Basic Artillery Mod . . .

[stockwellpete]

I see that you have Heavy Artillery and Super Heavy Artillery in the Editor. Will they work as intended if they are added to a very simple main campaign mod?

Basically, I want to try an idea that has the smaller field guns (e.g. British 19pdrs and 13pdrs) with the infantry and cavalry Corps and the actual artillery units are used to represent in an abstracted way the capability of each nation to concentrate their heavier artillery weapons. I can do this in one of two ways.

Either continue to use the Artillery units we have now but start them at Tech level 1 so they can de-entrench immediately. The cost of upgrading from Tech 1 to Tech 2 will be 250 MPP to replicate the default cost of going from 0-2 Tech. Of course, they will reach Tech 2 more quickly in this mod.

Or delete all the Artillery units and replace them with Heavy Artillery units. Maybe these should only have 1 Tech increase too? I see they cost just 200 MPP's instead of 300MPP's and I am not sure why that is. Do they automatically de-entrench units at level 0 Tech?

Thanks for any assistance.

[BillRunacre]

Hi

The units will function as artillery, but I think you'll probably want to edit their attack values, demoralization, de-entrenchment and max shells settings. Adjusting their cost and research limits as appropriately too.

[stockwellpete]

Bill,

What I have done so far is this . . .

1) Removed all standard Artillery units from my Mod (smaller field artillery assumed to be attached to infantry Corps)

2) Instead I will use Heavy Artillery units, initially allocated as follows (these are provisional as I need to do more research) . . .

Germany 4, Austria-Hungary 2, Turkey 2
UK 2, France 2, Russia 2, Serbia 1, Italy 1, USA 1

3) reduced Artillery shells maximum from 10 to 5; left De-Entrenchment value at 0.5 (does this mean each salvo has a 50% chance to de-entrench?); and increased Demoralisation to a value of 15 (standard Artillery has a value of 5 for this).

Are there any other values I should be adjusting? You mentioned "Attack Values" and I see there are boxes for "Soft Attack", "Hard Attack" and "Artillery" etc, but I am not sure what they do. They are all set on zero currently for all 3 types of artillery in the game. Given that I feel standard Artillery is a bit too powerful in the game, it might be OK for my Heavy Artillery units to basically have the same values, apart from the Demoralisation value.

4) There is only 1 Tech level to be researched for Heavy Artillery and I have increased the cost of it to 150MPP's (corrected 150MPP's not 250 MPP's). How will the engine calculate the improvement gained for the heavy artillery by this research?

5) The cost of buying a heavy artillery unit has increased to 350 MPP's.

6) Germany has one Heavy Artillery unit at the start so it can start the game by shelling Liege, but the other automatic deployments of artillery have been removed for the time being. I might re-instate them later depending on how things work out.

Thanks for any help with this.

[stockwellpete]

Ottomans reduced from 2 to 1; Serbia reduced from 1 to 0.

[stockwellpete]

ORIGINAL: stockwellpete

6) Germany has one Heavy Artillery unit at the start so it can start the game by shelling Liege, but the other automatic deployments of artillery have been removed for the time being. I might re-instate them later depending on how things work out.

Thanks for any help with this.

I have put these deployments back in.

[BillRunacre]

ORIGINAL: stockwellpete

3) reduced Artillery shells maximum from 10 to 5; left De-Entrenchment value at 0.5 (does this mean each salvo has a 50% chance to de-entrench?); and increased Demoralisation to a value of 15 (standard Artillery has a value of 5 for this).

Hi

0.5 entrenchment has no effect until the Artillery has been upgraded via research (Artillery Weapons tech) to have a De-Entrenchment value of 1.

So un-upgraded artillery will not de-entrench, but they can soften up the target and even occasionally cause casualties.

[BillRunacre]

ORIGINAL: stockwellpete

Are there any other values I should be adjusting? You mentioned "Attack Values" and I see there are boxes for "Soft Attack", "Hard Attack" and "Artillery" etc, but I am not sure what they do. They are all set on zero currently for all 3 types of artillery in the game.

