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tofudog

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  1. Hello again, I started another game and when I came to Castle Linden I was mightily surprised: Except for a crash when mopping up the first bandit wave everything worked perfectly - even Sting was back in the game and shot herself some zombies! Just wanted to let you know. Would it be possible to link the quality of weapons to the engineering skill? Like in: Buy a dozen surplus rifles, strip them down and assess the parts. Then build one perfectly functional gun from all the stuff that was still good. But maybe that is more trouble to implement than it is worth for the game and you can just leave that out and assume it is done behind the scenes (reflected in the prices and no low quality guns for purchase - if I buy it, it better be in good condition). Have a nice day
  2. Shiny happy modding! Blunter is back, the big bad real life monster is tamed (for now) and we can return to - as Campino and the Toten Hosen sang: "Komm mit uns, verschwende Deine Zeit!" (Come with us, waste your time!). I just love those little screenshots! Rocco forgot the marshmallows, what a tool! Even if you did not really work on any mod and just made up those scenes I would come back to see what our "heroes" had gotten themselves into now. Btw. Dani Kunstler is totally underrepresented. Here's why: It was in my very first playthrough of the original SS2 campaign, in that mission when you have to infiltrate a russian base, bureau or something in Siberia while TH enter from the other side. I decided to try opening a locked door with a big ol' Rpg 40 and ended up taking out the door, some walls and a lot of floor too. So I am standing there, feeling right stupid, staring at a gaping expanse of nothing, when into the stunned silence Dani chirps: "Do you feel better about your mother now?" To me this remains one of the absolute highlights of over 30 years of gaming. I have NEVER ever felt so owned by a piece of code. Thrud's Sword? As in: Thrud the barbarian, from White Dwarf Magazine? Nice touch. Has the name of Toby's gun been finalized yet? If I recall correctly, Patrick Pearse, the commander of the Irish Volunteers, was using a Webley Revolver during the 1916 Uprising against the English. Would be just the kind of thing Holly would hold onto, if she could get her hands on it. So I propose to christen the gun "Claidheamh Soluis" (Sword of Light) after the newspaper of the Gaelic Revival, that Pearse edited. My 2 cents on ammunition, pistols and economy: Pistols: H&S introduced an inventory weight system, which made the pistol a viable choice of sidearm for lower strength characters. From my point of view nobody who could pack an SMG would bother with a pistol. The SMG is almost as agile, longer ranged, higher damage (both due to a longer barrel on the same ammo) and vastly superior in rate of fire. So - to me - it is either introduce an encumbrance limit a la H&S or live with the inferiority of pistols. Maybe (very maybe(very, very, very maybe in fact)) make them the only silencable firearms. As far as I know, in this period pistols among combat personnel were restricted to officers and vehicle crews anyway. Ammunition: Hollow points were forbidden for war use by the 1899 Hague Convention, explosive projectiles under 400 grams were forbidden even earlier in the 1868 St. Petersburg Declaration (interesting point there: small charges that are only sufficient to kill or maim a single man got banned, because normal bullets were up to the job and were deemed far less likely to cause excessive suffering, while large charges were, for the achievement of military objectives, considered too useful to ban). Civilian use of hollow points continues because of the lower risk to bystanders, due to the low penetration of the bullets and in hunting because of the damage potential of HPs (and anyway a hunter is supposed to only shoot when a kill is guaranteed - couldn't be further from a military situation). So my standpoint is: no extra ammunition types, except "because I can" showoff single finds - in reality the vast majority of eg. mauser bullets were the standard variety too, with the bulk of the rest being tracers and AP. Explosive Mauser rounds were, as far as I have found out only issued to snipers and only on the eastern front - they had to turn in any remaining explosive bullets, when being transferred to any other theater (Stalin had renounced all "rules of war"-kind of agreements that czarist russia had entered into and german use of explosive bullets was strictly to retaliate against use of explosive bullets by russian snipers(which happened because Hitler refused the one-on-one regulation Russia tried to implement (and those things were not standard issue for russian snipers either, but salvage from aircraft guns)). In any other theater of war their use would have been another war-crime.) And yes, I know that legality is kind of an odd point to raise in a black ops environment (though an engagement in which illegal ordnance was used might draw another level of attention than an ordinary shootout, so this might be a mission-specific restriction(hint, hint)). The "game" justification is, that you have rocket launchers and handgrenades, which are kind of obsoleted by explosive bullets. Economy: Whatever. I couldn't care less. Which is not true, or else I wouldn't be writing this. I liked the quartermaster-economy of SS2. You were not forced to loot and squeeze stuff into every last square of everybodies inventory, you could pick up a Luger or another iconic piece as a memento and that was that. No hassle, free ammo for everyone and get on with the game. Furthermore I consider grenades to be too long-ranged currently. Have I said that I am happy this mod is alive again?
