Jump to content

Drawde79

Members
  • Posts

    54
  • Joined

  • Last visited

    Never

Drawde79's Achievements

Member

Member (2/3)

0

Reputation

  1. What do you think should be done regarding fixing the grenade effects, assuming these aren't going to be fixed in an official patch? Should other AT grenades/charges (Geballte Ladung, Gammon Bomb etc.) be given similar blast power to the RPG-40 or is it possible to improve the damage calculation system via editing damage.ini? I've also found that regular fragmentation grenades are still near-useless against unarmoured vehicles, other than sometimes killing the crew, even when their armour value is reduced.
  2. Thanks for the information and links! I didn't realise that you don't have the game (ToW) yet, otherwise you'd probably know what I mean. In the early-war Russian scenarios you are invariably outnumbered and often (though not always) are unable to get much of an an advantage in range. By the time you're allowed decent numbers of T-34s (e.g the Kursk missions) the Germans have plenty of things capable of taking them out at range! Seems like the problem is as much due to scenario design as anything else, it's rare (in any campaign mission, regardless of side/theatre) that you aren't outnumbered at least 2 or 3 to 1. My "30 rounds a minute" comment refers to the fact that the default reload time in ToW for the ZiS-3 towed gun, as well as a number of other AT guns of similar calibre, is 2 seconds! (though low crew skill will result in a slower reload time than this) I think I made my last post before you edited your post to add the comment on the ZiS-3, so I wasn't referring to your post.
  3. Are you saying then that the armour penetration values in weapon .ini files don't actually affect the in-game behaviour of the weapon? What's the name of the file where the penetration table is stored? (data\settings\damage.ini contains data for HE effects, but not AP) - or are you just referring to HE/HEAT rounds, not AP? Data for vehicle armour thickness is definitely the same in-game as displayed in the encyclopedia (though angle/slope is calculated from the 3D model, not stored in the .ini files). Reducing the "armour thickness" of trucks to 1-2mm has made them noticeably more vulnerable to small-arms fire.
  4. I thought that might be the reason for the T-34's low rate of fire, but I wasn't sure how much this would affect the rate of fire during a combat situation, and whether the KV-1 had the same problem or not. Reducing the rate of fire seems like a good way to represent the T-34's cramped and inefficient turret (also for French tanks which had similarly overworked crew) but I'm not sure the scenario designers took this into account when designing the missions for ToW! When you have only one T-34 vs. half a dozen Pz.IVs and IIIs, which can fire less than 6 rounds a minute (at least half of which miss) it tends to get knocked out very quickly no matter how carefully you use ambush/hull down positions or flanking manouevres. Maybe a reload time of about 8 seconds would be a good compromise. Towed guns should certainly have an advantage in rate of fire over tanks, but I'm not sure a 75-76mm gun could fire 30 rounds a minute even with a very skilled crew (correct me if I'm wrong though)
  5. Anyone have any suggestions for improving this mission? I don't really want to remove the Ferdinands or Tigers, so giving the player more firepower seems like the best option. Did any T-34/85s, SU-85s and/or SU-100s see action at Kursk? The main problem with the difficulty of this mission seems to be that, other than the SU-122's HEAT shells (only 4 rounds per vehicle, most of which seem to miss) you have absolutely nothing that will penetrate the frontal armour of Ferdinands and Tigers, and even side/rear shots with the 76mm (T-34s and ZIS-3) only have a chance at close range. Unlike many of the missions in ToW, you aren't significantly outnumbered by the enemy in this one, but this doesn't make much difference when the enemy armour is near-invulnerable to anything you throw at it!
  6. I remember in earlier posts regarding inaccurate statistics for vehicles, weapons etc. in ToW's unit encyclopedia, that a developer stated that the values shown in the encyclopedia are not those used in-game. However, my experiences with modding ToW seem to indicate that this isn't the case - change the data for a unit or weapon, and the altered values show up in the encyclopedia as well as in the game. There certainly doesn't seem to be a seperate database for the encyclopedia.
  7. This is a problem I've also noticed, if a tank is set to hold position it seems to be very reluctant to fire on enemy infantry (and sometimes enemy tanks as well). The problem with giving manual targeting orders, apart from the increased micromanagement, is that you can end up targeting enemies which are in line of sight but not line of fire, which results in the unit ignoring targets that it actually can fire at!
  8. Thanks - this should be useful for calculating approximate reload times for the 75mm and larger guns in ToW. Does anyone know the usual rate of fire for smaller calibres (57-37mm)? One other comment about gun loading times in ToW - it seems like the skill of the crew affects the rate of fire. This explains why the loading time is often higher than the time in seconds shown in the unit information. Hence I think it'd be best to use the theoretical maximum rate of fire for the values used in the game - as only the most skilled tank crews will actually be able to achieve this rate. [ July 04, 2007, 04:20 AM: Message edited by: Drawde79 ]
