Feedback sought for units mod

[grimjaw]

I am working on a mod for CW2 that significantly alters the unit compositions. Specifically, almost all of the units will be anywhere from 1-4 elements in size, and exceedingly few of the units will contain mixed arms. Infantry, cavalry, and artillery each have the own units.

Division creation works the same as before, of course, so you can have the same division makeup as you had before. But now your building blocks for that division are different. Since the building blocks, the base units, now have a maximum size of 4 elements this presents a question of how to divide up the elements available to each state. Let's say New York has 176 infantry and 30 cavalry regiments, plus 84 artillery batteries. I don't want the player or AI to have to worry about handling 176 individual infantry regiments. I want to divide those regiments into 1, 2, 3, and 4 element units, and the same way with the cavalry and artillery.

The divvying up part of it is pretty easy. What I have to decide on, and what I'd like to get your input on, is the naming of the elements. There are some states where the regiments were moved in and out of brigades fairly often. If I pick four names to be in the pool for a 4-element unit, that's the composition of that unit from then on, barring individual element destruction. If I try to get *really* close to historical accuracy with the naming scheme, that limits my ability to make the unit compositions player-friendly. I have to spawn more brigades for the player so that they match the brigade compositions in real life. This is very time consuming. For each regiment I have to map out when it was mustered in and out (that's done), if and when it was brigaded, with what regiments and how long. To find a brigade that served in the same setup from start to finish is proving to be troublesome; there aren't that many. It means more single element units, and that means the stack panel becomes a headache. To make some of these brigades I have to spawn them for the player, because there's very little options for having them built correctly using the recruit panel.

This is the version I've been working on up until now. This ultimately gives the player less control over the units they build and I think that kind of defeats the point of creating this mod. However, I am willing to do it if more people would be interested in that kind of setup.

Alternately, I can pull out some of the more notable regimental names (e.g. Meagher's Irish brigade) and leave the rest as a pool for buildable units. The alternate scheme gives me more flexibility to create a set of building blocks that is player-friendly, and still have a reasonably accurate set of names to choose from. By this method, regimental names would be set up in the pool in the order they were mustered. It would lead to regiments serving in brigades they never did in real life, but they'd still end up in a game unit with other regiments from the same state that were mustered about the same time. Since the unit sizes are smaller than before, mixed state brigades could be as common or as rare as you liked. It's simpler and faster for me to design this alternate method.

If there's no feedback, I'll probably go with the second method. If it sounds like I'm wimping out, consider that I've already done research on this, off and on, for about five years.

Let me know what you think.

[karahaze]

look forward to your mod its nice to see some still modding and dedicated to making CW2 even better so thank you for all your hard work

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

look forward to your mod its nice to see some still modding and dedicated to making CW2 even better so thank you for all your hard work

Amen to that!

[caranorn]

I was looking into a different force pool during the Alpha. But there just wasn't enough time to get it done. To boot I lost a large amount when my laptop of the time crashed, literally, fell of the table and hard disk unrecoverable.

Some things I was looking into was continuity of certain brigades. That is identifying who took command of a brigade on promotion or diablement of previous commander, trying to track as far as I could. Doing this completely would have meant going through the Official Record from start to finish (in other works, work for ten people full time over ten years). Names of original commanders would then have been first in the list for brigade names, their successors later.

I also looked into formation dates (well, swearing in) for regiments. And built a database from that.

Tackeling Engagement times 3-month, 6-month, 9-month, 1-year, 2-years, 3-years and for the war would have been a programing issue, not sure Pocus could have done that, certainly not by release date. But not having this will make 1861 much to easy for the Union considering how many regiments from Ohio to the seaboard walked out on their commanders at the start of campaigning.

My idea for brigades was for most to be 4x type plus 1x artillery. That is the average infantry brigade would be 4x infantry and 1x Artillery. Having Artillery separate would 1) put more strain on the engine as it would require tracking a huge number of additional units, 2) it would mean Artillery would only appear in places producing war supply, so hardly any artillery in the Trans Mississipi. Abstracting a battery into most brigades would not be far of the historic path in game terms.

One other thing I was looking into was special upgrade paths for certain models (elements, regents within units). That is early war brigades being different units from later war brigades. The early war would often have a cavalry, light infantry or even Artillery element in place of an infantry one. This to reflect the chaotic early war mobilisations, with légions and/or regiments forming with less than the usual 10 companies of line infantry and instead light infantry, cavalry or even artillery in their stead. Those models (elements) would then later (mid1862 and forward) start to upgrade to regular infantry. I never passed this idea by Pocus, so not sure it could have been done, and that without putting strain on the engine. Ideally the player would even just order a 4+1 standard brigade and receive a random 3+1+1 instead.

I also looked into a more accurate starting situation and mobilization of units for the April1861 scenario. Things like the two Union fleets enroute to Forts Sumter and Pickens. The Union regulars trapped in Texas near Indianola. Possibly random event driven. Oh also the Norfolk naval yard capture, possibly more Confederate ships, Artillery and war supply, but also possibly the opposite with Union reacting quicker to the occupation if Norfolk. Generally US at start regulars organised into battalions instead of regiments to reflect their dispersed status as well as their use. Armies in West Virginia etc. that have made it into the game by today without my contribution (well done team)

Also a total overhaul of naval units and ships to get closer to history. That was actually duscussed in development but was decided to be to much at that point, but possible for a later patch or DLC.

You will notice I had a large number of things I was looking into (did I mention general's seniority reviewed ;-)). But just to much for me and I'm probably not the best team player. Worse, I lost so much research in that computer crash that I was to demotivated to continue, which was about a week before the game went live and ai dropped out soon after that.

I will look into my files to see what I still have, Probably regiment formations, brigade commanders and some of the 1861 setups. Might be useful for you...