Expanded Toolbar - Grog

[The Joker]

I bought the Steam copy and it came with an early version of the toolbar...
I noticed it only when I downloaded the latest copy, go to the mod enable panel and found that I have already another copy (named slight different) of the bar...

[RebBugler]

Update 5.5

- Waterloo and User Scenarios are merged into one 'Scenarios' button
As promised, after needless CTD's, a simple solution

- Pause and Resume text buttons are replaced by standard pause/play icons
The long French names kept overlapping the pause text making for messy displays at times. The replacement icons should help tidy things up.

New Single Player Window...

The attachment SPscreen.jpg is no longer available

[Rico2016]

How do you patch to 1.01 the Steam Version of SOW WL? When I use the new 5.5 version of the tool bar I get an incomplete version (no formations bar etc) of this tool bar. 5.4 works fine.

[Didz]

Duplicate post due to server lag.

[Didz]

How do you patch to 1.01 the Steam Version of SOW WL? When I use the new 5.5 version of the tool bar I get an incomplete version (no formations bar etc) of this tool bar. 5.4 works fine.

I don't think you can.

In theory Steam will automatically update mods and workshop content via the subscription mechanism. But as far as I know because the Grog Toolbar was supplied as part of the original game package so it falls outside the workshop system and doesn't benefit from its automatic update function.

Likewise, Steam will automatically update your game to the latest steam released version, so SOWWL itself should be kept up to date, but because the Grog Toolbar isn't actually part of the game proper it also falls outside this process.

I think if you want the latest version you will need to download and instal it yourself. At least this is what I did and here is a link to a guide explaining how I did it.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =974752629

[RebBugler]

How do you patch to 1.01 the Steam Version of SOW WL? When I use the new 5.5 version of the tool bar I get an incomplete version (no formations bar etc) of this tool bar. 5.4 works fine.

I don't think you can.

In theory Steam will automatically update mods and workshop content via the subscription mechanism. But as far as I know because the Grog Toolbar was supplied as part of the original game package so it falls outside the workshop system and doesn't benefit from its automatic update function.

Likewise, Steam will automatically update your game to the latest steam released version, so SOWWL itself should be kept up to date, but because the Grog Toolbar isn't actually part of the game proper it also falls outside this process.

I think if you want the latest version you will need to download and instal it yourself. At least this is what I did and here is a link to a guide explaining how I did it.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =974752629

Certainly appreciate this help in steering the Steam folks on the right path to using SOW mods. Finally got around to reading your link and was very impressed by the presentation. Just one thing to question though, you mention having to restart the game after enabling or dis-enabling mods. This was fixed with one of the last patches, an hour glass appears now when changing out mods, with no restart necessary. Has this been fixed with the latest Steam version?

[Didz]

Certainly appreciate this help in steering the Steam folks on the right path to using SOW mods. Finally got around to reading your link and was very impressed by the presentation. Just one thing to question though, you mention having to restart the game after enabling or dis-enabling mods. This was fixed with one of the last patches, an hour glass appears now when changing out mods, with no restart necessary. Has this been fixed with the latest Steam version?

I've just checked this in-game and it does appear that it's now possible to enable and disable mods without needing to restart the entire game. Obviously you still need to restart your current scenario to make the changes.

Thank you for pointing this out and I'll make the appropriate changes to my steam guide.

[mcaryf]

Hi Reb
if you are still up for developing the Grog Toolbar there are two additions that would greatly help the way I play the game.

First having watched a lot of Darkrob's Youtube videos, I now realise that I should make much more use of skirmishers and more skirmishers is any case a true reflection of the historic way of fighting. The problem is that when you play battle level scenarios, as I mostly do, it is often too time consuming to split off a significant number of skirmish units e.g. for 6 whole brigades prior to D'Erlons attack. Thus would it be possible to introduce a new brigade level command that orders each battalion in the brigade to split off one skirmisher unit each with whatever size (50, 100, 200) you specify with possibly a companion recall command that recalls all skirmisher units split from the Brigade that have not been set as detached?