These are the base attack values of this unit type, and I would suggest keeping them at zero for now.

[stockwellpete]

Thanks Bill for those posts.

I next thing that I am thinking about with this mod is counter-battery fire, which was an important element in WW1. Using planes, or balloons as spotters was probably the most effective way of identifying the position of enemy artillery, and "flash spotting" was also very productive.

In the default game, where the range of the guns is 2 hexes, there is very little opportunity for counter-battery fire. But in my current trial I have increased the range to 3 hexes to see how that plays out, given that the number of artillery pieces has been considerably reduced as they now represent just the very big guns.

[Chernobyl]

You could set their de-entrenchment to 0 so you need level 2 artillery to start de-entrenching.

That would cause the second half of 1915 to be extremely defensive. But hey that might be somewhat historical!

[stockwellpete]

ORIGINAL: Chernobyl

You could set their de-entrenchment to 0 so you need level 2 artillery to start de-entrenching.

That would cause the second half of 1915 to be extremely defensive. But hey that might be somewhat historical!

I have actually gone the other way with it so De-entrenchment is set at 1 from the beginning of the game. It seems to be OK as there are not many Artillery units in the game until the spring of 1915 and there is a rough parity in artillery across all the major fronts. I am about half-way through my first game against the AI at the moment.

[Chernobyl]

Is there a way to change the name of a type of unit? Specifically I want to change Heavy Artillery" into "Artillery Detachment"

I could just change the stats of Heavy Artillery, but the name Heavy Artillery would be confusing since I want it to be a smaller unit.

[stockwellpete]

ORIGINAL: Chernobyl

Is there a way to change the name of a type of unit? Specifically I want to change Heavy Artillery" into "Artillery Detachment"

I could just change the stats of Heavy Artillery, but the name Heavy Artillery would be confusing since I want it to be a smaller unit.

I have had a look but cannot see a way to do it. Bill or Hubert will read this eventually.[:)]

[BillRunacre]

ORIGINAL: Chernobyl

Is there a way to change the name of a type of unit? Specifically I want to change Heavy Artillery" into "Artillery Detachment"

I could just change the stats of Heavy Artillery, but the name Heavy Artillery would be confusing since I want it to be a smaller unit.

Yes, you'll need to change the unit name in the localization.txt file for your mod.

Searching the Manual for the word localization is probably the quickest way to find details of what you need to do.

[Chernobyl]

Thanks!

[stockwellpete]

I have got a FAILED store: Permission denied message while playing this Mod. The date in the game was the end of the turn 9/9/16 and I cannot get past this date. Any ideas?

[BillRunacre]

Hi

I've found that this came up before, in this thread: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.a ... =&#4776792


I've pasted below Hubert's first suggestions to that poster, and hope it works for you too?

Bill

__________________________


Essentially a permissions error is an operating system error and user access control error which could also be affected by your anti virus software (which sometimes likes EXEs that are digitally signed more than those that are not).


* * *


A couple of things you can try:

1) right click on your game EXE (or your desktop shortcut for the game) and try and run as an Administrator to see if this helps.

OR

2) Perform a full uninstall and then reinstall to see if that helps as well.

If you do a full uninstall and reinstall, I would also navigate to the following folder and remove this as well. It is a hidden folder created by Windows when running the game in the Program Files folder where the game typically installs.

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Matrix Games\Strategic Command WWI

[stockwellpete]

ORIGINAL: BillRunacre

2) Perform a full uninstall and then reinstall to see if that helps as well.

