Quick and Dirty 2: A Soviet Resurgence and WW3 (HOI3 - March 1944 start)

[nuclearslurpee]

Operational summary, Far East – Northern Sector (not including the Magadan Pocket), October 1945.

Now this is the kind of impressive advance we've been waiting to see! Three provinces deep across the front, very nice!

Operational summary, Far East – Central Sector, October 1945.

Here the advance is less impressive, but as noted there is an opportunity to encircle and capture one of the famous SNLF divisions (here seen woefully out-of-place). Poor positioning aside, we could learn something from "studying" the tactics of this division...

[NB: I'm not sure what the difference, if any, is between a 'node' and a 'province' in this context.]

I believe they're the same thing, although I don't know for certain how the nodes calculation works for overseas supply. As you're seeing, of course, the route calculated for a given division/province is not simple or even particularly sensical in many cases, as the divisions on the front are certainly not separated from one another by two dozen provinces.

​

The Allies were currently relying on the Thais in Malaya, but their criminally negligent failure to garrison Singapore had led to its loss.

The real criminal negligence here is all that border gore. Something tells me the imperialists may be too busy arguing about their new colonial borders to pay attention while we build up for WW2.1.

 

[Bullfilter]

Australia is almost liberated! Time to celebrate?

The news from the East continues to be good - but winter will surely soon start to bite.

Getting close! Now it’s just rounding them up - I doubt whether they are getting any more reinforcements! Winter will bite and slow things down in terms of movement and combat, but we expect our rugged soldiers to fight on through it as best they can - their orders will remain ‘Attack, attack, always attack!’

Good gains continue this month, even though there's been some lost battles. I think the gains will speed up each passing month! Thanks for the nice episode!

I'm not sure but I think a node is a province with more than 10% infra?

One such opportunity can also happen around the Pacific coast

It seems all will be POWs, good result!

Fast increase! Nazım Hikmet, Pertev Naili Boratav et al are coming to rule

I wish Paradox put Hikmet the Doctor as a minister as well, dashing looks and interesting character

Thank you! The coastal advance was nice - probably better terrain for it, and once the enemy were on the run, the AI kept pushing them hard, with backup forces to maintain the momentum. They would often be attacking the next province the same day they had secured the last one.

The supply system will I guess remain a semi-logical guesstimate! It is good to see Australia being retaken at last, the Philippine too, though also for the Allies to be a bit confused in Malaya, while still keeping the Japanese a little distracted.

Hikmet looks very funky for the time! Thanks for the pic. I’ll be interested to see how the influencing goes with them and see if either Turkey or Spain can be induced to join the Comintern peacefully in due course.

Any plans for a Cold War after this?

More of a Hot War - nothing less than the forcible liberation of Europe (mainly Germany and the Balkans, plus Spain and Turkey), if that proves feasible. Though this fight against Japan is taking a long time to complete. Then again, that gives some time to modernise and prepare plus carry out the political campaigns against Spain and Turkey. Specifically, the strategy here is to develop submarine, missile and nuke capabilities to sap enemy will to resist. Japan will be the test case.

Now this is the kind of impressive advance we've been waiting to see! Three provinces deep across the front, very nice!

Here the advance is less impressive, but as noted there is an opportunity to encircle and capture one of the famous SNLF divisions (here seen woefully out-of-place). Poor positioning aside, we could learn something from "studying" the tactics of this division...

I believe they're the same thing, although I don't know for certain how the nodes calculation works for overseas supply. As you're seeing, of course, the route calculated for a given division/province is not simple or even particularly sensical in many cases, as the divisions on the front are certainly not separated from one another by two dozen provinces.

The real criminal negligence here is all that border gore. Something tells me the imperialists may be too busy arguing about their new colonial borders to pay attention while we build up for WW2.1.

Agree, that coastal offensive especially was very heartening - also strategically sound. If we can cut off and contain them, plus get some good air bases from which to strike the Japanese with bombers, then rockets and eventually nukes, it may knock them out without having to fight all the way through their armies in China and the Home Islands.

It seems to me the supply system is one of those things you are meant to broadly understand but never rely on ‘scientifically’ or precisely.

And yes, the proletariat will sweep away all their colonialist map markings. The World will be Red!

