dimovski

My God he's back! FOLKS HE'S BACK! *champagne bottles pop* Glad to see You (virtually) again! I think that a fresh start would be awesome. Don't get me wrong, Your mod truly is awesome, but I fear that it doesn't give You quite as much artistic freedom in terms of plot or equipment as a fresh start could. As I understand it, the fans of this game are a community that is "close" enough that creating a storyline for a servant of a totalitarian regime shouldn't cause much uproar, if You know what I mean. In my opinion, both storylines offer a lot in terms of ethical degradation of the main character, but the KriPo-officer-line would allow for more variety if You should choose to place the plot in the period between 1917 and 1945. From fighting with the Poles in the ruins of the German Empire after their declaration of independence to the civil war-like situation in the twenties, a secret mission or two to Africa or Japan and then the great escape from Nazi Germany to Argentina. Maybe add a "trial-cutscene" at the end for good measure? Of course, the Soviet-line would also be rather varied: from the cities in 1917 to Crimea and Vrangels defeat in the early 20s, with a healthy dose of rebellion suppression... Maybe a secret mission to Yugoslavia to prepare equipment for the partisans, some shootouts in Finland and Persia, maybe a stroll through Manchuria... Well, I guess both appear to be very promising! Wishing You all the best, dear Blunter!

Say, Lt.Havoc, wouldn't Forschungsobjekte be written as one word? And would there really be a need to write down "Ausrüstungs Lager" (and wouldn't that be one word aswell?), I'd say that "Lager" would work out aswell.

I can tell you right now that 4. is "Betreten verboten". Instead of "Risk of shock" in 3, "Lebensgefahr" would probably be used. But I'm only a wannabe-non-native German, so I never really familiarized myself with the art of warning signs. 4: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQrCZOikFL_kUmhRooOMWBDRihAPip8XqKhoeCiI-Z3b-72PObwWzKgZ8M https://encrypted-tb...2SL8fbZlgjrmfVg https://encrypted-tb...gmITIjRCEpm9m1Q And this one I like the most https://encrypted-tb...gmITIjRCEpm9m1Q 3: https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR5XdbVeq94ufTYqA6Agr3VT1vIY81Fju1pr2IyVhEvN3cCPKX4pMAbLw http://pics.ts-audio...5/j172905_1.jpg

Now that looks amazing! Very hi-tech, nicely done!

What an unexpected surprise! Glad to see you back in action, but even more glad that things have settled for you and your family!

Sui Generis looks very interesting! Definately bookmarked. I've been fooling around with Kerbal Space Program, still searching for a neat beryllium-oxygen-hydrogen tripropellant design. Might even change to lithium-flourine-hydrogen... And I'm currently installing WoT for old time's sake.

I guess we simply disagree about the Arms Dealer, and I'm fine with that, so I won't argue with it anymore I guess the detonators for the charges are wireless? If that's the case, maybe something simple could work, like having only 6 frequencies to set them off. Or maybe limit charges to engineer use only, and make it so that the whole inventory is filled with 6 charges + the stuff needed to set them off. Would work aswell I think... it just wouldn't really be plausible to carry 3 Panzerfausts in the backpack, and one in each hand but only 6 satchel charges ^^

I am still undecided on what to do with the dealer. I've no idea how to change the price modifier via scripts (it is a constant set in the database that stays the same throughout the campaign) and replacing him with someone else, who is very similar in what they can do for us (except for their looks and name), might not be worth the effort... I still think he has no place in the base, but I might be wrong. If he really works for a nation to collect weapons, would it be ethical from the Sentinels standpoint to provide these weapons for false-flag ops? If he is working for both the Soviet Union and the Western Allies he isn't exactly the most trustworthy person ever, and if he works, for example, with the Western Allies, we are, in some way, working for them aswell. And we can't buy Soviet weapons as we're supposed to get them to the Western Allies. And I've got no idea what would happen with German weapons then. I am actually questioning that after reading Ecthel's thoughts on this. Perhaps there is another way... hmm... I just pointed out that I find it unrealistic. Ofcourse I might be wrong, and it likely is a bad choice. Then again, I'm just thinking out loud, you're the one who can choose ...not my 'department'... What do you mean? I'm not sure anymore... I probably missunderstood that your daughter(?) is creating both acks and characters... Or is it about possible Acks? Possible Acks it is... We already have an ancient sword in the game. It's an RPG 'money item' not a melee one. I could probably try and make it a melee weapon. Cool! A bit too shiny for an officers sword I think... Here's one from the times of George VI: http://www.antique-swords.eu/images/E79-1.jpg

Cool, I had no idea 'bout Jack! Would be funny to see him in the game. Viking fought in the South however... so instead of Moscow maybe Kharkov? It's more likely he'd be Swedish than Danish then, I think.

