EaW: Total Realism v1.1 (gold)

[Athanasios]

Directly from EaW:Total Realism readme file:

 

EaW:Total Realism mod enhances Empire at War realism and gameplay features on Ground, Space and Galactic Campaign. It was developed for those that wished to lay down more strategies on the battlefield than amass an overwhelming "doom" force that eradicates everything in its pass.

 

Realism enhancements were based on real-life examples, such as armor penetration law and a talor-made "food chain" among several classes of units while Gameplay enhancements had as purpose to provide a challenging, real-time-strategy game by balancing all aspects of the game that contribute to this aim.

 

What would you expect to see from this mod?

 

 

Ground major modifications

 

• Ground camera pitch limits unlocked
  
• Enhanced laser graphics
  
• ATAT headmounted anti-air lasers enabled
  
• Regular infantry can no longer damage armored vehicles (penetration implemented)
  
• T4B's heavy lasers and missiles fire simultaneously
  
• T4B's special ability changed to "power to weapons"
  
• T4B has now shields
  
• Infiltrators and scout troopers can now use binoculars
  
• TIE Mauler has the "hunt for enemy" ability
  
• Repair Facilities can heal multiple units per cycle
  
• Repair Facilities heal faster and have wider repair ranges
  
• Rebel Repair Facility can repair damaged Snowspeeders
  
• Bacta Tanks can heal multiple units per cycle
  
• Bacta Tanks heal faster and have wider healing ranges
  
• Weather effects balanced
  
• Indigenous spawn units will not respawn after first kill
  

 

 

Space major modifications

 

• Mon Calamari Cruiser spawns 3 X-Wing and 1 Y-Wing squadrons
  
• MKII Assault Frigate spawns 2 A-Wing and 1 Y-Wing squadrons
  
• Nebulon-B Frigate spawns 2 Z-95 Headhunter squadrons
  
• Interdictor Cruiser spawns 2 TIE Fighter squadrons
  
• Interdictor Cruiser removed from Rebels
  
• Carrack Cruiser removed
  
• Torpedoe boat removed
  
• Tie Interceptor removed
  
• Repair Tenders removed
  
• TIE Fighter enhanced to come up for Rebel Capital ships' spawn squadrons
  
• Z-95 Headhunter can lure the enemy like the A-Wings
  
• X-Wings, A-Wings and TIE-Bombers have the "hunt for enemy" ability
  

 

• More than 330 tweaks and modifications on most .xml files in order to achieve balanced and challenging gameplay
  
• Detailed changelog .xls files containing all the editting done so that anyone can play with the values
  

 

 

Special credits must be given to (alphabetically):

- Adonnay , for his enhanced laser shots and ATAT headmounted cannon lasers activated

- MistenTH , for allowing using his "Realism v3.0 (gold)" mod as base for the space modification

- Slocket , for allowing using his "Ground Camera angle - unlocked" mod

 

Expect EaW:Total Realism to be uploaded later tomorow or on Thursday.

[Tom Servo]

Seems good but i have to ask, now that infantry cant damage vehicles, is there balance in the units? Is infantry more resistant to vehicles?

[Athanasios]

The penetration issue is not a simple, light-hearted "let's zero all infantry VS vehicle damage in gameconstants.xml", but way more complicated. In the final zipped file you can see that infantry does damage some vehicles (ie. Tie Mauler, T2B), but not like in EaW original (where infantry was an overpowered all-purpose unit). Vehicles that are completely immune to regular infantry damage is ATAT (0.0 damage) and T4B hull (shield can be taken down, 0.01 damage by regular infantry, 0.05 by infiltrators).

 

All the 330 tweaks/modifications had been extensively tested, but should any imbalance issue arise, a patch will be released as soon as possible.

 

[edit] By the way, to avoid misunderstandings, under the "regular" infantry term we mean: stormtroopers, rebel troopers, scout troopers (no bike), pirate troopers, rebel pilot and generally all the infantry that carries handheld blaster lasers. Plex troopers and infiltrators are not regarded as regular infantry.

[mandead]

Have re-scaled everything properly?

[Athanasios]

No scaling has been done in v1.0, since accuracies will be affected. Maybe in later versions.

[mandead]

lol, total realism, yet no scaling

[Athanasios]

Well, putting a 16klm ship in a 5klm map wouldn't be that realistic, would it?

 

Anyway, as said, detailed .xls files describe all the values changed and with the same thinking, anyone can edit the scaling too. Mind however that some scaling have side-effects too, so, it's not that simple as you may think.

[mandead]

I know it's not, but Adonnay and I have re-scaled stuff, and it looks a lot better. Still, looking forward to your mod

[Slocket]

Darth_Torpid stated somewhere that a larger scale causes the unit to have a larger hit collision area. I agree, I would not mess with the scaling for that reason.

