SSHIP - General Discussion

[j.a.luna]

Totally agree with roma victrix! I am a spanish man and of course we are not so darkest people like moors or north africa people...we are also like french or greek people, same for italians and portuguese people, i dont know if it is for preconceived ideas or something but we are with medium white skin and generally with brown hair, not so dark skin...

[bigdaddy1204]

I wouldn't say it's useless, Lifthrasir. Roma Victrix is one of the best contributors on these forums and this was a post that clearly took time and effort. I don't think this is inherently any less valid as a separate thread than other posts such as my Iran one a long time ago tbh.

I think Roma Victrix raises a good point. In fact North African people are not dark like many people think. My wife is North African and she is often guessed to be Spanish, French or German. She took a DNA test and her ancestry is 95% North African. She is automatically "white" wherever she goes.

Just thought I'd share some images for anyone who thinks all North Africans are black like Uganda or Nigeria or Kenya.

This is Moroccan pop star Hanane el Khader:
:


This is Algerian singer Kenza Morsli:



And this is Tunisian singer Amani Swissi:



As you see, North Africans are not "black" either and in many cases are not any darker than Spanish or Italians. The typical Moroccan woman will easily fit in with her Mediterranean sisters.

Anyway thank you SSHIP team, I am always grateful to you guys for creating this awesome mod. I've had some of the best experiences in the whole TW series playing your mod.

[Lifthrasir]

My point is not against Roma Victrix or his post itself but rather to the fact that a thread was created where it was not especially needed. Sorry if I haven't made myself clear
I'm trying to keep that forum as "clean" as possible to not miss important points. If threads are created as soon as somebody has to post something, this forum is going to be a mess very quickly.

Regarding that "skin texture issue", the files are being currently checked by one of us for the next release. Once he has completed his stuff, I can have a look a them

[Roma_Victrix]

Well, this thread is useless to be honest (threads merged). A simple post in the General Discussion thread would have been good enough.

Some harsh words here. It's better to be blunt, though.

This being said, I haven't touched any unit face skin texture. Not sure for MWY and I let him to answer. Anyway, in the long term and as already stated, all vanilla units should be removed and most of the textures reworked. Because we're using models from various modders, they look different. The idea is to make them with some homogeneity.

I generally love the outfits, the detail of the armor, the flashy colors, and all the other things about your SS sub-mod. The concept that Southern Europeans look like stereotypical Arabs (hell, even some Arabs are light-skinned) is the only thing that bugs me and it should certainly be remedied. Some Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, and Greeks are pretty swarthy-looking. From my own anecdotal observations, though, the vast majority of them are simply white people with Mediterranean suntans. Perhaps this could be reflected in making a more varied appearance or variety of faces that are either fair/light and swarthy/tan for the same unit? I'm sure it's possible. Each unit has what, four to five different face model possibilities?

Totally agree with roma victrix! I am a spanish man and of course we are not so darkest people like moors or north africa people...we are also like french or greek people, same for italians and portuguese people, i dont know if it is for preconceived ideas or something but we are with medium white skin and generally with brown hair, not so dark skin...

I said more about Italy than Spain in my post, only because I've been to Italy and met/seen far more Italians than Spaniards, so thanks for backing me up on this.

I wouldn't say it's useless, Lifthrasir. Roma Victrix is one of the best contributors on these forums and this was a post that clearly took time and effort. I don't think this is inherently any less valid as a separate thread than other posts such as my Iran one a long time ago tbh.

I think Roma Victrix raises a good point. In fact North African people are not dark like many people think. My wife is North African and she is often guessed to be Spanish, French or German. She took a DNA test and her ancestry is 95% North African. She is automatically "white" wherever she goes.

Just thought I'd share some images for anyone who thinks all North Africans are black like Uganda or Nigeria or Kenya.

Exactly, and I tersely mentioned this in my previous post. I'm not terribly fussed by the Middle Eastern/North African units in the game, although they too should include some more variation to reflect that yes, some people in the Middle East and North Africa are as fair-skinned as most Europeans. They don't look like a bunch of Swedes, Danes, or Norwegians, but the general Mediterranean look is basically an olive complexion. I'm not sure why people automatically think this means they are brown-toned like your average Yemenese or Pakistanis.

Here is the awesome new model for the Moorish general and Middle Eastern general more generally:

https://i.imgur.com/RrHGIvY.jpg


He kind of looks like the Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud from Kingdom of Heaven:

https://i.imgur.com/hdU8Gqt.jpg


At this rate, I'm just glad that at least here the skinners/modelers didn't make him look like a Nigerian or Ethiopian.

