"Naval Arms Race" mod overhaul. BETA v11.1 - for UAD v1.5.1.3

[NathanKell]

Oh, and I should mention that the RoF for the Mk1 guns (well, the 13-and-lower guns) is artificially high in the above table, because I also changed the early propellant to represent the horrible affect on RoF that black powder (and early smokeless) had: Otherwise you can't really replicate how the same guns increased their RoF like 3-fold between 1890 and 1910.

projectile_explosive_17,projectile_explosive,,$component_name_short_propellant_0,1890,,26,"start, reload(-60), shell_weight(-37), hull(-2), accuracy(-5)",propellant_0,,$technology_desc_projectile_explosive_17,,,
projectile_explosive_18,projectile_explosive,,$component_name_short_propellant_1,1893,1,26,"reload(-10), shell_velocity(2.5), range(3), penetration(3), shell_cost(-50), shell_weight(10), detonation(-7.5), flash(-7.5), flash_explosion(-10), flash_spread(-20), accuracy(4)",propellant_1,,$technology_desc_projectile_explosive_18,,,

[o Barão]

9 hours ago, NathanKell said:

set your nation to US, your year to 1918 or so, your crew skill to 50, and add a 2x 16/45 turret. Note that the quoted RoF in the tooltip is lower than what is specified in the textasset.

1.53 rof and in the table is 1.5

I don't see any issue.

And I have no idea why you are taking 50% crew quality in your testings. The rof I created serves as a reference to what we can see in game with all maximum. Crew quality, components. Everything.

 

9 hours ago, NathanKell said:

Oh, and I should mention that the RoF for the Mk1 guns (well, the 13-and-lower guns) is artificially high in the above table

I will disagree with you on that, but since you know how to edit the files you can always change to what you think is right. Anyway about the 13" mk1

0.62, in the table I wrote 0.6. All fine.

And if you want to use a real life as a reference.

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_135-30_mk1.php

0.5 best case scenario, but this is a 13.5 inches.

 

So again, everything is very close to real life data.

[flaviohc16]

I would say that mk1 of bigger guns ( 14"+), the ones you don't get right at the start  and have already the model for their start year, should be slightly nerfed, because right now they are a bit too competitive against their smaller cousins, especially considering that the 1st generation of a gun should not be competitive with the 2/3rd generation of a smaller gun.

 

For example in my US campaign, I have mk3 12", mk 2 14" and mk 1 16", but their rof and range is close enough to be too good of a choice, and IMHO, it shouldn't be like that for a 1st generation of anything, but I would also understand why you did it this way, to give players more choice

[o Barão]

56 minutes ago, flaviohc16 said:

should be slightly nerfed, because right now they are a bit too competitive against their smaller cousins

I don't buff or nerf anything about guns rof. I simply researched historical data about the guns and implemented in game. The focus on NAR is to be as historical as possible as it can get inside the game limitations ofc. There was a good reason why the navies around the world pushed the gun's technology forward in the beginning of the XX century and I have no problems in seeing a 14" performing better in the battlefield in comparison with a 12" in some situations. It should be better. But you pay a heavy price for that. Weight, cost and space.

 

Sometimes is better to go with lower caliber guns but more barrels, in other situations is better fewer but bigger guns. The player can choose any path and achieve the same success in the battlefield.

[NathanKell]

13 hours ago, o Barão said:

1.53 rof and in the table is 1.5

I don't see any issue.

And I have no idea why you are taking 50% crew quality in your testings. The rof I created serves as a reference to what we can see in game with all maximum. Crew quality, components. Everything.

 

I will disagree with you on that, but since you know how to edit the files you can always change to what you think is right. Anyway about the 13" mk1

0.62, in the table I wrote 0.6. All fine.

And if you want to use a real life as a reference.

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_135-30_mk1.php

0.5 best case scenario, but this is a 13.5 inches.

 

So again, everything is very close to real life data.

Apologies if I've offended you, that isn't at all my intent. I think I may be misunderstanding your aim here then. My operating assumption was that a given vessel should be able to achieve its historic rate of fire, i.e. a British battleship laid down in 1912 with 15"/42 twin mounts should be able to achieve the QE's historic 2 rounds/minute rate of fire per barrel. Further, I assumed that that historic rate of fire would be with regular (i.e. maximally trained, but _not combat  veteran_) crew, since in UAD, as I understand it, any crew training above 50% can only come from combat and certainly in the US and British cases, ships' complements in 1912-1914 were not going to be veterans of combat.

Even with crew at 100% though, I get 1.19rds/min for the British twin 15/42 in 1912 via Shared Designs in 5.0.4. Similarly, for Nevada (with the year set to 1913, because that's needed for triples, despite Nevada being laid down in 1912) I get 0.85rds/min with crew at 100%. This is about half the historic rate of fire (1.5-1.75rds/min) for the Nevada class, according to the NavWeaps data in your gun research doc. Attached are the two screenshots of this in 1.4.1.1x2 / 5.0.4.

