Ruges GC Mod (5.08(11-2-13))

[Krafty]

On the "Game Settings" (ctrl-shift-S) window there is an option labled "Units Eliminated When Region Falls". But I don't know if this is available for the multiplayer game.

Yeah I found that setting, was just musing over if it should be default or not. And so other people can get the most entertainment out of it.

I agree completely. If you are willing to risk your aircraft over such heavy AA, then certainly once it drops a bomb, it should impact. Keep in mind that Fighter/Bombers are subject to "Close-Air" AA fire, but Strategic Bombers are not.

Yeah I figured that out the hard way. I was like, why are my F111s being hit by 20mm and 40mm AA guns. Well its cause I loaded them with GP bombs and they have to drop down to drop them.

If maybe Ruges could up the HPs of GP unguided bombs, that would be great. I dont mind a few being shot down by VERY heavy AA fire, but most of them should get through. Possibly lower the range on them too so the aircraft have to get within AA range to drop them. A GP bomb is hard to drop on a target, you have to get to where even heavy small arms fire could be a danger. It should be a dangerous but effective prospect.

As I have stated, I think that the mod offers too many missiles - after playing the vanilla game, I never expected to hear myself saying that.

Yeah I agree, they should either cost more, so building that many instantly drains your treasury. Alot of missiles are quite expensive. A GP bomb on the other hand is fairly cheap. So the build capacity is nice. You just shouldnt be able to build 10,000 tomahawk missiles and not feel the bump in your economy. It makes the AI more dangerous though and thats nice. There is a better balance to be found imho.

[Ruges]

I suspect the max stealth value for any unit is 256 if memory serves me correctly.

I acualy ran a test on stealth once. The results are here on the forums. But the Value is only 1-256. and entering a number higher then this would start it all over. If you enter 257 for the stealth value it would acualy show up ingame as stealth 1. Also stealth is supposed to only be 1-255 with 256 being a special case of not being able to see the unit at all. (case of spies). However remember any unit that is moving will have its stealth halfed. And any unit that is firing will also have its stealth halfed. So a plane that is stealth 100, when it is flying is acualy only stealth 50. If it shoots its weapons, then it is only stealth 25. So even in the top end, a plane that had 255 stealth, would acualy only have a real value of 64 in combat. Same rules apply to missles.

I am going to bumb up missle defense values even more. Currently I have them set to 400 percent of what they where. Looks like I need to bump that up to 800 or a 1,000 percent. I am also considering lowering missle production. But right now I have a strong argument not to. I also lowered ground forces AA by a bit more too (except acual AA units).

in the current version I am testing. I have also adjusted Uranium production. (IE there will be more Uranium avail around the world). This should meet the demand there is for it so energy production is not disrupted which has caused disruption in other resource production, which should help out the worlds economy.

Also I not have ferries working good, so they dont get destroyed as easily (although they still can). In the process I also made it so AI units dont get stuck out of supply when in international waters on a ferry.

I like the long build times. It seemed silly to me that I could hop into a country and make them complety self sufficiet with exports of profitable resources in a mater of months. So the long build times to me mean you have to plan ahead. (although I think I need to adjust the cost of production on these buildings now, as the cost is more then it should be with the longer build times). If you dont plan ahead you could find yourself in a shortage having to buy from the world market. This puts the player vrs the AI on a more level playing field. I also write off the longer building times as a way of representing the amount of time it takes to plan for the buildings, geting permits, making blueprints, collecting the resources on site, building it, and then manning it.

And then all the more changes I have made to the AI, like this one even more, exspecialy focused on air and navy units this time around.

Also for this version Catatonic was nice enough to go threw and rewrite allot of the language for the techs, so they should feel more consistant and better named with good discriptions.

what else, hmm I foget all of them, some more ferries, couple new towns and military bases sea piers that where missing but needed. complexes got a strength boost, relations adjustments, and then have been making it compatable for the next patches release.