Regarding that "skin texture issue", the files are being currently checked by one of us for the next release. Once he has completed his stuff, I can have a look a them

In that case my one humble request would be for you guys to consider making a greater variety of faces for Southern Europeans that would include some lighter/fairer ones.

Just for fun, you could even include a Mussolini-type face. Now that's Italian!

[Lifthrasir]

Again, it wasn't my point to be harsh. Sorry about that.

And, I got the message. Just to be clear: I haven't touched these skin textures. I understand that they need to be corrected. I'll do that for the next release. Now, can we move on and stop posting all these pics. Thanks.

[Sar1n]

That asks for new submod-all italian factions' king should look like Benito.

Just...don't do the same thing for HRE.

[Jurand of Cracow]

This discussion is somewhat strange to me for I don't pay attention at all to such details . For me, the gameplay, role-playing (traits, events), battle dynamics, diplomacy and CAI, and not-visual historicalities (names, maps, buildings) are much more important. So it's interesting to see that you are so interested in the soldiers' complexions (what is not to criticise, but just to say that different people are looking at different issues and I need to be careful as well).

[shadowtwinz]

I've been playing alot recently as Spain and noticed that Heavy Cav is very strong and completely can crush any sword or spear unit.
What happend to spear units, shouldnt they beat cav. In my game my whole spearmen stack gets wrecked by one by 20-30 generals. Even one of strongest spearmen units like crusader seargents gets beaten by Heavy Cav.

[marcp]

Thank you for therep Lifth, and your detailed and thoughtful responses Jurand of C. When I think of SSHIP I think of the two of you as the primary actors...I understand it is not your mod as far as ownership but I have not yet had the pleasure of interacting with the "mysterious" MWY yet

I am glad my post was taken the way I had intended, not an indite of the mod. I have made some further observations on a couple of fronts.

1. Mercs in the Spanish peninsula, Lusitanian Javmen are the mercs available to Leonian(?) Kingdom that will have a manageable upkeep rate. The Moors are able to splurge in lavish fashion as they have all the other mercs avail. for marginal upkeep. This certainly makes the game more challenging and I have no problem with that per se but having a cav. unite available that I could afford would be nice, not a deal breaker though.

2. So, I'm not the only one who finds faction standing to be something of a mess, in the worst case, problematic at best.

My first recent Campaign Leon was going very well but it all has to do with what happens on the peninsula. I recall by turn 4-6 that Aragon had become vassal of Moorish Caliphate and the Ports destroyed as faction. I was able to capture some settlements and gift to or sell to Sicily to not have to spread my forces so thin...to defend everything is to protect nothing..right?, or however that splash quote goes! The Papacy and Sicilians would eventually lose the settlements but give me time to muster and build and stand strong against the Moorish threat, was awesome. The Argonese were content to sit it out and were neither aggressive nor helpful toward my ends...pretty historic or rather "real" type geopolitical behavior IMO.

To J.O.C. I am using your sub-mods for traits/generals and I believe it is helping to curb the gaining of questionable traits. I understand there is no "one" ideal fix to these things but it helps.

I am going to see what I can do soon in my next camp. I am also going to take care to have a fresh install as I am not quite sure if there were some conflicting or slop in my data files which may have contributed to some odd-ish behaviors.

I intend to read through some of the post for the the training of generals and a thread on faction rep. I overlooked.

Be well all, Mark.

[Lifthrasir]

MWY has an important role in our team. Most of the script, the settlement models, AI and some other things are his work. SSHIP wouldn't have reached that level without his contribution. The thing is that he's not especially "communicative" (seriously, he's quite busy in RL as well from my understanding)
JoC is the newest dev. who has joined us. Though, his contribution is not under-evaluated
And I'm the team leader (oldest in the team but not the creator who was Fair Prince) plus a bunch of contributors and former dev.

[Jurand of Cracow]

I've been playing alot recently as Spain and noticed that Heavy Cav is very strong and completely can crush any sword or spear unit.
What happend to spear units, shouldnt they beat cav. In my game my whole spearmen stack gets wrecked by one by 20-30 generals. Even one of strongest spearmen units like crusader seargents gets beaten by Heavy Cav.

I think it's intentional. HC is already nerfed compared to the SS6.4, but it's strenght is legitimate to my mind. It should be like you've described.

1. Mercs in the Spanish peninsula, Lusitanian Javmen are the mercs available to Leonian(?) Kingdom that will have a manageable upkeep rate.

Prices of the mercs will be adjusted. For the moment I think one of the tmodelsk submod options allow for the changes.

2. So, I'm not the only one who finds faction standing to be something of a mess, in the worst case, problematic at best.

I'm not sure there's an ideal case. I haven't been involved in adjusting the standings, but I believe the team made a lot of effort to find the right standings.

