WiR Tank Realism Mod

[JagdFlanker]

i forgot to mention too that i changed the tanks which cost 99 to a factory price, giving boths sides access to all their tanks in the pool for upgrading. they'r your tanks, so why can't you do what you want with them?! sure t-37's are almost useless, but might as well use them for something!

possibly more contriversally i also added a rail line straight east from voronezh. it's more for the '42/43 scens since kursk is super vulnerable being supplied the way it is now, and a smart german player will make it almost impossible to be able hold/advance in the kursk area until the sovs advance signifigantly west of moscow. i feel very strongly about adding this to the game as i see it as a glaring weakness in that area. playing slakkboy showed me by isolating 2 rail points in that area cuts off 50% of the map, forcing massive retreat. we'll see how it goes according to what you guys think when you play!

i'm hoping to finish this all by early next week - are there volenteers out there to take it through it's paces? just send me a private msg - unfortunatly this board will not allow me to post up the obwir file. i think i pretty much covered the whole database to get rid of 'inconsistancies/bugs/mistakes', so it should be pretty solid. i'm really curious about the cheaper tanks - i'm hoping it makes the game a little more fun! and who can argue with more tanks! i think tank losses in this game are too low myself, so we'll see!

thanks for all the comments - they really helped me out!

[WarPig]

Please check your list. The PzKw IIIj was initially armed with the short (L42) 50mm gun. It was until Dec 41 when the long (L60) 50mm gun began to arm the PzKw IIIj. Production of the PzKw IIIj model, however, did start by April 41.

[Denniss]

Pz-IIIj is represented by the 50L60 version only as seen in availability date 12/41 or 1/42

If there are some slots for an additional tank available maybe it's possible to replace Pz-IIIj with Pz-IIIj/1 and create a Pz-IIIj with the 50L42 gun available from the first turn on

[JagdFlanker]

thanks! i checked on it and you are totally right!

PzKpfw-IIIh - - - atk:8 - def:6 - cost:4 - 6/41
PzKpfw-IIIj/42 - atk:8 - def:6 - cost:4 - 6/41
PzKpfw-IIIj/60 - atk:10 - def:6 - cost:4 - 12/41

unfortunately that puts the IIIh and the early IIIj as identical, but now that i know how to use the free slots i can just add the newer IIIj/42 seperately. now the lousy thing about the diff IIIj's is that the current name only allows for 1 more additional letter (the /!), so if my names are right (are they? i was guessing!) i would have to change all PzKpfw to Pz only. no biggie!

anyone know offhand if in '43 germany gets all their elefant Jpz Bn's full of elefants or if they have to fill them themselves? if they are already full then i may give the elefants a MUCH shorter production run and have them upgrade to nashorns for the rest of the war, just to keep the numbers low.

[Veroporo]

IIRC only some 90 elefants were ever made so maybe giving them an independent battalion of 60 and change some factory to product them. I think this mod will have a huge number of tanks in game as basic tanks cost only some 3 or 4 points.

And if you're going to mod the map, please make a railroad to the northern hexes for finns to attack carelia as they did historially.

[Elefantinho]

Good plan about the Finnish railroad! Same for a railroad linking the Crimea to the Caucasus, so Manstein can do something useful after having taken Sevastopol!

Regarding the Elefant I see the following alternatives:
- When its upgrading from the Marder let the Elefant be active for (90 - the number of Elefants that appear with the batallions) / (75 / 10) weeks, before replacing it with the Nashorn. So when you introduce the two batallions with 5 Elefants each Elefant production should continue for about 10 weeks to make up the full complement.
- Keep the Elefant outside any upgrade path and have the two batallions appear full strength with 45 Elefants each. If a player has some special attachment to this model he'll have to pay the price of switching production.
- Same as above, but put costs at 99 to avoid the player produce more by switching factories. With my login name, how could I ever have dreamt up this one... [:(]

Note that in the current game it's quite possible to equip a large part of the JPz force with Elefants, even in version 3.2. The question is whether we'd like to avoid this.

