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

[Hazbones]

Updated 2nd post with what I was up to...

Basically, I have finished the Peasant unit chain and now working on the Ashigaru chain.
Once done with getting these two unit castes working in a single province then it will be just a lot of Find/Replace work in TSV files to carbon copy them for each province in the game.
After that, each unit caste roster will be tweaked for stats and such then I might release them for play-testing while I work on the Samurai, Hatamoto and Kashindan unit rosters.

The speed at which I can release a Beta test of this mod will greatly depend upon the input I get from all of you!

[Loger]

I can't really be of much help right now, as I don't have the hardware necessary to run Shogun 2 anymore. However, you have my full spiritual support!

[Hazbones]

Busy with the holiday errands but I did manage to finish the Ashigaru unit roster. Got all of them working in-game and now starting on the Samurai/Hatamoto/Kashindan rosters.

Ashigaru Summary
The Ashigaru Roster consists of:

Spear Class Units- Requires Crafts resource
Sword Class Units- Requires Iron resource
Bow Class Units- Requires Wood resource
Siege Class Units- Requires Stone resource

Each weapon class will have additional unit versions consisting of:

Mercenary Units- Built on the Stealth Bldg Chain... expensive but don't require you to build any resource buildings. Unit Caps.
Buddhist Units- Built on the Temple Bldg Chain... cost is comparative to regular units and require the budhist religion. Do not require any resources. Unit Caps.
Ikko Ikki Units- Built on the Ikko Bldg Chain... cost same as buddhist and require Ikko religion. Boosted morale and stats and do not require any resources. Unit caps.
Christian Units- Built on the Christian Bldg Chain... cost same as buddhist and require Christian religion. Boosted morale and stats and do not require any resources. Unit Caps.

This same roster is repeated for each province so the units in one province will be completely different from all other provinces!

NOTE: at this point I have not even started on the techs so I do not have any tech requirements for units. They will be added before any play testing is started so don't worry about that.

[MagicCuboid]

Wow, very ambitious! Really nice work so far, I like the level of control you're giving the player over the provinces . +rep

[Gorhaax]

Love this mod idea, I hope to be able to help test it soon!

[Hazbones]

Thanks for the encouragements.

I have not been idle, just finishing up the Samurai Unit Roster. This is the largest roster in MBS so the next 2 rosters (Hatamoto and Kashindan) are much smaller and will be easier to finish.
Still got tweaking to do after the rosters are done before any play testing is possible. Just have to keep plugging away at it...

[Hazbones]

Agggghh...!!!

I thought I would have all the units done by New Years Day but it looks like I will come up just a little short. Still got a few more to do but my eyes are blurring (something to do with what I was drinking I assume) so gonna call it a night. Will start fresh when I recoup. The fun part of tweaking the mod for Alpha is next... stay tuned!

Happy New Year!

[Junaidi83 de Bodemloze]

man this mod remind me like BGR in stainless stell , good for advance player put more heavy thinking about what ,where and when something to do, good mod inded

[Hazbones]

I have completed the Hatamoto unit roster and got them working in-game.
I posted the complete list of Hatamoto units on the OP under the "Military Development" content box.

Check it out!

[MagicCuboid]

I'm really excited for this. The level of historical and tactical depth you've provided for each unit has made me a passionate follower of your mod . If you provide me with examples of loc descriptions you have already finished, I would be happy to help you finish this tedious process. Part of the trouble with many mods I have tried is their failure to communicate in-game the importance of their building decisions and the long term effects they may have, so I appreciate the amount of effort you are putting into the text descriptions.

Feel free to PM me with some work if you accept my offer!

edit: Also, about the Hatamoto units (which look really cool by the way), how much of each stack would you expect to be comprised of Hatamoto units? Do the generals have a bodyguard attached to the unit, or are they a single character supported by the other Hatamoto units? Finally, with so many different units would having a Hatamoto with "all the bells and whistles" come at the expense of your regular army given the 20 unit cap? (Not necessarily a problem, since an extensive bodyguard no doubt would impact the daimyo's ability to pay other troops, we can always keep another army in reserve as reinforcements).

Also, I like how peasants have full engineering abilities. This would encourage to bring along builders and servants with the army as was historical. I hope their unit upkeep would be next to nothing, though .

[weeeee659]

Hey Hazbones, I'm loving the progress.
One small thing in the description of the Mtd Sword Courier Guards, it says they are armed only with a short spear but, going by their name i'd assume they were armed with Katana?
Keep up the good work.

[Hazbones]

I'm really excited for this. The level of historical and tactical depth you've provided for each unit has made me a passionate follower of your mod . If you provide me with examples of loc descriptions you have already finished, I would be happy to help you finish this tedious process. Part of the trouble with many mods I have tried is their failure to communicate in-game the importance of their building decisions and the long term effects they may have, so I appreciate the amount of effort you are putting into the text descriptions.

Feel free to PM me with some work if you accept my offer!