[sirveri]

I suspect the max stealth value for any unit is 256 if memory serves me correctly.

I acualy ran a test on stealth once. The results are here on the forums. But the Value is only 1-256. and entering a number higher then this would start it all over.

Just curious, but why not just make the dumb bombs have 256 stealth? They're basically part of the plane.

This is actually one of the design points for the mod I was thinking about doing back when the game first launched. I don't remember what I thought would be better, but maybe it would be better to simply remove some of the missles and abstract them into the attack values of the aircraft. Air to Air missles are already abstracted into the aircraft, why not do the same with traditional air to ground armaments?

Actually, I think I wanted to see about making air to air missles, then I would assign aircraft attack values for the onboard gun systems only. But, not sure if that's possible. I'm guessing no or you probably would have some missles that hit air units.

[Ruges]

Just curious, but why not just make the dumb bombs have 256 stealth? They're basically part of the plane.

you know thats probly not a bad idea, Game mechanic wise having them set to 256 will cause them to get shot down less. But its not like they will be invisable, as when these bombs get droped it is supposed tobe secounds before they impact, giving practicaly no time to react except for some sort of metal storm tech.

but maybe it would be better to simply remove some of the missles and abstract them into the attack values of the aircraft.

Na, I dont like the attack value of units being considered for missles. Infact I would acualy like to move away from that. And acualy remove those stats, so if it is a missle unit, its going to need missles.

Actually, I think I wanted to see about making air to air missles, then I would assign aircraft attack values for the onboard gun systems only. But, not sure if that's possible. I'm guessing no or you probably would have some missles that hit air units

yea its acualy possible to make anti air missles. The only issue is the AI, going tobe able to understand them. And then to what aspect should they be put in. and if you put them in should all stat based attack be removed, and more missle cap added in?

Also I am probly going tobe removing the link to the current download in the next couple days as I will be switching to alpha testing of my next version.

[Krafty]

Yeah I dont have a problem with 10 foot long, rocket powered missiles being shot down by massive amounts of AA.

But a general purpose dead drop bomb, crap we've had those since world war 1. In ww2, they got up to 2,000+ lbs. A strategic bomber group dropping them, sure, flak and AA will hit some, because theyre literally thousands being dropped in an area the size of a factory, but a fighter bomber coming in at 700+mph, dropping an iron PETN bomb at a few thousand feet, thats basically impossible for even a computer assisted gun to hit. Unless youre using Metal Storm, or a Laser. Even the mini-guns on ships used for missile defense would have a very very hard time tracking and destroying a GP bomb.

Certainly 40mm, stingers, and medium range SAMs should not be able to take down individual, or groups, of GP bombs. I dont even know how that would work? Program the warhead to detonate, pray you lined up the rocket with the plane coming in on a bombing run, hope it explodes when the plane drops its ordanance?

I was under the impression the reason we still used GP bombs was because you were pretty much 100% certain if that planes got to target, that the munitions got to target. No funky TV cameras, or wires, lasers, radars, computers, just good old fashioned lining up the piper and pulling the release.

Now an group of Exocets. Massed amount of 40mm could take down something thats the size of a small plane, or drone, with a contrail behind it. Not much more complicated than firing on a low flying jet. You just need to put up more lead.

[Krafty]

Also, me and my friend started a new game (he invaded and destroyed teh australia), im Venezuala he's Algeria.

Couple issues. First Brazil declares war on Venezuala fairly quickly, thats fine, it should. However, theres only 1 road connecting the two of us, and if you know as Venezuala that theyre coming its not hard to take their only supply depot south of you, destroy the two bridges and laugh maniacly as the AI sends 1 arty at a time up to be destroyed by aircraft.

