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1870s-1900 mod total conversion proposal - 7/3/2016 9:27:59 PM   
alomoes

 

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I've wanted to do something like this for a while. I have limited modding skills, but I already have a general outline of what I want to do.

First order of business is making infantry stronger on the offensive than they are on defense. I want to make it possible to make a fast maneuver war. The idea is that earlier on, warfare was not static and this represents the push at the beginning of the First World War. It will become necessary to entrench to keep the enemy from beating you back. To do this, infantry units should have units of sappers or company engineers to keep the front entrenched. It should be possible for someone to push through and get close to the enemy capital if they keep the momentum up. This is to simulate the push in the beginning of World War 1, where the Germans did get within one mile of Paris in 1914.

Second order of business is adding in new units, such as grenadiers, storm troopers, snipers, armored infantry and dividing up the kinds of artillery.

Basic infantry should be split between professional, which gets slightly better experience, and conscripts, which are the basic infantry.

Grenadiers and storm troopers will have a better attack than defense, as they are best used in assaults, but cannot really take and hold. Grenadiers will be better in defense than storm troopers, but storm troopers will be better at attack than grenadiers. I am considering on splitting storm troopers between rifles and smgs, with the SMGs having more attacks and less accuracy. These assault troops will have less entrenchment value, and thus be worse at defense.

Armored infantry will have more health, but otherwise be the same. They will weigh more, but have less ap, and cost more supply.

Snipers will have high accuracy, but lower rate of fire, and they'd fire from the back.

Light infantry will have better accuracy, less rate of fire, and less hit points. These are meant to represent zouaves and such.

Also, this being the 1870s, there will be transition from powder to smokeless guns. Powder infantry will not entrench as fast and will have less accuracy, so as to simulate the lack of sight through smoke.

Latter infantry will become better at entrenching, getting better entrenching equipment.

Also, I am debating the simulation of guns that can fire multiple shots per round, having rifle infantry that shoots five shots in a round, and smgs that fire 30 times in a round. This would have to be balanced.

Third is rebalancing artillery

The idea with artillery is that initially, larger guns will be inaccurate, and field guns at the front will be better at lowering enemy readiness and possibly better at defense with shrapnel being king. I'm not sure if I want this artillery to fight from the back initially or fight at the front line. I'll start field guns at the front, being direct fire.

Artillery will be split between light, medium, heavy, and super heavy.

There will be several categories of artillery. Field artillery will fight on or one tile behind the front, being direct fire, and they will have a decent defense with shrapnel shot. These should be used early in the war to lower the readiness of infantry before an attack. They will not damage entrenchment a whole lot.

Mortars should be used for that purpose. The bigger the gun, the better At destroying trenches. Mortars will fight 1-3 hexes behind the lines, and be less good at dealing readiness damage.

In general, heavier guns will cause more casualties, but less readiness damage. This is because heavy artillery in this period was used mainly for destruction of enemy defenses.

Latter, artillery will do more damage, as spotting and firing tactics become better, along with better equipment causing it to have better survivability.

If I add tanks, artillery will be a counter to them, with lighter artillery being better against lighter tanks, and heavier artillery being better against heavier tanks.

Finally, late game tech, armor, cars, and trucks

Armor will be split between armored cars and tanks. There will be two kinds of armored cars. The first will be 1-5 tons, labeled light armored cars, the second will be 5-10 tons. Thiese will be heavy armored cars. They will have more health.

I may add in earlier cars and possibly a very cheap and poor quality standard 'car' that would be like a Jeep, except slower, and worse. Car research will be required for trucks, which will preform worse than normal.

For tanks, I might put in all the way up to super heavy tanks, but currently, I'll split tanks between heavy and light. Heavy tanks would be used as infantry support tanks, and light tanks being like the whippet and eventually the Renault F-17, and being used for breaking through. Heavy tanks are seen as half-tracks for infantry.

I may split tanks even further with a female and male tank. Female tanks will be anti infantry, while male tanks will be primarily anti tank, but will still do a decent job against infantry. As male tanks improve, health and combat against harder targets improves. As female tanks are upgraded, health and combat against soft targets improves.

Cavalry will also be getting an overhaul, and will be split into hussars and the armored cavalry that I don't remember the name of. Curaisiers? I'll also consider putting in a Dragoons unit, which would be a little better than mounted infantry, and split the difference between hussars and curaisiers.

