Historical Plausibility Project Mod

[TheBromgrev]

Yes, we have. The problem lately has been finding the effort to implement the concept due to work and family obligations. Here's a (very) brief overview of what we plan to do:

* Some raw materials are critical to certain industries. These raw materials will be SRs, but won't give bonuses. Simply having something like Uranium is meaningless unless you need it to do something else.
* The industries (aerospace, ship-building, electronics, etc) that require the rare raw materials mentioned above will be SRs that provide bonuses, and can be added and removed by event. These SRs will require a certain level of IC, infrastructure, and for shipyards ports in order to exist. This means that minors can, if they put forth the effort, gain super-efficient tank factories and shipyards. Conversely, the majors can lose their production advantage if they lose access to the raw materials that fuel their factories. These industry-type SRs will have multiple levels, so a low-level shipyard (think Kiel) will provide a smaller bonus than a higher-level shipyard would (think Newport News). This makes China become far more important, because it supplies (today and back in the 30's) at least 90% of the world's rare earth metals, because all electronics require the raw materials that China mines.

[Halbard]

You will not take in consideration the factual Strategic Resources that influenced the actual WW2? For example Portugal's Tungsten was important to the Axis' war effort, and to a lesser extent, Spain's

[TheBromgrev]

At the moment here is our idea. I'm quoting HPP team member Nephandus below. I personally haven't put any effort, research, input, whatever into the new system other than the idea that "resources are worthless unless there's a reason to have them".

The in-game strategic resources will be:

- Coal
- Iron Ore
- Bauxite
- Copper
- Lead
- Sulfur
- Rubber
- Common Alloy Ores
- Rare Alloy Ores

The strategic effects for bonus provision will be:
- Vehicle Industry
- Naval Yards
- Aircraft Industry
- Small Arms Industry
- Artillery Factory

The fundamental idea is that strategic resources are worthless without an industry that requires them! This means that having strategic resources will allow for industrial bonuses, but the resource itself does nothing. Let's use the example of Iberian Tungsten. Simply having a Tungsten mine doesn't do anything; it's what you do with the Tungsten that matters. The Tungsten SR won't provide any bonuses, but having an industry that requires Tungsten will provide bonuses if and only if Tungsten is available.

The idea is still a work in progress, but the basic idea is that there's no reason to mine or farm something unless that "something" has a purpose. I can mine all the Uranium in the world, but if I can't sell it then all I did was waste time, money, and resources.

[Halbard]

Seems good, tough i think that if you can mine Tungsten, then you should be able to sell it at least?
How about a Research Centre or an Intelligence Agency SR? To mimic the OSS, GRU, NKVD, etc...

BTW, is there a list of the resource placement?

[TheBromgrev]

That's a good idea. We can tie in a small money bonus to the raw materials. Here's a further breakdown of the raw materials:

• Coal: Contains all coal types except lignite (brown coal)
• Iron Ore: All types of iron ore in significant quantities
• Bauxite
• Copper
• Lead
• Sulphur (natural occurences)
• Rubber (natural occurences, not synthetic ones)
• Common Alloy Ores: Contains Zinc, Nickel, Manganese
• Rare Alloy Ores: Contains Tungsten, Chrome, Molybdenum, Tin
• Uranium

This thread in our Paradox forum is about SR placement. Nephandus didn't mention any specific areas he already decided on; he was asking for suggestions for places to compare to whatever list he made.

[TheBromgrev]

FYI for those who are interested. I'm moving my AAR as Japan using this mod to this forum and out of the Paradox forum, because the Paradoxplaza AAR moderators are overzealous power-drunk jerks and I refuse to post in their forum. Here's the link to my AAR thread in TWC: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...0#post12220400

[CrazyShadowDami]

any new info? aprox. time for the next release?

[TheBromgrev]

New release already out and available from modDB and the Paradox forum. I just forgot to update this thread

Also, Slan, the mod leader, is "retiring", which makes me the new mod leader. Things will probably slow down for a bit since my real job will be picking up over the holidays. Everyone is going on vacation but me (I'm the new guy), which means I have to do their work too AI-related bugs likely won't get fixed anymore either, because I don't know how to edit the AI files and the other 2 team members don't know either.

[TheBromgrev]

Alright, we finally decided on how we want to use SRs. Rather than make Strategic Resources be natural resources, we'll instead use the concept as Strategic Assets. A Strategic Asset is a bomb-able target, such as a building or mine, that is critical to the military capacity and technological level of a country. There will be two types: Buildings and Natural Resources, and the buildings category will be by-far the largest of the two. Both will be displayed as a vanilla Strategic Resource, but how they work will be different from the base game.

