Some suggestions for CORE-HoI2

[unmerged(62347)]

I presume that Iraq would form part of this Arab Federation..
I'd like to suggest further improvements , though CORE may not be able to fix it, as it's part of the game-engine. I would like to make it possible for the German-owned V1s/V2s/V3 rockets to be strategically redeployed. At the moment, I can only place them in Brest, but with the UK and Ireland occupied, as of June 1944, there's nothing to use as a target, with the single exception of Casablanca which gets routinely invaded by the US about this time. I can't place my ballistic rockets in the Russian Far-East as I created Primorsk, given that the Bitter-Peace option is too unlikely, historically, to be viable. Things will change once I get the intercontinental ballistic missile tech completed, but even so, all rockets should be able to be SRed at any time.

Lastly, why is it that I can SR my units anywhere within my occupied territory and most of my allied nations, with the single exception of Japanese-controlled territory or that of its allies such as Primorsk/Siam etc? This just has to be corrected as, when Japan is in full alliance with Germany, full SR options should be made available. Otherwise it takes ages to crawl to Hong-Kong etc. just in order to wipe out the UK.

 

[unmerged(62347)]

One other thing:- Land-troop leaders take absolutely ages to get promoted or advance in skill-level points(usually only plus 2 skill-points), whereas, as Germany, my sub-commanders and my air-force-commanders quickly got to 5-7 points in skill-level within a couple of years of war. On the other hand, it seems much easier for land-troop commanders to get special traits such as "jungle-rat" ,"mountaineer" etc., than it is for navy or air-force-commanders to get these traits. This is not surprising as subs and air-force inevitably get into numerous battles, whereas infantry spend so much time in movement. Anyway, either movement-rate needs to be speeded up dramatically, much like the total realism mod, or land-troop leaders should get a higher chance to get promoted each time.

 

[unmerged(8076)]

I hope this isn't heresy, but whilst I absolutely adore COREs detailing of tech and units, I wish that CORE would take some cues from TRP and modify the map and combat system to give it a little more flair instead of a diversity of units. What I like about TRP are:

• Faster land movement tempered by a general reduction of infrastructure across the board (making the rebounds from occupation / strategic bombing sluggish for ESE)
• An increase of urban and mountain provinces based not on smooth gameplay but population density and topographical maps (Delhi, Paris).
• Combat adjustments to make for lengthier battles and multiprovince attacks in depth versus the traditional province by province creep that usually takes place which adds a delectable strategic tone to planning operations.
• Lastly, and I can't remember if this was implemented for CORE .25 or not, was a general increase of resources outside of the traditional provinces in vanilla. I'm sure this is dependent on the global amount of ICs, but giving third-world nations resources (South Africa, for example, with 100+ rares, Mexico with 40+ rares, oil) makes them now well worth fighting for and decentralizes the goodies which are traditionally in direct Allied hands.

These elements combined into future versions of CORE would overall make for a much more strategic game with combat now turning into commitments and new prizes dangling for the taking. I hope you give them so thought!

 

[Hagar]

Well some of the things you mention is actually being worked on for 0.30. Infra is being revised, as is topography. It's not really my cup of tea, but I'm sure Historyman, JRaup and Dec are willing to give them some thought!

 

[HistoryMan]

Infra is being revised (generally downwards), though I am not sure you will necessarily see faster land movement as well. Current movement speeds do not allow for the inevitable need of human beings to go to sleep and stop every night, amongst other things.

Urban provinces have, if anything, been reduced. Most suggested provinces just don't stack up when you actually look at it properly - the province is so much bigger than the city it is named for that it makes no sense to call it urban. Mountains are also probably not going to increase, especially.. simply being at a high elevation doesn't make the terrain mountainous. Looking at topographical maps and satellite imagery has indeed formed part of our discussions.

Resources/IC are also being redistributed, in a historical manner - ie, placed where they really were. Sometimes this will mean that certain places in odd locations are well worth taking.. other times, it means that certain resources are indeed concentrated in a particular major nation.

Hopefully you will see some things you like in the changes that we have planned.

Tim

 

[unmerged(62347)]

In that case, I would like to point out that Nepal, and especially Bhutan(!), should not be allowed to have the 5 and 6 respective factories in their territories. I mean, Nepal was a hopelessly unindustrialised nation, at the time, and Bhutan is so tiny it's ridiculous to give it so many factories.

 

[HistoryMan]

Don't worry - we are aware of such things. Paradox gave many countries a 5 IC bonus for their Capital - whilst we aim to leave overall world wide IC levels about the same, we will redistribute them in a more equitable (and realistic) manner.

Tim

 

[unmerged(8076)]

Any change is a good thing

Infra is being revised (generally downwards), though I am not sure you will necessarily see faster land movement as well. Current movement speeds do not allow for the inevitable need of human beings to go to sleep and stop every night, amongst other things.

I'm not aware of how the vanilla speeds / mod speeds are - I presume that they are accurate representations of how quickly men/vehicles on the march move while in the field?

