[MOD] Homeland, an ahistorical mod for Darkest Hour

[ggm]

hi nova big fan of this mod. some notes. units with esc fighters become way over powered compared to int and fig late in the game. this is a dh hour problem to.maybe some boosts to int and fighters would help. also transport planes seem a bit short ranged compared to other planes. cold war mod for AOD has some interesting attachments for planes: cruise missiles for tac and ecm counter measures for planes. with the changes to dh 1.03 you could buf fighters and int with attachements like gun pods, advanced missiles, and look down shoot down radars, drop tanks, just to name a few. perhaps escort fighters could be changed from an attachemnt to a unit (long range fighters).

just some suggestions.

ggm

 

[Paladino]

I haven't given much attention to DH in the last months but I'll try this mod, should be a nice change from the usual setup.

Congratulations for doing it.

 

[ggm]

just noticed a bug. brigade air transport needs an extra unit in the unit brigade file otherwise late game save causes crash.
ggm

 

[novapaddy]

UPDATE:

I have stopped doing this mod.
I have been unemployed for 18 months now, and modding was filling in the time nicely.

But things are getting serious in RL, and I have to stop modding and concentrate on learning new stuff for my next career.

I wish you guys All The Best!

Cheers, novapaddy

 

[Blecky]

Too bad for us, but all the best for you, Nova.

 

[delanonne]

Hey NP you do what you gotta do. I was in the same boat and it is why I am here in China. Lots of jobs for English teachers here plus my wife is Chinese. You are nice guy and real talented. We are unfortunate to be stuck in the poorest economy since the great depression. Maybe we are fortunate that it happened so we can really appreciate things when they get better. I have seen it all since I am 60. I was in the Air Force during Vietnam. You hang in there buddy.
delanonne

 

[Bread8756]

UPDATE:

I have stopped doing this mod.
I have been unemployed for 18 months now, and modding was filling in the time nicely.

But things are getting serious in RL, and I have to stop modding and concentrate on learning new stuff for my next career.

I wish you guys All The Best!

Cheers, novapaddy

So I am going to take it that this mod is dead,permanently.

But either way I hope you find your way.

 

[LiamRiordan]

Good luck out there man, I know how tough it is to be unemployed for a long time, it really is a git. Look up career centers, even pull odd jobs to keep yourself going. Anything to show you're doing work on your resume/CV. Even if its volunteer.

Good luck.

 

[unmerged(139227)]

Hopes.

Dashed.

 

[Morph_]

Good luck with future endeavors novapaddy

 

[lanodaka]

I dont mean to disrespect you, Novapaddy, this mod looks great but when is this mod ready to be installed without fixes and hotfixes and such?

 

[unmerged(139227)]

I dont mean to disrespect you, Novapaddy, this mod looks great but when is this mod ready to be installed without fixes and hotfixes and such?

Bro, just a few posts above.

Mod is done/cancelled.

 

[novapaddy]

First, a big THANKS for all the positive replies to my recent news.

I don't want to leave the mod in a confused state (for posterity!), so I'm going to work on it a little more, BUT with a much reduced commitment and spending much less time on it, than before.

I've applied RC2 to DH1.03, and it wasn't as bad as I anticipated a couple of weeks back!

So, basically, I intend to get the DH1.03 version up to patch RC2 status, and see if I can fix any errors/crashes etc etc.

And then upload a version for posterity.

Cheers

 

[Gukpa]

First, a big THANKS for all the positive replies to my recent news.

I don't want to leave the mod in a confused state (for posterity!), so I'm going to work on it a little more, BUT with a much reduced commitment and spending much less time on it, than before.

I've applied RC2 to DH1.03, and it wasn't as bad as I anticipated a couple of weeks back!

So, basically, I intend to get the DH1.03 version up to patch RC2 status, and see if I can fix any errors/crashes etc etc.

And then upload a version for posterity.

Cheers

Thanks We love your job with this mod

 

[lanodaka]

First, a big THANKS for all the positive replies to my recent news.

I don't want to leave the mod in a confused state (for posterity!), so I'm going to work on it a little more, BUT with a much reduced commitment and spending much less time on it, than before.

I've applied RC2 to DH1.03, and it wasn't as bad as I anticipated a couple of weeks back!

So, basically, I intend to get the DH1.03 version up to patch RC2 status, and see if I can fix any errors/crashes etc etc.

And then upload a version for posterity.

Cheers

hooray for Novapaddy!

 

[Kami888]

Very interesting mod scenario. The front page has me a little confused though as to what is the overall alliance structure of this mod, like who are the British allies and who are the American allies and so on.

I've made a somewhat similar scenario myself, for my own entertainment purposes, except in reverse - the UK will be taking the initiative and try to attack the US rather than vice versa.

The premise is basically that deeper depression around the world causes the UK to eventually go fascist and ally with Germany which promises to help defend the empire and reverse its decline. This inevitably brings them into conflict with the US and the USSR which are both suffering from temporary problems (dust bowl and deeper 1937 depression in the US, purges and instability in the USSR). And that means a lot of other changes as well. The war typically breaks out in early 1939 with the UK crossing the US-Canadian border in pursuit of the (mostly French speaking) Canadian resistance forces as they are overrun by the British and Canadian loyalists. This also causes war to break out in Europe where Germany is all but surrounded by enemies. Generally speaking the alliance structure is mostly reminiscent of the Seven Years War or to some degree war of the Spanish Succession/Great Northern war.

