Men of War Valour Mod

[SimpleSimon]

So for about a year i've been experimenting with and teaching myself the GEM editor attached to Men of War 2 Assault Squad. I wasn't too crazy about MoW for years but with the attachment of Valour Mod so much material and equipment has been put in the game that you can make a literally unlimited number of potential scenarios involving a shocking number of configurations and setups. It's been very challenging since so little of the Editor has published reference material, I still don't know how to make waypoints and reinforcements for instance and YouTube tutorials i've watched look veeeery complicated. So i've been content to just build scenarios and then just hotseat them playing them out in the editor and i've gotta say i've been having a blast. 

Thus far i've done scenarios from the Battle of France to Kursk and Bagration and yes even North Africa and the Philippines! Japanese forces are not only in the game but are crucially depicted with their full toolkit of heavy artillery and tanks. The Chinese are in the game too, and in theory with Valour Mod you could actually do stuff crazy and obscure in the West like the Mukden Incident. For now though i've decided to show off some pictures of a modest infantry scenario i'm working on at the moment involving a US Infantry Battalion + Recon Troop advancing on a German Aufklarung deployed in a French hamlet. 

https://ibb.co/kyM5TgJ

https://ibb.co/Mg570N4

https://ibb.co/grV21v4

Valour Mod's caveat is that its a multiplayer mod that sets MoW's lethality and accuracy values way high, so to compensate i've buffed all soft units to 600% of their normal health values and 600% health regen rates. This leads to infantry firefights that tend to be indecisive at range and go on for a while, by lowering ambient visibility or changing the spotting values of units (units can be set to be better at detecting objects or have their field of view changed) they can be easy to break off too. With the modifications i've made infantry usually have the ability to get within range of eachother and get into short-sharp firefights that don't usually tend to do much except waste lots of ammo now. Exactly what I want. HE is also somewhat less deadly than in the multiplayer mod, otherwise it was just way too overpowered. 

I'm having a lot of fun using the tools available through MoW and Valour to sort of make my own "game" here since the GEM Editor grants some pretty major control over abstractions such as health, visibility, geography, and yes the AI too although I haven't quite figured that one out yet. I'm prepared to answer some questions here about how to use the editor and some of its tools if anyone would like help crafting their own stuff. 

Edited May 19, 2021 by SimpleSimon

[Erwin]

Is this is "real time"?  Be nice to have some of these features in CM3.

[SimpleSimon]

Yeah it's real time, a turn-based option would be pretty handy but it's important to remember MoW is basically much closer to Company of Heroes than Combat Mission. It doesn't have much base content either I felt, but Valour Mod adds an incredible library of units and stuff into the editor's files that you can use. Some things however cannot be controlled from the editor, like firing range values which I would very much like to modify for some weapons. The ZiS-3 for instance has a shorter firing range than the M1938, when in fact it was the other way around. 

[SimpleSimon]

Here's a scenario Im in late testing for.

https://ibb.co/28KRcND

The American's right-most Battalion. I advanced them and their support teams up through the crevice as close as possible to the town. The Germans weren't deployed to stop this, so they were able to get close enough to screen the machine guns moving up behind them. I've abstracted American infantry squads to 6 men-this is the 1944 arrangement of 4 Garands, 1 Thompson or 50% Grease Gun and 1 BAR. Additionally there are BAR, marksman, bazooka, and rifle grenade "teams" of two men and an HQ squad of 4 men. 

German Infantry are configured dependent upon when I set the scenario but the late 1944 arrangement is usually 5 men, one MG34 or 50% chance of an MG42, three K98s and randomly one G43 or StG 44 selected randomly. The last guy will have an StG44 or MP40 selected randomly. The high randomization of German infantry squads is meant to abstract the confused state of resupply and rearmament going on in the Wehrmacht at this time. Since this is a Panzer Aufklarung they're all Scout Teams of 3 men though with an MG42/34, MP40, and K98/G43. 

https://ibb.co/wNK7K8M

Post battle. 2nd Battalion went up a road I had placed an Sdkfz 234/4-the variant with a Pak 40. They were delayed by this and Jeep that tried to scout up the road was destroyed. The center of the town was taken by Right-Battalion which maneuvered closely and was able to destroy the half track pictured with their bazooka team. There's a destroyed 232 barely visible that was taken out by a bazooka team after they maneuvered into the hamlet from behind. On the flipside of this, as the German commander I was trying to extricate my Aufklarung by using the Spahwagens to cover the movement of the Scout teams but in practice this was extremely difficult. The Americans can rapidly punish any movement you make openly and in the end I was only able to extract one team and the 234/4 car. This is how I can construct stories and narratives that play out really well and are exciting to watch even if there's not many surprises because im hotseating against myself. 

Edited May 20, 2021 by SimpleSimon

[SimpleSimon]

A further scenario I made for myself "Fall of Calais". A Waffen SS motor Division invests the town w/support from StuGs, Combat Engineers and artillery. I fortified the British into the city and the density of the map + it's relatively small size made for a pretty hectic battle. 

https://ibb.co/7289HRY

Just discovered horses are in the mod too! 

https://ibb.co/LPp4Txh