Starfire Historical Mod - PreRelease

[Ming]

Hopefully someone will identify what's causing events to stop firing in some games.

As for armor vs air losses, well that's certainly a player's choice, using air power extensively certainly would allow you to reduce your ground losses. Since air can be very expensive it might be worth letting your armor beat on them a bit more and give the Luftwaffe a break.

Japan should remain engaged with China through the entire war, however we need to get those amphibious assaults a bit more successful I think. Once Japan has taken enough of China it should shift to the AI file that will focus on the pacific instead.

It's been a busy week but perhaps tomorrow and the weekend I can get back to tweaking a little.

- Mithel

Perhaps you could modify the AI so it no longer defends the beachheads so much (beyond, perhaps shanghai.) It seems a bit silly to have Nationalist China station 12 divisions on Hainan, and most historical Japanese landings weren't strongly contested at the beachhead anyway. It appears to me that the AI will perform much better if it can actually get on shore and stay there, rather than constantly siphoning troops from the main front to make fresh amphibious assaults over and over.

Meh, I'll try overrunning France again without using any air at all. Though I'm now more interested in testing peripheral engagements such as the winter war, war in China, etc. and seeing if it plays well from a human perspective. I really need to find some other poor soul to test against, as I have a feeling the French campaign would have been epic if the defense had been conducted a shade more competently.

 

[Mithel]

Version 0.94 is now released.

Japan & China seem to be doing better. I've adjusted the Netherlands production so they build a far more historic number of divisions. Finland's airforce is now relocated back to Finland! And a few other changes.

I observed a game where Japan's elections ran peaceful leading to a late entry for the USA. England decided to invade and managed to get three provinces before Germany blasted them back off the continent.

- Mithel

 

[Ming]

Mithel, do you have any plans to develop versions of the other scenarios for your mod? It seems to me the work wouldn't be to too overwhelming, as you'd mostly only need to adjust the technologies researched by each country and developed IC levels. (Paradox already has the OOB done. . . mostly)

a 39 scenario would be excellent for testing purposes, much more functional than the 36 one.

 

[unmerged(23689)]

My first ever post in the forum *Yippee* as a HOI fanatic this Looks really cool and will give this a try very soon *smiles*

 

[Mithel]

I've found out why events sometimes stop firing. I was able to track down the fact that *sometimes* when the game is saved it leaves out the "event = "filename" " lines, thus no more events! It's by no means conclusive but it appears this happens when a save game is made with a battle in progress (specifically a tactical bombing). When this happens it also appears to wipe out the "sleepevent" information!

As far as I can tell this is a Paradox bug and has nothing to do with mods.

Ming, at this point in time I don't plan to make any other scenarios for the Starfire Mod. It could be done fairly quick and dirty by just fixing up the .inc files for all nations but there are potentially a lot of little things that might be over looked. It would definitely take time to do, test and tweak. (and I already spend FAR too much time fixing up someone else's game {grin} )

- Mithel

 

[unmerged(17228)]

Just discovered, this mod, it sounds pretty good. Going to try it right now.

 

[unmerged(17228)]

Can you please help me on how to uninstall this mod? It is ruining my game. I can't start a new game or load a saved one with it. The game CTDs whenever I try to.

 

[Mithel]

"Uninstall" is simple (if you followed the instructions) just go back to playing your previous copy of v1.05c.

If you did not make a copy before applying our mod then just re-install HoI.

- Mithel

 

[unmerged(17228)]

Ok. Heck I forgot I even had a backup.

 

[Mithel]

Version 0.96 has been released.

- Mithel

 

[Mithel]

v0.97 has been released.

The Fall of France and the Eastern Front are starting to look very historic (France is still a bit tougher than it should be).

AI tech researching is starting to get a little better.

- Mithel

 

[Mithel]

Version 0.98 has been released:
http://www.mnstarfire.com/ww2/hoi/recommendations.html

Note: this is an emergency rushed bug fix release. There are two major changes halfway implemented.

