Slitherine

It's been months, and I haven't seen anything like there is at battlefront for SC2. What gives?

There's a significant mod in the works that was primarily developed by Staffenberg & Happycat and which I've been involved with since early June. I believe this mod adds to the historical flavor of an already great game. I want to stress that I feel that the vanilla CEaW game is a GREAT game and it's fun to play; but, I feel that this mod adds significantly to the richness and historical feel of CEaW.

This mod includes land hexes in Greenland and the Azores that allow the US to rebase strategic and tactical bomber wings via air versus transport. Also, these hexes (especially the Greenland one's) allow allied strategic and tactical bombers to provide protection to convoys against u-boat attacks. Also, the Murmansk convoy "exit hex" has been moved east and now u-boats, surface fleets and air based in Norway can play a more significant and historical impact on interdiction of this convoy.

This mod places more importance on North Africa and an Operation Torch & Husky operations. In fact I just completed a game as the allies against Staffenberg and I decided on a strategy to get to Europe via Portugal and Spain and not through the Med. Bad decision on my part. The delay that I incurred to go this way instead of via Operation Torch & Husky allowed Staffenberg to rout the Russians by October 1943.

98% of this mod is accomplished through data, scenario and map file changes and is handled automatically by the CEaW game engine. The other 2% is through a set of house rules that contain mechanics that are implemented by the players in good faith. To me these "manual" mechanics add significantly to the CEaW gaming experience and are common sense, easy to learn and easy to implement in CEaW. They make u-boats more of a force against allied convoys (historical) and make Malta an impact on Axis supply to North Africa (also historical).

We've just started another round of playtesting to test out some refinements to starting Allied manpower levels and to armor tech levels.

That sounds very interesting to me. We could have those files for download if the mod proofs good.
Just remember to consider 1.07 patch changes into your mod so that it keep s the balance.

The changes for 1.07 is

- slightly cheaper subs and strat bombers, in order to provide more variety of strategies
- the War effort % goes up more when countries enter war which works as a deterrent for moving everything east and wiping out Russia as the only good strategy.

Just so you consider those changes into your mod, thanks again

Sounds promising. One thing that's interesting me with the new Patton Drives East add-on for SC2 is the 1938 start date, which gives you, the Axis commander, a lot to consider with Sudetenland and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, not to mention whether Poland gets invaded at all.

Note to Moderators:

I can't help but think that a major issue with community involvement might just be the fact that the "Notify me when a reply is posted" doesn't work. I've never received a notification on a post. You'd be surprised how often people forget they posted something. Please, turn this feature on.

gravyface wrote:Note to Moderators:

I can't help but think that a major issue with community involvement might just be the fact that the "Notify me when a reply is posted" doesn't work. I've never received a notification on a post. You'd be surprised how often people forget they posted something. Please, turn this feature on.

This feature works for me. Are you sure YOU have the feature turned on? It is one of the user controlled selections in your user profile.

firepowerjohan wrote:That sounds very interesting to me. We could have those files for download if the mod proofs good.
Just remember to consider 1.07 patch changes into your mod so that it keep s the balance.

The changes for 1.07 is

- slightly cheaper subs and strat bombers, in order to provide more variety of strategies
- the War effort % goes up more when countries enter war which works as a deterrent for moving everything east and wiping out Russia as the only good strategy.

Just so you consider those changes into your mod, thanks again

Stauffenberg is away for a couple of days, and since he is more familiar with all of the myriad changes made (and was in fact the originator of the mod), we should probably leave this to him to answer.

I will email you our changes log, so you get some idea of what has been done Pour yourself a coffee and get a comfortable seat before you start reading it!

The notify feature works but it may be overriden if you say receive no mail from us in your profile and it may be stopped by your spam filter.

Happycat wrote:

firepowerjohan wrote:That sounds very interesting to me. We could have those files for download if the mod proofs good.
Just remember to consider 1.07 patch changes into your mod so that it keep s the balance.