  3. Hope dies last. The OP posted here in September ´14, so his blogspot is more outdated To recap: Modding this game requires a full Windows XP environment (Something I myself don´t have). Compatibility mode is not enough. From what I have been reading in this thread this mod was a labor of love, until something happened in RL. If somebody who knew their stuff took over (to build on the shoulders of a giant, so to speak) and took this in their own direction, I highly doubt that Blunter would disagree. I can only hope that he and his family are alive and well, and maybe someday soon we will hear from them.
  4. Ah yes, the Linden encounter... I noticed lots of new crashes as well. My intuition says, that the "lost weapon" critical effect might be involved with this - the crashes never happened before this effect was up and maybe the control script (we can't have 2 instances of the superguns, now can we?) gets in the way of something else. But of course intuition is not a replacement for proper error search and destroy . Maybe Windows 8 has its dirty fingers in the cake too. Sting still has her blonde moments and is forgetting to actually pull the trigger while mooning at those handsome Ubermenschen in her scope... Currently I would advise against playing that encounter, which is a sad thing, as the balance seems to be much better and keeping Bruiser or Dust alive is not guaranteed anymore. @Gustav-I: Another case of "You cannot make everyone happy" - You seem to favor a more generalistic approach, which at its extreme end boils down to a single class with a single big perk tree and player choice be the main form-factor for the characters, while I would like to keep these very distinct specialties with emphasis on giving each of them more of a reason to be. Like making the grenadier class actually viable for example. As it is now I get the feeling that my medics are sniping just fine. Edit: just been having a look at Sui Generis/Exanima - thanks for that info, if it continues growing like this it might become everything that Skyrim was not. It also seems that I may have missed the chance to become a backer, as Exanima is already released and the "contributions" page is down.
  5. Hello everybody, I might have a recommendation or two to tide you over the time until 2.5 hits the net. The first one is 'Shadowrun - Dragonfall' by a company called "Harebrained Schemes" and is very, very storyheavy. I found the characters well thought out and believable [no there are no romance options :,) - would not fit the story in this one]. For those who don't know Shadowrun - it is originally a PnP fantasy-cyberpunk alternate dystopian near-future crossover roleplaying game which had (or still has?) a big following and thus a very rich background. Play this, it will not insult your brain. Though it has an editor to go with it, sadly it does not feature destructible environment, which is my only (semi-) quibble. The other one is Divinity - Original Sin. Once I got over the title I found a pretty upbeat straight fantasy RPG, which has only a single fault: It ends. This too comes with an editor, and if it had received just a fraction of the attention DA-Inquisition (which it blows straight out of the water - not that hard btw) now gets there would be a lot of stories growing for it right now. Somewhat comparable to Neverwinter Nights in its overall outlook, but better in every respect. I don't mean to highjack this thread, but as long as the main mod is quasi-dormant we might as well do a round of "What are you playing today?", no?
