Hello McGuba:
Again, thanks for still investing your time and effort to refine this mod... For your comments, one con only be astonished about how much thought you gave to the balancing of the mod and the tweaking you made and still are making to improve the action-reaction cycles between the player options and the AI moves. Excellent!
Now some questions, ideas and comments that I would like to make, hoping that you find some time to elaborate on them. Some are new, some are a continuation from my previous post in this thread.
1) "Man Towed" light AT guns: may be I was not able to explain my idea in a clear way, but I was not meaning to give a "triople switch" to those units, but to add a new unit with just two switches, like the others already present in the mod. Taking the 3,7 cm Pak35/36 gun which is available in several variants that can be switched between its "combat" and "transport" states. This was a brilliant way to avoid the problem of the "stealth rail and sea transport" problem when the player embarked a unt with "camo" trait on a transport unit, which it inherited the same trait, which was unrealistic.
Back to my example, the 3,7 cm Pak is offered in several variants:
- 3,7 Pak switchable into a Krupp Protze transport (without "camo" trait as I said)
- 3,7 cm Pak switchable into an Opel Blitz truck.
- 3,7 cm Pak switchable into Renault UE tracked transport
To this options, I think it can be added a new unit of a 3,7 cm AT gun switchable into a "leg mobile" version (again, without the "camo" trait in its transport mode). The utility of this new AT unit, would be that the player would have at his disposal an AT gun which do not depends on fuel to move, and it an be made air portable also...
Against this last possibility, I think that your opinion that the Axis forces did not have the resources to transport by air 1000 AT light guns is probably right, so you may opt to rule out the "airborne" option for that unit, but I think that the "leg mobile" AT gun is a worthy addition.
All of this, of course, does not need to make any "triple switch" unit, just to add a new AT unit like the ones already present.
2) I completely agree the idea to add some more "pre Barbarossa" scenarios, because I think it is very important for the player to count on a core of units with good experiance before the beginning of the invasion of Poland (as it was the case historical). So, a new Spanish Civil War scenario would be a nice addition in my opinion.
3) Another idea to consider for another "pre Barbarossa" scenario with a different flavour: I thought about a "Save the Bismark" aero maritime scenario, where the player has to avoid the sinking of battleship Bismark trying to make that ship to make its way to a French port and the AI air and naval forces trying to stop/destroy it. It would be a nice sea battle scenario, and its historical time would be almost perfect, because it happened on May, 1941, just before the start of Barbarossa. If the player succeeds in saving the Bismarck by achieving a Victory in that scenario, the next one (i.e. the main BE scenario) can include a new battleship unit present in one of the French coast ports (with reduced strength, to simulate damage suffered in the previous battle).
Now, the questions:
- Why is it that there are two different 8,8 cm Flak units (one on its wheeled trailer/carriage and the other on its cruciform mountng), they seem to have the same values and traits in the equipment mod... What is the idea of having those two different units?
- I saw you added a new layer to the tiles graphic folder (called "LayerFlatWater"). Does the game engine uses it? What is its function?
...And a suggestion: May be you can add a Ju-290 unit, an aircraft the entered in service at the end of 1943, beginning of 1944, which can be a useful upgrade to the Fw-200 maritime patrol units. This upgrade can be granted to a succesful player who did well in the Battle of the Atlantic in its appropiate timeframe. That unit would be purchaseable by the player or "upgradeable" from the Fw-200, or to be given by the game engine if some in-game conditions are met (for example that the player has a determined number of French ports under his control at a given date, or a determined number of submarine units surviving, etc...).
Again, thanks for making this gem of a mod and sharing with everyone here!
