MEGA Pacific...in progress!

[Nginear]

So I've been working on porting the xl AE pac map (Elessar2 used this map for his mod for WaW). There are 12000 more hexs in this map! So far I have entered airfields, new units, new tech, and currently have completed about 60% of all the developer's scripts and "extras" from Pacific. It is coming along nicely! I've spent considerable time improving the map and placing major historical airfields and harbors. Even adding plenty of my own ideas such as "building" the Burma railroad and a phsycial Ledo road (ultimately my goal is to have these things activated by an engineer nearby, but I'm not going to hold up the whole mod while I figure those scripts out).

My goal is 70% historical, maybe 30% sandbox. I'm building the map to be hard; unless the Axis player royally screws up, there should be no steam rolling the Japanese by 1943. To help this goal, Naval Construction will be paramount - because most of the harbors have been eliminated. Until the developers make a "wharf" that does not supply ships but unloads troops, it's the best that can be done. The harbors are at historical refueling spots (a few non-historical are placed for gameplay sake, remember 30% sandbox).

I'm changing the purpose of airfields too. They will still provide a small bonus for extra range to fighters only, but they will add a second strike capability for LBA.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Looking forward to see how this project progresses.
Count me in if you need a tester.

[Tanaka]

So I've been working on porting the xl AE pac map (Elessar2 used this map for his mod for WaW). There are 12000 more hexs in this map! So far I have entered airfields, new units, new tech, and currently have completed about 60% of all the developer's scripts and "extras" from Pacific. It is coming along nicely! I've spent considerable time improving the map and placing major historical airfields and harbors. Even adding plenty of my own ideas such as "building" the Burma railroad and a phsycial Ledo road (ultimately my goal is to have these things activated by an engineer nearby, but I'm not going to hold up the whole mod while I figure those scripts out).

My goal is 70% historical, maybe 30% sandbox. I'm building the map to be hard; unless the Allies royally screw up, there should be no steam rolling the Japanese by 1943. To help this goal, Naval Construction will be paramount - because most of the harbors have been eliminated. Until the developers make a "wharf" that does not supply ships but unloads troops, it's the best that can be done. The harbors are at historical refueling spots (a few non-historical are placed for gameplay sake, remember 30% sandbox).

I'm changing the purpose of airfields too. They will still provide a small bonus for extra range to fighters only, but they will add a second strike capability for LBA.

Wow exciting news to hear.

I'm assuming you mean "I'm building the map to be hard; unless the Japanese royally screw up, there should be no steam rolling the Japanese by 1943?

[Nginear]

I'm assuming you mean "I'm building the map to be hard; unless the Japanese royally screw up, there should be no steam rolling the Japanese by 1943?

Yes corrected

Here are pictures of tech and available units. Coastal defense battery is just heavy artillery reprogrammed to attack naval instead of ground units. Sea Planes are the blimps and represent the long range scouts (PBYs) - cheap and expendable but no real attack value. LBA is now figured for each of the major bombers categories (dive, torpedo, medium, strategic). Japanese medium bombers can add torpedo tech, but Allied cannot.

Anyway, this is still going to take awhile. I just finished the national morale scripts which was a biggie. But I still have the all important Decision Events to go through, and a few others.

[Tanaka]

I'm assuming you mean "I'm building the map to be hard; unless the Japanese royally screw up, there should be no steam rolling the Japanese by 1943?

Yes corrected

Here are pictures of tech and available units. Coastal defense battery is just heavy artillery reprogrammed to attack naval instead of ground units. Sea Planes are the blimps and represent the long range scouts (PBYs) - cheap and expendable but no real attack value. LBA is now figured for each of the major bombers categories (dive, torpedo, medium, strategic). Japanese medium bombers can add torpedo tech, but Allied cannot.

Anyway, this is still going to take awhile. I just finished the national morale scripts which was a biggie. But I still have the all important Decision Events to go through, and a few others.

Hi I believe there are PBY and Mavis type recon planes in the Guadalcanal scenario? Maybe you could use those instead of the blimps?

[Nginear]

Hi I believe there are PBY and Mavis type recon planes in the Guadalcanal scenario? Maybe you could use those instead of the blimps?

I just looked, the Naval Patrol aircraft are retitled Maritime Bombers. I'm using MarB as land based torpedo bombers. The Guad scenario just uses a generic customizable Tactical Bombers too. So I have to use all the air slots to get all the major types.

[Elessar2]

I may have to spring for the Pacific engine just to check this out! As the original designer of the original W@W scenario you have my full blessing.

[Nginear]

I may have to spring for the Pacific engine just to check this out! As the original designer of the original W@W scenario you have my full blessing.

