Slitherine

In v1.2 the Italians will get a major overhaul: apart from the late war camouflaged tanks they also get four new towed guns and some tractors and SP guns. The Italians will have more, but less effective artillery units.

The Italian guns in the vanilla game are not the most numerous or the most important ones: the 75mm 75/18 was produced in limited numbers and in 1940 there were only 114 of these light mountain guns, and the 149mm 149/19 was also produced in relatively small numbers with only 147 produced by 1942 (also its vanilla icon looks more like another gun, the earlier 149/13). Only the 105mm 105/28 (French Schneider model 1913) was available in large numbers (around 1,000) at the start of WWII. So I tried to create some of those more numerous guns, most dating back to WWI or even earlier, and their tractors in vanilla style. Most of these guns were designed with horse drawn transport in mind and thus they were not suitable for high speed traction due to their stuctural weakness and spoked wheels.





65mm 65/17: a light mountain gun designed in 1913, around 1,000 available in 1940

75mm 75/27 modello 11: one of the most numerous Italian guns, with more than 1,400 available in 1940. Also known as the 'Deport' gun, an unusual design with a split trail, designed in 1911.

100mm 100/17: an Austro-Hungarian 10 cm field howitzer, large numbers of these were captured at the end of WWI and put to good use by the Italians as it was superior to their own 100 mm howitzer. Nearly 2,000 were still available in 1940.

Autocannone 100/17: in an effort to provide more mobility to their artillery the Italians created a makeshift self-propelled gun by placing a 100/17 howitzer on the trailer of a Lancia heavy truck. These were used with some success in North Africa.

149mm 149/13: another Austro-Hungarian howitzer captured at the end of WWI, about 500 were available in 1940. Just like the other Austro-Hungrian Skoda howitzer it was an excellent weapon in WWI, but in WWII it was hampered by its short range. The vanilla icon of the 149/19 resembles this howitzer so I retouched it and changed it to this type.

149mm 149/19: a sound design, it was intended to replace those aging WWI guns, and more than a thousand were ordered, but the Italian economy was just unable to produce it in adequate numbers. By 1943 only 230 examples had been completed.

Most of these guns were moved by slow Pavesi (max speed 18 km/h), Breda or other wheeled tractors which seriously limited their mobility, and it was a big problem in North Africa. However, most being old designs, they were not suitable to be moved by faster tractors. Another ad hoc, but successful design, the 90/53 multipurpose AA/AT gun was also installed on the trailer of the Lancia truck creating the Lancia da 90/53 Autocannone.

Note that the Lancia 3Ro truck icon is based on guille's original icon.

Nice icon set, Mac!

So the Italians can go toe to toe with the Brits now?

Interesting how so much Italian weaponry was basically WWI surplus. Especially in light of all the pre-war bravado coming from Il Duce. Forget about speaking softly and carrying a big stick. Much better to talk loud and bring a knife to a gun fight.

Oh well, nice to see the new units. Despite their age, it's still very interesting to try and succeed despite the limitations, so thanks for helping flesh them out.

Hello McGuba,

very nice mod concept! Fresh ideas and unit compilation! The flag style is also very cool!

Good to see, that also with vanilla style units we can get new and interesting game themes....

The 75/27 has two heads! Or I just drunk too much?
You could insert Guille's nice 75/34 AA/AT icon too - I will send it with the next mail, so you don't have to search for it.
Hopefully the 3 range 149mm will still available for the same price (which is anyway high, because there is no upgrade in family option). Although, for me it is no more interesting......

I must announce the I have finished the mod!
OK, I already did it some days earlier but this time with 1.1 and with TOTAL VICTORY (on Rommel, of course)!
So, when I relaxed some bits from these hard battles, you can await a strategic guide and a new AAR with visuals from me.
By the way, it would make sense to us all to write PM's to the developers (Kerensky or Rudankort?) to make the number of the AI zones higher - if technically it is easy to do.

LandMarine 47 wrote:
So the Italians can go toe to toe with the Brits now?