Then since Brazil is the aggressor, I have an influx of support from nations the world round. Perhaps raise Brazils Cassus Belli on Venezuala? Venezuala isnt exactly liked, surely people would wag their finger at Brazil, but I dont see the UN offering me better subsidy, military advisors, and equipment, to fight off Brazil, considering Venezualas belligerent nature. Also Argentina declares war on Brazil fairly quickly over the whole incident, and the two nations pretty much eliminate each other as a threat fairly quickly, leaving south america wide open for any two bit despot.

Perhaps either improve relations between Argentina and Brazil so Brazil doesnt get gangbanged, or cool relations between venezuala and Brazil so Brazil has a chance to use its economic might to build a decent force.

Or perhaps just not let Brazil get into a fight at all. Since all it does is make it easier on a human player who is not Brazil, to conquer the south american superpower.

As it happened brazil sent 10-15 units my way, piecemeal because of the destroyed bridge, obviously the group broke up because of lack of supply on the long journey through the jungle to the front, so dispatching them was no problem. Then with them sending an equally sized army to argentina, argentina and brazil are left with no offensive forces.

Makes it just a matter of mopping up as venezuala.

Even though I start with no land fabrication, Brazil being the aggressor has had the AI offer me about 30-40 infantry units. Enough with what I start and being slow and careful, to take over the entire continent.

It shouldnt be that easy.

[catatonic]

Just curious, but why not just make the dumb bombs have 256 stealth? They're basically part of the plane.

you know thats probly not a bad idea, Game mechanic wise having them set to 256 will cause them to get shot down less. But its not like they will be invisable, as when these bombs get droped it is supposed tobe secounds before they impact, giving practicaly no time to react except for some sort of metal storm tech.

Even "invisible" spys can be spotted when the FOW is turned off, as it nearly always needs to be in a game of any length. Why not just make them very tough bombs with > 450 defensive values? This is how your high-tech missiles are.

but maybe it would be better to simply remove some of the missles and abstract them into the attack values of the aircraft.

Na, I dont like the attack value of units being considered for missles. Infact I would acualy like to move away from that. And acualy remove those stats, so if it is a missle unit, its going to need missles.

Please don't do this - remove the attack stats of units that are also missile platforms. Why be so missile-centric? Some regions don't even have missile fabs. The AI doesn't know how to use missiles effectively. Check out their missile platforms - they are all set for both Land and Naval Roles, which means that when you face an enemy launcher on land it is half loaded with Naval missiles. And they can't use nukes at all.

Strat Bombers should be able to bomb stand-alone, fighter/bombers should be able to jump on tanks and destroy them and Intecepters should be able to attack and destroy other aircraft - without supplementry missles. Would you remove the torpedos from subs too?

How about making existing intrinsic attack capabilities more effective so that you need fewer missiles?

Please make the high-tech Destroyers and Cruisers direct-fire instead of indirect. A naval gun-shell IS a saturation explosion weapon, however the explosion radius is only a few hundred feet wide. A 16 km hex is 201 square kilometers in area. I should be able to send my DDG-1000 destroyers out to destroy the AA sites on an enemy air field without pounding the crap out of the runway and tower of the air field itself.

If the game used missiles less wastefully and the AA units were more realisticly modeled then you would not need so many missiles in the first place. It takes a steady stream of missile two days to destroy just one MANPADS AA unit because there are 70 launcher teams in a FIM-92 Stinger unit. This is BS - nobody fields 70 MANPADs in one place. A stack of launchers or ships will expend hundreds of missiles on a random Garrison unit or on a single patrol boat. And once the target is destroyed, they send a follow-up volley that hits nothing, even if there are additional targets in the hex.

If you don't want to change the MANPADs batallion size or the indirect-fire ships, then please at least supply the DEFAULT.UNITS file, etc. so that we can mod it ourselves.

Actually, I think I wanted to see about making air to air missles, then I would assign aircraft attack values for the onboard gun systems only. But, not sure if that's possible. I'm guessing no or you probably would have some missles that hit air units

yea its acualy possible to make anti air missles. The only issue is the AI, going tobe able to understand them. And then to what aspect should they be put in. and if you put them in should all stat based attack be removed, and more missle cap added in?