 

I think it's pretty clear I'm missing something here, so apologies; I'm just trying to figure out what it is, because I absolutely adore the emphasis on realism in this mod, and wouldn't want to play such a game any other way.

[o Barão]

9 hours ago, NathanKell said:

Apologies if I've offended you, that isn't at all my intent.

Please no. You must understand, that English is not my native language, so I am usually very direct and short on my answers. Don't imagine things. I can always explain why I did things the way I did, and change anything, if I see an improvement in the player feedback.

 

9 hours ago, NathanKell said:

British battleship laid down in 1912 with 15"/42 twin mounts should be able to achieve the QE's historic 2 rounds/minute rate of fire per barrel. Further, I assumed that that historic rate of fire would be with regular (i.e. maximally trained, but _not combat  veteran_) crew, since in UAD, as I understand it, any crew training above 50% can only come from combat and certainly in the US and British cases, ships' complements in 1912-1914 were not going to be veterans of combat.

About the guns table reloads, take into consideration, that they are global and applied equal to all nations. With this being said let's talk about the QE 15" guns.

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_15-42_mk1.php

"The nominal firing cycle for the Mark I and Mark I* mountings was 36 seconds, but 30.2 seconds was achieved on 1 October 1917 by one ship. The Mark II mountings used on Hood had a nominal firing cycle of 32 seconds."

36sec - 37.2sec

Very close to real life performance. However, I noticed an issue here. The 14" mk1 have terrible performance in comparison, and it should be quicker. I noticed that you mention a similar thing below about the Nevada Guns.

 

But I need to stress again the issue about the guns data being global and applied to all navies. In this example, I will use the 36 sec reload from the QE that I am using as reference as a global for all navies. I have another 15" gun from the same time period with a 23 sec reload. The German gun. Should I use that version instead as a reference? No ofc not. Imagine having a 15" gun with 23sec reload and a 14" gun with 40 sec reload in the same time period. That would be a problem.

 

When you are using data from many different guns and being applied to all nations equal, you need to be careful with how you will use that data.  If you are using only the best case available, you will end with a graph with going up and down many times, with clear bad guns and good guns. In terms of gameplay, will not make any sense. So what I did was to gather all the guns info and changed the values so that would make sense with the neighbor values. To have a logical progression. This is important to understand, because the values in the game are being applied global, in equal way for all nations. It is not per gun. It is an engine limitation and is a good thing. Imagine editing all individual guns. You will need to edit around 37000 guns tables and many would be a fantasy without any info about them.

 

So if you are going to say "X" or "Y" ships had better or worse rof in real life. Well, I can't do anything about that without ruining the progression. If it is close enough to real life performance, then it is good enough IMO.

 

Also, don't take the data too serious. One thing is the performance during naval exercises, another one completely different is the crew working during a battle. A good example if I am not mistaken is the Bismarck vs Hood, where the rate of fire was very poor by the Germans that day, but it was good enough with a lucky shot. Another important detail is the range to target, and the delay with raising or lowering the barrel between shots, a mechanic missing in UAD.

 

But I agree with you that 14" should be much quicker, and I will fix that. I can also improve the 15", but would be only by a few seconds.

 

[NathanKell]

1 hour ago, o Barão said:

Please no. You must understand, that English is not my native language, so I am usually very direct and short on my answers. Don't imagine things. I can always explain why I did things the way I did, and change anything, if I see an improvement in the player feedback.

 

Cheers!

 

 

  

1 hour ago, o Barão said:

About the guns table reloads, take into consideration, that they are global and applied equal to all nations. With this being said let's talk about the QE 15" guns.

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_15-42_mk1.php

"The nominal firing cycle for the Mark I and Mark I* mountings was 36 seconds, but 30.2 seconds was achieved on 1 October 1917 by one ship. The Mark II mountings used on Hood had a nominal firing cycle of 32 seconds."

36sec - 37.2sec

Very close to real life performance. However, I noticed an issue here. The 14" mk1 have terrible performance in comparison, and it should be quicker. I noticed that you mention a similar thing below about the Nevada Guns.

 

But I need to stress again the issue about the guns data being global and applied to all navies. In this example, I will use the 36 sec reload from the QE that I am using as reference as a global for all navies. I have another 15" gun from the same time period with a 23 sec reload. The German gun. Should I use that version instead as a reference? No ofc not. Imagine having a 15" gun with 23sec reload and a 14" gun with 40 sec reload in the same time period. That would be a problem.

 

When you are using data from many different guns and being applied to all nations equal, you need to be careful with how you will use that data.  If you are using only the best case available, you will end with a graph with going up and down many times, with clear bad guns and good guns. In terms of gameplay, will not make any sense. So what I did was to gather all the guns info and changed the values so that would make sense with the neighbor values. To have a logical progression. This is important to understand, because the values in the game are being applied global, in equal way for all nations. It is not per gun. It is an engine limitation and is a good thing. Imagine editing all individual guns. You will need to edit around 37000 guns tables and many would be a fantasy without any info about them.