The core idea revolves around production and research. Currently, the system is set up to represent all production as IC, but that's going to change. IC will instead be "split up" into two types: Assembly areas and component manufacturing. The building SRs will represent assembly areas for the final product, such as shipyards, automotive assembly plants, and arms manufacturers. IC will in turn represent the places where the components, such as ball bearings, barrels, sheet steel, etc. are built then transported to the place where the vehicle or gun will be assembled. What this means is that in order to build certain units (in-game this means they're "activated"), you have to have the assembly area SR for that unit type, and it can't be bombed to oblivion. The starting scenario will have all of these assembly areas placed that existed in 1936, so the majors and most mediums will be able to build what they start with. If certain infrastructure and IC conditions are met then an SR can be "built" via a decision if the country doesn't currently have the SR. This way smaller nations are rewarded for their investment and aren't permanently behind.

The way upgrading is handled in the game means that we have to limit research to ownership of a SR. It doesn't make sense for a nation that can't build tanks but has some it bought (think licensed build) to research improvements to the tank and then magically be able to upgrade the tank. Likewise, a nation that has ships but no shipyard shouldn't be able to research and add radar or new AA guns, since it lacks the facilities to do so.

Here is the current list of SRs and their planned final effects. Their effects will come from Strategic Effects, which will prevent the benefits of the SR from being shared. Ignore the Activation part below for the time being; that will come into play after the mod gets ported to TFH. TFH allows us to deactivate units, but FTM doesn't, so that part can't be implemented right now and the future 3.0 version of the mod won't include any changes to the activation techs.

- Small Armament Factory: Used for activation INF, MIL, GAR and CAV, one of two activators for MTN, PAR, MAR, MOT and MEC
- Heavy Armament Factory: Used for activation of Horse towed SUP, one of two activators for MOT SUP and MEC SUP
- Special Armament Factory: one of two activators for MTN, PAR and MAR
- Light Vehicle Factory: One of two activators for MOT and MOT SUP, is a pre-req to certain levels of the supply_throughput tech (increases throughput due to having actually trucks to do the job)
- Heavy Vehicle Factory: Used for activation of IST, LARM, one of the two activators for MEC and MEC SUP
- Advanced Vehicle Factory: Used for activation of ARM and HARM
- Light Aircraft Factory: Used for activation of INT, FTR, CAS and CAG
- Heavy Aircraft Factory: Used for activation of TAC, TRA, and STR; is a pre-req to later levels of the supply_throughput tech (increases throughput due to having actually abstracted TRA planes to do the job)
- Advanced Aircraft Factory: Used for activation of all Jets, Rockets and Flying Bombs
- Small Naval Yard: Used for activation of SUB, DD, TRANS
- Medium Naval Yard: Used for activation of SUB, DD, TRANS, CL, CA, CVL
- Large Naval Yard: Used for activation of SUB, DD, TRANS, CL, CA, CVL, BC, BB, CV

And the research SRs. These won't appear in the FtM version of the mod and their effects will be merged into the SRs above for 3.0. Might be merged into the above completely for 3.x; still not sure on that

- Light Weapons R&D Bureau: Like your small arsenal
- Heavy Weapons R&D Bureau: like your large arsenal
- Automotive R&D Bureau: like your Automotive plant
- Armor R&D Bureau: for IST and LArm
- Advanced Armor R&D Bureau: for ARM and HARM
- Light Aircraft R&D: For INT, FTR, CAS, CAG
- Heavy Aircraft R&D: for TAC, STR and Airtransports
- Submarine R&D: pretty obvious I think
- Naval R&D: DD, CA, CL, BC, BB
- Carrier R&D: CVL and CV.

And the natural resources:

- Uranium - access to it required to research the nuclear bomb tech; you can go through the entire nuclear tree w/o Uranium, but can't get the bomb without a source of Uranium
- Tungsten - TFH-Only; will be a requirement for a new tech that adds a bonus to armor penetration for tanks and the support brigades
- Rubber - covers both natural and synthetic; I forgot what this was supposed to do; will update when I find the notes on it :)

So, here's an example of how it would work in FtM. Let's say I'm playing as Poland and have the small shipyard at Danzig. This means I can build and research techs for destoyers, submarines, and transports, but until I build more IC, infra, and increase the port size in Danzig I won't be able to upgrade it to a medium shipyard and gain access to cruiser-hulls. In TFH you'd also have to have a naval R&D Strategic Resource to research destroyer techs and a sub R&D SR to research sub techs.