Sweet! The experience I had playing your mod has been invaluable for making this one.

[Nginear]

Looking for some ideas. I have not liked how Atomic bombs are handled in any of the SC series (abstract and boring), but the mod engine has limitations on how to deal with this issue. This is my design so far:

I am leaning towards using the Kamikaze slot as kamikazes for Japan (obviously!) but using it as an atomic bomb for USA. The disposable "bomb" would work like this:
-500mpp to build, 9 month build time. Available starting in 1944 and max of 3 at a time.
-The bomb would have no natural stats of its own - no attack or AP points.
-Upgrades are Heavy Aircraft and ground attack weapons. Each level of Heavy Aircraft (heavy air is tied to upgrading strategic bombers) would add 4AP to the strike range. Each level of ground attack weapons would add 5 across-the-board attack value, and 50% evasion (so lvl 2 maxes it at 10 attack and 100% evasion).

Thus, a fully equipped bomb that is capable of being fired from Iwo Jima would need: lvl 5 heavy aircraft (not easy to obtain) and lvl 2 ground attack weapons. You could use less stats for a less effective bomb, or shorter range bomb. But a fully equipped bomb should destroy everything that it fires at, and could reach about half of Japan from Iwo Jima. Total cost of research and upgrades would be ~1000mpp, plus the cost of each bomb, plus the cost of operating it. It won't be deducted in small turns, but by 1944 the USA should be winning enough they can divert funds for this over a few turns.

This is all pretty close to the scripts so far, but doesn't include any national morale hits. Unfortunately, the editor won't allow me to have a NM hit tied to this unit. So....my idea is to write a script that fires once: "If bombs are on both Iwo Jima AND Okinawa, then Japan will suffer a one time NM hit." Presumably, the allied player will then launch the bombs....and the soldiers can then invade through uncontested radioactive beaches Why have both locations? Because Japan needed both bombs to take the threat seriously; plus it keeps the Allied player from using the same bomb at both locations.

That's what I got. I don't l-i-k-e my idea to activate the NM by script, but that's the best I can come up with given the editor limitations.

What do ya'll think? Any other ideas for bombs?

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Your Atomic Bomb idea is really thinking out of the box.
I do like the SC-PACIFIC and Elessar's WitP Mod version as it takes a long term commitment early in MPPs (Never liked the WaW version),
but your idea is intriguing and probably would work better.
What I like is the tactical aspect of having to actually FLY the mission.

Needs testing, especially the NM script part.

Side note:TRP-WORLD mod does not have the Atomic Bomb/Manhattan Project component, (which I and my opponent just found out late game, and it's a huge flaw as even in defeat at sea and land by island hopping to Okinawa and Formosa, Japanese NM is really high.)
Point is definitely consider the metrics regarding Japanese NM and the malus that will be taken their NM with each Bomb dropped. In WaW, a third bomb is available in October 1945. It's scripted for Osaka. In a few games I played in WaW multi-player, I had to use the third bomb to get Japan to surrender.

Cheers looking forward to how you implement this!

[Elessar2]

My original idea was to try to rework the Rockets slot, but there's a hardcoded algorithm that decreases damage with distance-and at the distance from the Marianas to Japan it reduced all city damage to nothing. Rockets also cannot be loaded onto a Transport. The Kami slot makes a lot more sense however since you will "burn" each bomb with each drop. The NM kludge is likely the best you can hope for there, alas. Nice outside the box thinking Nginear.

[BillRunacre]

You can reduce the accuracy loss as range increases to zero if you wish to.

Simply go to Campaign -> Edit Country Data -> Edit Research -> Advanced

It is near the bottom.

[Nginear]

Ugh...keep getting stuck in the weeds. Spend 45 minutes researching the name of a single airfield or the name of B17 group that was formed after PH....
Anyway, I'm working on the Units scripts right now. It's proving to be more tedious than the others. I think I only have partisans left after that. All the rest are converted over.
Then starting unit placement...

[Elessar2]

You going to keep my partisan hordes scripts?

One thing I was toying with was reducing the attack ratings of the Nationalist Chinese infantry, something World in Flames does, so that if Japan goes Quiet China they aren't overrun (see your game with Feinder). Mao's guys can remain the tough guys that they were tho.

[Nginear]

You going to keep my partisan hordes scripts?

