Any gameplay mods ?

[W1ndy]

By gameplay I mean changes to the way cover works, eg. Buildings - more cover or less

The way accuracy works , lethality , stuff like that.

I see most mods are about graphics and sound so I'm asking as it might be that these other things are hard coded.

[Erwin]

gameplay is not changeable in the way you seem to mean. If it were, it would make PBEM a cheater's paradise.

All mods do is improve the look and sound of the product.

[mjkerner]

Hard-coded, under-the-hood gameplay is off limits to us, as it should be for a host of reasons, but namely for what Erwin said.

[MG TOW]

Hard-coded, under-the-hood gameplay is off limits to us, as it should be for a host of reasons, but namely for what Erwin said.

What I find a little odd about making that off limits, is there are things like check encoding as the typical, or one method, used for ensuring players have matching data files before going head to head. I recall playing more than a few other games where I'd link up just to get that failed data file message. It was usually a case of "sorry i forgot i had that machine gun ROF mod". or something like that.

Probably not an easy thing to shoe horn into an already existing game I would suspect.

[JonS]

gameplay is not changeable in the way you seem to mean. If it were, it would make PBEM a cheater's paradise.

HPSSIM's Panzer Campaigns series is an excellent example of this. That system uses a fantastically open set of reference files that drives everything from movement to capabilities to combat, and they're all just text files which are very easy to modify (although understanding those files takes a bit longer )

But the system is SO open that it's hard not to 'cheat' if you're a regular modder, and trivially easy to cheat if you're that way inclined. That's because the game calls the reference files every time they're needed, using the ones that are currently in the phasing players directory structure.

That's right. The reference files to be used are NOT baked in to the PBEM file at the start of the game - it just uses whatever is there when needed. So I could, as a player, create a custom OoB file that vastly inflates the capabilities of all my units and cripples all my opponent's units. And there's no way to prevent that - or even detect it.

I think there's some minimal encryption in place so that I can't view my opponent's turn to see exactly what he's up to ... but who cares? If I'm guaranteed to win every battle, it really doesn't matter what my opponent does, although he's probably cheating in the same way too.

It's a neat series and system, but the PBEM implementation is terrible.

[MG TOW]

The TOW series is one example where data files were converted to usable spread sheets and things like weapons data could be altered, even nationalities for certain weapons and so much more you could do with these files. But when it came to multiplayer it would just do a bit count and if the numbers didn't match then punt.

TOW2 btw was extremely tedious to locate files, then unpak and open them. Many people gave up. But once all the hoops were jumped through the sky was the limit.