[Ferdinand Porsc]

91 Ferdinands/Elefants were constructed, 89 of which saw action at Kursk, in two schwere Panzerjäger Abteilungen (one with 44, one with 45 Ferdinands) - the 653 and 654. s.Pz.Jäg.Abt. 653 was later rearmed with Jagdtigers, and s.Pz.Jäg.Abt. was rearmed with Jagdpanthers.

[crusher]

well i have been following this thread and this tank mod sounds real good where will you be able to get it at. thanks for your work on this good game

[JagdFlanker]

again thanks for the comments!

i looked into the unit dbase and in the '41 campaign germany later gets 3 elefant units - the 681st, 682nd, and 683rd Jpz Bns, each equiped with 4 elefants. therefore as it stands the game expects YOU to fill them, which i prefer as you get to choose. so i'm not going to let anything naturally upgrade to the elefant and have 1 factory with 3 or more elefants come in in Jan'43 and upgrade to the nashorn in july. as it stands the price of the elefant is pretty crazy - 11, which is almost 4 times the cost of the pz IV in '43 and twice the cost of the panther, so you definately don't get near as big a bang for the buck. so if you want to lose 4 weeks production and change over some other factories manually to the elefant, as the opponent i wouldn't mind!

as far as tank costs go i plan on continually updating this mod for a long time until i'm satisfied so once i (and hopefull some of you guys) have played we'll see how it looks. we can't know the effects until after we actually play the game, but i figure i'd rather start testing with 'too many' tanks and tone it down later than starting with too little and slowly increasing the amounts. i think it's way more fun that way! once it all looks pretty smooth perhaps i will ask matrix to put it up, since i have no way of posting it myself. until then you can just send me a private msg with your email address and i will gladly send it to you. right now all i have left to do is tweak the factories to balance the vehicle upgrade path more, and that should be it!

ok, i guess with the map requests i may have opened a can of worms with my small map mod! i have put a lot of thought already into adding both a Crimea to the Caucasus and a northern railroad and have decided against it only for now. as for the Crimea to the Caucasus rail, there is only one good way for it to be done and that is for the sovs to have 5 supply come up from sevastopol when the crimea is cut off, and have supply 5 flow out of novorossiysk for germany after they capture it. but that is hard code stuff so i can't do it! the northern rail is a little more interesting as finland's rail lines do not start extending or growing until around sept'41 or something so finland can't start advancing north until then, which gives the sovs plenty of time to dig in. looking at it now i think the addition of both rail lines definately is worth a shot to try and test it a little later, as it would only add to the game, but for now i want to test it as is, especially since i'v only really played 2 games and i need more experience with how the map is now! my map mod was a pure gameplay balance issue, and if you want to know why just play slakkboy in '43, if you don't mind 1 turn every 6 months!

upgrade issue - the KV-2 ended production in 1941, but in the game it upgrades to the Su-152 in 3/43. the soonest anything sov upgrades is 6/42, 8 months after KV-2 production should stop. think i should just throw the extra units not on the frontline in the pool? (330 were built total) then convert the 2 factories to KV-1? it is possible i could also create a new dummy tank the kv-2 could upgrade to in 10/42 and then have that upgrade to the KV-1. might make the tank pool screen look wierd, though!

attached is the latest stats after tweaking and a new provisional upgrade path. it doesn't look like i will be able to keep all upgrades strictly historical, but i guess as long as you get all the tanks it doesn't matter!

[JagdFlanker]

allright, i tried the dummy tank thing and it worked much better than i thought it would! i made a new slot called 'conversion KV-1 ' which the KV-2 upgrades to, made it cost 99 so it wouldn't appear on the tank pool list, and had THAT convert to the KV-1 at the end of oct'41. worked like a charm, and it also reset the production to 0 so it has to start from scratch! i may do that with more units, which COULD allow me to keep factory upgrades to historical! and the starting production from 0 could offset the cheapness of tanks, but that all depends on how it all works out.

[Veroporo]

Just an idea about the Crimea: make a railway from Odessa to Sevastopol (or from constanta) on sea. It needs agreement not to use it as a attack route and acting like it wasn't there but it would make a possibility to stay in Crimea.