Not really, but they can enter the fight with more style at least.

iceFlame wrote:
Interesting how so much Italian weaponry was basically WWI surplus.

I think it was mainly because they had just so many captured plus own WWI artillery in stock that they did not really feel the need to develop and produce new types between the two wars. On the contrary, the Versailles treaty limited the maximum number of artillery guns of Germany so they had to develop new and more effective types to get the best out of that limited number. Sometimes victory makes you lazy and overconfident.

asuser wrote:
very nice mod concept! Fresh ideas and unit compilation! The flag style is also very cool!

Thanks, and welcome! By the way the new flags were contributed by RumpNissen, so we have to thank to him. For some reason he seems to think that his contribution to PzC modding is very limited, which is not true, of course.

And, you made a big contribution as well, as some of your excellent ship icons find their way to this mod, boosting the Battle of Atlantic part of it. So, many thanks to you, too.

Uhu wrote:
The 75/27 has two heads! Or I just drunk too much?

Haha, never drink before playing this mod, or else you might find the Soviet Steamrolller reaching Berlin way too early!

But, in this case perhaps it was not you who had one too many drinks, but the Italian designer of this rather unique looking piece of artillery:

http://moderndrawings.jexiste.be/WW1Dra ... -27_11.htm

Hopefully the 3 range 149mm will still available for the same price (which is anyway high, because there is no upgrade in family option).

Of course, but there will be none of these at the start, the player has to upgrade to it. Historically this gun was produced in limited numbers due to the limited industrial capacity of Italy and the fact that the airforce and the navy was given priority over the land forces.

Although, for me it is no more interesting......

Sorry to hear it, though.

OK, I already did it some days earlier but this time with 1.1 and with TOTAL VICTORY (on Rommel, of course)!

Maybe it explains why... Congratulations, again, for your success! I think you are the most enthusiastic player of this mod to date, so well done!

By the way, it would make sense to us all to write PM's to the developers (Kerensky or Rudankort?) to make the number of the AI zones higher - if technically it is easy to do.

Sure, I am planning to do something like that soon. Having more AI zones would definitely improve the base game.

McGuba wrote: Haha, never drink before playing this mod, or else you might find the Soviet Steamrolller reaching Berlin way too early!

No way, I was just kidding: you shall play this mod only, if you can totally focus, because there are so many units, so many fronts, so many tasks to take care that other way, you quickly loose focus and that means in longer time interval, you loose the game. Still, several times, I forget about that damn partisans, especially in Norway, who therefore even managed to destroy a fort!

McGuba wrote: But, in this case perhaps it was not you who had one too many drinks, but the Italian designer of this rather unique looking piece of artillery:
http://moderndrawings.jexiste.be/WW1Dra ... -27_11.htm

I'm happy that no guns were designed with seven heads, just with two.

McGuba wrote: Of course, but there will be none of these at the start, the player has to upgrade to it. Historically this gun was produced in limited numbers due to the limited industrial capacity of Italy and the fact that the airforce and the navy was given priority over the land forces.

That's okay, still it is good if they will available from the beginning.

By the way McGuba... Are those new icons you show in the screen capture above going to be included in a future update of the mod? I could not find them in the Units folder of the v1.1 version download... Thank you!

McGuba wrote:I think it was mainly because they had just so many captured plus own WWI artillery in stock that they did not really feel the need to develop and produce new types between the two wars. On the contrary, the Versailles treaty limited the maximum number of artillery guns of Germany so they had to develop new and more effective types to get the best out of that limited number. Sometimes victory makes you lazy and overconfident.

Good point. As they say, necessity is often the mother of invention, and conditions were certainly such that Germany was forced to get creative. Meanwhile Italy more or less stood still in a time warp seemingly oblivious to the advances being made elsewhere. That being said, they certainly weren't alone in that camp as the Allied powers were also lagging behind (especially when it came to the implementation of armor doctrine).

Can be played as Ally?

Akkula wrote:Can be played as Ally?

