SP Modern Snow In the East - WW2 Eastern Front mod (v0.5 Demo Come out!)

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No cover, fully automatic weapons. Don't even bother with cavalry. Whichever side advances first is cut to ribbons with automatic fire. You can attack 50 guys with a force of 300. The smaller force won't budge from their starting place, and as you move up on them, you will lose most of your men. What a bloodbath! I've been surviving so far by conducting anti-partisan warfare against sea-raiders (Yugoslav Partisans) and exterminating Soviet villages. I guess my guys are more of an Einsatzgruppe than a frontline unit.
This is a direct consequence of all weapons having 100 accuracy. The lack of cover also reinforces the problem. My much earlier suggestion about lowering the accuracy of everything except sniper rifles to 90 probably didn't go far enough. I now suspect that values in the 60-80 range for most rifles would be better for game balance than the numbers I initially suggested.

Note that "The Red Wars" puts most rifles in the 50-70 accuracy category, with the best non-sniper weapons in about the 80-85 range, and those can be rather effective in the hands of well-trained troops. Automatic weapons need to have even further reduced accuracy to compensate for the increased rate of fire, making SMGs rather poor at long range, but still quite powerful in city scenes or other close quarters engagements. Giving them 100 accuracy makes them absolutely lethal at any range on a big open map, which is probably why you're seeing the bloodbaths. The moving soldiers lose accuracy while in motion, while the stationary defenders get the full 100 and hit substantially more of their shots. A lower base accuracy would favor volume of fire more than just sheer accuracy.

The other issue with advancing troops being cut down is due to the unfixable AI problem with the troops ALL attacking the closest enemy unit, leading to them clumping together or stringing out single-file, rather than advancing on a broad front with a lot of empty space between them. Essentially, they become easier targets, while they also become less effective at firing back due to the loss in accuracy while moving. In several cases, I've watched as an NPC dodged back and forth or side to side while firing, then stopped and stood still while reloading, intentionally ruining their own shot before becoming a stationary target for the opposition.

You CAN bother with cavalry if you're willing to lead them off at some angle past the enemy, so the stationary defenders fire at the fast-moving targets instead of at your slowly advancing infantry. Letting them charge straight at the enemy is an obvious death sentence. Once your infantry is in a decent position, you can let them stand and trade fire at better odds, while your cavalry detachment circles back out of harm's way until the defenders begin to break and run.
 
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I'm happy to see an update: just downloaded it, and will try it out tonight. A brief change log on the opening post might be helpful to indicate what was done since the last version.
 
I had plenty of time over the holiday weekend to test out the new version. There were a number of missing textures, particularly noticeable in the taverns where several NPCs had invisible bodies, or blank white heads.

The biggest issue was the insanely high accuracy of the weapons, particularly the automatic types. I fought several minor battles against looters and various other types of bandits, and the battles tended to last about 15-30 seconds before the opposing side was exterminated. I was typically able to get off about 5 shots at the tiny 1-2-pixel specks in the distance, and by the time I reloaded, the fight was over.

The combination of weapons with 100 accuracy and stationary shooters is devastating, and needs to be drastically reduced. The accuracy penalty for movement means that looters and other bandits who charge the enemy by default will hit with their shots FAR less often. For a comparison between this mod's accuracy and another similar Warband mod, check out "The Red Wars", which covers a pseudo-historical Interwar period before WWII, but uses a lot of similar weapons. Accuracy is set to around 50-70 for most rifles, with SMGs and pistols at the low end of that, and only sniper models ranging into the 90s. Despite the reduced accuracy, the battles still hardly ever come down to melee. With basic rifle accuracy set to 100, any shots that miss are mostly because the shooter is moving while firing.

A minor gripe: I wasn't able to find a Hungarian helmet in this version, although there were a couple of Hungarian field caps available at the start of the game, but no more seemed to generate. Worse, my Hungarian officer began the game with over a dozen Polish troops, but no Hungarians. At least there were several villages to recruit from, after disbanding the Polish troops.

Overall, the visual quality of the uniforms and weapons is excellent, and the additional basic uniforms at affordable prices makes it much more feasible to wear those instead of medieval armor (the medieval stuff should be removed), but the present settings for weapons and skills still make the mod almost unplayable. The NPCs are able to exterminate opposing troops with uncanny and deadly accuracy, unless they move and spoil their own shots. A human player may not even be able to see the opposing troops, but the AI can hit them reliably, and they most certainly can hit you.

I tried one battle against a regular military group of similar size, and the results were a mutual bloodbath, over in about 15 seconds. Both sides parked and fired, the automatic weapons laid down deadly steams of fire without any recoil penalties, and the whole left side of the screen was filled with a long list of casualties. My entire party was wiped out from extreme range in seconds, and we dealt about equal casualties to the opponents, who ended up with just 2 or 3 men still standing. That's not my idea of "entertaining". When even sub-machineguns can hit figures at the far edge of the map with a high probability of success, it really needs to be toned WAY down.
 
Sorry about double-posting, but I'm wondering if the mod developer is still working on this? The mod seems extremely promising, and the uniforms and equipment seem well done graphically, although it does need major accuracy adjustments to the weapons before I'd really call it "playable". Basically, I can't judge anything about balance until that's corrected. The couple of misplaced or missing texture files shouldn't take much to fix.
 
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