Hi Folks,
I spent the past couple months developing a new mod of "Steampunk 1915" called "Steampunk Advanced"
It is essentially the same map as the original, but I have created many new, interesting units and fixed some of the glitches in the original. See below for the list of changes and upgrades.
I am hoping people will download this and send feedback on potential future improvements. I am worried about balance issues, as well as general feedback on the new units. I have done many playthroughs and find it more interesting and challenging than the original. Lucky hits on the tech tree... can move a game in new direction (or unbalance it). Interested to see what the community thinks.
- New Units:
I went nuts adding a bunch of new units. Sometimes I reused icons (in the unit folder) the original creator never used.. tried to imagine what he was envision here and put it in action.
France: I added landship, land Leviathan and "heat ray tripod" to this country"Heat ray tripod is a massively expensive unit I created here... 4 hitpoints, 6 offense/Defence" and artillery support for 6 other units.. looks cool and costs 35 points
USA: I added landship, land leviathan, guerilla(a new conscript like cavalry) and dreadnaught (swiped from England)
Alliance: I added a two hit "mecha" unit (the original author had this in the units folder but did not use it)also land leviathan and gave them battleship purchasing rights
Austria: added land leviathan
Turkey: added "bombard" unit.. basically a big, two hit siege gun
Britain: Added "heat ray tripod"
Russia: Added landship and land leviathan units.. also added a cheap suicide unit (Penal battalion) simiar to gas.. but cheaper and not as powerful
Germany: Added a two hit "steam walker" unitas well as a new relatively cheap and powerful two hit submarine (deutchland)
and of course "heat ray tripod" (all major powers should have this!)
Communists: The commies succeeded in stealing the Frankenstein tech from Austria and made their own army of zombie-fied Trotsky soldierssimilar to the undead qualities of Frankenstein
Lastly I made sure every country had light, "regular" and heavy tanks. - Error Correction:
Scotia and Goa were both "0" production, despite having factories. I made these both "2"
Aviatrix unit could not land on carriers, despite manual indicating so.. corrected this.
Alliance could not purchase assassin units (despite being in initial placement).. corrected this.
The "Nautilus-hit" icon did not match the undamaged one (two different unit icons!)... and other two hit units did not have a "hit" unit counterpart.. which I corrected. I spent a good deal of time airbrushing little smoking fires on these using Paint.net.
I fixed the Propaganda tech bug, where units keep being produced even though the capital has fallen (by fixed, I mean I stole the code from the correction to Domination 1914, as this map inherited the problem) - Debatable Enhancements and/or error correction:
Colonial and Sniper units now upgrade to two movement with Mobile Warfare. I think it is kind of pointless if a support unit (sniper) cant keep up with their main unit. Shouldn't a colonial (as elite) be able to upgrade? I think so. However an early lucky hit on this tech could really unbalance the game perhaps?
Upgraded "Tesla" cannon to movement 2 with railway gun tech (see above).
I did a bunch of anal retentive cosmetic corrections like making sure the units for all the nations point in the same direction (left or right). I also tried to correct the "hue" of each of these units so the colors are as close as possible. I am not an artist here.. it is better than before but still not perfect. I also fixed and added a ton of unit icons (mostly lifted and recolorized from other Triplea maps). Some of the icons were exactly the same for each nation.. I tried to add a flag or otherwise differentiate.
Also made sub, dreadnaught, and carrier upgrade to +4 movement with merchant marine tech.. otherwise you leave half your fleet behind. (again and early lucky hit on this tech could really unbalance perhaps. - Controversial Changes (maybe):
Okay, I love the concept of the original Steampunk 1915.. fantastic! However, I hate the overuse of cartoonish unit icons for the standard units (i.e. infantry, etc). I tried to strike a balance by using "standard" icons for "regular units" and more decorative ones for special units. I don't want to destroy the "steampunk" feel.. but sometimes "less is more" - Future upgrades planned:
Bug fix: There is something odd with the "Guadalcanal" territory as it doesnt seem to reliably change color on capture. I think there is a fix for this in Steampunk 1915, which I will port over
Manual upgrade: I would love to get my hands on the non-pdf version of the game manual so I can modify it to reflect my changes.