The second command that would help me is for a battery commander to be able to order the ammunition type to be used by all the guns in his battery. The reason I need this is because I still cannot get the game regularly to apply the longer ranges that I have enabled for canister. I have set the army commanders to issue use canister commands every 30 minutes in my battlescript but I still have to do a lot of individual commands for each gun when they have opportunities to do real damage - being able to do it once via the battery commander would save about a dozen clicks! It would hardly matter if some guns in a battery might not have targets within canister range at that time or even no canister ammo left as they are already so ineffective when firing other ammo types.

Regards

Mike

[RebBugler]

Hi Reb
if you are still up for developing the Grog Toolbar there are two additions that would greatly help the way I play the game.

First having watched a lot of Darkrob's Youtube videos, I now realise that I should make much more use of skirmishers and more skirmishers is any case a true reflection of the historic way of fighting. The problem is that when you play battle level scenarios, as I mostly do, it is often too time consuming to split off a significant number of skirmish units e.g. for 6 whole brigades prior to D'Erlons attack. Thus would it be possible to introduce a new brigade level command that orders each battalion in the brigade to split off one skirmisher unit each with whatever size (50, 100, 200) you specify with possibly a companion recall command that recalls all skirmisher units split from the Brigade that have not been set as detached?

The second command that would help me is for a battery commander to be able to order the ammunition type to be used by all the guns in his battery. The reason I need this is because I still cannot get the game regularly to apply the longer ranges that I have enabled for canister. I have set the army commanders to issue use canister commands every 30 minutes in my battlescript but I still have to do a lot of individual commands for each gun when they have opportunities to do real damage - being able to do it once via the battery commander would save about a dozen clicks! It would hardly matter if some guns in a battery might not have targets within canister range at that time or even no canister ammo left as they are already so ineffective when firing other ammo types.

Regards

Mike

Glad you're enjoying the game and making the most of it with your own modding techniques in developing your personal preferences. Your skirmisher request, brigade command, would be a nice addition. However, after giving this much thought I see no way of making it happen...Pretty sure it would take a patch. I did do some testing and found that the Probe command does send out skirmishers automatically. With my testing two battalions out of four split off skirmishers under the Probe command. I know they also split off with the Attack command and probably with the All Out Attack command. I didn't test that far, but you can, and possibly share your results with the forum. Sorry I can't help more here, just throwing out some ideas.

I'm really no help with your "canister only" request either. With long range canister modded that really opens a can of worms that messes with the engine's hard coding big time...A dangerous hack if you will. And even if I knew how to make the hack work, it would not be the kind of command that would fit the Grog Toolbar profile, that is, enhancing the game while maintaining historical accuracy.

Thanks for your input...

[DarkRob]

Glad you're enjoying the game and making the most of it with your own modding techniques in developing your personal preferences. Your skirmisher request, brigade command, would be a nice addition. However, after giving this much thought I see no way of making it happen...Pretty sure it would take a patch. I did do some testing and found that the Probe command does send out skirmishers automatically. With my testing two battalions out of four split off skirmishers under the Probe command. I know they also split off with the Attack command and probably with the All Out Attack command. I didn't test that far, but you can, and possibly share your results with the forum. Sorry I can't help more here, just throwing out some ideas.

Also just to add to what Reb said, having the ability to do this at a brigade level is rife for abuse. There are already to many commands at the brigade level that work EVEN if all subordinate units are TC'd which was never intended. Skirmishers are already way WAY to abusable in this game. The ability to split off limitless numbers of skirmishers with no limit to the distance they can move away from their parent unit is just crazy. They can turn approaching artillery around just by moving into engage distance, they can force entire divisions to stop and go online way far back from their destination, and all at the cost of a couple of hundred men. Skirmishers need to be toned down in the next game. Not necessarily in their effectiveness against line infantry, because there has to be a reason to use them in the first place. But there needs to be a limit on how many skirmishers a battalion can split off and also how far away they can move from the parent battalion once split off.
The way they are now its just to easy to abuse the hell out of them, especially against an AI that prefers the musket ball to the bayonet.