Some but reduced.
The devs added a whole bunch of China specific ideas - convoys, warlord repression, commie bases, etc. I have incorporated all of those changes, but changed it to only 2 alt capitals. My main way of dealing with the much-argued China problem is to have the Japanese units starting around strength 7-8. In reality, most of the units were exhausted, and most of the air power had been pulled out for Operation Centrifuge. There was a major attack against Changsha at the same time as PH, which ended badly for the Japanese. China will have very little technology and cheap unit purchases but will greatly rely on convoys. Japan will have to invest in the army if it wants to go on a conquering spree.
I also completely redesigned the map to make the Yangtze River a major dividing point, complete with bridges crossings. Starting boundaries also reflect detailed historical starting points.

Also implementing a goal for Japan to complete a railroad link. Seoul is an alternate capital, so any captured territory linked to it will rise from 5 value to 8, which should provide more MPP. If Japan can capture the railroads connecting to Indochina, and connect the railroad to Burma, then that will be very beneficial for Japan. This was a secondary goal in their 1944 Ichi-Go offensive.

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[OldCrowBalthazor]

This is looking and sounding VERY nice!

[mdsmall]

Looking for some ideas. I have not liked how Atomic bombs are handled in any of the SC series (abstract and boring), but the mod engine has limitations on how to deal with this issue. This is my design so far:

I am leaning towards using the Kamikaze slot as kamikazes for Japan (obviously!) but using it as an atomic bomb for USA. The disposable "bomb" would work like this:
-500mpp to build, 9 month build time. Available starting in 1944 and max of 3 at a time.
-The bomb would have no natural stats of its own - no attack or AP points.
-Upgrades are Heavy Aircraft and ground attack weapons. Each level of Heavy Aircraft (heavy air is tied to upgrading strategic bombers) would add 4AP to the strike range. Each level of ground attack weapons would add 5 across-the-board attack value, and 50% evasion (so lvl 2 maxes it at 10 attack and 100% evasion).

Thus, a fully equipped bomb that is capable of being fired from Iwo Jima would need: lvl 5 heavy aircraft (not easy to obtain) and lvl 2 ground attack weapons. You could use less stats for a less effective bomb, or shorter range bomb. But a fully equipped bomb should destroy everything that it fires at, and could reach about half of Japan from Iwo Jima. Total cost of research and upgrades would be ~1000mpp, plus the cost of each bomb, plus the cost of operating it. It won't be deducted in small turns, but by 1944 the USA should be winning enough they can divert funds for this over a few turns.

This is all pretty close to the scripts so far, but doesn't include any national morale hits. Unfortunately, the editor won't allow me to have a NM hit tied to this unit. So....my idea is to write a script that fires once: "If bombs are on both Iwo Jima AND Okinawa, then Japan will suffer a one time NM hit." Presumably, the allied player will then launch the bombs....and the soldiers can then invade through uncontested radioactive beaches Why have both locations? Because Japan needed both bombs to take the threat seriously; plus it keeps the Allied player from using the same bomb at both locations.

That's what I got. I don't l-i-k-e my idea to activate the NM by script, but that's the best I can come up with given the editor limitations.

What do ya'll think? Any other ideas for bombs?

I am new to playing War in the Pacific, but I have had a lot of experience designing a mod using the SC system (see my Icarus mod for SC WW1), so I am happy to offer my two cents on this very interesting question.

I would start with first principles. Atomic weapons are the ultimate strategic technology, so what exactly are the strategic trade-offs you wish to pose for the Allies if they choose to invest in this capability? There are different costs which you can oblige the USA to pay if the Allies go this route, in terms of:
- MPPs
- Time
- Tech limits
- National Morale (for either side)
- Victory conditions
Given the complexity of this weapon and its importance to the outcome of the actual war, I would design a revised approach to atomic weapons which entails all of these factors.

I like your idea of requiring the Allies to buy and build one or more actual bombs and repurposing one equipment slot for those purposes (kamikazes would work well). I would add to that by re-purposing one tech investment slot too for atomic weapons, available to the USA only. Anti-tank tech could work (since it seems largely irrelevant to this campaign) but you might chose a different one. I would make this a pure atomic tech which has to be achieved before atomic weapons can be built. To keep this clean, I would not add secondary effects of this tech on the range or combat evasion capacity of heavy bombers (but see below).

For historic realism and to make it a true strategic choice, I would oblige the Allies to decide early in the war – certainly in 1942 – whether or not to go the atomic route. 1944 seems too late to me. That decision should then shape their subsequent decisions about how they want to go about defeating Japan.

To make it a true strategic choice, I recommend making it equally attractive for the Allies to forego investing in atomic weapons. In the vanilla game, the decision is purely a matter of opportunity cost (MPPs spent on the bomb DE are not available for other purposes). But if you design a different set of victory conditions for the Allies contingent on whether they decide to build the bomb, then this choice will truly shape their grand strategy. Here is one way you might achieve the above.