  6. Ah, so I have been a bit harsh in my yesterday post. Sorry about that. I know, that I like to refer back to the real world for reference about how I want the game to handle its mechanics, so it is not that far off to assume that others do that too - and are vocal about it. But the fact remains, that this game just is not up to certain things. A lot of them. Refer to the "suppressive fire" discussion, or the shotgun discussion, or the flamethrower discussion (not sure if we had that one yet, might be high time to kick it off). I remember the answer Blunter gave me, when I came up with a crazy idea for a mission/questline: Give me a concise script/screenplay and I will consider it. I found that pretty generous and it might be the lead-in for coming up with fan-based missions - kicking around scripts in this thread until they are ready to be set up in the game. So let me start: miniquestline: Gib dem Opi Opium, denn Opium haut den Opi um. (Give opium to granddad, because opium knocks granddad flat - it only works in german) tracking the missing opium shipments to amsterdams harbour, the heroes are setting up a meeting with the current suppliers, to find out what´s wrong. When they arrive at the warehouse, they hear three gunshots. Barging in to investigate, they find themselves in a standoff with a gangstercrew (smgs and pistols for urban gang warfare). On the ground, the three emissaries. Dead. Now we have the option to either open fire (being - hopefully - better armed than the opposition) or negotiate a new deal with the gangsters who obviously have taken over. The new deal would be a rotten one, with double the usual prices to be paid. This would not result in a discount from nurse, but it would end the questline nevertheless. Withdrawing after refusal would result in the gangsters opening fire (they are so flush with victory, that they do not take our heroes seriously. Last mistake.) Either way, after the gunfight our heroes find the address of one Abdullah ibn Ibrahim, trader of opium in eastern turkey, also known as kurdistan. Negotiating a deal with ibn Ibrahim, who is freshly out of his european retail service would involve the assassination of a competitor of his and secure the sentinels a steady source of income (financing clandestine operations with drug-money is a practice that would later be imitated to great effect by honoraries like the CIA). That is my rough expose. Depending on how you play it there are zero or at least two gunfights (in the warehouse, depending on your actions you get first or second move, on the assassination mission you go first (if you are not discovered by Ali ben Gator´s numerous guards, armed with sabres and antique muskets (and a penetrating smell of dromedary))) - maybe a random encounter or five in the desert.
  7. Once again so very much has happened since last I dropped in to loose my 2 cents. Jack Churchill is indeed quite a find - and quite a handful too, when you consider that he was a married man and quite newlywed in the timeframe of some of his craziest antics (some women like facial scars, most of them are Krogan, mind you - G. Vakarian). Is there somebody on this thread who can do a convincing highland accent (or who knows someone who can do it)? I think that the current debate about arms-dealer and placed explosives is one of history vs. game mechanics. In the real world mobile patrols would interfer with setting up dets, the package would be spotted and whatever you can think of. Go play Far Cry or something in that league - The S3 artificial idiot just is not up to the challenge, so the playing field needs to be levelled for it. I personally don´t mind having limited remote bombs. Also this cuts both ways - just imagine what you would say about being on the receiving end of a defensive setup with remotes. Then there are the weapons - either we agree about tiered guns or we don´t. A real Mauser bullet is just as deadly as a Springfield round, just to name two of them. The prices for these weapons are completely arbitrary and yes, they offend my sensibility too, but so what? It works for the game. S3 gives us a tier system in which the russian guns are the deadliest - so what? I could live with that in vanilla. Before this turns into a rant I conclude that I find this discussion a bit fruitless. I also remember taking part in it, the last time this crept up, so I am not blameless either. Let´s return to discussing our new careers as drug-dealers(opium). Does S3 have jungle textures? If not, maybe a mission to kurdistan with its desert/mountain terrain might be in order, if we wanted to go to the source. Holidays of a mercenary... Is it feasible to get together something quasi-arab for the opposition to wear? Have a nice time tofudog
  8. @uranium and mac (and everybody else who has that problem): This is annoying, but not caused by this mod, I had that happening in vanilla too. When you reload something ingame, there is a chance that the program does not fully load and your perks don´t take effect. There is a workaround, though: You save the game, return to desktop and load your save anew (luckily this is an old game which loads right quick even on my shoddy machine). About 99% of cases your toons will enjoy their true capabilities now. As the problem has not been reported before, I guess it is something Windows 7 and up are doing (or is so common, that nobody has thought it worth commenting to). To the old hands: I dropped of the net and am still catching up on what happened in the thread. I especially like Dimovskis posts - nothing like a good history lesson while modding a game .
