S:HOWW2 Realism and Historical Accuracy Mod v1.05 Created by Edward Pinniger (edward@pinniger.fsworld.co.uk) This is a mod for Soldiers:Heroes of WW2 which intends to make the vehicles and weapons more historically accurate, as well as including various other tweaks and enhancements such as new sounds, more camera freedom, and modified missions. Whilst many of these changes are fairly unobtrusive, some of them do significantly affect gameplay! For example: - The durability of tank/vehicle tracks now varies with the vehicle type, so you can no longer (for example) disable a King Tiger with just an ATR.. - Artillery units have greatly increased range, and can bombard enemy positions from a safe distance, however they are much less effective against tanks as they mostly carry HE rounds. - Due to more accurate armour thickness and weapon armour penetration values, heavier German armour (Tiger, Panther, KT, Jagdpanther etc.) is virtually immune to the standard Allied 75mm (and in most cases the earlier T-34's 76mm) from the front - making flanking shots, or infantry bazooka support, far more important. To install, unzip into the "mods" directory in your Soldiers game directory, making sure "use folder names" is checked. Then activate the mod via the in-game menu. CHANGES IN 1.05 - Added 40mm 2-pounder cannon - Added new sound for 37mm cannon - Increased firing rate of KwK30 and FlaK38 20mm cannons - 20mm AP shells have no blast radius - Decreased explosive power of 20mm HE shells - Corrected G41 ammo capacity COMPLETE LIST OF CHANGES Vehicles: - Modified the following values to match historical data: - Armour thickness - Ammunition load - Weight - Maximum speed - Vulnerability to damage of a vehicle's tracks/wheels and main gun now varies depending on the type of vehicle. (Previously it was the same for all vehicles, so it was easy, for example, to "track" a King Tiger with grenades or an anti-tank rifle..) - Armoured car/halftrack engines are slightly less vulnerable to damage from MGs. - Turret crew (gunner, loader, commander) can now be killed when a tank's turret is hit or destroyed. - Turret crew are less likely to be killed when a tank's hull is hit. - Light AFVs (armoured cars, APCs, light tanks) are less likely to instantaneously explode when hit by small HE rounds (20mm,37mm). - All tanks can now have their turrets knocked off by HE shells (the heavier the tank, the bigger the explosion needed...). Previously this only worked for light tanks. - The Panzer I and II, T-26, BT-7, and 7TP now require only 3 crew members. (The Pz.I actually only had a crew of 2, but I couldn't get this to work; the gun would not load, as there was no loader position) - The ISU-152, Panzer II and SdKfz.231 now carry both AP and HE rounds. - The KV-2 now only carries HE rounds. (However these are more than enough to deal with early-war German armour..) - The Matilda now only carries AP rounds. (A historic disadvantage of this tank!) - The BM-13 Katyusha starts with ammunition (16 rockets). - The Opel ambulance carries medical supplies. - The Opel fuel truck carries a fuel can (for transferring to other vehicles) and a large amount of fuel. - The Jeep's MG is now dismountable. - SdKfz.231 is now recognised by the AI as having a cannon. - Reduced fuel consumption rate of vehicles (so they don't run out of fuel as quickly) - Adjusted steering/handling slightly for wheeled vehicles. - Triangle icons for cannons and MGs appear slightly smaller than vehicles on the minimap. - Added full support for the new Churchill tank and M8 Greyhound armoured car. - Churchill tank track guards now show up correctly. - All vehicles have correct names. - Added descriptions/stats for vehicles (visible in the inventory screen). Soldiers: - All default and mission soldiers have weapons appropriate to their nation (e.g. US machinegunners now have BAR instead of Bren; UK tank crews have Webley instead of TT). - Russian machinegunners now correctly use the DP infantry version rather than the DT tank/vehicle version of the Degtyarev machinegun. - All US troops now use American rather than English voices. (one or two templates still had "English" as their nationality) - Slightly adjusted some of the default soldier skills in the template files. Weapons: - Modified armour penetration and velocity (for cannons and AT weapons) to match historical data. (Velocity is 50% of the real-life value) - Increased firing rate and decreased explosive radius of 20mm cannon. (The graphical effect for the explosion is the same size, but the damage radius is smaller). - 20mm KwK30 (Pz.2, SdKfz.231) is now an automatic weapon, with 10 shells per clip. - Single-barrel flak guns (Flakpanzer, Flak38) now have a slower firing rate, and lower ammo capacity, than quad ones (SdKfz.10/5, Flakvierling). - Increased ranges of cannons slightly depending on power/accuracy. - Significantly increased range of artillery weapons (Hummel, M8 HMC, Priest, BT-7A, Katyusha). - Slightly increased close-range armour penetration ability of machineguns. - Added 37mm HE shells (SdKfz.250/10, M8 Greyhound and 7TP). - Added 40mm 2-pounder cannon (Matilda) - Added 105mm M2A1 howitzer (used by the Priest SPG). - Added Browning M2 .50cal MG (now used by M3A1, Jeep, M8 HMC and M7, replacing the .30cal). - Added BESA .303 MG (used by all British tanks) - DShk MG is now correctly a heavy MG (14.5mm) with firing rate, damage/penetration, and ammo load adjusted accordingly. - M1 Garand, Lee-Enfield and G41 ammo capacity corrected. - Increased range of anti-tank rifles. - Increased firing rate of BAR. - Difference between max range and AI range of cannons is now 5m, not 10m (giving you less of an advantage over the AI in combat) - Increased AI engagement range (not max range) of MGs. - AI can now use DShk MG, Flak37 and 105mm cannon. - AI flak guns will attack vehicles. - Incorporated Framnk's weapon description mod. - Added descriptions for vehicle weapons. Sounds: - All turreted vehicles now have turret rotation sounds. - All cannons now have reload sounds. - Changed some of the GMC truck engine sounds, so it no longer sounds like a tank :P - Changed sound assignments for some vehicles and added some missing ones (Matilda, StuG, Chaffee etc.) so these vehicles no longer use generic sounds. - Changed sound assignments for some weapons (45mm, 152mm etc.), to use some previously unused sounds in game.pak. - Added new sounds for: 37mm,20mm cannons Anti-tank rifle MG42 DShk MG Browning .50 MG Shell ricochets More sounds will hopefully be added in future versions of this mod. Maps/Missions: - "Unlocked" camera angles/zoom distances on all single and campaign maps - Changed some soldier weapon loadouts. Future changes: - Adjustments to the number and type of troops/vehicles in missions - More ammo types - More sounds - and hopefully more.. Credits To: Best Way and Codemasters for such an impressive (and easily moddable) game Framnk for his weapon description mod Battlefront/Big Time Studios for the Combat Mission series (another great WW2 strategy game and a source of some of the vehicle/weapon stat info for this mod, as well as sounds!)