mod UI and AI Customizations Mod V1.9.2

[Byzantium]

Thanks for providing the mod and the updates  -  can't imagine ever going back to the default artillery cone, and all this other stuff on top of it! 

2 Questions - 1) What does the new size degradation curve look like? I'm guessing it remains unchanged until the net-damage inflection points, but do they now just go directly to that linear regime that starts beyond the maximum player unit sizes in the default curves or did you implement a new curve in those regions? 

2) I like the new way of displaying range modifiers: I was going to ask how you were defining Short/Medium/etc. but then you mentioned in that camp video that it was as 25% increments - maybe something to add to the description in the OP? Looking directly at the modifiers here (moreso I found than considering them in isolation in the files you posted) does make the damage statistic itself harder to interpret, given how many weapons have range modifiers that are everywhere well below 1 - seems like it might be useful to 'normalize' the range modifier at the highest point to 100%, and change listed damage to (peak range modifier)*(damage*acc-low) - (peak range modifier)*(damage*acc-high)? (I.e. change the damage on the 10-pounder Parrot to 2.21-22.1, and range modifiers would go from 29/10/8/8/15 to 85%/30%/24%/24%/44%) [still not ideal because of the offset between 100 range units and the peak of the damage curve in this case, I admit.] 

Although I don't think it makes much difference since I don't think any of the default artillery take a net damage loss from it (ignoring their range degradation curves), one very minor loss of reporting only a resulting damage rather than accuracy ranges is evaluating the penalty to accuracy-low the mechanics thread mentions for shell and canister shot? (Which seems like an odd mechanical choice to me anyway, I guess an increase in downward variance because of faulty fuses or something.) 

[pandakraut]

1 hour ago, Byzantium said:

2 Questions - 1) What does the new size degradation curve look like? I'm guessing it remains unchanged until the net-damage inflection points, but do they now just go directly to that linear regime that starts beyond the maximum player unit sizes in the default curves or did you implement a new curve in those regions? 

New curves, here is what the result damage curves look like.

1 hour ago, Byzantium said:

2) I like the new way of displaying range modifiers: I was going to ask how you were defining Short/Medium/etc. but then you mentioned in that camp video that it was as 25% increments - maybe something to add to the description in the OP? Looking directly at the modifiers here (moreso I found than considering them in isolation in the files you posted) does make the damage statistic itself harder to interpret, given how many weapons have range modifiers that are everywhere well below 1 - seems like it might be useful to 'normalize' the range modifier at the highest point to 100%, and change listed damage to (peak range modifier)*(damage*acc-low) - (peak range modifier)*(damage*acc-high)? (I.e. change the damage on the 10-pounder Parrot to 2.21-22.1, and range modifiers would go from 29/10/8/8/15 to 85%/30%/24%/24%/44%) [still not ideal because of the offset between 100 range units and the peak of the damage curve in this case, I admit.] 

I could replace the short, med, etc with 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 but I'm extremely limited with how many characters I can display on one line and I found that the numbers get much harder to compare quickly if they are spread out across multiple lines. Showing 4 and 5 range increments is the best comprise I could find between detail and space.

I'm not seeing the advantages to normalizing the percentages. You're still seeing decreasing percentages for most weapons. For me at least, it seems more useful to have the percentages correspond to the values you'd see if you looked up the graphs. Showing the 'max' damage most weapons can do also isn't all that helpful since it tends to be at ranges you rarely fight at.

1 hour ago, Byzantium said:

Although I don't think it makes much difference since I don't think any of the default artillery take a net damage loss from it (ignoring their range degradation curves), one very minor loss of reporting only a resulting damage rather than accuracy ranges is evaluating the penalty to accuracy-low the mechanics thread mentions for shell and canister shot? (Which seems like an odd mechanical choice to me anyway, I guess an increase in downward variance because of faulty fuses or something.) 

That's true, but I think the net gain of not having the implications that the accuracy label brings is worth it. The shell/canister penalties will be consistent across all cannon, so I don't think it adds much to comparisons. I would guess the added randomness is to somewhat counter the increased damage? Not sure what the historical comparison would be.

 

 

[Jorlaan]

I finished my first campaign: Union on BG. I gotta say this mod made things much better. I beat Chickamauga with vanilla but was wanting to restart anyways and that was when I started with this mod.

I'm going to do a South campaign now, having already gone about 1/2 through one of those on vanilla as well I have at least some idea what to expect and I've learned a lot.