Machine guns will be split between light, medium, and heavy. The heavier the gun, the more shots it will fire before overheating, but the slower it becomes moving. I expect heavier machine guns to be used for defense, and lighter machine guns to be used in offense. Heavy machine guns May fire from the back, while medium and light will fire from the front.

I haven't thought about airplanes yet, but expect early planes to be used for recon, along with hot air balloons and zeppelins.

Last thing is that horses will be able to carry 1 weight, which is the weight of one standard infantry man.

I believe that raps things up. I'm kind of new to modding units, but I will try to make things balanced. Help with anything would be welcome. Comments on what you think stats and general balance should be is welcome. I have no idea on what I need to set stats to on the units.

Off the top of my head, I want infantry to be 1.25 times better at attacking than defending at the start, and artillery should defend 2:1 times with canister/shrapnel shot. This will change latter as tech improves, and infantry can better snipe artillery crews.

In the far future, after I've finished this mod, I'll make a Great War 1914 scenario, a Polish Soviet War 1920 scenario, and then possibly a GD 1870 and/or 1900 scenario. We'll see if I don't lose interest in that time. I will post the mod in the modding forum if I do get a beta out, but currently, I don't have a lot other than a couple pictures of various troops in formation to use as subornation pictures.

If I made any error in grammar or spelling, blame the fact that I'm on a phone, and that this took a while to type. Thanks ahead of time to people who comment.
Post #: 1
RE: 1870s-1900 mod total conversion proposal - 7/4/2016 5:15:09 AM   
danlongman

 

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From: Over the hills and far away
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Well that certainly appeals to me. I find the time period from the introduction
of the machine gun to 1950 or so to be most interesting...but that is just myself.

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(in reply to alomoes)
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RE: 1870s-1900 mod total conversion proposal - 7/4/2016 3:57:53 PM   
ernieschwitz

 

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Firstly, impressed you wrote all this on a telephone. Kudos.

Second I thought that this would be something that Bombur would love to know about, you should try and contact him. He knows alot more about the SFTs and Items, than I do, which is what is needed to be changed. He may be able to give you hints and pointers too as for historical accuracy.

Thirdly I was wondering about scale. Scale determines things like movement, but also, things like range of guns. I was surprised that you wanted mortars to have a range of 3. To me that means a very low scale, but if you are at the same time considering a GD 1870, something i know bombur would really be interested in, the scale for that would be around 200 km pr. hex, which makes a range of 3 seem enormous.

Along with consideration of scale, comes consideration of time scale. How long is one turn, ATG models from 1 day to almost infinate. You can also model less of course, but then you need somehow to either make a difference happen when day ends and night begins, and you won't get to use the date system. Time scale will also determine rates of movement.

On a more "this can't be done" comment: It isn't really possible in this system to let a unit fire more than once in this system. Yes there are exceptions, if the target is destroyed or retreats and you still have APs left. But in general all available APs are used when attacking. So having guns fire more than once seems to be out of reach for this mod.

Other than that I wish you lots of luck, and modding is really about throwing yourself into it, and swimming as well as you can. If you need a life guard, the forum is good for that. Describing the problem and what you want the solution to look like.

(in reply to danlongman)
Post #: 3
RE: 1870s-1900 mod total conversion proposal - 7/4/2016 5:08:03 PM   
danlongman

 

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Thank You ernieschwitz for coming in. My editor skills are weak. My goal is to combine the ERM and officers modes with
something like Bombur's random game generator in the first iteration of Advanced Tactics...the one that started about 1900.
Unfortunately I have not had time previously and double unfortunately I have a lot of time lately. You and Roy and Bombur
have helped me out before. I am getting excited. BTW I am not too worried about the AI abilities to handle Resources Management
and Realistic Officers. Just so it won't crash. -dan

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"Patriotism: Your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." - George Bernard Shaw

(in reply to ernieschwitz)
Post #: 4
RE: 1870s-1900 mod total conversion proposal - 7/4/2016 5:27:08 PM   
ernieschwitz

 

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From: Denmark
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The AI is able to move stuff, fight with stuff, and produce stuff. It will need some sort of scripting help, like in New Dawn, to be able to handle running out of resources and reacting to that. It is not too hard to do however. It will need help with anything that requires cards to be played. Basically you either have to tell it when to do so, or give it bonuses that will compensate. This too is done in New Dawn with the officers.