- Mithel

 

[Mithel]

v0.99b is now available for download.

Still in the middle of some major adjustments but working much better.

The penalty for Germany conquering Hungary, Bulgaria and/or Romania has been increased. Balance of Italy vs UK is improved.

- Mithel

 

[Mithel]

v0.99d now available.

Changed to initializing the modifiers via techs. Experimenting with various values for the modifiers.

 

[unmerged(12743)]

I see two possibilities to realize that:

1)Use e.g. tag = U12 and create it with
ownedprovinces = { 1 }
controlledprovinces = { 1 }
nationalprovinces = { }

I did this, using tahiti (a silly little island) Works quite well, and really has no adverse effect. The independant country as a control works VERY well with changes such as random election results. By sheer coincidence, U12 was the one I selected as well, about a month ago.

FYI this is why I had been trying to use the ID parameter on the switch_alegance function. I wanted to pre-load the build queue, and then transfer specific units to other countries build queues. so much fof unimplemented features.

 

[Mithel]

Version 0.99e has been released and is now available for download.

- Mithel

 

[unmerged(19545)]

Responding to a comment in another thread

Hi Mithel. You stated that the current SA gain from a fully teched out infantry division is about a 100% increase over the base division. Since GD is already irrelevant, it seems like you feel the best German infantry division is worth about 2 prewar Argentinian divisions. What are the impications of this. Just kidding, I know that Org is a factor too, but both sides will be taking equal casualties, until the Argies break. However, since they started with 80% of the German org (40 + 40), the Germans will still be hurting. Of course, this is different with tanks, but there were always more inf divs than armor divs.

 

[Mithel]

In the Starfire Historical Mod Germany starts out with a ground defense efficiency bonus, thus they inflict 25% more casualties point for point (only the techs that reduce (enemy) ground defense efficiency (which is still poorly named) adjust this so no matter how teched up you are this advantage still exists).

From the documentation I've read the peak relative effectiveness of a top notch division vs a poorly organized, trained, armed division (soldier for soldier) was roughly double (i.e. the better division inflicted double the casualties per loss), thus it's actually fairly reasonable that maximum techs only result in roughly double the combat value.

Most of the one sided victories over pathetic opponents were due to non-resistance by the inferior side not the failure of a soldier to fight effectively. There are certainly cases of poorly armed and trained men fighting bravely against a superior foe (and inflicting severe losses).

Basically I've reduced the wide gap between the "best of the best" and the "worst of the worst" so that even an overwhelming assault against a pitiful opponent does result in some casualties.

- Mithel

 

[unmerged(19545)]

Okay, sounds reasonable to me. And the overwhelming defeat you relate can easily happen in HoI anyway, even with combat values set closer to par.

I'm a little concerned about the built-in inherent superiority of the German soldier, but if most folks find that reasonable, I won't quibble.

 

[Mithel]

The "superiority" of the German soldier in my opinion is "myth". However there are some good logical reasons why the average German soldier far outperformed his opponent that are based in fact:

1) Training - German military training was probably the best in the world in the WWII era.
2) Training again - German training doctrine included training each soldier to perform the duties of the rank above him so they were well prepared to handle losses.
3) Training yet again - the German training encouraged independent thinking at lower levels allowing them to skillfully adapt to the situations. (you'll note that in the Starfire Historical Mod it takes longer for the Germans to build an Infantry division than other nations - this is an offset from giving them the ground defense efficiency bonus).
4) Leadership - well trained and skilled leadership at all levels (and extra experience gained from Spain and the early conflicts).
5) Equipment - often German equipment had designs or features that were subtle that dramatically improved effectiveness - the best example being the Germans usage of radio. Russian tanks and aircraft without radios were at a severe disadvantage.
6) Experience - the Wehrmacht gained a lot of fighting experience and this was often employed against foes that lacked actual combat experience.

- Mithel