Here's another example of how increasing the size of an SR will work. Let's take the Spanish shipyard at Ferrol. Nearby La Coruna is the regional port, but Ferrol is where Spain's WW2 cruisers were built. Ferrol will have a medium shipyard SR that unlocks cruiser hull research and units. To upgrade it to a large shipyard that can build capital ships, Ferrol must have 8 infra and one of Ferrol's neighboring provinces must have both a level 9 port and 9 IC (note that these numbers haven't been finalized). La Coruna currently has a level 7 port and 3 IC, while Ferrol has 7 infra. So, for Spain to build and research capital ships one option is to build 6 IC and 2 port-levels in La Caruna and 1 infra in Ferrol, which will cause a random event to fire that will remove the medium shipyard SR and add a large shipyard SR.

[TheBromgrev]

The time for me to port the mod over to the new expansion is coming up, and there are still some things I haven't fully decided on. Since I enjoy discussing potential changes with the community I've started this thread to collect ideas. I'll first go over the new features, my initial thoughts on them, then will open the thread for discussion.

* Armor & Piercing: I like this feature and think we could use or rebalance vanilla values for light, medium, and heavy tanks as well as tank destroyers. We'd have to come up with appropriate values for the support brigades, and right now this where I'm stuck at in general. Note that aircraft ignore armor (thus need no penetration value), and planes and ships can't use this feature. Any ideas for appropriate values?

* Combined Arms: I mentioned this in another thread, but the way I see this working is that no unit type (artillery, direct fire, support, armor) will have an inherent CA bonus; they'll all start off at zero. Doctrine choices (both tabs) will provide bonuses to the 4 unit types. Right now here is the unit type breakdown I'm thinking of using (note that a unit can be of one CA type):
--artillery - the 3 support brigades
--direct fire - tank destroyer and (maybe) heavy armor
--armor - light, medium, and (maybe) heavy armor
--support - ISTs and stormtroopers. maybe special forces

Feel free to offer alternatives and other suggestions.

* Elite Units: I'm most definitely going to use this to represent the naval treaty limits to prevent construction of new capital ships until the signatory leaves the treaties. I'm also heavily leaning on putting the limits on our special forces brigades (stormtrooper, mountain, paratrooper, marine), because by definition special forces are elite troops. IIRC, Germany only fielded the in-game equivalent of 7 mountain brigades. Japan fielded at most 4 paratrooper brigades (2 were para/marines), 8 marine brigades, and no mountain troops. The UK only fielded enough marines to cover a a single in-game triangular division. These men were the elites of their armies, and their respective nations couldn't field them in the numbers that are possible in FTM.

Any thoughts on the specifics?

* Country-specific units: The other part of the elite unit code allows for country-specific units. I'm not a fan of the idea at all, but given the new code I can work with I'm at least willing to discuss it within the following limits:
1) Any country-specific unit cannot cover the same role as our basic units. The base game's Italian elite unit is a prime example of something I won't use, because it's role is the same as the regular mountain brigade.
2) Any country-specific unit must be limited in number. The vanilla Guard and SS units are prime examples of something I won't use for this reason, because there were so many of them that from a higher-level perspective they were indistinguishable from the regulars. How can you be special if at least 1/5 of the entire army can be classed as being "special"?
3) Any country-specific unit must have historically had at least 3,000 men in the organization. While #2 is the upper limit, this item is the lower limit. This means no Army Rangers, no Brandenburgers, no commandos of any kind. This is a strategy game, not a squad-based shooter. Such units were never used in brigade-sized formations (due to their nature they couldn't be used in such large numbers), and have no place in a game of this scale.
4) The country-specific unit must have actually performed better than the regulars of the same army on a consistent basis. This means the Japanese Imperial Guard are out, since they were so bad they were relegated to occupation duty throughout the entire war, and the one major engagement they participated in they performed far, far worse than the regulars they were attached to.
5) The unit, if it meets requirements 1-4, must really be unique to a certain country or small number of countries.

Examples of units I would consider keeping or adding:
* French Foreign Legion: These guys were limited in number, are motivated, and consistently performed better than the regular army. The latter is probably due to the fact they aren't French :laugh:
* Ghurkas: recruited for a specific combat role that the other special forces don't fulfill (mountain & jungle), are limited in number, and are selected based on a variety of factors, including where they live.
* IJN Naval Paratrooper: Three brigades from the SNLF based in Yokosuka were trained as paratroopers as well as marines, though only 2 of the 3 brigades were used as paratroopers. I haven't heard of any other unit that had such a dual-role and were trained in such large numbers.

