Realistic Medals
I’m Only trying to create medals that match those historically worn by U-boat crews.
Even with this mod, obtaining medals in the game may still seem too easy to you.
I have adjusted medal acquisition criteria to better reflect historical reality.
But this does not necessarily correspond to the difficulty level you have chosen in the game options.
Historical Facts:
On average, U-boat patrols lasted about 5 weeks at sea (less for Type II, much more for Type IX),
followed by 4 weeks in port for repairs, maintenance, and rest.
Since the war lasted 5 years and 8 months for Germany, a U-boat commander could theoretically complete about 33 patrols.
In reality:
- No commander ever exceeded 27 patrols (record held by Albrecht Brandi, with short missions in the Mediterranean).
- Most famous commanders (Kretschmer, Prien, Lüth, Lehmann-Willenbrock) completed only 10 to 16 patrols during their entire career.
- No U-boat commander’s career lasted the entire war!
So, for this mod:
I decided to implement realistic patrol requirements for the ‘U-boat War Badge’ and the ‘U-boat Front Clasp’.
(Even though the historical criteria for these medals weren’t based only on patrol count.)
This is especially true for the ‘U-boat War Badge with Diamonds,’ which in the vanilla game is awarded far too easily after just 8 patrols.
Regarding the ‘U-Boat Front Clasp in Gold’ (which was never officially awarded during the war), I chose to keep it but set an extremely difficult patrols count requirement.
No changes:
Requirements for ‘Wound Badges’ already align with history.
Also no changes to German, Iron, Knight’s Crosses;
Since this would require changing the entire rewards points system, it is beyond my scope for now,., and the developers may update this soon.
(Whatever, you will receive all these crosses in the correct order.)
And because I don’t do half things, all the medal description texts have been adapted (thanks to the AI).
🔹 Enlarged 3D Models
Bigger 3D medals on screen!
(Note: Depending on your screen resolution and UI settings, you may need to adjust ScaleMultiplier and PositionOffset in my DecorationPatches.cs file.
My defaults are fine if you don’t use max UI text size on screens smaller than: 1920×1080.)
🔹 Enhanced Sprite Images
re-worked the small medal icons (sprites) in the character’s profile (the place where you can customize his clothes) for better historical accuracy and visual distinction.
🔹 No More "Gamey" Arcade Locks
When you almost deserve to receive a new medal, the game shows an image of that medal with a lock on it.
I replaced this with something more sober: a blurry, darker, translucent medal image.
- With uncensored Swastika indeed.
- Detailed back-side with brooch and pins.
- Enhanced 3D details.
- High-Quality Effective Textures (optimized for 4K).
And of course, always based on authentic historical references (note: there is a lil part of personal style, because in reality, so many different versions of these medals were made, and the available photos are not "pure historical truth").
Now you may think that all of these things make these new 3D models too big.
But in fact, the original game models were often messy and wasted resources (understandable when you have to create hundreds of other 3D models in limited time).
So, my high-quality models are not much harder to handle by computers.
Is that a 3D scan?
No, I don’t have these medals and 3D scans cost too much.
Is it generated by AI?
I tried, but it seems that for now most hyped AIs are good at generating a specific type of things (cats, dogs on skateboards…), but not so much with WW2 medals apparently…
(Plus, some AI just block when detecting the Swastika.)
In short, for now, generating 3D medals by AI doesn’t give enough precise high-quality details, so I only used AI for "fixing" some heightmap textures.
✔ This mod does NOT require starting a new campaign.
✔ It should work with previous saved games.
If you get LOD issues (old textures reappearing), delete all .dxt files in the Cache game folder.
🔸 Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 (Attribution – ShareAlike)
The content of this mod cannot be redistributed as-is by others.
unless it has been significantly modified for the end user.
In any case, proper credit must be given to the original author(s), along with mention reference of this original version.
Too sensitive topic,, not a big surprise…
I Repeat ! my mods have no political agenda and I don’t take sides in any past wars.
Anyway… For those interested, by technical support, high-resolution assets, extended integration, early-access updates, and experimental development builds or just for chatting,,, => join my private Discord[discord.gg]