[JagdFlanker]

not a bad idea, but it looks messy so i'd rather avoid it!

anyhow i just unlocked another special treat which we didn't know was missing - the marder III icon! currently the game uses the marder II icon for both marders, but i was looking in a gif which had the german tank icons and i noticed at the end there was the marder III icon, but i didn't remember seeing it before! so i tried it, and boy it looks great! that along with the Pz II icon really adds to the game for me! theres a halftrack icon there too but i don't think anything uses it so i also made a StuG IIIf icon by superimposing the IIIb icon on the IIIg - looks great too! i have to figure out how to edit the icons to put it in the game, but i know it can be done!

i also made it so the Do 217 no longer upgrades - in the dbase i noticed no german bomber upgrades except the Do 217, so now at least if you choose a bomber to produce you can stick with it for the rest of the war.

[JagdFlanker]

actaully there are a lot of cool unused icons i have to play with - there are 3 Pz III icons - a short barreled, med barreled, and an unused long barreled icon! actually according to barrel lengths the game points all the Pz III units to all the wrong icons!! in 3.3 it goes from short to mid icon, but actually it should be mid to short to long!! pretty sloppy, but i'm glad i can fix it!

was the pz IVh the first IV to have skirts?

[Veroporo]

Heh. That's true, it is pretty messy idea so better leave it as it is

Looks even better when you're making progress.

[Tom1939]

I read somewhere that panther cost only about 10% more to produce in reichmarks then the late pz IV's. The tiger costed about 100 % more if I remember right. So you might consider puting panther to cost 5. It would be more historical. But from a game balance point the cost of 6 is perfectly right. Just a suggestion:) Great work!

[Denniss]

IVh should be the first with skirts
III short is correct up to IIIh
The med length III looks a litle too short in gun length and the long one a little too long (looks more like a 75L48 gun mounted in a IIIj)

[JagdFlanker]

because PBEMers are likely to super micro manage their production i had to base prices on capibility as opposed to historical factors. however, i have not looked into this yet but if there is a way to lock factories like in italy within the dbase i may put out a second mod after with all LOCKED factories and historical prices. i'm not getting my hopes up on being able to do that until i investagate further, though.

i found 1 icon editor but i find it difficult to use (it uses excel) so i have to look harder for another one or play with this one until i finally get the hang of it. as it stands i don't know if i can transfer my new StuG IIIf icon over (yikes!) the excel dbase editor is, on the other hand, very easy to use! it should make things MUCH easier to edit than the dos one, even though the dos one is actually good too.

anyone got a copy of 3.2 they can throw my way? i just want to compare some stats, and also i believe 3.2 has the Ju 188 which was taken out of 3.3. i may not need the whole thing, but it might be best to have it all anyways.

[matt.buttsworth]

I have a copy of wir 3.2 if you want it.

Matthew

matthew_buttsworth@yahoo.com

[JagdFlanker]

i guess a little update - my planned date of completion is the end of june. i'v been on a little hiatus after i saw i had to start everything from scratch, but i'v been slowly working on diff parts recently, notably i found a .sym to .bmp converter which got my StuG IIIf in and allowed me to play with unit icons in the game (after units move, plot or get transferred into they turn a dark blue so you see they have been taken care of!). also i want to check details like gun barrel lengths, etc, since now it's easy to do! the project is probrably less than a weeks work, but i have 2 games going right now and with hockey playoffs here that will keep me nice and busy through to the end of the first week in june. after that, summer gets sorta boring w/o hockey so i got lotsa time!

i do have a couple new ideas

units not in production on june 22/41 will not have an upgrade path - no more upgrade cheating! even if i myself do prefer it, especially for the soviet factory railing....but with cheaper tanks it's not as big a loss - i think t-34's are too expensive in 3.3! you barely have any new tanks for winter, even if you don't use them! in reality the sovs had thousands of tanks produced by the end of winter!

[JagdFlanker]

had some time so today i worked on making the german ikons more accurite according to pictures/profiles i found on the net. made a new Pz IVf icon, shortened the barrel on the late Pz III series ikon. note as well i created a much more accurite StuG IIIf ikon compared to my original on top of this page!