tofudog

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

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

@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 .

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.

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

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

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

@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.

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

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.

Once again I could not resist inviting real world numbers to the Panzerklein, so here is what I did and what I found. The nearly habitual warning applies: If I am boring you with tech, please ignore this. So what size would a Panzerklein actually be? I used a few generous assumptions: 1) the human skin is about 2 square meters. The Panzerklein shell projects outward from its operator, which would make for a bigger surface, then it has fewer wrinkles, some overlap and some (small) uncovered places - I felt justified in using the 2 square meters as a starting point. 2) The Mauser 7.92x57 Panzerpatrone cartridge achieves penetration against 20mm of standard steel at 500m distance. With a few expensive tricks like special alloys and face hardening those 20mm could be made a little more protective - the PK should withstand something as easily obtained as rifle-fired AP-ammunition, otherwise it would be just so much dead weight. Again I felt justified using this number - considering the preferred use of PK would be close assault you might easily require thicker armor (the standard mauser cartridge almost doubles penetration from 400m down to 100m). 3) steel is in the range of 7.5 to 8 by specific density, so I have the armor shell of a PK weighing 370-400 kg. 4) half again the armor weight for an engine and hydraulics seems generous enough (actually a little on the light side). Adding payload and the operator I would place a combat-ready PK in the 700-750 kg range (VERY generous with the numbers I have seen.This already is the high-tech version.). This is definitely a lot lighter than airborne (glider-landed) tanks of the period ( I stopped after finding tetrarch and locust, both at 7.5 tonnes). It also is in the zone of airdropped guns russian 45mm AT ~ 550 kg, australian 25lb short howitzer (to be assembled on the ground from 14 parts) ~1.3 tons. I would assume that the russian gun too would not be dropped in one piece as the wiki page of the howitzer specifically mentions that most parts were under 135 kg. So this should apply to PKs too - paradrop in something like 6 easily assembled parts. Another entry scenario would be disguised ground transport. Many industrial machines like stationary saws or engine lathes come in the 3/4 ton range and it would be absolutely usual for the vendor to supply an installation-crew of his own. Just another dirty delivery van with 3 oil-stained mechanics and a heavy box on its way to work - nobody would (nor want to) take noctice. This also offers the advantage of having a method of exit close by. Incidentally a 3-man squad would (once again my view) work well for the theme of PK-assault: Operator and 2 infantry (sniper and soldier) for close support and protection. So far, so good. Based on these numbers of mine a clandestine PK-operation seems perfectly feasible. The whole thing hitches on one crucial assumption: The PK MUST be proof against small arms fired AP ammunition. If it is not, a deployment of 1 clip AP to each guard is the dirt-cheap counter to it. Also, 3/4 of a ton is the equivalent of 5 heavily armed soldiers EACH packing a bazooka plus LMG, so I would have a hard time seeing the economy of force if the PK was not small-arms proof. Those who are bored by tech can safely ignore everything up to this line. This is it for now. Have a nice weekend.