 

[Specialist290]

Impressive gains this month The southern sector remains an area of concern, but given the supply problems and the fact that you have undoubtedly less capable Mongolian troops facing crack Japanese Marine divisions, that's probably not too unexpected.

Also quite gratifying to see the Japanese collapsing on other fronts as well, especially in Australia and the Philippines. Perhaps not as helpful in the long-term as a continued meat-grinder, but at the very least it's a sign that Japan's general war effort is starting to buckle under the strain. And, of course, the fact that the Western Allies still managed to lose Singapore yet again despite all this is undoubtedly more evidence of the capitalist imperialists' utter unfitness to govern the peoples of East Asia

 

[roverS3]

Very good progress this month. The potential for more encirclements is definitely there, both along the Pacific Coast and East of lake Baikal. The Red Army has resolutely taken the initiative, and it doesn't look like the Japanese will be able to take it back in any meaningful way.

Research looks good, and an officer ratio of 117% is rather impressive for the Soviet Union, considering the size of the red army, and it's relatively limited leadership. The ambitious intelligence operations have been quite costly this month though. The results in Turkey are looking good, and risks rather limited. Spain looks rather risky, and possibly not worth the effort right now. Manchukuo is in the middle, and Japan, as your main enemy is a tough, expensive, but justifiable mission to run. Might I enquire as to why you don't switch entirely to Counter-espionage in a situation like Spain, where you have 10 spy teams facing 7 spy-hunter teams? Wouldn't it be more cost-effective to whittle down enemy spy numbers to a low number (or 0), before resuming or undertaking another mission, which your spies can then give (almost) full attention?
My experiments with espionage have been somewhat limited as I find the leadership expense to be rather prohibitive, even for the USSR, which despite being a major power, has rather low leadership compared to the size of it's armed forces and territory. This may have led me into the, potentially overly cautious, tactic of putting the mission on full counter-espionage as soon as more than 2 enemy spy hunter teams rear their heads...

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the total Soviet conquest of Axis-controlled mainland Asia. It could still take another year, but remain hopeful it could be mostly done in 6-9 months.

 

[El Pip]

Soviet Marines with a battalion of engineers on the end? A bold strategy comrade, let us hope the ruined amphibious bonus does not see you send to the Gulag for being a wrecker.

Also, all hail the Tu-4! Or, as we are not allowed to call it, the B-29ski Super Forgedcopy

 

[Bullfilter]

Impressive gains this month The southern sector remains an area of concern, but given the supply problems and the fact that you have undoubtedly less capable Mongolian troops facing crack Japanese Marine divisions, that's probably not too unexpected.

The South isn’t too bad, and I’m quite happy if they keep fighting out there while we roll down the Pacific Coast.

Also quite gratifying to see the Japanese collapsing on other fronts as well, especially in Australia and the Philippines. Perhaps not as helpful in the long-term as a continued meat-grinder, but at the very least it's a sign that Japan's general war effort is starting to buckle under the strain. And, of course, the fact that the Western Allies still managed to lose Singapore yet again despite all this is undoubtedly more evidence of the capitalist imperialists' utter unfitness to govern the peoples of East Asia

Happy for Australia not to fall for once! Singapore? How careless of them, but I’m happy they are taking their time to wrap that campaign up, while keep the enemy distracted.

Very good progress this month. The potential for more encirclements is definitely there, both along the Pacific Coast and East of lake Baikal. The Red Army has resolutely taken the initiative, and it doesn't look like the Japanese will be able to take it back in any meaningful way.

It is hopefully all largely advancing from here - we need to wrap this theatre up so we can look West again. Maybe practice with an A-bomb on the Japanese ...

Research looks good, and an officer ratio of 117% is rather impressive for the Soviet Union, considering the size of the red army, and it's relatively limited leadership. The ambitious intelligence operations have been quite costly this month though. The results in Turkey are looking good, and risks rather limited. Spain looks rather risky, and possibly not worth the effort right now. Manchukuo is in the middle, and Japan, as your main enemy is a tough, expensive, but justifiable mission to run. Might I enquire as to why you don't switch entirely to Counter-espionage in a situation like Spain, where you have 10 spy teams facing 7 spy-hunter teams? Wouldn't it be more cost-effective to whittle down enemy spy numbers to a low number (or 0), before resuming or undertaking another mission, which your spies can then give (almost) full attention?

