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Had a few troubles with viruses, fortunately, withouth damage to my system, this delayed a bit the release of v0.30. The file, now, has 196 units and will be released as soon I reach 200. It´s complete as far you want to play to the late 40´s, but the 50´s units are still incomplete.

Bombur,
 
thxs for all your hard work.  I don't post much, but always make a point to keep an eye on your terrific work as all I play are random map games.  Anxiously awaiting .30
 
 

Thank you, bssybeep. Unfortunately, the in the mod is too slow. I´m grateful for all support I had from the community, particularly from Jeffery H., and from Grymme, Tow weber, Vic and Appren, my PBEM partners.
I was considering, however, that I could have made a mistake that delayed my work a lot. I created different categories of aircraft and ship, based on top speed. I made this to simulate the effect of performance in fighter vs. bomber interceptions. I felt evasiveness, as used by Capt Cruft in his excellent Ostfront mod, wasn´t a good answer fro the trouble in a multi-era scenario as mine. This happens because evasiveness too is dependent on other features. A Mosquito can easily outrun, say, a Me-109E and even a Fw-190A will have troubles intercepting that bomber. However, against a MIG-15, the high speed (600km/h) is useless because the fighter in question can achieve more than 1000km/h. Even worse, the wooden structure of a Mosquito makes it far more vulnerable to a MIG-15 than a B-25 or B-26. So the correct would be to create a special category (SF GROUP) for the Mosquito and similar aircraft (in mod terms this is HiBomber4-propeller driven planes with to speeds above 550kh/h), and we set different values for A2A combat for each fighter we want to intercept the Mosquito. The Me-109E, for instance, is rated as Fighter V, and has almost no chance to intercept a HiBomber4, the Fw190A is similar to Fighter VI and has a far better A2A value. The MIG-15 is Fighter IX and can shot down essentially every propeller driven plane. The trouble of this strategy is that it´s accurate, but gives a lot of work to create all entries, because, instead of a single bomber SF GROUP, I have 14!!!!!! And 4 Fighter SF GROUPS instead of one!!!! This means 32 extra entries for each plane I have, and there are more than 50 planes in the mod. So.....What would be the alternative? We could make Hitpoints an average value that would consider speed and durability. An aircraft could have up to 1000 hitpoints (500 performance+ 500 durability), and this value would define its vulnerability. Big inconvenient is that fast bombers would be hard to be destroyed in the ground due to high number of hit points, but this could be fixed too, I think. I´m considering to do this experience in a future mod, because this one is too cumbersome for a WWII scenario with custom units.

Bombur-
Thanks for sharing the details of what all you considered in creating the air units for this mod.
I"m WAY impressed by your thoughtfulness and the time you have put into it.
We will all benefit greatly from your efforts.

v0.30 uploaded. Has the first cruise missiles (the V-1 and the antiship SS-N-3). Also updated fighters (up to the Mig-19/F-100) and bombers (up to Tu-16/B-47 and Tu-20/B-52). Also has recoiless guns, supercarriers and main battle tanks. For large maps with few players we strongly suggest to increase the speed of research, otherwise, research is very slow....Next version will be v0.50 and will have about 220 units. This version will be sent to definitive approval.

...which reminds me that I need to get back on the horse on those other counter graphics.

ORIGINAL: Jeffrey H.

...which reminds me that I need to get back on the horse on those other counter graphics.

I´m anxiously waiting for your missile graphics....[:D]

Made an emergency fix, as v0.30 had a gamebreaking bug. Some newly created units had no research pre requisite attached, so a player would start the game with MIG-19´s, M47 Pattons and Tu-20´s (not to mention Tankers)

After feedback from Vic and Grymme, made the following changes:
Decreased hitpoints for armoured car II to 400
Increased hitpoints for light tank I to 700
Decreased cost for light tank I to 6000
Decreased pp cost to 250, effectively doubling research speed.

v0.50 is to be somewhat delayed, as playtesting vs the AI is showing multiple small bugs, as items not related to SF´s, or advanced units that aren´t blocking older ones. The scenario, however, is playable and stable up to the 50´s.

-We have now an advanced beta version (v0.50). It has all units planned. I will add more units only on player´s request. Now what is left to be done is to make more extensive playtesting and fixing bugs. The v1.00 will be ready in 2 months, I hope. Meanwhile, I will start work in my next project: Global domination for Bombur mod. It will use Grymme´s world map for an epic 252 turn conquest of world game.

Well, I struggled a bit with the surface to air missle. I did these 3 and I'm still not happy. I decided today to let you upload them and have a look at them ingame to see if any of them look ok to you. I'm not happy but I'm also reluctant to try again.

Let me know if any of these are good enough or which one you think looks best.

Your graphics are excellent. I will place some screenshoots here briefly.

Thanks, some screenshots would be nice indeed.

wow this looks cool.

Bombur....

Grymme and I have been having some discussions about the effectiveness of armor vs infantry in the normal game over in the main forums and.... myself trying different things in the rulevars to try to make the AI more competitive.... came over here to read the tuturials on what the rulevars do and.... found this.

Far out! <g>

Almost like AT: WW ONE.... and as far as infantry vs armor... moot when for all practical purposes.... there is no armor (lol).

However..... there is still the matter of the AI effectiveness in the random generated games.... and (for sure).... I got some comments.

First.... there is rulevar 226.... and amount of production that the AI puts into research.

In the regular random games.... in playing I found this to be too high (e.g. to the AI's disadvantage as far as being competitive). It would not be unusual for the AI to have medium tank 4 and heavy tank 2... while I would only have, at best, medium tank 2... but I would nevertheless clean the AI's clock as it would only have a few of these here and there while I had many 5 strength medium tank units, and lots of artillery and dive bombers (yeah, remember once taking out the AI's heavy tank 2... with armored cars.. this after heavy artillery bombardment.... I am giving the AI AI+ but this was what was happenning).

