Hi another small update for CasaMOd, I changed the rules for ruins, I thought they were not different enough from other terrains. Formerly their stats were just kind of a different looking tile for woods that fits better into some streetfight maps. I made them capturable now. After your units captured the ruins, like they fortified some of them with sandbags, brought in crates with supplies (ammo, spare parts & donuts?) and set up tents, ruins now boost repairs, defense  and create a minimum of income. It was kind of hard to make them look owned by colors like green or yellow because of the indifference to the sandy or grassy floor texture, so I added tents in the middle to the captured state, while the neutral grey state doesn’t show the tents.

neutral ruins captured ruins

• can be captured
• generates 5%  income
• specifications changed to
  - HARD, AMPHIBIC same as in town or base (repair only +1 if captured)
  - SOFT  attack/defense +1 (& another +1 if captured)
  - SOFT repair +3 if captured  (main feature)
  - movement cost same as on town, base etc.

I also thought of removing wasteland completely form CasaMOD, I didn’t use the terrain much except in 2 city maps (NY, Wien). The stats are pretty much same as for roads and the tile feels a bit redundant. Don’t you think I should take it out to decrease the amount of terrains in terms of simplification?

Another idea, what do you think about that; as I made the New York map there is a single terrain there named “landmark” and showing the Statue of Liberty and giving extra $$$  if captured. As I made other country or city maps I thought I could add landmarks there too. The California map could have the Golden Gate Bridge and the Nevada map the Hoover Dam etc. I’m not sure, if each one would need its own specifications xml file. Kajah could several .png be linked to 1 specification xml in the imagemap xml or do they need to be all separate with unique IDs? What do you guys think of the landmark terrain in general? Is the landmark idea good at all or should I keep the terrains limited without them?

edit Apr.08

Okay I added the Golden Gate Bridge as second landmark terrain to casaMOD, you can see it in red ownership on the California map screenshot in the previous post. It gives you 300% income if captured and behaves like a normal bridge. The CasaMOD upload will be updated soon, including the bridge and some minor map balancing changes.

Some of the new maps  have not been included in the former version, so the CasaMOD download has been updated, purged from original weewar maps and includes all modified maps now, some minor balancing has been done too. There will be a further map update later hopefully, but currently I’m shifting my attention to WildWestMOD again.

Maps that have been altered for this mod, containing CasaMOD specific terrains like wasteland, hills, mountain peak, shallow water, deep sea, roads, ruins or landmarks:

• Jungle river

XS 2pl.

small fight for a crossable river.

important  terrains: bunkers, jungle, forests, shallow water

• Crossroads

S 3pl. (FFA)

small  map with a single road connecting the factions.

important  terrains: plains, roads, towns, bunker

• Waters

S 2pl.

small sized sea-fight scenario with 2 bases 2 harbors and 1 airfield for each player.

important  terrains: water, deep sea, shallow water, harbors

• Nevada

M 2pl.

medium sized fight in the deserts and mountain ranges of nevada.

important  terrains: deserts, mountains, hills, towns

• Lakedon

M 3pl. (FFA)

medium sized and geometrical sea-fight scenario, with a stronger red player in the center.

important  terrains: deep sea, shallow water

• California

M 3pl. (FFA)

medium map with invasion from sea and land based battle.
important  terrains: roads, towns, mountains

• Central America
  

L 6pl. (teams)

large sized map displaying warring latin american states split in 2 teams (red white purple vs. rest).
important  terrains: jungle, hills, roads, towns, mountains

• Nam68

L 2pl.

large map where masses of red viet cong troopers face blue US fire power.
important  terrains: jungle, forests, swamps, hills, shallow water

• Wien Habidere
  

L 6pl. (FFA)

large city map of the Austrian capital with 2 starting positions for each player.
important  terrains: bases, towns, roads

• New York in ruins

XL 6pl. (FFA or teams)

extensive street-fight scenario with very many capturable structures that produce low income.

important  terrains: bridges, towns, ruins, wasteland

• From Casablanca to Cairo 1942

XXL 4pl. (teams)

huge historical world war II scenario in north africa of 1943 played in 2 teams.

important  terrains: deserts, hills, roads, towns, bunkers, harbors, airfields

This post is ment  to give you guys an idea of the features implemented for CasaMOD and the ones probably to be built in later…

By now CasaMOD is kind of finished and fully playable and the current features are:

1. New units: cruiser, strike fighter, flak tank, sniper. minisub, torpedo boat, cushion launcher
   
2. New terrains:  town, bunker, jungle, hills, deep sea, shallow water, ruins, wasteland, roads, mountain peak
   
3. Repairing differs in some ways;
   I liked the air unit repair in weewar and kind of used this idea for the other units as well, the basic “in the field” repair is cut down to 1 hitpoint per turn for all units, except air which still can repair its 3 points on airfields only. To boost repair you move your unit to a certain terrain. In Weewar the repairshop was the only terrain that boosts repairs, in CasaMOD most of the “structure terrains” (like bases, towns & harbors) can do that in a slighter manner. SEA units can use harbors to increase their repair rate and HARD units (tanks and stuff) do it in towns or bases. SOFT units (all kind of troopers) repair 1 in the field and can boost repairs on towns or bases. The second new aspect about repairing is the additional repair bonus, if the structure terrain you are repairing on is owned by you. This example explains it best: Your blue tank sitting on a plain is hit –  Ouch. You decide to increase its lifespan, if you hit repair (right mouse button in Weebot) it will recover 1 point. If you move to a neutral town, its repair will be 2 per turn. If the town is your color, it will repair 3 even. With this I hope to give the players more options to either fight it out to the end as both you and your enemy`s unit dont repair that fast, or tactically redraw to your strongholds for repairs. The other idea behind this was that this repair system also might increase a bit the value of faster or better armored vehicles, and decrease the amount of trooper spamming seen so often in Weewar.
4. Income differs slightly. In Weewar you capture bases for income. In CasaMod there is additional towns you can capture, they increase your income by 50% of a base´s income (dependent on the map settings). Not much of a difference you think? Nope there really is a big difference, because towns cannot create units at all!  This means maps have areas that are valuable income sources, but once conquered they need protection from your other areas that actually CAN produce units. With that, suddenly reinforcement tactics become more important. And you can bind your adversary’ s forces with sending some raiding troopers into such of his areas. Towns in combination with roads make your move decisions even more important and tactical.
5. Some Weewar unit specifications tweaked and rebalanced (bomber attacks from 2 distance, jet speed increased,destroyer values changed,  AA gun is static and  fires 5 hexes,…)

What I would like to add in the future:

• More maps
• Transport units (freighter, halftrack, aircraft carrier, maybe airlift)
• Paratroopers ay!
• Victory conditions (like adding flags in a not yet programmed  ”capture the flag” mode)

Where to find hard facts & detailed infos about single CasaMOD units/terrains:

You can see  the specifications for the new units and terrains in the specifications.html file, that is included in the CasaMod download root directory. If you don’t want to download and just have a look into the details, you can see it  online here (opens new window) on my fansite. In some cases they might slightly differ to the specifications tables presented on my website (opens new window). I can recall that shallow water behaves differently in CasaMOD than described on my website for example. Shallow water described there allows land units to stay on it with big combat disadvantages, but the actual behavior for CasaMOD in the download is like land units could move trough but not stay on shallow water. The reason for that is that the tables on the site are ment as idea collection for all kind of mods, not just CasaMOD. E.g. I think in KajahMOD units can “park” on shallow water… And yes another way to see the specifications is the geeky look into the particular unit or terrain xml.files in the MOD itself, thanks to Kajah, these files are quite self-explanatory and easy to read.

Maps that were changed for CasaMOD so far (most are included in the CasaMOD download, others will be downloadable here separately):

Waters, Roads,  Jungle, Vietnam, Casablanca to Cairo, New York ruined, Central America, Lakedon

some thoughts about complexity:

Honestly, if you or your buddies are new to Weebot or even never played Weewar before I suggest to play your first game in a different mod or in basic classical Weewar setting to get used to the differences in user interface. The amount of changes might be overwhelming in the start. Also some people might don’t like the changed repair system or the quantity of buildable units. In that case I also would suggest to load KajahMOD where the range of units is not that big and the rules stick more to the ones known from original weewar. A real con in CasaMOD is that the bots provided in weebot were made for the original weewar ruleset and perform worse in CasaMOD (e.g. bots don’t understand that towns can’ t produce units and leave them unprotected). So if you play Weebot in  CasaMOD setting with several people and 1 is missing to fill a mulitplayer map so I’d suggest to set “fog of war” to “true”, the bot replacing the missing player performs more unpredictable and is harder to beat then.