Slitherine

@Defiant yes i prefer a maybe "strange" playstyle. i play it like "chess".
2-3 teams (of course depending on the mission) on the map- fully protected, with artillery/AT Anti-Air umbrella. and in latewar, i reassign heros nearly every mission...
For me more unit often means more "stress out for me" because they block the way sometimes, i normaly prepare enemy units to get steamrolled away, means bombing them, or artillery fire.

Most of my playthroughs i prefer using 2 or 3 heros, what means i need to get out the most of my units especially on a small team, and yes for me zeroslots its blocking an hero slots on my units in some cases.

But i play real weird difficulty settings, and of course i need to alter my playstlye with DvG, HeroicShowdown, UphillBattle i play diffrent than i play trenchsolog and DvG.


to answer the "how" questions. In most "slogging" scenarios where you have to run vs enemy defense nests u will face 2-3 infantry, 1 anti air, 1 anti-tank and 1 artillery piece. using a pioneer unit or heavy weapons team with light OS 18-19 depens onj the unit and time, you are able to take out all of them, if not, im using 1 artillery piece to weaken them or my airforce.
depending on my coreforce that infantry unit is guarded by provocateur or antitank/artillery support unit like a heavy tank that can get rid of a unit like anti-air or artillery and/or protect that infantry.
last playthrough i tried to use a distraction at-support recon to guard my infantry, works fine in most of the time, but not always (rip heavy weapons team hehe).

in late war, a free unit might a mean 10 or 15% coreslot bonus, but even with some experience, most units are quite useless (for me and my playstyle) if i cant protect them or if i dont have the proper heros to assign a special job for them or make them "useful".
again free tanks are nice, but with 2-3 assualt teams in most cases i dont need another tank. i mean, 8 tanks means up to 30+ steamrolls every round, there is no way i could "prepare" my enemies to play that out

again that is my way to play the game, but yes i dont hate ZeroSlots, but i would pick other heros and im still convinced that some hero combinations are way more problematic in terms of balance than just zeroslots. That one of the reasons i would love a way to "claim" the heros i want, at least sometimes, without rng. i most playthroughs i would exchange zeroslots vs somethibng else that seems more useful for me. but again, that depends on the year of the war, my playthrough, the coreforce i have build so far, the upcoming battles and so on.


best example (i dont use it) 21cm:
- overrun with steamroller
- consolidator or specail +1 range/ammo hero
- rapid-fire 1.5
- lethal

means 5-8 free kills every round, maybe with some softening with airforce if there is a big or resistent unit.

but 4 zero slot units can achive the same, even tigerII with steamroller will have problems to achieve the same kill-count on most maps due to spreaded enemies.


-----

but im noticing im capturing poor grondels opinion thread (sorry for this Thomas) - but its based around balancing somehow, so maybe at least a little useful for the mod.
That one of the games big "pro", you can play it so many ways, get make useless units so incredible usefull, you can pick so mane traits that alter your playstyle or the AI behaviour

Bee1976 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:28 am again that is my way to play the game, but yes i dont hate ZeroSlots, but i would pick other heros and im still convinced that some hero combinations are way more problematic in terms of balance than just zeroslots.

yes i agree that apples are not bananas....

Bee1976 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:28 am best example (i dont use it) 21cm:
- overrun with steamroller
- consolidator or specail +1 range/ammo hero
- rapid-fire 1.5
- lethal

this might sound rude, but i won´t try to balance such shit. Overrun should have been restricted to infantry/tank/self-propelled AT-guns from the beginning.

Bee1976 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:28 am but im noticing im capturing poor grondels opinion thread (sorry for this Thomas) - but its based around balancing somehow, so maybe at least a little useful for the mod.

sharing information is always welcome, even if u stray of topic.

sers,
Thomas

Grondel wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:43 am yes i agree that apples are not bananas....

Well, thats my point. If you got no heros or only a few, ZeroSlots is way more useful. And it would be apples vs bananas like you said.

But, if you have some heros around in a little pool after scw in AO or 1940 in GC-Mod) there are a lot of heros suddenly way more useful than ZeroSlots because you now can form combinations stronger than just a free unit.

best example:
killer team start with ZeroSlots, Ent+4, Butcher = Nice and ZeroSlots is godlike

5 missions later, you recieved Flagkiller, OverwhelmingAttack, Ferocoious Defense and Fast Rebase

Would you prefer another Zeroslots or maybe an Envelopment Hero ?

and suddenly is apples vs apples

Bee1976 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 12:11 pm

Grondel wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 11:43 am yes i agree that apples are not bananas....

Well, thats my point. If you got no heros or only a few, ZeroSlots is way more useful. And it would be apples vs bananas like you said.

