"Naval Arms Race" mod overhaul. BETA 2.8 "Major Powers update"

[TamaDasha]

The tech progression feels a little busted. 1907, playing from 1890 as the US. Britain sits at Very Advanced, while everybody else is Average or Behind - including myself. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to keep up with tech, if maxing out the tech slider as the USA on turn 1 still leaves me Behind. The problem might be that both starting GDP and GDP growth is incredibly stunted for everybody who isn't Britain compared to vanilla.

At the same time, I have enough GDP to support infinity battleships, so I'm not sure if money is the issue, or research modifiers need tweaking. FWIW, I'm 4th on GDP after Britain, France and Germany.

Edited April 14 by TamaDasha

[o Barão]

1 hour ago, TamaDasha said:

The problem might be that both starting GDP and GDP growth is incredibly stunted for everybody who isn't Britain compared to vanilla.

No. That it is for two reasons only:

A:) you are not playing at normal difficulty or...

B:) you are using the priority function to unlock prefer techs sooner...

 

If you are playing at normal difficulty with the research slider always maximum without choosing any tech to be unlocked first, in theory should be impossible for the AI to get an advantage on you.

[cookiemonste94]

This is my first time playing with this mod so excuse my ignorance, the AI is abslutely dunking on every single ship of mine. Even though we have roughly the same equipment and tech grade. Both crews are trained. I am playing on normal difficulty. The AI just does drivebys in 1905 while my ships cant hit anything.

[TamaDasha]

1 hour ago, o Barão said:

No. That it is for two reasons only:

A:) you are not playing at normal difficulty or...

B:) you are using the priority function to unlock prefer techs sooner...

 

If you are playing at normal difficulty with the research slider always maximum without choosing any tech to be unlocked first, in theory should be impossible for the AI to get an advantage on you.

So what's the point of saying "Lowered weight penalty for non prioritized researches" if using the priority still gets you screwed? I only did it for a couple of techs, never more than 1 at once.

Also - why is almost every other country "Behind" if it's my fault? That's almost never the case in vanilla. Britain unlocked dreadnought hulls in 1897, everybody else still using toy boats - the issue is the disparity, if it was a difficulty issue or a player error, other AIs would be benefiting too.

[o Barão]

39 minutes ago, cookiemonste94 said:

This is my first time playing with this mod so excuse my ignorance, the AI is abslutely dunking on every single ship of mine. Even though we have roughly the same equipment and tech grade. Both crews are trained. I am playing on normal difficulty. The AI just does drivebys in 1905 while my ships cant hit anything.

"...dunking on every single ship of mine."

English it is not my native language and I failed to understand what "dunking" means here. Google translate is also not helping me.

 

What I did understand it's that you are having difficulty against the AI in battles. Well that's good news for me. 😉

[TamaDasha]

The other issue I'm noticing is the AI doesn't understand how to deal with the new armor weight. Battleships with 9in main belt and 0.1in everywhere else are extremely common, the armor is too heavy for the AI to fit anything else in, so they just use no armor at all.

[Draco]

10 hours ago, cookiemonste94 said:

This is my first time playing with this mod so excuse my ignorance, the AI is abslutely dunking on every single ship of mine. Even though we have roughly the same equipment and tech grade. Both crews are trained. I am playing on normal difficulty. The AI just does drivebys in 1905 while my ships cant hit anything.

Yes this mod is a lot harder than vanilla. I'm struggling to make designs that don't get their asses kicked by ships half their size too, maybe we can exchange notes, so we get a better grip on what not to do?

[cookiemonste94]

13 hours ago, o Barão said:

"...dunking on every single ship of mine."

English it is not my native language and I failed to understand what "dunking" means here. Google translate is also not helping me.

 

What I did understand it's that you are having difficulty against the AI in battles. Well that's good news for me. 😉

This is dunking.

It was a one on one, heavy cruiser vs heavy cruiser.
We had the same gun grade and rangefinders and he even had less armour than me.
We had the same amout of guns, secondary and primary but he kept hitting me with salvo after salvo. We also had the same crew training.

[brothermunro]

20 hours ago, o Barão said:

"...dunking on every single ship of mine."

English it is not my native language and I failed to understand what "dunking" means here. Google translate is also not helping me.