The espionage is a good little mini-game, and one of the areas I can control directly as the player. In Spain, it’s mainly been 100% c-e, but I did want to see if a little political progress could be made. I do normally try to reduce enemy spies first.

My experiments with espionage have been somewhat limited as I find the leadership expense to be rather prohibitive, even for the USSR, which despite being a major power, has rather low leadership compared to the size of it's armed forces and territory. This may have led me into the, potentially overly cautious, tactic of putting the mission on full counter-espionage as soon as more than 2 enemy spy hunter teams rear their heads...

In this case, Spain and Turkey are being done as political missions and experiments, to see what might be done before attention returns to Europe. Turkey is now starting to come along, but Spain is taking longer. Though having them Republican rather than Nationalist is handy.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the total Soviet conquest of Axis-controlled mainland Asia. It could still take another year, but remain hopeful it could be mostly done in 6-9 months.

I think you’re right, even if things do speed up, it’s still a long haul, then Japan itself still needs defeating.

Soviet Marines with a battalion of engineers on the end? A bold strategy comrade, let us hope the ruined amphibious bonus does not see you send to the Gulag for being a wrecker.

I’ll have to check, but I didn’t think engineers ruined the amphibious bonus and help with naval landings, fort assaults and river ops ...

Also, all hail the Tu-4! Or, as we are not allowed to call it, the B-29ski Super Forgedcopy

Purely Soviet scientific mastery.

 

[roverS3]

I’ll have to check, but I didn’t think engineers ruined the amphibious bonus and help with naval landings, fort assaults and river ops ...

Engineers do reduce the amphibious bonus somewhat (not as bad as Inf, let alone any other support brigade). However, they increase the river crossing bonus, help the Marines take care of fortresses (coastal or otherwise), and help navigate urban, forest, woods, and Jungle terrain. They also give you a small combined arms bonus. Long story short: If you do an amphib invasion onto a plains, hills, or woods province with no fortress, you're better off not taking the Eng. If you're landing into Jungle, Urban, or Forest, and/or facing a (coastal) fortress it'll likely be neutral or help you. If you attack across a river, adding Eng to Mar will always be of significant benefit.
There's also a defensive bonus from having that extra combined arms brigade for once you've actually landed and need to defend the beachhead.
There are definitely arguments both ways, as Mar will also unload a little bit quicker if they aren't slowed down by Eng, which has a lower amphibious movement bonus.
For an amphib invasion into a Mountains province Mountaineers are somewhat better than Marines. They will take longer to get off the boats, but will take fewer casualties overall, and are more likely to win once they are all on land.

 

[El Pip]

Engineers do reduce the amphibious bonus somewhat (not as bad as Inf, let alone any other support brigade).
...
There are definitely arguments both ways, as Mar will also unload a little bit quicker if they aren't slowed down by Eng, which has a lower amphibious movement bonus.

It does depend on what you are doing with your Marines after the landing I suppose. I always try to ship in new forces for the exploitation phase so the Marines can take their special skills somewhere else, but that's not always possible. If your targets are just small islands then this is not a factor, but for slogging through the jungles of SE Asia for instance then Mar+Eng is arguably the way to go regardless.

For an amphib invasion into a Mountains province Mountaineers are somewhat better than Marines. They will take longer to get off the boats, but will take fewer casualties overall, and are more likely to win once they are all on land.

Amphibious landing into mountains just sound a terrible plan. Sure I can see STAVKA doing it because "we have the reserves" and/or "Stalin said so", but rather than sending in the Mountaineers surely you should look for a better invasion location? (Unless there is some crucial coastal mountain province I've forgotten about or never knew about. Which is entirely possible. )

 

[roverS3]

Amphibious landing into mountains just sound a terrible plan. Sure I can see STAVKA doing it because "we have the reserves" and/or "Stalin said so", but rather than sending in the Mountaineers surely you should look for a better invasion location? (Unless there is some crucial coastal mountain province I've forgotten about or never knew about. Which is entirely possible. )

This is rarely relevant beyond island provinces which are mountains, though those can be quite important. I'm thinking of Eastern Med islands like Rhodes, the Dodecanese islands. Iwo Jima also comes to mind. I'm sure there are more of them.

