It has long been my desire to have the capability to modify more of the game than the engine has been capable of allowing. Some of the items that are hard coded seem to be desirable as data items. The most obvious is the Random Political events, which has already engendered much discussion with regard to Spain.
Joel and 2by3 have been kind enough to give me an opportunity to attempt to modify the game engine to make scenarios more modifiable. I hope to use this to enhance my Global Glory mod, but I also hope to support the ideas that others would like to see for their own modding efforts (or simply to suggest concepts for modders such as me or Lebatron).
So, please feel free to suggest things on this thread that perhaps should be modifiable but currently are not. I'm interested in rule enhacements, and I don't plan any effort for any graphics/icon mod-ability.
Here's a list of things under consideration:
- (high priority) mod-able random political events. Completely captured in data files and backward compatible (current rules can be represented in the data file). Also add new types of random events that can be used to model Russian, Australian, Indian surrender or cease-fire.
- (high priority) infrastructure can start game with damage
- (medium priority) at startof game, units can have nationality other than the region where they start (for friendly regions, e.g. German units in Italy).
- (low priority) adjustability to combat rules. I consider this unlikely because it might be hard to get working bug-free, it could be confusing for mods to have different combat rules, and 10 people could have 10 ideas as to what should be configurable. But it is open for consideration. Possibilities include
-- some adjustments to suppression
-- air penalty at max range (which would allow for a Battle of Britain and be fairly realistic in terms of air units decreasing effectiveness when they are far from base)
For Russian/Australian/Indian surrender, I see these being a new kind of Random Political event. They would be evaluated at the beginning of the season like all the current political events, but the effects are new and require some careful coding and debugging. It would allow three basic new features:
(1) a specified list of territories can made made to be ceded to the opposition without assessing new infra damage (e.g. a Russian surrender yields the regions west of the Urals to Germany). This can be made so that either the cession does not occur for occupied regions (which I would likely do for India or Australia in my own mod), or units in the ceded territories are forced to retreat (which I would likely do for western Russia) and would be destroyed if they cannot retreat.
(2) remaining territories can be made frozen, envisioned both for a Russian cease-fire (no territory cession) and a Russian surrender (western territories ceded) . This would apply to the remainder of Russia. Full strat move would still be possible, so a new "surprise attack" from the Axis would not be possible. Any attack by the Axis would at this point nullify the cease-fire terms and unfreeze the regions again.
(3) force a new resource gift, envisioned for Russia to Germany after a cease-fire or surrender.
This gives an idea what what I am planning to add. Let me know if there are any other good ideas that appear easy to implement.
I make no promises whatever. I've looked over the code, and can change and recompile the code, but making useful changes will take a good deal of time.
We'll see how it goes.