The "Gabe-Mod" (v8.4.4)

[GabeKnight]

Will this mod work with Erik's campaign in 9.0.3 (current) version of the game?

Should work with most of them. The "Germany" ones probably and everything else that wasn't updated in 2021.

The worst case should be some missing units in the scen and/or a strange Japanese tank(s) appearing...

[Horst]

If it's not too much work, I could need a direct-fire mode picture of the Fortress.

[andreyder]

Will this mod work with Erik's campaign in 9.0.3 (current) version of the game?

Should work with most of them. The "Germany" ones probably and everything else that wasn't updated in 2021.

The worst case should be some missing units in the scen and/or a strange Japanese tank(s) appearing...

What is causing this strange Japanese tank(s) to appear? (I saw them only in 2-3 soviet campaigns with my edited version of this mod with some additional infantry units) Can I edit units csv file or scenario to fix this?

[Erik2]

Will this mod work with Erik's campaign in 9.0.3 (current) version of the game?

Should work with most of them. The "Germany" ones probably and everything else that wasn't updated in 2021.

The worst case should be some missing units in the scen and/or a strange Japanese tank(s) appearing...

What is causing this strange Japanese tank(s) to appear? (I saw them only in 2-3 soviet campaigns with my edited version of this mod with some additional infantry units) Can I edit units csv file or scenario to fix this?

The Japanese tanks are used by the game as a default if it can't find the proper unit.

[GabeKnight]

The Japanese tanks are used by the game as a default if it can't find the proper unit.

Yeah. Thanks, Erik!

[Hubbfrosch]

Hi Gabe, is there a chance, that you update your mod to make it fully compatible? Its overall a great mod and improves the game quite a bit.

[GabeKnight]

Yeah...sometime....later...maybe. Sorry.

[Horst]

For "sometime later maybe":

A little inconsistency among mountain troops and light infantry:

mountain troops
German Gebirgsjäger: lightTreaded
Italian Alpini: lightTreaded
French Chasseurs Alpins: lightTreaded
Yugoslavian Mountaineers (Planinari?): guerrilla
Romanian Mountaineer (Vânatori de Munte): lightTreaded
Indian Gurkhas: guerrilla
French Goumiers: lightTreaded

ski troops/light infantry/jäger
SS Wiking: guerrilla
Finnish Ski Infantry (Jääkäri): guerrilla
Bersaglieri: guerrilla
Chasseurs Ardennais: lightTreaded

Mountain troops are trained to fight in most difficult terrain and climate, thus should rather gain guerrilla than light infantry.
Gurkha are basically mountain troops too, so it's fine here, while the other mountain troops usually won't see jungle terrain anyway.
Makes more sense if mountain troops (e.g. Alpini) loose no efficiency while moving around on mountains while light infantry (e.g. Bersaglieri) does a little.

Had the same issue within my mod that mountain troops lacked something.
I felt that heavy infantry and regular one were too versed in crossing terrain compared to specialized infantry.
That's why I gave heavy infantry and engineers heavyTreaded and regular one no trait instead of lightTreaded. In particular heavy and regular rather consist of less trained men with lower endurance than elite troops.
lightTreaded for light infantry already sounds very suitable, doesn't it?
Little tweaks that shouldn't also impact so much slightly modified vanilla gameplay.

[GabeKnight]

Good points, thanks! And stat-equalisation between the factions is always a good thing IMO.

But without the "lightTreaded" trait, it's like 2 eff. per dense forest/mountain/jungle and such, right? And "heavyTreaded" would be like double of that. And engineers and heavies could not enter mountain/dense forest anymore - or was that determined by the chassis file alone? I've been out for so long, I don't remember the correlation anymore. I just recall that the "ski" chassis (e.g. Fin. ski troops) was the best you could have and made some other traits superfluous.

There's a vague memory of me trying something similar, I believe. And I think the 1 eff. loss per every "difficult terrain" hex was too much in the end and I reverted the stats back to the original state.

[Horst]

Only chassis_*.csv defines who can enter what terrain.
Ski basically gives always one hex more movement on mountain, (dense) forest, and scorched. With winter climate, generally one hex more on open ground, farmland, but also on swamp and frozen lake.
It really makes a difference in the long run through all the maps with rough terrain.