I think we're trying to remove him with that quest. Regarding uniforms - the more the merrier. Btw, how about a character (not Blunter's department, IIRC?) with Panzerwaffe background as a PK expert? And as his background/personal story - his tank got knocked out in Operation Typhoon so he had to fight as infanterist (good pistol and MP skill, with which german tankers were equipped. fighting as infantry was a one off for the assault on Moscow and had tragic consequences on the experience of the Panzerwaffe, as some of the best tankers have been lost in infantry combat) - so he could go the fanatic Nazi way (Axel) or be a bitter soldier, hating the time he had to fight as infanterist. And even more that he got transferred to an infantry regiment because there weren't enough tanks available for all tankers, and all instructor places have been taken. Now to Blunter's post - I obviously agree and admire everything. I probably just misread the achivement post, nevermind. I usually stop functioning a lot later tho. Might have to re-grease my brain.

I might be wrong on this one, but wasn't ammonium nitrate used as rocket fuel in the late 40s/early 50s? If it really was, 25% is probably too low for European conditions - if it's the same supstance the Germans were using, I remember the Americans seized full railcar loads of 70 to 90% purified ammonium nitrate! I think there's a pdf version of the book from which I've read that ("Ignition!" I think, so I'll check) EDIT:Nevermind, peroxide it was.

Hah, I'm honestly flattered now! I'm just thinking out loud, nothing special... (deep in dimovski's lair: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxmC6OlUWiQ) With "enjoying" I meant that I had to pretend I enjoy my stay on the shore for my family, even tho I hate going to the sea (don't really see why getting salty water into your nose and then trying to dry yourself for hours on a ludicrously hot coast is fun, but they enjoy it for some reason)... I also agree that my proposal is a bit far too complicated and tedious, there ought to be a better way... Those achivements are simply EXCELLENT! I'd like to propose another additional trigger for them, however - if you need 10 experiments to unlock level 1 of the achivement, how about adding for all level 1s a 95% chance that they happen. If not, the next experiment also has 95% chance etc, The 2nd would have maybe 80%, and the 3rd one 65%. It wouldn't be soo routinous then. And the dialogs are HILLARIOUS! However, I have that funny feeling Klaus(?) would prefer red stripes on some trousers (general staff of the Wehrmacht... I always knew he just wanted a safe logistics place! I even heard that a bohemian doctor tried making him unfit for duty for just 2500RM!)

