"Naval Arms Race" mod overhaul. BETA v10.9.2 - "Shells & Ballistics rework" update - for UAD v1.5.1.0 Opt

[o Barão]

W.I.P.

New german DD & CL 4" and 5" guns.

 

New British DD 3", 4" and 5" inch guns. ("Tribal class is now complete")

Edited April 5, 2023 by o Barão

[clavernever]

Question!

I'm currently trying out some changes to government modifiers, and if it goes well I would like to know how could I go about sharing it (you're free to add the changes to your mod if you want to).
It's the result of me getting frustrated at how ridiculous France's GDP was, doing some digging to find out what the heck was happening and finally reaching govt modifiers as the culprit: in the base game Right-Wing governments send your economy to the moon and Communism is both insanely stable and insanely stagnant, both things together resulting in the last one or two surviving right-wing governments becoming an absolute world dominating economic powerhouse, while everyone else slowly drifts toward communist regimes in a neverending cascade of GDP stagnation.

My changes are fairly simple: the left is generally more stable, the center has better long-term growth and the extremes get massive flat bonuses at the cost of instability and economic stagnation. Key feature being the more stagnant you are the more unstable you become, thus avoiding the economic death trap that is communism in the base game.

For historical reasons, the extreme right gets more military power than the extreme left, but the left is generally more stable than the right.
Overall all governments are more unstable, so big wars should result in revolutions more often than not, keeping politics moving and avoiding long term strategic stagnation.
For gameplay reasons, the extreme right gets more naval power and the extreme left gets more army power. The player is incentivized to take different strategies according to their government type:
- The right favors naval supremacy and home port invasions since your army is weak but your navy has the funding to sustain a straight-forward attack.
- The center favors neutrality and peacetime economic growth, and remains strategically flexible military-wise.
- The left favors strategic takeovers of minor to medium ports, enabling your armies to invade adjacent major provinces by land while you use your relatively limited navy to take over colonies and other side objectives.
- Monarchies get both high army and navy power at the cost of economic growth and base province income (aka base GDP), Constitutional Monarchies have a milder version of this.

The mentioned strategies should work on a normal difficulty game, I don't find higher difficulties fun cause the unfair economics drive me mad, so I don't play them and don't know what strategies are best in them.

The exact modifiers go as follows:
[ All numbers in the table are straight multipliers, for example in-game 0.75 = -25% , 2 = +100% , 1 = +0% , etc. ]

Edited April 5, 2023 by clavernever

[o Barão]

1 hour ago, clavernever said:

....in the base game Right-Wing governments send your economy to the moon and Communism is both insanely stable and insanely stagnant...

So historical accurate? I don't have problems with those stereotypes in game. Well, maybe, except unrest for the communism. I understand why is the most stable type, but with only "0.1" this can be too much, to the point if a government becomes communism it can stay there forever. If I remember, there is something similar in the rebalancing mod. I still need to play more campaigns to have a good feeling what needs to change or not.

 

I fail to see what was the question. If you want, it is possible to edit the base nation income in the "players" file.

[MasterBurte]

I have three requests.

First is it possible that you unlock all superstructures of a specific ship class to all ships of the class? So for example if the japanese paragon tower becomes available enable it beeing build on all BBs. Atm some modernized dreadnoughts have it but the newer hull don't.

Second i would like to ask if it's possible to enable double/triple/quad guns for all ships on main and sec guns once the technology is researched the first time, so you don't have to research for years just to be allowed to build turrets that you already know how to build. For example i can currently build triple guns on BBs, double guns on DDs but only single guns on CLs.

And last is it possible that we somehow retain the ability to build partially armored turrets for small single guns? I wanted to make a refit for my torpedo CLs that have a bunch of small turrets/guns but i have already researched to much into small guns. This results is the build becoming unrefittable due to the mark 3/4 guns beeing to big to fit anywhere. It would be nice if the guns could differantiate into partially armored and fully armored, so that once the fully armored once become available we still have the option to build versions with the smaller footprint.

[o Barão]

2 hours ago, MasterBurte said:

First is it possible that you unlock all superstructures of a specific ship class to all ships of the class? So for example if the japanese paragon tower becomes available enable it beeing build on all BBs. Atm some modernized dreadnoughts have it but the newer hull don't.

Yes, it is possible, but I will not do that. I want to expand the design options. To add more variety and interesting choices, but I also want to respect the national design language of each country. The last part is the most difficult. As an example...

W.I.P.