 

So if you are going to say "X" or "Y" ships had better or worse rof in real life. Well, I can't do anything about that without ruining the progression. If it is close enough to real life performance, then it is good enough IMO.

 

Also, don't take the data too serious. One thing is the performance during naval exercises, another one completely different is the crew working during a battle. A good example if I am not mistaken is the Bismarck vs Hood, where the rate of fire was very poor by the Germans that day, but it was good enough with a lucky shot. Another important detail is the range to target, and the delay with raising or lowering the barrel between shots, a mechanic missing in UAD.

 

But I agree with you that 14" should be much quicker, and I will fix that. I can also improve the 15", but would be only by a few seconds.

 

First, how are you getting 37sec reload time for a 15/42 (well, I see 15/40 in your screenshot, but still)? When I place a 15"/42 and set to 1916 (when Hood was laid down) I still get a 49.7s reload time. What components were you using, maybe there's a difference there? (I left it at Standard reloading since per the tooltips that seems to be the correct type to use.) And the British 15"/42 appears to have, per the research, a comparable rate of fire to the Italian 15", and rather worse than the German (on the Bayern class), as you mentioned.

 

Second, I absolutely agree about the problematic (but also useful) nature of the stats being global--although they're not quite global, because of the varying stat impact of length in the gun parts textasset, per above (where, weirdly, a turret with a non-mark-typical caliber length seems to have different stats than one where the player manually gets achieves that caliber length using the length percents. I _really_ have to get around to digging into the IL to see what's going on yet, I just haven't committed enough to try modding the code yet). But the broader point I'm making--as opposed to particular outliers like the 14" gun--is that by my read of the data, there is only _very_ slight decrease in rate of fire, if at all, as caliber increases, between 13 and 18 inches (with the possible exception of the early British 18" on Furious, but the argument regarding the global nature of these stats cuts against such an exception given the performance of other nations' 18" guns of that time, i.e. the US and Japan). So that's why I was surprised to see considerable difference in rate of fire across those calibers in NAR, where there's a factor of two difference between the mk1 18" (0.92) and the equivalent-year 13" (1.8).

 

The other point I'd make regarding rate of fire is the influence of turret reload penalties. Since all the data we have on gun fire rates refers to them in their mountings, as I understand it, the fact that twin turrets have a small penalty to RoF (although that eventually goes away), triple turrets have a larger penalty that never goes fully away, and quadruple turrets have a huge penalty, is quite meaningful here. Which is partly why that triple 14" turret fares so badly. My solution would be to pretty much entirely remove RoF penalties from turrets, at least after a few years of them being available, but your solution is of course whatever you wish it to be! (As a further point here, it's worth noting that, for example with the US 14"/45, the twin mounts on the New York had a considerably lower rate of fire than the three-gun mounts on Nevada and later). Just as with gun stats being global we're handicapped here too because there's no distinction between 3-gun and triple mounts, etc., so that's a problem too (especially regarding accuracy), but I'm not aware of that distinction having a great impact on reload time at least, historically.

 

Finally, yes, (a) you're quite right that in practice these are human beings fighting their ships, so paper stats don't mean a whole lot, and (b) this is a game. I come from working on rocket realism, where there's much less variation in practice (and where realism definitely trumps Game Balance!), so my perspective is definitely a bit skewed!   But I will say on the game balance front that I do think there's reasonable balance reasons for having a much flatter progression in rate of fire between the heavy guns, as well as the historical-data reasons, and there's certainly reasons to reduce the penalties for three- and four-gun turrets.

[CharlieChap]

Have been trying  out your BETA v5.0.4 N.A.R.  

o Barao

Really good.  This is completely circumstantial and I suspect that there may never be perfect settings  because each nation plays differently, and also, each one of us also has different expectations of what level of difficulty is historical or even 'difficult'.

Played through about 15 years of NAR as Spain from 1900  on Legendary difficulty.

(and also about 15 year of the new beta but using your GovernmentMod settings and relevent param edits for  increased port expansion costs ( this is great edit, hopefully it slows down ai  port expansion a little also ?).

 

It Rocks. All nations navies are smaller but  seem better proportioned and balanced.

Have so little money can  only build a few ships as Spain and have to sell ships to allies and be really economical with the fleet. Wars have been much smaller ( 2 vs US)  and the small encounters really have  a lot more meaning to them.  

 

Will try another nation or two but think you are definitely doing a lot right with these changes. 

 

p.s thanks for everything you have done, really enjoy your work.

 

 

 

[o Barão]

15 hours ago, NathanKell said:

First, how are you getting 37sec reload time for a 15/42 (well, I see 15/40 in your screenshot, but still)? When I place a 15"/42 and set to 1916 (when Hood was laid down) I still get a 49.7s reload time. What components were you using, maybe there's a difference there? (I left it at Standard reloading since per the tooltips that seems to be the correct type to use.)

o7. 

