TRP - Total Realism Project for War in Europe (1.10b Download)

[Taxman66]

The Atlantic did turn into an Allied Pond by 1943 as U-boats got crushed, repeatedly. Just look at the damn numbers.

Even by mid 1942 the tide had turned and then snowballed quickly.

[Duedman]

Sure it did. But in TRP the dynamics change a lot.
1. There are more ships in general.
2. There are a twice the number of turns.
3. France lives longer in terms of playable turns (more ships + longer hunting time).

In previous TRP versions, If Axis sent the Subs out they were all dead super quickly.
It was not even hard. And I do not mean the versions where Capital ships had attack stats vs Subs.
Just sheer numbers making sure they cannot escape once found.

This is not good. But making the most annoying part even more annoying can not be the solution.

One thing Lothos already did (that ran rather unnoticed), was to take away the tiny traderoutes from the colonies.
It was absolutely not worthwhile to exchange 1 supply for raiding 1 or 2 MPP. (edit: Those automatically got raided first before the underlying better ones).
That lead to the Subs either beeing useless or going for the North Atlantic routes - where they were easy to find.

Maybe changing that was the solution already. If the whole huge TRP-Atlantic is the playing field and not just the North Atlantic then Subs should be a lot harder to find.
Still not super realistic but maybe a good tradeoff.

[Lothos]

The Atlantic did turn into an Allied Pond by 1943 as U-boats got crushed, repeatedly. Just look at the damn numbers.

Even by mid 1942 the tide had turned and then snowballed quickly.

That is actually NOT TRUE!

People complain that subs are harder to kill now but then complain before that subs are to easy to kill and not worth building. Then some people say the sub war is boring and make it easy.

What I find most interesting is some of you complaining only play MP games till 1942 or less, then rage quit because of something in the game and say its un-playable because the game does not fit into how you want to play.

I am going to remind all of you that I have been modding World War 2 global strategy games for almost 30 years. Some of you were not even born yet.

The height of allied ship losses was in 1942 which was the worse year with over 1000 allied merchant ships lost in the North Atlantic alone (not counting the rest of the world). SO this entire thing of 1942 was when the U-Boat campaign died is a bunch of HORSE CRAP!

When the mod first came out many of you complained about not having enough Action Points. Now everyone has adjusted and say it’s about right.

There are two people right now that I am in constant talk with (meaning multiple times a day) who are playing several MP games (including against me) and their does not seem to be any issues here. One person is playing the Allies and he admitted he had a hard time in the beginning and was not happy about it but he adjusted his tactics and has destroyed 6 subs and his game just started 1941.

In my current Allied game, I destroyed a sub already and we had not even reached December 1939 and I did it with 1 destroyer and 3 Light Carriers.

So, this constant complaining when something new is put out there is annoying.

Stop crying, try the changes out and adjust your tactics (do not stick with your old tactics). I changed my strategies on how I hunt U-Boats down and it has made it much easier to find them.

Since I cannot fix how diving works, which means the usual bug when a sub dives it only goes 1 hex if no ZOC and the all the Allied player has to do is move any ship into the last hex the sub was in to find them is not fixable by me. Even if you set the dive range to 50 it will make no difference because it will only go as far as it needs to go to avoid an enemy ZOC which is why they are to easy to find.

For some historical reference read below, if you want a mod that makes the game easier for you to stroke your ego and make you feel that you are George Patton then this is not the mod for you.

The goal of this mod is to make the game as challenging and historical as possible within the confines of the game engine.
 
https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/bat ... -of-battle

EDITED: I also want to point out that Surface Ships have the same ZOC as subs. They just need 2 or more ships. This was done so that proper screening could be done to protect convoys and carriers. Especially in TRP World were you have the Pacific War.

[Lothos]

I put out a quick release of TRP v1.4.1 because there were some bugs that really effected game play that I fixed.

