Some thoughts about OoB

[Zekedia222]

Specific mods are another matter. Somewhere on a back burner is my redevelopment and expansion (a follow-up scenario) of the Battle of Britain mod. And I wish, wish, wish, that guy with the Spanish Civil War mod would reappear and continue development. If not, I'm thinking of taking it over and trying my hand.

Would a Pacific War mod be of specific interest to you?

[bru888]

Specific mods are another matter. Somewhere on a back burner is my redevelopment and expansion (a follow-up scenario) of the Battle of Britain mod. And I wish, wish, wish, that guy with the Spanish Civil War mod would reappear and continue development. If not, I'm thinking of taking it over and trying my hand.

Would a Pacific War mod be of specific interest to you?

Thanks. To be honest, that sounds too general in nature, as I mentioned previously. I would prefer U.S. Pacific, Rising Sun, and U.S. Marines as my Pacific War, and those are all vanilla OOB.

[prestidigitation]

Recommendation: use only one or two heavy bombers. I only ever have 1 or 2 as they are expensive and [usually] you don’t need insane amounts. I, of course, am relatively inexperienced in OoB.

I personally find 2 is enough, I also tend to bring a single tac bomber with precision strike as a last hit unit to clean up 1 or 2 hp enemies. It is a rare campaign that allows you more than 6 total air units.

I highly recommend bringing AA unless you are playing a campaign where air dominance is virtually assured. Fighters are great for escorting bombers so that they can escape and get some hits in, but you are much better off using AA to clean up any enemy fighters. So so so much cheaper than doing it with fighters. Same with AT guns in campaigns where you expect to fight enemy armor. The difference a 2 CP AT gun makes to your units and overall cash burn rate is remarkable. A single one behind a couple of infantry units can inflict enormous bleed on enemy armor, especially if that armor cannot call on artillery to force the AT gun away. Attacked directly they are much weaker, but the cost is so low that it really doesn't much matter.

I go very heavy on artillery. Usually a mix of the harder hitting pieces (with commanders) for breaking through fortified positions and the longer range guns for counterbattery (usually in coordination with a recon plane for spotting). 4 or 5 pieces on the field is normal for me in the more recent campaigns, virtually guaranteeing fire superiority wherever I want it. I also tend to rely on standard infantry and truck mounted engineers. Heavy infantry are too slow on the march for my tastes and giving them a truck makes them cost the same as a tank in command points, and elite infantry tend to be very expensive to reinforce and very vulnerable to armor. The exception is Chindits and SAS which were fantastic in the Burma campaign.

Tanks are nice and I usually have a few, typically the slower and heavier types that can break through fortified infantry without much worry. Or the T-34, a maneuver warfare monster. But when it comes down to it my army is primarily infantry and artillery (always elite reinforce) with a smattering of AA and AT and at most four tanks.

[Zekedia222]

I disagree about fighters. I find it important to use fighters, especially those good at ground support, such as the P38 Lightning or the Typhoon. A concentrated strike can destroy far off targets, like grounded aircraft or artillery. Strategic bombers, I’ve found, don’t damage ground targets nearly as much. Fighters, as well as killing ground targets, can also engage most air targets they encounter. The Typhoon can destroy Zeros or D3As in just a few attacks. By the time AA can attack, the bombers are already on top of you. Thats just my opinion, though.
Also, spotting planes are ineffective in situations where targets are situated in jungles, forests, and towns. They can only effectively target support units, and even then, these support units include a AA gun or two. These can shred a recon plane, and force your artillery to bombard the enemy with no spotting. Again, thats just the way I see it.

[Mascarenhas]

Thinking back about game features, I would like to suggest the devs to create kind of a " remain idle"or "stay put" button, particularly for supply ships and other naval vessels which have no more important role, say after the initial phase of a shore invasion,as we can see, for instance, in the recently released Normandy UK. It´s really boring to get past every turn on the ships orders, just for nothing. It´s a waste of time. Just ignore them may also get some other important (air, for instance) unit unattended. I´d really like to have a switch to circumvent these situations.

[Erik2]

You know can put units to sleep (hit keyboard z a couple of times) and then just ignore these units until you decide to wake them again?

[bru888]

You know can put units to sleep (hit keyboard z a couple of times) and then just ignore these units until you decide to wake them again?

Yes, and the sleep indicator is when you see "Z's" floating up from the unit. More than once, that's been my own cue to hit the hay before I hit the keyboard with my head.

[GabeKnight]

I know it is easy to mod this, but I don't want to fix the mod every time there's an official update.

You're creating a campaign per week, fixing the reported issues "on the side" and worrying about a few hours of work twice a year?

And if you don't mess with the units file, just add or change some pics, emblems, nations/factions and specs, then every "update" would take like half an hour. But I know this is not the first time we've talked about this... I'm just offering options...

Yeah, Gabe, I'm with Erik on the subject of mods at least. [...] I prefer to live in the official OOB-world myself. Here's the reason: With all of the custom campaigns and scenarios that I am accumulating, it would be a nightmare having to go through all of those to fix them with each official update if they had all been adapted to my private mod, or somebody else's mod. And if I did not adapt them to a mod, I would need to play them with vanilla OOB so what would be the sense of having the mod?

I'm not sure if I'm understanding you right, or maybe I didn't notice something important, as I'm not that versed with creating scens:
But why would you need to "fix" any scenarios or campaigns with every official update? Nothing's changing in there. Maybe you have a wrong impression of what "updating the mod" means?

Sure, you need to update the "core" of the mod itself every time, but that's basically only the content of the \data folder and only the files you've changed. That's about it.

The only problem that I can think of - and that really could break scens, indeed - would be if you would change the mod's internal structure yourself between updates - like deleting units or classes, changing unit IDs or something similar "drastic". But if you build your mod with a bit of a logical structure, you don't need to worry about such things. Units that are not needed anymore just get the "nopurchase/noeditor" traits and all's good.

But...in the end... you're right:

It's a matter of choice, of course [...]

[Mascarenhas]

Er... no, I didn´t. Many thx for the tip. It´s really quite useful.

[Erik2]

I did actually start my own unit mod a long way back.
This was a simple naval one, just changing vessel movements to more historical values.
Then I changed the air unit movement system, basically longer movement ranges and fewer turns up in the air.
Both worked fine

But I prefer spending my time on scenarios and campaigns.
Maybe when I retire from real work I'll get back into modding...