I changed the guns models for the Germans and added the Uber funnels to the modern light cruiser. The generic super structure components are the same for all nations, however this changes alone are enough to have a different look in comparison with the other "modern light cruiser" from other nations. The issue here is where I was able to create new guns, for the hulls I never managed to get it to work. So this specific hull is shared also with the Austrians and the French, and I don't like to see the French with Uber funnels. Maybe it is possible to change the French to another group, or maybe I can find the solution to create new hulls and make it work in game. The latter option would be the best, in that scenario I could add some of the Richelieu funnels (smaller new version) only to the French "modern light cruisers".

I also created a generic  new secondary tower for some DDs.

2 hours ago, MasterBurte said:

Second i would like to ask if it's possible to enable double/triple/quad guns for all ships on main and sec guns once the technology is researched the first time, so you don't have to research for years just to be allowed to build turrets that you already know how to build. For example i can currently build triple guns on BBs, double guns on DDs but only single guns on CLs.

I tried to add the quad Bofors gun to the Bristish and the Americans, and I failed to do so. Maybe is something related with the "technologies" file that I still need to check.

 

2 hours ago, MasterBurte said:

And last is it possible that we somehow retain the ability to build partially armored turrets for small single guns? I wanted to make a refit for my torpedo CLs that have a bunch of small turrets/guns but i have already researched to much into small guns. This results is the build becoming unrefittable due to the mark 3/4 guns beeing to big to fit anywhere. It would be nice if the guns could differantiate into partially armored and fully armored, so that once the fully armored once become available we still have the option to build versions with the smaller footprint.

Yes, it should be possible, by keeping the same gun model, but you will lose the models from the upgrade ones. You can't have both. Where this is a very good idea, is for example the terrible 2" late era Japanese gun models. Horrible in design and unable to fit in many places. The generic option would be much more useful and interesting. I will take a look at those.

[MasterBurte]

47 minutes ago, o Barão said:

Yes, it is possible, but I will not do that. I want to expand the design options. To add more variety and interesting choices, but I also want to respect the national design language of each country. The last part is the most difficult. As an example...

I need to clarify what i meant. Currently i play japanese and i used one of the moderized dreadnoughts with the Paragon tower. The next set of hulls unlock the hull that looks like the Yamato. But there the very good Paragon tower isn't available anymore. Instead you have a worse tower that has integrated funnel slots and barbettes. The Paragon would enable some usefullness by adding the very big sec towers, but without Paragon the Yamato hull builds are stuck with a mediocre main and sec tower. I don't want to have the Paragon for other nations just for all japanese BBs.

Edited April 6, 2023 by MasterBurte

[o Barão]

44 minutes ago, MasterBurte said:

I need to clarify what i meant. Currently i play japanese and i used one of the moderized dreadnoughts with the Paragon tower. The next set of hulls unlock the hull that looks like the Yamato. But there the very good Paragon tower isn't available anymore.

Done!👍

And a few other Japanese hulls will also get more Pagoda towers.

Edited April 6, 2023 by o Barão

[MasterBurte]

56 minutes ago, o Barão said:

Done!👍

And a few other Japanese hulls will also get more Pagoda towers.

Nice thx 😍

When do you think the changes will be uploaded and is a fresh campaign start nessesary?

Edited April 6, 2023 by MasterBurte

[MasterBurte]

Another thing that is a unique problem to the Yamato style hulls (maybe other nation hulls too) is that you can't place the barbette for the second front turret accurate on the slope. Barbettes up to the enlarged can't be placed at all and the bigger ones are to high. Maybe we could get attachment points that sit deeper in the hull and allow all barbettes to be used if we only want to mount up to 16" guns. The 4 gun mounts in the rear of the ship that should normally not obstruct the rear main gun if used with a small gun. Currently you have to leave them with the search lights or have an obstruction.

[o Barão]

7 minutes ago, MasterBurte said:

Maybe we could get attachment points that sit deeper in the hull and allow all barbettes to be used if we only want to mount up to 16" guns.

You need to ask this to the devs.

 

The good news, is that I finally understand how to make specific hull nations.

New possibilities for "Modern light cruiser" hull. Exclusive for the Germany and Austria.

[Käptn_Flitschauge]

4 hours ago, o Barão said:

Done!👍

And a few other Japanese hulls will also get more Pagoda towers.

YEEEESSS! Give me all of the pagodas

[mk4m]

Planning rework 1890-1910 ships? Hulls, weapon models?

 

[o Barão]

1 hour ago, mk4m said:

Planning rework 1890-1910 ships? Hulls, weapon models?