Chasseurs_Ardennais got ski too, although rather light infantry/jäger, similar like Bersaglieri, but jäger should be faster in woods, so it's fine. At least today, Berserglieri also train with ski and used bicycles in the past, like the Belgium guys in '40.
Can't do much with only two inf movement types in vanilla.

The efficiency-loss difference is a bit nitpicking of my side to make a bit more differences between the infantry types.
I don't like to see non-mountain troops run around on mountain tops that often fare as well as mountain troops themselves. With heavyTreated, at least the player should think twice before moving a heavy infantry onto a mountain hex. Also fine by me if their heavy gear drowns into the swamps.
AI pathfinding is not great and efficiency recovering of the AI neither, especially if the map designers give too high aggression values.
I'd still like to do some further tests that when exactly the AI decides to move its units away to recover efficiency. I could cry watching when it assaults with 1-3 efficiency sometimes. On the other hand, the AI has such a high priority to tap all your units preventing recovering.

[Horst]

I've resorted the factions.txt file according to Major/Minor Axis/Allied powers with a touch of chronology.
Should be easier to find a nation now.
I see that you added noEditor to [REDUSA] in your mod's file for unknown reasons. It's a useful allied/enemy faction sometimes mappers have already used so far, like [RAF] as allied British faction.
I also don't know for what the theme entries are. The turn-sound?
Your new faction [UNITED_NATIONS] can still be added somewhere, or simply forget about my file.
Maybe also useful for other mappers and modders.

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[Horst]

While playing Red Storm here, the air commander Kaciaryna Kasyanova has following vanilla stats

Code: Select all

[KACIARYNA_KASYANOVA]
id = 94
category = air
faction = ussr
weapon = infantry_attack, 1
defense = air_defense, 2
shock = 10
range = 0
camouflaged
undetachable

After importing your core from Red Steel, she isn't attached to her biplane anymore, thus you can attach her to any plane, like making a stealth fighter or other stealth tactical/strategical bomber. I think it's possible to get her wounded too, getting detached this way too, but not sure at moment.
I've removed her undetachable trait, so you can use her as regular air commander. I modified her without a shock value/bonus as well, but you could add this value to the plane. I normally give all air commanders intended for bombing role only ground/naval attack/defense values, so they can't be abused for fighters.
I added the camouflaged trait to the plane Po-2 itself, and not the commander, what should make more sense, so these can also be used without any commander in their intended night attacker role. That's also a trait they have reducing dmg from air source.
I also see no problem in removing the noPurchase trait, as biplane only use 2 CP now. so they could be useful sometimes.
If you are looking for a proper availability trait for the Po-2:
"12 June 1942: the Night Witches regiment's baptism by fire took place on the Southern front in bombings of river crossings on the Mius, Severny Donets, and Don rivers as well as roads in the Sal steppes and Stavropol suburbs."

[GabeKnight]

As always, thanks for your input, Horst.

I see that you added noEditor to [REDUSA] in your mod's file for unknown reasons.[...]
I also don't know for what the theme entries are. The turn-sound?
Your new faction [UNITED_NATIONS] can still be added somewhere, or simply forget about my file.
Maybe also useful for other mappers and modders.

Don't know about the "red_usa" trait, but as my mod is intended as "player's mod" only, I didn't care about scen creating/editing purposes.

The theme entries are for UI, music, AI spinning animation and such. Mostly used it inside the "Korean War mod" to create new factions.

The "united_nation" faction was for testing purposes only and I've left them there, because, you know, no harm done.

While playing Red Storm here, the air commander Kaciaryna Kasyanova has following vanilla stats
[...]
After importing your core from Red Steel, she isn't attached to her biplane anymore, thus you can attach her to any plane, like making a stealth fighter or other stealth tactical/strategical bomber. I think it's possible to get her wounded too, getting detached this way too, but not sure at moment.

Yeah, that's one of the first things I do during the Stalingrad scen. "Disband" the useless biplane and free the "camouflage" commander to add to my tac. or strat. bombers... camouflaged... so cool...