I would like to make just a couple small changes though before I do and I was wondering if you might know how there Pandakraut. I would like to change medicine, training and economic to all have a 3% bonus per level.

I have acquired a hex editor and am diving in and looking around but gods I am over my head. I have learned a good deal over the years in the name of modding though and this is my new thing. This reminds me a bit of modding Mount and Blade, just big strings of numbers that need to be changed. I learned how to do some of that through some great guides and now maybe I can learn some of this. I have also been absorbing as much as I can from the various threads.

I can find the words medicine etc in the file, but I have no knowledge in interpreting the data.

Any help you can share or point me in the right direction, would be much appreciated.

Edited January 15, 2019 by Jorlaan
Rethought something

[Byzantium]

7 hours ago, pandakraut said:

I could replace the short, med, etc with 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 but I'm extremely limited with how many characters I can display on one line and I found that the numbers get much harder to compare quickly if they are spread out across multiple lines. Showing 4 and 5 range increments is the best comprise I could find between detail and space.

Understood. To clarify, I didn't mean to change the in-game tooltips, meant adding a note that these percentages are what the ranges correspond to in the feature list. 

Compared to the difference in artillery effectiveness, the increase to skirmisher damage has not felt as immediately obvious in battle (Played one union MG campaign through Richmond, and two attempts at as the CSA on MG that have come up short in the Overland Campaign and on Washington itself), although in retrospect both Parker's Crossroads and Rio Hill were far tougher than I had remembered.

One last very minor question, in the info cards for units, what does the number that follows the weapon's caliber represent?  (i.e. ".69 Musket 1", or "6PDR Smoothbore 100", etc.) I think it wasn't there prior to the mod? It seems to be the same for all of my units in a given battle but changes between battles, seems like it's generally increasing as the campaigns go on but not in a way I've been able to relate to anything else.

 

Edited January 15, 2019 by Byzantium
Forgot to add in another very minor question.

[pandakraut]

6 hours ago, Byzantium said:

Understood. To clarify, I didn't mean to change the in-game tooltips, meant adding a note that these percentages are what the ranges correspond to in the feature list. 

I see what you mean, I've updated the description of the change in the main post with some additional detail.

6 hours ago, Byzantium said:

Compared to the difference in artillery effectiveness, the increase to skirmisher damage has not felt as immediately obvious in battle (Played one union MG campaign through Richmond, and two attempts at as the CSA on MG that have come up short in the Overland Campaign and on Washington itself), although in retrospect both Parker's Crossroads and Rio Hill were far tougher than I had remembered.

I think the reason skirmishers aren't as noticeable is that the AI uses terrible weapons for most of the campaign. I'm up to Rio Hill on legendary currently and I'm definitely taking more casualties than normal. I have a test save where the AI weapons value jumped up to 60 and instead of facing burnsides, smiths, and a few spencers they now have whitworth(ts), jf browns, and spencers. Without the new damage curves the battle is rough but manageable. With the curves I was having units shattered off the field even if I sat in heavy cover the entire battle. It's probably possible to still win with enough cheesing, but the lose 40% of your army goal is a serious concern.

6 hours ago, Byzantium said:

One last very minor question, in the info cards for units, what does the number that follows the weapon's caliber represent?  (i.e. ".69 Musket 1", or "6PDR Smoothbore 100", etc.) I think it wasn't there prior to the mod? It seems to be the same for all of my units in a given battle but changes between battles, seems like it's generally increasing as the campaigns go on but not in a way I've been able to relate to anything else.

Oops, that's some testing code that I didn't notice got left in. It's displaying the ammo cost of a weapon. I was using it to test the supply perks. I'll remove it in the next update.

[pandakraut]

11 hours ago, Jorlaan said:

I would like to make just a couple small changes though before I do and I was wondering if you might know how there Pandakraut. I would like to change medicine, training and economic to all have a 3% bonus per level.

I have acquired a hex editor and am diving in and looking around but gods I am over my head. I have learned a good deal over the years in the name of modding though and this is my new thing. This reminds me a bit of modding Mount and Blade, just big strings of numbers that need to be changed. I learned how to do some of that through some great guides and now maybe I can learn some of this. I have also been absorbing as much as I can from the various threads.

There are hex decompilers which can translate a bit more in the assets file. Jonny is travelling at the moment, but I can ask him to create a screenshot of the career point sections when he gets back. I'm not sure if this section is near where medicine is controlled, but if you haven't seen it already here is where AO controls your army size. You could also try comparing the Rebalance mod assets file to the base game as we do change the medicine, econ, and training values there. Lots of other changes as well, but maybe searching on medicine will reveal an obvious area and you can experiment from there.

