Some feedback posts from the official Forum..

[Chromos]

After the merger I was crawling through the thread to pick up the new links for the old infos, I also copied some of the already given feedback..

Can't wait to see what this is about.

Indeed looks promising.

This is a big project (and a big taiser!), I am very curious to see the different units and tech with I.C.E. (which adds around 80 units and couple hundreds techs).

I wonder how the engine is responding to the increased number of units and tech. I.C.E. is pretty slow in late war with a lot less stuff than yours. I secretly hope you have a solution for that you can share.

good teaser, hope all goes well, i find it funny how people can come up with similar ideas on things, in my mod i have a few that are similar to yours. best of luck.

Looks amazing, just wondering how much can you research in a single game. Have you increased the amount of leadership in the game?

Congratulations of your return to HOI modding Chromos - I have sent you a PM with some comments - great work with the addition of INF Sections such as snipers, GPMG development. The railway network and implied Logistic elements are also valid in any warfare simulation too.

Will try it out this week.

cheers

been playing for several hours now, really enjoying it so far.

there are some techs(e.g. qaulity) that only have negative effects are they set up correctly?

also when you get time or help the tech descriptions could do with writing in instead of just tech_name_desc

Your interface redesign is brilliant. Everything fits in the production screens and there are much more possible screens in the research screen because the buttons are also vertical. Never thought of doing it that way. Kudos.

I really like the direction this mod is going in. I'm still testing it out, but it's certainly got a lot of promise.

I played as the US well into the night last night. Overall, I like what you've done. It "feels" right - much more so than any other mod, in my opinion - even in this early stage. I fought a quick war with Mexico - I'm not sure why that happened, but I suspect it's my fault for accidentally including an old scenario of mine, but the war seems to be progressing as expected in the rest of the world.

I have a couple of notes written down here somewhere, but I'll keep playing and post them a bit later.

I think the techs are very well done. Very logical, and they have good bonuses and penalties assigned with them. The wide-gauge railroad tech, for example. -4% IC for +5% supply thoughput (I think)?? No way I wanted to do that until I realized that I had some excessive IC to burn (I built a lot in '38) and realized that supplying my units was becoming a problem. The tech tree is very well thought out and requires a certain focus on the player's part to get the most out of it.

I'm only in '41 now, so I'll have more input later on.

Im really excited about this mod and i have downloaded it but i would like some colors for the HQs so i can easily distinguish them apart. Right now i have a hard time looking at them, perhaps its just my eyes that ar bad.
So is there an easy way to fix that myself or get stronger eyeglasses

I really like the direction this it taking, keep it up!

I agree - though it sounds like the game engine is making things a little difficult for Chromos' team to put their 'brainstorming plan' easily into action. Either way, I am sure that others are waiting for further developments just as keenly as I am.

Haven't played much over the Christmas break, but hope to get playtime in early 2011.

Happy New Year to you all...

cheers

This mod looks great Chromos- i really like what you have done with the Tech trees. Its the kind of detail i like.

Regards
Flag

OK, I pretty much finished up my game. It's the winter of '44 and playing as the US. The techs were great - I felt like I was keeping pace with reality, and I definitely felt like I was able to play with the kind of forces I wanted to play with. On that front, everything was excellent.

Some minor points:

Industrial practicals might be a bit unbalanced. Towards the end I was building ports, infrastructure, industry, airfields and even nuclear power points for very, very low cost and very, very quickly. My nuclear plants were 0.50 IC and 1 day to build.

V1s/V2s might be a bit overpowered. I'd launch six V2s and they would wipe out all the industry and air defenses in Berlin. If those six V2s actually represent 60 or 600 V2s, then that might not be as big a problem, but they were also building at very low cost and a very high rate of speed.

I don't know if this came as part of your mod or is a leftover from Vanilla SF, but I got a Germany Surrenders event... and they kept their territorial integrity, remained part of the Axis, and kicked me out of Germany. I would've expected a more conventional post-war breakup of Germany. Also, Vichy was still around. I never declared war on them, and actually influenced them to be very close to the Allies, but I would've expected them to go away too.

