The "Gabe-Mod" (v8.4.4)

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Land transports & LOS(Line Of Sight)

Why the Komintern Tractor has a LOS=4 while the other Soviet trucks have a LOS=2

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PS: data in your Mod & in the official units.csv

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[Horst]

Why the Komintern Tractor has a LOS=4 while the other Soviet trucks have a LOS=2

The LVT_2(_Naval) transport also got LOS 2 on land and 3 on water. The DUKW(_Naval) got 2 on land and also on water. The LVT_A1/4 tanks got 4 on land and 3 on water, like the Type2_Ka-Mi.
As general LOS rule, it should look like this maybe:
Defenseless transports/tractors: 2 on land, 2 on water if amphibious
Armed transports: 4 on land, 3 on water if amphibious
However, LCVP and LCT are armed too but only got LOS 2 on water. What do do now?
I calculate the LOS range on water based on the units (rangefinder) height. I honestly would drop the LOS for amphibious land units also to 2 on water to get in line with the LCVP and LCT landing barges, as these are rather only suitable for low ocean waves with hardly visibility during a swim.

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The problem is that this kind of unit(Sd.Kfz. 250, see the screenshoot) is used in several scenarios of the Soviet campaign but with LOS=2 while the Sd.Kfz. 250 was also used as scout vehicle

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[Horst]

Yep, the German armoured personnel carriers also don't have the "typical" LOS 4, except their captured Universal Carrier.
To find such discrepancies among all vanilla infantry units for Gabe (at least until 7.1.8), I sorted all infantry in an Excel sheet according to type and date. It didn't really take that long to do. There aren't a lot of transports anyway, so it shouldn't be that much work without sorting for comparison to fix these as long as you follow the more or less typical vanilla stat-rules and stick to them.

[GabeKnight]

Yeah, I still have to recheck the OoB v8.6 changes and the whole recon/2-step business. But thanks for the heads up, Mr. T.

Conversion units: Nope, don't have those changes in my version of your mod. I get it why you did it of course, and it seems kinda reasonable, but I can not include something like this in my mod. Every misclick would lead to a permanent unit change and a savegame reload. But once you have a new version of your mod ready, Horst, I gladly give it a testdrive. Maybe I'll change my mind then.

LOS:
I haven't tackled some columns of the units file, like LOS, if it wasn't (at least to me) obviously flawed. No idea how the Devs came up with them stats and for a lack of own ideas, I didn't change anything there. But actually I'm glad you two pointed that out. Sure, I'll put it on my to-do-list and will equalize it in my mod according to your suggestions. Seems reasonable.

Nice, more work, Yay!

To find such discrepancies among all vanilla infantry units for Gabe (at least until 7.1.8 ), I sorted all infantry in an Excel sheet according to type and date.

And I owe you a HUGE thank you for that. So here it is:

THANK YOU !

Seriously, you've done all the groundwork and even marked the faulty stats. Once I began the work on the infantry units (and updated your table to v8.x), thanks to your sheet all that was left to do was to enter the corrections into the units file. Saved me a LOT of time.

[Horst]

Conversion: no, the conversion-unit is only a transition unit, e,g. Pz.3 -> StuG.3 Conversion tank -> StuG.3
There are no misclicks there. Either you upgrade your original tank to the StuG.3 Conversion tank or not. The only super-bummer I noticed now that the onlyUpgrade trait don't seem to work anymore. It still worked last year.. *facepalm*
Sigh, maybe I get it somehow to work later when I finished my units.csv with the new stuff.

Check out my slide-show "T-style" explanation!

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[GabeKnight]

Ships vs. Land: [...] As attempt to semi-fix this low-strength killing, you could create a root-function based on the vanilla small-ship attack value. Or simpler, you cut all inf-/veh-attack values at half at first and see how this works. These are typically always 6, 8, 10, or even 12.

Good call. I've tried it and it's better. Still, even at inf.att.=4 they kill 1HP/turn off of infantry in the open (even at very low strength... ).
I'll continue testing and observing.

Re Conversion: OK, thanks, I get it now. Quite the clever way actually. I didn't know myself about the onlyUpgrade trait, to be honest. So with this trait those conversion units woudn't show during the usual purchase screen, right?