Thanks. I did a full uninstall and reinstall and it is working fine now. I could not find that folder though, or anything connected to the game in the Program (x86) list. I use Steam. It must be on my laptop somewhere, but I have no idea where.[8|]

[BillRunacre]

Glad to hear it worked! [:)]

[stockwellpete]

I have finished the first game against the AI with the Mod and I feel overall that it gave a good game. Balancing German with British/French artillery numbers on the Western Front meant that front remained deadlocked right up to the end of 1918, even though the Entente had about 6 rows of units lined up against the Germans' two rows. The USA did not enter the war and would have been superfluous even if they had. With the range of artillery units increased to 3 hexes there were half a dozen examples of counter-battery fire in the game, which was also a plus as it hardly ever happens in the vanilla game.

My next variation will leave Artillery units as in the vanilla game, except that the numbers of artillery units will be balanced so Germany has parity with Britain and France. Artillery units will represent both heavier guns and lighter field artillery in this variation. Instead, Infantry and Cavalry Corps will lose their ability to de-entrench enemy units when they attack them.

[stockwellpete]

ORIGINAL: stockwellpete

I have finished the first game against the AI with the Mod and I feel overall that it gave a good game. Balancing German with British/French artillery numbers on the Western Front meant that front remained deadlocked right up to the end of 1918, even though the Entente had about 6 rows of units lined up against the Germans' two rows. The USA did not enter the war and would have been superfluous even if they had. With the range of artillery units increased to 3 hexes there were half a dozen examples of counter-battery fire in the game, which was also a plus as it hardly ever happens in the vanilla game.

My next variation will leave Artillery units as in the vanilla game, except that the numbers of artillery units will be balanced so Germany has parity with Britain and France. Artillery units will represent both heavier guns and lighter field artillery in this variation. Instead, Infantry and Cavalry Corps will lose their ability to de-entrench enemy units when they attack them.

I have decided not to pursue this second option, basically because it will be a lot more difficult to balance. So I am going to stick with my first idea of having artillery units just representing the ability of the various combatant nations to concentrate their heavier guns.

I have also found how to adjust scripts at the start of a game and so the following events DE129, DE135 and DE415 will be disabled before I start a game in future. These are the events that allow the British to deploy (heavy) artillery in Egypt and Iraq and the Russians to deploy (heavy) artillery in the Caucasus.

Regarding the Alpine front, I am going to try it with 3 hexes as impassable terrain - 170,89 171,89 and 170,90. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be impassable mountains to use in the editor so I have used the impassable desert (depression) image instead. It doesn't look great but it will serve my purposes for now which is to stop the AI trying to reach Salzburg across the mountains every game.

Another issue that I want to address is the late game problem of the Entente having about 6 rows of units on the Western Front, which renders USA entry into the war completely superfluous. The Editor gives the following Build limits for Corps and then Detachments . . .

UK 24 + 8
France 24 + 6
Italy 15 + 6
Serbia 5 + 3
Russia 44 + 8
USA 24 + 4
Germany 50 + 12
Austria-Hungary 24 + 10
Ottoman Turkey 22 + 15
Bulgaria (need to look them up in a minute)

I am not quite sure how to scale this down but perhaps a 25% cut across the board might be in the right sort of area? So UK would be 18 + 6 instead of 24 + 8. France would be 18 + 5 (if I round up fractions of units) and Russia 33 + 6. Germany would be 38 + 9 and A-H 18 + 8. That might be OK as a starting point. When I play as Central Powers against the AI I never get near the Infantry Corp maximum for Germany anyway.

The other areas that I may also look at are . . .
i) does Italy mobilise too quickly?
ii) should there be impassable mountain hexes in the Caucasus?
iii) can I make Maritime Bombers/Seaplanes much less effective attacking against submarines
iv) should tanks and cavalry go up mountain hexes without a road in them?
v) is it possible to add in the effect of mutinies, Spanish flu, war weariness etc in the later game?

And I have I have just one question if anyone can help me. In the Editor there is a box that it ticked called "Reformable". What is this please? Does it refer to the facility to replace "destroyed" units like Infantry Corps for 135 MPP's rather than paying full cost 225 MPP's? So, if I untick it then I will always have to pay full price to refit a badly damaged unit? Doing this might help with the "6 rows of units" phenomenon in the later game.