All in all, though, a really enjoyable game. Great work on the mod so far.

You deserve the praise - by far the best mod I've played for HOI3 and a lot more enjoyable than vanilla.

Have you thought about maybe merging the Magrathea map mod into your project at some point? It's a much better map than the vanilla. http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?429060-Magrathea-The-Map-Rebuilt

Looks impressive;)!

Haven't downloaded it yet.

I really like your Tank techs! But how will you name the components? Also with a sandbox aproach and many tank components, means lots of different possible models, how do you name your models, and which pics do you use. Or do you still use historical model names and pics, but with ahistorical components?

Hi Chromos,A nice surprise to see the new version available so soon.I have downloaded it and i will give it a go and i will let you know what i think.Hopefully it will get the thumbs up.

Looking very good, C !

Great techs and layout! I do however feel that WW1 would be interesting and hope it's something you'll consider in the future.

EDIT: Woops! Sorry, misread your post.

Hi Chromos, sorry i have not been in touch i have had no time to play your first version.I have had a quick look at the tech-tree and i have to say i'm impressed.It might not be everyone's cup of tea maybe too many techs for some people.It is obvious you have spent a lot of time and effort on it and it shows.For me anyway a thumbs up for the tech-tree.I also like the look of your division set-up.I would imagine the divisions would be man hungry i added a AA Brig And an Eng Brig to your default divisions and it took the total up to over 21,000 men.I'm not sure how many divisions you will be able to build certainly not as many as in vanilla.I know you don't need to fill up your divisions but i like to.If it can have 5 or 7 brigades then my divisions will have them.I like the look of it and i hope to give it a try soon. As for WW1 will that just be a scenario or are you planning to run it from 1914-1948?.

Lurker here. I like where this is going but I have one request. Could you upload it on a different site? Like Mediafire or Filefront? Just a little thing I ask of you.

Hi Chromos

I decided to give your a Mod a go... It looks fairly good so far.

But I needed to mod it a bit and there are some adjustments that still need to be made.

I added most new units to "unit_upgrades.txt".
Changed Austrian Army to historical units.
Reduced manpower gain from Austria back to 50, but gave full handover of Austrian Army to Germany. etc

What I found though was that tech seems a bit advanced and needs adjusting back. (To easy for Germany to research) and that manpower and builds seem to be a bit generous. The Austrians had doubled the size of the army and added 2 tactical bombers in just 2 years, for example.

Apart from that.. looks good so far!

Have fun

Ozbones

central highlands in victoria.... and yes I use the other patch. I played till 1939, but the balance is not there yet. Its a great concept and I am sure that with a little more work on balance and fixing up the loose ends it will be a fantastic mod.

Hi, I've updated the Gui-change section in the third post with this pic:

Pop-up's changes:


Thoose of you who play the mod already know this change.

As nobody "complained" over it, I guess the look is allright so far.

Kind regards,
Chromos

Lovely artwork - this is a great look, especially for those of us with wide screens, so I wouldn't think that there will be many complaints.
My game is working again and I hope to send in some gameplay notes later - apologies Chromos - but it has taken me a while to get everyting sorted out -- gameplay first - notes 2nd.

cheers

This is Delicious!

Yes Yes YES!

Thank you for finally getting it up to date.

Since I was a little "underwhelmed" by I.C.E and the smaller CWWWII DLC, I think I'll give this mod a try. It surely looks awesome.

Prepare for feedback within the next copple of weeks...

Edit: And I think it's very practical that it's contained within a mod folder, so I can easily turn it on and off. Keep the treasure commin.

hi great work so far, and the GEM GUI looks brilliant, cant wait

However i have a problem, the tooltip says i dont have the technology to build land forts yet, i am playing germany, i have searched, but cannot seem to find which tecnology i need to research to be able to build these

playing 0.3a downloaded today.

thanks in advance for any help.

Eh.. simply adding "Elite" and " Super dooper elite" "Heavy" etc.. versions of units is a huge put off for me... the tech screens look great but the units added are.. to put it bluntly dumb.

