Plagued /r/TNOmod and the Reddit HOI4 modding community - When a subreddit for a video game mod turns to utter insanity

[Rome's rightful successor]

It’s official, Cameroon/WAU isn’t imperialist because West Africans are largely the same, like Italians were during their independence wars.
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(Discussion on Reddit)
(Archive)

Didn't Panzer once said TNO is about "deconstructing space filling empires"?
All west african peoples are definitely not the same.

 

[RA-5C Vigilante]

Kalterkrieg continues to slowly drag on:

Almost 2 years after the Pacific States progress report (to which the sequel never appeared) and 2 and a half years after the Union State progress report (which they never even pretended to make a sequel for), we got the update for the Third American Civil War. Sounds mildly interesting, right?

Well no, it's just a decision picker masquerading as quality content, like base KR has started doing. It's been almost 5 years since the first progress report, and they've still only implemented the most barebones/boring content, even for the most important nations.

You reckon they'll come out this year, like they promised for the 3rd year, or will it be another nothing burger?

Nothing burger, and frankly, those people should call it quits and find something better to do than a submod for a mod that is slowly dying already.

 

[Skeletonized Cow]

Didn't Panzer once said TNO is about "deconstructing space filling empires"?

This is usually in AH circles slang for "no big white nations" than anything else. I have literally never seen a piece of AH media that "deconstructs the space filling empire" actually handle the territories that otherwise would get shunted to such a concept in a good manner.

 

[Corpun]

TNOization and it's consequences have really been a disaster for HOI4 modding. KR Germany is unplayable, I totally expect the same to happen to Russia once it gets an actual update. Shit is fucked for HOI4 modding since everyone decided TNO was the way to go.

I don't mind reading a wall of text for an event, but that design philosophy should always be supplementary. The Fallout mod does this pretty well. Up in Canada there is this kingdom ruled by a 200 year old ghoul. Guy is paranoid about turning feral and has nightmares about it and is basically an absentee king for the safety of the realm. Pretty nice story playing as his country, especially with the lore they did for that region of the mod. There is even an event if all goes well where you choose whether or not the Ghoul commits suicide or not, which leads to two divergent paths.

 

[EpicGamerMoment]

KR Germany is unplayable

Speaking of unplayable I booted up TNO for the first time in almost two years and tried their new Ukraine content. Of course it’s another visual novel with minigames that don’t really matter because the colony is gonna collapse into civil war anyways. I don’t really mind because it’s fucking RK Ukraine so of course the minigames are gonna be the main focus til the civil war kicks off.

I didn’t read any of the events start to finish I only skimmed them which was enough, went as the reformist guy because it’s common knowledge that “wholesome” paths get the lion’s share of content. Of course after Hitler ascends to hyperborea shit hits the fan and the civil war begins.

I started playing the civil war and for the first time I’m actually starting to have fun…which doesn’t last long because I come to notice there’s a fucking starvation manager minigame that you have to manage otherwise your divisions can’t fight and you lose the war.

What the actual fuck is wrong with these retards ? You want me to play some fucking grain manager minigame while I’m sandwiched between three partisan groups and trying to hold them off with underpowered militia divisions ?

If this is the future of HOI4 modding man we are fucked.

 

[Mussolini’s Merkin]

If this is the future of HOI4 modding man we are fucked.

OWB and EaW are still holding the line when it comes to good modded HOI4 experiences. I wish Pax Britannica updated more often, I think they're onto something with the setting so far.

 

[EpicGamerMoment]

OWB and EaW are still holding the line when it comes to good modded HOI4 experiences. I wish Pax Britannica updated more often, I think they're onto something with the setting so far.

Once the Sonic the Hedgehog mod comes out you can probably include that as well.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Once the Sonic the Hedgehog mod comes out you can probably include that as well.

It's been in development for almost 5 years now, hopefully it will come out soon.
I really want to play as the Huey Long and William Dudley Pelley inspired sonic OCs.

I wish Pax Britannica updated more often, I think they're onto something with the setting so far.

Can't wait for the Russia update.

