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

[Pappystein]

3 hours ago, o Barão said:

The idea is for the game to tell you where is the enemy? It is interesting, the issue is that RDF will always work. So for me to implement an arrow telling the player where is the smoke in the horizon and the ships are sailing in the dark of the night is unrealistic. Interesting idea, good for the gameplay, but a fantasy. I would prefer the devs to implement some feature that would help players understand better where is the "smoke in the horizon".

IRL, a bearing (not North South East or West) would be given.   It might be a 10 degree arc, but that is still at least 4.5x better than "North East."   It is too easy to "miss" as a ship turns because "oh I didn't tell you the ship changed directions"  

A VISUAL indicator of smoke (like literally smoke on the horizon, would be a huge boon.    But, our ships are all clean burning Oil powered ships for the purposes of actual visual clues.   And RDF could still be important if when Oil Tech is unlocked by the target player, the visual indication would disappear.

 

3 hours ago, o Barão said:

I am considering increasing the splash modifiers, this will indirectly make the stereoscopic more interesting in the first years (1890-1900), specially in the situation when there are many ships shooting at the same target. Something to consider.

I think the changes to the shells has helped a lot already as I tried to state earlier.   But yes Shell splashes should have a greater effect, even a small one will likely bring huge improvements to gameplay for both player and AI.
 

[Azerostar]

3 hours ago, Pappystein said:

I think the changes to the shells has helped a lot already as I tried to state earlier.   But yes Shell splashes should have a greater effect, even a small one will likely bring huge improvements to gameplay for both player and AI.

As for now the AI prefer to shoot one target to death than stop firing and shoot a new high threat target, so everything which reduce accuracy will hurt AI more than the player.

[Azerostar]

I think there maybe one way to solve the targeting programe defect without the Devs.

The main problem is AI always shoot at the light armor target in their fire range and sight, so here comes the point, if AI can only find some heavy armor targets,than AI had no choice but to shoot at them, until they find lighter targets.

UAD use main and secondary towers to offer spotting range, if towers can't offer enough spotting range, then use the surface visibility of enemies ships to decide how far they will be spotted.

So if delet all towers' spotting range modifies,and increase surface visibility of big ships, so the small ships will only be spotted when they are close to enemy ships while big ships can be spotted far away. Through this we may get something like the spotting and concealment rules of WOWS, not histroy at all but may suit the game better.

A test screenshot, if use concealment rules depend on surface visibility, DDs could work as player did in WOWS. And so it will be useful and necessary to use DDs and CLs than just bring them as baits to attract firepowers.

Edited April 24 by Azerostar

[TamaDasha]

Minor error in the description of the Quad Gun tech - the warning about which countries have quad turrets uses the Spanish abbreviation for America - EUA - instead of the proper English - USA.

[o Barão]

1 hour ago, TamaDasha said:

Minor error in the description of the Quad Gun tech - the warning about which countries have quad turrets uses the Spanish abbreviation for America - EUA - instead of the proper English - USA.

It is the same for the Portuguese language.

I will fix it.

 

@Azerostar your suggestion adds other problems. The AI needs to focus on the nearest targets, and that only the devs can do. I just don't know why is taking so much time for them to realize that. It is hampering the AI capability to win battles. 😒

[o Barão]

BETA v10.7 - "Shells & Ballistics rework" update - N.A.R. changelog:

• Changes about the splash modifiers. In 1890, I noticed that also with a positive modifier there would be always a negative value present, so I changed the modifiers to be a direct relation with the shell weight. The values now are very close to vanilla. The negative modifiers for the heavy shells seem to be already big enough and should indirectly make stereo range finders a good option if the Admiral likes to focus the firepower of many ships against a single target.
• Added main quad guns for light cruisers.
• Changed the German 5" single barrel for late years on German CL and DDs to be open turret.
• Fixed grammar errors in the english file.

[Azerostar]

3 hours ago, o Barão said:

your suggestion adds other problems. The AI needs to focus on the nearest targets, and that only the devs can do. I just don't know why is taking so much time for them to realize that. It is hampering the AI capability to win battles.

Since small ships have better concealment than big ships, they can come closer to enemies, and if they been spotted, then AI will get some light armor targets that they prefer to shoot at. So small ships get better survivability because they won't be shot at long range, and the AI will also begin to focus on nearest targets because those targets will be the kind which they like so much. And it's reasonable for battleships to shoot some DDs or TBs if they came in deadly tropedos attack range.

