Here are some unusual ideas for modding. I don't think I could implement any of these ideas as my coding skills are not good enough. If anyone else wants to run with some of these ideas it would be fun to see the results. 1. Make the balloon a real unit. In Cossacks 1 the balloon drifted around and gave sight of the whole map. In C3 the balloon seems to remain fixed at one location. As well as gc_obj_media_land = 0; and gc_obj_media_water = 1;, C3 also has gc_obj_media_fly = 2;. This indicates I think that there is an air domain where the balloon could float around. Update: Yes, I see the State Vs Country balloon floats around. However, I would advocate a tethered balloon not a free-floating balloon. The balloon unit needs to be a wagon carrying a balloon (probably an inflated balloon unless you want to to do balloon inflation graphics). Send the wagon to a point where you need great sight range (an area already defended by your troops). Then launch the balloon. As the balloon rises you get the sight range. Make the sight range very large but not of the entire map. The enemy could destroy or capture this setup in the usual ways: artillery, destruction of wagon or capture by troops. Very hilarious but maybe a bit extreme would be allowing sharpshooters to shoot down the balloon. Note: the rope from wagon to balloon could follow (mathematically) the results of calculating a catenary (curve) from the ground to the balloon. 2. Have a spread function for scouts. If you selected say 9 scouts (maybe 9 spare 17th C drummers) and hit a Ctrl command and a key meant to spread the scouts, they would spread mathematically to 9 points equidistant from each other so that their sight ranges just overlapped each other enough to deliver complete sight of the map within and around the square area covered by them. This would cut down on micro-ing scout spread. 3. Allow the loopholes in stone walls to shoot one musket weapon each. If you look closely at stone walls, below the parapet, there is one loophole in each wall section. Without needing a musket unit or even a musket barrel each of these loopholes could fire a musket weapon signaled by the single puff of smoke of a musket weapon. The idea is that there are men inside an enclosed walkaway in the wall at each loophole. This would be easier than allowing and placing units on the open parapet. 4. Allow the same as 3. above at building windows? 5. Permit Escalade. This would be a really tough one. Escalade is when attackers use ladders to scale walls. If some attackers could bring ladders and scale walls with the ladders then this would look wonderful. Very hard to code I imagine. 6. Blowing up wall sections with gunpowder wagons. Might be fun. 7. Permit trenching and tunneling. This is in the realms of fantasy I guess so far as the C3 engine goes. But a truly great game of the C3 era and later eras would permit trenching, tunneling, gabions and redoubt construction.
I feel that point no. 6 is quite achiveable, we just need to create a model of a wagon, add moving animation (copy wheels from howitzer, just change the position of animation on model), made it as a unit and then add animation of explotion from some smal building. Action button/key would unlock the wagon and then when i would reached 0 HP it would explode with large range of damage (copy/paste of code that is responsible from howitzer damage). It would be of course heavily armoured. Point No. 7 is sure much harder. We can create something like "elevated trench", basically causeway or bank, huge pile of mud and gravel and in the middle a trench. No intervention in the terraing would be necessary. And it can behave basically like a wall, that means create model: straight, perpendicular, diagonal left, diagonal right + 2 typer of corners i think = 6 models, which is not really hard since visualisation of trench is super easy. Instead of gate there would be possibility to create and entrace in it. Then just copy the function of enetring a ferry. If soldiers can go into ferry, they can go into trench too. Or just simple sandbags with pank would be nice. Also completley recreating walls and shooting cabins, they are awful. I've already done one type of design. To sum it up, improving defence mechanisms would be really nice. I'm not a programmer so I'm showing only my thoughts about models and animations and how to do it as easy as possible. I hope these things can be done also by coding.
I love those models. Excellent. Taller fence is excellent too. With such a fence would shooting through it be possible? I would think not in general but defenders could be given certain advantages still. One would be wooden towers which provide some extra sight range and have shooters like log cabins. The wooden towers could be behind the fence if high enough or incorporated into the fence. Rather than being magically added like gates, they should require the deletion of two or three fence sections and then they can be built and join seamlessly with the fence. Another idea would be that the fence/wooden towers algorithm would be made so that wherever a fence makes a right-angle corner a tower is automatically incorporated at correct costs. When the fence makes one or two little 45 degree corners, no tower is incorporated. And why not gates with towers as well as cheaper gates without towers? Of course, whenever one adds defensive structures, one should give the attacker new ways of attacking the defense. Thus, the gunpowder demolition wagon would would fit that bill along with existing howitzers and cannon of course. A variant of the wagon should also be available to Ukraine to use as a military unit. The Cossacks historically used wagons on the battle field as cover. Have the wagons give significant cover against musket fire and multi-barrell cannon. This would make Ukraine more intersting to play especially in late 18th C. The raised earthworks idea also sounds good if it could be incorporated. The earthworks would have to be designated impassable ground I think.
Talking about fortification, in CS1 + CS3 it's quite pitty that mines are so fragile and easy to attack. Sure, it pushes a player to make some defence for his own, but as we know the game is often played directly from market gaining without any significant mine uprgading. My idea (one from those many I have) is to create mines as a complex building units with proper defence. Also it wasn't "just a hole in the ground" back in 17th century as interpreted in CS. Picture above is not historicaly accurate, that's not the point. I would just add walls, more inside structures, larger pile of stones and also some shooting cabins (windows or whatever) to have mine as self-defending unit.
Yes, that looks a lot better for a mine. It is a mining complex not just a mine, not just a hole in the ground. There would be a few issues for game balance. To encourage the extra investment in the mine complex, it would be necessary to implement the mine complex idea into both game economic balance and the upgrades system. 1. Market profits need to be lower to encourage more primary resource gathering. This would mean a flat or flatter market with poor prices for exchange. Then the best use of peasants is to gather resources directly, especially in mines. Trading surpluses are a back-up for emergencies. 2. The mine upgrade process would upgrade not just the mine but the structures around it. The implementation of this would be quite tricky. One possibility would be a mine complex upgrade template. An upgrade would require template components around it. The first mine upgrade would require a wooden fence around the mine. The second upgrade would require one shooting cabin and so on. I imagine a mine of 95 peasants would require fences, shooting cabins and towers (a fort basically) . These components could be built manually but they could also be selected from a template. Templates are essentially an automated build queue. Imagine a template to build four houses. You select it and with one click you build four houses in a square, not one house. If one of the houses would build on impassable ground, the template greys out that house and only three foundations for houses are laid. In a similar way, a template for an enclosing fence for a mine would lay all fence foundations and the peasants would build that. No finicky clicking and dragging would be necessary. Further iterations of the template add more structures to mine defense. The template concept exists in Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. Indeed, in that game the player can make his own personalized templates for use in games.
Whoah @Ftoomsh, you took it to another lever . I was only thinking about making model of mine larger, more HP, some defence parameter (as units have) plus shooting ability as a shooting cabin. Upgrades would be for increasing num. of peasants and shooting power. But yeah, since mine is non movable building, there is plenty of space how to recreate it.
This sounds very similar to my idea of creating comprex buildings, like installing towers directly into walls or making minarets as new corner segments of a mosque. But even after this long time of scrolling through the forums and seeing how the modding scene goes, it's almost like it would be easier to make a new game from scratch.