########################
# TRP 1.4.1 Europe
########################

- (New) Italy, both Battleships in the production que will come with full research.
- (New) Yugoslavia, unit caps for Mech. Div., Armor Div., Motorized, Fighter and Tac Bomber were increased from 0 to 1.
- (New) Malta Effect will no longer hit the ports in North Africa except for the first turn Italy joins the war
- (New) France can no longer build Armor or Mechanized units till June 1st 1940 (they do get some at the start of the game)
- (New) Anti-Air, base Soft/Hard defense lowered from 3 to 2
- (New) Germany, changes unit names for SP-Artillery
- (New) Germany, changed unit names for Armor Corps

- (Bug) Germany, fixed issue where decision to counter Allied manipulation of Greece did not fire.
- (Bug) Anti-Tank is now reformable like all other land units
- (Bug) North Africa supply cap of 16 Alert will count properly before turning red
- (Bug) Yugoslavia, added message when they join the Axis and made it a little more random on when
- (Bug) Fixed an issue were reports were all messed up and everything showed as UK

- (Map) hex 203,81 added Forest to the Terrain
- (Map) Ethiopia, added some mountains that were missed and the hex was clear

- (AI) UK, will garrison Damascus if Syria surrenders to the Allies

[Taxman66]

I will only adjust my comment to say that instead of 'Mid 42 the tide had changed' to 'the later stages of 42 the tide had changed'.

I absolutely stand by my 1943 comment/opinion though.

Now I'm done discussing the Sub subject.

For the record I loathe the SC naval system completely.

-----
I am curious as to what your reasoning is for taking away the option to build French Armor/Mech?
I believe it is a solid strategic option that you are removing, and thus limiting possible defense strategies.

Also has anything been done to prevent the Axis from steamrolling the low countries and starting into France in the Fall of 1939, or is that going to have to remain a 'House Rule'?

[gigiduru]

I will only adjust my comment to say that instead of 'Mid 42 the tide had changed' to 'the later stages of 42 the tide had changed'.

I absolutely stand by my 1943 comment/opinion though.

Now I'm done discussing the Sub subject.

For the record I loathe the SC naval system completely.

-----
I am curious as to what your reasoning is for taking away the option to build French Armor/Mech?
I believe it is a solid strategic option that you are removing, and thus limiting possible defense strategies.

Also has anything been done to prevent the Axis from steamrolling the low countries and starting into France in the Fall of 1939, or is that going to have to remain a 'House Rule'?

Partly because of me and because of how stubborn i managed to make a defence in both MP games i played vs Lothos and someone else. Armor in fortifications at that stage of the war is very very tought to kill and if you cancel some research and have a house rule that France can't get attacked before April/May '40 then you have the time to build a defence that could last to August and even September if the axis get some bad weather roles.

As for the invasion of France in '39 the only thing he can do is raising the mobilization impact on Soviet Union/USA. But that would mess up things again. Immo a house rule is sufficient for a fun game.

[Lothos]

I am curious as to what your reasoning is for taking away the option to build French Armor/Mech?
I believe it is a solid strategic option that you are removing, and thus limiting possible defense strategies.

Also has anything been done to prevent the Axis from steamrolling the low countries and starting into France in the Fall of 1939, or is that going to have to remain a 'House Rule'?

In 1940 techinically the French had more armor/tanks than the Germans did.

HOWEVER

The French had their armor spread out all over the place and it was not concentrated. They did not learn these new tactics of concentrating their armor till after the Germans began their attack in the Low Countries and by then it was to late.

As this is a game the human player has hindsight of the future and therefore their is no lesson to be learned here. A human player will naturaly build (concentrate into a single unit) all that armor knowing the future.

When playing with the House rule (which I agree with) the French can amass a very large army to survive until between July and September.

If you are playing France and are not able to amass almost 3 lines of defense between Belgium and Paris then you are doing something wrong.

[gremlok]

What I experienced was that the Germans simply bombed the Maginot line to dust with artillery and planes. So the French lines were now significantly longer. Yes I had AAA but not for the first 2 turns he bombed the Maginot, and I'm not keen on relying on house rules for much, I prefer the sandbox aspect.

Which makes me wonder if the best play for the Allies isn't to rush Italy before France goes down? I am thinking that the damage from mines in the Adriatic might be worth sinking the Italian fleet if exposed.....

As for the rage-quitting, you're probably right. I seriously doubt many games ever make it far beyond 1942, personally I never played a MP game (vanilla) that lasted into 1943 before either Germany had steamrolled NA and USSR or the Allies had taken down Italy and invaded France.