Do you really want to go down the route of making short-range missiles like Sidewinder, Maverick, Hellfire and TOW? BG passed on modeling these and gravity bombs as well because they are not stand-off weapons, so the missile platform (tank, helo or AC) must go into the target hex at close-air level to release the weapon. This is why SR2020 nuke bombs are so hard to deliver.

Also, due to the ZoC (Zone of Control) effect, even a unit with an official 4 km range can still hit all of the surrounding hexes (its ZoC), giving it an actual range of at least 32 km.

Also I am probly going tobe removing the link to the current download in the next couple days as I will be switching to alpha testing of my next version.

Yipee!

[Ruges]

The problem with South America is they dont have the units ratio wise of units owned to land mass owned. When you compare them to say Isreal. what would it be like? Isreal having a good 10 units per hex owned and brazil would have what .2 units per hex? Brazil also has many cities, So they leave some units back in defense of those cities. That does not leave much in the way for an offensive. And then you put in that the country does not produce its own arms, instead importing from other nations. Somthing that the game does not represent very well. So even in the long run they dont start pumping out units to win the war. Which leads to a standpoint.

Now a player can negate this situation. In the mod becouse of the easy diplo, the player gets better relations with the world. This causes them to offer more units, which in the case of South America can be a real boon. Also the player has the ability to build more factories (although the mod does negate this a bit becouse of the build times).

No, the only solution for South America is in how it controls its units. It has very few of them and cannot risk sending them one at a time to there doom. However such a thing cannot be moded in as that is on the hardcode side. So my only options are to leave it be, add in ground factories, add in more units, change relations so war does not happen. So far I have been leaning towards the leave it be side.

Please make the high-tech Destroyers and Cruisers direct-fire instead of indirect. A naval gun-shell IS a saturation explosion weapon, however the explosion radius is only a few hundred feet wide. A 16 km hex is 201 square kilometers in area. I should be able to send my DDG-1000 destroyers out to destroy the AA sites on an enemy air field without pounding the crap out of the runway and tower of the air field itself.

Hmm thought I did this. hmm looking at the list:
DD-441 McKenzie
DD-112 Connery
DD-87 Arkhangel
DD-4 Durban
DD-187 Atlantic Sea
DD-310 Western Sea
DD-734 Asiatic Sea
DD-228 Indian Sea
DD-468 Mastiff
DD-116 Morotai
DD-97 Mandable
DD-6 Manchurian
those are the units I did it for.
CR-NSEB1
CR Aegis-137
CR-Gavriil
CR-Raeef
CR NSEB-2
CR Aegis-148
CR-Iosif
CR-Qaadir
CR NSEB-3
CR Aegis-159
CR-Nikita
CR-Sami
CR NSEB-4
CR Aegis-170
CR-Sacha
CR-Sofian
CR NSEB-5
CR Aegis-182
CR-Vikenti
CR-Ziyad
And those are the units I added in that are also direct fire. (although I think these cruisers where maining missle platforms.) If you find any other ones that you feel should be direct fire instead of indirect lemme know.

Why be so missile-centric? Some regions don't even have missile fabs

Becouse missle's/bombs are what modern combat is all about. And countries that cannot produce these exspensive techs are at loss for not being able todo so. Its one of the reasons the US military is so advanced over other countries. One thing thow, I have not compared the game price to real world prices as I asumed BG had already done so. They are in line thow right? do they need a bump in price?

[catatonic]

Please make the high-tech Destroyers and Cruisers direct-fire instead of indirect...

Hmm thought I did this. hmm looking at the list:
DD-441 McKenzie
DD-112 Connery
DD-87 Arkhangel
DD-4 Durban
DD-187 Atlantic Sea
DD-310 Western Sea
DD-734 Asiatic Sea
DD-228 Indian Sea
DD-468 Mastiff
DD-116 Morotai
DD-97 Mandable
DD-6 Manchurian...

