Goofy's Battlefield Speed System 1.0

[Goofy]

Goofy's Battlefield Speed System 1.0

Features

This submod for SS 6.4 aims to provide you an exceptionally complex system of individual unit battlefield marching (or well, actually running) speeds.

In the official version of SS there's little difference between units' marching speeds, and that's the purpose of the existence of this mod. There are now individual movement speed factors for each unit including unit training, weapon, armour and mount type. Missile cavalry have also been given an extra minus modifier, although not as significant as there's in the official version of SS - this is to represent their aiming and hence their speed has been slightly decreased (from what it would've been with my speed factors - they're still usually faster than originally in SS). Partially due to this semi-heavy cavalry units with strong horses, such like Mailed Knights, are now rather effective at pursuing enemy missile cavalry now being 1.3 % faster than before - that's just to give you an example of how this mod works. On the other hand some heavy cavalry units may actually be faster than before due to the differences between this system and RealCombat.

The differences and changes in unit speeds are nonetheless not greater than a maximum of several percents, as that is really enough to give your game a bit more spicy taste. I can not exactly describe what the mod is like, especially as the changelog is as long as the list of land units - however, you'll just have to try it out and see if you like it (I'm sure you'll do)!

Unfortunately this mod can't take armour upgrades into account as it comes to unit movement speed due to the limitations of M2TW engine.

There are two versions of this mod, both attached at the bottom of this post:

Goofy's Battlefield Speed System 1.0

This is the "normal" version of this mod with no changes apart from unit marching speeds.

Goofy's Battlefield Speed System 1.0 (Realistic Missile Ranges included)

This version includes Goofy's Realistic Missile Ranges mod version 1.01.

I have also put a not-so-clear list of movement factors used in this mod into the mod download folder - that is for those who may be interested in having a look at it. The factors may or may not seem logical and thought-out but according to my tests this mod is rather balanced and realistic.

Compatibility

This mod is fully save-game compatible, but is not compatible with any version of RR/RC apart from the one included in SS 6.4.

Installation

Download the mod version of your choice - both versions are attached to this post. Please note that you'll need a file unpacking program, such like WinRAR to extract the mod. Once that has been done open the download folder, copy "export_descr_unit.txt" and paste it into your SS 6.4 folder (by default this is .../.../Program Files/SEGA/Medieval II Total War/mods/SS6.3/data). The installation instructions are also found in the ReadMe file included in the download folders.

My special thanks to Mega Tortas for all the discussing and support. You rock! (Please go +rep him, for GLORY's sake.)

Please report any bugs, errors or faults you might encounter.

PS. As to the front page mention "months of development" - well, I was just being lazy. (Or busy with my GIMP class, decide yourself.)

Enjoy!

[bɑne]

Congrats

[Wowwars]

Nice!

[Future Filmmaker]

Congrats on all the hard work guys!

Partially due to this semi-heavy cavalry units with strong horses, such like Mailed Knights, are now rather effective at pursuing enemy missile cavalry now being 1.3 % faster than before

I don't understand the need for this, tbh. Horse archers are far less powered in M2 than in Rome.

[Auran]

Good job. Now if you'll skip over to Shogun II, you could get your mod in with Darth_Vader.

Good Luck

[Goofy]

Thanks for commenting everyone, it's highly appreciated!

I don't understand the need for this, tbh. Horse archers are far less powered in M2 than in Rome.

Well, missile cavalry is quite overpowered if there is no way you can catch them. "Vanilla" SS has a way more drastic speed decrease for many of the elite missile cavalry units so I'm partially following Point Blank's example here. On the other hand I think that it just makes the system more balanced if mounted missile units have reduced speed to represent aiming as is stated in the OP. Cavalry equipped with thrown javelins don't have this minus modifier, though, as they're both missile and melee units. If they had more than just a couple of javelins to throw I would've given them that minus modifier as well but I think it was not needed this time.

Anyways, the speed decrease missile cavalry have is 1 % of their default speed so it's nothing that dramatic (original SS has a 5 % decrease for those elite/professional units I mentioned).