[Horst]

Pick your poison:
Ship Inf-Atk X vs. Inf Nav-Def 13 with 0 efficiency:
Attack 1 = 10 attacks per HP
Attack 2 = 5 attacks per HP
Attack 3 = 2.5 attacks per HP
Attack 4 = ~1.5x attacks per HP
Attack 5 = ~1.25x attacks per HP

Can't do anything about the low-strength hammering, but you can see that inf-survivability increases vastly from 10 points difference on. It's typical for other unit types as well without precisionStrike trait or the land-arty.
Without touching the nav-def values of land units, I guess there is not much variety possible among naval unit types if someone wants less destruction. Towed guns with nav-def 7-8 will still be very vulnerable against a naval unit inf-attacking with only 1.

Conversion: I remember I've digged the onlyUpgrade trait from the code like motorised (recover 1 eff/turn). onlyUpgrade should make units only appear during the Upgrade-screen. If it doesn't work anymore, it shouldn't be such a pain to always show the conversion-unit in the Purchase-screen. This unit could also be named like "Pz.III-StuG.III Conversion" if it helps.

[GabeKnight]

Can't do anything about the low-strength hammering, but you can see that inf-survivability increases vastly from 10 points difference on. It's typical for other unit types as well without precisionStrike trait or the land-arty.
Without touching the nav-def values of land units, I guess there is not much variety possible among naval unit types if someone wants less destruction. Towed guns with nav-def 7-8 will still be very vulnerable against a naval unit inf-attacking with only 1.

I'm okay with some destruction, but with some scen there were like four DDs attacking my units and that meant that I could not leave any low strength units at the end of the turn or they would be definitely killed... not ideal. I'm gonna try some varieties of stats to see what's best.

Do you know if this "motorised" traits still works? That could come in handy, I suppose.

[Horst]

motorised: yep, still works!

weakFlanks for weak side-armor units, like Panther: nah, I've checked around other unit's nominal armor values and there are so many with about double-front compared to side armor, e.g. Pz.4G-J: 80f/30s compared to Panther 80f/40s (although front is sloped). I leave as it is. weakFlanks makes sense if the turret of a tank is very slow like that of the Pz.4J, KV-2, railway guns, etc.

Naval vs. Inf: vanilla emphasises damage how close a ship can move to the shore. I'd rather balance it according your mentioned appearance numbers on the battlefield and the firepower:
Destroyers: attack 2 is maybe suitable for destroyers if about 5 attacks eliminate one strength point related to their numbers
Cruisers: 3, as uncommon
Patrol Boats/Battleships: 4, as specifically close-range river boats and/or rare

[GabeKnight]

motorised: yep, still works!

Cool.
And I'm not fishing for ideas or something..... but what did you use that trait on?

Naval vs. Inf: vanilla emphasises damage how close a ship can move to the shore. I'd rather balance it according your mentioned appearance numbers on the battlefield and the firepower:
Destroyers: attack 2 is maybe suitable for destroyers if about 5 attacks eliminate one strength point related to their numbers
Cruisers: 3, as uncommon
Patrol Boats/Battleships: 4, as specifically close-range river boats and/or rare

Sounds good to me. Maybe I'll use slightly higher stats, but yeah.
Even if I don't like it, the ships must do some damage.

What do you think about adding a bit of shock as compensation? Even the smallest land arty usually have at least "10".

[GabeKnight]

One of the many fails when testing something new...

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Background tiles distribution:

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[kondi754]

One of the many fails when testing something new...


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Background tiles distribution:


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I like this

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New real grass texture, no one has mowed yet!

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The grass a little shorter:

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New Farmland Texture :

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New swamp texture (you have all the new textures on the screenshot):

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New mountain texture :

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PS: mountain = mountain + rocks

[Erik2]

I prefer the high grass as this terrain should add some additional cover to infantry and maybe recon type units.

[Horst]

As we can see above, there is still room for graphical improvement in this game.
The high-grass looks indeed pretty good for the Pacific and the mountains also merge much better with the surrounding green than originally.
The swamp's green is a bit too bright compared to the rest.
The soil's color change of farmland looks a bit too strange compared to the rest. All ground tiles should match somewhat with the underlaying soil color, but the grass color should still stay green and don't turn into this muddy brown "scorched earth" mess like in Gabe's example. Eh, sorry!

@Gabe
Nav vs Inf: the ships already do shock. Do you want to increase it even further? With so many ships usually around, the shock values are really already high enough.

Motorised: Elite troops, light/small infantry-types like commandos, partisans, kamikaze, scouts, and snipers, all land-based recon units, structures, trains, and super-heavy siege and rocket artillery.