  9. Hello everybody, first off - nice travelogue. Makes the journey of Blunter and family somehow more real. I have been thinking about grenades and their place in the scheme of the S3 reality. There is a lot that doesn´t really fit so maybe somebody else has an idea to make it all come together. The weapon ranges in S3 are all shortened, and on a curve on top of that. Machineguns and rifles are somewhere between 1:15 and 1:20 (rough estimates, but accurate enough to illustrate my point), with machineguns having it a tad worse (if you take performance from the prone position - hip firing is hollywood). Submachineguns are somewhere around 1:10, pistols come in around 1:4 or 1:5, and grenades actually have it best - even in vanilla you would be hard pressed to argue a shortening beyond 1:3, with 1:2 being a more likely candidate. And still it feels completely the other way round. Using medium and heavy grenades in Vanilla (I accept that point) is a near suicidal act of desperation for anybody but grenadiers and for them it is a gamble which most of the time hurts the opposition worse than himself. Welcome to the war. The more I read about grenade specifications, the more I am convinced, that this is pretty accurate. S3 just compunds the problem, because it is missing specific mechanics for grenades going off early, being thrown back by an alert enemy, being used by a comrade while you are in the open and on hearing "Frag out!" you can only hit the dirt and pray (same as the intended targets of it) - wounding radius 30m (estimate), killing radius 5m(the 36m, or "mills bomb"). If you think of that, S3 vanilla grenades are actually pretty tame. And still, rational civilians that we are (that I at least am), we tend to stear clear of them, because we are strangers to the suicidal courage, that desperate men in desperate straits develop. Drone warfare has given us the illusion that where is such a thing as a "safe" way to conduct a war. So after considering all of this, I vote for something that is not as punishing as vanilla grenades, yet not as easy as the current system. P.S. I got done with Linden. The crash did not return and Sting (wonder of wonders) found her trigger finger (stuck in her ass I assume). She fired a whopping total of 2 shots. At least both were kills. With the different formation I used for the zombie waves they were even manageable, so I think it is about right now (if sting continues to be a primadonna). Now I am stuck in Seefeld and I have a problem with invisible grenadiers that make the station building indefensible. Tricky thing . have a nice weekend everybody. tofudog.
  10. Hej Blunter, as you reacted so positively to my grenade-wishes, I thought it would be worthwhile to do some actual research into the real world (or at least its wiki-based approximation). So far I have indeed found three tiers of grenades. The 200gram Breda/SRCM.35 (the Breda was replaced by the SRCM in the italian army) as light class (up to 300g for the Mk3A1), the 500-800gram (F1: 570, M24 and Mk2:595, 36M: 765) range as mediums and the 1.2-1.4 kg class as heavies (PWM, RPG series). I have not checked every individual grenade, but asof now I am reasonably sure, that Nival did their homework, concerning the weights. The bulk is something else entirely. The wikipedia explicitly states, that the M24 with its wooden handle could be thrown a lot farther than its round counterparts, but due to its bulk fewer of them could be carried by a single soldier. So for fine-tuning maybe the M24 ought to retain light status, but it should be at least as big as the other mediums. Same goes for the PWM, which was the same size as its russian counterparts. As S3 lacks a mechanic for "throw and cover" there is no point in even attempting to model the real effect of a handgrenade. But nevertheless, here are some numbers and facts I have come across, which might convince you to rethink grenades: The grooves on the outside do NOT aid fragmentation. Post-war grenades have grooves on the inside. Those actually do aid fragmentation. Grooves on the outside only improve grip while throwing - which is not half bad actually. Fuse time varied from one grenade to the next - you could never be entirely sure when your bomb would go off. Even today, the marine handbook advises against "cooking off". WW2 vintage frag grenades could not be safely thrown without some cover for yourself and your comrades - the official US-army style grenade-throw is accompanied by a loud yell of: "Frag out!" for this reason. The only numbers I found are those for the modern M67 grenade: wounding radius 15 meter "half that of older style grenades". Concussion grenades are a different proposition altogether. We know the story: no heavy fragmentation casing. But that still leaves a certain risk of encountering minor parts, that are projected up to 200 meters (same as frags). Granted, the risk is low, but shit happens. The heavies then were real tricky beasts. Except the RPG 40 (which essentially was just a 1.2 kg thrown bomb (trust a russian to make it simple and strong)) they were shaped charges