One other thing to note, be careful with what you change the econ values to don't result in selling weapons for more than their buy price at 10 econ. I had to change the formula in the dll to work with the numbers in the Rebalance mod.

 

[Yesman21]

Whenever I install the mod, even on a vanilla install of UGCW, the game will freeze on the first loading screen. All I've done is extract the download into the UGCW_Data folder. If it doesn't truly freeze, it certainly takes several minutes and I haven't seen it load at all.

[pandakraut]

40 minutes ago, Yesman21 said:

Whenever I install the mod, even on a vanilla install of UGCW, the game will freeze on the first loading screen. All I've done is extract the download into the UGCW_Data folder. If it doesn't truly freeze, it certainly takes several minutes and I haven't seen it load at all.

That usually means the config files aren't being found. Are you on a mac or pc? What product did you use to install the game(steam, gog, apple store, etc)?

[Yesman21]

steam on a PC. I've even gotten mods for the game to work before on this same computer, just not this one.

[pandakraut]

Path for the extraction should be C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Ultimate General Civil War\Ultimate General Civil War_Data

Specific locations after extraction should be:

Ultimate General Civil War\Ultimate General Civil War_Data\Managed\Assembly-CSharp.dll

Ultimate General Civil War\Ultimate General Civil War_Data\Mod\UIAICustomizations\ConfigFile.csv

Ultimate General Civil War\Ultimate General Civil War_Data\resources.assets

Were you prompted to overwrite the assembly and resources files? Do they show an updated timestamp?

[Yesman21]

Turns out I accidentally put the the Config just in the mod folder, somehow discarding the UIAICustomizations folder entirely. Thanks for the help, either way!

[pandakraut]

Good to hear that you were able to get it working. Enjoy!

[TechnoSarge]

Pandakraut, I changed out my files for the recent version and then started a BG Federal campaign. I am shocked at officer losses - like I've never seen before. It is not uncommon to lose 5 leaders even in a minor battle. As an example, I just finished Seven Pines... I only absorbed 2529 casualties, but I lost 4 leaders! Thank goodness 3 of those were from borrow units!

Is there anything in the changes that might account for this?I realize it may be luck of the draw, but I've had to take every officer offered for reputation, my Barracks is empty of unwounded guys (and there are only 2 wounded because of the KIAs), and there are only 2 better than a Major left for me to hire! I've only been able to make 3 units in my 3rd Corps for want of leaders (and weapons) and one of those is currently leaderless from a previous fight.

Edited January 24, 2019 by TechnoSarge

[pandakraut]

27 minutes ago, TechnoSarge said:

Pandakraut, I changed out my files for the recent version and then started a BG Federal campaign. I am shocked at officer losses - like I've never seen before. It is not uncommon to lose 5 leaders even in a minor battle. As an example, I just finished Seven Pines... I only absorbed 2529 casualties, but I lost 4 leaders! Thank goodness 3 of those were from borrow units!

Is there anything in the changes that might account for this?I realize it may be luck of the draw, but I've had to take every officer offered for reputation, my Barracks is empty of unwounded guys (and there are only 2 wounded because of the KIAs), and there are only 2 better than a Major left for me to hire! I've only been able to make 3 units in my 3rd Corps for want of leaders (and weapons) and one of those is currently leaderless from a previous fight.

Definitely no changes to officer kill rates other than side effects of larger units doing more damage(more likely to trigger die roll). I haven't noticed any increased officer death rates while playing myself so I think you're just having a streak of bad luck.

You can always buy more officers even if the barracks is empty. Just create a new unit, division, or corps and a minimum xp officer of the appropriate rank will get generated.

[pacbard]

Does anyone know if the current version of the mod is compatible for UG on MacOS? When I copy the mod's files inside the application bundle, the game does not start. I just get a black screen after the loading screen. I should have found the right place for the files as I get asked to replace the base game files.

[pandakraut]

1 hour ago, pacbard said:

Does anyone know if the current version of the mod is compatible for UG on MacOS? When I copy the mod's files inside the application bundle, the game does not start. I just get a black screen after the loading screen. I should have found the right place for the files as I get asked to replace the base game files.

Mod should work on a mac though the install instructions are a bit different. The blank screen on startup usually means that the config files aren't being found.