Units I will not use or even consider using, so please don't ask for them to be added
* SS - too many, and their combat performance was due to factors other than skill or brainwashing (please don't argue, these guys won't be in the mod aside from unit names for the regulars)
* Guards - too many
* Rangers - not enough of them
* Armored trains - just...don't
* Battlecarriers - stupid idea created for the sole purpose of not being sent to the frontlines
* Submarine carriers - only carried 3 floatplanes, and less than an in-game flotilla was built or planned to be built
* Panzerschiffe - Germany reclassed them later in the war to Heavy Cruiser. Enough said
* Coastal Battleships - these are created in the mod through a tech, which only a few nations have and I believe the AI is told to ignore. Since it's already implemented, I won't add it as a new country-specific unit.

Feel free to offer suggestions. I'm still not sold on the country-specific units, but I'll still open the topic up for discussion.

[Halbard]

Well, i reckon that the US Marines should be a larger force, since almost 500.000 US Marines fought in the war. Either replace the marines for the US with a new unit, and give it a 15-20 brigade limit or something.

The French Foreign Legion seems a great idea to me, and the Ghurkas aswell. Japan i dont know much about.
About the SS, well i reckon that they should remain in the game, for history's sake, since the SS fought a lot in the war, plenty of SS divisions.
Concerning the Guard units, well... there were a lot them thats for sure, but that is a reason to implement them.

[CrazyShadowDami]

i dont like limiting techs to specific nations tbh. what if a nation rises to huge power, and then it cant research techs that are suposed to be avaliable to powefull nations.

[TheBromgrev]

About the SS, well i reckon that they should remain in the game, for history's sake, since the SS fought a lot in the war, plenty of SS divisions.
Concerning the Guard units, well... there were a lot them thats for sure, but that is a reason to implement them.

Those are the reasons I won't implement them. Regular infantry divisions will have SS and Guard in their names, which better reflects reality. To me, units are only special if there were few of them. SS and guards can't be considered special because there were hundreds of thousands of them. The phrase "I'm special just like everyone else" applies here, in that because there were so many of them, by definition they're not unique.

i dont like limiting techs to specific nations tbh. what if a nation rises to huge power, and then it cant research techs that are suposed to be avaliable to powefull nations.

When did I say that? The mod never had country-specific techs and as long as I'm working on it the mod won't have them.

Right now I see it working something like this: The unique units would be even more specialized than the Elite units and further limited in number. One idea could be that the owner of Casablanca could raise Goumier (mountain/desert Elite troops), or that the owner of Nepal (or the puppet master of Nepal) could raise Gurkha (mountain/jungle) troops. Likewise, reaching a certain level of special forces training, officer training, infiltration doctrine (the player can follow it if s/he wants to, but no AI nation other than Japan will follow it), paratrooper equipment, and marine equipment techs would allow for marine/paratroopers. Events could fire after meeting the conditions to activate the unit that would notify the player that s/he can recruit said units, and the event would set a flag that allows them to be recruited. This makes the units country-specific in practice, though the potential exists for other nations to recruit them if they meet the conditions to do so.

All max limits would be a % of the total infantry, and at least 2 brigades of each type can be built.

[Halbard]

what about my marine suggestion?

[TheBromgrev]

You're confusing support personnel like logistics people with combat personnel. The brigade sizes in the game only count combat personnel (except for HQs). There also were only 6 divisions, so the max % limit will work fine here. No need for a new unit that's identical for another one aside from how many you can build.

[CrazyShadowDami]

so the number of elite and unique units is proportial to the number of normal brigades you have

[TheBromgrev]

Yes. There will be a minimum of 2 brigades of each type you can build, assuming you meet the conditions to build them, and the max limit will be proportional to the total number of infantry and garrison units you have. This will make some units be country-specific in practice, but at no point will a unit be hard-coded to be exclusive to one nation like you see in vanilla and the ICE mod.

[TheBromgrev]

Version 2.9.0 is up. At this point all I'm going to do is fix bugs, so if you'd like to provide feedback then please visit the ModDB link in the first post. I only have at most 8 hours a week to work on the mod, so the more people giving me feedback the better.

[Ferdiad]

Any version for TFH yet?

[TheBromgrev]

No. I want to finish the FTM version first, then port that over to TFH. Depending on how much feedback I get this could be as early as 2 weeks or as long as 3. Making the FTM be as balanced as possible given my very limited time will in turn mean the TFH version starts off in as good a state as possible.