Possibility of a Cold War mod?

[agentgb]

would be neat if paradox kinda planned for rockets/missles with the ability to intercept nuclear missles, so it's just isn't pure MAD. For the sake of a good cold war mod anyway. GIven the air combat system, it could work, and wouldn't be tedious either.

 

[Commissar Yossarian]

Why does the vast majority of the opposed side think that Nukes would fly on day 1 leading to a dumb and boring game?

In the early years no side could declare war on the other since World Tension would be too low. By the time two super powers could throw down MAD would be part of the game and as such you'd loose. Fine, most would try it once, but after a full up nuclear exchange when you go from world super power to blasted wasteland and the game mechanics force you into a peace with everyone and an automatic loss for ending your country then it's not a big deal, nor "un-fun".

The best part of a cold war mod is how to steer your country through MAD and control the world's resources without losing. You'd be fighting proxy wars, getting involved in civil wars, shaping your industry and technology, installing puppet governments etc.

Even the industrial aspect is easy with HOI4 if you add a dissent mechanism. As the game progresses your populous demands a certain standard of living, such that you need to keep up civilian factory output and civilian research tech (or NF).

The biggest challenge is finding multiple exits from WWII based on war weariness like the Korean war. Then you could have some fun.

 

[agentgb]

Why does the vast majority of the opposed side think that Nukes would fly on day 1 leading to a dumb and boring game?

In the early years no side could declare war on the other since World Tension would be too low. By the time two super powers could throw down MAD would be part of the game and as such you'd loose. Fine, most would try it once, but after a full up nuclear exchange when you go from world super power to blasted wasteland and the game mechanics force you into a peace with everyone and an automatic loss for ending your country then it's not a big deal, nor "un-fun".

The best part of a cold war mod is how to steer your country through MAD and control the world's resources without losing. You'd be fighting proxy wars, getting involved in civil wars, shaping your industry and technology, installing puppet governments etc.

Even the industrial aspect is easy with HOI4 if you add a dissent mechanism. As the game progresses your populous demands a certain standard of living, such that you need to keep up civilian factory output and civilian research tech (or NF).

The biggest challenge is finding multiple exits from WWII based on war weariness like the Korean war. Then you could have some fun.

yeah, imo, a cold war game is about pushing your luck without causing MAD, it's a game of world tension & geopolitical outmaneuvering. The whole idea of building nukes, is merely has a deterrent and also for power projection, for those times you need to draw a redline.

I've basically made a wish thread here, of a few mechanics i wouldn't mind be represented, although, may have gone somewhat overboard.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...expansion-full-game-mod.910772/#post-20725206

 

[Commissar Yossarian]

Oh, in case anyone is curious I figure you'd have to set a flag in the game such that any province nuked would no longer count as under your control until repaired rather than a NU hit.

So part of the tech tree would be going from Atom bomb to hydrogen to neutron etc and cranking up the yield leading to more and more damage output until a province is effectively lost permanently.

This way if you nuke a country enough it's control would drop enough to dip below it's NU and surrender making MAD a real thing instead of a 'lols' I can win even after being nuked.

This coupled with a dissent counter again ensures a real MAD state causing the player to lose if Nukes fly.

 

[Commissar Yossarian]

would be neat if paradox kinda planned for rockets/missles with the ability to intercept nuclear missles, so it's just isn't pure MAD. For the sake of a good cold war mod anyway. GIven the air combat system, it could work, and wouldn't be tedious either.

But there is no possible technological solution that leads to a viable defense against ICBMs. It's always pure MAD.

The missile shield the Americans keep trying to put into place are for defending against a few random missiles at launch. Their success rate is going to be at best 1-2% on intercept so you need 100ish anti-balistic missiles for every missile you have launched. If you're trying to shoot incoming warheads your odds drop by orders of magnitude. Finally the nice people that build solar-sails now all started building decoys for MIR Missiles that would give you a target space of 20 real warheads and some 100-1000 dummy warheads of aluminium foil that look identical on radar.