I think Blunter needs a specific version of Maya to do that. Which is payware. And making weapons isn't easy. However, I think some reskins and modifications of existing ones are indeed possible. As a bonus, the Norwegian sniper could get the MP as stock. I guess the WWI German grenadier could use the Steyr, or even the Croatian scout. (or Yugoslav, I don't remember what they called him, but from the way he talks and from his dossier I'd guess he's more likely to be a Croat than a Serb) Anyway, again a beautiful update Blunter! Regarding the economy, do you know if any of the generic scenery of factories in base-game and SS3 were animated? (I assume it's impossible to create custom animations so that's why I ask) Maybe instead of the Arms Dealer, the following could work: After you return from your first test of loyalty, the Major is angry (you've surived, and he's in fact part of Thor's Hammer, or what was it again..?) that you survived easily- he would prefer it not to give tasks important to the fullfilment of Hammers plans to opponents of Hammer. So he sends you on another futile task. You have to secure a salt mine (maybe in Slovakia, near Preshov, as Slovakian mines usually don't have the Nazi-death-labor implications Czech and/or Austrian/South German mines have) which Thor's Hammer wants to build their very own weapons. - It would probably be better to think of it as a former Nazi ammunition factory built during the Rüstungswunder '44-'45, but that might be controversial, so going with the idea that Thor's Hammer simply moved in there with their own machines should work. (Ofcourse not involving the Major and introducing Die Wölfe a bit earlier could work aswell, I just don't know how) Anyway, after you clear it, the Major decides (somewhat disturbed with the proficiency of our hero) to use it to build weapons and ammo for the Sentinels, this way, the Sentinels are a lot less visible in terms of financial transactions - no money is spent on buying/selling weapons/ammo. So, you'd have a couple of machines which would create different parts of weapons from raw materials. (probably includes smelting and casting them into Rohlinge (can't remember the English term for it, sorry)) These machines are rather simple I would assume, which means that they only need different tooling. So, how about the following method of creating a weapon: 1. You capture a Kar98k 2. You bring it into the Salt mine (that's a problem too, if it's not connected with the base in Switzerland, how would the transition work? Would they maybe transport the machines from Slovakia and use them in Switzerland?)/base 3. Your engineer disassembles the weapon into parts, for example: Stock + forestock Barrel + Muzzle + Chamber Bolt-action-rifle specific bolthandle + trigger+ trigger guard 4. He makes copies in plaster (gips?) - and from them the needed tooling - then he makes these parts. Obviously, wooden parts hardly need a copy from which he would make them, the original would work aswell. (Ammo could be handled about the same) - but then you could have some upgrade for Grenadiers/Soldiers - (5a.instead of a wooden stock, you could have a metal one (or some expensive raw material as something I'll call UP2) - the 1st upgrade (UP1) - the weapon would be heavier, but it would have +1 (maximum +2 for those with optics) range, and such a slight buff in accuracy - the heavier stock allows for better aiming. UP2 would have the same benefits, whilst being lighter than UP1, yet heavier then the original wooden stock.) 5b. Create from raw materials these parts by interacting with the machines. Engineering skill would have a role here. Maybe, if possible, even different perks which would "unlock" specific builds - for example interacting with a drawing board and coming up with those "special weapons" we discussed before. I considered this because it adds a lot of importance to engineering skill - adding charges is entirely optional and depends on playstyle, but you will hardly get around building your own guns and ammo. Either that, or you will have to scavenge ammo from your enemies (which was brutally unfunny - I remember trying to find M1 Carbine ammo as Axis in Silent Storm - you have to search for random encounters and then scavenge the ammo - only this way you can have an efficient scout through most of the game) Ofcourse, I didn't really think all of it through properly. In fact, it probably has lots of flaws. I'm just thinking out loud here. Regarding Zhukov - I was just thinking out loud about his character again, merely pointing out that he could be considered for that role. I've got no idea what and if he would do anything.

Could you please reduce the swearing. Thanks. I'm not implying I'm a mod or that I'm offended with it, but it's fairly impolite. I don't think there were as many swearwords posted on all the 40 pages as in your post. You also double posted, I'd suggest editing current posts instead of making new ones. It's also supposed to be for the more experienced users. I doubt Blunter would make impossible missions. This mod is supposed to be a lot more challenging than the original game. And improving the AI is close to impossible. PS: I did read your magnificent update Blunter. I'm still "enjoying" my last few hours of vacation at the Adriatic, I'll be back at home in a couple o' hours and give my opinion on it. Hopefully you might find it useful.

Regarding the "Friendly hit", here in Croatia (well, probably its known in all south-slavic countries) we say "Čudni su putevi Gospodnji", it translates to something like: Unknown/Weird are the ways of the Lord. Or maybe something from the Bible - like the "vale of tears"? Thank you for the amazing work btw, if anything in SS was really amazing and gave flair - it was the great voiceacting. Now to Blunters amazing post: As always, I'm stunned with your work. I'd sit their crying for weeks trying to figure such stuff out. Or I'd just hammer my laptop Is it possible to re-use the SS3 multiple-choice quest-picking GUI? And for example, from the 4 possible missions we'd have: 1)Titanium Raid I 2)Vanadium Mine I 3)Scandium Refinery Plant I 4)Plutonium Warehouse I After finishing Vanadium Mine I, we get: 1)Titanium Raid I 2)Vanadium Mine II 3)Scandium Refinery Plant I 4)Plutonium Warehouse I etc. Each time more enemies, and maybe even bigger or simply different maps. Obviously it's a lot of work to create them, so I'm just daydreaming. Back to the arms dealer: How do we even know he's loyal to us?! And even more importantly... how can he be loyal to us if he's buying weapon - I mean, who wants weapons in the year 1947?(Is it even 1947?) 1)Mafia 2)Die Wölfe 3)We 4)"small criminals" 5)secret service undercover agents... I guess. If they can't smuggle weapons to their area of operations. (You'd guess it's easier to smuggle a 1911 into a factory than a human, but then again...) 6)The not-so-average-father-who-can-afford-buying-weapons-on-the-black-market-to-protect-his-children-with-them(-even-tho-he-was-in-the-war-and-probably-still-has-his-Kar98-and-a-Mauser-semi-auto) So there's literally 2 out of 6 options, with them being probably the least important in volume of orders, which would be acceptable to the Sentinels - themselves and civilans. I didn't count the few high-class citizens who can afford to go hunting 2 years after the war. IMO, if you really don't want to remove him completely, would it be possible to create a different base interface for a different difficulty setting? Then you could add "Sentinel" or "Silent Storm" difficulty, with no arms dealer. Or modify the current most difficult one (or the easiest one, which no one probably uses... or atleast would use with this mod). Or remove the easiest one and add "Sentinel". I'd go with removing him for good tho. I "like" Zhukov too, but taking into account the blunder at Seelow Heights (losing 2000 tanks just to get 1st to Berlin, so that his Ukrainian comrade from the south can't sack the glory) - I'd imagine he's more than capable of acting in a ruthless way. Beria obviously doesn't sound really trustful and humane either.