But, if you have some heros around in a little pool after scw in AO or 1940 in GC-Mod) there are a lot of heros suddenly way more useful than ZeroSlots because you now can form combinations stronger than just a free unit.

best example:
killer team start with ZeroSlots, Ent+4, Butcher = Nice and ZeroSlots is godlike

5 missions later, you recieved Flagkiller, OverwhelmingAttack, Ferocoious Defense and Fast Rebase

Would you prefer another Zeroslots or maybe an Envelopment Hero ?

and suddenly is apples vs apples

Overwhelming attack, envelopement and scavenger are instant 1k prestige since currently i always play with ruthless so i don´t have to bother with the capture mechanic.
This is something i want to adress with this change,too. give prestige some meaning, beyond being a 6 digid number at the top of the screen.

The decision to have a possibile insta kill button in a game like this is still beyond me. same category as overrun/lethal on artillerie.

if i would bother myself with this i would add unittype-restrictions to certain heros. but i decided some time ago to just ignore this. ppl that play this way tend to move to another game pretty quick anyways.

sers,
Thomas

DefiantXYX wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 8:46 am

BarbarianHunter wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 10:31 pm I do the same thing. I prefer No Retaliation & First Strike heroes for air units (even fighters).

Of course, but the question is if you got other units who need these heroes more. Even in the lategame you should not have more than 2-3 heroes of that kind. If you ask me infantry relies stronger on the heroes, because if you damage your inf in your own turn you might lose them easily in the ai turn. Fighters or Bombers are most of the time safe, since the AI ignores them often or you can easily protect them.

I definitely understand what you're saying and it's a valid point. Early game a no retaliation on a pioneer unit helps a lot with entrenched units in close terrain. As the game progresses and more options become available due to new units or hero combos, I tend to move infantry from one close terrain tile to the next in order to establish zones of control rather than attack. I'll run 1 (or no) infantry depending on the situation (of course, the # would be 1 free Grenadier when the Manstein hero becomes available).

With having been said, I definitely understand what you mean as they can be quite the offensive force as well when softening up a 25 STR David & Goliath conscript for overun by armor would be one such example.

I expanded the script and its now very easy to set a "limit" for each hero/hero category.
By doing so the max number of any hero can be set.

one example:
If hero limit is set to 1 and u get a ATSupoort hero u will not get another ATSupport hero during this campaign unless u lose/sell the first one.
This number must be set for each hero category and can be set for evry single hero.

This script should get rid of the hero clustering that keeps happening(at least to me) when playing a campaign.

It is very easy to add unit.type restrictions to heros as well if needed. Easy example would be Infantry for FirstAid. Let me know if other heros should be restricted like this.

Please keep posting ur opinions on the category each hero should be in.
In the first post is the list that i will keep updated according to feedback here or in steam.

sers,
Thomas

Grondel wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2023 10:20 pm This script should get rid of the hero clustering that keeps happening(at least to me) when playing a campaign.

Does this skript work for the whole campaign or can you change it every year?
Setting any hero to 2, maybe even 1 for a year would be already nice to make it more balanced.

Grondel wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2023 10:20 pm I expanded the script and its now very easy to set a "limit" for each hero/hero category.

I like the idea a lot!

The heroes list is ok for me. i would mix them a little diffrent but that because i value some heros more than others, in the end it will be fun to try out and play the cards the gc will give me

one idea:
as mentioned i like the idea of the script considering hero clustering and avoid a bunch of OP heros in 1 campaign. but there is so much optential in this. in campaigns that got a lot of air combat, aircraft viable heros would be neat during this campaigns and makes sense from a narrative/roleplay perspective aka immersion.

if you ever think about creating a campaign outside "the real histroic war" (you know what i mean, a campaign completly apart from historic events) this might be a nice addition,

DefiantXYX wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 7:49 am

Grondel wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2023 10:20 pm This script should get rid of the hero clustering that keeps happening(at least to me) when playing a campaign.

Does this skript work for the whole campaign or can you change it every year?
Setting any hero to 2, maybe even 1 for a year would be already nice to make it more balanced.

it needs to be put into evry scenario, so in theory can be set individually for evry scenario.
one way would be to have it set like this:
1939: Limit set to 1 for all heros
1940: Limit set to 2 for all heros, except for ZeroSlots, Camouflage, IncMaxOverstrength, NoRetaliation which are set 1.
1941: Limit set to 2 for all heros, except for ZeroSlots, Camouflage, IncMaxOverstrength, NoRetaliation which are set 1.
1942: Limit set to 3 for all heros, except for ZeroSlots, Camouflage, IncMaxOverstrength, NoRetaliation which are set to 2.
1943: Limit set to 4 for all heros, except for ZeroSlots, Camouflage, IncMaxOverstrength, NoRetaliation which are set to 2.
1943NH: Limit set to 4 for all heros, except for ZeroSlots, Camouflage, IncMaxOverstrength, NoRetaliation which are set to 2 for the first half of the campaign and Limit set to 5 for all heros, except for ZeroSlots, Camouflage, IncMaxOverstrength, NoRetaliation which are set to 3

This is just an example to show how it works, but it will be something like this.

sers,
Thomas

Bee1976 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 11:07 am one idea:
as mentioned i like the idea of the script considering hero clustering and avoid a bunch of OP heros in 1 campaign. but there is so much optential in this. in campaigns that got a lot of air combat, aircraft viable heros would be neat during this campaigns and makes sense from a narrative/roleplay perspective aka immersion.