 

[Bullfilter]

Engineers do reduce the amphibious bonus somewhat (not as bad as Inf, let alone any other support brigade). However, they increase the river crossing bonus, help the Marines take care of fortresses (coastal or otherwise), and help navigate urban, forest, woods, and Jungle terrain. They also give you a small combined arms bonus. Long story short: If you do an amphib invasion onto a plains, hills, or woods province with no fortress, you're better off not taking the Eng. If you're landing into Jungle, Urban, or Forest, and/or facing a (coastal) fortress it'll likely be neutral or help you. If you attack across a river, adding Eng to Mar will always be of significant benefit.
There's also a defensive bonus from having that extra combined arms brigade for once you've actually landed and need to defend the beachhead.
There are definitely arguments both ways, as Mar will also unload a little bit quicker if they aren't slowed down by Eng, which has a lower amphibious movement bonus.
For an amphib invasion into a Mountains province Mountaineers are somewhat better than Marines. They will take longer to get off the boats, but will take fewer casualties overall, and are more likely to win once they are all on land.

It does depend on what you are doing with your Marines after the landing I suppose. I always try to ship in new forces for the exploitation phase so the Marines can take their special skills somewhere else, but that's not always possible. If your targets are just small islands then this is not a factor, but for slogging through the jungles of SE Asia for instance then Mar+Eng is arguably the way to go regardless.


Amphibious landing into mountains just sound a terrible plan. Sure I can see STAVKA doing it because "we have the reserves" and/or "Stalin said so", but rather than sending in the Mountaineers surely you should look for a better invasion location? (Unless there is some crucial coastal mountain province I've forgotten about or never knew about. Which is entirely possible. )

This is rarely relevant beyond island provinces which are mountains, though those can be quite important. I'm thinking of Eastern Med islands like Rhodes, the Dodecanese islands. Iwo Jima also comes to mind. I'm sure there are more of them.

Very helpful, and this saves me looking it all up. They’ll have the engineers follow them around to be available as necessary, but can drop them off when performing ‘pure’ amphibious landings. Thanks very much @El Pip for raising it in the first place and both of you for working it through.

 

[diskoerekto]

as an engineer I can say, aside from game mechanics, one should always want our kind nearby so if anybody attempts an amphibious landing just let me know

 

[Bullfilter]

Just to let you all know, I’ll update this AAR next, but with the boards pretty slow at the moment in that northern summer holiday siesta and general corona ennui, I’m getting into a project I’ve been thinking of doing for a while. It is a major mod (map, political, strategic, hopefully some events, but not major changes to the game mechanics) for HOI3. So I’m learning HOI3 modding 101 at the moment as well as devising my new alt-universe. Though if someone points me to how I can fix that air defence bug I‘ve heard mentioned, I’ll do that! As well as trying to change the text from “futher“ to further in the unit arrival pop-up.

So there may be a bit of a longer delay than usual in my AAR rotations, but they will still keep going.

I’ve modded Civ IV before (with varying degrees of success) and do enjoy modding in general. This will be mainly for my own enjoyment but if it gets off the drawing board and tests out ok, I may share it via an introductory (short and general) AAR some time. But first I need to finish one or two of my current stories. And for now, the mod stays under wraps, so take this as a cheeky teaser, in that sense.

 

[Wraith11B]

Just to let you all know, I’ll update this AAR next, but with the boards pretty slow at the moment in that northern summer holiday siesta and general corona ennui, I’m getting into a project I’ve been thinking of doing for a while. It is a major mod (map, political, strategic, hopefully some events, but not major changes to the game mechanics) for HOI3. So I’m learning HOI3 modding 101 at the moment as well as devising my new alt-universe. Though if someone points me to how I can fix that air defence bug I‘ve heard mentioned, I’ll do that! As well as trying to change the text from “futher“ to further in the unit arrival pop-up.

So there may be a bit of a longer delay than usual in my AAR rotations, but they will still keep going.

I’ve modded Civ IV before (with varying degrees of success) and do enjoy modding in general. This will be mainly for my own enjoyment but if it gets off the drawing board and tests out ok, I may share it via an introductory (short and general) AAR some time. But first I need to finish one or two of my current stories. And for now, the mod stays under wraps, so take this as a cheeky teaser, in that sense.

I believe @Kovax has done some modifying of the air defense values (I'm tagging him to see if he can just read and get in touch with you, Bull) to provide a basis for a way forward into a mod that might do the air war justice. Otherwise, I think the guys from both HPP and BICE have done some editing of those paths and using them might be a way to further develop the plans.