I am going to see what I can do soon in my next camp. ... I intend to read through some of the post for the the training of generals

If you have any ideas how to make things better, just post in the right thread. For the moment you may just change on line in the EDCT to get rid of that "coward" problem.



I mean here:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger BattleCoward1_No_Killed_Enemies
 WhenToTest PostBattle


 Condition IsGeneral
       and BattleOdds <= 5
       and GeneralFoughtInCombat
       and GeneralNumKillsInBattle < 2


 Affects Coward 1 Chance 50

you change that 50 to, say, 1. Or you just delete that section.

[shadowtwinz]

Do you know how to make any Infantry exp faster ? Right now with Cavalry it's insanely easy to stack chevrons but with Infantry its a challenge. Cavalry is already a game changer, slowing it's exp is ok.

[marcp]

Damn it all to hell, I write up a response and my woman decides to watch House of Cards which in turn disrupted my connection and scrapped my post. I need a morning star...quick, I do have a 20Lb. demo hammer but what'ya gonna do!

Re; Jurand. Thanks for your insight and detailed post. I will use your script if I notice any undo cowardly behavior in my new campaign. I have Notepad++, I suppose that is a good prog. for editing, I've note done so in a while.

I thought I would bring something up as it relates to shadowtwins cav. query, in a way. I know SS6.4 had Almogavar available at a certain military building level but are they included in SSHIP. I have yet to reach a stage of play where I would have noticed. I can probably look through the game files but am being lazy...not only lazy but interested in SSHIP's take on the renowned Almogavar. My understanding is that they were an elite mercenary company/s that used only light, leather armor for agility in battle, especially confined urban spaces as well as general havoc inducing melee. Their strength was that they developed fearfully effective tactics against cavalry and the heavily weighed down feudal knight. Through their ability to bring a man off his horse they could swing the advantage against their heavily armored foe. I was disappointed this was not reflected in SS. I was hoping to see the unit have a bonus vs. cav. instead of being marginally better than Lusitanian Jav. Through expense and availibilty as elite unit I don't see why this would make them unbalanced.

Obviously the spear and especially thrown spear was a common and well regarded and utilized piece of war kit for the Spanish peoples. I recall reading of the Almogavar and their exploits both valorous and nefarious in historic text and want that to be presented as close as can be in game.

I also overlooked the fact that the reg. javelin men are available in Spanish merc pool but have noted as well the Moors are able to field Christian heavy cav. and foot lancers. I suppose I don't understand why these units are not available to Leon. From my cache of historic knowledge the "Christian" knights/sellswords fought for whomever had the coins prior too and probably during the Reconquista. I wonder though if perhaps the Moors have bought out the pool avail. before I have noticed. It isn't a big deal but the Moors field some fancy armies against me. It isn't SSHIP's fault but I am winning some battles through exploiting AI limitations than I am overwhelming them with strategy.

Having said that the AI does seem to do a better job with it's large stack compositions. All too often in reg.SS I would come up against full cav stacks with some archers thrown in and three generals, or something like that. I am pleased with seeing the AI have only two Gen's in one stack for the most part.

And Re: Lifth, I used to be involved with a Dungeon&Dragons game called NeverwinterNights. I was a dungeon/game master on a persistent world and became the forum admin. too and lead area designer/trouble shooter etc. at various times due to team members dropping in and out, myself included. It is commendable that you and Jurand plus others are still as involved as you are in responding to the players and not only keeping the SSHIP afloat but working to improve upon it. I feel M2TW is one of the strongest classic game communities their is (Like NeverwinterNights was for so long, the game is 15 years old+now).

[marcp]

For the moment you may just change on line in the EDCT to get rid of that "coward" problem.



I mean here:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger BattleCoward1_No_Killed_Enemies
 WhenToTest PostBattle


 Condition IsGeneral
       and BattleOdds <= 5
       and GeneralFoughtInCombat
       and GeneralNumKillsInBattle < 2


 Affects Coward 1 Chance 50

you change that 50 to, say, 1. Or you just delete that section.

I'm sorry, which directory would I find this in exactly. EDTC I have looked about I cannot seem to find it...makes me feel shame...

P.S. I noticed some grammatical errors in some of my post. Here's the rub, I was in honors/advanced class English back in school days. I blame it on state dependent learning but I have really seemed to have lost my touch. Though I will admit to a bit of laziness interacting in the social media era!

PP.S. Like you Jurand I do not focus too heavily on the unit facial detail. I tend to notice certain particulars that strike me but am not overly concerned with appearances. With that stated, with such finely detailed work on the overhauled units, perhaps it is a bit too stereotypical in certain aspects. I do not support stereotypical thought/expression in general but as far as M2TW goes I reserve judgement one the issue.