Especially seeing how these units exist in the game already... light, medium, and heavy tanks etc.. Light, heavy, battlecruiser. BB, SH-BB, CVL, CV.

Just seems completely unnecessary and pointless.

looks great. finally we can use our large monitors

Hi Chromos,

I really like all the changes i've read are in this mod(especially the tech tree) but i haven't started to play it. Should i give it a go now or is a new release pending that i should hold out for ?

Cheers
ColonelFlag

I am new to the game, and (new) to your gem mod. Although played 16 hours in a row yesterday. lol. Amazing mod you've created.
It could be alot better if the Allies, axis, commu part of the game is not so defined from the start. It would be nice to wreack havoc as germany without the constant neusans of the allies ( and maybe fight italie. Or if italie joins the allies, and so forth.
I played as yugoslavia. had a blast. im really looking forward to some more tech

i like this but dont overdu it with the many researches.also if you could better organize them iw would be very good

It looks awesome. What starting scenario do you have in mind? Still WW2 or will you make a WW1 scenario to accompany the techs?

outstanding mod, a question however.

first the malus in range for the aircraft armament techs is nasty. i have gotten naval and tac aircraft with minus 250 km in range with only 2 generations of fuel tanks behind . this may be an issue.

Thanks for the great work Chromos. Keep up the good work!

Hey Chromos,

Inf screen shots look great. Keep up the good work mate. I really like what your trying to achieve with GEM.

Cheers
ColonelFlag

impressive what you are doing. Maybe you should add all your splitted work into one big pack. I'm very much interrested in the 1001 techs stuff I like research. It's also brilliant to expand the timeline because it adds more flavour to the game and HOI has a great foundation to go through those timelines on a massive scale If not to hard i would also use sliders to put in some customization regarding production/research time %..make it slower of faster just like the player likes to be able to go all out sandbox

Keep up your brilliant work I think that all your parts are worth doing and together they provide a unique experience that shouldn't be missed.

I really think you're going the right way on this. It adds considerably not only to the thinking and strategy aspects of the game (not to mention the fun) when more choices are available to the player. The detailed tech options really do that.

One slight suggestion I have relates to the colors of the tech tabs and background. With all the different options it would make it much more readable if there were more contrast to the colors. Brighter colors and darker print or, vice versa, with more color options would make it easier to scan and recognizable at a glance.

Just a minor suggestion.

FFF

Amazing project! I have to support your idea, because this is what hoi3 needed. But i think you really need a team and a whole thread for this, to organize you and all the work done. Good luck, ill follow this closely!!!

This sounds like a nice mod to have, but I'm having trouble extracting the archive. Regardles of the server I pick, WinRAR and Windows 7 say the file is corrupted. Any Ideas?

great, congrats
i wonder if i can use this with DiG

I'm pretty new here. I hardly ever post here. but,
WOW
If you can pull this off and make a 1910-1970 mod for HOI3, I will forever be in your debt. Best of luck with the project!

By the way, I joined the forums for the sole purpose of posting this.

Hey Chromos!

Beautiful mod, I'll give a try tonight.
I play in 1920x1080 so this will be reeeally nice.

Cheers,
Tedesco

Worls like a charm for me, just wanted to say thanks and keep it up

I like it alot- it reminds me of the old CORE for HOI I tech tree with its rich detail.

Cheers
ColonelFlag

Hello Chromos!

I just downloaded and tried your graphical mod - great work, i have to say!

It is really nice to see the available resolution (1920x1200 in my case) exploited to a fuller degree so we can have more information at a single glance!

I wanted to add that the colored symbols for the different echelons of the command chain are very useful and add considerably to a better overview.

Thanks for your effort!

I can't play HoI3 anymore without this mod.

I would be most grateful for a version that is compatible with Dies Irae in FTM (when the compatibility patch comes out, course).

I can't play HoI3 anymore without this mod.

+1. I actually seldom touched Vanilla HoI. Your little mod has forced a change in my habit.