Also, lemme know if you have any questions because I've done a little bit of the modifications myself. Can't wait for another great Bullfilter special!

 

[stnylan]

Just to let you all know, I’ll update this AAR next, but with the boards pretty slow at the moment in that northern summer holiday siesta and general corona ennui, I’m getting into a project I’ve been thinking of doing for a while. It is a major mod (map, political, strategic, hopefully some events, but not major changes to the game mechanics) for HOI3. So I’m learning HOI3 modding 101 at the moment as well as devising my new alt-universe. Though if someone points me to how I can fix that air defence bug I‘ve heard mentioned, I’ll do that! As well as trying to change the text from “futher“ to further in the unit arrival pop-up.

So there may be a bit of a longer delay than usual in my AAR rotations, but they will still keep going.

I’ve modded Civ IV before (with varying degrees of success) and do enjoy modding in general. This will be mainly for my own enjoyment but if it gets off the drawing board and tests out ok, I may share it via an introductory (short and general) AAR some time. But first I need to finish one or two of my current stories. And for now, the mod stays under wraps, so take this as a cheeky teaser, in that sense.

My friend, I am not entirely sure you understand the meaning of the word "leisure". Allegdly retired folks such as yourself are meant to enjoy it.

I mean - 4 AARs on the go already, and then you add a modding project. Did you miss working at a computer desk that much?



All the best

 

[El Pip]

I believe @Kovax has done some modifying of the air defense values (I'm tagging him to see if he can just read and get in touch with you, Bull) to provide a basis for a way forward into a mod that might do the air war justice. Otherwise, I think the guys from both HPP and BICE have done some editing of those paths and using them might be a way to further develop the plans.

Also, lemme know if you have any questions because I've done a little bit of the modifications myself. Can't wait for another great Bullfilter special!

Either all the tech values for air defence or surface defence are out by a factor of 100 (i.e. instead of 0.05 meaning a 5% increase in a stat it only applies a 0.05% increase) OR the game engine takes absolutely no account of the value at all. I lean towards the latter as people have tried bumping up the surface_defence value by a factor of 1000 and it appears to make no difference.

If you are lucky and it is 'just' the factor of 100 bug, the issue becomes that the game was balanced for those values, so if you just 'fix' all the values in the tech files you end up with even more over-powered NAVs and CAGs (and potentially every other air unit as well). I think air combat was balanced for mid/late war, probably mid-war Eastern Front/Med tbh (because Germany), so in early war the 'lower tech' aircraft still have the same defence values (as tech makes no difference), so are much tougher than they should be.

What I think you need to do is, counter-intuitively, reduce the base defence of aircraft so that early war AA /fighters can do damage against low tech air units, then the techs improve the defence value so upgraded aircraft take less damage (unless of course facing equally upgraded AA units). Might not be that simple and you may need to increase Air Attack values as well, maybe of base divisions/ships, maybe of AA brigades/ CLs only, depends what you are trying to balance and how. I fear it ends up as a fundamental rebalance of the game's air-land combat mechanics, and that's assuming best-case that it's not a bug in the game engine that cannot be fixed by a mod.

 

[nuclearslurpee]

Interesting @Bullfilter to see modding added to your already-impressive CV! I certainly look forward to seeing what comes out of your efforts.

At risk of being a bit self-serving, have you looked into the HPP mod at all? I mention this for two reasons, first of course being that if you're looking into plausible alt-historical modding it may serve as a good base and in addition the changes to units, AI, tech, and politics are all improvements to the vanilla mechanics in terms of gameplay (though some other areas still need work yet). Secondly, there's been discussion on that board about adding more alt-hist paths and branching event paths and I'm sure a potential contribution would be appreciated - if you decided that this interests you, of course, I certainly don't mean to imply any sort of peer pressure (well...maybe just a little ).

Of course, I'm quite certain any mod coming out from Bullfilter AARs and Co. will be a fine piece of work and a notable addition to this HoI3 game we all still play for some reason!

I believe @Kovax has done some modifying of the air defense values (I'm tagging him to see if he can just read and get in touch with you, Bull) to provide a basis for a way forward into a mod that might do the air war justice. Otherwise, I think the guys from both HPP and BICE have done some editing of those paths and using them might be a way to further develop the plans.