[Roma_Victrix]

That asks for new submod-all italian factions' king should look like Benito.

Just...don't do the same thing for HRE.

That's your loss! You're missing out on a wonderful opportunity to introduce Hitler into the game ala Kung Fury.

This discussion is somewhat strange to me for I don't pay attention at all to such details . For me, the gameplay, role-playing (traits, events), battle dynamics, diplomacy and CAI, and not-visual historicalities (names, maps, buildings) are much more important. So it's interesting to see that you are so interested in the soldiers' complexions (what is not to criticise, but just to say that different people are looking at different issues and I need to be careful as well).

I'm a very visual-centric player. If things don't look right to me then it's like nails on a chalkboard.

Speaking of which, there's something else in your mod that regular Stainless Steel does not have and it bugs me a little. I find it somewhat distracting when playing sieges or field battles and I look in the distance to see this jarring site, a hill that's way too dark for this time of day. It doesn't look realistic to me and it's somewhat jarring:



Also, your sub-mod suffers the same problem in regular Stainless Steel regarding the hand gunners when they are given siege ladders. Even before you have them drop the ladders, the soldiers holding them have their shields floating in the air. It's actually worse than depicted here in this screenshot, because the shields start to flutter around aimlessly and uncontrollably:




The problem is sometimes fixed when you order them to climb up the walls or to start shooting their guns, but it doesn't always fix the problem. There's no guarantee that the glitch will go away by the end of the battle. I'm assuming it's because an animation was never actually created for hand gunners holding siege ladders, because vanilla M2TW does not feature hand gunners with pavise shields. Their hand gunners are just as well armored, but they don't carry shields of any kind.

I raised this issue in the bugs sub-forum of Stainless Steel, yet no one there seemed interested in addressing my concerns.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Do you know how to make any Infantry exp faster ? Right now with Cavalry it's insanely easy to stack chevrons but with Infantry its a challenge. Cavalry is already a game changer, slowing it's exp is ok.

I don't think it's possible. Afaik, the speed is hardcoded and depends on the kills/loses ratio - obviously for the infantry is lower than for cavalry, and much lower than for the missiles. Actually, I think there are mechanisms that lower the problem. First, the progression of the heavy cavalry upgrades. In the case of Poland every 100 turns you get one: Piast Nobles -> Polish Knights -> Feudal Knights. Each time my units arrived to the highest level there was a change. And the new type had to start from scratch.
For the missiles it's not so easy, but the benefits of many chevrons is smaller - what again alleviates the problem.

... Almogavar available at a certain military building level but are they included in SSHIP. I have yet to reach a stage of play where I would have noticed. I can probably look through the game files but am being lazy...not only lazy but interested in SSHIP's take on the renowned Almogavar.

I haven't dealt with it at all. I'd be interested what @tmodelsk feels about it :-).

Having said that the AI does seem to do a better job with it's large stack compositions. All too often in reg.SS I would come up against full cav stacks with some archers thrown in and three generals, or something like that. I am pleased with seeing the AI have only two Gen's in one stack for the most part.

This is also my observation and this is (among numerous other things) why I find the SSHIP superior to the other mods.


EDCT - export_desc_character_trait.txt in the /data directory (/mods/SSHIP/data/)

[Sar1n]

I stil wonder, are there any plans to improve the pre-gunpowder artillery? Having counterweight trebuchets as only option is kinda letdown IMO, especially since trebuchets can't harm towers due to their inaccuracy. As I wrote before, and provided example of, while counterweight trebuchets were the "big guns" that brought down walls, there would usually be just 1-2 used in siege, and complemented with smaller traction trebuchets and torsion based artillery that served to suppress and bombard defenders, damage crennelations and towers, and generally support the heavy pieces.

I know that creating a totally new animated model for traction trebuchet might be beyond the possibilites of the team or even the engine, but at least using one of two torsion powered pieces in game (mangonel and catapult) to represent these smaller pieces would be great.

BTW, can we get Warwolf as unique English unit?

[Lifthrasir]

We'll see what can be done but might take a while.

[bigdaddy1204]

I'm a very visual-centric player. If things don't look right to me then it's like nails on a chalkboard.

Does this apply to your attitude on women too, Roma? I suspect you'd like Queen Zenobia. She was a total babe!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[marcp]

I haven't dealt with it at all. I'd be interested what @tmodelsk feels about it :-).

This is also my observation and this is (among numerous other things) why I find the SSHIP superior to the other mods.


EDCT - export_desc_character_trait.txt in the /data directory (/mods/SSHIP/data/)

Ya'know, I found the file just before I checked back into TWcenter, but thanks for the help...also I am greatly interested in the Aragon boost tweaks in TM's mod, I hope to get it working on my install/machine soon.