived.
Re: Mod
I did copy a submarine and attempt to use it as a transport. Did not work. Next I'm going to copy either a land or air transport and attempt to convert it to a submarine. Worth a shot. If that doesn't work at least I can say I tried.Horst wrote:The transport ability of submarines wasn't working with baby-subs last time I checked some time ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't work with any other unit either.
Even though I may fail, I certainly have learned quite a bit about the units.csv file. Still more to learn, but each experiment uncovers more.
Re: Mod
I'm REALLY close. I've been successful in getting Marine Raiders to be transported by submarine. They are able to deploy to shore and return to their submarine. Just as with any transport the transport will "disappear" once the riders have disembarked.
There are still a couple of small issues I'm working out. The first is the submarine transport shows a torpedo reload time of 255. Not sure yet why. I would love to get this "transport" working just like a submarine weapons-wise if I can. Otherwise I would prefer to remove the torpedo capability. On a raid these guys would want to sneak in and out. Firing off a torpedo, except in an emergency scenario would be unwise.
Also, when first deployed to a water hex the Marine Raiders will use the default naval transport. This can "switch" to the submarine so I'm thinking of leaving (or I should say not figuring out how to change) it as these units could (and mostly did) deploy from amphibious ships.
There are still a couple of small issues I'm working out. The first is the submarine transport shows a torpedo reload time of 255. Not sure yet why. I would love to get this "transport" working just like a submarine weapons-wise if I can. Otherwise I would prefer to remove the torpedo capability. On a raid these guys would want to sneak in and out. Firing off a torpedo, except in an emergency scenario would be unwise.
Also, when first deployed to a water hex the Marine Raiders will use the default naval transport. This can "switch" to the submarine so I'm thinking of leaving (or I should say not figuring out how to change) it as these units could (and mostly did) deploy from amphibious ships.