Good job. Now if you'll skip over to Shogun II, you could get your mod in with Darth_Vader.

I'm not particularly interested in S2 modding, while the Shogun 2 unit speeds do vary from each other (yet they're definitely way too fast) - there's actually no need for that.

Again, thanks for stopping by!

EDIT: And oh, missile cavalry's speed has in almost every case been increased from SS 6.4 but decreased from what it would've been according to my system otherwise. I guess I'll have to add that in the OP.

[Lord Ragnar]

May I say what a great little mod add-on. I tend to play SS 6.4 with BYG BGR-V (think thats right). Anyway i found that with only a few lil tweeks it works rather well..
Hope you could find you way to releasing your gem under a BYG friendly folder thanks.

Oh, the changes I made were to the cost side as most of these are 1. with all siege weapons at 12.

I also had to add cost to the Generals in all factions. However I did notice the NE Generals did not have the slave faction present? as in BYG mods. Very well done thanks again

[DochtorGajo]

Really interesting addition, good job.

[Triand I]

Very nice !!!

[Navajo Joe]

A nice piece of work, going to install this for sure, +rep

[Goofy]

May I say what a great little mod add-on. I tend to play SS 6.4 with BYG BGR-V (think thats right). Anyway i found that with only a few lil tweeks it works rather well..
Hope you could find you way to releasing your gem under a BYG friendly folder thanks.

As far as I'm aware this should be fully compatible with Byg's Grim Reality, or at least BGRIV.

Oh, the changes I made were to the cost side as most of these are 1. with all siege weapons at 12.

I'm afraid I don't quite follow you here. If you have made changes to export_descr_unit.txt you can still install this mod but those changes you made will naturally disappear.

Thanks for commenting!

Really interesting addition, good job.

Very nice !!!

A nice piece of work, going to install this for sure, +rep

Thanks a lot fellows - wish you'll enjoy it!

[Chlοë]

Looks cool. I'll have to give it a spin.

[Fair Prince]

Great work Goofy, and even more impressive that you just pulled this stuff out of nowhere! (+rep)

[Goofy]

Looks cool. I'll have to give it a spin.

Great - to GLORY!

Great work Goofy, and even more impressive that you just pulled this stuff out of nowhere! (+rep)

I prefer working that way - no thread without mod. (This has been more or less in progress since February.)

Thanks for commenting again!

[Sgt's Beaten Drum]

Why doesn't it shows in the setup as the other sub-mods of SS?

[Goofy]

Because the installer was made by gracul (I'm assuming) and this mod was not included in the latest SS release, which is also quite natural since this was released a long time after SS 6.4.

[Sgt's Beaten Drum]

So is it automatically included when i install it? Hence no need for activation?

[Goofy]

Just drop the EDU (export_descr_unit.txt) file into your SS data folder (by default .../.../SEGA/Medieval II Total War/mods/SS6.3/data) and overwrite the original file after backing it up first (I really recommend this so you can convert back to the original SS speeds at will). Once that is done the mod will start working and is also fully save-game compatible.

[MagicCuboid]

I love the level of thought put into this mod! The idea fits very well into RR/RC. My only question is if we should try to account for armor upgrades?

For instance, Fyrd Spearmen start with 0 armor, making them very quick. The problem comes in when they very quickly are upgraded to light mail, giving them an armor level of 6. And, after some investment into Heavy Mail, they can even reach an armor level of 10! This ends up making your low-grade fyrdmen heavily armored and fast as archers.

The only suggestion I can come up with is by averaging out the armor upgrade levels for units - making a Fyrd Spearmen average armor 10/4 armor levels = 2.5 (round up to 3). Still, given that this only comes to a speed coefficient difference of only 0.01, I'd understand if nobody worried so much about this .

EDIT:

Unfortunately this mod can't take armour upgrades into account as it comes to unit movement speed due to the limitations of M2TW engine.

Second point - I am interested to hear why the more heavily armored horses actually have a higher speed modifier than the smaller, swifter horses? They may be more powerful, but a french destrier holds nothing against an arab horse for speed...