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Thread: Suggestions - Single Player

  1. #1

    Default Suggestions - Single Player

    Mandatory thread dedicated to all possible suggestions regarding the Single Player aspect of the mod. Post here your wildest ideas, keeping in mind that, while the scope of the mod is ambitious, certain limits apply not only to the engine itself, but also to how big the impact of your ideas may have on the overall experience. Example: "Adding more units" is not a valid suggestion. You must specify name, regiment (if present), setting, why you want it, and where. "Add xxx minister who stood in power for 1 year at the start of the campaign" is also an unacceptable suggestion. Any named character must have been at least capable of fighting and \ or diplomatic action and \ or espionage during the era at the very least until 1815.
    My Mods and Projects

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    - Battleterrain Mod, larger, better campaign battle maps (NTW)
    - Developer for 1800 (ETW) battle mechanics, unit stats
    - Developer for Victoria Total War (ETW) unit modeller \ texturer
    - Developer of Rise of the Eagles (MTW2 - HOSTED), creator \ db \ models \ textures
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  2. #2
    KmanBEAST's Avatar Civis
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    Default Re: Suggestions - Single Player

    What are you going to do for the settlement walls? Obviously not many settlements in Europe were sieged in the 19th century with the walls that are in Medieval II: Total War's vanilla game. So are you just going to keep the settlement walls (like the huge walls for a huge city)? What about castles? I personally think you should make all settlements cities if you don't have anything ambitious, but if you are going to make certain settlements "fortresses," I think you should make it so that you can't convert it back to a city, and that you can't convert a city to a castle/fortress. So only keep castles as a settlement type if you are going to do something unique with their building and/or recruitment, otherwise just make all settlements classified as "cities."

    For recruitment, please don't do what so many other mods have done. Do not make most of a faction's units just recruitable from the walls. Actually make the line infantry recruitable only through barracks, and with each upgrade you receive more professional units (Ex for France: Town Watch gives just National Guard/Militia and Armed Citizens since it's the first level of barracks). And don't have the weaker units be completely replaced by the more professional units. Make it so that even the mid-tier units are hard to replenish in the pool and they cost a decent amount. That way, unless you want to spend a good amount of time and money into a really good army, most of your armies consist of a lot of militia, a modest amount of mid-tier professionals, and a small elite core of units (Old Guard, Young Guard, etc.). Also add the "stables" level of buildings to cities (that is, if you're going to make all settlements cities). If you are going to keep castles, then keep the cavalry recruitable from there. For artillery just add the "gunsmith" level of buildings from vanilla that allow you to build cannons. Get rid of the "Siege Workshop" level of buildings obviously since we don't need wooden artillery.

    I would say make other factions hold alliances and do good diplomacy, but that's looking to far ahead to the future, and those are pretty broad statements.

    As for battles, I would say artillery is perfect right now. It's deadly on the battlefield, as it was in real history. Cavalry is also superb, and I like how not all the cavalry units basically have guns. I think only a select few should. I have already mentioned how I felt about the line infantry and how slowly they manage to kill anything with their shots. My concerns still remain with this, for in my opinion it kind of ruins the fun of the battle for me not seeing them kill at least 5 guys shooting from point blank range. I deeply respect your attempts at historical accuracy and challenge, for in my opinion you put a lot of hard work into making everything work greatly. I love the unit models, the animations, and how the volleys impact morale (even though they don't kill anyone most of the time). It's just that their inaccuracy makes them really ineffective at all when dealing with cavalry that is charging towards them, and it prolongs battles. It makes cavalry really overpowered because of this too, since they can't shoot and rout any cavalry units that are coming to charge them.

    However, I am willing to push aside my opinion on this if it means YOU are satisfied with what you have done. After all, it is your mod. It's good to release what others may request, but you have a right to make these however you like. These are simply suggestions. I have been following your mod pretty closely ever since it's been recommended to me by someone else on the forums, and I have fallen in love with it either way. Keep up the great work, and I hope my ideas were specific enough!

  3. #3

    Default Re: Suggestions - Single Player

    I will try to answer based on my current plans, taking into account that at the moment I'm busy with another well-known mod and I need to get that one out the door first, before I can concentrate on RotE full time.

    What are you going to do for the settlement walls - Every settlement will need to be reworked, meaning, I'll have to make them from scratch. I will get rid of all walls, any battle with walls is only going to take place insode fortresses which are outside the cities themselves. It is true that there are isolated cases of medieval towns still defended with the old fortifications however I think it is still more interesting to have open battles or city occupied by an army - with all the destruction and destabilization it involves - since MTW2 allows us to recreate detailed 18th century cities I am excited by the challenge.