Thanks for the encouragement. Do you happen to know how to create new encyclopedia pages? I have never done that before so if you could make some pages for the new units that would be incredibly helpful.

Also, about the Hatamoto units (which look really cool by the way), how much of each stack would you expect to be comprised of Hatamoto units?

I was planning to make my mod capable of hosting both the default 20 units and also a 40 unit version.
Speaking for myself, I would probably go after the Guard units first and of course the General to lead my forces. Everything else is just variety.

The units a player chooses depends on how much reality he/she wants to play with on the battlefield.
There will be severe caps on all Hatamoto units, they are supposed to be the best-of-the-best after all. Some units have specific uses that would help you on the battlefield, like the Kisho Ninja. I would assume 4 or 5 Hat units per stack would be a good limit. Maybe keep a variety of them in each stack?

When I start working on the AI, I planned to make only 4 units (1bow, 1spear, 1sword, 1gun) a really high priority for AI recruitment. The rest will all be about the same priority for recruitment purposes. This is so that the AI doesn't focus too hard on Hatamoto units and neglect his army.

Do the generals have a bodyguard attached to the unit, or are they a single character supported by the other Hatamoto units?

The Generals will be very small units (maybe 10 or less men). That is what the Kinju (Retainers) are for. One of their duties is to be bodyguards on the battlefield for important people. You'll have to think twice about throwing your General into the frey now!

Finally, with so many different units would having a Hatamoto with "all the bells and whistles" come at the expense of your regular army given the 20 unit cap? (Not necessarily a problem, since an extensive bodyguard no doubt would impact the daimyo's ability to pay other troops, we can always keep another army in reserve as reinforcements).

My mod will have a 20 and 40 unit version or like I said before, you can just keep the default 20 and only have like 4 or 5 Hat units in each stack. Yes, the more you spend on Hat units, the less you'll have for regular units. The Upkeep on Hat units will be high.

Also, I like how peasants have full engineering abilities. This would encourage to bring along builders and servants with the army as was historical. I hope their unit upkeep would be next to nothing, though .

Yeah, I was trying to think of how to make Peasants worth building after you get past level 1. The best I could think of was making them engineers and taking that ability away from the Ashigaru and Samurai units. The Ashi units have a few engineer abilities but very limited.

Yup, you are right, their cost and upkeep is next to nothing. It will probably be less than the cheapest Ashigaru unit currently in the vanilla game.

[Hazbones]

Hey Hazbones, I'm loving the progress.
One small thing in the description of the Mtd Sword Courier Guards, it says they are armed only with a short spear but, going by their name i'd assume they were armed with Katana?
Keep up the good work.

Thanks for pointing that out. It was a type-o. That must have been where my eyes started blurring from all that typing.

Found and fixed it.

[MagicCuboid]

Thanks for the encouragement. Do you happen to know how to create new encyclopedia pages? I have never done that before so if you could make some pages for the new units that would be incredibly helpful.

Sure thing, I'll talk to you in PM!

[Hazbones]

Ok, the last and final unit roster is nearing completion, the Kashindan!

I posted the complete list of Kashi units on the OP under the "Military Development" content box, 11 units in total.

Check them out!

[weeeee659]

So essentially, most, if not all, of the Kashindan are units that are more as a support for your main fighting force right? And some would be more used to flank opposing units that are already in combat with one of your main fighting units e.g the Nembutsu Sohei would be perfect because they give your units a morale boost and instill fear into your enemies. Correct?

[Hazbones]

So essentially, most, if not all, of the Kashindan are units that are more as a support for your main fighting force right? And some would be more used to flank opposing units that are already in combat with one of your main fighting units e.g the Nembutsu Sohei would be perfect because they give your units a morale boost and instill fear into your enemies. Correct?

Yes, the Kashindan was basically just the mobile government of the clan. Their numbers are far too small to be combat effective but they have several abilities that are great to have on the battlefield. Mostly you can only use them as support to keep your peasants and ashigaru from running away before they even start fighting. There are a couple of the OS where having these morale support troops will be very handy.

Yup, you can use the Nembutsu Sohei to do the exact opposite to your enemy peasants as well, scare the crap out of them then charge into them! The Colour Guards will also have a scare factor as well kind of like that sinking feeling a soldier gets when he realizes that big banner coming toward him is going to be accompanied by some bad mo-fo's.

Other units are just symbolic I admit (like the family units). I just find it fun to slaughter the innocents of my enemy.

[weeeee659]

Other units are just symbolic I admit (like the family units). I just find it fun to slaughter the innocents of my enemy.

+rep for that sentence alone

[Castiel]

Just stopping by just to say that you are making awesome progress ,

[Hazbones]

Sorry guys, been slow going lately... down with the flu so working on the mod as quickly as my tired body will let me.

All of the unit rosters are done. I am working on polishing the unit model variants now.
I will use one of the existing mods out there for unit stats initially and we'll tweak them for balance as we go along with later versions.