PG/AG Mod Roundup
PG/AG Mod Roundup
Here are some ideas from my forum discussions. You can find elaboration of some points in earlier posts on this site.
Campaigns
Allow any country to be a core for campaigns (Rumanian core in Ostfront campaign).
Add Vichy nation.
I am not familiar with how the code handles core but maybe it is possible to treat it like CSS code where the campaign refers to "core1" and the country for "core1" is defined globally.
Once you have a Polish core in a formerly British AG campaign, the Polish core can deploy in the Allied deployment areas. One issue might be how to have Polish-owned cities but this might be solved by allowing allies to change ownership of allied-owned cities by occupation which often would result in Polish-owned cities and airfields at the end of deployment. "Capturing" cities/airfields from your own allies can use the DOS instant-build rule instead of the WIN delayed-build rule.
Weather
Sandstorms, typhoons, local weather in one part of map
Terrain (or terrain-related units)
Shallow sea, blowable bridges, railways, dirt/grass airfields, drop zones (air supply if supply lines implemented)
New unit classes/types/parameters
Allow more attributes (evasion, long-term suppression, support fire, fire after move, initiative penalty) on a unit-by-unit basis, like bridging already is.
Allow AD-type support fire by AA.
One distinction for AA might be to denote small calibers that cannot attack high-altitude level bombers at full strength or at all. However, you also could use AD range as an effectiveness modifier against high-altitude planes.
Allow Soviet tank-riding desant troops.
Allow seaplanes from battleships, cruisers, or I-class submarines (variant of aircraft carrier that can operate only certain recon planes, which probably would have limited spotting to represent one or two planes instead of a squadron of SBDs).
Assign transports so a Bren Carrier does not tow an 8in gun at 50mph cross-country.
Add a partisan nation.
Add direct-fire multi-hex range that stops at obstructions like woods/city hex.
You could split current columns such as ground spotting from air spotting, AA ammunition from artillery shells, AA ammunition from aircraft bombs (jcrouch had the same idea), HE from AP ammunition, or different types of AP ammunition. Can a Typhoon fire its cannon at tanks after it runs out of rockets? Can a Zero fire its MG at a Wildcat after it runs out of 20mm shells? Can a tank fire its hull MG at infantry after it runs out of cannon shells? However, do not make it too complicated for the user. An easy possibility is to say that a B-17 has "unlimited" AA ammunition and firing defensive AA does not reduce the B17's "ammunition" (in practice, the B-17 is limited by fuel range or dropping a single bombload). Maybe each unit could have an option of unlimited bracketed fire.
Balance
Players with too much prestige already can play at player -2 and AI +2.
A PG plane attacking AD is a special initiative (IN) case that sets both units to IN=5 with no experience modifier and only a die-roll modifier. The problem with removing the special case would would be even less effective AD in stock PG with its mostly AD IN=2. Adding experience with current PG IN would make AD less effective because 3-5-star planes are much more common than 3-5-star AD. You could set AD IN to the greater of efile IN or 5.
Non-submarine units should evade (as some people proposed) only if they retreat (opposite of PacG's fearless, I think). Jeeps should not be able to evade King Tigers while also preventing the King Tigers from entering Bastogne. It would be like if a sub occupied a port victory hex and somehow prevented an infantry battalion from occupying the port while hiding at the bottom of the harbor.
Allow random AI deployment.
Disable overstrength or elite replacements, or vastly increase cost for 3-5-star elites.
Remove the unit limit for core so a player can choose a larger number of cheaper units instead of pushing the player to a smaller number of wunderwaffen.
Add vehicle rarity, such as a column that starts with everything set to a default value for common or unrestricted but which could be changed for actual production in hundreds (Jagdtiger=1, Jagdpanther=4, Panther=60) for use in an availability formula.
Other/Additional
You can think of 10 strength as meaning 100% and small units would have lower combat factors than larger units. However, choices for maximum unit strength and for which units can capture cities are good ideas for this thread.
Overstrength (OS) removes your favorite units from much of the game, since bringing a 9-point unit to 15 strength requires 6 turns out of action or maybe even 8 turns out of action if an aircraft has to return to base first.
