TRP 1.02 RC1 for Darkest Hour 1.04 RC1
Months full of researching, coding and playtesting have passed, you've had a hard time waiting, but now we're ready: TRP 1.02 for Darkest Hour 1.04 is ready!
Based upon the features introduced with TRP 1.01 (new combat mechanics, new OOBs,...), we were able to focus on three main aspects for version 1.02:
- balancing und bugfixing
- new and extended event chains, especially for creating historically plausible incentives in-game
- a complete overhaul and massive extension of our naval branch
What's new:
1) Balancing and bugfixing
We tweaked several aspects of the combat system where we (and you!) deemed necessary:
- Airattack and airdefense values have been rescaled so that outdated models still stand a chance against newer ones.
- Escort fighters now also increase the surface defense value of the attached division, which should especially reduce damage dealt by naval AA.
- The range of transport planes has been reduced in order to limit the use (and possible exploit) of paratroopers.
- Bad weather now severely slows down carriers so that 'conventional' vessels might finally get a chance to face them at close range.
- Convoy- and submarine warfare have been rebalanced: Convoys now are rather vulnerable to raiders and sub fleets suffer less damage against ASW units of their size. (This aspect of the game has been balanced mainly for MP game purposes. AIs sadly still tend to form many, but very small ASW groups, so it's rather easy to "starve" them just by using rather large submarine fleets. We recommend not to use submarine fleets larger than 6 boats against the AI if you don't want to take advantage of the AI's problem.)
- Damage caused by naval bombardment now distributes more evenly amongst the bombed vessels. It should be considerably more difficult to "snipe" capital ships out of otherwise unharmed fleets now.
- Strategic, logistic, infrastructure and ground bombardment have also been tweaked.
2) New gameplay incentives
- Air force upkeep costs have been doubled so that they now match those of army units.
- Moreover, building times for air force units have been prolonged (while keeping total costs identical). It's now more difficult to build up long serial runs.
Both measures will cause oversized air forces to be less attractive.
- Dissent costs for releasing puppets have been raised. (We still recommend not to release puppets manually, though, if you don't want to lower game difficulty.)
- Several on-map-bottlenecks (especially for the AI) have been (at least partially) removed, for example some province connections via straits. (Corrections made by DH have also been adapted, of course.)
- Germany now gets Militia and Cavalry from the volunteer events (easy occupation policy in the east) instead of mechanized infantry...
- Bitter Peace conditions for the historical occupation policy have been changed so that you don't have to take the fight into Siberia any more, but just into the Urals.
- Province improvement costs (e.g. rocket test facility) have been reviewed.
- Convoy and escort building costs have been recalculated to improve plausibility.
- In order to make some research projects (self-propelled guns, rocket artillery,...) more attractive and to make ahistorical projects (e.g. german carrier fleets) a little more costly, we decided to change several research costs and prerequisites.
- Since AA brigades also needed a push, we limited garrisons to attaching either MP- or AA-brigades only.
- In TRP 1.01, it was hard to let ground units gain combat experience. Now at least your best divisions should be trained over time.
- If you run out of manpower during the war, you may now decide to call the "last stand"...which, as a consequence, will harm your economy.
- Most important: We implemented and rewrote several event chains to create incentives for fighting on certain locations at certain points in time:
=> The IC reclocation in the USSR now requires the player to fight and hold the ground instead of just retreating and digging in behind the river line. On the other hand, the german player now has to aim for a quick advance into the enemy IC provinces instead of just surrounding enemy units and taking them out of the game. It's like a race for Russia's industrial capacity for a quick and substantial recovery.
=> Missing Operation Marita might now result into Greece aligning with the western Allies when neither Germany nor Italy are prepared to.
=> You don't want to fight for Norway because of the risky invasion or the costly occupation? Well, then you'll miss the chance to interrupt the lend-lease event shipments to Murmansk now...
=> Also Great Britain now can't count on Cash & Carry / Lend-Lease arriving safely any more: The more Axis shipping there is in the North Atlantic sea zones, the more likely the shipments will be interrupted. So if you want to receive help from the Yanks...keep your sealanes clean!
3) Visual and conceptual additions, new events
- Aser has provided us with dozens of freshly researched leader files und hundreds of new pictures. Thx very much!
- We decided to remove all trait acronyms from the leader files because of DH's elaborate sorting function. All files have been reworked that way.