 

Yes, mainly rework the funnels stats. I already did for all TBs and DDs and also the torpedo cruiser & Maine. But I still need to check all the funnels from 1905-1920.

I also changed the default Italian BB I hull for one that resembles more to what they were building in that time period, and added new main towers to the A-H and Italian BB I hull.

But most changes, until now, are more focus in late period since there is lack of variety between nations and hulls. Mainly the light cruisers and destroyers. They are too much generic

And with the new update, I can see new possibilities. Maybe is possible to use this components to make some DDs more interesting. That round main tower is similar to the Benson class and other Italian, Russian and If I am not mistaken, also French destroyers from WWII time period.

Edited April 6, 2023 by o Barão

[SpardaSon21]

I'm loving the changes you've shown off so far.  I would recommend adding @clavernever's government modifiers to this mod because they seem reasonably balanced while also making sense.  I'd tone the unrest maluses down a bit because +100% is ridiculous, but other than that I see no issues.

Edited April 6, 2023 by SpardaSon21

[o Barão]

W.I.P.

Change 3D model for late era guns (7" - 11") for the Italians.

7"-9" guns will use the same historical model from the left.

10"-11" guns will use the model from the right.

 

IMPORTANT:

In the next update, will not be possible anymore to have triple turrets on destroyers. That is unrealistic and will be fixed. I was unable until now to set the 2" as secondaries on DDs, so this guns will also be limited to double turrets.

[SpardaSon21]

Geez, you're really going a ton of work with turrets lately.  Keep up the good work.

[o Barão]

W.I.P.

French and Italian new destroyer leader look possibilities.

[o Barão]

W.I.P.

French design studies.

French design from mid 20s to late 30s. The funnels are the interesting component here. Look a lot to what was used in the early XX century in the capital ships.

[Fangoriously]

Looking great, and ya if any editing of superstructure parts is needed, it's to have at least 1 fore and aft tower option for light and heavy cruisers that isn't the generic, along with faction specific funnels.

 

I'd crank up the hull form Stat for destroyers as well, they basicly max out at 39 knots and i can match that on a few min beam modern BBs, befor price and weight skyrocket.

 

Some min beam french and italian modern BCs I can get above 40 knots, I can even max the slider to 49 knots on the Japanese BC with min beam. You can get crazy speed stats at the cost of a bit of base resistance with min beam and draft on late era ships.

[SpardaSon21]

Those destroyers look great.  Any chance we can get a Porter or Somers style DDL, next?  I don't think its physically possible to fit 4 turrets and three quadruple tubes (Somers) on any existing US hull types, even with just a single stack.  You'd need to give them those French-style towers instead of the current English-style ones, too, if that's possible.

[o Barão]

21 hours ago, Fangoriously said:

...along with faction specific funnels.

That is the idea. Specific funnels and new tower components. However, I am limited by the hulls available. I can choose specific nations for each hull, components, etc… But sadly, I can't make new hulls for the game. But still is going to be a nice improvement with many new components.

 

Some examples.

Italian destroyer leader

 

German & Austria destroyer leader

 

French destroyer leader

 

19 hours ago, SpardaSon21 said:

I don't think its physically possible to fit 4 turrets and three quadruple tubes (Somers) on any existing US hull types, even with just a single stack.

Yes is possible. Those French style towers will be used instead for the Russians and Chinese, probably. They are what more resemble the Leningrad class destroyer. Still testing possibilities.

[o Barão]

W.I.P.

The weight modifiers will be removed from sonar and radio components variants. The way they worked in game is confusing. The same sonar equipment can weight 9 tons in a DD and several hundred tons in a BB. And in reality, the weight from the equipment was irrelevant if we look to the whole ship weight. About radio, I don't have a clue. I suspect because of all the cables connecting the masts to the ship bow and stern should be heavier than a conventional sonar, but still we have the same issue with weight modifiers and I don't expect the weight from the cables to be something relevant. In any case, let's just assume the base weight from a tower is already with the cables included.

[MDHansen]

cant wait for you to release this

Amazing work

[TachiKaze]

Hi Baron, Was just wondering if you are planning to remove the smoke techs under explosives as you removed the smoke function in battles. Loving the mod so far. 

[o Barão]

9 minutes ago, TachiKaze said:

Hi Baron, Was just wondering if you are planning to remove the smoke techs under explosives as you removed the smoke function in battles. Loving the mod so far. 

I already did that. The changes will appear in the next update.