 

[The Gene Genie]

I said it before but most of these shitty VN mods should just stop wasting their time trying to force their dumb political simulator game into a poorly-designed World War II military strategy mobile-tier game. At this point TNO, KR (and its derivatives like Kalterkrieg), and the like would function better as a Suzerain/Crisis in the Kremlin-style VN game with lite forms of strategy and sliders.

 

[Mussolini’s Merkin]

Once the Sonic the Hedgehog mod comes out you can probably include that as well.

I had no idea this was a thing, looks like it might be fun.

 

[LOWERCASE LETTERS]

It's been in development for almost 5 years now, hopefully it will come out soon.
I really want to play as the Huey Long and William Dudley Pelly inspired sonic OCs.
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Can't wait for the Russia update.

I will play this only if I can be Eggman and murder all of the furry OCs.

 

[JesusChristDenton]

I will play this only if I can be Eggman and murder all of the furry OCs.

I think you can only turn them into robots as Eggman, but there's a Metal Sonic path where you can kill everyone.

 

[I_Lurk_Here]

I hope the Sonic mod references him since I know EAW has many references itself.

 

[Chuckwagon]

The Fire Rises (a 2020 mod where the 2ACW actually happens after the election, Saudi Arabia shits itself and its own civil war causes an international oil crisis, Russia still fights Ukraine and China goes on a conquering spree once America unravels, among other things) has been pushing out a lot of beefier teasers recently, and they also did a six-hour dev livestream of the Trump playthrough yesterday (they unpause & actually start playing for the first time at around the 44:44 mark). I'm not sure these guys can manage a 2024 release to coincide with the RL election, but it does at least seem clear to me that they have way more content implemented & are much closer to a release of any kind, even a demo (in the sense that 1 is an infinitely greater number than 0) than BTWH is or ever will be.

Spoiler: The American Gracchus and his tree to Make America Great Again. Additional focuses seem to appear below the middle branch post-2ACW victory, per the livestream

Spoiler: The Patriot Front either turn out not to be glowies after all, or else break their programming

Spoiler: Commiefornia rising, wonder if they can recruit Aaron Bushnell since this happens before 2024

 

[EpicGamerMoment]

The Fire Rises (a 2020 mod where the 2ACW actually happens after the election, Saudi Arabia shits itself and its own civil war causes an international oil crisis, Russia still fights Ukraine and China goes on a conquering spree once America unravels, among other things) has been pushing out a lot of beefier teasers recently, and they also did a six-hour dev livestream of the Trump playthrough yesterday (they unpause & actually start playing for the first time at around the 44:44 mark). I'm not sure these guys can manage a 2024 release to coincide with the RL election, but it does at least seem clear to me that they have way more content implemented & are much closer to a release of any kind, even a demo (in the sense that 1 is an infinitely greater number than 0) than BTWH is or ever will be.

Spoiler: The American Gracchus and his tree to Make America Great Again. Additional focuses seem to appear below the middle branch post-2ACW victory, per the livestream

View attachment 5862963

Spoiler: The Patriot Front either turn out not to be glowies after all, or else break their programming

View attachment 5862991

Spoiler: Commiefornia rising, wonder if they can recruit Aaron Bushnell since this happens before 2024

I want to play as atomwaffen division

Kalterkrieg continues to slowly drag on:

Almost 2 years after the Pacific States progress report (to which the sequel never appeared) and 2 and a half years after the Union State progress report (which they never even pretended to make a sequel for), we got the update for the Third American Civil War. Sounds mildly interesting, right?

Well no, it's just a decision picker masquerading as quality content, like base KR has started doing. It's been almost 5 years since the first progress report, and they've still only implemented the most barebones/boring content, even for the most important nations.

You reckon they'll come out this year, like they promised for the 3rd year, or will it be another nothing burger?

While kalterkrieg has been claiming release is soon since 2020 I actually think it may come out this year. The reason why is because they are tweaking the country paths selector screen which is not exactly something you do unless you’re almost done.