One thing that is especially nice with this are the tech and other menus that show 2 or 3 times as many items. This means a whole lot more information at a glance, which in turn, means a whole lot less scrolling with a quirky scroll bar.

Thanks again. Oh, and it sure would be sweet of you to make this for the new August storm mod.

Nice mod! complements!

very handy! thanx 1920 here

Aloha chromos.Thank you for the excellent mod...I have come across a couple bugs on my first German playthrough.most of them are little things that don't affect the game too much(tech research mostly).I'll post a comprehensive list later.my biggest problem so far is the ai sending the bulk of my armies to obscure locations(62 div in split, 114 div in a eastern black sea port) for what seems to be no reason.even during open hostilities, while the theater ai is set to attack or blitz and has 1 objective like paris. both of said ports are in the eastern theater, and both theater hqs still relentlessly send troops to those two locations...thank you for your time...
P.s. I'm only playing this one because the compilation is not yet available for ftm 3.04.I assure you I'll download it as soon as it's available...thanks again

Sweet, you do great work.

Much much better, everything worked fine! The Hotfix 2 files did belong in the Mod folder. Great Job TY!

Chromos,

I installed your Widescreen GUI HOI3/FTM last night. Fantastic and exceptional work! Thank you very much. I look forward to additional publications, especially the GEM - 1001 Techs.
I ask your thoughts on an element of the Technology window.
I have never been happy with the small technology picture displayed on the lower left of the technology window. For me it is so small as to be insignificant. I know that the picture is displayed for only a short period during play while selecting techs to research. Nevertheless, I think a larger picture would provide “eye appeal” similar to that of Fernando Torres great work with models.
Thoughts?
Thanks again for the superlative widescreen GUI. Have a great day.

I have no doubt about that. I wonder how many ppl that are still playing HOI3. I have taken a break from it, havent played it for quite some time actually. Been saving up my desire for the game to play your mod
I will return frequently to this forum again from now on, got alot of spare time on my hands.

Best regards.
Necroshy

Hi,
I just have a simple question.

What are the main reasons for you to choose the - GEM -GUI?

For me your GUI remarkably improves the look and feel of HOI3 by providing an enhanced balance between functionality and the visual elements of a particular window [production, technology, etc]. It maximizes available space and provides better visual feedback.

I followed your instructions and everything worked great. The only thing is everything got big, i had to change the resolution to make it look a bit better. I anxiously look forward to each element you add to this mod. The patience and time you take, and i know its frustrating some times when people (like me!) dont always get things, has set you apart from many of the others. Anyone who is reading this thread and has yet to try your mod should do themselves right and check it out. I have spent the past few weeks rotating playing all the mods and i can say to all who read here that i have no doubt then when you finish this mod it will clearly, stand out as the best mod for HOI3. We need to get your own thread here to assist you better. I for one am grateful to the time you have taken to make sure i am able to play your mod. You make the game fun and challenging for me. Thank you!

I'm not sure what was messed up as I had the correct downloads-Gem 1 for FtM and the GUI mod-- separately. The GUI mod did not fix it so I cleaned out the works and started again. I used the Gem 1 with the GUI in one mod and it is working .
I tested an opening of the game at each stage. One little scare was the CTD before adding the #2 hotfix. All is well now-thanks.

I think I am really going to like the GEM 1 mod. The unit scale is what I have wanted all along, but never saw before. It, like, makes sense-lol. Seriously; this whole brigade thing as divisional building blocks was drastically over simplified-and incorrect. I am very happy to finally see a system that a somewhat historical organization can be created. The techs are a bit, eh, expanded, but I will persevere.

Thanks for your great work in creating this.

hey chromos,



just wanted to say thanks for all your hard work.

yes chromos your mod is very very nice...what i want to add is that i had an issue with francescos counters mod and your mod....at the end i altered a bit the mods and now everything is ok....

Chromos,

Cheers, ... I'm really impressed.
Hopefully you can continue with the great work; looking forward to much more.

