Mettle Blades and Skill **BETA ver 005 12tpy RELEASED 30May**

First of all, thank you for your time and effort creating this project.

Secondly, please let us, your humble servants, be part of testing this superb looking mod as soon as possible.

Thirdly, keep up the good work.

With regards,
Nokter

Who knows that limited modding capabilities of S2 can bring out such wonderful mod like MBS :P
I meant we can't have a "traditional" total conversion like TATW or SS, but MBS surely has its own way of implement replayability and diversion!

...im dreaming of a Game of Thrones total conversion :p that will suit perfectly the FOTS mechanism .... ive to kidnapp some geniuses like Hazbones and put them to work on that !! :laughter:

Btw the mod is looking every day more promising !!

......As long as when u have a kid with an Ashikaga daughter.....the soryo has purple eyes!

I will do a limited Alpha test with a small group of players just to iron out the glaring mechanical bugs and help me balance the CAI and BAI.
After that I will open it up to the general public in Beta testing to get the rest of the bugs and maybe start incorporating more of the popular community mods that will fit MBS without too much reformatting.

Hang in there guys, We are more than half finished already!

What program are you using??

Do you mean which version of Shogun?
I am using vanilla TWS2 + all DLC's EXCEPT ROTS and FOTS.

If you mean which tools am I using I am just using Pack File Manager and MS Paint plus a couple online tools for file conversions.

Just want to put my two cents in: You have yet another fan of this mod's concept.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by delanis

Just want to put my two cents in: You have yet another fan of this mod's concept.

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Thanks!

I have been slowed by a recent bug I discovered. I have been racking my brain over it for the past couple days now. Basically, I have units in the units_table that don't want to work on the battlefield. The game loads fine but any time specific units are in your stack and you try to fight a battle on the battlefield, the game will crash as the battle is loading...

There is no obvious reason why the unit will not load in a battle. The entry in the units_table is exactly the same as another unit (that does work in battles) with the exception of the unit name is different of course.

From what I can tell, it has something to do with WHERE in the units_table the problem unit is located and the unique number that the units has. I have been creating custom units in TWS2 for some time now and of course I always create a new unique number for every unit I make.

I have been able to delete the problem unit from the units_table then re-enter it at the bottom of the table as a new record. It then magically fixes the issue and the game will load battles properly.

Has anyone else heard of this issue?
Needless to say it has greatly slowed my progress because I have to test every single unit in-game to make sure it will load in a campaign battle. Those that won't I have to totally redo to fix the problem. :disgust:

With that said, I am finishing up the Cavalry Icon Pack and hopefully can start on the last remaining unit rosters by this weekend.

No ive put my units always at random in the middle of the table ( usually i start with a cloned one to not have to retype every field ) but ivent got major problems .
But i had other bugs that were solved only by retyping the new infos in a vanilla file because i wasnt able to find where the bug was ( and i did look for hours ... ) ... a bug did magically solved himself when i changed the name of the unit .

That's weird.
I think I read somewhere along time ago that someone stated that the bug comes from the game confusing the main data file with the pack files.

The bug I am getting seems to go away if I recreate the unit at the bottom of the unit_table and recreate the entry in the unit_stats_land_table as well.
It is time consuming and frustrating but I am happy to say that I am now finished and got all the units working so I can start on the next unit roster.

I have not slacked off from this mod so don't worry!

I just completed the units cards for all rosters and now I have turned back to creating the Hatamoto models.
Getting there slowly...

Great, was a bit worried "something" happened. Waiting with growing anticipation.

Keep it up Hazbones! I'm still greatly looking forward to trying out this mod. You and Fra70 are doing some very great things to revive Shogun for us "realist" players.

I haven't forgotten my offer to make an Encyclopedia submod, and my offer still stands! I think, because of the complexity of this mod, players would greatly benefit from it. Also because of the complexity, though, I felt a little overwhelmed and confused on where to start :). Rest assured, as soon as Alpha is released I will start tackling it!

Thanks MagicCuboid. I will definitely still need help with the encyclopedia entries when we go Alpha.

I have finished the Hatamoto Roster and got everything working in-game.
I am now moving on to the last and final unit roster, the Kashindan!

I think I might incorporate Fra70's mod into MBS or at least offer a version of MBS compatible with his mod to start things off.
Of course I will be using components of TROM and Darthmod to fix some of the known issues in game (poor AI, homing missiles, etc.) on top of that.

After I get MBS out the door for play testing, I will then start on my own stats and AI tweaking and offer a "pure" MBS version as well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hazbones

I think I might incorporate Fra70's mod into MBS or at least offer a version of MBS compatible with his mod to start things off.
Of course I will be using components of TROM and Darthmod to fix some of the known issues in game (poor AI, homing missiles, etc.) on top of that.

After I get MBS out the door for play testing, I will then start on my own stats and AI tweaking and offer a "pure" MBS version as well.

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This.

All of this.

Today I will preview the MBS Hatamoto units.
Below are the units and if you can imagine them much smaller, you'd get the idea for what the unit cards for them look like as well.