From what I remember (and @El Pip has confirmed, partly), the bug is that air defense is thrown off by a factor of 100 in the game code. In practice some people have found that bumping up the values from the techs by a factor of 10 or so gives results without breaking game balance, I believe, so that may be an easier fix than rebalancing all of air combat around your changes.

HPP has done nothing about this bug to date, although the air units are modded in other ways. BICE of course always does its own thing and cannot be trusted by us mere mortals.

Either all the tech values for air defence or surface defence are out by a factor of 100 (i.e. instead of 0.05 meaning a 5% increase in a stat it only applies a 0.05% increase) OR the game engine takes absolutely no account of the value at all. I lean towards the latter as people have tried bumping up the surface_defence value by a factor of 1000 and it appears to make no difference.

I believe that surface defense is actually a completely different bug, yes amazingly enough Paradox has managed to cock up the same thing twice in one go, please hold your applause for the end. Anyways, for the air defense I believe folks have worked out that it functions just with that x0.01 bug, while the surface-to-air code seems to be completely nonfunctional in all directions (air defense on land units does nothing to limit bombing casualties, only air attack works which damages planes).

As it is now the end, please applaud. Or don't, that is up to you.

 

[diskoerekto]

If you need any help, or want to hear any ideas, I’m always one button click away

 

[Bullfilter]

Good news, next month played through, new (even quicker and dirtier style) screenshots and tables (which I’m going to rely on more to replace words, summarise and make production a bit quicker, easier and more automated) done, writing started. Though it does mean a couple of days modding on hold.

speaking of which, I’m definitely learning some of the dark arts of modding HOI3 as I go along. Fortunately, having done a fair bit on Civ4 before, there are some basics for designing and approaching changes that have helped this time around. Including a healthy respect for the power of one wrong keystroke , keeping copies of things separate and testing things as you go, etc.I’m changing what I must but trying to keep as much the same as possible, as a general principle.

I believe @Kovax has done some modifying of the air defense values (I'm tagging him to see if he can just read and get in touch with you, Bull) to provide a basis for a way forward into a mod that might do the air war justice. Otherwise, I think the guys from both HPP and BICE have done some editing of those paths and using them might be a way to further develop the plans.

Also, lemme know if you have any questions because I've done a little bit of the modifications myself. Can't wait for another great Bullfilter special!

That one I’ll fix if there’s a known comparatively ‘easy’ fix for it, but if not I may well just let it go, as it will be the same for all countries in the game, which are going to be largely ‘regularised’ in terms of tech, starting strengths, etc, making it a little more of an alt-hist sandbox, without over-revved Germany, etc. And thanks, I’m likely to take you up on the offer at some point!

My friend, I am not entirely sure you understand the meaning of the word "leisure". Allegdly retired folks such as yourself are meant to enjoy it.

I mean - 4 AARs on the go already, and then you add a modding project. Did you miss working at a computer desk that much?



All the best

Thanks! I really need to get 2-3 of them done to create the time to do what I want without dragging them all out too much. What I’d like to do is a simple mini-AAR to ‘launch’ the mod, with a finished game after I’ve developed and play tested the first version. And not be running five AARs at once!

Either all the tech values for air defence or surface defence are out by a factor of 100 (i.e. instead of 0.05 meaning a 5% increase in a stat it only applies a 0.05% increase) OR the game engine takes absolutely no account of the value at all. I lean towards the latter as people have tried bumping up the surface_defence value by a factor of 1000 and it appears to make no difference.

If you are lucky and it is 'just' the factor of 100 bug, the issue becomes that the game was balanced for those values, so if you just 'fix' all the values in the tech files you end up with even more over-powered NAVs and CAGs (and potentially every other air unit as well). I think air combat was balanced for mid/late war, probably mid-war Eastern Front/Med tbh (because Germany), so in early war the 'lower tech' aircraft still have the same defence values (as tech makes no difference), so are much tougher than they should be.

What I think you need to do is, counter-intuitively, reduce the base defence of aircraft so that early war AA /fighters can do damage against low tech air units, then the techs improve the defence value so upgraded aircraft take less damage (unless of course facing equally upgraded AA units). Might not be that simple and you may need to increase Air Attack values as well, maybe of base divisions/ships, maybe of AA brigades/ CLs only, depends what you are trying to balance and how. I fear it ends up as a fundamental rebalance of the game's air-land combat mechanics, and that's assuming best-case that it's not a bug in the game engine that cannot be fixed by a mod.