In another side, for now player can use small ships as baits and push their capital ships forward to destroy enemies easily.But if AI DDs could also come very closer to player's capital ships, then player will need to use DDs to stop them and use cruisers and secondary guns to provide fire support. This situation certainly will make it harder to push capital ships.
 

[Azerostar]

In this screenshot, the AI BB can't spot my DD, so it focus fire on my battleship. If not use the concealment based spotting, at this range it will focus on this DD.

Then if the DD is nearly enough to be spotted, AI BB will focus on it imeediately, this situation is easily recurrentable.

I found it really hard to upload pictures, what happened to this forum...

Edited April 24 by Azerostar

[o Barão]

1 minute ago, Azerostar said:

Since small ships have better concealment than big ships, they can come closer to enemies, and if they been spotted, then AI will get some light armor targets that they prefer to shoot at. So small ships get better survivability because they won't be shot at long range, and the AI will also begin to focus on nearest targets because those targets will be the kind which they like so much. And it's reasonable for battleships to shoot some DDs or TBs if they came in deadly tropedos attack range.

In another side, for now player can use small ships as baits and push their capital ships forward to destroy enemies easily.But if AI DDs could also come very closer to player's capital ships, then player will need to use DDs to stop them and use cruisers and secondary guns to provide fire support. This situation certainly will make it harder to push capital ships.
 

• The first problem is that you are suggesting for small invisible ships to be able to fire against larger targets without being spotted unless they come very close to the capital ships.
• The second problem is if you delete the spotting range you will need to edit hundreds of towers stats and to compensate that you will need to edit all the hulls visibility in the "parts" file.
• The third problem is that it is perfectly normal for big tower to have better spotting range value and you want to remove that.

 

Your suggestion comes with many red flags, and with new and more problems. It is a big NO-NO IMO.

[o Barão]

7 minutes ago, Azerostar said:

I found it really hard to upload pictures, what happened to this forum...

Did you tried Imgur? Is very simple.

[Azerostar]

28 minutes ago, o Barão said:

The second problem is if you delete the spotting range you will need to edit hundreds of towers stats and to compensate that you will need to edit all the hulls visibility in the "parts" file.

This is truly the biggest problem, there are too many towers need to edit. And if the Devs finally solve the problem, then this work will be no used.

But I'm sure this is a way to get a better battle performace for some specific environment players, for example players focus on custom battles, they can modify some parts which they used themselves.

Quote

Did you tried Imgur? Is very simple.

Thanks a lot!
 

Edited April 24 by Azerostar

[o Barão]

5 minutes ago, Azerostar said:

This is truly the biggest problem, there are too many towers need to edit. And if the Dev finally solve the problem, then this work will be no used.

For me all 3 are big problems 😂

[Azerostar]

2 minutes ago, o Barão said:

For me all 3 are big problems 😂

The same to me, but I felt enough with the poor targeting programe so rather find a solution even it is crazy😂

[YFH]

Thank you very much:) I will check out the change if the latest update is compatible with my save game.

[Admiral Hipster]

6 hours ago, o Barão said:

BETA v10.7 - "Shells & Ballistics rework" update - N.A.R. changelog:

• Changes about the splash modifiers. In 1890, I noticed that also with a positive modifier there would be always a negative value present, so I changed the modifiers to be a direct relation with the shell weight. The values now are very close to vanilla. The negative modifiers for the heavy shells seem to be already big enough and should indirectly make stereo range finders a good option if the Admiral likes to focus the firepower of many ships against a single target.
• Added main quad guns for light cruisers.
• Changed the German 5" single barrel for late years on German CL and DDs to be open turret.
• Fixed grammar errors in the english file.

It's possible to do the same thing with the 5" single barrel for German BB, BC and CA? It's been difficult to recreate the secondary armament of the Scharnhorst, Deutschland class and even the main armament of the Emden (1925).

[o Barão]

33 minutes ago, Admiral Hipster said:

It's possible to do the same thing with the 5" single barrel for German BB, BC and CA? It's been difficult to recreate the secondary armament of the Scharnhorst, Deutschland class and even the main armament of the Emden (1925).

Good suggestion! 😉

[o Barão]

BETA v10.8 - "Shells & Ballistics rework" update - N.A.R. changelog:

• Updated to UAD 1.5.0.9 Optx4
• Updated the single German single barrel 5" mk4 & mk5 for all ships to be open turret version. A little size tweak and barrel length to be the same as the x2 and x3 versions.

