Observations from a newbie...

[unmerged(63070)]

To begin with, thanks to everyone involved for the great work on this mod. Until now I have only played HoI2DD 1.3 vanilla, with BeBro's sprites. Searched around the forums looking for good intel on which mod or combination of mods to try first. Settled on CORE.30 for starters. I'm not at home at the moment, so I haven't had a chance to gather my thoughts completely. So I'm just going to throw out whatever comes to mind...

I love this mod! Not every thing about it, mind you. But overall, it's great. Things I love include;
DD names instead of flottillas...
lower shipbuilding costs to encourage builds, and longer build times - to discourage gearing bonus for capitals...
more realistic air and naval base placements...
much more realistic numbers and positioning of starting units...
more variety and realistic models of units to build...
more complex tech trees... big bump!
more tech teams, some only available through events... another big bump!
increased number of ships for each level of command...
variety and flavor of events... including Philippine partisan activity prior to Japan DOW... nice!
many more, too numerous to mention...

What I didn't like or that I'd like to see changed;
North Carolina class is level 8, Iowa class is level 7???
still scratching my head over North Carolina class speed 28 (or maybe 26) and South Carolina class speed 21??? should be almost identical, as both classes were considered "fast" and used in carrier task forces.
use of old air unit command limits. This was changed in patch 1.3a to allow Major Gen to command 4 units instead of 2 without penalty. Would like to see this change in CORE.
ships I gave GB (as US) continued to use the same name. GB typically renamed lend lease ships, rather than continue to use the same name. This is a minor issue.
since events such as World Series winners are included, would like to see an event for the 36 Olympics, held in Berlin. Would be a nice touch...
Because Old Guard retirement might be considered too counter-realistic for CORE, would like to see promotion event putting Ernie King in charge, and Nimitz as well.

I should add that I haven't actually experienced combat yet. I played through to Japan DOW US, just to see what happens and when. Now that I have a better understanding of the CORE mod, I'm going to begin my first GC game, as US.

Would also like to add that I'm struggling with figuring out which combination of mods works well together. I'm going to start with CORE, CORE color, GIP, with sexxicolor, I think. I tried the mod that creates mod sub folders, and then you have to run it to activate which mod you want to use. Then I installed CORE into the folder I thought it was supposed to be in, only to learn the game couldn't find the HoI.exe file when I used the CORE desktop icon. Still all a bit confusing to me, so I got rid of it. I read Baylox's (or someone) thread explaining mods, but I got lost trying to follow the instructions. I guess I'm not quite mod knowledgable just yet.

Again, thanks to all... I really, really, really, like CORE! Cheers and happy gaming!

 

[HistoryMan]

Thanks for your comments Nice to see that you are enjoying the game.

On your specific points :-

North Carolina class is level 8, Iowa class is level 7???
still scratching my head over North Carolina class speed 28 (or maybe 26) and South Carolina class speed 21??? should be almost identical, as both classes were considered "fast" and used in carrier task forces.

The Montana class (lvl 9 BB) are the proposed "super Iowas". It is possible that the model names have been transposed for lvl 7 & 8 - I will check that.

I think you mean the South Dakota class, not South Carolina ? Anyway - the "South Dakota" class we are referring to there are the 1920s vintage vessels, not the WW2 ships - hence why they are slow. NB Game speeds are in km/h, not knots - and remember that the usual listed speed is the maximum speed - not the actual average cruising speed.

use of old air unit command limits. This was changed in patch 1.3a to allow Major Gen to command 4 units instead of 2 without penalty. Would like to see this change in CORE.

I'll pass this issue on to our "Air guru", baylox.

ships I gave GB (as US) continued to use the same name. GB typically renamed lend lease ships, rather than continue to use the same name. This is a minor issue.

That is a game engine issue - there is no way to rename ships by event.. or even for the UK to know it has been given ships, etc. So we are rather stuck on that point, alas.

would like to see an event for the 36 Olympics, held in Berlin

We had such an event in CORE1 (for the original HoI) - I am sure such will appear again in due course.

There are some AI events that swap ministers, so if you played somebody other than the USA, you might well see Nimitz or King moving, etc. I don't think the events fire for a player nation, however - after all, it is then up to you to choose your ministers.

Tim

 

[baylox]

I don't have any plans on increasing the limit of the Mj. General Air Leader from 2 to 4. If I make any changes, it'll probably be to cut the highest rank down from 16 to 12.

---

As for that program that creates subfolders for mods, it isn't necessary with CORE since CORE (as the only major mod, as far as I know) uses mod-dir completely without overwriting any files in the regular Doomsday folders. That means you have have CORE and just about anything else installed and CORE won't interfer with that and those things won't interfer with CORE (as long as the HoI2.exe executable isn't replaced, that is).

 

[unmerged(63070)]

"I think you mean the South Dakota class, not South Carolina ? Anyway - the "South Dakota" class we are referring to there are the 1920s vintage vessels, not the WW2 ships - hence why they are slow. NB Game speeds are in km/h, not knots - and remember that the usual listed speed is the maximum speed - not the actual average cruising speed."

Indeed, I did mean South Dakota BB-57 class. Am I to assume that in the game this class is combined or included in the North Carolina class, which is represented? If so, that solves my dilemma.