But you know... with the AI air-seek&destroy order with 99 hex range (and the AI cheating with the FoW) , camouflage... doesn't work really well. It's the same with commando units... the AI somehow "knows" they are there, even if it cannot find them right away...
Seriously... I've seen whole AI groups with 6-7 units chasing one commando unit until they surrounded and killed it...

[Horst]

Seriously... I've seen whole AI groups with 6-7 units chasing one commando unit until they surrounded and killed it...

Seek/Search & Destroy behavior is the lazy setting that truely ruins the fog-of-war play. Move to Hex, Defend Hex and Air Patrol as attack orders work fine enough and sometimes even better. Especially Air Patrol reduces these annoying long waiting times for the AI calculation.
Should you play one day my US Leyte version, you should immediately notice the difference as I use Air Patrol there for existing and spawning air reinforcements; at least what I still remember. Was the last big revamp two years ago where I didn't dare to finally test-play through all as I was afraid that I could still discover a mistake or other thing to improve or fix while playing. This scenario is simply too huge.
Anyway, I think camouflage still works fine enough as long as you don't lead your hidden units right into the enemy. Good strategy is to use commandos far away from other allied ones and wait for the seekers to get busy with your regular line units. It is surely not that awesome for planes as these move longer distances often over concealed enemy units which can make them immediately visible again.
You could do a 2-Steps movement for all camo-units like me to help sneaking around. Rather this than fast 2-steps light tanks which rule I didn't copy to my mod. What a cut-supply line nightmare...

[GabeKnight]

You could do a 2-Steps movement for all camo-units like me to help sneaking around. Rather this than fast 2-steps light tanks which rule I didn't copy to my mod. What a cut-supply line nightmare...

Good idea. Could add the 2-step to the commander herself.

At first, I didn't like the 2-step light tanks change - but I love it by now. Yeah, a supply-cut-nightmare and the AI uses it very well, too.

[Horst]

What I have recently added is the Metal Detector spec for more factions:
usa,redusa,usarmy,marine_corps,britain,australia,canada,newzealand,poland,free_france,south_africa,india,germany,waffenss,italy,finland,ussr
These additonal nations should have access to a similar effective detectors to remove mines like the Brits and Commonwealth troops at about the same time in 7/1942. I have no idea about Japan though, as I found nothing about their mine removal methods.
Remove the word "Polish" at beginning of the spec description in english_9 (and other desired lingo text files), so it starts "Scientists have designed a device..." then everything looks fine.

More spec options are always good, especially if they are covered by history.
I know it's still hilarious with the mine-removal chaining, but there aren't so many large mine fields in scenarios anyway.
I don't think I can fix this in the code.

[Horst]

commander_23 = John M. Billings (https://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewto ... 14#p756414)
commander_72 = Unto Petäjä (umlauts! https://ilmarischepel.livejournal.com/6944.html)

The portrait of Wardaddy is not bad.
They added Lafayette G. Pool (119) in the last Allied DLC, who is/was the real War Daddy, but doesn't matter.

[GabeKnight]

commander_23 = John M. Billings (https://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewto ... 14#p756414)

...because I don't think it's him. The photo doesn't fit.

The portrait of Wardaddy is not bad.

It's been done by "terminator". Yeah, good job.
(And the movie's not bad either IMO.)

[Horst]

Yeah, it's not 100% accurate, but comes very close with possible own modifications. I'll keep my Billings who still flew above 90 years old. Died this year in March at age of 98.
I only this other old photo. The eyebrows don't match, but oh well...

John M. Billings.jpg (108.68 KiB) Viewed 2195 times

About Wardaddy: heh, a shameless rip from here: https://www.lifeminiatures.com/product- ... -commander

[terminator]

About Wardaddy: heh, a shameless rip from here: https://www.lifeminiatures.com/product- ... -commander

I never claimed to have drawn the portrait myself. Personally I really appreciate Brad Pitt’s films in general.

-rememorando-xxiii-el-verdadero-wardaddy-fury-L-pAXPGQ.jpeg (25.6 KiB) Viewed 2118 times