Upcoming Mod - New Generals, 7 day turns & Other Hotness! (Shameless Plugging)

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

Just in case you haven't the mod we're working on, check it out here: viewtopic.php?f=340&t=54285.
Your feedback would be appreciated

[Nikel]

Perhaps you should post it in Matrix games forum.

This forum is empty...

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

Perhaps you should post it in Matrix games forum.

This forum is empty...

I'll do that, thanks. I'd actually quite forgotten about the Matrix forum. And yeah... this forum is but a shell of its former self. Makes me quite sad to see it.

[Nikel]

And yeah... this forum is but a shell of its former self. Makes me quite sad to see it.

Indeed

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

And yeah... this forum is but a shell of its former self. Makes me quite sad to see it.

Indeed

I oft feel like an empty can rolling through the dry and dusty streets of a long deserted town but on I roll regardless...

[Nikel]

Good to know

IMHO modding makes sense only for your own fun.

Because if you expect the support of masses of wargamers you will be disappointed.

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

IMHO modding makes sense only for your own fun.

Because if you expect the support of masses of wargamers you will be disappointed.

I've honestly never expected the support "of masses of wargamers", nor, I think, would I ever rely upon it. The mod has been created entirely with the view of pleasing myself and a couple of friends who have also made very significant contributions. If along the way others pick this mod up and enjoy it as much as I do and perhaps appreciate the amount of work that has been put into it then I'll be very pleased

[Nikel]

OK, well said and well done!

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

OK, well said and well done!

Thank you

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

Bump

[StatboyVT]

Looking forward to this. Any idea on an ETA?

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

Looking forward to this. Any idea on an ETA?

Let's be optimistic and say early June, but don't hold me to that
Thanks for your support, by the way. It's genuinely appreciated. Any further questions and I'll be happy to help

[Durk]

I too will be interested in your mod. I have two comments:
1. If you make the mod easy to use by providing a change mod feature so I can copy and paste between the base game and the mod, that is a nice feature.
2. Seven days has issues with the opportunity to make challenging moves. This is especially a problem for the CSA which needs some lead in order to distance itself. So in your seven day change, you might consider some kind of 'masking' to allow force to slip past an opposing army with luck, chance and high initiative leaders.

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

I too will be interested in your mod. I have two comments:
1. If you make the mod easy to use by providing a change mod feature so I can copy and paste between the base game and the mod, that is a nice feature.
2. Seven days has issues with the opportunity to make challenging moves. This is especially a problem for the CSA which needs some lead in order to distance itself. So in your seven day change, you might consider some kind of 'masking' to allow force to slip past an opposing army with luck, chance and high initiative leaders.

Regarding your first comment, that has already been implemented. Switching between the mod and the vanilla is a simple and quick affair

Regarding the second comment, that's an interesting proposition and certainly one we'll discuss.
What we have done is increase the speed of land movement, which was done not only with the view to make for a faster paced, more exciting and realistic game, but to also simulate to some degree just how problematic aggressive and fast moving generals like Lee, Jackson, etc, etc, could be to an opposing army. This increase in speed becomes particularly noticeable, not to mention very beneficial, after the player is able to form divisions and corps. We've noticed in testing that, for example, an army under Lee or a 20,000 man corps under Jackson, or a 5,000 man cavalry division under someone like Forrest can be a very considerable problem for an opposing player as they can get 'up and around and behind' you quite quickly. The beauty of it for me, though, is that it doesn't only benefit the CSA/player as an aggressive-minded Union player with the right generals in charge would be a genuine headache for an opponent. Having said that, our changes really should be of greater advantage to the CSA, particularly in the 1861-63 years, and might address to some degree the "masking" of which you speak.
It's not a perfect fix, but it'll do until that perfect fix gets here
Thank you for the suggestion. It's an interesting one.

[Durk]

Excellent news. I am always interested in Strategic level American Civil War games creating the potential for Lee/Jackson as well as Braggs Kentucky offensive. It is tough to do at this scale. Part of why I suggested a 'skirting' was so a decent Union corps cannot block the movement northward with the whole Army of the Potomac descending. This wall is the primary weakness of the current game as a simulation. I am very glad to hear this is a part of what you are addressing.

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

Excellent news. I am always interested in Strategic level American Civil War games creating the potential for Lee/Jackson as well as Braggs Kentucky offensive. It is tough to do at this scale. Part of why I suggested a 'skirting' was so a decent Union corps cannot block the movement northward with the whole Army of the Potomac descending. This wall is the primary weakness of the current game as a simulation. I am very glad to hear this is a part of what you are addressing.

Aside from the issues you mention there are two other problems that combine to make those large scale offensives very difficult to undertake.
1. There just aren't enough regions. This is particularly noticeable on the 'Virginia Front', if you want to call it that, and my mind immediately goes to the Shenandoah Valley and the York Peninsula as glaring examples of two areas that really should be potentially enthralling theatres but are instead reduced to little more than simplistic, regional, back and forth slugging matches.
Not that I think that it could be fixed here, but if I could I'd throw away the concept of defending a region, and instead introduce towns (far more of them), various geographical features and perhaps most importantly of all, the larger road networks that connect them all as a new 'region'. Think of it like this: instead of having 4 or 5 'squares' on one side and 4 or 5 on the other to defend or alternately use as a springboard for offensive manoeuvres, you have 20 or 30 on either side, with an individual square possibly having a number of alternate routes from which it can be arrived at, and suddenly that unavoidable and heavily congested artery has blood coarsing through it. The game suddenly opens itself up to numerous tactical and strategic possibilities instead of being limited by maps that are just far too broadly encompassing and haphazard.
If games like this are going to progress then they need to jettison that regional way of mapping/thinking and instead adopt something like what I've suggested. Yeah, it'd be an awful lot of work, but work worth doing. I mean, imagine the Army of the Potomac, instead of having 4 or 5 points of entry to 'home soil' to worry about, suddenly having 20 or 25 or 30 and you see where I'm going
2. The agonising slowness with which a unit moves. That includes everything from a large army down to a small, 450-man regiment of militia. I mean 7 or 8 or 9 or more days from Winchester to Harper's Ferry? In nearly every circumstance completely absurd.
If a developer combined my aforementioned suggestion with something closely (and I do mean closely) resembling circumstancially realistic marching times and you have changed the way games like these play, and much for the better.
It's why I was from the very outset so insistent upon increasing marching speed as it was at the time the only way I could see of taking the edge off some of the larger problems to some degree. Though, as you may have read, that increase in speed comes with increased cohesion loss to replicate straggling, etc.
As I said before, it's not a perfect fix but it's a start.

Also, the mod will come with news units graphics and lots of new generals. Entirely too many, to be sure, but I got a little obsessive with that
Now that was a truly massive amount of work...