Start by writing a DE for the Allies on whether or not to launch the Manhattan Project. This would fire in the first turn or two of the campaign. It need not have any MPP costs attached to it; but YES/NO to this decision would determine the ultimate victory conditions for the Allies in the game. Thus, if the Allies decide to invest in building a bomb, in order to achieve a Minor Victory Japanese NM would have to fall below, say, 15% (as in the existing game). But if the Allies decide not to build them bomb, then the Japanese NM threshold for a Minor Victory could be higher, say 25% by end of 1945. Or you could attach different minimum territorial objectives which the Allies have to achieve, depending on whether they decide to invest in the bomb. I would make this DE fire very early in the campaign, and write it with no other conditions, so it is a pure strategic choice. If they say YES, then they still have to go about building the bomb and delivering it to have the desired results. But they would be bound from the start o the victory that flow from this initial decision.

Make “Atomic Weapons” a tech which only the USA can buy. I would suggest that only one chit can be invested in atomic tech and make it cost a bomb (literally) – say 750 MPPs. One reason for the very high cost is that it will reduce the USA’s tech limit capacity for investing in other conventional weapons (and thus creates an incentive not to go this route). The USA could invest in this tech at any time and would probably have to save up for a few turns before buying a chit. If only one chit can be invested in it, they will have a strong motivation to invest in it early in the game. One chit will take about 20 turns to reach level 1, if no breakthroughs occur. For simplicity, I would give atomic weapons only one level, which once reached allows 2 bombs to be built. But you could play around with these tech parameters if you wished.

Once the USA has the capacity to build atomic weapons – probably sometime in 1943 – they then have to buy them. I would make them expensive, something like 500 MPPs each as you suggest, but with an even longer build time to ensure they are not available before 1945. They could take say 24 months to build. As weapons, I would give them an appropriate range, so the Allies have to capture one or more launch spots close to Japan. You could increase the range contingent on investment in Heavy Bomber tech, so the two go together.

Then I would write a DE around the decision to launch the bombs. These DEs would fire once at least one bomb unit was deployed by the U.S. within a specific range of certain target hexes in Japan. You can write a variable condition script which only fires if a certain unit type is within a certain range of a given hex. The point of using a DE is – as you say – that will trigger the national morale impact on Japan which would be the main point of dropping the weapons. If you wanted to give the USA a reason to build more than one bomb, then you could have the DE fire every turn in which there is a bomb within range. Saying YES to the decision to launch the bomb could then be linked to unit script which would destroy the bomb unit after the USA decided to fire it. This would take some play-testing to make sure all the scripts work, but I believe this would be doable with the existing game engine.

Taken together, this set of decision events, tech investments, equipment purchases, and requirements to conquer a suitable launch position would more closely resemble what actually happened. It would also require forward planning by the Allies throughout the game. And it could set up a different decision-tree of choices if the Allies decided to forego building the bomb.

Thanks for posing this great modding challenge. Good luck!

Michael

[Nginear]

Thanks for posing this great modding challenge. Good luck!

Michael

Wow those are some great suggestions! I especially like the idea of a DE to choose the victory path (truthfully, I fear the devs' victory conditions may not transfer well to such a large map. I'm using theirs for now). That would add a great element of uncertainty to the game.
I don't have any tech slots left open (anti tank is already rolled into adv tank), except the shell production slot which is hard coded for some reason, so I can't use that. See pic above for all my tech changes.
However...
I am going to think about replacing the standard Armored Warfare slot with Nuke Tech like you suggested. As you stated, tanks only play a limited role and it's a one-and-done, which I never really cared for anyway.



IN OTHER NEWS
I finished porting over all the dev's scripts. Yay! I've gotten good at reading scripts, but many times I don't understand how they all tie in together, or why there are so many. Hopefully it all meshes well with this mod. Of course I have made some changes along the way, usually for more historical accuracy (such as eliminating the CCP --> China convoy. I can only find records stating how much they were not cooperating by 1941).

I mostly have unit placement and preproduction left, which I will borrow heavily from Elessar2's mod. Maybe I'll get this done before Christmas. That's my hope!

[BillRunacre]

Of course I have made some changes along the way, usually for more historical accuracy (such as eliminating the CCP --> China convoy. I can only find records stating how much they were not cooperating by 1941).

Indeed. It is a way to get around the fact that the USSR cannot have a convoy running directly to China, so the Allied player can if they wish, indirectly have them flow to China via the CCP - and while historically Soviet aid to China preceded the stage of the Second Sino-Japanese conflict represented here, it is not inconceivable that Stalin may have supported them again if the situation demanded it.

Of course, it is up to you whether or not you keep it, I just wanted players to have as much flexibility as possible there.