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(Note: this is only for Silent Storm: Sentinels) All right folks, I am going to attempt to make a modification that allows players to buy any uniform (whether existing or only in model form) from the seller at the Sentinel base from the very beginning (as soon as you get access to his stock). Since the uniforms are separate items in S^3 as compared to S^2 where they were simple models - they need to be created first. I'll try to keep the mod light (sizewise) so only the textures and materials available in the game will be used for v 1.0 of the mod. After Lt. Havoc contacted me I started messing around with some of the uniforms today, here are the results: ____________________________________ Remember the "Manor" special encounter from S^2 where the fabled "Sea Devil" rifle was located. It had German and Italian troops in the area. Since Italian models are still in the game, I decided to make them fully usable. Italian Uniforms Done! ___________________________________ Another special encounter "Road Bend" with Katana had Japanese troops and a bunch of "Ninjas". Now one can dress like them. Japanese Uniforms Done! ___________________________________ If you desire to serve some drinks or repair a few Panzerkleins why not dress appropriately. Bartender and EBase PK technician Done! (to be continued) ~Blunter~

A happy new year everybody, I take full blame for not reading the whole thread before commenting on balance . And as far as I understand warfare the deadliness of real life guns has lead to the tactical implication that he who hits first will live, while the other one will not. No matter if the caliber was a lowly .303 or a mighty 7.62x54R (did anybody else notice how it is russian guns that hit the hardest in this game?). Though I share in the sentiment, that it makes for a more exciting game if you have to hit the other guy A LOT until he quits and you can progress through stages that make it increasingly easy to do so. Maybe a layout of that progression and the place of everything within it might help clear things up. A small update or several: 1) A few months ago a helpful zombie has uploaded the editor to this forum. I am installing sql on my main machine as I type this. Finally I can put my big foot where it belongs: In my big mouth . Truth be told: I would have believed you if you told me LUA was a malayan fish-dish 5 days ago. 2) Disclaimer: This shall in no way be construed as implying that Blunter and the crew of this mod are anything but completely awesome in what they are doing here. This is just an attempt to share my experience using the fruit of their labors. I was curious about my feeling, so I reran castle Linden, doing nothing. I just sat my group in the living room, and guess what happened: The Dust group (aka gun turrets)did take care of everything. I only had to intervene twice, when some bad guys were camping in blind spots. Case 1: There is a kink in the palisade on the west side, just before the stairs up to bruiser´s post. That position is blind to all of the gun turrets. And this is where one zombie parked, holding up the whole goddamn war. Case 2: The southeastern corner has a comfortable place for three bandits to take cover, which is what they did, only moving to their shallow graves when I submachinegunned them. Also: this very piece of wall has room for 1 figure to be on it, which is bad for the zombies, as they cannot get up, but they still try to, comfortably being mowed down by whoever is slinging his gun up there (Dani with her bigass Sauer comes to mind IF somebody tosses her spare ammo). Apart from that I did NOTHING, through the whole siege. The PK never even got into Bruiser´s arc of fire. Dust took him alone. Even the Tesla team (who have relatively human stats right now) were relatively unscathed in the end. 3) If I am boring you with tech, please don´t read the following paragraph. I still think that a cable is way too mundane for Compton´s needs. If you really want to transfer a shitload of current from a to b, you can just steal a piece of railtrack and weld it in place - its sliceplane is large enough that the inferior conductivity of iron vs copper (1:6, meaning copper is 6 times better or iron has to be 6 times bigger to be as good) does not matter. If you are a snob about conductivity you would use a silver cable anyway (~5% gain on copper). However, there are other devices that I would think of. If I was the mechanic in charge of setting up a device to produce powerful electric pulses the result would be something like this: A mobile generator or three (what is available? How much power do you want? Chaining is always an option), because it does not interfere with regular operations. Your typical mobile generator is powered by a truck-engine and it delivers AC-power. The engine of an M3 halftrack would by my best estimate throw ~70 kw in generator mode. A capacitor (or a bank of capacitors, if you cannot find a single one to suit your needs) is dependent on DC-power for its operation, so you would first need a transformer to give your power the desired Voltage, then a rectifier to convert it, then the capacitor bank and finally a bigass contactor to release the pulse. The transformer would need to be custom built, as it needs a specific relation of threads on the input and output sides. If you have a machine shop (the armory of a special forces base would be sufficient) you can do this yourself. For raw materials you would need one or more kilometers of basic cable and a solid iron core. A low power (everything is relative) rectifier is used for consumable electrode arc-welding, so you could cannibalize a number of welders (using portable machines about 20 would be sufficient) and set them up in parallel. Or you could find yourself 4 titanic diodes and voila - instant rectifier. The last piece is the contactor, which can not be synchronized from smaller pieces and thus must be a single device. From that grocery list I think the piece most likely to be troublesome to find would be the contactor. Diodes would be nice, as a bank of ~20 small rectifiers (IF the power from a single truck is enough) is a bit cumbersome. Assuming you could not find a contactor on the open market, you would have to take