The changes for 1.07 is

- slightly cheaper subs and strat bombers, in order to provide more variety of strategies
- the War effort % goes up more when countries enter war which works as a deterrent for moving everything east and wiping out Russia as the only good strategy.

Just so you consider those changes into your mod, thanks again

Stauffenberg is away for a couple of days, and since he is more familiar with all of the myriad changes made (and was in fact the originator of the mod), we should probably leave this to him to answer.

I will email you our changes log, so you get some idea of what has been done Pour yourself a coffee and get a comfortable seat before you start reading it!

We can easily change the sub and strat bomber costs, just as we in our last playtest try with garrison cost of 15 instead of 20. It takes me 10 seconds to alter the values from v1.07 into our mod.

What I need is a complete list of changes, especially changes to the general.txt, units.txt and technology.txt. I also need to know if there are any changes to units setup (both specific units, but also country changes like starting tech levels, manpower levels etc.) so I can update that in the 1939.scn file.

It would also be nice to know about any programmed changes in v1.07 that is no part of any moddable file. These are in fact the most important changes of them all because we need to retest our mod to see the consequences of these changes.

I think we need a few iterations to fine tune changed values. E. g. we noticed that from 1943 and beyond the German armor units were almost impregnable to air attack. You could send 5 bombers against a tank and only inflict 1-2 step losses. We made significant changes to tac bombers giving them tech increases to their antitank value at different levesl. But maybe we notice we've overdone it so each tac bomber will inflict 2-3 steps upon tanks. It's nice to have tank busters, but too much is as bad as too little. I think a good thing would be if each tac bomber inflict about 1 step per armor unit (sometimes 2 or 3 and sometimes 0). This way you can get the efficiency down and it's possible to finish off the tank with infantry or friendly armor.

So fine adjusting the values for different units is quite difficult. E. g. garrisons almost don't get any tech advances at all (only antitank 2 times). At the price of 20 compared to 35 for corps units it means nobody builds any garrisons after France is defeated. So by setting a value of 15 we might see more garrisons built later in the war as well. But 15 may end up being too cheap and we might see a blob effect with Russia building hordes of garrison that can stop Germany behind Dnepr / Dvina in 1941. So we need to test carefully the consequences of every change we make.

We also have to distinguish between "imbalances" caused by gaming strategy and imbalances caused by the mod being made in a certain way. E. g. if the Americans are left idle for most of 1942 then it's maybe not a mod imbalance if Russia is knocked out of the war in 1943, like Rkr1958 mentioned. E. g. I played the same mod against him and captured Berlin in March 1944 when I was the Axis. My Russians launched a major offensive in 1943 and threw him out of Russia. I invaded Algeria early in 1942 and landed in Sardinia and Sicily late 1942.

But the imbalance you mentioned about tanks being impregnable to air attacks from 1943 and beyond is not a playing style imbalance. It's a mod imbalance that can only be fixed by lowering the tank survivability or increasing the air unit antitank values. I chose the latter and then we will see how it works. The bombers get +1 antitank per combat support tech level so it will take awhile to get good antitank values. My major concern about this change is that air techs seem to arrive faster than armor techs. So you might end up with tac bombers with tech 5 combat support while only having armor with tech 3 armor. This way the tac bombers might be too strong vs the armor. If that's the fact then we need to change the tac bomber advantages so most of them come at the higher tech levels (like 5 or 6). I calculated that armor units at tech 6 armor and with max XP will have a survivability of 14. No air units have any chance of damaging such armor units without a significant antitank value. Tac bombers with level 6 in combat support will have an antitank value of 6 (in the mod) and that means the effective survivability of the armor is 8. That is still high, but you may inflict damage upon in. Inexperienced armor units have max effective survivability of 6. Then the bombers might be like tank busters.

So modding a game is definitely not an easy task. It's hard to fine tune the values so you don't get unwanted results. We have to play for quite awhile until we see the effects I described (we need to get to 1943-1944 until they become important).