As I mentioned before, I always use the maximum in everything to achieve the rof in the table. So the best component available for the reloading is used, and ofc maximum crew quality always. Also, this is very important. I was messing around to see the issue with the reload time in some guns, and I found there was a difference. I cannot tell if per ship or nation, but is some hidden stat that I can't explain why. Maybe something related to the 3D model. A bug IMO. I am guessing here. You will notice that the Spanish gun have the same barrel length, but other stats are different, like range and penetration values. Like we were comparing a 16/45 with a 16/50 but with the same name.

German 16/45 38.4 sec

Spanish 16/45 44.9 sec

*Components and crew quality is the same in both examples.

 

15 hours ago, NathanKell said:

Which is partly why that triple 14" turret fares so badly. My solution would be to pretty much entirely remove RoF penalties from turrets, at least after a few years of them being available

Wait, I will explain. The penalties are realistic and not the source of the issue. I went on searching for a reason why the 14" and others guns had worse reload when comparing with bigger caliber guns, and the issue was created by me by mistake months ago. Months ago I reworked the years the guns becomes available so each year the player would get access to a new gun. Every year, to make things interesting. The issue is now some guns ROF are overlapping each other in a bad way if we're comparing with a gun bigger or smaller in some years.

 

I already fixed the issue, and implemented other small changes to the ROF, so everything will make sense. I will upload in a few hours.

[o Barão]

14 hours ago, CharlieChap said:

It Rocks. All nations navies are smaller but  seem better proportioned and balanced.

Have so little money can  only build a few ships as Spain and have to sell ships to allies and be really economical with the fleet. Wars have been much smaller ( 2 vs US)  and the small encounters really have  a lot more meaning to them. 

Ok that is great news. I will continue to use this new economy version in the future updates.

Can you tell how many ships the EUA and A-H. A-H is important to know, so I can understand how the AI is handling the economy with a small nation.

[o Barão]

BETA v5.0.5 N.A.R. changelog:

• Fixed some issues with guns reloads overlapping in a wrong way in some years.
• Other small improvements.

Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rsqwKiBEtf1PD72XbFUkANlAXeROidYB?usp=drive_link

 

[Lucky Kadono]

where and what do i modify to change how the pitch and roll are calculated i just cant play how vanilla does it and i wanna try the new beta 1.5 patch but the vanilla mechanics make it hard to get throu a campaign

[CharlieChap]

Its like pulling teeth isn't it Lucky.

 

Fortunately its very easy to change:-

Find the section in Params-resources  headed 

#,,Constructor Stability,,,,,,,  (about line 746)

Cut & paste all 15 following lines from NAR and copy them over the stock values. 

This should give you a maximum inbalance longitudinaly of 3%. Its a lot better anyhow.

 

(note:- the offset mechanic is a terrible mechanic isn't it. It makes many historical designs totally untenable plus the AI completely ignores it so that many ai ships are completely useless.)

[CharlieChap]

Campaign Feedback:-

I don't still have the NAR campaign that I started using the new NAR economy setting. However here are a few details from a stock beta campaign using many of your parameters. ( governmentMod,  Increased Dock costs, reduced Naval war budget (1.5)  although not your increased upkeep values. ). I think the data is still relevant.

Spring 1890 start to 1907 , Legendary (using a complete set of 'historical' shared designs for all nations at start. More later)

Spain Navy:- 4BB (2 very old, all pre-dreads).  6CA, 12 CL, 19 DD, 17TB. (120000 Tons total), Current Naval Budget 890 million.

Tech level is very behind.  My CL's  are still from 1890 and I have to set fleet to limited  or defend except in specific regions of expected conflict and be very careful. May be able to build an Espana type  BB if I am very careful in the next few years.  This is good, its pretty close to historical isn't it.

Austria Hungary has 11BB, 25 CA, 8CL, 5DD & 6 TB's (28000 Tons total). Current Naval Budget 4.9 Billion. Technology level is average.

UK has  14BB, 18CA, 21 CL's,39DD, 24 TB  (690000 Tons total). Current  Naval Budget 10 Billion. Technology level is Very advanced.

No Nations have collapsed or dissolved although Russia has had its revolution (as it always seems to a few years after whatever campaign start date.)

 

Shared Designs.

I know that you said that its too early because of probable major changes but I find it really difficult not to use them because the ai designs can be so hit or miss.

Here are 400ish shared designs of ships upto around 1915. These should generate completely shared design fleets for 1900 or 1910 starts.

(there is some randomization because of randomized start techs but you should get about 95% shared, its the DD's and TB's shared designs that are more hit & miss. I will do a complete 1890 (its nearly there now) start but they only just got that working in official beta so its not relevant yet anyhow.

These are all based on historical ships and are not necessarily good designs. Firstly I tried to make them look roughly correct, then I used data for guns, speed, armour thicknesses, range. There are a few hyptheticals too (denoted by (cc), eg if I did not create US or Spanish BC's for  a 1910 start  the ai would just create something instead so it was better to include a what if that is similar to something actual.