 

[The Gene Genie]

The Fire Rises (a 2020 mod where the 2ACW actually happens after the election, Saudi Arabia shits itself and its own civil war causes an international oil crisis, Russia still fights Ukraine and China goes on a conquering spree once America unravels, among other things) has been pushing out a lot of beefier teasers recently, and they also did a six-hour dev livestream of the Trump playthrough yesterday (they unpause & actually start playing for the first time at around the 44:44 mark). I'm not sure these guys can manage a 2024 release to coincide with the RL election, but it does at least seem clear to me that they have way more content implemented & are much closer to a release of any kind, even a demo (in the sense that 1 is an infinitely greater number than 0) than BTWH is or ever will be.

Spoiler: The American Gracchus and his tree to Make America Great Again. Additional focuses seem to appear below the middle branch post-2ACW victory, per the livestream

View attachment 5862963

Spoiler: The Patriot Front either turn out not to be glowies after all, or else break their programming

View attachment 5862991

Spoiler: Commiefornia rising, wonder if they can recruit Aaron Bushnell since this happens before 2024

This is the kind of stuff that really adds to what I said about the limitations of this game. This is a complex lore-based mod that seems to really want to tell a specific story but I don't see how that can reconcile with the fact that Goy$ can't actually depict asymmetrical warfare in any real form that works. It's a Barbarossa simulator that is based around encirclements and frontline action. What this mod seems to be pushing towards is a political commentary and an anarchic America descending into factional civil war. This is something that the game can't depict. TNO has these problems with their German RK content and they fix it by slapping "minigames" onto a broken system.

These people should really just learn Unity and make their own fucking game. They could even make money off of it instead of literally doing it for free.

 

[Channel Catfish]

I said it before but most of these shitty VN mods should just stop wasting their time trying to force their dumb political simulator game into a poorly-designed World War II military strategy mobile-tier game. At this point TNO, KR (and its derivatives like Kalterkrieg), and the like would function better as a Suzerain/Crisis in the Kremlin-style VN game with lite forms of strategy and sliders.

I believe it's been posted in the thread already but originally, TNO was envisioned to be a mod for Victoria 2. (archive here if we ever need it for some reason) To be honest, it was a much better game for something like TNO, and Panzer even admitted it as such:

Spoiler: Quotes from Dev Diary

Victoria 2 could represent the setting better than most other games. The sphere system, colonization (or, in this case, recolonization), crisis, great powers, and other systems are something very helpful for the setting, as well as its focus on narrative and flavor events. These things all come together in Victoria, and only one other Paradox game at the time had any of those features (Europa Universalis, which has colonization mechanics, and which at the time had not yet added Great Powers).

Hearts of Iron 4 is a rather arcadey game, and Victoria 2 has a lot of very deep features that (although a pain in my ass to mod) were a joy to get working and have in the game. The full economy system could show how each side were industrial power houses, the pop system meant I could properly show the German caste system (and how horrifying it is) and really pound in how Germany is built on slavery in this mod (as well as Japan, really). The tech system of Victoria 2 encourages long term development over the quick 10 years or so of research open in the Hearts of Iron series.

Panzer even realized back then that HOI4's game design was not meant for the Cold War setting TNO was meant to have:

Hearts of Iron 4 simply isn't meant to simulate [a cold war], though it's the best Hearts of Iron game to do so with its new world tension system. However, Hearts of Iron is still meant to be about a lead up to an inevitable war which takes up 90% of the game. The game simply doesn't have much in the way of a system to make peacetime enjoyable, which is why I'm going out of my way to add things to do in the meantime, like civil disorder in Germany or rising rebellion in Japan.

Panzer abandoned the idea of TNO in Victoria 2 though because Vicky 2 modding sucks ass, apparently. I never played it myself.

As for making a new game altogether, I'll play devil's advocate and say that even with Unity, developing a game is admittedly a bit more difficult to do than just plopping a bunch of shit on top of Hearts of Iron IV, what with mapping out exactly how you want your game to look and play like, designing core mechanics, developing the gameplay loop, creating assets and interfaces from scratch and so on. Though who am I kidding, 90% of HOI4 mods are just eternal toozers even with a base game already there so good luck ever getting them to make a new game entirely.

 

[VariableOverflow]

I imagine there must be a couple hundred people in the modding community who can do coding/scripting, but out of those I would guess only a small fraction has what it takes to learn whatever language Unity uses. Clausewitz is an attractive choice for anyone looking to do a project because it's so easy to work with.

