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J & P Rebalance Mod by JonnyH13 and Pandakraut 05/06/2023 1.28.4


JonnyH13

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pandakraut, I don't understand why or how this happens, but I worked up some Generals to Brigadiers, and some Major Generals as well. Went into the 2nd small battle of the Valley, Cross Keyes maybe! I place all my real named Generals, like Major General Sidney Johnston, which was my reward for Shiloh, R. E. Lee who was Brigadier, as well as about a dozen others into the Brigades of my first and second corps, to continue to gain experience with them, and after the battle they all got Promoted....... Fantastic....... to Colonels..... WTF even AS Johnston my reward, so having acquired him under the mod, why would the mod then lower his experience and demote him three ranks??

Edited by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet
after thought
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p.s. Ruggles was wounded at Shiloh, one of the computers generated AI Generals. After Shiloh, he is still in my barracks. That's one way to keep the computers generated generals. Also, Wade Hampton was killed at Norfolk News. Does this mean I will never see another Wade Hampton, or might he come along in a later scenario?

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21 minutes ago, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet said:

p.s. Ruggles was wounded at Shiloh, one of the computers generated AI Generals. After Shiloh, he is still in my barracks. That's one way to keep the computers generated generals. Also, Wade Hampton was killed at Norfolk News. Does this mean I will never see another Wade Hampton, or might he come along in a later scenario?

There is a known bug where allied officers can end up in your barracks. Getting officers to join would be pretty easy, it's the units that are more difficult.

The officers are all auto generated, I'm not sure if there is any logic in place to make sure dead officers don't get generated again though.

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Is there any editor or modding tool that I can use to increase the officers experience back to their previous rank and levels?

I was under the impression, that a wounded Brigade Commander who was wounded, was replaced by a temporary Junior Ranking officer. But after the battle, both would be retained, one in the hospital (barracks) and the other still in temporary command. So far temporary officers do inherit their positions, but the wounded officer disappears!

Also, the UI and AI Customization Mod allows my trainer to work again, whereas the J&P Mod does not.  At the main loading screen, the UI mod shows the version number of the game and the version number of the UI mod. With the JP mod, this is not the case, as it shows the exact same game version but the mod version is one long number, not a version number. This is probably why the trainer can no longer see this file.

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15 minutes ago, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet said:

Is there any editor or modding tool that I can use to increase the officers experience back to their previous rank and levels?

Officer experience cutoffs are stored in the assets file so they not configurable currently.

16 minutes ago, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet said:

I was under the impression, that a wounded Brigade Commander who was wounded, was replaced by a temporary Junior Ranking officer. But after the battle, both would be retained, one in the hospital (barracks) and the other still in temporary command. So far temporary officers do inherit their positions, but the wounded officer disappears!

Wounded officers are returned to the barracks when a junior officer takes command. Are you sure the officer wasn't killed? If multiple replacement officers are generated for a single unit only the original officer and last officer will be retained.

17 minutes ago, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet said:

Also, the UI and AI Customization Mod allows my trainer to work again, whereas the J&P Mod does not.  At the main loading screen, the UI mod shows the version number of the game and the version number of the UI mod. With the JP mod, this is not the case, as it shows the exact same game version but the mod version is one long number, not a version number. This is probably why the trainer can no longer see this file.

The Customizations mod makes significantly fewer changes which may be why the trainer works. The Rebalance mod has not yet been updated to change the version number. I doubt this is what is breaking the trainer as I'm only updating the text visible to the user. The version number behind the scenes in other places is not being updated.

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Yes, positive 3rd Brigade Commander, Colonel Seigfreid was wounded at the Battle of Norfolk News. A Lt. Colonel Rains took over temporary command and still holds that position. No sign of Seigfreid. As for the trainer it cannot see or locate the file. yet they are named to same on the outside, it must be a text error or discrepancy somewhere. I might try an earlier J&P mod for testing purposes

 

 

Edited by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet
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I just retested the officer replacement functionality and wounded officers went to the barracks as expected. It's possible there is an edge case where this doesn't happen, but unless I can reproduce it consistently I won't be able to correct it.

Perks are basically the same in 1.21. There are some timer bugs that were fixed in later versions that you may encounter using 1.21.

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pI might have been wrong, maybe it said something like he was Hit or something other than killed, Maybe I have played these first few battles so much now I remember him in the hospital and he is not there now, so I am confused!