 

What I did understand it's that you are having difficulty against the AI in battles. Well that's good news for me. 😉

‘Dunking’ in this context would mean that the AI ships are winning with ease. It’s a term originally from basketball (where you are losing to an opposing team who are scoring a bunch of easy 2 point scores). It could also be from ‘dunking for apples’ which involves submerging your head (or ships in this case) but that seems less likely 😅

[PalaiologosTheGreat]

21 hours ago, cookiemonste94 said:

This is my first time playing with this mod so excuse my ignorance, the AI is abslutely dunking on every single ship of mine. Even though we have roughly the same equipment and tech grade. Both crews are trained. I am playing on normal difficulty. The AI just does drivebys in 1905 while my ships cant hit anything

What are your ship designs? Also, if you're playing semi-realistic, use a lot of DDs. They're very effective as light calibre guns can't hit that well still in 1905. You can do a ton of torpedo runs and go out with no damage.

[rossi191]

i play on legendary and GDP and GDP growth seem fine to me as for Britain being the most advanced and powerful nation in the early years of this game its historically accurate the US didn't catch up to European nations in naval technology till the late 1920-1930s maybe even later barao has done a good job with how each nation unlock technology and there GDP/GDP growth it gives each nation there own set of challenges even when playing as Britain you can have a difficult time balancing the hundreds of ships needed to protect its empire against the naval budget build to many super advanced max sized ships to soon and you go bankrupt very quickly but if you don't build enough ships your land army suffers and you lose transports everywhere when war starts so to me the economy and technology seems to be well balanced.

[o Barão]

11 hours ago, cookiemonste94 said:

We had the same gun grade and rangefinders and he even had less armour than me.
We had the same amout of guns, secondary and primary but he kept hitting me with salvo after salvo. We also had the same crew training.

Armour does have no influence in the hit rate, so we can ignore that. But now let's list some of the most possible factors that you are ignoring, or you are still not aware how important they are.

• Gun grade is the same, ok, but what guns, what was the range, caliber length, and what shell was being used by both?
• What was the weather? What are your hull stats in that weather? And what were the AI hull stats in that weather?
• What are your hull stats? What is the enemy ship hull stats?
• What are your cruiser tower stats? What is the enemy tower stats?
• Were you sailing in a straight line at cruise speed for the most part and using most guns? The AI was doing the same or was maneuvering for the most part?
• Were you shooting trough smoke?
• You had the sun in your back?
• Pitch roll status from your ship and the AI?

I could list other things, but you probably already got the idea what I am trying to tell you.

 

This game is too complex, and many things about how they work are never simple. But I can assure you that the AI does not have any unfair advantage in the battlefield. However, for someone that comes from vanilla to NAR, the first impression can be a shock.😁

[o Barão]

23 hours ago, TamaDasha said:

The other issue I'm noticing is the AI doesn't understand how to deal with the new armor weight. Battleships with 9in main belt and 0.1in everywhere else are extremely common, the armor is too heavy for the AI to fit anything else in, so they just use no armor at all.

The problem is not the armor weight. It is the lack of priorities or rules to force the AI to use a minimum armor value in the different ship sections. 

[basedana]

why is Oil 1 lighter than Oil 2?

Oil 2

Oil 1

Edited April 16 by basedana

[Azerostar]

14 hours ago, cookiemonste94 said:

It was a one on one, heavy cruiser vs heavy cruiser.
We had the same gun grade and rangefinders and he even had less armour than me.
We had the same amout of guns, secondary and primary but he kept hitting me with salvo after salvo. We also had the same crew training.

 

In this game, the armor of a ship mostly depends on the 3rd layer belt/deck. And some hulls have much better stats that could give them big advantages.

Than, in the combat, damage instability taken by hit will cause the ships been harder to fight back,especially at the earlier tech years, this will enlarge some hulls' advantages, because those hulls with better stability more likely to hit targets before been hit.

[basedana]

2 hours ago, basedana said:

why is Oil 1 lighter than Oil 2?

Oil 2

Oil 1

To follow up. Apparently both Oil 2 and Oil 3 are missing the -10% boiler weight stat, which may actually make them heavier in some hulls.

[o Barão]

9 hours ago, basedana said:

why is Oil 1 lighter than Oil 2?

Oil 2

Oil 1

"Improved methods to use oil as fuel for ship engines with boilers or not. The fuel consumption is further decreased and it pays off for the higher cost of the new system."

[o Barão]

On 4/14/2024 at 9:57 PM, TamaDasha said:

So what's the point of saying "Lowered weight penalty for non prioritized researches" if using the priority still gets you screwed? I only did it for a couple of techs, never more than 1 at once.

If you are comparing with vanilla, you will notice a big difference. There is still a penalty, but is much smaller. This change helps players to interact more with the tech tree if they wish, without the feeling they are being penalized too much.