Hello Okim, nice to see your mod is gathering momentum, so I have two great mods to anticipate now . edit: the following may seem harsh, so please consider: Whatever you do with my words, when your mod is done I will play the s**t out of it and I will be happy with whatever you did. Right now is my chance to have an influence and so naturally I try to use it. I have played the mod for a bit and I can second fishmachine´s observation: Snipers rule the battlefield - especially with the wide open spaces of desert warfare. But that is nothing new, snipers rule the battlefield in Vanilla S3, so I can feel right at home here. The weapon mod system was a tad confusing in the beginning and it still feels a little artificial. What is to stop me from dismounting any mod I rigged my gun with? Or why do I have to put in the silencer first and then the scope? Same thing with the weapon classes - I know you want the different weapon classes to feel different, but now it is just counterintuitive to me. Submachineguns penalized in the prone position because of parts sticking out? Can you imagine what a soldier you handed such a thing would say? Also the automatic weapons being restricted to short OR long bursts instead of having both available. That feels so 19th century. The other thing you have done with snap/aimed/careful/sniper-modes works for me and feels ok. The following is really just a small thing for the nitpicker in me: If it is automatic and uses pistol ammo it is an SMG, if it uses rifle ammo it is an assault-rifle. I know, this is just real life and goes against what you want to achieve with weapon-classes, but to me it is irritating nonetheless. Next spot of bother: The clip sizes. Please rethink them. Some examples: 9mm ammo: Pistol:7.5 shots per inventory space. Assault rifle 10 and microSMG 15. 10mm ammo: Pistol 3.5, SMG 6.67 6mm ammo: Precision rifle: 10, assault rifle: 12.5, LMG: 25 Yes I remember the ZB 26/30 magazines from vanilla (the "ammo compactor" I call this gun) - but that is not among my top reasons to love this game . Dear god, by now it must seem like I want to tear your mod to tiny bits and pound you with them - nothing could be more wrong. I am absolutely happy that one of my favorite modders (SotS1, aftershock) is having a go at my favorite game. So lets move on to the random missions. To me what you have until now feels too small to really use tactics. I play them as static shootouts (pretty one sided ones at that: Identify the bandit with the rifle, put a bullet in his head, mop up the others, walk home a little richer.). Encounters like that do have their place, but you need more variety when the mod is done. In the second mission I managed to get myself stuck: In front of the truck, between the left light and the destroyed crate. The missions themselves were nice little vignettes, if you leave out the third one. If you grind yourself a full squad before this mission, you have enough things to do so the number of stupid NPCs is tolerable, but then the bandits have even less of a chance (all missions played on 100% everything for everybody). Considering the tactical aptitude of the game´s AI the missions might profit from less allies to watch doing situps or whatever in front of the enemy. This is a pure player view, as I did not gather enough motivation to get an XP-machine running in my den up to now. Keep it up, this has potential.

Hi Blunter, I hope you can resolve your family emergency with everyone in good health, body and soul. Take all the time you need - in here we are just playing a game after all. About the ammo, there is this page: http://www.mausershooters.org/k98k/8_ident.html subsonic is third picture from the top - it also has interesting facts about every type of cartridge that is out there in 7.92x57. Have a nice day.

Honor to whom honor is due .

Back again. Well I was not thinking straight on my last post, otherwise I would have noticed, that I already had proposed one possible way to encourage ammo use, by attaching a tangible benefit to it (the no damage/AP-reduction criticals, if they are possible). But tonight I wanted to unveil the rule of the fishmachine (so named, because I found it in one of his posts): If it can drop in random encounters it is in endless supply. In my current game I wanted to build my squad before going on the story missions and so I farmed the random encounters for a bit. Right before it got truly tedious I had sold the $ 39000 worth of guns and stuff I needed to buy my mercenaries and am now ready with a level 6-8 squad and more ammunition than I can ever use. regarding PKs: One might have a look at the mission area - if it is at all likely that civilians are in the area PKs would be out of the question (if they are supposed to be a secret super-weapon still), also you would need one or two trucks to deploy the PKs for a squad, so these would have to be able to get to the area (unnoticed in most cases). Being issued with PKs on a mission by mission basis also raises the question, why the squad would keep its own economy for the rest of everything. For that train of thought I would find it more logical if one or more trained PK-pilots would accompany our heroes on certain missions (and the PKs are kept out of player hands entirely, because the government would confiscate or force-buy any looted PKs as soon as it got wind of them) For assault missions you would also have to find reasons, why a mortar team, howitzer, armoured car or an actual tank was not used for fire-support.

Ah, hold your horses there, dear fish Before I accept the heavy hand of necessity at work I need more reason. Simplification - yes. But a matter of choice I would say. And license to implement what is the best family-fun organized mass murder can be, as we cannot achieve its grim reality anyway.