As for the version 1.21, if there isn't that much different at this time, maybe I will hunker down and muddle through until you update v1.23a. Mind you that Surrender Mod is a little overdone in my honest opinion. I had 3000 plus Brigades surrender to me at Manassas, The very first unit stormed onto the Stone Bridge point blank into my 2300 man Brigade behind those fortifications and ballooie!!! Out of the War! and hello Andersonville. It seems like if they take too much fireintense they rout and flee, but if you charge them and they rout they surrender instead, or if they are in melee maybe is the key?

 

Edited by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet
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p.s. Wow, what intense battles I have now. I have played Manassas twice, with each a different strategy and could have lost both at one time in either. A whole different kettle of fish with your work. I could not play this game now without the longer timers and the more intense action, just wouldn't hold my attention the same way. Well done

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Pandakraut, I have a question that applies to vanilla and every mod I've tried:

The unit organization career points let you gradually add to division & corps sizes and numbers... but the scenarios don't seem to engage all these troops.  Many of the scenarios restrict the number of engaged brigades from your corps, and the number appears to top out at 25.  I am in the final battle of the war, BG US with Rebalance, and have 4 corps of 6 divisions each, and I believe I have headroom to add a 7th division to each - but what's the point? I can only still use 25 brigades, which is 5 divisions.  Also, some of the major battles offer reinforcement slots for more corps than I've ever been able to field.

It's almost as if the scenario designers weren't talking to the people responsible for the camp.

Is it possible to change something so that what you can build matches better with what you can use?

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28 minutes ago, TechnoSarge said:

Pandakraut, I have a question that applies to vanilla and every mod I've tried:

The unit organization career points let you gradually add to division & corps sizes and numbers... but the scenarios don't seem to engage all these troops.  Many of the scenarios restrict the number of engaged brigades from your corps, and the number appears to top out at 25.  I am in the final battle of the war, BG US with Rebalance, and have 4 corps of 6 divisions each, and I believe I have headroom to add a 7th division to each - but what's the point? I can only still use 25 brigades, which is 5 divisions.  Also, some of the major battles offer reinforcement slots for more corps than I've ever been able to field.

It's almost as if the scenario designers weren't talking to the people responsible for the camp.

Is it possible to change something so that what you can build matches better with what you can use?

In the base game the max brigade deployment per corps was 25 and the maximum amount of corps was 5. The largest battles allowed you to field all of these.

In the mod the max brigade size per corps is currently 40 and the maximum number of corps is 4. The maximum deployment amount is only going to be 30. This is an oversight from when I was implementing the increased deployment slots and we were reworking the number of brigades/divisions per corps. The lack of a 5th corps is technically a balancing change but really should probably just get added back in for consistency.

You mentioned you are only seeing 25 units per corps allowed to be deployed at Richmond in the mod? I just checked and those should all allow 30 units, did you change any of the configuration files?

At Richmond you may be able to deploy two corps with 40 units into the Reinforcement slots, though I'm not sure if all of those units will end up arriving.

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pandakraut, Is there any way possible to prevent the computer from lowering an Officers rank. I appreciate the theory of slower promotions but I have had Major Generals and Brigadier Generals for 3 or more battles now and they still get demoted the next time they get experience. The last time Robert E. Lee was a colonel was in the old 2nd Cavalry fighting Indians. Every time an officer gets promotion in the place of a Brigade command, he becomes a colonel, doesn't matter what rank he started as. Brigade Commands start as Brigadiers usually that's why they are called Brigadiers, Now due to a lot of casualties in the Civil War, I realize there were a lot of Colonels that held these posts at times but usually because they were too junior to be promoted at that time. But at the start of the War, a lot of Confederate officers, and even Union as well found themselves propelled in rank due to the splitting of the old US Army into to parts. But within weeks of the start of hostilities (Bull Run or 1st Manassas), the Confederacy alone promoted A.S. Johnston, R.E. Lee, J.E. Johnston, and P.G.T. Beauregard to full Generals. Here in my game at Shiloh, they are colonels?

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53 minutes ago, pandakraut said:

In the base game the max brigade deployment per corps was 25 and the maximum amount of corps was 5. The largest battles allowed you to field all of these.

In the mod the max brigade size per corps is currently 40 and the maximum number of corps is 4. The maximum deployment amount is only going to be 30. This is an oversight from when I was implementing the increased deployment slots and we were reworking the number of brigades/divisions per corps. The lack of a 5th corps is technically a balancing change but really should probably just get added back in for consistency.