So you might want to learn coding, not that it is super tough, but it will require some dedication. If you do learn it, I know what is wrong with ERM regarding officers, and I have discussed with Vic how it might be done if you wanted to merge ERM and TO&E...



< Message edited by ernieschwitz -- 7/4/2016 5:39:24 PM >

(in reply to danlongman)
Post #: 5
RE: 1870s-1900 mod total conversion proposal - 7/4/2016 5:50:22 PM   
danlongman

 

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From: Over the hills and far away
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Wonderful. I gotta run now though. Thanks.


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"Patriotism: Your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." - George Bernard Shaw

(in reply to ernieschwitz)
Post #: 6
RE: 1870s-1900 mod total conversion proposal - 7/5/2016 1:20:15 AM   
alomoes

 

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Joined: 12/29/2012
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Ok, so I have some issues with the graphic's card crashing every so often, but I'm making progress.

I think that upgrades to infantry will increase damage on the offensive and defensive. Hitpoints will stay the same until I get to interwar units.

Infantry will start with light, regular, and heavy infantry. The bigger the unit the more shots, to simulate differing infantry guns of the time period, with light infantry being 3 shots per round, regulars being 5 shots per round, and heavy infantry being 8 shots per round. Thus as an example, Germany would use regular infantry, and France would use heavy infantry, and Russia would use light infantry. The thing is though, heavy infantry will cost more supply and production but keep the same hit points, so it might be wise to have mixed divisions to lower the chance of losing heavier units. Heavier infantry will stack more effectively though, as they get more shots per stack points.

I'm playing around with things, and have decided that every upgrade, kill chance will go up by 5% and retreat chance will go down by %5. This will lead to an early game state where losses are low, and the idea is to push the enemy and encircle them, much like what the Prussians did against France, although with a large advantage in numbers. Also, after testing things, I found it is VERY important to flank the enemy. A direct assault does not work very well as the enemy is able to fire first and get some of your troops to retreat early on, causing a defensive numerical advantage.

I shall now work on field artillery, which will be better at lowering enemy readiness.

Note, I am counting mortars as any indirect fire weapon. Howitzers will be in between, and field guns are direct fire. So, I did some research and there were several types of artillery. Mortars are indirect fire weapons that had a low profile. Howitzers were pretty much field guns, and finally, there were pieces that were simply called guns. Artillery guns fired at the optimal 45 degrees mark. That means I'll be naming direct fire guns field guns, indirect fire guns mortars, and artillery pieces, which will cost the most, will be named artillery. There were also infantry support guns, AT guns, and so on and so forth, but I'll start small with only early era weapons.

With artillery, as tech goes up, artillery will get more hitpoints, and do more damage. This is because artillery started out less accurate, and had none of the armor plates that were developed later. They will not gain more defensive attack.

Edit: I got field guns in, but they might be too OP. I am also having trouble getting a city I made to produce the new units. I'll look it up in the tutorial.

Second edit: I made Field Guns balanced. Still can't figure out why my cities are not producing infantry. I set up the items type. I'll upload the file and set up the mod forum. This mod will play radically different from the vanilla game, however. My plan is to add some form of cavalry, horses to pull artillery and then I'll create the first release forum that outlines what I have done.

< Message edited by alomoes -- 7/5/2016 4:16:35 AM >

(in reply to danlongman)
Post #: 7
RE: 1870s-1900 mod total conversion proposal - 7/5/2016 3:26:50 PM   
ernieschwitz

 

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Joined: 9/15/2009
From: Denmark
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Still unsure what you mean by shots pr. round...

Do you mean nr. of attacks as in SFTs combat stat, or are you somehow going to allow them to attack more than once each turn.

Also the scale still baffles me. High scale would render range of rifles irrelevant, while low scale, lower than the game in my opinion allows, would allow ranged rifle attacks.

Also still perplexed at the time frame you are going to use, for each round...


(in reply to alomoes)
Post #: 8
RE: 1870s-1900 mod total conversion proposal - 7/5/2016 4:16:26 PM   
alomoes

 

Posts: 46
Joined: 12/29/2012
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Shots per round is indeed attacks per round. I apologize for the confusion.

(in reply to ernieschwitz)
Post #: 9
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