And, also looking forward to a complete German version =P

Cheers again,

I tried Germany again. This time I avoided anything that would decrease rares production. Also, I did what I could with intelligence and diplomacy to keep trade going. The result was somewhat better than my last effort--perhaps 25%--which amounts to a lot of stuff. I also avoided building (or trying to) any naval units except subs.

This mod has a drastically different economical situation than any other. There is no point at all in Germany building IC. It has more than enough in view of the rares situation. I researched searching and producing rares to the 1950 level by 1940. by the time for the western campaign Germany was producing about 77 rares. There was still a little trade, but not much. So, I was running a deficit that would exhaust supplies in a few months--even though I was only using about 2/3 of total IC. I checked the UK pre war--it was using about the same amount of IC that I was using--because I could not utilize all of Germany's production capacity--at least not for very long. This is arguably a better approach to the real industrial situation. However, in view of the onset of rares world wide shortages very early in the game I think this needs another look. Germany needs more somehow.

I ran into another, and bigger, problem. As soon as Germany invaded Denmark and Norway I noticed some rather large stacks of units. I was able to push forward, but Denmark did not surrender even though all the nation was taken except the island between Copenhagen and the mainland. There were armored divisions there. I thought that the Brits had landed, but discovered later that those were actually Danish units. I pressed on with the campaign in the west. As I had built up a good force (more than I normally need to win) I was confident of beating France. There was much hard fighting along the Rhine all throughout the winter--no sitzkreig. Things looked like they started well, but a day or two into the main attack I ran into a brick wall-all along the front. The stacks of forces in the Netherlands and Luxembourg were just a bit too large. I had to reopen the game to take a look at each. I have never seen such forces in the Low Countries. Luxembourg had 17 divisions along with two heavy tank brigades. The Netherlands had more than twice as much. Luxembourg units were almost devoid of manpower, but still were at full organization. I went back to the German side to give it a shot, but to no avail---the defenses were too much. Norway also had some massive forces. Even if I did play a bit different than usual, this build up by small nations is a bit too much--actually impossible.

The tech situation plays out in a different way than the other mods. Again, this is, arguably, a more correct method- if there is such a thing. Many techs come fast and furious in the prewar years. After that it is a costly effort to keep the momentum going on into the future. I find this situation a bit refreshing. However, the layout and some techs need to be adjusted. The air training doctrines are well grouped together, but others are difficult to follow or to see a method. I need to take notes to be more specific.

I was able to improve the supply situation over my first try with Germany. By making maximum use of organization and ministers I was able to keep a healthy amount available. There would not be any shortage until Barbarossa. However, that was not very easy. During the campaign in Poland German supply requirements were over 1200 a day for a while. What happens in Russia? Perhaps with all the additional units per division there is a need to reduced supply requirements across the board for all standard regiments/battalions.

I still found the naval builds to be prohibitively expensive.

The TO&E and the improved interface are fantastic-that is really great work.

Thanks, again, for your work.

Hi nimrod123,

yes somehow. It is possible for bigger resolution as it is now designed for, and someone has to do it.. :ninja:

Btw, what was it, that took you the most time to get used to it?


Best regards,
Chromos

It was the postion of stuff in all the menus (production diplomacy etc.

BUT! once i was used to it made it far easier to use

Hey there. Downloaded the mod yesterday and I am very impressed. Have only played a game as USA so far as I find it a good country to start with to get an overview of a mod. I like the division make-up and the way the techs are arranged. The techs are overwelhming at first but I think that is a good thing as it means you have to think things through and not just got the same route every game.

With regards to the techs increasing the cost and time taken I've looked at this a bit and it the ic increases for techs are increasing the time. This does seem to nullify practical bonus quite a bit. On the other hand it also seems to keep ship construction to reasonable numbers. I find in most mods that playing as Germany I end up with 6 to 8 modern capital ships by 1940. I can't see that happening here which is good.

Progress of the game so far has been as follows. Nationalist Spain won in a bit a year. Japan defeated all of china in around 6 months. Not ideal, however I find this is better than china winning as it leads to a more interesting game later on. Germany begin invasion of Poland in January 1940. Took about two and a half months for Germany to win. Meanwhile France had invaded Germany over the maginot line. Germany is currently pushing into France through the north of the maginot line and should beat France soon.

