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maojoejoe

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  1. Hey! Congrats on getting melee values, I never figured that out. It appears that melee and accuracy values are actually both embedded in 10 character string I originally thought was for accuracy only. (I overwrote the Whitworth's accuracy string with the Tredegar's and got a Whitworth cannon with 50 accuracy--instead of the vanilla 15--so I know accuracy is somewhere in there. Of course, all cannons have 10 melee so I never made the connection that melee was embedded in there too; nice job dude!) Back before I got overwhelmed with work, I managed to mod most of the weapons to realistic/historical stats, but that didn't really fix my main historical itch with this game: the insane casualties. To be honest, it just made the game play worse by skyrocketing the casualties even further. For a realism/historical authenticity mod to truly succeed morale/kill rates/AI changes are needed. Most casual or semi casual players aren't bothered by the 50-60% (sometimes 80%+ when you wipe it off the field completely) casualty rates the AI takes every battle, but for a history nerd it shatters immersion. Lee could've marched straight to Washington if he had killed 90 thousand Union men at Fredericksburg. I tried this: made the Whitworth have 50 accuracy (it was exceptionally accurate), 40 fire rate (breechloading) and 4336 range (messed with the Hex values until I got lucky lol). It was fun for a bit, but then it turned ridiculous, racking up almost 9 thousand kills at Antietam. Combined with other modifications I had made the game had become rather unplayable; inflicting 80 thousand (and up to 100 once) casualties per battle (even more than the average 30-40k in vanilla) ruined any sense of immersion for me. @Nick Thomadis With the full game released, I hope you'll eventually release some modding tools so we don't have to dig through with hex editors
  2. Yeah it definitely is not ideal. Seeing the enemy army take 75% or more losses really just destroys immersion for me; especially when they come back in the next battle (like 3-6 months later) with a full strength army again.
  3. Darth, My final major issue with this game is that casualties in this game are ridiculously high. In battles like Antietam and Fredericksburg, my Confederate army wiped out 60k and 75k Union troops, respectively, while taking 26k and 24k losses. The actual Union casualties in those battles were 12,410 and 12,653 respectively, with Confederate casualties being 10,316 and 4,201. Even in battles like First Bull Run, the total casualties are climbing above the 20k mark consistently, when in real life the combined causalities were under 5k. While I don't expect the game to be a 100% realistic battle simulator, I'd like at least a shred of realism. If the Union lost 75 thousand men in a single battle on a single day, the Army of the Potomac would dissolve, the Northern public would revolt, and Great Britain and France would immediately recognize the Confederacy. Lee would have his Austerlitz and the North would have to capitulate. UGG managed to pull off realistic causalities pretty well: if you played against the dynamic AI competently causalities would end up in the high 30k range on the enemy side and the 20k range on yours, which, while being higher than history, was still realistic and not an absurd 600 or 700% increase. I am not you, so I do not know the exact causes, but I believe these ridiculous casualties are caused by a combination of 1) an overly aggressive AI, 2) absurd morale levels, and 3) high kill rates. 1) While the AI is one of the best I have played against in any game, it doesn't really recognize when to take a break, rest, and regroup. The first attack the AI conducts is always excellent: the battle has just started and its brigades are fresh and full strength. Then, if it fails and brigades begin routing, the AI keeps persisting and persisting, continuously pressing with exhausted and severely damaged brigades. It has no concept of falling back, and when routed brigades return to the field, it sends them back into the meat grinder piecemeal instead of regrouping multiple routed brigades together, letting them rest to high condition, and then attacking in another "phase." Programming the AI to make temporary retreat and regrouping/resting actions (while rear-guarding with a couple of brigades/skirmishers) for crippled brigades will reduce unnecessary AI casualties and add difficulty to defensive battles like Fredericksburg, where if you survive the first wave and reinforce your lines the game basically becomes a 4x fast forward grind. 2) On the note of those crippled brigades...morale is overall too high for brigades. I regularly have Zero star or one star brigades sustain 66% or more causalities and continue fighting instead of shitting their pants and running off the battlefield. Realistically, most units would've permanently retreated (or outright routed) after sustaining losses of 2/3 or more, whether their commanding officer ordered it or not (i.e. Buford's Division was wrecked on Day 1 in Gettysburg, so it was sent off the field to guard supply lines. Generals do not usually send 30% strength units back into the fight). While the Iron Brigade drew renown because it sustained 61% causalities at Gettysburg and kept fighting, it was an elite unit standing its ground. An elite unit. Not a unit of freshly levied recruits (aka zero star troops). 3) Kill rates are unrealistically high. In the war, there was only 1 casualty for every 250-300 shots fired. While this obviously should not be the rule of thumb in the game, it is a reminder of battle conditions. The accuracy difference between rifles and muskets was somewhat negated by battlefield conditions (huge clouds of black powder smoke), so while a large brigade's first couple volleys could achieve 100+ kills, after the smoke starts building up its pretty hard to hit much. A "field of smoke" feature would be very nice, but I think it would be pretty difficult to program so a flat percentage reduction on accuracy could work too. If you read all of this, thank you. I know it's a bit late to ask for a casualty re-balance right before release, but I can hope
  4. Yea a "run" option for artillery would be nice. Maybe make it only available for 12 pounders or less to simulate horse artillery--that would be very good.