and had to hit their target as close as possible to 90 gegrees and hard enough to ignite them (watch it here, we are dealing with impact triggers again). Which was no easy task in the heat of battle, even with all the tricks from fins to teensy dragging parachutes that were used to make the grenadiers life easier. In normal circumstances, these weapons were only issued to specially trained troops as a result. And to Strafbattallions. The Japanese took that concept to its extreme, with a pole-mounted warhead, which was delivered just like an ancient spear-charge, running into the target. This warhead was even stronger than its thrown counterpart and virtually guaranteed a tank kill. It also utterly annihilated its user. Returning to the S3 version of reality, vanilla conveys that feel of high-risk, high-reward that comes with using grenades. With throwing ranges of about up to 15 meters for the 36m, or 24 meters for the M24 (another source says 50% more than the 36m, which would be 22 meters) you are at 1/3 to 1/2 of effective pistol range (50 meters), which is pretty much at your feet, given the reduction in range that the pistol went through. And yes, I too never considered a grenadier for main hero, you may know why . Small correction: Scouts have the throw-cost reduction too. In their case it applies to ANY thrown weapon. My playthrough of 2.4 is currently stalled, because I had a crash just after killing the bandit boss (Linden map) and I have yet to man up enough to replay the scenario. This crash was my first ever, when playing Sentinels, so I thought I´d report it, in case it was 2.4 related - no further evidence yet. But the changes you did! Wow. This map just has become dangerous. Dani was running back and forth between Dust and Bruiser, because they would not duck. While the others were just desperately picking off the closest enemies. Had I not waited for "every hit is critical", I guess they would have swamped me. As it was Zinaida with her submachinegun was my saving grace on the zombie waves through numerous "AP-reduction" hits. Also Sting did not fire even a single shot. She sometimes remarked about an enemy she saw, but no action beyond that. None whatsoever. I expected, that taking Danilov alive would throw a wrench in your plot, but still - at that point with the things I don´t know at the time, detaining him is (for me) the only real option. Closing todays wall of text you might want to visit youtube searching for Lahti L39 - which was a homebrewed finnish 20mm anti-tank gun, different versions of it under 50 kg, so if you ever find a way to import models, this would be my current favorite candidate. Have a nice day (for me its time to go to bed) tofudog
  11. Thank you for the information about vanilla behaviour, Blunter. About grenades. There are acually two wishes I have. The first one is PK-related and something I would really like to see. The vanilla-heavy grenades were dedicated anti-tank weapons in the real world, so I would like to see greatly increased penetration to do justice to a bomb that was designed to knock out a full size tank. Acompanying this would be a slight increase in damage and a decrease in blast radius (shaped charges anyone?). Well, and the original throwing range would need to come back to retain a fighting chance for the PK. That is related to my second wish, which relates to the plight of a grenadier - namely the superfluousness of the class. In vanilla the grenadier had his spot as the class to use medium grenades on a regular basis and replacing him was a real decision. Now anyone can grenade effectively and the already tenuous effectivity of the class dropped to zero. Other classes contribute just so much more to the team, that the exchange of the grenadier for say a second sniper or soldier is a total no-brainer. This is why I would like to see the return of the medium grenade. Concluding I´d like to add that I read the original posts about the introduction of your new system, so I know you are working with limitations and as I remember the thread I am probably the only one who liked the harsh vanilla feel, so I will be content if you leave the grenades as they are now and concentrate on other good stuffs. That won´t keep me from bringing this up from time to time, but now you know what I mean. By now I have played the first mission and (as was to be expected) I have a few remarks. When Vera says "pushed into the river" that struck me as odd. I would have expected thrown or dumped, but that may be my limited english, so nothing important. When the comrade Lt.Colonel lights his cigarette he only goes through the motions, but no actual cig shows up - is this related to Hollywood´s anti-smoking campaign, wherein they retroactively cut scenes that show the hero smoking or drinking? The pub is a great map for the kind of fight that takes place, lots of corners, the open hall in the center, the lone smuggler´s sniper in the bushes. It shows how much you enjoy setting this up. After the three way fight (which was not so much difficult, but terribly anxious - At first I did not dare shoot much