A few things I have noted that I think would be improvements. With some techs having benefits for so many units it can be hard to pick out what units it is for in the tool tip. I noticed in the tech completion pop up that each unit has a separate lone to show it's benefits. Would this be possible on the tech screen tooltips?

I noticed that with the new GUI politics screen that there are several blank lines at the laws list. Could these be used for new laws? A couple that sprung to mind are an industry law that decreases unit construction time when at war. So the long unit build time at peace and high neutrality that is lessened for aggressive countries or countries at war. Another one was a civil defence law. Could account for air wardens etc and decrease Provence improvement repair time bit cost manpower perhaps.

I noticed that the unit types on the production screen need resorting. More of a flavour thing and probably hard to do when so many techs affect a unIt. How does he unit type work, for example when does the interceptor unit get upgraded to the next model type? Is it after a percentage of the techs relating to it are upgraded or can some core techs be used for this i.e. The four main fighter techs.

Overall I like this mod and the way it is going. I know it is before the stage for some of the points I have mentioned but thought they may be of interest.

Thanks for the great work

David

Hi nimrod123,

yes it can.

But you would need a bigger resolution as XXXX*768..
As the height you painted in the picture is filled by the AI-interface that pops down if you activate the HQ-AI..
So a "special version" for bigger screens (XXXX*1024 ...) would have to be done..
so its not possible at the moment because of the minimum screen size in use.

ah well. will have to wait, but it seems a bit silly to have that small unit box on the left when your screen is 1920x1080.

other wise i love the mod, it just takes a while to get used to.

I had looked at this a while back but I was put off by what seemed to be a disjointed system. I thought it had lots of good ideas but it seemed difficult (at the time) to understand what I needed to do. It was a good idea to bring it together and to provide detailed explanations (although I'm sure the long posts will put some people off). In particular, I think PI has been poor in explaining its position on combat support, leading to a lot of confusion as to how a particular division might be represented and how Corps and Army troops should be represented.

I have looked at this again due to the recent posts you made on the ICE forum. In those posts you provided lots of great advertising for your mod, while doing your best to help the ICE team out of a hole.

This mod is definitely a high priority for me, once I finish my current campaign.

Congratulations for the work.
Just some small report from Italy.
the province of Genova is changed with Savona (Genova should be urban with Industry , port and airport)
the province of Pescara is changed with Ortona (Pescara should be urban with Industry and Port)
the province of Bari is urban and had industry, port and airport.
Byeee

Blue, blue and blue. I never understood the use of white for rivers. Even funky old military maps show rivers in blue.

Are you changing anything in the production tab?

Keep on trucking Chromos--your work is great.

Got it!!! (finally! LOL! If i dig enough holes I am bound to fall in one eventually!). Looks
absolutly fantastic tho many of the models are out of place the tech tree is wonderful! I
do need a widescreen monitor tho. My little 17in is just not gonna hack it and if i try and
use it my eyes will fall out. Really look forward to this when i upgrade to a widescreen tho!
Again super job!

Chromos,

big fan of your work. any chance of getting a copy of your work done so far.

ggm

ooo man..your wide screen mod is just awesome..i love it and cant wait to have it...

superb work as always....Chromos does your widescreen mod effects the checksum?...

No kidding. Chromos has actually made me seriously consider tossing the ICE 4 tech tree I spent months on and adopt a modified variant of his. Depending on how the 1001 tech tree turns out, I may end up doing just that. With his permission, of course.

Subforum votes:

Clearly this great mod project deserves, in a profound way, its own sub-forum.

What say you grognards?

i agree!

Clearly this great mod project deserves, in a profound way, its own sub-forum.

What say you grognards?

The current situation with multiple active threads is a chore for the users and must be a tad more difficult for Chromos. It seems it should have its own forum, but I do not know the requirements of PI. It is a reasonable assumption Chromos has already tried to get one..