Empires Ablaze Mod

[Andy Mac]

I would also suggest that a 5th Japanese Div be added for late 42 a lesser mirror of a USMC Div with lots of Combat Engineers and attached forces basically a spearhead Div for assaulting bases with high forts - a sort of elite combination of the SNLF forces formed by the navy otherwise couter invasions will be almost impossible. You need a naval counter attack force !!!
 
The more I think on it I think the Japanese must have the option for a strong end of war surface DD force something that can go toe to toe with 2nd gen USN DD's like the Bensons say a class of 24 of these to help out with raiding !!!!
 

[Andy Mac]

Yeah but I like Tribals !!! this is a never were mod I would actually like 24 Tribals and drop both the RN BB's !!!!
 
Good DD's are fun to play with BB's just get in the way and are targets ---- you are always more willing to take risks with DD's !!!! (unless your name is Pauk or PZB that is !!!)

[Andy Mac]

Ohhh pet peeve repair yards !!!! I dont know what Aden is set to or west coast US but they should be upgraded albeit disabled make them mostly disabled so they suck in some allied supply as a means of controlling ahistoric overabundance of allied supply its  irritating that in every game I play my opponents have more repair yards than me and better hmmmm does south Africa have a repair yard historically it was the biggest RN drydock places like that should have low active shipyards but a lot disabled !!!

[Andy Mac]

Why not give the Japanese anogther at start fleet carrier based off the BB that got destroyed in the Earthquake ?
 
I think it was Amagi turn her into another Kaga class Carrier to give the Japs additional bite at the start !!!

[Nemo121]

Andy,
 
It'll be ready later this evening barring anything unforseen. I managed to get things done more quickly than I had expected. I've also taken the opportunity to clean the LCU files slot by slot so that we now no longer have a late-war Japanese Base Force entering with over 200 IJA combat squads and other weirdnesses
 
As to unbalancing things... Well, I want the Allies to have a chance... To be honest with you I think that if I were to play this into late 43/early 44 that I would be quite able to turn back the occasional Allied amphibious invasion with crushing losses. I may be wrong but I want to protect Allied players from suffering massive losses in early 43 that they cannot make up until late 44.
 
 
Re Kittyhawks. Ah, my bad. I see your point now... I was counting them. 120 fighters per month is a lot better than the 70 the RAF would be left with now. So tell me by plane type what you think is reasonable and I'll amend it accordingly. I agree that 50 or 60 planes is too little and am happy to increase that.

[Nemo121]

I've added repair yards to EVERY port with a build factor of 4 and over.
 
I believe that players should be able to develop yards etc wherever they want so long as:
a) it costs them to do so and
b) the port is of a reasonable size. Level 4 is an arbitary choice but I feel reasonable.
 
Aden, Ulithi and loads of the Japanese ports now qualify for repair yards. If the Allies hold India, Aden, Australia and CONUSA they will have more than enough HI for all these upgrades. If they hold Aden and CONUSA they may have to make some minor choices but still have enough for 90% of what they want. Aden is out of bounds and CONUSA is, essentially, invulnerable to ground invasion so I think this should suffice.

[Nemo121]

Hmm, looks like I must have messed something up in the ship file ( or it got corrupted). Whenever I click on ANY ship the game now crashes... Any ideas? I'm going to go in and undo my latest changes and see if that helps.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Ohhh pet peeve repair yards !!!! I dont know what Aden is set to or west coast US but they should be upgraded albeit disabled make them mostly disabled so they suck in some allied supply as a means of controlling ahistoric overabundance of allied supply its irritating that in every game I play my opponents have more repair yards than me and better hmmmm does south Africa have a repair yard historically it was the biggest RN drydock places like that should have low active shipyards but a lot disabled !!!

Already done in RHS (at least in EOS). Also disabled are large set of HI, Resources, and Oil. This has the effect of 1) eating supply early on, 2) increasing repair yards as time goes on, and 3) large amounts of supply later on (after mobilization).

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Nemo I really do think you have overdone it on allied BB's and Essex class ...

Given the aircraft and ships he's adding to the Japanese, plus the IJN ships you have suggested, plus the fact that the timetable will be pushed back along with more capable Japanese defenders to overcome over a (most likely) larger area of expansion, I think this conclusion is premature.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

Hmm, looks like I must have messed something up in the ship file ( or it got corrupted). Whenever I click on ANY ship the game now crashes... Any ideas? I'm going to go in and undo my latest changes and see if that helps.

That's usually a graphics problem - if the graphics file the game wants is not there, it crashes.

[webhop]

Will this Mod be for PBEM or for AI opponents?  Wondering how the AI will handle some of the changes for Japan.

[Nemo121]

How nasty is night strategic bombing in WiTP? I'm asking because the Japanese did get several Ju88s and could have gotten He-219 Uhu for prototyping and copying purposes. This would give the Japanese the option of putting Uhus in the air over Japan to fight off Allied night bombers.
 
Since this would boost Japanese defensive capabilities without increasing their offensive potential I think this might be a worthwhile change to make and we actually COULD have seen Uhus in the air over Japan if the Japanese had just taken an interest in the plane early enough

[Nemo121]

webhop,
 
This is purely for PBEM. I amn't making any allowances for the AI whatsoever and with the way certain slots are hard-coded to do certain things the AI won't make many options human players would ( upgrading army sentai with Zeroes in early 42) such that the AI won't play "well" in this mod.
 