My final comment on the whole sub thing: it is clearly an important aspect to you, and again it's your mod. Personally, TRP or vanilla, I consider raiding/asw as a sideshow to Barbarossa and can't be bothered if it's just frustrating. I put playability and balance over historical relevance if pressed.

One more thing, when Greece was invaded, I went for the option to pay for 2 UK corps. But these spawned right next to the German panzers, so that was a waste of money. Which leads me to the point, that for historical accuracy (wink wink) no German forces should be allowed to invade Greece following the Italian decision. Maybe there is a way to prevent German units from being transported in the Med until a certain date or event? It also stops the deployment of 3 panzer corps in Libya during the summer of 1940.

[gigiduru]

What I experienced was that the Germans simply bombed the Maginot line to dust with artillery and planes. So the French lines were now significantly longer. Yes I had AAA but not for the first 2 turns he bombed the Maginot, and I'm not keen on relying on house rules for much, I prefer the sandbox aspect.

Which makes me wonder if the best play for the Allies isn't to rush Italy before France goes down? I am thinking that the damage from mines in the Adriatic might be worth sinking the Italian fleet if exposed.....

As for the rage-quitting, you're probably right. I seriously doubt many games ever make it far beyond 1942, personally I never played a MP game (vanilla) that lasted into 1943 before either Germany had steamrolled NA and USSR or the Allies had taken down Italy and invaded France.

My final comment on the whole sub thing: it is clearly an important aspect to you, and again it's your mod. Personally, TRP or vanilla, I consider raiding/asw as a sideshow to Barbarossa and can't be bothered if it's just frustrating. I put playability and balance over historical relevance if pressed.

One more thing, when Greece was invaded, I went for the option to pay for 2 UK corps. But these spawned right next to the German panzers, so that was a waste of money. Which leads me to the point, that for historical accuracy (wink wink) no German forces should be allowed to invade Greece following the Italian decision. Maybe there is a way to prevent German units from being transported in the Med until a certain date or event? It also stops the deployment of 3 panzer corps in Libya during the summer of 1940.

This why SC games are fun. You are allowed and even encouraged to experiment. As the UK you could also build 3 armored cores and bring them to Egipt by summer '40. You could bring the whole of the RN in the med and you could contest Malta. Not even the italian navy+the luftwaffe can't compete vs so much firepower and the losses would be staggering for both sides (but in the end affect the axis more bc you won't have enough units for USSR).

As for the Greece event yeah you are right. But it things need to play like in history why bother to play the game? No one stops the allies from bringing the whole british air force into Ethiopia and carpet bombing the italians in a few turns to oblivion.

Or even preparing for a 'D-Day' in Denmark just before the invasion in order to distract the Germans from barbarossa and occupy some units.

Yeah indeed the allies are in a pickle after the fall of france and until the entry of the US in the war. Just like in IRL that is the period where the axis was dominant everywhere. And this game reflects that.

Not gonna comment on rage quiting because i did the same vs Lothos in dec '41 after he got several turns of good weather in nov/dec and my defences were bypassed near Moscow and Rostov. Looking back i could have probably contained him bc and i was preparing for a MASSIVE 30/40 units push in NA with everything the brits had (armored cores/divisions all the airforce AA arty 6 HQ etc and the fleet). But i got mad in the moment and pressed resigned ...

I am a bit upset you are refusing to engage with me like i am some sort of pariah.

[Taxman66]

That was not our experience with France. Albeit I screwed up a bit of timing and could have had a few INF Corps and stalled the fall of France until the middle of, or maybe late July/early August.

I suspect Lothos's Axis invested heavily in Tech early on and that may partly be the reason why France held on so long.

[Lothos]

How did the Armor get so far into Greece in 1 turn is what I am concerned about. The only thing I can think of is you moved all the Greek forces back and let the Axis get the two towns on the border.

[Lothos]

That was not our experience with France. Albeit I screwed up a bit of timing and could have had a few INF Corps and stalled the fall of France until the middle of, or maybe late July/early August.

I suspect Lothos's Axis invested heavily in Tech early on and that may partly be the reason why France held on so long.

Or it could be the other thing, were strategy needs to be adjusted.