Sorry, that's unlikely. Except if you wish to say that a threat of nuclear war and the cold war itself (and we are already in that part of world history) wouldn't bother the Soviet, French, British and American armies as much as a band of criminals. (Remember that Die Wölfe would hardly bie as foolish to openly show off their force, or even to make themselves noticed by governments! If they'd have that bad org. and command chains, the Sentinels wouldn't even need to be bothered by them.

Oh my God how far north that is! Didn't know that Zhukov was interested in leading the CCCP tho, you find out something new every day!

I have to agree - that is truly epic! The... "planning room" is what I called the room you made for which you said that you haven't found a purpose, and I thought it might work out as some sort of planning room (the map on the table inspired me I guess...) which could be used for obtaining resources etc.

I would, in fact, suggest that a huge quantity of equipment (as in - a very big assortment of different models, not 20 thousand kar 98s) shouldn't be sellable. Millions of soldiers fought 2 (or was it 3?) years ago a world war - why would anyone want to buy a mosin or kar98 from you if he can obtain thousands at a cheaper price via a connection to the military? Heck, the military /wants/ to get rid of all those antiquated rifles. Same goes for munitions - I find it unlikely that the arms dealer in the Sentinel HQ could be bothered with buying old and nearly broken rifles and SMGs from you, if he can buy thousands of them, it doesn't make sense! It is fairly reasonable to expect that he isn't working only for the sentinels, but selling his weapons elsewhere aswell, and that he hasn't got the time to arrange deals for the tiny profit which is offered to him. IMO, only scopes (not scoped rifles, if you are going to proceed with creating weapon parts, which I find really cool), unique weapons, prototypes and mid-to-late-war small-production-batch weapons should be sellable, and even those for a rather low price. And instead - you have the good ol' planning room, where you can accept various missions for money. Grenades shouldn't be sellable either, IMO. Anyone who wants a grenade just wishes to make some boom, only Die Wölfe and the Sentinels need different grenades for different purposes. And whilst you probably won't find many Panzerschreck or Panzerfaust rockets for the launchers, there should be plenty of PIAT and Bazooka rockets lying around. Taking into account that the Panzerschreck was just a copy of the Bazooka, I would guess that you could make these either "special" weapons (rare, ammo which isn't getting produced anymore, and for gameplay terms you can always argue that the Germans didn't do a 1by1 copy but added their own improvements, thus slightly better stats) or remove them completely. Back to the metals: We have a couple of problems here: a)The materials themselves are scarce and rather costly, yes. BUT, we don't need tons and tons of them, like the armor industry would need vanadium, or Die Wölfe would need to create hardened steel for their Panzerkleins. We would need a few dozen pounds, 100-200kg at most if we would build our own Panzerkleins. Even less of the other, rarer (God does that word sound awkward) metals. b)Whilst there is enough of these metals lying around for us to acquire, it shouldn't be easy to get them, as it defeats the point of special, rare weapons. That means that there has to be a challenge in getting them. c)If the challenge is to get enough money to buy them - then you are grinding for it and it doesn't FEEL like you worked for it and accomplished something, you just... well, collected the money and bought it. Not really exciting. Then again, it's a lot of work to create all these maps and missions.

I just realized that I haven't been watching my politeness with the post above. Please forgive me, as I probably just tried shortening it a bit (my hands hurt from all the typing) - I didn't want to come off rude. Might be my terrible English too.