The "special" heros u gain with commendation points are untouched and remain in place. If u feel the lack of a certain hero type, please let me know and we discuss what can be done about that.
Easy exmaple for this. Ppl kept asking for a Strategic Bomber hero. In the rework of the 1939 campaign during Bydgoszc this one will show up in the future:

Any ideas for things like that are always welcome and will be considered.

Bee1976 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 11:07 am if you ever think about creating a campaign outside "the real histroic war" (you know what i mean, a campaign completly apart from historic events) this might be a nice addition,

I have a lot in mind what could be done with this engine, sadly i suffer the same limitations in time as evry human being
of 168h per week.
I´ll think about stuff like that when i am finished with the PC1 remake mod, which surely will take some more years.

sers,
Thomas

Grondel wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 11:40 am If u feel the lack of a certain hero type, please let me know

That was no complaint
Im not really sure how to manage a system that rewards "normal" heros per missions played. My idea was, that you have a chance to recieve heros for stuff you had done so far in the campaign(s) - means if you have killed a lot of infatry so far, butcher sounds like a hero that would fit somehow.
If your artillery killed some units, maybe lethal ?
If you keep loosing a lot of tanks and have to repair often, maybe fieldrepairs. but im pretty sure the engine wont offer that much felxibility. as mentioned no complain or request. just an idea


Considering heros (but i have to admit, that i havent played the game for a long time, so im not sure if they are in the mod already):
i like using units that are quite unusual, especially in lategame, like bridge engineers, cavalry (!), Kradschützen.

The strategic bomber hero sounds good

Will he replace Rudel who was strat bomber hero in 39 aswell, or will we have two of those badbois ?

Bee1976 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 2:56 pm That was no complaint
Im not really sure how to manage a system that rewards "normal" heros per missions played. My idea was, that you have a chance to recieve heros for stuff you had done so far in the campaign(s) - means if you have killed a lot of infatry so far, butcher sounds like a hero that would fit somehow.
If your artillery killed some units, maybe lethal ?
If you keep loosing a lot of tanks and have to repair often, maybe fieldrepairs. but im pretty sure the engine wont offer that much felxibility. as mentioned no complain or request. just an idea

This can be done, but needs a little more planning ahead, since u need to keep track of certain kills.
Def something i´ll think about, when i get bored or start a new campaign series.

Bee1976 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 2:56 pm Considering heros (but i have to admit, that i havent played the game for a long time, so im not sure if they are in the mod already):
i like using units that are quite unusual, especially in lategame, like bridge engineers, cavalry (!), Kradschützen.

Sadly restricting heros to certain units is not possible atm afaik.

Bee1976 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 2:56 pm The strategic bomber hero sounds good
Will he replace Rudel who was strat bomber hero in 39 aswell, or will we have two of those badbois ?

They will both be around together some time in 39, but Rudel leaves the Core early 40 to go back to flight school.

sers,
Thomas

Very cool. When all this comes together, a new campaign will almost feel like a new game

Sequester Grundleplith, MD wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 5:09 pm Very cool. When all this comes together, a new campaign will almost feel like a new game

That´s exactly the plan.

The most important thing about it, it will hold surprises -->>>FOR ME<<<--

Most annoying thing about modding is that u never get to play what u created without any foreknowledge. U will always know what u were thinking when u created it and therefor always play it the way it was ment to be played.
That´s what makes feedback of any kind so valuable.

sers,
Thomas

Grondel wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 11:26 am it needs to be put into evry scenario, so in theory can be set individually for evry scenario.
one way would be to have it set like this:
1939: Limit set to 1 for all heros
1940: Limit set to 2 for all heros, except for ZeroSlots, Camouflage, IncMaxOverstrength, NoRetaliation which are set 1.
[...]
This is just an example to show how it works, but it will be something like this.

Sounds like a lot of work. How about removing all the better heroes from the random pool and players always get the chance in a new campaign to create their own hero, like Rudel in the AO DLCs.
You can chose the class, maybe 1-2 traits + 1 fixed trait, like famous.