- Many countries have got new model names, pictures and icons.
- Same deal for the techteams:
- We created several additional country-specific experience stars (e.g. for France and Romania).
- Great Britain and the USA may now field some additional elite units. (Gurkha Rifles, Rangers & First Special Service Force)
- Several event chains have been added (Polish Army in exile, Nortraship, Finland wins the Continuation War,...) or rewritten (Chindits). Furthermore, there are some new info events about game mechanics.
4) Naval overhaul
Our major project for TRP 1.02 has been the recreation and extension of the navy. Extensive research has been done and on our way to implementation of our findings, we also got several rather unconventional ideas. We hope that you'll enjoy the new concept as much as we do.
4a) More models
So far, any ship built before ~1930 has been considered model 0 in TRP. While this might have been appropriate for large fleet carriers, it also didn't take into account that there had been a long development before for any other unit type, especially for battleships and cruisers. In order to differentiate better and to make building modern ships more attractive, we heavily expanded both techtree and the number of models. Now you'll face models ranging from the early 1900s deep into the 1960s, including several special models, especially amongst the early "heavy cruisers". Historically, these units didn't see action until the late days of WW1, so we use the prewar models to simulate small coastal battleships and monitors.
4b) New unit types
Some ships were both too different and too numerous to treat them just by adding additional models. That's why we also introduced two new naval unit types:
First, we've got cruiser submarines. These are large submarines with heavy artillery armament for high seas anti-convoy use. Often they even carried their own reconnaisance planes with them. Especially Japan relied on these boats and now, you also see the difference in-game.
Second, there are Large Destroyers. You'll find them in large numbers for example in France, Japan, Italy and Germany while both Great Britain and The USA relied just on a handful of them as "Destroyer leaders". Large Destroyers, at least modern models, resemble light cruisers in many ways: They offer higher tonnage, heavier armament, larger range and often even greater speed than normal destroyers do. You may use them as rather cheap, multi role escort ships for your task forces, while "small" destroyers now clearly focus on ASW duties.
4c) Nation-specific units
Two ship classes were even more special so that we were unable to model them just by expanding the techtree or by adding new unit types. So we decided to implement something completely new: Nation-specific units.Just one nation in the game may ever build them, replacing the standard unit of this time period.
Instead of conventional 1930 heavy cruisers, Germany has access to its Deutschland-class 'pocket battleships'. They offer additional range and firepower while being slightly more expensive and slower. Japan on the other hand has access to its Shinano-class heavy carriers instead of conventional 1943 carriers. They offer additional defensive capabilities while being more expensive and slower.
4d) Upgradable ships
Ever since the release of HoI2 back in 2005, there has been one "holy rule": You may upgrade your army and your air force, but you have to stick with your navy. We decided that it was time for a change...at least to some extent.
To be more specific: You may now upgrade specific battleships and battlecruisers just like you do with planes and tanks. We could have introduced general modernization, too, but be decided to limit this function to just a few steps and specific upgrade models in order to keep incentives for building new ships.
Any player may now do exactly as Japan and Italy did in the 1930s: They were forbidden to build new capital ships...and so they took their existing ones and reconstructed them completely. Speed, armor and firing range were increased. Battlecruisers were transformed into "Fast Battleships".
In TRP, you may now give the order to upgrade via decision, you assign IC and as long as you keep your ships in port, they will slowly go up to 100% modernization. It will cost you much for a rather long time...but finally, you will be able to get your old fleet a little more up-to-date.
You may upgrade both battleships and battlecruisers, models 1908, 1914 and 1918.
You may also note some OOB corrections and tweaks. For example, the numbers of escort vessels now match historical sources and also the merchant navies now correctly relate to each other.
Our goal was to achieve not just historical accuracy, but also new incentives to build modern ships that clearly show improvements over capital ships from WW1.
Oh, i nearly forgot...of course, there now are also nation-specific icons for the new ship types and models.
Download and installation:
- You need the latest Darkest Hour patch 1.04 RC1.
- Click here to Download TRP 1.02 RC 1 (422 MB).
- Unzip (using 7zip) into Darkest Hour's Mods-directory. Check if the folder hierarchy is correct.
- In Darkest Hour Launcher select "TRP 102" as Mod and start (Checksum: YIYB).
Have fun!
Eine deutschsprachige Mod-Vorstellung haben wir übrigens auch wieder.
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