You mentioned you are only seeing 25 units per corps allowed to be deployed at Richmond in the mod? I just checked and those should all allow 30 units, did you change any of the configuration files?

At Richmond you may be able to deploy two corps with 40 units into the Reinforcement slots, though I'm not sure if all of those units will end up arriving.

Once I finish the battle, I'll reload my pre-battle save and show the offerings.  I did change some config, but I  only remember re-allowing skirmisher detachment.  Looking at the .csv files again, I can't see anything related to scenario brigade restrictions.

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14 minutes ago, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet said:

Is there any way possible to prevent the computer from lowering an Officers rank

This is not configurable in the mod as that information is stored in the assets file which can only be modified through hex editing. Demoting of officers will always occur if using pre-mod saves. It's probably possible to increase an individual officers xp with cheatengine or the like so that they are the desired rank in the mod, but that's not something I have experience with. In the mod BG xp is 75.

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36 minutes ago, TechnoSarge said:

Once I finish the battle, I'll reload my pre-battle save and show the offerings.  I did change some config, but I  only remember re-allowing skirmisher detachment.  Looking at the .csv files again, I can't see anything related to scenario brigade restrictions.

In the ConfigFile.csv deploySizeMultiplier, is what controls the deployments. If you are only seeing deployments of 25 at Richmond I would expect that value to be 1. Using 1.25 gets you to 39 at Richmond, this will probably make most other battles way to easy though. Default value in the mod is 1.1

Edited by pandakraut
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7 minutes ago, pandakraut said:

This is not configurable in the mod as that information is stored in the assets file which can only be modified through hex editing. Demoting of officers will always occur if using pre-mod saves.

That's my point, I started a brand new game with the 1.21 and surrender mod. Before the Battle of Norfolk News, I had Brigadier Generals after they are all Colonels. And some waited until after Manassas before they got demoted to Colonel as well. So I presume you are saying that there is no way using your mod I can prevent Officers from losing 2 to 3 ranks before they start to gain enough experience to promote them above the rank of Colonel?

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6 minutes ago, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet said:

That's my point, I started a brand new game with the 1.21 and surrender mod. Before the Battle of Norfolk News, I had Brigadier Generals after they are all Colonels. And some waited until after Manassas before they got demoted to Colonel as well. So I presume you are saying that there is no way using your mod I can prevent Officers from losing 2 to 3 ranks before they start to gain enough experience to promote them above the rank of Colonel?

Are you referring to officers in allied units? Those will show demotions as it's a ton of effort to update officers in every battle, but that also has no impact on the campaign going forward.

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Allied Officers..... ? No these are guys that I have after the Potomac Fort Battles, or buy from my Government, or get out of the Barracks, or receive as rewards after a Battle. I place them in Brigade Command and when they get experience during a battle, they get promoted to Colonels, even though they were  Generals before they started.

I'm sorry, I have not been clear in explaining, I love the work and the mod but its frustrating to spend Reputation Points on Ewell, Early, and Archer and they all get demoted to Colonel after they get their first experience boost and should be promoted instead. No Colonels or Lt.Colonels ever get demoted/promoted. I first thought it was anyone that I placed in a Brigade Command slot, but then a Division Commander lost 2 ranks! MG A.S. Johnston after Shiloh who along with BG N. Forrest gets placed in your army after that Battle, and putting him in my 1st division command slot so he could gain experience got promoted to Colonel. The only thing I haven't noticed is the demotion of a Corps Commander.

Maybe I'm not sure of what you mean Allied, to me they would be your extras they fire into every battle as your reinforcements, but these never come into your army. I asked you if that was possible and much to my disappointment you said you couldn't do that yet 

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1 hour ago, pandakraut said:

In the ConfigFile.csv deploySizeMultiplier, is what controls the deployments. If you are only seeing deployments of 25 at Richmond I would expect that value to be 1. Using 1.25 gets you to 39 at Richmond, this will probably make most other battles way to easy though. Default value in the mod is 1.1

Indeed the number is at 1.  Strange, though, because unless I read of that number in this thread, I wouldn't touch it, since it isn't obvious what it does. And I've always had this issue, which I would have liked to ease.

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In regards to officers demoting, I changed the officer rank experience requirements but did not change the reputation officer experience.  Currently they will be displayed as whatever rank they are in vanilla. Brigadier and above will definitely demote as their experience requirements are higher than vanilla. It is safe to say that unless they are already colonels, they will be demoted by the game due to them not meeting the experience requirements.  Again this only applies to reputation officers or if you load up a vanilla save game (you can do that by the way and nothing will break (I think)).  This will be changed in the future but I plan on doing something other than officers for rewards.  