 

[novapaddy]

Very interesting mod scenario. The front page has me a little confused though as to what is the overall alliance structure of this mod, like who are the British allies and who are the American allies and so on.
I've made a somewhat similar scenario myself, for my own entertainment purposes, except in reverse - the UK will be taking the initiative and try to attack the US rather than vice versa.
The premise is basically that deeper depression around the world causes the UK to eventually go fascist and ally with Germany which promises to help defend the empire and reverse its decline. This inevitably brings them into conflict with the US and the USSR which are both suffering from temporary problems (dust bowl and deeper 1937 depression in the US, purges and instability in the USSR). And that means a lot of other changes as well. The war typically breaks out in early 1939 with the UK crossing the US-Canadian border in pursuit of the (mostly French speaking) Canadian resistance forces as they are overrun by the British and Canadian loyalists. This also causes war to break out in Europe where Germany is all but surrounded by enemies. Generally speaking the alliance structure is mostly reminiscent of the Seven Years War or to some degree war of the Spanish Succession/Great Northern war.

THANKS again guys for the positives and the interest shown by your posts!

@kami888: Yeah, the mod as described on the front page is confusing, even to me, as I ask myself: "What was I thinking about there...?"

Basically if you watch the movie, it sets up the whole idea of the mod. The USA invades Canada, setting off the British Commonwealth, who rush to defend Canada.
.... So the USA is alone.
... Versus the British Commonwealth.
... plus Japan who come to Britain's aid when she appeals for help...

This sets of a total different war scenario for the mod.

The mod so far is a framework. It is no where near done.

I've also added 35 new units to the mod.

It is interesting that you have your own mod, and it is something similar. How far advanced are you in releasing your mod?

I'd be interested to hear what you think of Homeland, when compared to your own mod...I mean after you've played it...

 

[Kami888]

I wouldn't call it a mod, it's mostly just an alternative WW2 scenario with a bunch of things on top of it. It's working as a bare minimum, I'm mostly just trying to get the balance right to make it more enjoyable at this point.
I've been also a little frustrated by some of the AI behavior which I've described here, however no one has yet suggested anything on that, fueling my suspicions that the behavior may be so inherent in the AI logic that nothing short of a new DH patch would help to solve it.

Anyway if I were to make it into a presentable mod, in addition to getting the balance and AI behavior predictable, I'd also need to make sure that all of my events/decisions have decent descriptions and pictures (currently some of them have next to nothing), make more events not just leading up to war but during the war and for a post-war settlement as well, make sure that all the leaders and ministers make sense (i haven't been paying much attention to the cabinets, mostly letting the game pick whatever ministers based on ideology, and of course it often picks completely wrong ones), etc. Perhaps I'll get around to doing that in the future.

I'll also try to get around to playing Homeland some time soon.

 

[novapaddy]

I wouldn't call it a mod, it's mostly just an alternative WW2 scenario with a bunch of things on top of it. It's working as a bare minimum, I'm mostly just trying to get the balance right to make it more enjoyable at this point.
I've been also a little frustrated by some of the AI behavior which I've described here, however no one has yet suggested anything on that, fueling my suspicions that the behavior may be so inherent in the AI logic that nothing short of a new DH patch would help to solve it.
Anyway if I were to make it into a presentable mod, in addition to getting the balance and AI behavior predictable, I'd also need to make sure that all of my events/decisions have decent descriptions and pictures (currently some of them have next to nothing), make more events not just leading up to war but during the war and for a post-war settlement as well, make sure that all the leaders and ministers make sense (i haven't been paying much attention to the cabinets, mostly letting the game pick whatever ministers based on ideology, and of course it often picks completely wrong ones), etc. Perhaps I'll get around to doing that in the future.
I'll also try to get around to playing Homeland some time soon.

AI: have a look at the AI Files modifiers file in the main DH folder, called Modding Docs.

# Proportion of divisions in a front province that may be used to support the defense of neighboring provinces. Default 0.33
support_defense_prop = X

recklessness = [0-3]

# Even - Distribute forces evenly along the whole front.
# Reactive - Try to match enemy troop concentrations.
# Defensive - More troops in strategically important provinces (IC, Victory Points, Oil, etc)
# Offensive - Concentrate more troops where the enemy us weak
# Operational Defensive - The fewer avenues of escape, the less troops (to avoid encirclement.)
distrib_vs_ai = [even/reactive/defensive/offensive/op_defensive]
distrib_vs_human = [even/reactive/defensive/offensive/op_defensive]

used like this:

front = {
recklessness = 2 # 0-3
distrib_vs_ai = even
distrib_vs_human = even


You have lots of choices to choose from to set up your forces for the situation. But remember, the AI needs lots of spare units so it can make a good job of applying these settings properly. That's why I started building brigades...

Yeah, keep chugging away on your mod, I find modding is addictive and it keeps me from being hyperactive.. which I get when I'm bored.. or so my wife tells me..

She TOLD me to go back to modding again... as I was like a 2-year old child with nothing to do.. A bit like Denis the Menace... Jeez!!

 

[Kami888]

Haha, nice. Thanks for the suggestion, yeah I've been looking at that modding documentation for a while now. I know there's a lot of variables which sound relevant, but changing none of them appears to produce the desired effect. We might as well discuss it here since it might be relevant to your mod as well, tactical AI is always a mess. And yes in my scenario the AI has plenty of units to deal with, there is no shortage of divisions on the front line.

"support_defense_prop = X"
is a value I've been playing around with, but doesn't this only deal with defensive situations? How many reinforcements to send to a province when it's under attack? That seems to be what it's doing. Anyway defensive situations are not the problem, the problem is specifically in attacking. The AI takes all it has from neighboring provinces and just moves it all to the enemy province when attacking, leaving its flanks exposed even if temporarily. After the enemy province is taken, the AI then goes "oh shit look at that, my flanks are exposed and my distribution is all fucked up" and tries to move some of those troops back to cover the flanks, but it is often too late and the enemy gets there first.

I've also tried playing around with the distribution setting. I tried "even" and I tried "op_defensive", neither seemed to make any difference with regards to the issue.