  9. Are there any sources of historical data for WW2 tank gun reload times? This is something I have very little information on, compared to things like armour penetration and velocity. I assume the main factors involved are the weight of the shell and the design of the gun breech mechanism, also things like the design of the turret (ammo stowage locations etc.) must play a part. I also seem to remember that some guns, such as the IS-2's 122mm, had two-part ammo (propellant and shell) which must have significantly increased the reload time. Regarding my original post, the reload time for the ZIS-3 AT gun is actually 2 seconds, the 3 second value is for the SU-76! This must surely be wrong, as is the same value for the Polish and French 75mm field guns (explains why they're so effective...)
  10. I just set the "armour" value for most of the components to 1 or 2mm, other than the engine (4-8mm). This makes "softskins" a lot more vulnerable to small arms fire (including SMGs, which previously they were virtually impervious to) and 20mm HE shells. However, from my experiences testing the mod, these vehicles don't seem to be so vulnerable as to be useless - they don't die immediately, it usually takes a few shots/bursts to destroy or disable them. BTW, the new sounds in the patch seem mostly to consist of alternative sounds, with slightly varying pitch, for MGs and other automatic weapons. I'm incorporating this into my sound mod (rather tedious though as each weapon now has 7 different sound files)
  11. In ToW, the reload time for the 1941 model T-34/76's 76.2mm gun (F-34) is 11 seconds, compared to 6.5 seconds for the 76.2mm ZIS-5 (on the KV-1), only 3 seconds for the ZIS-3 AT gun (though I suspect this one is wrong, many of the AT guns have too fast reload times), and 4 seconds for the 75mm L/24 on the German Panzer IVC. Is this accurate? Currently it seems that it's hard to use T-34s effectively, due to their low fire rate. Since you're always outnumbered anyway, the enemy can usually hit the T-34 with 5-6 shots for every one it fires, and though early-war German guns can rarely if ever penetrate its frontal armour, sooner or later they'll knock out the gun or tracks, or panic the crew. If this is historically accurate, fair enough - but some of the gun reload times in TOW seem a bit suspect to me, especially the 2-3 seconds for AT guns (even 75-76mm ones). If they're wrong, it'll be simple enough to mod them!
  12. Could anyone clarify exactly what new sounds are added in the patch? (weapon sounds, unit speech?) As I'm currently working on a sound mod, I'd be interested to know. Also, are there any changes to the armour of "softskin" vehicles (trucks, jeeps etc.) and/or the armament and properties of aircraft? Both of these are areas I'm modding, it would be useful to know if my efforts are redundant!
  13. Not sure why DrJones hasn't released his tool yet. I got it by asking him on the TOW Modding forums (http://tow.sieber-markus.de/). The tool probably needs updating now that the patch is out, I'm not sure the current version be able to extract files from the new .SFS archives added in the patch. I haven't tried this myself as I still have 115 megabytes and 8 hours to go downloading it :mad:
  14. Not sure why DrJones hasn't released his tool yet. I got it by asking him on the TOW Modding forums (http://tow.sieber-markus.de/). The tool probably needs updating now that the patch is out, I'm not sure the current version be able to extract files from the new .SFS archives added in the patch. I haven't tried this myself as I still have 115 megabytes and 8 hours to go downloading it :mad:
  15. Currently I'm only doing weapon sounds (cannons, MGs and small arms), not explosions, ambient sounds etc., but I do agree that the mortar projectile sounds are very odd! Replacing them isn't just a case of taking sounds from CM, though, as they are 3D sounds made by moving projectiles rather than (as in CM) a simple sound effect played when a mortar shell lands. Apart from the truck armour mod and the sounds, I'm also trying to mod the aircraft. I was surprised (considering that TOW was produced by the same developers as the Il-2 series!) to find when looking at the data files that all the fighters and ground attack planes are armed with Russian 20mm cannons (even the Polish PZL.11...) - in fact all the aircraft of each type seem to be virtually "cookie-cutter" copies other than having different 3D models. My attempts to give P-47s bombs have failed so far, so I'm trying to add an aircraft version of the US .50 cal MG instead. I also noticed that none of the aircraft have armour, even the Il-2 and Hs129 - not sure, though, if adding armour would affect gameplay by making them too hard to shoot down (I'll try it and see what happens) I will be away for a week or so from tomorrow, once I get back I'll continue work on my TOW mods. Maybe, though, some of the "issues" I'm trying to fix with my mods will be fixed in the patch... here's hoping! At least this is one WW2 game where a complete "realism mod" isn't necessary - just minor tweaks, fixes and additions. As I mentioned in my original post, I'd appreciate advice from French WW2 equipment experts/grogs on data for the 25mm gun. (edit: in reply to SlapHappy's post) I was going to wait until the patch release before doing any serious modding, let alone releasing anything, but the delay, and uncertainty as to what fixes and changes the patch will actually include, has made me rethink this! I thought that releasing even a small and basic mod like this might encourage others just by showing it can be done. Installing mods is fairly simple as the game engine reads data files outside the .SFS archives before it reads the ones packed into the archives, hence to install modded files you just need to put the files and folders in your TOW root directory. No different to installing CM graphics/sound mods, except that the original files aren't overwritten, so it's fairly easy to remove the mod by deleting the files. I haven't really looked at the data for grenades, partly as I rarely seem to get the chance to use them in missions, but from the times I have managed to use them it seems like Russian AT grenades are rather overpowered (they seem to be a guaranteed one-shot kill on early-war German tanks) [ June 25, 2007, 11:57 AM: Message edited by: Drawde79 ]
×
×
  • Create New...