Anyhow hope these are interesting or useful for people.

https://ufile.io/qen2s887

 

Note about shared Designs in the campaign currently:-

The problem is that after a few years the ai upgrades these ships and so when you encounter them you often find that your lovely historical BB now has 3 4" inch guns in ln place of its forward 12" gun... no deck armour or belt and 18" on the stern Belt. Upgraded shared designs may actually be even worse than stock autogenerated ships as a result.

It would be really good if the ai did not upgrade shared designs really or had a different logic. I have been experimenting with the following settings in Params to try and limit the amount of replacement parts in ai refits (I don't know if there is anything that can be done to prevent armour redistribution ?):-

ai_refit_base,0.3,"Choose whether to create an updated design based on existing designs, or create a new one and build.",,,,,,,
ai_refit_simple,0.9,Сhoice between updating only technical characteristics of the ship and replacing parts.,,,,,,,

Long post, hope its either interesting or useful.

 

 

 

[Lucky Kadono]

3 hours ago, CharlieChap said:

Its like pulling teeth isn't it Lucky.

 

Fortunately its very easy to change:-

Find the section in Params-resources  headed 

#,,Constructor Stability,,,,,,,  (about line 746)

Cut & paste all 15 following lines from NAR and copy them over the stock values. 

This should give you a maximum inbalance longitudinaly of 3%. Its a lot better anyhow.

 

(note:- the offset mechanic is a terrible mechanic isn't it. It makes many historical designs totally untenable plus the AI completely ignores it so that many ai ships are completely useless.)

thanks man as much as i love this game some of the vanila mechanics do need work but glad that modding can fix some of them i just wish they would release a modding tool at some point to streamline and give us more freedom in modding

[o Barão]

1 hour ago, CharlieChap said:

 This is good, its pretty close to historical isn't it.

Yes, excellent.

 

1 hour ago, CharlieChap said:

Austria Hungary has 11BB, 25 CA, 8CL, 5DD & 6 TB's (28000 Tons total). Current Naval Budget 4.9 Billion. Technology level is average.

 

UK has  14BB, 18CA, 21 CL's,39DD, 24 TB  (690000 Tons total). Current  Naval Budget 10 Billion. Technology level is Very advanced.

Legendary difficulty, seems reasonable to me. Thanks!!!

 

1 hour ago, CharlieChap said:

It would be really good if the ai did not upgrade shared designs really or had a different logic.

Yes, but I can't recommend anyone to waste time with shared design when the devs are still adding new parts to ships or changing something.

[NathanKell]

 

5 hours ago, o Barão said:

o7. 

As I mentioned before, I always use the maximum in everything to achieve the rof in the table. So the best component available for the reloading is used, and ofc maximum crew quality always.

While I can understand using maximum crew quality here (if you're modeling maximum mechanical rate of fire), that's still applying reload time buffs rather than taking the specified reload time as given, which does point to the numbers being specified in the TextAsset _not_ being the numbers the game actually uses (see below re: caliber length, as well).

Regarding the reload component however, my understanding is that that component is _not_ indicative of technological advancement per se, but of non-typical reload systems. For example the autoloader used on the Des Moines class for the 8"/55, rather than the normal reloading equipment for the 8"/55. This seems born out by the tooltip of the component, which says that standard reloading is "the reloading equipment of the current technology level" (give or take, I forget the exact words) and the other options are tradeoffs. For example Enhanced being for close actions where accuracy matters less but rate of fire matters more, and the autoloaders for when you want to trade a lot of weight (and some accuracy) for a greater rate of fire, as on the Des Moines (though I don't recall that autoloader having worse accuracy in reality). It'd be like using the maximum range of the Iowa's 16"/50 (with 2700lb superheavies) and taking that to be the maximum range of a Mk5 16" gun firing a regular-weight shell, in my opinion.

So that's why I very explicitly left the reloading component alone; if I were looking at the rate of fire of a gun that _did_ have an autoloader, then I would use the Auto I / Auto II components, on the assumption that that gun without an autoloader (i.e. in normal service) would have a lower rate of fire.

5 hours ago, o Barão said:

Also, this is very important. I was messing around to see the issue with the reload time in some guns, and I found there was a difference. I cannot tell if per ship or nation, but is some hidden stat that I can't explain why. Maybe something related to the 3D model. A bug IMO. I am guessing here. You will notice that the Spanish gun have the same barrel length, but other stats are different, like range and penetration values. Like we were comparing a 16/45 with a 16/50 but with the same name.

German 16/45 38.4 sec

Spanish 16/45 44.9 sec

*Components and crew quality is the same in both examples.

 

Yep, that's what I was talking about in my first post, here:

 

On 2/28/2024 at 7:16 PM, NathanKell said:

Somewhat relatedly, do you know why a gun part set to a given length (i.e. by using the parts asset to make it a 12/50 instead of the 12/45 it otherwise would be) has _different stats_ from a 12/45 that you increase to 12/50 via the Length setting in-game?
 