No, just as the Axis Powers

Ok. Did you know if there´s some campaign or big scenario (like this one) out there to play as soviet?. I cannot wait to Soviet Corps

EDIT: The game crahses after the scenario is loaded (any of them) . I followed all the installation steps so I dont know what could it be. Some suggestion?

guille1434 wrote:
By the way McGuba... Are those new icons you show in the screen capture above going to be included in a future update of the mod? I could not find them in the Units folder of the v1.1 version download... Thank you!

Yes, those will come with the next update - I still want to retouch them a bit by adding the Italian insignia and such. Also I have to rearrange the attack animation offsets.

iceFlame wrote:
That being said, they certainly weren't alone in that camp as the Allied powers were also lagging behind (especially when it came to the implementation of armor doctrine).

And that delay allowed the Germans to take over much of Europe before the Allies had managed to catch up with them...

Akkula wrote:
Can be played as Ally?

It can be played as the Allies in scenario mode, but it is not supported at the moment. E.g. playing as the Allies you would not get any in-game messages and winning the scenario would be much easier as the Allies get considerably more reinforcements - like historically.

Ok. Did you know if there´s some campaign or big scenario (like this one) out there to play as soviet?. I cannot wait to Soviet Corps

You can try to play it from the Soviet (Allied) side, but in that case you would probably win the war earlier, maybe as early as in 1942-43. I might make a conversion like this later, I like this idea - the scenario would need some rebalancing, though, to make it more challenging.

EDIT: The game crahses after the scenario is loaded (any of them) . I followed all the installation steps so I dont know what could it be. Some suggestion?

I can only think that you are using a Panzer Corps version earlier than v1.22. In that case I strongly suggest updating the base game to v1.22 otherwise the scenarios of this mod would not run.

MacGuba: Now that you mention... I have v1.21 of the game... would that give me problems if I want to play the mod? I understant that v1.22 patch is only for uses of Mac computers (or another platform different from Windows PC). Besides, I could not find where to download the v1.22 patch in the slitherine web... Is it Ok to stick to v1.21 of the gfame? Thanks!

PS: Waiting for the new units and mod upgrade!

Hm... this is something I do not know for sure. You can try to run it on v1.21 it may or may not work. With the previous versions if someone saved a map in the editor with e.g. v1.20, than this particular scenario required v1.20 or later to run properly. Otherwise a blank screen was loaded if I am right. Now, since I have been using v1.22 for a while and I saved the maps with this I suspect one need to have this version at least to load the scenarios properly.


For Panzer Corps v1.22 try here:

http://slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=121&t=47244

As for the next update of this mod I should release it in 1-2 days if all goes well.

Hi,

I have the 1.0 download file in my folder but haven't extracted yet. I tried to search to look for the 1.1 patch or the complete download, what should I do?

Hi,

Sorry, I did not make patch, so you have to download the whole v1.1 mod

Or wait one more day for v1.2 which would fix a number or issues of the previous version.

McGuba wrote:

Akkula wrote:
Can be played as Ally?

It can be played as the Allies in scenario mode, but it is not supported at the moment. E.g. playing as the Allies you would not get any in-game messages and winning the scenario would be much easier as the Allies get considerably more reinforcements - like historically.

Ok. Did you know if there´s some campaign or big scenario (like this one) out there to play as soviet?. I cannot wait to Soviet Corps

You can try to play it from the Soviet (Allied) side, but in that case you would probably win the war earlier, maybe as early as in 1942-43. I might make a conversion like this later, I like this idea - the scenario would need some rebalancing, though, to make it more challenging.

EDIT: The game crahses after the scenario is loaded (any of them) . I followed all the installation steps so I dont know what could it be. Some suggestion?

I can only think that you are using a Panzer Corps version earlier than v1.22. In that case I strongly suggest updating the base game to v1.22 otherwise the scenarios of this mod would not run.

I am running 1.23 (Steam), so the game is up to date. Maybe a glitch only for me hardware configuration?

PS: I like you have in consideration the chance to make the ally version of this great map.