Thank you. I stand corrected, except about the Zumwalt destroyer. After reading your reply I immediately restarted my last game and checked out my DD-310 destroyers and you ar correct, they are direct fire. However when I tried to kill something with them I discovered that old artillery problem - your only selection on the orders pull-down is "Attack Unit", which causes the DD-310 to charge at its target and close with it. There is no stand-off capability. This is OK for shore bombardment IF the shoreline is undefended, because the ship will run right into the shore, attempting to close with its distant land target. Otherwise, well you know what happens when Garrison meets warship.

I solved this by creating a new order in the ORDERS.CSV file, called "BOMBARD UNIT". I copied the "ATTACK UNIT" command, gave it a unique number, and deleted the "1" under columns 4, 7 and 70 - "Ground Units", "Submarines" and "Pursue/Follow Unit".

Why be so missile-centric? Some regions don't even have missile fabs

Becouse missle's/bombs are what modern combat is all about. And countries that cannot produce these exspensive techs are at loss for not being able todo so. Its one of the reasons the US military is so advanced over other countries.

IMHO this is over-stated. Most of the missiles used in modern warfare are not the stand-off missiles like Tomahawk and Harpoon - they are short range missiles not modeled in the game like TOW, Hellfire and Maverick. Modern naval warfare is littorial/coastal warfare that relies upon naval guns and machine guns for coastal fire-supression. The tactical portion of Desert Storm was executed with APCs, Tanks, helos and MLRS units. The B-52 has been retained, not to fire missiles, but to drop iron bombs.

And nukes aren't used at all.

But the important point is do you want to reduce the game down to just wasting the enemy with tons of missiles, without due regard to infantry, close-air and naval support? I seem to remember a player that would defeat the world with B-52s and missiles, and then brag that he had not suffered any casualties. That is not what I want from this game.

As for "the US military is so advanced over other countries.", don't try to tell this to the Europeans. The U.S. military is just larger, not more advanced.

One thing thow, I have not compared the game price to real world prices as I asumed BG had already done so. They are in line thow right? do they need a bump in price?

Don't know. I do know that I had over a million missles last game. I was told that missiles had a maintenance cost associated with them, so you would think that I would notice the expense but I didn't.

[catatonic]

Then since Brazil is the aggressor, I have an influx of support from nations the world round. Perhaps raise Brazils Cassus Belli on Venezuala?

I don't think that you actually get any diplomatic or approval for another region DOWing you without Casus Belli. Only the aggressor is penalized.

You do get diplomatic and approval points for negociating a peace treaty however.

Perhaps either improve relations between Argentina and Brazil so Brazil doesnt get gangbanged, or cool relations between venezuala and Brazil so Brazil has a chance to use its economic might to build a decent force.

Or perhaps just not let Brazil get into a fight at all. Since all it does is make it easier on a human player who is not Brazil, to conquer the south american superpower.

I read your earlier description of your previous multi-player game. It read like my Ruges mod game in almost every detail - Israel taking over the Mid-East, Germany running amuck (they eventually take over Russia), etc.

The different thing in your Venezuala game now is that Venezuala is a human player and not an AI. In my game, Brazil ends up with a huge tech-level and nearly owns SA (including Venezuala), until I come in from the U.S. and kick their butts. So I don't think that Brazil needs any help.

[sirveri]

Just curious, but why not just make the dumb bombs have 256 stealth? They're basically part of the plane.

you know thats probly not a bad idea, Game mechanic wise having them set to 256 will cause them to get shot down less. But its not like they will be invisable, as when these bombs get droped it is supposed tobe secounds before they impact, giving practicaly no time to react except for some sort of metal storm tech.

The first thing I did when I started poking around the files was increase the speed of the general purpose bomb from 50kph to 1000kph. I think they later incorporated that into a patch. I'd still say a combination of stealth and a speed boost is for the best.

but maybe it would be better to simply remove some of the missles and abstract them into the attack values of the aircraft.