I'm still trying to puzzle out the code involved (I finally gave in and started looking ) but, you know, assembly isn't my forte so it's taking some work. I'll let you know when I figure out the math, but my hunch is that in the case where the part has a non-default length, that means there's two clamped lerps involved rather than one, and so discontinuities arise. Whether that's a bug or not I'm not sure; if it is, it's a bug in design rather than coding.

5 hours ago, o Barão said:

Wait, I will explain. The penalties are realistic and not the source of the issue. I went on searching for a reason why the 14" and others guns had worse reload when comparing with bigger caliber guns, and the issue was created by me by mistake months ago. Months ago I reworked the years the guns becomes available so each year the player would get access to a new gun. Every year, to make things interesting. The issue is now some guns ROF are overlapping each other in a bad way if we're comparing with a gun bigger or smaller in some years.

 

I already fixed the issue, and implemented other small changes to the ROF, so everything will make sense. I will upload in a few hours.

 

Wait, an 85% (!) penalty to rate of fire is realistic for starting quad turrets? I thought the quads to be used on the Normandie class (the first instance of them, as far as I know?) were basically just two twin turrets internally, so I would not have expected a decreased rate of fire from cramping or anything like that. And for twin vs. triple mounts, out of curiosity where have you seen that rate of fire suffered in triple mounts compared to twins?

 

Regarding the years and overlapping issue, I'm not quite sure I understand the issue you're describing, can you go into a bit more detail what had happened there? Just from comparing the old vs new numbers I see a considerable increase in early rate of fire for 14+ calibers, and a slight increase for early 6" and some other changes there, and a considerable decrease across the board for the 5". But I'm not sure how that relates to unlock years, except as to how the guns of 14+ caliber don't start unlocking until 1910+ and thus shouldn't be subject to the Victorian-era reloading penalties of the 1-13" guns.

 

Looking forward to trying out the new version this evening!

[flaviohc16]

@o Barão so, i have kept playing the test economy and I'm now in 1931:

(US, 1890, normal difficulty)

I'm basically going for world domination.

so, in 1931 the 4 biggest economies (US, Germany, AH, UK) have a GDP of: 1.2 trillion, 1.3 trillion, 850 billions and 500 billions respectively.

The entire planet's GDP is around 5 trillion, which is close to reality, that was at the time around 6 trillions ( i'm taking the whole planet because we did so many conquest that comparing the nations to real life would be unfair)

However i feel like from 1925 onwards the economy starts to snowball, and I can be in permabuild mode, i have 1 millions tons of shipyard capacity ( and max ship size of 330k tons!!). I have 4 millions tons of ships and every 18 months if we average between ships i can add 1 million tons, which means that by the end of 1945, I would have, considering other shipyard updates, around 20 million tons. The US at the end of ww2 had 10 millions tons of warships: considering BBs, CVs ( that i would consider other bbs in this game), cruisers, and destroyers. 

 

As the size of the economy is right, but we can still build too many ships, I would:

-make late era ships (components/technologies) more expensive, probably by a factor of almost 2, so that you don't cripple the early game but make ships more expensive in the late games, ofc it has to be tested if this breaks the game in late era's starts. We could also try to balance with cost of research or transports, but it might be trickier (although faster to implement).

-make shipyard growth slower, both in the sense of how much tonnage you earn per upgrade (capacity) and especially for how big a single ship can be(size), especially because now it's outright useless, because after the 1st 2 upgrades (that you end in 1894) you will never feel the need of upgrading your shipyard if we consider the max ship size. 

it should be something like:

1890: 10k tons

1900 15k tons

1910: 25k

1920: 40k

1930: 60k

1940: 90k

1950:140k

basically that every 10 years you get your shipyard 50% bigger in size, if you are right on time with every shipyard upgrade every 2 years, or said in in another way: every shipyard upgrade should add 8% cumulative to the max shipyard size. But i don't know if shipyard size and shipyard capacity are linked together. Also the shipyard capacity should be 5-10 year behind. I Should reach 1 million capacity probably by 1935-40

something like, shipyard capacity:

1890: 100k tons

1900 150k tons

1910: 250k

1920: 400k

1930: 600k

1940: 1000k ( one million)

1950:1500k

so basically shipyard size x10. Again, 8% cumulative growth per shipyard "tick" ( every 2 years).

 

 

here again the folder with pictures of the economy, fleet composition and wolrd

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15oIX4xNe5GHnAoRK6y4qct7slhbsIDJs?usp=sharing

 

Edited March 4 by flaviohc16

[o Barão]

1 hour ago, NathanKell said:

Wait, an 85% (!) penalty to rate of fire is realistic for starting quad turrets? I thought the quads to be used on the Normandie class (the first instance of them, as far as I know?) were basically just two twin turrets internally,

Two twins inside the same barbette. The vibrations from the reloading mechanism and gun's blasting will be the same. The advantage in being two twins, is that in theory could be possible to have one pair disable in action and the other one still working.

