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So I Got Myself Into Wargaming...

The tabletop variety that is. These past 2 months have been an emotional rollercoaster ride of painting Warhammer miniatures agonizing over how terrible my painting skills are. I am impatient in a way that I want instant results; never would I have thought that I'd have to woodshed just to get my miniature painting up to speed. I have tried everything though, from airbrushes, washes to drybrushing, but the fact remains that I need to develop this over time and not rush anything. If only money weren't an issue, though.

Here are some semi finished stuff:

Men of War: Cracking the Projectile Damage Table

Finally solved the "ProjectileDamageTable" entry in the .preset file. The format goes something like this

(Define "Damage" {ProjectileDamageTable (N%a)(N%b) (N%c) (N%d) (N%e})

Not exactly as written but close enough to the code. Where N is a number denoting "Range" in meters. The entry "(%[letter])" is damage scaling based on the range which is mapped to another file. That other file is a specific "Gun" file containing all the values and properties associated with that specific gun (ie 75mm KwK). The other file in question will have an entry for scaling damage based on range so it basically tells you what the values of a,b c and so forth. For example: ( "damage" a (80) b (70) c (60) d (40) e (20)). The letter is the range category with a being the shortest and e being in the extreme. The number represents the penetration(damage) value of the cannon at that specific range category. Map that to your ProjectileDamageTable, then you have your complete damage categories scaled according to the tank's distance from the target. Oh by the way, this only applies to tank battles using armor piercing rounds in Men of War. High Explosive rounds are handled differently albeit simpler.

Overall, the projectile damage table and range scaling is fairly straightforward and easy once you wrap your head around the value sets mentioned above. The next dilemna is Overmatchdamping and armor sloping which is a big factor in figuring tank damage in Men of War. That holds the final key to adjusting range and damage values in Men of War to the side of realism.

Currently Reading: Dark Heresy Ascension

I am taking a break from my Men of War scripting lessons. Needed a fresh perspective on how to set-up certain scenarios. The reason I love the world wide web so much is that you end up with some very useful information that is distantly removed from what you started to look out for.

It has been a while since I had my groove for tabletop RPGs going. Acquired a copy of Dark Heresy Ascension the other day and now skimming through the pages bit by bit. I like what I am reading so far.

A couple of years back, my group started a Dark Heresy campaign. It ended abruptly as the general consensus was that it "wasn't Warhammer enough". And indeed it was not so: The game limited itself to needless minimalism and only allowed to play "regular joes" as tools of the actual Inquisition. Rules on how to play an actual Inquisitor were frustratingly missing.This wasn't what I had in mind for my W40k RPGS. The decadence and the baroque feel of the setting was surely translated in the fluff but, running the game, I always felt like we were clutching at straws as far as player character abilities go. I was looking for the over-the-top, politically incorrect, scores of dead bodies game that we believed W40K to be (Exterminatus comes into mind). The appeal of the tabletop wargame was the way it's exaggerated/flamboyant universe was almost a parody unto itself. Needless to say, Dark Heresy has not captured that grandeur (Cthulhu in Space is more like it).

Enter Ascension.



Dark Heresy: Ascension is the newest sourcebook from Fantasy Flight games and advances the Dark Heresy characters to the next level. What I've read from my cursory browsing has shown promise. Now we see PCs as Inquisitors, Interrogators and (drum-roll please) a fuckin VINDICARE ASSASSIN. Now Dark Heresy actually looks and reads like a proper Warhammer game. This has been almost around 3 years coming but it was sure worth the wait. I have not gone through the entire thing yet but I shall write what I think when I have carefully gone through the entire book in detail.

Weekend Draws Near

Time is slowly working its way to a Middle Eastern weekend (Friday-Sat). So stoked for a full weekend of Men of War.

Downloaded the German Soldier mod and the BTRH mod which injects semi-realistic tank penetration values. Im still unsure about the ranges though. I feel that a 200 meter maximum for direct fire takes away from realism. My interest gravitates towards tank sims.

Still scouring the net on how the Germans acheived a 6:1 kill ratio with Panzer IIIs vs T-34s (If true). Diving Stukas?

WW2 All Over Again

My current fixation is on games themed and set in the Second World War. From Grand Strategy (Hearts of Iron) to Tank Simulation (Achtung Panzer: Kharkov 1943), I've been wallowing and keeping myself busy trying to be at least a successful field commander.

Men of War stands out among the crop of WW2 games that I have. Men of war is a World War 2 Real Time Strategy-or more appropriately, Real Time Tactics game from Best Way. It gives the players control of various WW2 units across different theaters of operations. It provides single-player campaigns for Allied, German and Soviet factions of the War. The game does away with unit production and base-building and, instead, units are pre-assigned at the start of each scenario. Each scenario is played out in a detailed and fully destructible 3d environment. Most of these will be small unit infiltration missions behind enemy lines while some are full-blown combat operations against waves of enemies. The game itself is extremely challenging as the player's units are usually outnumbered and outgunned for most of the missions. This is part of the charm of Men of War as it, much like real war, gives no quarters and obvious advantages to the player. You are left to your own to imporvise and a scenario can be beaten a number of different ways.

Men of War not only presents cinematic, real-time action in stunning, beautifully rendered graphics, but is also extremely mod-able for creating custom scenarios. It comes packaged with it's own SDK called GEM Editor that allows you to tweak the minutae of combat units, create maps and assign scripts for the AI. This tool alone makes the game infinitely replayable. You can think of any World War 2 engagement and try to recreate it in the game. In fact this one knocks Company of Heroes out of the top of my WW2 gaming list. It's that awesome.

The expansion for Dawn of War 2, Chaos Rising is being shipped as I type this but I feel my enthusiasm is a bit diminished by my unwavering attention to Men of War. A good thing though, considering my monthly fund allocated to gaming is running dry.

Anyway, I will post screenshots and modification discussions of Men of War later. For now, I'll go back to planning the map and scripts for a mod involving Otto Skorzeny and his Fallschirmjägers rescue of the fascist dictator Moussollini in '43.