1. In Steam, right click UGCW and select Properties.

2. Click local files, then select browse local files

3. right click 'Ultimate General Civil War' and select 'show package contents'

4. navigate (relative path) to /Contents/
   a) Place the 'Mod' folder in Contents/

5. navigate (relative path) to /Contents/Resources/Data/
   a) Copy the resources.assets file into /Data/
   b) Copy the /Managed/Assembly-CSharp.dll file from the mod release into the /Managed/ folder, overwriting the existing file

[pacbard]

1 hour ago, pandakraut said:

navigate (relative path) to /Contents/
a) Place the 'Mod' folder in Contents/

That was the step that I was missing. Thank you!

[Davek86]

Pandakraut: in the comments on one of your video's I read that you and Jonny enabled capturing of cannon in the re-balance mod. Would it be possible to also make this change in UI and AI Customization mod? I have only seen the end screen of the campaign twice and both times it seemed odd to me that there was a mention of how many cannons you had captured while there is no way to do it in game. 

Currently I am experimenting with skirmishers, non sniper ones might be more feasible with normal rifles is it difficult to enable this? 

I am greatly enjoying the mod, especially the fire arcs for cannons and the fixed damage curves. 

[pandakraut]

2 hours ago, Davek86 said:

Pandakraut: in the comments on one of your video's I read that you and Jonny enabled capturing of cannon in the re-balance mod. Would it be possible to also make this change in UI and AI Customization mod? I have only seen the end screen of the campaign twice and both times it seemed odd to me that there was a mention of how many cannons you had captured while there is no way to do it in game. 

Currently I am experimenting with skirmishers, non sniper ones might be more feasible with normal rifles is it difficult to enable this? 

I am greatly enjoying the mod, especially the fire arcs for cannons and the fixed damage curves. 

While both of these changes could be added to this mod, I'm not sure if they are appropriate for it. While this mod started as just some usability improvements, I now see it as basically an unofficial patch. The goal being to provide the usability improvements and bug fixes for players who otherwise want the base game experience.

With that context adding infantry weapons to skirmishers doesn't seem like it fits. While it does work pretty well for the skirmishers, it basically renders carbines useless for anything but cavalry. It also somewhat overrides the role that detached skirmishers play in the base game. Those are disabled in the Rebalance mod which is part of the trade off for allowing skirmishers to use infantry weapons.

Capturing cannon is a bit closer to a bug fix, as it does seem like it was considered at one point in development. Looking behind the scenes this definitely seems to be a feature that was considered and then not implemented. There is no sprite for captured cannon so you just end up with a few infantry sprites that walk at the speed of pushing cannon. In the Rebalance mod we consider the trade off worthwhile, but it's clunky enough that I'm hesitant to add it to a mod that is trying to give a mostly base game experience.

Any comments are appreciated, happy to hear you're enjoying the mod overall.

Edited January 27, 2019 by pandakraut

[Davek86]

So, the siege of Suffolk. 

That battle was hard, first scaling and the manpower pool is giving me a hard time as I got several high reinforcement rolls.  Before using some ballast units I was facing around 23K vs 36K. Tried to play it several times and the enemy just steamrolls right through any defense I can set up. With some ballast units the enemy number goes down to 28K, which was plenty for hard pressure for the first part of the battle but the defense line does hold. 

The other notable thing in this battle is that I really started to feel the pain of the fixed damage curves. The enemy brought in 9 artillery units of 18 guns each. And Oh boy those cannons did hurt a lot they caused 4.000 out 7.000. It really did feel as heavy bombardment and did an excellent job to pin down the defense line, only with some luck and some I did manage to hold the line long enough for the reinforcements to arrive. 

unfortunately I did not check which guns I did capture, so don't which cannons they were using. 

Still greatly enjoying the mod,  currently for the first time playing on MG and it seems I might make to the finish line. Although the battles are getting much tougher, supply raid alone took 6  or 7 attempts to get any win and just outright defeat.

[pandakraut]

2 hours ago, Davek86 said:

So, the siege of Suffolk. 

That battle was hard, first scaling and the manpower pool is giving me a hard time as I got several high reinforcement rolls.  Before using some ballast units I was facing around 23K vs 36K. Tried to play it several times and the enemy just steamrolls right through any defense I can set up. With some ballast units the enemy number goes down to 28K, which was plenty for hard pressure for the first part of the battle but the defense line does hold. 