 

1 hour ago, NathanKell said:

Regarding the years and overlapping issue, I'm not quite sure I understand the issue you're describing, can you go into a bit more detail what had happened there? J

I was afraid you could ask me that. 😁 Let me see if I can use my poor English to explain why.

 

Imagine this as an example.

In the year "X" I have a 9" with 30 sec reload and a 10" with a 32 sec reload, but because I changed after how the guns are unlocked and upgraded to make every year interesting we would get a situation where a 9" mk2 was being compared with a 10" mk2 when it should be a 9"mk3. And that lead to situations where the bigger gun had a faster reload in some specific years.

 

This should be fixed in the recent update. I hope.

[o Barão]

13 hours ago, flaviohc16 said:

make late era ships (components/technologies) more expensive, probably by a factor of almost 2

 

About ships costs, ideally it should be the opposite. To make them cheaper but to nerf even further the economy. This way we could get a similar result but without seeing ships costing billions. However, this would need for anyone crazy enough to edit all the ship's hulls and parts (towers, barbettes, funnels) costs values. So, not an option. I will nerf even further the economy grow and also the income by oil, something I didn't touch yet, in the next update.

 

13 hours ago, flaviohc16 said:

make shipyard growth slower, both in the sense of how much tonnage you earn per upgrade (capacity) and especially for how big a single ship can be(size), especially because now it's outright useless, because after the 1st 2 upgrades (that you end in 1894) you will never feel the need of upgrading your shipyard if we consider the max ship size.

You are right. I will show the modifiers available and the values I am planning to change.

 

shipyard_start_increase,250,increase of shipyard per year after minimal year ---» 150

 

#,,Shipyard,,,,,,,
shipyard_dev_cost,20000,cost of increasing shipyard size by 1 t,,,,,,,
shipyard_cancel_built_penalty,0.6,penalty for current shipyard development if it is cancelled,,,,,,,
shipyard_dev_min_time_months,6,minimum time to build shipyard,,,,,,,
shipyard_dev_max_time_months,24,maximum time to build shipyard,,,,,,,---» 36
shipyard_dev_min_amount_tons,500,shipyard tons at min. built time,,,,,,,
shipyard_dev_max_amount_tons,4000,shipyard tons at max. built time,,,,,,,---» 3000
shipyard_max_modifier,3.5,shipyard size development bonus according to year (LERP max. at 1940),,,,,,,---» 3
shipyard_build_amount_max_modifier,8,shipyard tonnage built time speed according to year (LERP max. at 1940),,,,,,,---» 7

 

Thanks for the feedback!!!

 

Edited March 4 by o Barão

[NathanKell]

I'll respond back to the existing conversation tomorrow, but for now, after a very long dive into how fire rates etc work internally, I can finally say I (think I) understand it.

(A side note: remapping means doing an inverse-lerp between one set of values, and then lerping between a second. Let's take a simple example. We'll remap 5 from between 3 and 6 to between 2 and 12. First we inverse-lerp 5 to get a t value of ( (5-3) / (6-3) = ) 0.667. Then we lerp between 1 and 10, getting ( 2 + (12 - 2) * 0.667 = ) 8.67. Note that these are not clamped, so we could remap 1 from between 3 and 6 and get -4.67.)

First, we need to talk about how the per-gun-grade values from the TextAsset are grabbed and then modified based on the stats the player applies to them. Any given stat is fed through a function (the GetValue function) that takes:

• The specific (player-set) values of the part
• The gun grade (i.e. mk2)
• The max bonus (or penalty) from the length percent being at the minimum possible for the player's tech
• The max bonus (or penalty) from the length percent being at the maximum possible for the player's tech

There's also special handling for if it's an "ironclad" gun, but we'll ignore that for now.

First, the base value from caliber is calculated. That's a lerp between the value at the lower caliber, and 0.975x the value of the next caliber up. For example, let's say we have a 4.7" gun, and the RoF for a 4" gun is 8 and the ROF for a 5" gun is 6. The value will be ( 8 + (6*0.975 - 8 ) * 0.7 = ) 6.495.

Next, a multiplier from caliber length change is applied. First, the the min and max length mods are grabbed from params. (Weirdly, I think it's saying that if caliber is > 2", then min_gun_length_mod is used as the min, otherwise min_casemate_length_mod is used, and if caliber is > 2" then the regular tech_gun_length_limit is used for max, otherwise either tech_gun_length_limit_small or tech_gun_length_limit_casemates is used depending on if the gun is casemated. Once that's calculated, then the length modifier the player sets is remapped to the passed min/max params (i.e. it's inverse-lerped between the min and max length modifiers grabbed above, and then lerped between the min and max bonus/penalty values passed to this function).

I need to experimentally verify that that bug around casemate detection exists, but that's what I'm seeing so far.