It might be OK if normal infantry strength were 15 while normal strength of smaller units were less than 15, simply because on the current 10-as-normal scale a 5- or 3-strength Tiger is delicate rather than powerful. However, I would prefer the 100-strength idea. The 100-strength units would add granularity, would make 50-strength units more practical (contrasted to 5-strength units), and could incorporate Teo's idea about the difference between 700-men and 900-men units.
An idea for variable elite costs could use the actual current number of experience points as a cost multiplier to distinguish preserving 37 experience points from preserving 437 experience points.
Rate of fire affects attack and ammunition factors and the lack of rate of fire makes artillery difficult to model, to compare 1 heavy shell every 2 minutes vs. a few dozen 81mm mortar shells in the same time.
Maybe fighters and recon should not reduce entrenchments. You can increase maximum entrenchment levels and increase the rates at which units entrench (an often overlooked factor).
The ability to add support-fire or fire-after-move to certain units would help.
Another option is an advance-fire parameter for some units (maybe like the "bombing accuracy" column) for partial-strength attack after moving to be used in a formula, possibly also reducing attack strength based on if the unit used 10% of its MP or 100% of its MP.
Contingent captured equipment could be based on a % of those "destroyed." One way to simulate the spare parts and ammunition problem is to make captured units free (based on game performance like 1 PaK36(r) available for every 10 destroyed) but they cannot be resupplied or reinforced, making them disposable, as they were.
Plane/tank/run crews could be like infantry with organic transport, with the organic transports available to those classes being the usual plane/tank/gun units. On the other hand, you could argue that elite reinforcement of a 1-point unit represents the surviving crews getting their equipment replaced (the unit was 1 point because of disabled or shot-down vehicles, not killed crews).
Rail can be like air transport, if you think of a rail line like a string of airfields,* and with only enough rolling stock to transport a certain number at a time. I was thinking of infantry embarking anywhere on the line although maybe the rail line should be like a river with ports to embark Tigers only at train stations.
Here are some ideas from my forum discussions. You can find elaboration of some points in earlier posts on this site.
Campaigns
Allow any country to be a core for campaigns (Rumanian core in Ostfront campaign).
Add Vichy nation.
I am not familiar with how the code handles core but maybe it is possible to treat it like CSS code where the campaign refers to "core1" and the country for "core1" is defined globally.
Once you have a Polish core in a formerly British AG campaign, the Polish core can deploy in the Allied deployment areas. One issue might be how to have Polish-owned cities but this might be solved by allowing allies to change ownership of allied-owned cities by occupation which often would result in Polish-owned cities and airfields at the end of deployment. "Capturing" cities/airfields from your own allies can use the DOS instant-build rule instead of the WIN delayed-build rule.
Weather
Sandstorms, typhoons, local weather in one part of map
Terrain (or terrain-related units)
Shallow sea, blowable bridges, railways, dirt/grass airfields, drop zones (air supply if supply lines implemented)
New unit classes/types/parameters
Allow more attributes (evasion, long-term suppression, support fire, fire after move, initiative penalty) on a unit-by-unit basis, like bridging already is.
Allow AD-type support fire by AA.
One distinction for AA might be to denote small calibers that cannot attack high-altitude level bombers at full strength or at all. However, you also could use AD range as an effectiveness modifier against high-altitude planes.
Allow Soviet tank-riding desant troops.
Allow seaplanes from battleships, cruisers, or I-class submarines (variant of aircraft carrier that can operate only certain recon planes, which probably would have limited spotting to represent one or two planes instead of a squadron of SBDs).
Assign transports so a Bren Carrier does not tow an 8in gun at 50mph cross-country.
Add a partisan nation.
Add direct-fire multi-hex range that stops at obstructions like woods/city hex.