Urban provinces have, if anything, been reduced. Most suggested provinces just don't stack up when you actually look at it properly - the province is so much bigger than the city it is named for that it makes no sense to call it urban. Mountains are also probably not going to increase, especially.. simply being at a high elevation doesn't make the terrain mountainous. Looking at topographical maps and satellite imagery has indeed formed part of our discussions.

Good point on the former. My impression was that though, for large industrial centers (cities) they would eventually be an objective by the invading army, whether through direct assault or encirclement and through that way be more directly involved in the combat process. The most common example I've read on these forums usually involved cities like Paris - battles were fought around it, not in it.

I admit that I'm moreso of a strategically defensive-minded player versus offensive, and the premise of using cities as meatgrinders like Stalingrad or Budapest holds a lot of appeal for me. It would be nice if players had the option

Resources/IC are also being redistributed, in a historical manner - ie, placed where they really were. Sometimes this will mean that certain places in odd locations are well worth taking.. other times, it means that certain resources are indeed concentrated in a particular major nation.

I'm very much glad to read that. The more excuses to take a safari to Africa or South America, the better!

Hopefully you will see some things you like in the changes that we have planned.

Tim

I love what's been done so far, but unfortunately for you it just makes me hunger more for what's in store (A vague part of me asks if this is .30, what's going to be around for 1.00?)

P.S. Still don't know if the tactics of using torpedo boats are useful for hit and runs in the Pacific or not. As I remembered, their limited range tied them to the few ports in Indonesia quite strictly.

 

[unmerged(62347)]

I do like the idea of resources being properly distributed - at the moment, Africa, for example, has almost no resources available for the Axis, which seems very odd.

As for the urban provinces, they should not be removed, merely reduced in size(llike the size of the Newark province in the US). Historically, WWII forces often had to fight in urban areas such as Stalingrad/Leningrad, and it would be silly to have forested province in place of an urban one for Moscow etc.

 

[unmerged(8076)]

I do like the idea of resources being properly distributed - at the moment, Africa, for example, has almost no resources available for the Axis, which seems very odd.

As for the urban provinces, they should not be removed, merely reduced in size(llike the size of the Newark province in the US). Historically, WWII forces often had to fight in urban areas such as Stalingrad/Leningrad, and it would be silly to have forested province in place of an urban one for Moscow etc.

We have another believer! Although I'm not too worried about it either; with no offense towards the mod especially, I'd see if I could manually edit the urban provinces in myself to see what results. If CORE 3.0 Urban edition fails miserable for the western and eastern front, I'll report back with the results.

 

[HistoryMan]

P.S. Still don't know if the tactics of using torpedo boats are useful for hit and runs in the Pacific or not. As I remembered, their limited range tied them to the few ports in Indonesia quite strictly.

MTBs will be going in 0.3 - no room in the model structure for them, with the introduction of larger destroyers in the late 40s/50s. Plus they can be somewhat exploited and end up sinking Carriers, etc which is rather ahistoric.

You can't change province size (or anything else that is linked to the map) by modding stuff without cracking the map - I don't believe anyone has done this yet for HoI 2 / DD. If you could, there would be several changes I am sure we would love to make. As you can't, and provinces are the size that they are.. then I do not expect to see additional Urban provinces appearing.

If you want to amend the provinces yourself, it is relatively easy to do so.. just don't necessarily expect it to be adopted by CORE, since we aim to be historically accurate if we can. If you sign up on our forums at www.terranova.dk then you can take part in the discussions there and see past discussions about urban provinces, etc.

Tim

 

[unmerged(8076)]

MTBs will be going in 0.3 - no room in the model structure for them, with the introduction of larger destroyers in the late 40s/50s. Plus they can be somewhat exploited and end up sinking Carriers, etc which is rather ahistoric.

Ah, how unfortunate. I (hopefully) saw them as useful for taking out those errant DDs the AI sends out everywhere like mosquitos. I'm not sure if this is a problem specific to HOI2-DD, but in vanilla DD I've noticed that as AI fleets have the all-seeing eye they almost always send out a naval force larger than mine and whomp them (say, carrier task force versus my moving transport fleet or ASW fleet). It's quite frustrating and making me want to create superstacks, spot them via naval bombers, and to annihilate them. It works, but it's not so much fun when I'm hoping for more equitable battles not born out of rage to destroy the navy in an unskillful manner. Would you know what, if anything, CORE has done to modify the naval AI?

If you sign up on our forums at www.terranova.dk then you can take part in the discussions there and see past discussions about urban provinces, etc.

Tim

Oddly enough I have read your forums many times, but only in terms of units, techs, and doctrines I should go there and read some more. A thought that has just occured to me is if urban provinces can't be simulated well due to the scale, maybe using fortifications would be a stop-gap measure to simulate the city which is being fought over?

Thanks for the quick responses, by the way.

 

[HistoryMan]

MateDow is our naval Expert (gee, you'd never guess what he does for a living ? ) - if you ask him on the CORE forum at terranova he can tell you much better how the naval side of things works. Hope to see you there ! Otherwise, as you have noticed, I keep popping in here as well.