[Admiral Hipster]

Thank very much for the changes 😁

[TamaDasha]

There still seems to be a serious issue with autoresolve not taking into account the overwhelming firepower difference in seemingly obvious cases.

Situation:
1 Enemy DD

vs
5 CA
9 DD
Result:
1 CA sunk, 1 DD sunk, every single other ship damaged, enemy DD sunk.



I also can't seem to find enemy subs like... ever. Despite having destroyers with Sonar III in every port, I don't think I've ever spotted enemy submarines. Thankfully all they do is attack my transports, apparently.

[o Barão]

6 hours ago, TamaDasha said:

I also can't seem to find enemy subs like... ever. Despite having destroyers with Sonar III in every port, I don't think I've ever spotted enemy submarines. Thankfully all they do is attack my transports, apparently.

Most subs missions are against transports. Subs attacking TFs in transit are rare events. Your DDs being on ports are doing nothing against them. Subs don't attack ports. If your DDs are on sea control status maybe they can participate in events against subs. I am not sure.

 

And don't expect miracles about the auto resolve. It is probably better for me to remove that feature from the mod and use the vanilla values instead. I am not going to waste more hours generating battles just to see if I can make it work reasonably most of the time just for a player to report me that it happen this or that in that occasion. Not worth it.

[PalaiologosTheGreat]

On 4/24/2024 at 12:22 AM, Azerostar said:

So if delet all towers' spotting range modifies,and increase surface visibility of big ships, so the small ships will only be spotted when they are close to enemy ships while big ships can be spotted far away. Through this we may get something like the spotting and concealment rules of WOWS, not histroy at all but may suit the game better

I honestly wouldn't mind this bc the AI just focus fires on my DDs all the time even if they aren't in range for torpedoes. While they kill two or three of my DDs, they get their entire battle line wrecked. Additionally, DDs can't smoke up in this mod, so a way to manage them less would be more fun as it is a lot of micro to get DDs to not die.

[o Barão]

BETA v10.9 - "Shells & Ballistics rework" update - N.A.R. changelog:

• AI building program changed. Multiplied by x2 or more, in some cases, the chance of building BBs and BCs for all nations. I was noticing what should be powerful navies with few capital ships. Now most likely it should be much better. There is still the possibility of seeing a nation without BBs, but that is most likely the AI that failed to get a ship design when starting the campaign. In that case, I suspect the AI will start a building program to fix that issue in the first years. Note: I also noticed a limit for subs the AI gets when starting a campaign. Maybe a coincidence, or maybe it was limited by the devs. As a result, I think it is not possible to see Germany controlled by the AI with many subs.
• Initial shipyard size for later increase. This should help the AI to get capital ships designs. Japan as an example went from 48k tons to 64k in 1940. So it should be able to built Yamato class BBs from the start.
• I think I found the solution for convoys vs subs, and it should be using escorts more often if available in the area. I also add the chance if a big convoy is being attacked by subs for a CA, BC or BB to be present.
• Mine laying subs technology removed from the tech tree.
• Wolfpack subs progression moved to later years.
• Some of the more powerful subs unlocked also moved to later years.
• English file updated with the changes to subs.
• Auto resolve parameters updated. It is now 10 armor, 5 firepower, 1 speed, 0 crew, 0 ammo. In general, I like the results I got from these values, but I can't promise anyone that will work the way you want all the time. 

 

To get all the benefits, a new start is recommended.

 

Manor Lords is coming tomorrow, so I am now retired for the next weeks. 😁

[MDHansen]

Good one! I am also dissapearing in to Manor Lords tomorrow. Have fun and get some much needed rest 👍

[killjoy1941]

5 hours ago, o Barão said:

Manor Lords is coming tomorrow, so I am now retired for the next weeks. 😁

I haven't had enough time to confirm for certain the need for the campaign changes you made, but they do generally line up with what I've been seeing.

I'll be going hard on NAR tonight, then it's off to Manor Lords for me as well. I've had that game wishlisted since the first day it hit Steam.

[TamaDasha]

20 hours ago, o Barão said:

Your DDs being on ports are doing nothing against them. Subs don't attack ports. If your DDs are on sea control status maybe they can participate in events against subs. I am not sure.

DDs are obviously on sea control, no shit... Which allows them to participate in convoy raids and convoy escorts, as well as all other events that assume they're actually at sea. Subs didn't seem to ever get detected by DDs explicitly as part of a task force, not that subs bother them - they just drive past each other, and DD task force presence in a sea sector didn't seem to affect subs' ability to strike transports. Hence my feedback.

Edited April 26 by TamaDasha