[Orao]

Seems good but i have to ask, now that infantry cant damage vehicles, is there balance in the units? Is infantry more resistant to vehicles?[/Quote]

 

Hi,

 

As a co-maker of this mod (well at least a very litle part most of it goes to Athanasios) I can tell you that we based on the real life. Now in the RL you can't see any rifle team engaging the tank don't you ?

Well we have the same thing here. If you encounter the armor you need to bring in anti-armor infantry otherwise you will bite the dust. Ak-47 nor M-16 can't penetrate the armor of the tank or armored transport.

Now I klnow that this is the SW univers but let's think a litle bit. Why bothering making armored units if for the same cost you can build 10+ infatry squads which will destroy everything.

 

As for rescaling units well we still didn't touch it but as Slocked said it could mess the collision area which can result in the unit taking damming whereas the very same unit hass been missed by the projectile. We will experiment with this feature later.

[Tom Servo]

I agree on the scaling, even if you making everything look good, you still have different collition boxes to think about.

Talking about real life combat: You would have to also consider that vehicles have less visibility and their main gun can take a long time to reload. So if you nerf the infantry but leave the tanks as it is then i thought there would be a problem. But if you say you playtested i believe you.

[walpurgisng]

Did you use the Space Realism mod with this mod? I noticed you have removed several ships that misten added to his mod.

[Orao]

Yes we used Misthen's space realisme. But we removed fighters such as Tie-Interceptor because we don't have the 3D model yet. Same goes for Carack and torpedo gunship. Next thing we removed is the interdictor cruiser from rebels. That kind of cruiser was not used by rebels until the fall of the empire.

 

Now what we intend to do is not to make equal sides so that at the end we have 2 similar armies. Instead we rather try to make what the SW wanted to show us.

[walpurgisng]

What version of his mod did you use?

[Athanasios]

From the first message, in relevance to some space-modification questions...

 

 

Special credits must be given to (alphabetically):

- Adonnay , for his enhanced laser shots and ATAT headmounted cannon lasers activated

- MistenTH , for allowing using his "Realism v3.0 (gold)" mod as base for the space modification

- Slocket , for allowing using his "Ground Camera angle - unlocked" mod

 

 

@Tom Servo: All those 330 tweaks and modifications were not just damage tweaking. Turret rotate speeds, reload times, shield reload times, max movement speed, turn rotate speed and even thurst has been touched.....few to mentioned.

[walpurgisng]

See but did not read did I. Thank you.

[Somerled]

Good call on the armor penetration issue for ground combat. This is certainly an area that has been ignored by many mods, and should make the game much more strategic and enjoyable. Looking forward to trying it.

 

I would love to see the implementation of a greater diversity of ground unit squads (i.e. Storm Commando's, Wookies, Imperial Army Troopers) which seems like a viable option as the game stands now, even without new models (although new textures are probably necessary).

[Athanasios]

Well, as promised, i release the Empire at War: Total Realism v1.0 mod today, but with one small exception; the Autoresolve issue will not be fixed in this version. The reason is simply that it turned out to be way more complicated than i expected. To give you a numerical excample, Autoresolve ChangeLog.xls has more than 250 entries alone (boosting the whole tweak/modification numbers around up to 450), meaning that i will need more time to fix it correctly...and i expect these entries to get even more, since some (if not most) units have multiple autoresolve values in different .xmls.

 

However, there you go with v1.0 of EaW:TR mod . You can download it by clicking here, or, if your browser prevents pop-up windows, copy paste the entire link to a new window: ht*tp://users.auth.gr/~atsiolas/EaW Total Realism v1.0.rar (remove the * from http).

 

I'll try to upload this file both in LucaFiles and Gamesport, but i can't promise anything, so, i uploaded them to my personal university web storage.

 

As you'll read in the README file, since ill be working on the Autoresolve issue, any feedback is welcome in the meantime, so that the upcoming version will have as more fixes as possible (if any need for fixes arise).

 

I'd like again to give special thanks to Adonnay, MistenTH and Slocket for allowing us using their mods.

 

Hope you enjoy the EaW:TR mod and keep it slow with the tomotoes for my clumsy mistakes you might spot

[Tokakeke]

Lol, original name, this is like the 4th mod called "EaW Realism" or a variant.

 

Good luck with the mod though..

[Athanasios]

Yup, the title is not that inovative, but does the job . It's the only that describes the mod thoroughly.

[Orao]

Original name was knifeedge but it was lacking of explenation so we moved back to realism which actualy a mix of sta wars and real life realisme. Anyway we need you feedback on this mod. Thank you for trying it.