So, with this I went into the rulevars and was suprised to find rulevar 226 already at what would seem like a low value of .05. But, nonetheless, tried it at 0, .01 and .02, and IMO .01 works best for my taste.

So, in your mod..... it is at .2 and for me that is pretty high especially for WW1 scenarios (where you don't get that much for the research dollar)... and thus I guess my suggestion here is that you might want to consider a lower value here.

I guess on this it is a matter of whether you want what the AI is producing to be more interesting... or more competitive.

However.... what I should also say here.... is I tried your mod with this set at .01... and still the AI was not that competitive. Did not do much at all re exploration and then sent out small units that were easily gobbled up by my artillery and 50 strength rifle units.

So, assuming I have the time, I am gonna experiment some more with the AI rulevars and your mod... to see if I can make it more competitive... and will post what I find here for your perusal.

Oh.... the other thing I wanted to say here... ultimately... it would be nice to see your mod packed with multiple ptmaster files... one each for the various time frames covered by your mod. In other words (prefacing them with BM for 'Bombur Mod')... BM1900, BM1905, BM1914, BM1918... BM1936, BM1939, BM1940.... etc... and then the player playing your mod could then choose the era they want to play and have a ramdom game with the start units of that era... would be way cool IMO!

In any case... many thanks for you mod... is way cool!

Z

Zaratoughda:


I set the rulevar 226 to 0.2 because the AI was falling behind in research for long games. It seems the AI becomes confused with the amount of options. The increase to 20% worked well because the AI was finally able to build some aircraft and achieved a significant tech advantage in the first turns. This said, I must say that the AI is far from being competitive (unless you set it to AI++) and I´m not sure on what will happen with AI research in the long run. This is a provisional value that could change. I will consider your idea tof making other files. You´re free to mod my mod, if you want. I just ask you to tell me what graphics changes you want to do so we could keep the same directory for graphics files.

Hmmm... I use the 'standard military symbols' mod for my unit symbols... and for your mod made them myself for cavalry and costal artillery. I could do the rest of them (there are only about a half dozen others... would probably have to invent the Zepplin symbol) if you want but.... with these... have to replace the picture files that are there to be used.. so need to be in a separate folder for those that want to use them.

Otherwise... I guess some players like to see the advance in weapondry over time in the games they play.... while others just like a competitive game... while still others like... well, whatever they like <g>.

So, possibly my suggestion is something that Vic might be interested in in a future AT release.

Oh... you are probably aware of this but thought I'd mention it here... re the AI...

Normally the AI will build armored cars (in the random games) for exploration but in your mod cavalry serves that roll... but the AI cannot handle this... in fact does not build any cavalry at all (and no artillery either at least as far as I can tell). I tried giving it the armored car build at start and it built armored cars... but then dragged them down to foot movement by putting infantry in the same units.

In short.... I will probably try adjusting the AI rulevars some more to see if I can get it working better... but probably gonna end up that the AI has trouble dealing with this and thus probably not gonna work that well. We will see.

Z

P.S. Oh... the cost to upgrade artillery I to artillery II... is the same as buying a new artillery II. Don't know if you intended this or not but just thought I'd mention it.

ORIGINAL: Zaratoughda
Hmmm... I use the 'standard military symbols' mod for my unit symbols... and for your mod made them myself for cavalry and costal artillery. I could do the rest of them (there are only about a half dozen others... would probably have to invent the Zepplin symbol) if you want but.... with these... have to replace the picture files that are there to be used.. so need to be in a separate folder for those that want to use them.

-The last versions of my mod already have symbols for Zeppelins, Jet Fighters, Jet Bombers, Seaplanes and Torpedo bombers. They were created by Jeffrey H.

Normally the AI will build armored cars (in the random games) for exploration but in your mod cavalry serves that roll... but the AI cannot handle this... in fact does not build any cavalry at all (and no artillery either at least as far as I can tell).

In my games they are building cavalry, but they are never building artillery.

In short.... I will probably try adjusting the AI rulevars some more to see if I can get it working better... but probably gonna end up that the AI has trouble dealing with this and thus probably not gonna work that well. We will see.

-My guess is that it will be hard to improve the AI....but I will be happy to hear from you what you eventually achieves.

P.S. Oh... the cost to upgrade artillery I to artillery II... is the same as buying a new artillery II. Don't know if you intended this or not but just thought I'd mention it.

It´s actually intended

ORIGINAL: Bombur

ORIGINAL: Zaratoughda
Hmmm... I use the 'standard military symbols' mod for my unit symbols... and for your mod made them myself for cavalry and costal artillery. I could do the rest of them (there are only about a half dozen others... would probably have to invent the Zepplin symbol) if you want but.... with these... have to replace the picture files that are there to be used.. so need to be in a separate folder for those that want to use them.

-The last versions of my mod already have symbols for Zeppelins, Jet Fighters, Jet Bombers, Seaplanes and Torpedo bombers. They were created by Jeffrey H.

I was talking about something else. The game comes standard with 'picture' icons for all units... but a lot of wargames use the 'standard military symbols' on the units and there is a mod out on the community web site that replaces the pictures with the standard military symbols. I use this mod normally with AT but with your mod the cavalry was coming up with the picture you included in your mod... so I did a standard military symbol for it (box with a slash through it) and replaced the picture file (after saving it) with the military symbol and then did the same for the coastal artillery.

Again, if you want these I can get them to you but... no big deal.

Z

P.S. Some games... I believe it was the V for Victory/World at War games where I have seen this.... allow you to choose between the picture icons and the standard military symbols.