This makes it seem even more of a wild goose chase for my mod, as creating a few dozen new countries and modifying others, even with some mass-produced shortcuts I’ve devised, takes quite enough time as it is! Hell, I thought I’d fixed the “futher bug” in the dialogue of the arrival report, but there must be something else to change as it didn’t work!

Interesting @Bullfilter to see modding added to your already-impressive CV! I certainly look forward to seeing what comes out of your efforts.

At risk of being a bit self-serving, have you looked into the HPP mod at all? I mention this for two reasons, first of course being that if you're looking into plausible alt-historical modding it may serve as a good base and in addition the changes to units, AI, tech, and politics are all improvements to the vanilla mechanics in terms of gameplay (though some other areas still need work yet). Secondly, there's been discussion on that board about adding more alt-hist paths and branching event paths and I'm sure a potential contribution would be appreciated - if you decided that this interests you, of course, I certainly don't mean to imply any sort of peer pressure (well...maybe just a little ).

Of course, I'm quite certain any mod coming out from Bullfilter AARs and Co. will be a fine piece of work and a notable addition to this HoI3 game we all still play for some reason!

Thanks! I’m enjoying it already. Once I get the basics done, I’ll look to add some bells and whistles on the events and decisions side of things, to try to make the gaming experience a little richer.

I’ll certainly end up having a bit of a look at HPP, perhaps BICE as well for ideas. But with everything going on, to download and ‘learn’ a new mod I haven’t played, then mod the mod for my new project, when doing my first early attempt to mod HOI3 in general, is probably a little too much for me to contemplate at first. But once I’m a bit more confident, and depending on how different HPP is from the base game, there’s always the opportunity later to apply the new mod (working name is ‘The Diplomatic Revolution’, as a little cryptic hint as to its inspiration) to that game system.

Basically, my initial goal is to do something that has the widest appeal to the HOI3 base that is still playing, so it will be a mod of Vanilla TFH, playable with that. Cross-application to HPP might come down the track.

From what I remember (and @El Pip has confirmed, partly), the bug is that air defense is thrown off by a factor of 100 in the game code. In practice some people have found that bumping up the values from the techs by a factor of 10 or so gives results without breaking game balance, I believe, so that may be an easier fix than rebalancing all of air combat around your changes.

HPP has done nothing about this bug to date, although the air units are modded in other ways. BICE of course always does its own thing and cannot be trusted by us mere mortals.

Yeah, I don’t want to set off a cascading mod avalanche for my little project when the main point is really just a different strategic set up. Amused re BICE: there’s a friendly rivalry between siblings thing happening there?

I believe that surface defense is actually a completely different bug, yes amazingly enough Paradox has managed to cock up the same thing twice in one go, please hold your applause for the end. Anyways, for the air defense I believe folks have worked out that it functions just with that x0.01 bug, while the surface-to-air code seems to be completely nonfunctional in all directions (air defense on land units does nothing to limit bombing casualties, only air attack works which damages planes).

As it is now the end, please applaud. Or don't, that is up to you.

<applause> This has the look of a rabbit burrow I won’t be diving into!

If you need any help, or want to hear any ideas, I’m always one button click away

I may well be asking for such. I might set up a little ‘workshop thread’ for the mod on the HOI3 modding sub-forum in due course and will alert any interested parties. Perhaps also a PM or two.

 

[nuclearslurpee]

I’ll certainly end up having a bit of a look at HPP, perhaps BICE as well for ideas. But with everything going on, to download and ‘learn’ a new mod I haven’t played, then mod the mod for my new project, when doing my first early attempt to mod HOI3 in general, is probably a little too much for me to contemplate at first. But once I’m a bit more confident, and depending on how different HPP is from the base game, there’s always the opportunity later to apply the new mod (working name is ‘The Diplomatic Revolution’, as a little cryptic hint as to its inspiration) to that game system.

Perfectly understandable, of course. As to the name, do I detect a bit of Diplomacy influence in the design?

Yeah, I don’t want to set off a cascading mod avalanche for my little project when the main point is really just a different strategic set up. Amused re BICE: there’s a friendly rivalry between siblings thing happening there?