  5. If you want to be ridiculous you can use the whitworth cannon's range, the Lemat's fire rate, and the 20pdr Parrot/24 pounder howitzer's damage 2400 range, 250 fire rate, 95 accuracy and 70+ damage. I had to tone down most of my tweaks. The whitworth cannon became an absolute beast, my 8 gun battery inflicted more than 2000 casualties at Antietam sitting in dunker church more than 1000 yards behind the front line. Although it was historically the predecessor to modern artillery...
  6. There are level files in the same folder that resources.assets is stored in. I have been unable to decipher much so far. I have more time on the weekend so I'll take another shot at it.
  7. Hello guys, I recently discovered how to mod weapon stats in UGCW in a limited fashion. I’ve been able to change the range, damage, fire rate, and accuracy of weapons. The process is very complex, and I have yet to discover what most of the data means, but here are my tentative instructions. You need a hex editor like HxD. Using HxD, open the resources.assets file in Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Ultimate General Civil War\Ultimate General Civil War_Data. (Make a backup of the resources.assets in case you irreversibly damage the original. It’ll save you the time of a reinstall.) It’ll be intimidating gibberish. change the width to 32 for better readability. Scroll about halfway down, control-F, and type in a keyword of the weapon you are looking. i.e. if you want to modify the 6-pounder Wiard gun, you would look for “Wiard” If you are successful, this format will pop up: Range is 7 characters, ROF and damage are 2, and accuracy is usually 10 but may vary. If not (you probably will not be successful in finding the correct format on the first try) scroll up and try again. If still not successful, scroll down. HxD has a wonky Control-F feature with “search direction.” Keep trying different points of the page till you find the correct format. Once you find the format, you can modify the values. I don’t know how to convert the data values in the file into the numerical stats of the games so usually I will just copy other weapon’s desired stats over. i.e. I copied the 7 character value of the CS_Richmond’s range onto the Enfield’s range to make the Enfield’s range 375. You can also try changing the data values manually and hope for a lucky break (like I got with my 872 range scoped Whitworth) but you’re likely to get crazy values like 2534654 in-game when you type random values for the data. Control-S your changes and restart the game. Enjoy! I have also used HxD to modify save files and change unit sizes past their limit - aka 1500 man cavalry brigades and 1000 man skirmisher brigades. I know these instructions are rather difficult to follow so I'll try to make videos explaining all of this when I get a block of free time and a working mic. Good luck modders!
  8. Please fix the inverse artillery effectiveness bug where 12 cannon brigades inflict more damage than 24 cannon brigades over the same time interval. Adding more guns to an artillery brigade should increase its effectiveness, not decrease it This issue has been documented on a couple of threads now. Thanks!
  9. Yes if you use Fayettevilles I believe that the AI scales to have Model 1863s. Weapons scaling needs serious balancing and realism (only one type of weapon for all of the enemy infantry) improvements.
  10. I really enjoy the concept of the "Fixed Enemy Strength" option (aka no scaling) but right now its a bit cheesy in its description and role. I think the setting should be redesignated as "Historical Army Strength," providing a fixed, historical army size for the enemy in each battle. I think this could be done pretty easily by copying and importing the enemy armies from the Historical battles into the Campaign and then applying the +15, -15% size modifications to the brigades as needed for Colonel and Major General Difficulty. Thoughts?
  11. With all due respect to Darth for the amazing game, I must say that the AI's weapon scaling is implemented badly and ruins immersion. With a high enough recon stat, you can see that : All of the AI's infantry will share the same the same gun, all of the AI's artillery will share the same gun, all of the AI's skirmishers will share the same gun , and all of the AI's cavalry share the same gun. This is very unhistorical and unrealistic : units were issued different weapons throughout the war, on both sides--especially the Confederate side. Confederate units in the Army of Northern Virginia used everything from smoothbore muskets to stolen Springfields to imported Enfields. So, when playing as Union, facing an army of Confederate brigades equipped with M1855s and ONLY M1855s is extremely instantly breaks immersion. Likewise, when playing as Confederates, it is unsettling to face a Union army with 108,000 M1861s and not a single other type of rifle. Historically, Union brigades were outfitted with everything from Sharps rifles, to M1861s, to Enfields and Spencers) This is also very evident with artillery batteries : an AI army will only have ONE TYPE of cannon. So, when I played as Confederates at Chancellorsville, I had to face 311 10pd ordnance rifles from the Union. That's ridiculous from a historical standpoint : a Union army would have multiple rifles issued to its brigades and multiple types of cannons issued to its artillery. Proposed solution : I am not a game designer, so I do not know how difficult it would be to implement weapon variation, but here's my idea : Ideally, the weapons scaling system averages the "quality" of your army's rifles and then formulaically (taking into account unit "eliteness", historical availability and prevalence) generates/assigns guns to your opponents' army's brigades, keeping a lower/similar/higher average weapon "quality" depending on difficulty.
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