[magnus57]

Hey guys...great effort on the mod One thing from the beginning sticks out as needing to be addressed. Something needs to be done about the squash effect since rocket times seem to be slowed down. I propose either disabling squash altogether with the exception of the AT AT or slowing down squash capable units.

[Athanasios]

magnus, if you look into the .xls file you'll see that TIE Mauler speed was a bit reduced to avoid AI's tactic "let's toast all the infantry" , while Plex Troops' and MPTL's reload times were also reduced, due to being overpowered, giving the enemy a chance of getting close to them before turning into dust (artilleries and antivehicle infantry must be protected). Yet, for the squash effect you're talking about, we did have it in mind and what we're trying to implement in the next version is the SPRINT ability for all infantry (adjusting the speed for each unit).

 

Disabling the squash ability of Mauler (that's the only unit that pissed us off with its squash tactic), was excluded from beginning since it's a tank and it can smash some infantry. In comparison with the other tweaks (mauler speed/armor vs infantry), it's quite balanced, however the sprint ability should add even more tactical battle.

[Athanasios]

Some issues reported in the PFF forums...

-----------------------------------------

 

 

The AI still spreads like wildfire and spawns stations/buildings/garrisons/fleets in violation of the rules. (ie: within a few days of the start of the GC the AI has taken over and fortified every single unclaimed planet.)

This is because AI does not respects the Pop Cap limit and in hard mode, it will cheat in every way. Since we can't access .LUA files, we hope that the AI will be fixed by the upcoming patch

 

As Emp I couldn't build Interdictors.

In skirmish they are definitely buildable, yet, we might have editted (by mistake) a value for GC, when we removed it from Rebels. Are you sure you advanced to the required level to build them?

 

T4 tanks are overpowered. They're fast, heavily armored, shielded, and good against everything up to and including AT-AT. Just about the only two ways to combat them were Veers (all power to weapons!) and Vader (crush!) though I suspect Force Corrupt would have worked as well. I used my t4's (on unit, two tanks) several times to rush the base and take out the shield generator. They couldn't stop me.

We intended to make T4B tanks powerfull, since they are the last unit Rebels get in Tech 4. One ATAT can take two T4B (even three if the short-lasting "power to weapons" is not activated). Also, 4 M2 Repulsors can destroy 2 T4B of the company of 3. Their shield was intended to be used as to handle ONLY the first shots, before they get in the heat of battle, no like T2B and M2 shields that are vital for them to survive.

 

Yet, we can slow them down a bit (if you see the changelog we increased their speed in an extremely small amount), throw down a bit more their shields and powerup ATAT and M2 tanks. We're also planning to implement Veers ability to all ATAT (with less firepower).

 

I repeat however that T4B are meant to be the "all-purpose" tank of Rebellion, it's what they finally get, it's nothing against an ATAT (1v1 combat) and must be worth of its credits. It's the same case when you attack a planet with ATATs and a reasonable backing up force; if the defender has only T2B to defend, well, what does he expects to be the outcome of the battle?

 

There's something wrong with one of Home One's hardpoints. Durring two separate battles, I could not destroy the Hero ship. I would end up with one Turbolaser hardpoint left and even with 5 squads of bombers and Piet with his energy beam I couldn't bring it down from 100%. By either letting the Home One retreat (turn off my gravity well generator) or using auto-resolve once that one hardpoint was all that was left, the Home One would be "lost" after the battle ended.

Fixed. Thanks

 

Was it indended that the rebel ships (with the exception of Home One) have invisible docking bay hardpoints?

Well, not exactly. If you look into the .xls file Mon Cal (including Home One version), MKII, Nebulon-B and Interdictor have gained hangars that spawn and carry different types and amount of squadrons. The invisible hangars are due to the code programming used to implement hangars to ships that, by default, have no hangar textures. Yes, it doesn't look the best it could be, but we must texture some hangars and this takes up more time. Maybe in the next (or later) version.

 

Frigate MKII are CRAZY. I'd rather face down two mon-cals than one Frigate MKII.

Heh, same with T4B issue, since MKII are what Rebs get before they gain access to Mon Cals and while imps gets Victory class. Yet, we'll slower down their shields and this should do

 

Btw, we really appreciate such feeback! Seriously, keep posting such imbalance/bug issues, so that in the upcoming version (by Monday i hope) everything is solved.

[Athanasios]

A patch will be released later tomorow, including all the issues reported fixed plus some additions. For those however that can handle .xml editting (concerning the Home One issue):

 

1. Open Hardpoints.xml

2. Get in Home One's <HardPoint Name="HP_HomeOne_IC_Fighter_Bay">

3. The 2nd and 3rd lines

 

<Is_Targetable>Yes</Is_Targetable>

<Is_Destroyable>Yes</Is_Destroyable>

 

must be set to: No

 

Hope this helps