I think it's a good idea to send our files to Firepowerjohan. Also remember to send the map changes file we made, e. g. those files I made to take away the mistaken river and lake between Volga and Don (going from Stalingrad and upwards). The "river" is not implemented in the map file so it's only visible on the map. Rkr1958 defended against this river when I launched an offensive against him and I crushed him in this area because he didn't have the protection he believed. E. g. he put no unit in the lake hex because it's not a lake in the map file. So it was a hole in his front line I could exploit. These map files I updated remove the fake lake and river.

E. g. the file with screenshots of the map would be interesting for him to see. We have to update it with the latest changes, but it doesn't matter if we send the ones we have just now. There aren't that many changes.

Happycat wrote:

gravyface wrote:Note to Moderators:

I can't help but think that a major issue with community involvement might just be the fact that the "Notify me when a reply is posted" doesn't work. I've never received a notification on a post. You'd be surprised how often people forget they posted something. Please, turn this feature on.

This feature works for me. Are you sure YOU have the feature turned on? It is one of the user controlled selections in your user profile.

Yup. I have "Always notify me of replies: Sends an e-mail when someone replies to a topic you have posted in. This can be changed whenever you post." checked off in my profile. Also have it in the message options below. Could be in the spam filter though. Slitherine sounds kinda... dirty.

gravyface wrote:

Happycat wrote:

gravyface wrote: Could be in the spam filter though. Slitherine sounds kinda... dirty.

Hmm. Nothing in my spam filter (using gmail). Let me disable/enable it again and see if it works.

gravyface wrote:Hmm. Nothing in my spam filter (using gmail). Let me disable/enable it again and see if it works.

The feature definitely is working for me, because I just received email notification now (twice) when you added your posts

Stauffenberg wrote:E. g. the file with screenshots of the map would be interesting for him to see. We have to update it with the latest changes, but it doesn't matter if we send the ones we have just now. There aren't that many changes.

Yup, works. Was in my spam filter.

rkr1958 wrote:There's a significant mod in the works that was primarily developed by Staffenberg & Happycat and which I've been involved with since early June.

Yah, but two modders on one project a community doesn't really make. CEAW doesn't seem to have as much of a user base as some of the other games. I like it over HOI but it needs a bit of time to mature I think. I'd have grabbed CNAW but I don't much care for the Napoleonic Era.

I may buy CNAW anyway if it shows up for the mac but for goodness sake, don't give it to Freeverse. CEAW on the mac is practically abandonware.

I think the issue is the game editor: it's esoteric and clumsy and primitive. Until it's in the same league as something like Strategic Command 2's game editor, you're not going to see nearly as many mods.

nigel_ht wrote:

rkr1958 wrote:There's a significant mod in the works that was primarily developed by Staffenberg & Happycat and which I've been involved with since early June.

Yah, but two modders on one project a community doesn't really make.

Jump in. Depending or whether you count me or not that's a 25 to 33% increase!

What is the point of having a lot of mods?

For 2 players to play they have to have compatible versions of the game!

More mods means more chance of incompatability.

Games with a lot of mods have fewer H2H players.
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joe98 wrote:What is the point of having a lot of mods?

For 2 players to play they have to have compatible versions of the game!

More mods means more chance of incompatability.

Games with a lot of mods have fewer H2H players.
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Hasn't been a problem for me so far. I am playing two PBEM's of CEAW (Mod) and that's about all I can manage, 'cuz I'm also playing THREE PBEM's of CNAW and another one of SC2. Plus trying to play King's Bounty-Legend

My point is that there are only so many hours in the day, so if you have two other guys you play with regularly, making sure you're all on the same mod should not be hard. The hard part is remembering to check in with the real world occasionally.

joe98 wrote:What is the point of having a lot of mods?

For 2 players to play they have to have compatible versions of the game!

More mods means more chance of incompatability.

Games with a lot of mods have fewer H2H players.
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Wow, where did you pull this out of? Mods = replay value. If done correctly, installing a mod is as simple as extracting files into a directory; clearly you're not playing the same games I've been playing for the last 10 years.