 
Hmm, witpqs, thanks. I think you may be right... When I try to pull up an individual ship in-game ( in a TF or port) the game crashes. When I look at it in the ship availability screen the data comes up but the portrait is blank. Any ideas on a fix?

[witpqs]

There is only one way - you have to find what file is missing and provide it. Mind you, it could be any file, doesn't have to be the right ship.

[Nemo121]

Argh so the problem could be anywhere in the ship class and individual ship files and there's no way for me to know where it is. LOL!

Actually thinking on it some more the problem must be confined to the ship class file as that is the file which allocates the art file.


My 2nd option is to just replace the ship class and ship files from EOS base... Anyone know what the names of the ship class and individual ship files are?

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

Argh so the problem could be anywhere in the ship class and individual ship files and there's no way for me to know where it is. LOL!

Actually thinking on it some more the problem must be confined to the ship class file as that is the file which allocates the art file.


My 2nd option is to just replace the ship class and ship files from EOS base... Anyone know what the names of the ship class and individual ship files are?

Look in the editor at the class record for the ship and it will tell you what graphic 'number' it refers to for that ship. The field might not be labeled that way, but it's easy to figure out which field it is. Next, look in the Ship_Back folder (for either Allies or Japan), and you should see that the file with the appropriate number is missing.

Now, I think you said it crashes when you click on any ship. That would mean that all of your files are missing?

PS: Look in the Art folder and you will see the other folders with obvious names.

[Nemo121]

Well that seems to have been the problem... I have two installs of WiTP on my system, one for Level 5 and one for Level 6.
 
It turns out that when I move the files into my Level 5 folder it all works just fine... Obviously the problem is in my install. Am re-installing and will take it from there.

[Andy Mac]

I dont want to overdo it because probably a Sqn or two of Australians will end up in India with Kittyhawks

Also RAF cannot upgrade before May anyway.

So I would suggest the following

At Start Hurricane I  Production in Aden 40, Replacement 0
2/42 Spitfire VB Production in Aden 15, Replacement 10

Hurricane 2c Production in Aden 0 (will auto upgrade Hurricane I to have production of 40), Replacement 25
Mid 43 Spitfire VIII Production in Aden 0 (will auto upgrade both Hurricane 2c and Spit VB so total production 55), Replacement 0

Total Early 42 - 65 per month - 40 prior to 2/42 (which is right the RAF is low on fighters 40 Hurricanes, 25 Spits)
Total Late 42 - 90 per month (better but still critical) - 65 Hurricanes IIc, 25 Spits VB
Total Early 43 - 90 per month - (65 Hurricanes IIc, 25 Spits VB)
Total Late 43 - 90 per month of which 25 are obsolete (55 Spit VIII, 25 Hurricane IIc (obsolete now), 10 Spit VB)

Excludes the purely Ground attack Hurrican IV in mid 43

Total Early 44 - 135 per month of which 90 are current types - (55 Spit VIII, 45 Thuds,  25 Hurricane IIc (obsolete now), 10 Spit VB (obsolete now))

The above would be my suggestion up until late 43 I would expect to see P36's or Buffaloes (if any are left still in service)

Happy to discuss

[Andy Mac]

At these levels no need for the 96 Spits in Aden you could leave 48 if you were feeling generous but 96 is probably overkill

[Nemo121]

I made the changes as you requested EXCEPT that Hurricane I production at Aden is only 26 and Spitfire I production is 10, replacement 16. I also added a 48 plane squadron at Aden... The House Rule for that would be that it could ONLY be shipped to India starting 14 days after the Japanese invasion force is sighted.

So, you get 20 fewer auto-upgrades in your production per month but you do get about 3/4 of the front-line auto-upgradable production you wanted.

At present I'm experimenting with giving the Japanese an anti-invasion punch. I'm qoing to try to replace japanese barges in 1944 with "barges" which actually have the speed, manouverability and armament of PT boats... I am sure they operate with greatly reduced effectiveness but it is a replacable threat the Allies will have to honour... and it might force some fighter-type planes to be dedicated to naval attack at 100 feet which would also help with uebercap.

One other weird thing... I just found Sid included a Japanese NUKE sub in RHS EOS . It is based on some plans he has from late-war Japan. I'm leaving it in as it only appears in late 45 and is just too plain weird and cool to leave out .


I'm currently racing through the leader errors and incorrect nation assignments in RHS EOS ( which have carried over into my mini-mod) in an attempt to make this a clean mod. Pre-correction the error-checker listed about 2500. I expect to get that down to about 400 or so which aren't actually errors just things the error-checking wasn't expecting.


Also I had a look at the Japanese fighter-bomber upgrades and figured that there would be some utility in putting in the Ki-93... A heavily-armoured ( rates level 2 armour), twin-engined fighter-bomber with 2 x 20mm and 1 x 57mm cannon firing forward. It carries a back-seater with a cannon since it is SLOW - about the same pace as a 1942 plane and that simply isn't sufficient in the skies of late 1944. I think it creates an interesting plane which can destroy any enemy bomber it finds BUT will have some difficulty catching them. It also makes an excellent strafer with some chance of breaking through enemy CAP in sufficient numbers to cause damage. Very much a plane for a country which doesn't expect its pilots to return from the mission.