    Recruitment - Will be done with a building structure similar to NTW, I plan on remaking the building trees.

    Battle mechanics - This is undoubtedly the hardest part to get right. I have done extensive research on how MTW2 handles ballistics and I've already set up a whole different version than the one available to the public. I will most likely release anotther custom battles only version to specifically test this new battle plan and see how people react before I finish the campaign, which will be realistically done by January 2018 at this point.
    Last edited by Sirlion; November 24, 2017 at 11:10 AM.
    My Mods and Projects

    - Realism Core v5 for La Monteé de L'Empire 4.2 (NTW)
    - Battle Chaos, give life to your fights! (NTW)
    - Battleterrain Mod, larger, better campaign battle maps (NTW)
    - Developer for 1800 (ETW) battle mechanics, unit stats
    - Developer for Victoria Total War (ETW) unit modeller \ texturer
    - Developer of Rise of the Eagles (MTW2 - HOSTED), creator \ db \ models \ textures
    - Risorgimento 1859 The Franco-Austrian War (NTW), creator \ developer

  4. #4
    KmanBEAST's Avatar Civis
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    Default Re: Suggestions - Single Player

    Quote Originally Posted by Sirlion View Post
    I will try to answer based on my current plans, taking into account that at the moment I'm busy with another well-known mod and I need to get that one out the door first, before I can concentrate on RotE full time.

    What are you going to do for the settlement walls - Every settlement will need to be reworked, meaning, I'll have to make them from scratch. I will get rid of all walls, any battle with walls is only going to take place insode fortresses which are outside the cities themselves. It is true that there are isolated cases of medieval towns still defended with the old fortifications however I think it is still more interesting to have open battles or city occupied by an army - with all the destruction and destabilization it involves - since MTW2 allows us to recreate detailed 18th century cities I am excited by the challenge.

    Recruitment - Will be done with a building structure similar to NTW, I plan on remaking the building trees.

    Battle mechanics - This is undoubtedly the hardest part to get right. I have done extensive research on how MTW2 handles ballistics and I've already set up a whole different version than the one available to the public. I will most likely release anotther custom battles only version to specifically test this new battle plan and see how people react before I finish the campaign, which will be realistically done by January 2018 at this point.

    Oh, wow. I knew it was possible to rework settlements (Third Age Mod), but I honestly didn't expect a reworking of all the cities. That is really great! I wish you luck on that, because I think that'll be a really cool feature to have. Also good luck on your mod for Empire. I own Empire, and I have it sitting in my Steam library. If my current PC was better I could run it a bit smoother, and then I would be ready to download that really cool mod when it is finished as well. Either way, I wish you luck on both projects!

  5. #5
    Razor's Avatar Licenced to insult
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    Default Re: Suggestions - Single Player

    I'm curious about how you're going to keep all line infantry soldiers within a unit in formation. Unlike in RTW units in M2TW tend to lose formation easily. Also units don't seem to fire in salvos and the special fire by ranks (?) ability is a bit buggy and tedious and wouldn't fit the period.

    It would be nice if you could use the phalanx ability for that to keep the unit in formation and to (hopefully) make them force to fire more in salvos. I just don't know if that's possible and if it is, it would probably require new or modded animations to make it work with the phalanx ability (replacing the corresponding spear animations with musket animation variants for it to work with the ability).

  6. #6

    Default Re: Suggestions - Single Player

    Quote Originally Posted by Razor View Post
    I'm curious about how you're going to keep all line infantry soldiers within a unit in formation. Unlike in RTW units in M2TW tend to lose formation easily. Also units don't seem to fire in salvos and the special fire by ranks (?) ability is a bit buggy and tedious and wouldn't fit the period.

    It would be nice if you could use the phalanx ability for that to keep the unit in formation and to (hopefully) make them force to fire more in salvos. I just don't know if that's possible and if it is, it would probably require new or modded animations to make it work with the phalanx ability (replacing the corresponding spear animations with musket animation variants for it to work with the ability).
    For now I'm satisfied with the results I got. The slower movement and higher mass is doing the work quite nicely, we must consider also that the maps are quite small, but these represent very large chunks of terrain, therefore it is realistic to assume that if some men move slower or slightly off axis compared to the first ranks, it's because they have encountered some difficult terrain. This happened in reality as well.