1. I suggest doing so. I for one find it pointless to have it open - you wouldn't be able to do anything there, and being able to go there, without being hindered would result in a big loss of immersion. (IMO) 2.THANK YOU! That is so epic and great and unbelivable at the same time! But bullet-disassebly sounds somewhat pointless - honestly. No one would be bothered with that, except if the bullets carried poison or (un)depleted uranium. I mean it ought to be tedious to disassemble hundreds of bullets. 3.Whilst that would be cool, I hope it's going to be fairly plausible alterations. Looking forward to it. 4.That would be tedious too, if one wouldn't have the proper tooling. I think that it would be nice if you would have to buy yourself access to that. 2000 to 6000 should be enough I think. And it would pay off in the end. The problem with ammo is that you can't really create all those fancy special ammo types just like that - so I'd say no HE filled ammo. Or maybe a special perk for the engineer to be able to make HE ammo, at best. 5.No idea what Dark Steel is, didn't play for a long time. And don't have the game installed on my new laptop either. If it's kar-98 based I guess you'd repair it with kar-98 spares. Depending on the parts, it could matter- changing the chamber/tube would ask for a durability check I think, but something like a trigger shouldn't have much to do with durability. I guess that consuming might be the best idea to prevent exploits - but if you could disassemble every rifle into multiple parts, which would stack together into packs - then you could use the trigger from the rifle and keep the other parts. Next time you find a rifle with a working trigger you can reassemble the old rifle. (If that's even possible, sorry if I'm dreaming or even being offensive. You decide ofcourse, and these are only my humble thoughts.) 6.Sure, that would work nicely aswell. But you'd have to craft it, preferably with an engineer then. You'd get it by smelting other parts of the same material, or maybe by raiding chests in some random encounters in ore-rich areas. Taking into account that any operations made by the Sentinels do not require as much equipment as a single army corps needs (in fact, I doubt they need as much equipment as a division, except maybe in heavy equipment, which is a lot more common in their ranks than in the army), I do not think that any of the resources could be depleted. But, you could use the "planning room" you created to make special sets of missions, each one becoming more and more difficult, possibly even changing locations, and in each one you could raid some material. The amounts you could take should be roughly the same or increase slightly, but the amount of enemies should rise, aswell as their equipment. (the problem is that it could be exploited to sell the enemy equipment and earn money, so to prevent that, you could make it so that every piece of metal takes up a giant part of the inventory, if not the full inventory of one member!) 7.Specific components, which would be part of every weapon - yes. Shards - I don't get it, sorry. Again, if the weapons have these parts in common or could plausibly use the same parts, we could use them 8.We get the explosive the grenade/charge was made of, aswell as a detonator. You could add sticks/triggers/empty_hull depending on the type of weapon we disarmed and disassembled. However these hulls/casings might be a bit too much of a hassle. Detonators should be mostly the same, essentially differing between standard grenade ones, those "clock" ones on dynamite charges (or whatever it was, sorry) and electrical ones for setting 'em of from a distance. The trade-off is that we disassembled a perfectly fine explosive charge we could've used otherwise (if we do not have a skilled enough engineer who could put those parts together - my guess is that disassembly should be easier than assembly). We can obtain these components from the shop, but they should cost slightly more than a preassembled charge, so that you still save some money by improvising with other parts, but can't go full-save mode and just make your own charges. 9.The explosive itself (either make it possible to create a specific sort of explosive by mixing the basic ones like TNT and RDX, or use existing ones from this list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_explosives_used_during_World_War_II - I suggest the latter), a detonator (I mentioned different types above, but there's more finesse in them, obviously), and, optionally, a casing. 10.See six for "planning room".

If you already wish to use some rare metal without the obvious ones (titanium, paladium etc.), I'd suggest vanadium instead of scandium, as vanadium crippled german steel quality (however, there is one interesting article which shows that german steel quality wasn't that good even in '39 - lack of quality control could result in tanks which armor would just shatter and kill the crew with spalling, and the situation detoriated as war went on). Maybe even make Die Wölfe start researching a way of extracting vanadium from blood cells (as the biggest current producers are China and Russia (the far east of it), it's unlikely that Die Wölfe would be operating there... except with Japanese friends...), you could argue that they couldn't find enough of it for a new buildup, the old mines being depleted by years of war...

I never heard anything about Köpenick in fact. (I'm not German, but watch only German TV, and tend to watch the docu and culture channels... not,ugh... RTL (*realizes there's no point going that much offtopic*)) Anyway, if the game allows for Umlaute, turn caps on, then shift+tilde(button immediaetly over tab-button)+vocal for which you want an Umlaut.

Well, if only the modelling PROGRAM is the problem... why not take something free like Blender? Or if one of your kids happens to be a student, I think he may apply for a free version of 3max, right?

I'm very, very sorry for your loss. It is, however, good that you're back, maybe the game can help you to cheer up again. Looking forward to your work (and if I may request a drink, Gin & Tonic please ) on this wonderful game.