Bee1976 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 2:56 pm
Im not really sure how to manage a system that rewards "normal" heros per missions played. My idea was, that you have a chance to recieve heros for stuff you had done so far in the campaign(s)

Great idea. That reminds me off Panzergeneral 3D. Afair you get heroes/commanders in this game, if one of your units is performing extremly good in a scenario. Like reaching 2000 exp. or something like that. Would be a nice thing to work for your heroes yourself.

i addded a raw version of the script to the preludes campaign that works like this:
new Random heros:(currently in Preludes for testing, please try to break the script and let me know how u did it)
at the start of a scenario, where u don´t get to buy a special hero with commendation points, u get to choose a random officer out of 3 categories. A weak one for 1.000 prestige, a mediocre one for 3.000 prestige or an outstanding one for 5.000 prestige. This replaces the random hero generated at the start of a scenario.
here are the hero-trais sorted by categorie:
weak:
CombatLuck,Distraction,DoubleMassAttack,ExpertSupport,FastLearner,FastRetreat,FerociousDefense,FierceFighter,FirstAid,LearnsFromMistakes,NoRetreat,NoSurrender,Resilient,
RiverAssault,SixthSense,SkilledRecon,SkilledSupport,SuperiorManeuver,TenaciousDefender,ThoroughPreparation,Unyielding,EntKiller3,CounterBattery,AimingAssistance,AggressiveCounterattack,Avenger,Exterminator,FearsomeReputation,FlagKiller
mediocre:
FieldRepairs,AimedShot,Butcher,CityFighter,CripplingBlow,DoubleSupport,Evasive,ExpertRecon,FastRebase,Liberator,Leadership,LowProfile,Readiness,Famous,TankKiller,ReducedSlots,EntKiller4,Survivor,DoubleMove,IgnoresZOC,PhasedMovement
strong:
ArtySupport,ATSupport,Camouflage,DoubleAttack,Envelopment,FastDeployment,HitAndRun,IgnoresEntrenchment,IncMaxOverstrength,LethalAttack,LightningAttack,MachineGun,Overrun,Provocator,Legendary,ShockTactics,StrikesFirst,Vigilant,ZeroSlots,NoRetaliation,OverwhelmingAttack,PreciseOptics,Scavenger

Each trait has a limit per campaign to reduce unwanted hero clustering due to unlucky randomness. Currently this limit is set to roughly 1 per year of the war.
This should result in a wider spread hero variety.

Some heros have further restrictions:
ZeroSlots, Camouflage, IncMaxOverstrength and NoRetaliation are currently restricted to 1 per 2 years. This can be bypassed with the General trait "Killer-Team".

FastDeployment, FastRebase, ExpertRecon, CounterBattery and FirstAid are restricted to the apropriate unit.types to reduce player puzzlement.

Once all flaws have been found and solved this will be added to the whole mod.

thx for all the feedback and input.

sers,
Thomas

DefiantXYX wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 6:03 am Sounds like a lot of work. How about removing all the better heroes from the random pool and players always get the chance in a new campaign to create their own hero, like Rudel in the AO DLCs.
You can chose the class, maybe 1-2 traits + 1 fixed trait, like famous.

the rudel script is in the mod, too. it can easily be adapted to create other heros. i´ll think about having more heros that can be adjusted to the players liking. Maybe have 1 for each unit type in the order they become important in the war.
Oleh Dir would be a good candidate for Infantry in 39 eq.
Maybe we can expand on this idea. if u have more input u would like to share, ur welcome to do so.

DefiantXYX wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 6:03 am Great idea. That reminds me off Panzergeneral 3D. Afair you get heroes/commanders in this game, if one of your units is performing extremly good in a scenario. Like reaching 2000 exp. or something like that. Would be a nice thing to work for your heroes yourself.

Besides being a lot of scripting work, without me mastering LUA-libraries in PC2 i doubt this would fit into the scenario LUAs. Other than that i like the idea as well, but it needs to be implemented deeper than i can dig atm.

sers,
Thomas

Wait, is Aimed Shot a working trait? I don't think it has ever made any appearance.

VirgilInTheSKY wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 12:53 pm Wait, is Aimed Shot a working trait? I don't think it has ever made any appearance.

nope that one snug in and remaind unnoticed until now.
since it will only produce a hero without a trait i´ll remove it.

sers,
Thomas

I checked the Preludes & it seems to work as intended. I'm not sure why I thought I'd be able to choose the specific hero but now understand more fully.

I see you've placed DoubleSupport in the mediocre category. I think of this as weak at best. The reasons are twofold:
-Ammunition constraints (I'd rather do something to all opponents than double to 2 or 3 and then nothing to the rest).
-The AI often will not attack units being protected by a unit with the DoubleSupport hero meaning my unit will not fire, will not gain any experience, and perhaps most importantly the AI's units will not be partially damaged and easy to "mop up" via counter-attack on my turn. <--- This is at least the impression I have (as to whether the AI factors in the second shot is not 100% factually known).