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1 hour ago, TechnoSarge said:

Indeed the number is at 1.  Strange, though, because unless I read of that number in this thread, I wouldn't touch it, since it isn't obvious what it does. And I've always had this issue, which I would have liked to ease.

Ah right you mentioned you enabled detached skirmishers. I might have suggested you update that value to 1 since the extra deployment slots were added to support having dedicated skirmishers. That definitely throws the corps/brigade ratios out of alignment even worse though.

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Epic! Jonny thank you very much for the sitrep. Looking forward very much to those changes.

Well, something very strange happened to me, and I want to ask you guys about it. In my newest restarted BG Campaign during the Battle Of Pittsburg Landing or Shiloh, which is way more intense than Colonel for sure thanks to your mod, I actually had some units surrender to the enemy when I pushed them too far forward. First my most experienced and best Cavalry Brigade, I sent forward to catch an isolated Supply Column. Boy! are those guys uncanny, they take off so fast, its almost before you even think about catching one, they are going the other way. So I chased this one too far and a Union Cavalry Brigade intervened and after contact and melee, they chased my unit away from me and my control and after being much depleted in men (down to about 350), they surrendered, and not so that I blamed them! So later towards the end of the battle, I sent two more Brigades of Cavalry up toward that area, and lo and behold I freed them, or recaptured them, as the game proclaims! Well, that's fair, I mean I had won, so naturally, I freed my men that had been captured during it right?

So this other unit, after my Cavalry was captured, but before I freed them, had also surrendered. This one was an Infantry Brigade as part of my first Division. I sent the whole division forward to hit the Union flank, which they did in fine style. But my furthermost Brigade on my extreme left flank hit two union brigades and after causing one to rout, the other managed to hold on, and cause mine to rout and surrender instead. But despite the loss of some visibility, I had Units in the same proximity and when I pushed forward to complete the rout of the Union Line my Brigade was gone! It had simply vanished, and I never even remembered who until after the battle report. Anyone had this happen to them and know why?

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I'm glad you made detached skirmishers configurable. I use them as scouts, primarily - not as fighting units, which is what I use dedicated skirmishers for. My dedicated ones are armed with the longest-range weapon I can buy; I like sniper rifles for these formations. Of course, detached skirmishers are carrying the infantry rifle or musket of their parent formation, and are no better than that unit. The reduced casualties of troops in open formation makes the detached troops viable also as a "meat shield" for units going into assault against entrenchments.  Note that using a cloud of skirmishers in front of the battle line reaches back to Napoleon and before - and most of the professional officers were trained in Napoleonic warfare.

For this reason, I'm loath to give up the ability to detach skirmishers.  The AI always seems to produce many skirmisher formations, which are usually twice the size of my detached units, and without my scouts before me, my brigades would often take a galling & unexpected fire.

Experimentally, I reset the deploySizeMultiplier to 1.1 as apparently the default is, and restarted Richmond. I verify the brigade limit went to 30.  Still, when I checked my unit organization permissions, I found I was allowed to build 4 corps, each with 8 divisions of 5 brigades (Unit Org maxed out).  I still find the ability to build corps that can't carry all their brigades to ANY fight to be a flaw in the design of Ultimate General.

BTW - I am SERIOUSLY hoping the designers are going to produce other, similar titles. I'd love a Napoleonic version!

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I agree with those sediments TechnoSarge, I am having a blast with this game now especially after this mod insertion. and would love a Napoleonic one as well, but one a little more shall we say sandbox like, with maybe more political options like States representatives and Government, and also more strategic in scope. I would also love to see them revisit this game and do the same, for the Civil War. I remember one title years ago, I think the Blue and the Grey?? that actually had this. They had the different Generals you could appoint to command in seniority and the politicians of the states, that you could appoint to the Congress or cabinet, and they all had different traits and abilities. You had to juggle your commanders and the politicians to find a balance between pleasing everyone or you alienated certain states or factions. It was a blast but didn't have much in the way of playing battles, that was done just by giving results. I've tried to get this game again, I loved it back at the time, but that was for either the Amiga or Commodore 64 and you would need emulators today!

So what's this about unit numbers restriction and skirmishers, I would love to see the detachable skirmishers again, but not if it hurts this mod, how does that work I didn't understand what you guys were saying. I also didn't know about a config file that you could use to change options, where is that and what else is there interesting?

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