In the last game I played as the Axis I went all full tech and still had every single plane the Germans had plus all their AA, Artillery and enough Garrison units to hold partisans down by June 1940.

Its all on strategy, timing and a little luck with the dice rolls where it counts.

[gremlok]

How did the Armor get so far into Greece in 1 turn is what I am concerned about. The only thing I can think of is you moved all the Greek forces back and let the Axis get the two towns on the border.

I didn’t get to make my move. He rolled across the border, the only Greek units I had left in my turn were in Thessaloniki and Athens.

[gremlok]

What I experienced was that the Germans simply bombed the Maginot line to dust with artillery and planes. So the French lines were now significantly longer. Yes I had AAA but not for the first 2 turns he bombed the Maginot, and I'm not keen on relying on house rules for much, I prefer the sandbox aspect.

Which makes me wonder if the best play for the Allies isn't to rush Italy before France goes down? I am thinking that the damage from mines in the Adriatic might be worth sinking the Italian fleet if exposed.....

As for the rage-quitting, you're probably right. I seriously doubt many games ever make it far beyond 1942, personally I never played a MP game (vanilla) that lasted into 1943 before either Germany had steamrolled NA and USSR or the Allies had taken down Italy and invaded France.

My final comment on the whole sub thing: it is clearly an important aspect to you, and again it's your mod. Personally, TRP or vanilla, I consider raiding/asw as a sideshow to Barbarossa and can't be bothered if it's just frustrating. I put playability and balance over historical relevance if pressed.

One more thing, when Greece was invaded, I went for the option to pay for 2 UK corps. But these spawned right next to the German panzers, so that was a waste of money. Which leads me to the point, that for historical accuracy (wink wink) no German forces should be allowed to invade Greece following the Italian decision. Maybe there is a way to prevent German units from being transported in the Med until a certain date or event? It also stops the deployment of 3 panzer corps in Libya during the summer of 1940.

This why SC games are fun. You are allowed and even encouraged to experiment. As the UK you could also build 3 armored cores and bring them to Egipt by summer '40. You could bring the whole of the RN in the med and you could contest Malta. Not even the italian navy+the luftwaffe can't compete vs so much firepower and the losses would be staggering for both sides (but in the end affect the axis more bc you won't have enough units for USSR).

As for the Greece event yeah you are right. But it things need to play like in history why bother to play the game? No one stops the allies from bringing the whole british air force into Ethiopia and carpet bombing the italians in a few turns to oblivion.

Or even preparing for a 'D-Day' in Denmark just before the invasion in order to distract the Germans from barbarossa and occupy some units.

Yeah indeed the allies are in a pickle after the fall of france and until the entry of the US in the war. Just like in IRL that is the period where the axis was dominant everywhere. And this game reflects that.

Not gonna comment on rage quiting because i did the same vs Lothos in dec '41 after he got several turns of good weather in nov/dec and my defences were bypassed near Moscow and Rostov. Looking back i could have probably contained him bc and i was preparing for a MASSIVE 30/40 units push in NA with everything the brits had (armored cores/divisions all the airforce AA arty 6 HQ etc and the fleet). But i got mad in the moment and pressed resigned ...

I am a bit upset you are refusing to engage with me like i am some sort of pariah.

I disagree about Malta. The RN in the Med is too weak to face off the Axis, assuming France has fallen (I didn’t know you were not planning on going for Vichy). And if you empty Scapa Flow then Britain is undefended, not a wise option to me.

In hindsight sure, but that’s a mute point.

[Lothos]

How did the Armor get so far into Greece in 1 turn is what I am concerned about. The only thing I can think of is you moved all the Greek forces back and let the Axis get the two towns on the border.

I didn’t get to make my move. He rolled across the border, the only Greek units I had left in my turn were in Thessaloniki and Athens.

Ok let me think about this one see what I can come up with. Right now I am trying to figure out a way to get India to a higher supply level withought putting a UK Primary Supply point their in the World At War version but I added this to my notes.

[Lothos]

Just on another note cause of people complaining about the sub changes.

Playing a game in MP right now as the Axis. It is March 1940 and I lost 3 out of the 4 German subs I start the game with to the Allies ASW.

Should I now rage and complain that subs are still to easy to kill?