Hardly, BICE simply really does do their own thing in a highly idiosyncratic way, such that their solutions while often enlightening are rarely easy to apply to a less intensive mod, particularly since they rely heavily on the decision/event system to drive core mechanics whereas most mods essentially tweak the existing mechanics to some degree or another.

As a somewhat-relevant example given the topic of (air) combat, not only are unit stats in BICE completely different from vanilla HoI3 (we're talking an order of magnitude or two here), but they have periodic events that reduce unit stats for everyone at the same pace as technologies increase those stats. The aim being to keep combat results consistent throughout a campaign instead of e.g. the escalating casualty rates in later years we see in vanilla as unit attack stats increase. The side effect being that units which are not upgraded can wind up with zero or negative stats thus being effectively useless, quite a stark contrast with vanilla where even level I LARM for instance found in starting OOBs for minors can still be useful against enemy forces which lack AT capability.

Clearly such a system has its own pros and cons, but ultimately it's a highly idiosyncratic approach which simply accomplishes very different goals from anything else. HPP and all the other mods (except alternate timeline mods such as WWI or Imperium) largely rely on the base game mechanics and make fairly surface-level changes most often in the form of additional content rather than new mechanics entirely - which certainly does not mean such mods are in any way lacking depth or complexity, they simply achieve it quite differently.

Now I've gotten quite off track given this is the AAR forum and not the Modding Rants forum, but suffice to say, I have no issue with BICE and in fact someday dream of playing that mod when I have, say, three months to lock myself in a room with a supply of rations and puzzle the whole thing out... my personal complaints have to do with critically important trivia such as the starting Soviet naval OOB being completely wrong, and such.

 

[Bullfilter]

Perfectly understandable, of course. As to the name, do I detect a bit of Diplomacy influence in the design?


Hardly, BICE simply really does do their own thing in a highly idiosyncratic way, such that their solutions while often enlightening are rarely easy to apply to a less intensive mod, particularly since they rely heavily on the decision/event system to drive core mechanics whereas most mods essentially tweak the existing mechanics to some degree or another.

As a somewhat-relevant example given the topic of (air) combat, not only are unit stats in BICE completely different from vanilla HoI3 (we're talking an order of magnitude or two here), but they have periodic events that reduce unit stats for everyone at the same pace as technologies increase those stats. The aim being to keep combat results consistent throughout a campaign instead of e.g. the escalating casualty rates in later years we see in vanilla as unit attack stats increase. The side effect being that units which are not upgraded can wind up with zero or negative stats thus being effectively useless, quite a stark contrast with vanilla where even level I LARM for instance found in starting OOBs for minors can still be useful against enemy forces which lack AT capability.

Clearly such a system has its own pros and cons, but ultimately it's a highly idiosyncratic approach which simply accomplishes very different goals from anything else. HPP and all the other mods (except alternate timeline mods such as WWI or Imperium) largely rely on the base game mechanics and make fairly surface-level changes most often in the form of additional content rather than new mechanics entirely - which certainly does not mean such mods are in any way lacking depth or complexity, they simply achieve it quite differently.

Now I've gotten quite off track given this is the AAR forum and not the Modding Rants forum, but suffice to say, I have no issue with BICE and in fact someday dream of playing that mod when I have, say, three months to lock myself in a room with a supply of rations and puzzle the whole thing out... my personal complaints have to do with critically important trivia such as the starting Soviet naval OOB being completely wrong, and such.

A little bit - I used to play Diplomacy a lot, first in the 70s and later (more recently, but not for a few years now) on the on-line 'Judge' system, which at least has you competing against other humans, making for an interesting game. I did a Europe WW2 mod for that, too!

Interesting re BICE v HPP. By the sounds of it, HPP is going to be more appealing to me from its approach, but I'll need to find the time to get into it!

I plan to eventually do a bit of event-driven stuff for this mod, but more for strategic/diplomatic purposes rather than changing game mechanics. So when it comes time to dig into that more arcane set of mod challenges, I'll be looking for similar examples and seeking more help from friends and on the modding thread.

All: next chapter is ready and will be going up soon - easily the shortest yet, so I'm hoping my new approach keeps them that way. Took a bit of playing around and setting up with my spreadsheets, but the work should pay off later.