Thanks for the feedback HistoryMan. It is appreciated. Cheers.

And thanks Baylox, for the explanation. I understand.

 

[HistoryMan]

In game terms the late 1930s designs for the N Carolina & S. Dakota classes (BB 55/56 & BB57-60) are much of a muchness - similar size, speed, armament & armour. Biggest difference I can see is that the South Dakota's had 700 or so extra crew !

Any more queries, please do ask.

Tim

 

[Hagar]

CORE, CORE color, GIP, with sexxicolor should work together fine. GIP will (usually) be installed in the regular DD directory, whilst the CORE color imagery will be installed in our moddir, with only dummies installed in the Vanilla setup. Should you use the installer it will only install files not actually present, and overwriting existing CORE dummy files with actual GIP imagery is no problem. I'm not up to date upon the specifics of sexxicolor, but I see little problem there too.

 

[HistoryMan]

North Carolina class is level 8, Iowa class is level 7???

I did check, as I said I would - this is the right way round, though it does seem "odd", given the time frame for each class. But the Iowa's are indeed the "fast" BBs, whilst the N Carolina's are the Treaty BBs. Don't always assume that the "higher" model number has to be the better or later model - sometimes we model some vessels that aren't necessarily direct descendants of the previous model, as it were.

Tim

 

[BinomistaR-G]

That is a game engine issue - there is no way to rename ships by event.. or even for the UK to know it has been given ships, etc. So we are rather stuck on that point, alas.

:rofl:

why does the event make u lend ships?
i mean... y the event just not deletes the units from the source country and then creates them for the recieving one with any other name??

 

[HistoryMan]

why does the event make u lend ships?
i mean... y the event just not deletes the units from the source country and then creates them for the recieving one with any other name??

The only event that transfers ships in a "Lend Lease" style is the Destroyers for Bases one, which does use UK names if the ships are actually deployed as Destroyers (rather than as Escorts).

The reply was to a question along the lines of "If I sell my ships to the UK, they keep the American names".

Tim

 

[unmerged(63070)]

I did check, as I said I would - this is the right way round, though it does seem "odd", given the time frame for each class. But the Iowa's are indeed the "fast" BBs, whilst the N Carolina's are the Treaty BBs. Don't always assume that the "higher" model number has to be the better or later model - sometimes we model some vessels that aren't necessarily direct descendants of the previous model, as it were.

Tim

Thank you for the explanation and your help. I have now played a bit longer into the game and am managing quite nicely.

I would add that I don't think it would have been a misstep to make the North Carolina/South Dakota BBs level 7 and the Iowas level 8. It would seem more in keeping with how other naval units are numbered. Also, much of the Iowa class design was based on the NC/SD, and lessons learned previously, in construction and combat. Cheers.

 

[dec152000]

Hi,

The issue here is that the model 7 BB is not as valuable of an all around BB as the model 8. So for AI purposes the order needs to stay the same. While Iowa was influenced by the previous designs, there were also compromises made to achieve the desired speed which made her less battleworthy than NC in some respects. This is a hard area to model and I don't find the current set up completely satisfying either.

mm

 

[Lord Martin]

If magic032 excuse me, I will hijack his thread instead of making a new one.

I have tried the Core mod for the first time and played some games the last days. In the days of HoI 1 I played the original Core mod pretty much, so I´m not new to the core consept.

First I must congrat for an excellent mod. It really makes a different from the vanilla version.
The tech changes are impressive, even if it´s a bit confusing sometimes. When I fist saw I was remind of the first time I saw the HoI techs. Lots of stuff and no clue what to research. But after a few tries lots of things makes sense. But I must admite that the armor techs are still a bit hard to really grip. But maybe that just depends of the system with more brigade add-ons instead of real divisons.

The only thing that made my unsatisfied was the events, as I recall that the original Core hade lots of events. From the Berlin olympics, as speaken of earlier in this thread, to; say diferent plans how Germany handled their occupied Soviet provinces. BUT, I know you have concentrated your effort on other things so far, so I´m not complaning

I also have a question.
My knowledge in naval stuff isn´t so great. But I wonder what purpose those patrolboats you can build? I mean, they can travel any major distance and they are pretty much worthless in battle.

Oh, when writing the following I just recalled one thing that I dont think worked as planned.
When the US joins the war and occupy Marroco, those provinces soon went over to France controll. And prevented that any US troops fighted in the North Africa war. Maybe it´s just a small issue, but since the AI seems to have a bit problem with attack from the sea, it would be nice to give the american AI some help when fighting the axis in a land war.

So keep up the good work you have done so far!

And I wonder if I can help improving this project in any way?

 

[HistoryMan]

All of the original CORE 1 events are planned to be added in due course, unless they have been superceded by other things (eg trade events are likely to be replaced by starting trades).

MTBs (model 1 DD) are planned for removal in due course - they aren't that useful (as you mention) and given the limited number of available model slots, we think we can use that model slot to better effect for something else (Big (3000 ton) destroyers, most likely).

Tim

 

[baylox]

The best bet for this is surfing over to terranova.dk (our own forum) and participating and starting discussions there on any subject you like. Well, almost any subject.

Glad you like the mod, otherwise - apart from more CORE1 events, we do have other events coming as well. Its just that the tech trees have taken so long to get done to a level where we are satisfied with them.