    Moreover, the firing mechanism I'm using at the moment is similar to the Civil War mod: men dont fire solid volleys, and they shouldnt. Orders were difficult to hear, the confusion of battle and several factors such as panic, pressure from cavalry charges, unwillingness to kill etc, all contributed to the soldiers not coordinating as instructed "in the manual". Not to mention, it was almost impossible to maintain order and cohesion after a few volleys as the smoke was intense and nobody could see a thing (and soldiers wont be trained to aim at a specific target for another 50 years). So in essence, the "fire by rank" mechanic isnt working properly and it shouldnt. I'm happy with the final result, I would only like to change the reloading animation from crouching to standing, but unfortunately I cannot seem to make the relevant programs work so at the moment I'm unable to make new animations.
    Last edited by Sirlion; December 01, 2017 at 08:06 AM.
    My Mods and Projects

    - Realism Core v5 for La Monteé de L'Empire 4.2 (NTW)
    - Battle Chaos, give life to your fights! (NTW)
    - Battleterrain Mod, larger, better campaign battle maps (NTW)
    - Developer for 1800 (ETW) battle mechanics, unit stats
    - Developer for Victoria Total War (ETW) unit modeller \ texturer
    - Developer of Rise of the Eagles (MTW2 - HOSTED), creator \ db \ models \ textures
    - Risorgimento 1859 The Franco-Austrian War (NTW), creator \ developer

  7. #7

    Default Re: Suggestions - Single Player

    Have you thought about moving the starting date back a bit, perhaps to the start of Napoleons carreer as a general? I always hated that NTW starts with the Empire basically at it's high point, while ignoring stuff like the Egyptian expedition and his rise to power which would be very interesting imo.

  8. #8

    Default Re: Suggestions - Single Player

    NTW has all of that alraedy through the story mode campaigns. I could go back that far yes, but then I'd have to do triple the work because the time of Revolutionary France was characterized by an unstable, constantly shifting flux of uniforms, power struggle and political intrigue that would require many events and variables, far more so than a stable French Empire. If I wasnt alone in this endeavour maybe I would consider it but at this time I cant. I'm already working on too many projects.
    My Mods and Projects

    - Realism Core v5 for La Monteé de L'Empire 4.2 (NTW)
    - Battle Chaos, give life to your fights! (NTW)
    - Battleterrain Mod, larger, better campaign battle maps (NTW)
    - Developer for 1800 (ETW) battle mechanics, unit stats
    - Developer for Victoria Total War (ETW) unit modeller \ texturer
    - Developer of Rise of the Eagles (MTW2 - HOSTED), creator \ db \ models \ textures
    - Risorgimento 1859 The Franco-Austrian War (NTW), creator \ developer

  9. #9
    KmanBEAST's Avatar Civis
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    Default Re: Suggestions - Single Player

    I have found out a way for you to fix the accuracy of the projectiles. You must go to the descr_projectile.txt and edit the accuracy of whatever projectile you are using. In your mod, all the gunpowder units have the "hand_gun_bullet" type of missile attack (the others for gunners are musket_bullet or arquebus_bullet) according to what I saw in the export_descr_unit.txt file. So I just went to descr_projectile.txt, looked up "hand_gun" and then changed the accuracy vs units line. The way it works is that the higher the number (yours is at 0.35), the less accurate the unit is with that certain projectile. I've been experimenting with the different accuracy numbers and I've found it satisfactory to my needs (I of course made backup files of what I edited in your mod). You can change this and experiment with it however you like, I just wanted you to know (in case you didn't) that it is very easily possible to change the accuracy for all units at once since they all use the same "hand_gun_bullet" projectile.

  10. #10

    Default Re: Suggestions - Single Player

    Just changing the accuracy vs units is not enough. One must consider trajectory, velocity of the bullet, altitude, range... muskets dont work in a straight line, at this stage they all performed with parabole - to aim at a specific target the men had to aim above their heads in order to have a chance of hitting it. The issue is more complex than that.
    My Mods and Projects

    - Realism Core v5 for La Monteé de L'Empire 4.2 (NTW)
    - Battle Chaos, give life to your fights! (NTW)
    - Battleterrain Mod, larger, better campaign battle maps (NTW)
    - Developer for 1800 (ETW) battle mechanics, unit stats
    - Developer for Victoria Total War (ETW) unit modeller \ texturer
    - Developer of Rise of the Eagles (MTW2 - HOSTED), creator \ db \ models \ textures
    - Risorgimento 1859 The Franco-Austrian War (NTW), creator \ developer

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