Ok, now we know how the values from the guns TextAsset are modified based on player input. But that's not the only thing involved in calculating fire rate. The next step out is calculating the base fire rate of the actual gun part. Here, first the length ( _in calibers_, not the percent offset given ingame) of the part is grabbed. This is where the data from the model, the gun grade, and from the multiplier in the parts TextAsset come in. This caliber length is remapped from between default_caliber_lerp_min and default_caliber_lerp_max to between default_caliber_firerate_min and default_caliber_firerate_max.  Let's use a 45-caliber-length gun as an example. The t value of 45 between 5 and 70 is 0.6154 (i.e. (45-5)/(70-5) = 0.6154). That is then used to lerp between 1.25 and 0.7, giving a fire rate multiplier of (0.7 + (0.7-1.25)*0.6154) = ) 0.9115. That multiplier is used to multiply the value gotten in part 1, above, and the max and min passed to that for player-set length changes are gun_length_firerate_min and gun_length_firerate_max.

As you can see already, changing gun length ingame is not going to yield the same differences from baseline as a gun part that is already a nonstandard caliber length. But there's one more step that affects this (apart from tech, turret, and crew bonuses/penalties, which I've skipped for now). This is the total calculation of weapon reload time. It takes the fire rate we have above, but then multiplies it by 60 (to get reload time in seconds) but then multiplies that by a lerp factor based on shell velocity (!). In particular, it lerps between 1 and 1.65 using a t value of (shell velocity / 1500). This means that in practice rate of fire will be 1.3x slower (a muzzle velocity of 700) or more, before counting bonuses and penalties. Let's look at how shell velocity is calculated. There's the expected influence of tech/component bonuses/penalties, but there's a similar function to how fire rates are calculated, too.  Here, the part's caliber length is remapped from between default_caliber_lerp_min and default_caliber_lerp_max * 1.15 (yes, there's a hard-coded multiplier here) to between default_caliber_velocity_min and default_caliber_velocity_max * 1.5 (again, multiplier). Then that value is multiplied by the value we get by running the GetValue function on the shell velocity gun data, using a min length param of gun_length_velocity_min and a max of gun_length_velocity_max.

 

So in sum, base caliber length has a quadratic effect on rate of fire, as does the length setting ingame. However, the effects of different built-in caliber lengths are not the same as changing length ingame, because the lerping is different.

 

So. Hope that helps @o Barão  (and I guess I should cc @brothermunro since this is probably of interest to you too). And also I hope that this shows that I'm not blowing smoke when I say that the rate of fire numbers in the gun data become very different in practice, and that that variation changes as gun grades increase (I now know this is because of the quadratic effect of increasing caliber length). It also shows how changing explosive, propellant, AP type, and/or HE type, as well as changing tech that relates to shell velocity, can change rate of fire (!).

Edited March 4 by NathanKell
Edited for clarity and fixed the reversal of the part-caliber-length lerp (I lerped from 0.7 to 1.25, should have been 1.25 to 0.7). Also expanded the math of the first lerp.

[o Barão]

@NathanKell

"How is shell velocity calculated?"

In the "guns" file you will see this: shellV_1,shellV_2,shellV_3,shellV_4,shellV_5 per caliber.

Then in the "params" file:

gun_length_velocity_min,-0.135,,,,,,,,
gun_length_velocity_max,0.135,,,,,,,,

 

Note: the values from NAR are different from stock game.

[NathanKell]

5 hours ago, o Barão said:

@NathanKell

"How is shell velocity calculated?"

In the "guns" file you will see this: shellV_1,shellV_2,shellV_3,shellV_4,shellV_5 per caliber.

Then in the "params" file:

gun_length_velocity_min,-0.135,,,,,,,,
gun_length_velocity_max,0.135,,,,,,,,

 

Note: the values from NAR are different from stock game.

Sorry, I think you misunderstood the post. That question was rhetorical. The point of the post was to explain, from the game's own dll's code, how fire rate, shell velocity, etc. are actually calculated given the input data. In fact I mention those very parameters and the actual formula they are used in. And as you can see from reading the post, a number of other factors also go into calculating shell velocity.

[NathanKell]

I went ahead and edited the post for clarity around that point, to be clear I'm describing what the code is actually doing, rather than asking.

EDIT: And also, to be clear, this was what I mentioned before, that eventually I'd give up and dig into the IL rather than just speculating based on what we observe in-game and see in the TextAssets. So I did, to figure out what the code is actually doing, and the above is the result of reading the code.

Edited March 4 by NathanKell

[Fangoriously]

Noticed a huge weight increase when going from mk3 to mk4 Russian 14in guns during a refit. the Mk3 were as light as 942 tons, hitting refit shows the mk4 at 1202 tons. Id post screens shots, but this is playing 1.4 on a copy of the game folder, safe from steam updates.

The turret model did change from a more generic model to late Russian hulking model, but a weight increase like that is pretty ruff when doing refits, the ship was suddenly overweight by 5%. not sure if its isolated to 14in or not, this is just the one i happened to notice.

 

*edit, well this is bizarre, i try designing a new ship with 14in guns and with the exact same armor and tech applied the mk4 only weights 1060tons.

Edited March 5 by Fangoriously