at the Grimm Bandits, because they were all that kept Danilov alive during the smuggler´s onslaught. Well done.), when I interrogate Danilov he says: "You heard Linz...". How does he know? At that time I am still hidden in the darkness on the other side of the road. Along comes my real gripe: In the outcome my decision as an independent operator would be to detain the couple and drop the harsh decisions in Mikhalev´s lap. Precisely because nothing is certain and everything is different from what it looks at that point I would keep them both alive and within my grasp, after all I have them in my power already - no reason to do something as rash as letting them go or killing them. Changing this might throw a major wrench into the plot as it currently is (I did not read too much of it yet), but I think it needs to be changed. Maybe there are ways to bring the plot back on track after this. The phone call in the cut scene is a nice touch . My thoughts on Bernau were in the direction of a random encounter (save an ex-nazi, now good communist functionary from abduction by vicious israelis?), but a find like that surely could be turned into a full twist, if you so desire. That´s all for now. Expect more as I play the other missions one at a time. tofudog
  12. Hello everybody, can I express in words, how happy I am, that this awesome mod just got a few dimensions awesommer? (for non-german speakers: awe-summer - oh how clever I am ) . Because I did not know the Berlin-Brandenburg area for timber-frame construction before, I just read up the wikipedia on Bernau, and indeed it has them in ample supply. But it gets better: The Waldsiedlung (residential area in the woods) in Bernau was one of the places where the leadership of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED) was living secluded from the general populace. As the mod takes place in the very beginning days of the GDR, not all the measures of security would be in place yet. But a heavy presence of various security or intelligence elements surely would... you did not get that from me. The other places mentioned before did not turn up quite such earthshaking revelations, but Köpenick formerly known as Kopanica (old slavonic name, before 800), then Kopanic, then Cöpenick and only as of 1931 with its current spelling made me think, that this could be useful to differentiate various sources. So let american/british documents use Kopernick, or Mugglesheim or whatever and others... other names. If I say pretty please, you Okim, might even be persuaded to dig up the russian versions. Might you? Oh, and I have been playing a little 2.4. The extended hearing range makes for much more interesting firefights. That is definitely a keeper. I will continue to bitch about the grenade ranges though . Now if someone found a way to make those submachinegunners actually charge to within effective range for their weapons (or replace them with riflemen on open ground (the missile guidance thing-mission for instance)). They are wasting MY PRECIOUS LOOT, shooting from rifle range . Everybody have a nice weekend. tofudog
  13. @Dimovski: Don´t worry, the play was written sometime in the 20´s and I would never have known it if it were not mandatory reading in literature class. And a surprisingly entertaining read it was. Full recommendation if you are at all interested in theater or literature.
  14. Hello and welcome back Blunter, we were missing you in a good way if I may say so. You have my sympathy for your loss. Also you leave me speechless for all the goodies you have planned in 2.4. Some small observations: Zepernick, Bernau and Wansdorf are the same in german - Muggleheim (very HarryPotteresque ) would be Müggelheim (or Mueggelheim if you don´t have the Umlaute for true german spelling) and Kopernick would be Köpenick (or Koepenick) which is a famous town in germany, because of Carl Zuckmayers theater piece "Der Hauptmann von Köpenick". Keep it up Walter
  15. Hello again, in the days since my last post I had a few additional ideas I would like to share. On the logistics side I found it hard to organize airborne retrieval of the PK if you do not expect to hold the field after the battle - which would be the standard situation in hit-and-run raids. So even if you chuted the Mech in, you would have to get it out on the ground, or you would destroy it to enable a stealthy getaway by your troops. On the scenario side - how about this: Mission: Saving Private Panzerklein. An airborne PK operation has gone horribly wrong and now a crucial piece of machinery is in enemy hands. Our heroes are called upon to make things right - which means to recover the disassembled PK from bandit (or whoever) hands before they figure out how to actually make use of the machine. This might be the introduction to the world of PKs for our heroes, who would not know such a thing existed. The usual reason would be: You are in the area and we have to act faster than we can bring in regular commandoes, so in spite of your non-existant security clearance, we are sending you.
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