On 4/14/2024 at 9:57 PM, TamaDasha said:

Also - why is almost every other country "Behind" if it's my fault? That's almost never the case in vanilla. Britain unlocked dreadnought hulls in 1897, everybody else still using toy boats - the issue is the disparity, if it was a difficulty issue or a player error, other AIs would be benefiting too.

Because of your comment, I went on to take a look at a AIPersonalities file to see if there were any changes by the devs, and there are. So what you're experiencing is an old vanilla gameplay. I will update in the next version. Thanks 👍

[cookiemonste94]

Is there any indicator when the game is finished? because we get an update every 2nd day or so and it breaks everything.

[o Barão]

41 minutes ago, cookiemonste94 said:

Is there any indicator when the game is finished? because we get an update every 2nd day or so and it breaks everything.

In the mod description, you will see that I always recommend blocking steam updates. I wrote the instructions in details to how to do that.

I am working on a BIG update atm and I don't know when it will be ready. Probably around Friday or maybe sooner.

[cookiemonste94]

45 minutes ago, o Barão said:

In the mod description, you will see that I always recommend blocking steam updates. I wrote the instructions in details to how to do that.

I am working on a BIG update atm and I don't know when it will be ready. Probably around Friday or maybe sooner.

I actually did block the updates but in order to play the game I had to update. The play button was replaced by an "update" button.

[spinaker]

6 minutes ago, cookiemonste94 said:

Я действительно заблокировал обновления, но для того, чтобы играть в игру, мне пришлось обновиться. Кнопка воспроизведения была заменена кнопкой "обновить".

Have you tried running the game directly from the folder?

[cookiemonste94]

Ah, there we go, that's what I did wrong. Oh well.

[basedana]

16 hours ago, o Barão said:

"Improved methods to use oil as fuel for ship engines with boilers or not. The fuel consumption is further decreased and it pays off for the higher cost of the new system."

I mean, it still doesn't say it would be heavier, it says it would be more expensive which it is, so I don't see why not add the same -10% boiler weight to both Oil 2 and Oil 3 since boilers should be lighter due to lighter and more efficient fuel being used.

[NathanKell]

On 4/8/2024 at 5:59 AM, o Barão said:

@NathanKell time to call the heavy cavalry. I need your help.

 

I am trying to change minor nations to become playable, but I step on to a problem. Likewise, I supposed that you might have the knowledge to come with a solution for this.

As you can see here in this image, all major nations have a flag pack for all the different governments and also the "country". Minors, as you can see below, the Brazil example only have one. I need to learn how it is possible to add the flags missing for any minor nation.

The string path mentions other file. I supposed this is important.

 

Thanks in advance!

Hi! Very sorry I missed this, I was on vacation for a week and then the last week-plus work has been extremely busy (we're shipping a big game update, well, it's slipped a few days but definitely this week!). I'll take a look at this whenever I have a sec, though it might not be for a few days.

Regarding the path, if memory serves a .resS file is just a regular assets file with the header stripped, my guess is it's used here because unlike the main resource.assets file this one is _just_ a bunch of binary data to be streamed to the GPU?

...so, uh, I took a quick look while I was waiting for a build to complete. The flags are Sprite assets, not Texture2D. If you want to do this without code changes (if it's even possible), you'll need to add sprite assets of the given paths. To do that, you'll need to hook them up to new Texture2D atlases. I'm not sure the extent to which UABEA can actually do that.

The alternate approach is the code approach, which is fairly trivial. Hook postprocess for the Players data to load your flag assets (make a bunch of textures and use standard Unity code to load them as Texture2D) and make sprites out of them. Then harmony-prefix Player.Flag() (the static version of it) and set the return value as your desired sprite if the passed PlayerData is not a major (and then return false, so the base code doesn't run). Done! Shouldn't be more than a dozen or two lines.
EDIT: And to be clear I'm happy to write that if you want to supply the textures! You should be able to compile the dll yourself so you shouldn't be dependent on me, too.  (Basically you just install MelonLoader and run the game once; that generates moddable versions of the DLLs. Then you run MSBuild (from the command line) or VSCode/Visual Studio/whatever to compile code against the game's DLLs and you can ship the resulting DLL to users. The source code shouldn't need to be altered going forward, so at worst you'd have to recompile, but my guess is you wouldn't even need to do that since the bindings aren't going to change, so the initial compiled version I can make should suffice?)

Edited April 17 by NathanKell