@fishmachine. I like the way you think:). Also, I remember having heard about statistics of death in war, so I read up on the economy of the bullet and I arrive at an estimate of 2000 to 10000 bullets per kill for WW 2 (depending on who you ask). And the numbers have grown since then. If we take the low estimate and halve it, because we have exceptional soldiers at our command we still would have to model the mechanics to make 1000 bullets fired per kill a likely outcome. Maybe scaling down to 500 as we increase in level. Now wouldn´t that be fun?

@Okim //google translate. I copy pasted from an online dictionary, this may explain any strangeness. For what it is worth, I cannot even read those cyrillic letters of yours. For all I know I have told Okami: Your goat is grazing in the lake . Anything closer to my intended: "Hello and welcome" is a win. Plus, now I know how it feels to have to write an entire text this way and can respect that for the achievement it is. Also, now Okami knows how I would sound on a russian forum and can loose some of that "I don´t know the language" shyness. @Okami: eye-candy: Something nice to see, as in: Chocolate for the eyes and not for the mouth . Which brings us back to the weapons tiers. For me personally, they don´t have to exist as such - most WW2 rifle calibers seem to have beeen about equal 7.5 to 8mm bore and 50-60 mm length (yes, the Carcano 6.5, I know). Kind of light cannon built for long range engagements. So differences would not be in the power, but in the handling. This does bite with the "growing hit-point-pools" concept (unless you let guns skill affect the damage done) so it is a wash and I would go with the existing tiers, because no matter how you organize them, somebody could name a good reason why this is completely not realistic and a different order would be so much better.

Welcome aboard Okami , when I read that you were dedicated enough to spend an hour on these 5 lines I decided to try to welcome you in russian, so here goes: жела́нный о́коло себе́, жела́ю хоро́шего дня. Hats off to you, mate, this is not easy. Not easy at all. I wholeheartedly agree with your wishes - particularly the shotgun, as in the postwar setting of this mod a hunting shotgun would be an easy choice for someone looking for some firepower at close range. Those would then likely be sawn-off doublebarrels for one-punch housecleaning. The others, well except for the silenced Tokarev I would file them under eye-candy. But as I am not one of the artists and programmers here, I am happy with whatever I get.

@Lt. Havoc: How far is far enough? Using light grenades gave you range in original S2 and using heavies gave you striking power. I never did use a heavy grenade in S2 (except once, that was when Dani remarked "Do you feel better about your mother now?" after I did. It was glorious. It also was inside the russian commandant´s office and in addition to the door I wanted to have removed it took out 5 meters of wall and a good area of floor. One of my ultimate gaming moments.), because mediums generally did the job and with my playstyle being in grenade range without sufficient ready guns meant a fuckup anyway. Visiting Koch´s Manor as axis comes to mind. THE grenade moment in S2 - and it works. M60s (Mk3A1 in BlunterMod) over the wall, thrown by my scout (back when I still had one - no problem. This is my experience vs yours and Metal Canyon´s. There are valid reasons to both views. Mine is: If you can throw a grenade, you should be in real danger from a pistol-armed opponent. Which was true before the modification. Also Bazookas and stuff don´t compare favorably to simple grenades anymore. Why lug around an extra 3x7 if you can do the same things with PWMs which are the size of your ammo? This can be an argument for longer ranged rocket-launchers, for the abolition of a weapon class made superfluous, or for shorter ranged grenades. Take your pick:). Now I don´t demand to return the grenade´s full weight (and spoil your game - maybe ;-)), I just give my views and I can live with the new system, though I liked the other one better, for the reasons I have given- namely the overall balance of all weapon and perception ranges (Though this still can use a good tweaking, doubt not good Major!). Maybe this doesn´t have to be resolved until some time AFTER the story is done. No reason not to mention the issue now though. And for the feel - war movie is a good one. I am a bit undecided between undercover spies (in the story part) and war movie and just a dash of post-apocalypse. But definitely war-movie.