Hello again! This update brings some much-needed buffs to Operation Cherry Blossom.

• Phase 1 of Operation Cherry Blossom buffed significantly
  
  • +150% Attack on Core Territory (up from +30%)
    
  • +150% Defense on Core Territory (up from +50%)
• Phase 2 of Operation Cherry Blossom buffed significantly
  
  • +500% Paradrop Attack (up from +50%)
    
  • +150% Paradrop Defense (up from +50%)
    
  • +100% Paradrop Organization (up from none)
• Phase 3 of Operation Cherry Blossom buffed significantly
  
  • Phase 3 now Spawns One "A-04" Template and Three "Valkyries" Templates in the Original Hive
    
  • "A-04": Two XG-7d Battalions
    
  • "Valkyries": Five Imperial Guard Battalions
• The "Original Hive Destroyed" debuff was strengthened
  
  • Division attack was decreased to -15% (from -10%)
    
  • Division defense was decreased to -15% (from -10%)
    
  • Weekly Manpower was decreased to -10,000 (from none)
• The "Occupied Hive" debuff was strengthened
  
  • Weekly Manpower was decreased to -50,000 (from none)

After playtesting multiple times, I concluded that Operation Cherry Blossom was virtually impossible to pull off due to one crucial factor: The XG-7d is destroyed too easily. Having to defend against a single unit of Soldier classes would be enough to destroy the XG-7d equipment, which would make the A-04 unit worthless and doom the operation to failure. On top of this, no supporting divisions would spawn to soak up damage for the XG-7d, which further increased the chances of it being destroyed before it reached the main hall. Because of this, I edited the event template to contain two XGs, which gives the player some breathing room and dramatically increases the chances of Cherry Blossom succeeding.

For the buffs to Phases 1 and 2, I believed that this would make the effects fall more into line with what actually happened in-lore, which was every frontline nation throwing quite literally everything they had at the BETA, without regard for how bad the casualties got. Phase 2, in particular, was because securing the drop zone using orbital divers would result in them practically being instantly killed on touchdown, so I decided to give them a greater edge to at least give them a chance at clearing out a dropzone.

For the hive debuffs, I thought that destroying the Original Hive should have a stronger effect on the BETA. And for the Occupied Hive debuff especially, it made sense for the manpower loss to be added, since lore-wise the BETA tied to that hive would have nowhere to recharge their biological systems and thus would start to die out. This also counters the fact that occupied hives gain manpower, which made no sense.


I don't intend on rolling back the changes to Phase 3, ever (simply because I can't think of a workaround to HOI4's strength damage destroying equipment that theoretically shouldn't be destructible). However, I would be open to adjusting Phases 1 and 2 if they turn out to be too strong.

My next plan is to add an event that follows Operation Cherry Blossom (fires when "Scars of Cherry Blossom" expires), which will let the player properly see Takeru (and his comrades) off into the next world, and give every human nation a slight permanent buff. If you can't tell, I'm trying to make total human victory over the BETA possible, and expand the lore past Cherry Blossom.

As I thought, my changes to Lasers were overzealous and made it too easy for humanity to gain air superiority. So, I reverted most of the nerfs to lasers.

• Lasers and Heavy Lasers had their range reverted to 1900 (from 1000 and 1500)
  
• Lasers and HLasers had their speed increased to 300 (from 100)
  
• Lasers can no longer do CAS missions
  
• Munitions have stayed the same.

My nerfs to lasers made it too easy for the BETA to get overwhelmed by munition spam, and the AI had trouble moving lasers between airfields at only 100km/h. Additionally, the AI would only set Lasers to CAS (instead of Air Superiority/Interception) which resulted in a disproportionate amount of Lasers being killed by Anti-Laser munitions.

Hopefully this is enough to prevent the air war from turning into the BETA air forces getting steamrolled by munitions.

Hello! This is my first patch notes for this mod, and that's because I feel like explaining the changes in this update since they deviate significantly from the Original Mod.

• BETA Lasers and Heavy Lasers have had their air speed and air range reduced to 100 (from 95) and 1000/1500 (from 1900) for Lasers/HLasers.
  
• Lasers can now do CAS missions like HLasers can (They deal 50 ground attack, half of what HLasers do)
  
• Human Munitions (both AL and Con) have had their production cost decreased significantly to 8 and 5 respectively.
  
• Human Munitions (both types) now only require 1 manpower per munition, down from 20.

I felt the way the HOI4 AI used lasers (and the way air forces work) was very inaccurate to the lore of Muv Luv. The AI would be able to dogpile lasers in a single strategic region either by flying them in nearly instantly (both lasers had a speed of 950, which allowed them to cross Eurasia in a day) or by deploying them from a neighboring region. This not only made using munitions frustrating, but wasn't very lore-friendly either (since Lasers, like all BETA classes, need to walk to get places.

Imagine this scenario: You've stockpiled a few thousand munitions of both types in preparation for a big push, say, across the Suez. You deploy your Conventional Munitions to support the offensive, and then deploy your AL munitions in preparation for when the enemy hive deploys its lasers. It only has a few hundred lasers stockpiled, so you reason that your ALs will suppress them for at least a day while your conventional munitions get their CAS damage in. But as you look at the air zone, you realize that there aren't the few hundred lasers you expected, but four thousand. You look at the active enemy fighters and see that every single hive has sent at least a hundred lasers to counter your munitions. With every in-game hour, your conventional munitions get shot down by the hundreds, and by the end of the day, every munition deployed to that air zone got erased from the sky.

This isn't a hypothetical scenario: this is something that everyone that's played the original mod has had to deal with. Hives being able to deploy air wings halfway across the map is created a twofold issue: it made using sustained air forces worthless, and it was wildly inaccurate to the lore of Muv Luv. So I did two things: I limited the range of Lasers, to prevent them from being deployed to air zones outside the zone they're stationed in, and I set their air speed to 100, to create a larger window for players to use munitions and simulate the Laser classes having to walk across an entire continent. I think that this gave the air war a much needed balance while not giving humanity any outright buffs. Lasers still absolutely shred munitions, but now at least they're more replaceable (and cost less manpower).


I believe that while necessary, my changes may have been too extreme in one place or another. Once I get a better feel (and feedback, please) for how playing with these tweaks feels like, I'll make the necessary buffs/nerfs to keep the mod feeling true to Muv Luv.

Additionally, as I get better at coding in HOI4, you can expect completely new units and equipment being added to the game, most likely a cleanup of the code from the Original mod.

That's all, see you later.