So you spend 1 Trillion on your star wars programme, I spend 100 billion on some more Missile subs and I'm way out ahead.

MAD is integral to any cold war simulator and should never be taken out of it.

 

[agentgb]

But there is no possible technological solution that leads to a viable defense against ICBMs. It's always pure MAD.

The missile shield the Americans keep trying to put into place are for defending against a few random missiles at launch. Their success rate is going to be at best 1-2% on intercept so you need 100ish anti-balistic missiles for every missile you have launched. If you're trying to shoot incoming warheads your odds drop by orders of magnitude. Finally the nice people that build solar-sails now all started building decoys for MIR Missiles that would give you a target space of 20 real warheads and some 100-1000 dummy warheads of aluminium foil that look identical on radar.

So you spend 1 Trillion on your star wars programme, I spend 100 billion on some more Missile subs and I'm way out ahead.

MAD is integral to any cold war simulator and should never be taken out of it.

oh yeah of course, and the only ABM they were considering using, was mostly for missile silo defence, so a reaction can be made, i believe they saw it just wasn't cost effective and that nuclear warheads had advance that they were more like a cluster bomb, it was only in the 90's that ABM started to improve slighty, but even then they aren't that effective in the end, but in the 70's, treaties were signed that they would not produce to many ABM so has not to upset the status quo of MAD.

I also believe that the US goverment in the early stages of the cold war, when sputnik launched saw it was more viable to build nuclear bunkers.

btw, i have a feeling that post of mine you quote will continue to

 

[Veneke]

Definitely +1 on a Cold War mod, and I'd be interested in helping out too if there's a group getting together for it.

The problem with modeling the Cold War in a Mod for HoI 4 is that it's both a massive undertaking and the base mechanics HoI uses (from what I can see currently anyway) don't translate well into the Cold War era. To get the feel of the Cold War right you'd need to address 5 major elements in the mod:

• Nuclear weapons: Both their widespread proliferation during the period plus the rapid advancements made in their destructive potential.
• The end of empire: Huge swathes of territory was made independent during the period. Most of this process wasn't simply independence, or resistance with independence, either. Stuff like federations were hugely popular during the decolonization process and many of them failed miserably.
• Overlapping faction allegiances: The United Kingdom, for instance, loses its position as leader of the allies but is still a member, remains head of a massively expanding Commonwealth, is a member of the United Nations, is heavily involved in Europe from an early stage, and sets up a number of regional defence organizations some of which failed and some of which succeeded. It's far from the only one involved in so many international factions.
• There is a huge amount of data for events, ministers, technologies, etc that would need to be included given both the extended timeline and the broader range of topics (it's not all about direct warfare post-ww2).
• Even if you had all of that, you would need to plan events and gameplay around the fact that there are at least four viable outcomes for WW2 (Axis victory, Allied victory, Comintern victory, and enduring stalemate) all of which would require different events at least.

Plus then there are the two big bugbears in any mod which is balance (especially given the timeline) and AI. Getting all of that to work correctly is just a massive undertaking. The closest mod that I've seen that does something like this is the Grand Campaign for HoI2 and even that only partly addresses some of these issues.

One possibility that might be better than an all-encompassing Cold War mod would be a specific scenario that ran over a number of years and then ended. Something like 63-73 would cover plenty of interesting ground for instance.

 

[agentgb]

@Veneke may be worth giving @VibiusPanzer a pm, he seems to be very interested in this too

also, i think the best place to start a cold war mod would actually be in the post war i think, i think tinkering with the world tension would be a mod in it's self, getting the ai to respond, setting up things like the LON & UN. It would be one heck of a mod, worthy of a game in it's self. i made a thread with ideas, granted i don't or explain it in more sophisticated terms, but the gist of it is along the lines of what you just said.