one from a power station (don´t be shy, take the main circuit breaker from the installation - in itself only barely portable, I would guess, but as our heroes are capable of lugging around a solothurn AT-weapon this should be no trouble). If you would also want to hide what you have taken you would also have to blow up the whole installation and either fake an accident or plant evidence to blame a convenient scapegoat. As a side-effect you might have to have your conscience overlook what effect that loss of power has on the civilian populace of the area. Sketch of the mission: Steal the main switch, plant evidence blaming Die Wölfe (anything to diminish popular support for their cause is good). Blow it up. Thank the Heavens it was just a coal powered installation and not a nuclear one. What did we learn today, Children? asks He-Man Adam. Yes, correct. Only those who get blamed in the end are terrorists, the others are just unsung heroes, doing what is necessary for the greater good. Now for the oscillograph. Oscilloscopes were introduced in the thirties, but the familiar device with vertical and horizontal calibration was introduced commercially in 1946, if wiki does not fail me. Their use is in visually showing waveforms (rhythms) of fluctuating energy. Like the reflections of a radar wave. I understand how Compton would want such a device to study how the sphere reacted to different patterns of stimulation. The obvious path to get one would be anywhere a radar is. That should yield a long list of targets, almost all of them military in nature. But what if a clandestine group used a radar base, say for timing smuggling flights to avoid air-patrols? Smugglers would object to handing over their precious technology, if the heroes are lucky, gunslingingly so. But they would not go running to the authorities if their objections were overruled - which is what makes them a target. And if you can confiscate some pirated copies of Windows 48 while you are at it, so much the better. If you are bored by tech, you can switch back on HERE. 4) The installation has finished, now I have to figure out how to make the MSSQLSERVER service available to the editor. Life never gets boring. This has - once again - gotten longer than intended. Now I just hope that some of it has been useful to somebody and take my leave. Bye.

About a week ago I fired up HoI2 to get back into my Italy game... Unfortunately, the few minor flaws that the game has quickly killed the mood. So next I looked into Iron Cross just to see what all it offered, changed, etc., but it appears to have been released a bit buggy and poorly translated... And that's when I decided to give AoD a look. It doesn't add much in terms of content, so basically it's just appears to be HoI2 with tweaked or enhanced game mechanics and AI. I don't like the idea of spending another $20 for a game that I more or less already own, but what the hell, maybe it'll fix some of the flaws that've nagged at me. I haven't had much time to play around with this yet, so let's hope it was a worthy investment... The new content of AoD is in the form of over a dozen new technologies (most are in the industrial tree), new tech teams galore, and some new brigades and attachments (naval units get much needed love here). Republican Spain, 1936. Normal AI Difficulty and Aggression. http://i784.photobucket.com/albums/yy123/Kaije3/AoD/SPR001.png First thing I notice is that my starting IC is a little different than it was in HoI2, the same applies for most of the other nations. This is due to a game mechanic change, base IC and resource production are now modified by partisan activity, infrastructure, and terrain. Less than spectacular infrastructure combined with 30% dissent makes for an inefficient Spain. Swell. Oh well, at least I'm not playing as Nat. China because they're screwed. Diplomacy Tab http://i784.photobucket.com/albums/yy123/Kaije3/AoD/SPR002.png Time to sort out my ministers and political sliders. Oh, and to check out my National Identity, Social Policy, and Culture. These provide various bonuses and penalities similar to ministers, can be changed, but I have very limited options to choose from - based on my political ideology. Here I switched my culture from Conformist to Individual Enterprise which gives small bonuses to Industrial Research and IC, but requires an extra 10% belligerence for me to DoW. And of course changing this gave me an additional 6% dissent, while the new bonuses don't go into effect for 120 days (May 1). Pfft, what's another 6% though! Production Tab http://i784.photobucket.com/albums/yy123/Kaije3/AoD/SPR003.png Lots of new things here. A new IC slider under 'Upgrades' called 'Repair Provinces', which is for rebuilding a province after it gets blown to bits. Super. So now after I conquer a territory, I have to invest IC to get it back up and running... The Spanish Civil War is going to suck bad. Conversions slider box allows you to control how much of a resource is to be converted (energy-to-oil or oil-to-rares). Not only do I have to research the required tech, but I now have to build the necessary plant in a province to begin converting. The amount of resources that can be produced is dependent on how many plants are built. Expenses slider box is basically a break down of what makes up my 'Consumer Goods' need. Allocating IC above my needs just generates cash now, daily dissent change per day is now controlled with the 'Civil Expenses' slider. The way that production runs are done now has changed quite a bit too, more than I want to detail here because I'm not adding anything new at this time. Intelligence Tab http://i784.photobucket.com/albums/yy123/Kaije3/AoD/SPR004.png I don't know much about AoD intelligence, will play around with it later. As Spain I have much higher priorities to deal with Trades Tab http://i784.photobucket.com/albums/yy123/Kaije3/AoD/SPR005.png A simple and more convient way to initiate trades. Something worth noting here though is that now sea trade utilises convoys and escorts which will make convoy raiding far more worthwhile. Island nations beware! More to come... This isn't meant to be a serious AAR, I'm just going to touch on some of the subtle differences between AoD and standard HoI2 for anyone that may be interested.