You could split current columns such as ground spotting from air spotting, AA ammunition from artillery shells, AA ammunition from aircraft bombs (jcrouch had the same idea), HE from AP ammunition, or different types of AP ammunition. Can a Typhoon fire its cannon at tanks after it runs out of rockets? Can a Zero fire its MG at a Wildcat after it runs out of 20mm shells? Can a tank fire its hull MG at infantry after it runs out of cannon shells? However, do not make it too complicated for the user. An easy possibility is to say that a B-17 has "unlimited" AA ammunition and firing defensive AA does not reduce the B17's "ammunition" (in practice, the B-17 is limited by fuel range or dropping a single bombload). Maybe each unit could have an option of unlimited bracketed fire.
Balance
Players with too much prestige already can play at player -2 and AI +2.
A PG plane attacking AD is a special initiative (IN) case that sets both units to IN=5 with no experience modifier and only a die-roll modifier. The problem with removing the special case would would be even less effective AD in stock PG with its mostly AD IN=2. Adding experience with current PG IN would make AD less effective because 3-5-star planes are much more common than 3-5-star AD. You could set AD IN to the greater of efile IN or 5.
Non-submarine units should evade (as some people proposed) only if they retreat (opposite of PacG's fearless, I think). Jeeps should not be able to evade King Tigers while also preventing the King Tigers from entering Bastogne. It would be like if a sub occupied a port victory hex and somehow prevented an infantry battalion from occupying the port while hiding at the bottom of the harbor.
Allow random AI deployment.
Disable overstrength or elite replacements, or vastly increase cost for 3-5-star elites.
Remove the unit limit for core so a player can choose a larger number of cheaper units instead of pushing the player to a smaller number of wunderwaffen.
Add vehicle rarity, such as a column that starts with everything set to a default value for common or unrestricted but which could be changed for actual production in hundreds (Jagdtiger=1, Jagdpanther=4, Panther=60) for use in an availability formula.
Other/Additional
You can think of 10 strength as meaning 100% and small units would have lower combat factors than larger units. However, choices for maximum unit strength and for which units can capture cities are good ideas for this thread.
Overstrength (OS) removes your favorite units from much of the game, since bringing a 9-point unit to 15 strength requires 6 turns out of action or maybe even 8 turns out of action if an aircraft has to return to base first.
It might be OK if normal infantry strength were 15 while normal strength of smaller units were less than 15, simply because on the current 10-as-normal scale a 5- or 3-strength Tiger is delicate rather than powerful. However, I would prefer the 100-strength idea. The 100-strength units would add granularity, would make 50-strength units more practical (contrasted to 5-strength units), and could incorporate Teo's idea about the difference between 700-men and 900-men units.
An idea for variable elite costs could use the actual current number of experience points as a cost multiplier to distinguish preserving 37 experience points from preserving 437 experience points.
Rate of fire affects attack and ammunition factors and the lack of rate of fire makes artillery difficult to model, to compare 1 heavy shell every 2 minutes vs. a few dozen 81mm mortar shells in the same time.
Maybe fighters and recon should not reduce entrenchments. You can increase maximum entrenchment levels and increase the rates at which units entrench (an often overlooked factor).
The ability to add support-fire or fire-after-move to certain units would help.
Another option is an advance-fire parameter for some units (maybe like the "bombing accuracy" column) for partial-strength attack after moving to be used in a formula, possibly also reducing attack strength based on if the unit used 10% of its MP or 100% of its MP.
Contingent captured equipment could be based on a % of those "destroyed." One way to simulate the spare parts and ammunition problem is to make captured units free (based on game performance like 1 PaK36(r) available for every 10 destroyed) but they cannot be resupplied or reinforced, making them disposable, as they were.
Plane/tank/run crews could be like infantry with organic transport, with the organic transports available to those classes being the usual plane/tank/gun units. On the other hand, you could argue that elite reinforcement of a 1-point unit represents the surviving crews getting their equipment replaced (the unit was 1 point because of disabled or shot-down vehicles, not killed crews).
Rail can be like air transport, if you think of a rail line like a string of airfields,* and with only enough rolling stock to transport a certain number at a time. I was thinking of infantry embarking anywhere on the line although maybe the rail line should be like a river with ports to embark Tigers only at train stations.
posted by AGW at 12:14 AM
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