[Duedman]

Just on another note cause of people complaining about the sub changes.

Playing a game in MP right now as the Axis. It is March 1940 and I lost 3 out of the 4 German subs I start the game with to the Allies ASW.

Should I now rage and complain that subs are still to easy to kill?

Well yes. It is a foregone conclusion that they die!! Especially if you send them out when France is still in.
But what did you achieve by making them harder to kill? Was that a fun experience for one of you?
Was it more realistic?

Probably just watching the replay must have been a pain already.

[Lothos]

Just on another note cause of people complaining about the sub changes.

Playing a game in MP right now as the Axis. It is March 1940 and I lost 3 out of the 4 German subs I start the game with to the Allies ASW.

Should I now rage and complain that subs are still to easy to kill?

Well yes. It is a foregone conclusion that they die!! Especially if you send them out when France is still in.
But what did you achieve by making them harder to kill? Was that a fun experience for one of you?
Was it more realistic?

Probably just watching the replay must have been a pain already.

Hmm, by that definition then playing as the Allies I really hate how watching France loose to Germany is no fun. We should just remove that from the game and have an Event that says Germany beats France and gives them everything.

See my point here?

Its part of the game, if I redo how ships are handled in the game I would but this is the game engine as designed and I honestly do not feel its appropriate to remove all the submarines from the game because you hate doing ASW because that is what literally happens with the old version. Axis players never put any MPP into subs because it is a waste of money. Once their existing subs are dead (which is usually around end of 1940 then the Allies can do whatever they want and not have to ever worry about a submarine again.

Sure that is fun for the Allied player because now they spend all their MPP on building land units instead of ASW type units which then makes it even harder for the Axis because the allies can attack earlier on all fronts.

Their is a chain reaction to events!

Unless someone comes up with a better idea on how to help subs survive the onslaught the changes are staying. The goal of the mod is to make it as realistic as possible and as challenging as possible. No where in my goals did it state "make it as convenient and easy as possible".

However, as has been shown I do keep an open mind and always looking for alternative ways to make things better. So if people have suggestions to help subs survive I want to hear it.

[Duedman]

Hmm, by that definition then playing as the Allies I really hate how watching France loose to Germany is no fun. We should just remove that from the game and have an Event that says Germany beats France and gives them everything.

See my point here?

Frankly I do not see your point there. In France Allied player can at least try to deal as much damage as possible. And this can be quite a lot if he knows what he's doing and/or Axis player is not careful.
Just slowing the Axis down into late summer is "damage" in MPP terms. That's actually fun.
Whats not fun is travelling from Poland to France and then back to the East. But nothing can be done about that.

Still, think I know what you mean. It's part of WWII and has to be included somehow. And the game engine ties your hands.

I made several suggestions which never even got a "seen it, won't work" reply from you.
And every time I come back here I think of something new. Just because I hate having to play un-fun things.

My newest most likely undoable idea is:
Remove Subs as units and make it event based. Axis can chose to invest MPP. A little bit later Allies get a popup "umm something's fishy, wanna counterinvest?" Do this a few times back and forth and make it hurt the USSR convoys as well.
In the end, Allies will win but Axis has the chance to invest MPP to slow down Allies with one final "Happy Time" (and of course also the Event costs for countering it).
This is just a quick thought and would need a lot more flesh to it.

And it would be quite radical. Suddenly no Submarines no more.
But it would also solve another issue.
As others pointed out: Uboats were NO combat units. The occasions where Uboats actually engaged capital ships were very very rare.
Currently in SC the best way to use them is just as that.... combat units in a major fleet action. Or throw away scouts for a later Sealion.
Until then, you hoard them in the Baltic because the few MPPs raided until they die are not worth it.

You would need to tone down the number of Allied destroyers a lot tho.

Just imagine how ppl would scream: "Where are the Subs? What have you done!!!!???"

[Taxman66]

Nailed it, Dudeman.

I just want to add that for the record the 1942 numbers in the chart above are not the whole story. A disproportionate number of US merchant ships were sunk in early 1942 as the US foolishly did not listen to the advice from over the pond and failed to set up convoys. When they did, things started to turn around, and it eventually did so very dramatically.

Sorry, I promised I'd be off the subject. Back to my spider hole.