Na, I dont like the attack value of units being considered for missles. Infact I would acualy like to move away from that. And acualy remove those stats, so if it is a missle unit, its going to need missles.

That's one thing that bugged me about the high tech fighters, the air to air attack values and ranges had to be missle based. Seperating them would allow you to upgrade the air-air missle tech without being required to focus on the weapons platform itself.

Actually, I think I wanted to see about making air to air missles, then I would assign aircraft attack values for the onboard gun systems only. But, not sure if that's possible. I'm guessing no or you probably would have some missles that hit air units

yea its acualy possible to make anti air missles. The only issue is the AI, going tobe able to understand them. And then to what aspect should they be put in. and if you put them in should all stat based attack be removed, and more missle cap added in?

The main problem in my eyes would be to get the AI to figure out how to use it.

I'd probably make the aircraft basically nothing more than flying missle platforms, the attack values would be adjusted to represent only the guns of the fighter. Bombers would have short sight range and low defense and speed, so while you'd be able to mount air to air armaments on those platforms, it wouldn't be highly usefull... You could control the fighter armaments using max missle size.

That said, that ALSO makes air-air missles interceptible, which I don't like the idea of. Which is one reason I am also slightly in favor of removing traditional dumb bombs and simply abstracting them into the aircraft.

[theonlystd]

I was the guy the Dumb bomb missiles where being dropped on.


There was a pretty high concentration of modern units and AA in a very tiny area..And some where still getting threw.. And it wasnt excactly an insanely large attack by the airforce.


Id be carefull on adjusting them to much. If you make them harder to shoot down.. There would be very little motivation not to build em by the truck loads.. Considering how fast they build,number of missile fab slots and their cost esp all mixed in with them being quite effective when they get threw ..


I had some other suggestions but krafty seems to have posted em or you already fixed em in the latist version of your mod..

Looking forward to that .

[Krafty]

I think I had 12 Mirage w/250lb bombs, 2 F/A18 w/500lb bombs, and 2 P-3 w/500lb bombs. Id say he stopped 70-80% of them. Id be happy with 20-30% being stopped. With normal missiles, for the AA he had and the size of the area, id say a 70-80% stoppage rate is good. The missiles tend to have 100+ attack against inf or armor or both, whereas the bombs tend to be much lower.

I would say that for the era of the equipment used (late 70s to late 90s) that 16 squadrons of planes is a large attack though.

Maybe not considering the 90+ units he had, but considering it was south east asia, and using older equipment, some 360 planes is alot, and dropping iron bombs should do ALOT of damage, but take VERY heavy casualties. (dropping down to a few thousand kilometers to drop the bombs exposes you to alot of danger)

[catatonic]

Id be happy with 20-30% being stopped.

I think that you are "putting the cart before the horse" here. If the defending AA is light enough to allow the aircraft through, then the AA is certainly too light to neutralize iron bombs.

IMHO, once the aircraft penetrate to their target, there should be no way to stop ANY of the iron bombs that they drop.

The unrealistic element here is not that iron bombs are too powerful, but that an opponent can "zerg" attack you with 16 air units - 16 x 18 = 288 aircraft.

Also, remember many AA units take a certain amount of time to "recharge" after their initial firing. In this case the aircraft would adsorb the initial AA barrage and could then possibly drop their bombs or shoot their missiles before the defending AA had a chance to re-supply and fire again.

[Ruges]

Heh all this talk about free fall bombs. I went in to go threw them and adjust them. But then I remembered I removed them for the next version. They just did not fit in. Same reson BG removed them. Anywho runing a new cache now with the final changes. Then a quick pretest to make sure it all loads properly, then I will send it out for alpha which I hope will just take tonight if no issues are found. Which should leave me to having somthing ready for tomorrow night for the masses.