The Hatamoto are the elite of the Samurai and are "retained" by the daimyo for his personal protection literally serving "under the flag" protecting the maku (field HQ) on the battlefield.
They are the fighting portion of the Kashindan (clan government).
The Hatamoto in MBS are broken down into Leadership, Guards, Retainers, and Support.

Leadership

Background The Generals are recruited from the daimyo's Hatamoto. The units they lead is determined by the position they hold in the structure of the army. They are either an Insider (Clan or Relation) or an Outsider (Vassal). Clan members are just referred to as General (Taisho). There are many different names used to describe the vassal generals however; Parent (Yorioya), Outsider (Tozama), Shinzan (New People), etc. The bodyguard of the General unit in MBS will consist of different weapon types for each one so you'll see Generals travelling with Long Spear, Bows, Short Spears, etc. The unit sizes of the General units are very small and they should not be used to fight your battles for you. Loss of your general will break your army's morale. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/attac...6&d=1361762554

The Guards

Background To be a Guard is the highest honor the rank-and-file Samurai can hope to achieve. Normally, the highest position within the Guards is the Honorable Horse Guard (or Great Guard). These men are expected to be the die-hard fanatics of the clan and are mostly made up of the family and relatives of the daimyo, Kashindan members as well as prominent Hatamoto members. The Great Guard also came in a foot variation but were considered a lower rank than the mounted men. Their armor was even changed to ensure their place beneath the Horse Guards was understood. The Escort Guards are a specialist unit which are tasked with protecting the life of the Lord and his relatives and are never farther than earshot of their assigned charge. The mounted units have enough men to fight on the battlefield if needed but their foot counterparts are very small in number. The duties (of the foot units) were to protect whatever room that the Lord or their charge was in at the time. They also led the procession going to whatever destination the Lord needed to go. Escort Guards were so trusted by the daimyo or general that they were commonly chosen to be Courier Guards on the battlefield. Courier Guard units picked from the Escort Guard were tasked with carrying messages to leaders on the battlefield deemed too sensitive to be waved out with signal flags. The words spoken by a Courier Guard were to be followed as if they were spoken by the daimyo or general himself. Escort Guards came in different variations wielding all sorts of weapons from spears to bows and swords but their duties were all the same. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/attac...9&d=1361762572

Retainers

Background Hatamoto Retainers are simply those samurai who have shown great skill in battle and have been "retained" by the daimyo or other senior samurai. Any time there is a battle to be fought, the samurai is expected to provide a certain number of his retainers based upon the stipend he receives from his Lord. The larger your holdings and stipend, the more retainers you were expected to provide. Hatamoto Retainers enjoyed greater respect and privileges than common retainers and came in all variations and weapon types. Usually, the more exotic units (like mounted matchlock or mounted archers) were reserved for the more wealthy samurai and providing them to their Lord in a fight meant they would reap greater reward if they performed well in battle. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/attac...7&d=1361762562

Support

Background There were huge masses of men following the army on the march and usually outnumbered combatants on the field. These men provided various services to the Lord all the way down to the individual samurai from carrying the Lord's sandals to holding their samurai's spear and were expected to die rather than lose it! With all great men come others that choose to gain privilege and favor on the coat-tails of their betters. These men were known as Followers (or Tomo) and were normally paid, fed and equipped by the men they served. Even though Followers were in the Hatamoto, they were normally not considered "part" of it. They were basically the personal armies of ambitious men. The Japanese equivalence of the European squire was the Page. Pages were either personal attendants (Kinju) of their Lords or actual squires (Kosho) being prepped to step up into the samurai ranks. Pages were the personal grooms, medics, armour repairers, weapon cleaners and chamber pot tossers of the army, they are not meant to be fighters unless they are defending a weapon or object they were charged with keeping safe. Usually, the daimyo brought along with him on campaign a secret weapon for gaining knowledge of the enemy and/or handling sensitive missions of utmost importance. The Battlefield Ninja were used as a specialty unit and would be a considerable cost and loss of investment if thrown into battle needlessly. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/attac...8&d=1361762566

And here is an in-game view of the unit cards in case you were not able to imagine them... lol

Unit Cards

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/attac...3&d=1361782900

There are a couple units not shown in this preview that are only available when you take Kyoto. You'll have to wait and see what they are.

Sorry guys, RL has been busy lately but I have just finished the final unit roster (Kashindan) and got everything working in-game.

Next step is to incorporate Darthmod and a couple other options into MBS to shore up the CAI and BAI aspects of the mod. They will be "drop-in" options so you can play with which ever AI you like the most.
After that is just some polishing and then I can finally get this mod out the door for testing.

Hang with me. It is a slow process.

Really can't wait for this to be released. Great work on this Hazbones!

Thanks Xhenthius, I am working on the AI build preferences, CAI and such right now. Not the funnest thing to do but rest assured things are moving along nicely.
I have to tweak building effects and unit abilities to better match the Organization Systems in MBS. The vanilla settings just don't work with all the changes this mod makes.

That is both a good thing and a bad. Alot of the things you thought you knew about TWS2 are not so anymore. That is why I am also trying to document as much as possible to help players figure out the changes.