I don't see how that can reconcile with the fact that Goy$ can't actually depict asymmetrical warfare in any real form that works.

How would you depict asymmetrical warfare in a strategy game? Doesnt need to be in HoI4, just in general.

 

[Moja Zemlja]

Maybe when OpenVic comes out there'll be a few mods (or dedicated autists) that'll port over some of the HoI4 mods to the more fitting game.

How would you depict asymmetrical warfare in a strategy game? Doesnt need to be in HoI4, just in general.

Its hard to do but the unit stacks of Vic2/EU4 do allow you to fight more asymmetrically since you don't need to worry about a frontline,

 

[thefreshmaker]

How would you depict asymmetrical warfare in a strategy game? Doesnt need to be in HoI4, just in general.

Combat Mission: Shock Force 2 and Radio Commander portray asymmetric warfare of two stripes;

CM:SF2 portrays the modern, full-spectrum dominance of the late 2000s United States military invading the outdated, outgunned, untrained conventional conscription army of Syria. The US Army is invading through Route 2 from Iraq, breaking past Al-Tanf and heading to Dimashq, the USMC is landing on the coast, and NATO forces are invading southwards from Turkey on Aleppo. The Syrians are going to lose no matter what, and so the goal becomes to make it as painful as possible. Syria, outside of the context of a US/NATO invasion, is not weak; she has relatively modern version of late-Soviet armor in amounts that you wouldn't balk at, with the majority of troops being equipped and trained to Soviet standards of mass-mobilized mechanized forces. Unfortunately they also have a dictatorship more concerned with internal stability of the regime than an actually effective military, and so training is poor and the paper-strength is far below reality. Everything is centralized, so only commanders can call in rare artillery strikes compared to every US squad being a potential forward observer team. Air cover is nil and mobility is nil as a result despite the amount of tanks, APCs, and trucks. Eventually it all falls apart and a low-level insurgency of the remnants and those taking advantage of the power vacuum begins. IEDs, technicals, etc, start to appear. The Syrians are essentially aiming to delay at all costs versus a force that knows where they are at all times and can shoot them accurately from beyond their own range, even though they are a conventional force.

RC portrays, instead, the position of a commander from well behind the front in a tent relying on US Army radio communications to decipher the battle space during a Vietcong insurgency. It's more a puzzle game than anything else, but you have air cavalry, heavy artillery, tanks, etc, at your disposal against light infantry using the terrain and small, isolated teams to their advantage.

The issue is that you are either playing as the operational winner (the conventional, advantaged force) or you aren't having fun. To have fun as the Syrians in CM:SF2 you need to be a glutton for punishment and accept failure as the best outcome possible. It's difficult to portray beyond "you lose" because that's reality; the Vietnamese didn't defeat the US military, the defeated Congress' attention span after the '72 peace accords. The Jugoslav partisans didn't defeat the Axis powers, they found a country empty in 1944 as the Germans abandonded and were abandoned by the Balkan allies. The Mujahideen did not defeat the Soviet Army, they defeated an unsupported Afghan government which was abandoned just like the AVRN after a Soviet drawdown, not wanting to spend more money on a pointless conflict. The real standout here is that you don't win by skill, strategy, or any actual achievements besides longevity and sheer survival. The goal is to do just enough to make it more expensive for the enemy than $0, stretch it over enough time to get eyes and dissent, and then have enough strength in the drawdown to topple the remaining government and be the strongest group left. That's not fun in terms of gameplay and is not represented well in abstract like the operational focus of PDX games. You can really only portray realistic tactical engagements or super abstract strategic level stuff, like hiding in Qatar or Laos until you can topple the PLO or AVRN. It's also incredibly difficult to portray how often the "victor" doesn't win because they end up fighting a civil war; the Viet Minh, Mujahideen, Hamas, Greek partisans, Ukrainian People's Army, Libyan rebels, etc, they all experienced significant insurgencies or civil wars against themselves after coming to at least nominal power. Many were victorious but it still took years for the final shots to ring out.

A decent portrayal of asymmetric warfare is either going to be more abstrast than HoI4's naval system, or it's going to be about seeing 90% of your men die in a random helicopter strike attack, then fighting in Jeeps against tribals in Toyotas.