Feasibility of WWII total conversion
 

Did a search and didn't find anything on this.

It's occurred to me that there doesn't seem to be any Total Conversions for Dom3, and so I wanted to post an idea I tinkered around with before drifting away from the community. Basically, I think the depth and system of the game would lend itself fairly well to a WWII total conversion.

You would have the various major powers of WWII fighting over, say, the European continent and western Russia. You would have the same commander/unit system, as well as research and the production of weapons, vehicles and attachments for your divisions. Preaching could be replaced by propaganda, and obviously the Laboratories would be factory complexes, and the summon system would be used to create heavy vehicles such as Sherman Tanks. Exciting support/background operations such as Strategic bombing, sabotage missions, anti-aircraft cover and espionage would be handled by various spells.

For example, let's say you're playing as the Soviets and your scientists (scholars) research Katyushas. You can now produce (forge) the Katyusha artillery battery, which is then put in the Misc slot of one of your commanders, who can then cast the Katyusha Artillery Barrage spell. Or you could attach the Field Hospital to help the troops heal, Supply Trucks to feed more soldiers, Trucks to give them a boost in movement (using the magic carpet mechanic), Field Engineers to repair vehicles faster, you get the idea. We could also have capturable field guns by using the Holger the Headless hero mechanic: field guns would be items until battle, at which point they'd transform into field gun units. In addition you'd of course also have actual items such as bazookas, molotov coctails and binoculars (increase to accuracy or range or something).

You could also have bunkers which were simply units that could not move, but which were tough to knock out without flamethrowers (which would cause the Battle Affliction "inhabitants killed", which would reduce the bunker's ability to fire), tanks or artillery. Vehicles and bunkers could have special permanent wounds.

Magic sites would be things like large factory complexes, research facilities, the famous Hydro heavy water facility in Norway, famous landmarks, oil wells, harbours where resources from abroad are offloaded, and so on.

Resources would be war supplies, and the Alchemy system could be put to use to add more depth to the game by, say, refining crude oil to gasoline.

Prisoners of war, conscripts and forced labourers would be represented by blood slaves.


I barely got started with this a long time ago and made some rudimentary nations and had fun slaughtering Dominions 3 units with the machine guns and cannons of my tanks :D , but felt like airing this here to see if there's any support or thoughts on this. How feasible would this be?

Re: Feasibility of WWII total conversion
 

I guess the system could support it, but unfortunately the modding tools don't allow these kinds of changes to be made.

I mean, with a WHOLE LOT of abstraction you can do it.

Re: Feasibility of WWII total conversion
 

Ranged weapons in Dom3 are forced to either fly like arrows or have no flyspr (and thus ignore shields)

Some stuff you wrote is also impossible I suppose.

Re: Feasibility of WWII total conversion
 

There have been a number of experiments with mods that attempt to alter the game into firearms based combat, they have so far run into severe engine limitations, like those elmokki mentions. The most ambitious project is Dominions 3000, which is a kind of TC. But that is almost never played MP.

You might also consider the many warhammer nations, if played on the warhammer map, as a TC.

Anyways, I believe the engine isn't quite fit to make a ww2 mod. there are soo many ww2 games around anyway, so why make all that effort for another ww2 strategy game in a subpar engine? Will anyone play it over any of the dedicated ww2 tbs games out there? I wouldn't.

What works best for dom3 is replacing the content with content fit for a similar set of mechanics. So a LoTR TC would work fine for example, or a song of ice and fire TC, or a historically accurate bronze age TC (just remove magic and forging) and so on.

Re: Feasibility of WWII total conversion
 

A lot of your ideas are also impossible to implement by strict modding alone, so that's another problem since there's not many people who can do much of anything with the code.

Re: Feasibility of WWII total conversion
 

I think a mod nation from the civil war, or ww1 or WW2 would be cool

Re: Feasibility of WWII total conversion
 

Oh well, thanks for the input anyhow :) .

Re: Feasibility of WWII total conversion
 

That could be entertaining. I'm actually surprised no one has done one yet, truth be told. Undead Confederates in an alternate universe, anyone?

Re: Feasibility of WWII total conversion
 

Well, are you ok with every gun firing an arrow? If you are then the tools you have might be good for what you're going for.

Re: Feasibility of WWII total conversion
 

Actually, I'm not sure if I would mind. Bullets have bullet drop, so in reality, too, you aim higher than the target and then they drop :P . You could say it's to simulate distance or something:p.

Don't think I'll ever make anything serious myself, but if others want to give it a shot, I'd be happy to follow its progress ;) .