Tim

 

[Hagar]

MateDow is our naval Expert (gee, you'd never guess what he does for a living ? ) - if you ask him on the CORE forum at terranova he can tell you much better how the naval side of things works. Hope to see you there ! Otherwise, as you have noticed, I keep popping in here as well.

Tim

Most of us pop in here from time to time, but most of the detailed discussions are on our own forum. And that includes discussion of the game mechanics of future versions of the mod as well, while on the Paradox forum it's more 'troubleshooting' than anything else.

 

[unmerged(62347)]

I just encountered for the first time the notorious bug where several countries start declaring war on me at the same time, followed by a CTD. It occurred to me that it might be due to Germany having a vastly increased belligerence score from mid-war on, which would encourage mass declarations of war - and that this was due to the increased belligerence-added value that Hitler has for each day of the game, while at war. Shouldn't this be nullified?

 

[Hagar]

I just encountered for the first time the notorious bug where several countries start declaring war on me at the same time, followed by a CTD. It occurred to me that it might be due to Germany having a vastly increased belligerence score from mid-war on, which would encourage mass declarations of war - and that this was due to the increased belligerence-added value that Hitler has for each day of the game, while at war. Shouldn't this be nullified?

It's being worked on...

 

[HistoryMan]

I just encountered for the first time the notorious bug where several countries start declaring war on me at the same time, followed by a CTD. It occurred to me that it might be due to Germany having a vastly increased belligerence score from mid-war on, which would encourage mass declarations of war - and that this was due to the increased belligerence-added value that Hitler has for each day of the game, while at war. Shouldn't this be nullified?

I'm pretty certain this isn't due to Hitler - and even if it was, there is not a lot we can do about it, as Minister trait effects are hardcoded. The reason I say I'm pretty sure it isn't due to Hitler is that he has the same effect in vanilla, and you don't see these weird DoWs in the vanilla game (As far as I know, at any rate). We'd love to track down why (for example) Switzerland suddenly becomes the number one enemy for places like Peru and Ecuador, but it seems very random at the moment. The biggest problem is that it doesn't seem to kick off at a set point - there is no obvious trigger that seems to set the ball rolling, as it were - so it is very hard to reproduce and then track down. Indeed, the best "cure" so far for it seems to be to load up a save game from shortly before the DoW madness.. and usually (9 times out of 10, say) the DoWs don't happen after the reload.

Tim

 

[dec152000]

I'm not aware of how the vanilla speeds / mod speeds are - I presume that they are accurate representations of how quickly men/vehicles on the march move while in the field?

Hi,

The Vanilla speeds are actually much, much faster than RW units managed. On the surface the numbers seem pretty reasonabe and soem units may have been able to move at these rates for limited periods of time on a tactical scale. However there are a number of factors that prevented this sort of movement rates on a strategic level. The number one issue would be fatigue. ITRW troops need to rest while in HOI2 they are allowed to move continously. Plus the night movement penalty does not appear to be working at all. Another issue is that in game units move in a straight line between provinces while ITRW almost all movement is going to be somewhat inefficient. Plus no account for issue like road congestion, river crossing... In the end units were going much too fast. IMO this was intentional ,as it made for a more interesting fast paced gaming experience. For 0.30 we will be keeping the same speed values as 0.25 but the somewhat lower Infrastructure should have things at about the right pace.

mm

 

[unmerged(62347)]

Another suggestion for CORE. The "1944 "Full Mobilisation" Tech is a waste of time as no player would choose it(you get all sorts of minus points for fighting in most terrains plus the movement increase listed(3.3) is not much more than the 3.0 an INF usually has, last I checked).


Secondly, subs, IMO, should be strengthened towards the end of the game. After all, after WWII subs increasingly became more powerful than surface ships, with nuclear submarines being deployed etc. I would think that in c.1950, subs should be able to deal with ships quite well.

 

[unmerged(62347)]

Another issue is the German navy. When I played my last full CORE game, I found that my German navy got savaged during Operation SeaLion, in 1944. I then built up numerous carriers with the latest naval technology(all naval combat techs and all carrier-improvement techs)and invaded the US in 1947 or thereabouts. Anyway, I then, bizarrely, had virtually my entire fleet destroyed in just one confrontation with the US navy, which had only 6 CVs more than I had - 27 German CVs to 33 US CVs) I found myself, having conquered the entire US/Alaskan mainland, with the absurd situation of having to send various land-units on naval transport ships to launch beachhead invasions of Midway and Pearl Harbour, hoping desperately that the large US navy would not be able to intercept more than one or two of my forces.

Anyway, my point is that it shouldn't have to take several years to build up a naval force and that German naval strength and tech should (potentially) be the same as that of the US/UK, but it should just take longer to research the techs to get to the same level. I'm also highly dubious about the astonishing lack of effectiveness of air-units against naval units in CORE - for example, most historians state that the RAF(rather than the Fleet Air-Arm or the Royal Navy) was the primary key to preventing Operation SeaLion from happening.