The other notable thing in this battle is that I really started to feel the pain of the fixed damage curves. The enemy brought in 9 artillery units of 18 guns each. And Oh boy those cannons did hurt a lot they caused 4.000 out 7.000. It really did feel as heavy bombardment and did an excellent job to pin down the defense line, only with some luck and some I did manage to hold the line long enough for the reinforcements to arrive. 

The default sizes on that battle are pretty high. The last time I went through it I was still using 1.1k sized infantry units and I was still facing 2.5k+ units when I was normally facing 1.6k. The weapon defaults are also pretty high, fayettvilles and 24pdrs seem to be almost guaranteed. Finding ways to keep those cannons off of your troops reduced casualties a lot for me.

2 hours ago, Davek86 said:

Still greatly enjoying the mod,  currently for the first time playing on MG and it seems I might make to the finish line. Although the battles are getting much tougher, supply raid alone took 6  or 7 attempts to get any win and just outright defeat.

Supply raid can be a pain. I prefer to defend a line further south away from the defenses so that I can take out the reinforcements piecemeal. Something Compass on youtube has an example of this. You can click finish while the VP is contested as well so a quick cav charge can get you a win if nothing else.

Overall the new damage curves biggest impact definitely seems to be with skirmishers and artillery. Not unsurprising since those two were most penalized by the old curves but it certainly makes some missions much harder. Rio Hill as the CSA goes from manageable to nearly impossible if the enemy weapons value gets high enough for them to have scoped rifles. I've also had to rework my entire battle strategy a few times when running into 24 gun cannon units. Those really hurt now.

With Siege of Suffolk and Supply Raid completed you should be past the worst of it. Some of those later battles can be annoying, but mostly you can afford to just take your time and let your artillery lay waste to everything. Happy to hear you're enjoying the mod and thanks for the feedback.

[Haveatya]

How do I enable the customizations such as the perks and weapons curve? Oh wait nevermind, I can't read.

Edited March 5, 2019 by Haveatya
I figured it out

[Wodj]

On 11/7/2018 at 7:08 PM, pandakraut said:

Updated to V1.5
- The tooltip in the top left of camp will now display Difficulty: Legendary when appropriate.
- Perk tooltips now properly display all bonuses the perk provides.
- Several perks had missing perk bonuses. Since additional bonuses cannot be added, minor stat increases have been replaced with the missing unique bonus.
- Endurance Course(all), Tactical Training, Short Range Training, Long Range Training, Sharpshooter(skirmishers), Horseback Riding, Cavalry Training, Reconnaissance Course(cavalry), Shock Cavalry are affected.
- Horseback Riding had it's unique bonus changed to Accuracy since the Endurance Training speed bonus applies to both mounted and unmounted units.

Great mod Pandakraut.  I recently installed v1.6 and the missing perks issue fixed in v1.5 seems to come back.  Please advise.  Is this just cosmetic or does it have a real impact on the bonuses and skills like rotation speed?

[pandakraut]

10 hours ago, Wodj said:

Great mod Pandakraut.  I recently installed v1.6 and the missing perks issue fixed in v1.5 seems to come back.  Please advise.  Is this just cosmetic or does it have a real impact on the bonuses and skills like rotation speed?

When you load up the game does the version number displayed at the main menu show version 1.6? Was the resources.assets file overwritten when you installed? Do the tier 3 artillery perks display canister or shot/shell damage bonuses?

1.6 shouldn't have changed anything with the perks.  The artillery rotation speed attribute is missing from the perk and that is not something I can add back in. The tooltip should only display the cover and stealth bonuses with the mod installed.

[Wodj]

 

On 3/8/2019 at 5:10 AM, pandakraut said:

When you load up the game does the version number displayed at the main menu show version 1.6? Was the resources.assets file overwritten when you installed? Do the tier 3 artillery perks display canister or shot/shell damage bonuses?

1.6 shouldn't have changed anything with the perks.  The artillery rotation speed attribute is missing from the perk and that is not something I can add back in. The tooltip should only display the cover and stealth bonuses with the mod installed.

Panda

Thanks for the reply.  Yes the game shows v1.6.  I re-read your post of changes on v1.5 and understand it now.  I did an analysis of changes below and they seem to line up.

It sounds like from your reply that the changes effect actual game play not just what is displayed on the pop up windows.  I may have to re-think my perk selections going forward.

Thanks again.

Shown below - perks in v1.6.  Orange and white text are changes from standard - an orange + is an add in the new mod.