"Naval Arms Race" mod overhaul. BETA 1.0.6 "Major Powers update"

[NathanKell]

5 hours ago, o Barão said:

🙏

Yup, as easy as hoped. Was just away from my PC much of today. Uploaded version 1.1.0 with the fix.

[LongJohnSilver]

On 6/28/2024 at 2:03 AM, o Barão said:

This sometimes happens when editing the "partsmodel" (only happens with this file).

 

When an issue occurs in this file and you can't find why, replace the line you edit with the previous line or the vanilla line, save and start the game. If working properly, then you can edit again and see if it works now.

 

Don't know why, but only happens when editing lines in that file.

The solution worked, thank you !!!

[alphajedi16]

I am getting an issue where small caliber guns will occasionally penetrate or even over-pen heavy armor. Is this related to the mod or the base game?

[Kraut]

On 6/30/2024 at 10:54 PM, alphajedi16 said:

I am getting an issue where small caliber guns will occasionally penetrate or even over-pen heavy armor. Is this related to the mod or the base game?

witnessed that too in my campaign atleast once. Pen Value of the firing gun was nowhere near the armor beeing struck, but the log registered a main belt pen.

[DougToss]

Scrapping algorithm could use more work, I think

[alphajedi16]

On 6/30/2024 at 3:54 PM, alphajedi16 said:

I am getting an issue where small caliber guns will occasionally penetrate or even over-pen heavy armor. Is this related to the mod or the base game?

update: seems to have been most prevalent for pre-dreadnought era ships/mark 1&2 guns. I don't think it has been happening now that my campaign has progressed to mark 3 guns but im definitely going to keep an eye out for it. 

[o Barão]

12 hours ago, alphajedi16 said:

update: seems to have been most prevalent for pre-dreadnought era ships/mark 1&2 guns. I don't think it has been happening now that my campaign has progressed to mark 3 guns but im definitely going to keep an eye out for it. 

No need. In the example you gave with those armor values, anything could give you overpen.

 

And if you want to know how it compares with stock game, in NAR, the pen values are smaller, so against similar armor values you should get less overpen in general. 

 

But as I said before, that example is terrible. On the flip side, with those armor values you will have a dream day by using HE against it. 

[Kraut]

https://imgur.com/a/impossible-armour-pen-fWy4Rdm

Well, i dont know the Pen Values of Alphajedis gunz but i think my example shows well, that something is not rite... unless im missing something out really hard here? Could anyone pls provide me feedback if you can see the pics in that link since im posting them hidden?

Helgoland is btw the ship that i have shown here some posts ago. Anyway...

the Log of the Helgoland shows a hit from the MA of an enemy CA, 23.9cm, to the Main Belt and reports a Penetration with around 102 dmg dealt. The CA is atleast 5 km away.

The Armour Thickness of Helgolands Main Belt is 42cm (420mm) at 90% Quality.

The Penetration Table of the enemies CAs 23,9cm/42 MA shows a max Pen value of 24,5cm or 245mm at 1000m range. Over 5km it musst be below 20.8cm. The Pen Table should be set to 90% Quality, but even it it is set to 100 or 110%, an increase of 10-20% in Penetrating Power would still not be anywhere close to the 42cm Main Belt of the Helgoland.

So, what is the explanation of this? Multiple Hits of the same section lead to a degradtion/destruction of Armour Thickness / Resistance ?

Althoug the Structure shows a reassuring 93%, it appears there is a red zone two decks below Turm Anton, even with Fire, so, that could be an already penetrated part of the Main Belt. But even if there is a hole or dent from the enemies BB MA, what are the Chances, that another shell lands exactly there...🤔

The two reds before that should belong to the Fore-Belt

If that happen evar before, i probably missed it due to high gamespeed. 

Edited July 4 by Kraut

[Pappystein]

On 6/29/2024 at 9:38 AM, o Barão said:

@NathanKell I remember something very important.

Subs range, the way it works is different from ships. This is not really an issue in vanilla game due to the high unrealistic values being used, however in NAR is a BIG problem.

The issue is the map border. Place any sub in a port in Japan, as an example, and you will see that it is impossible to cross the Pacific Ocean to the other side.

 

If you could find the solution for this issue, it would be amazing.

So should we be installing NathanKell's mod in addition to yours?  Or do things need to change in your mod before we do so?

 

Edited July 3 by Pappystein

[Pappystein]

1 hour ago, Kraut said:

 

So, what is the explanation of this? Multiple Hits of the same section lead to a degradtion/destruction of Armour Thickness / Resistance ?

 

I mean, that is what happens in IRL  So why wouldn't it in game when we have a "degrading" damage model. 

Armor is Ablative, Not impermeable.   Heck with enough bullets you can penetrate very think armor with just a 7.62mm gun..


an Awful lot of bullets but you could do it.   Otherwise Waterjets, and lasers wouldn't be of any use in manufacturing (let alone welding).   They are just really small really REALLY fast bullets.  

Almost every Penetration table I have ever seen is Vs a clean new piece of armor.  Not a bashed up Piece of junk that is full of holes already.
 

Sorry but I hope this helps.

[Kraut]

2 hours ago, Pappystein said:

I mean, that is what happens in IRL  So why wouldn't it in game when we have a "degrading" damage model. 

Armor is Ablative, Not impermeable.   Heck with enough bullets you can penetrate very think armor with just a 7.62mm gun..


an Awful lot of bullets but you could do it.   Otherwise Waterjets, and lasers wouldn't be of any use in manufacturing (let alone welding).   They are just really small really REALLY fast bullets.  

Almost every Penetration table I have ever seen is Vs a clean new piece of armor.  Not a bashed up Piece of junk that is full of holes already.
 

Sorry but I hope this helps.

 

I know how reallity works. But AD is far away from that. I maybe have read something bout that already but forgot, so i was not sure if its modelled in the game at all when i was posting.  If you are certain about the degrading armour beeing modelled, than i take that.

Its strange that im not seeing it way more often. like, on completly red hulls. They are still bouncing every shot because of the listing angle and some how no shot is hitting the ship hull below the original waterline where armour would be much thinner... 

And in that specific example the Hull of my ship was far far away from beeing a bashed up piece of junk. In contrast to the hulls of the enemies im shootign at and not witnessed that behavior so far. but again, i could easily miss it since im most times fast forwarding the time. Ill try to pay more attention to catch those cases more often. There are always enough red hulls around.

[o Barão]

21 hours ago, Kraut said:

So, what is the explanation of this? Multiple Hits of the same section lead to a degradtion/destruction of Armour Thickness / Resistance ?

IMO, it can be a rare bug.  An issue with the game reading the armor layout, the shell flight path and penetration values and coming with a result playing at high speed. I am guessing here, because that shouldn't happen.

 

There is a pen random modifier in game. I can't remember now what is the value, maybe 5%. Not enough for that situation to happen anyway.

[o Barão]

20 hours ago, Pappystein said:

So should we be installing NathanKell's mod in addition to yours?  Or do things need to change in your mod before we do so?

 

I didn't have much time to test it. It works. Installation is very easy. But I had to quit because, for some reason, now I can't find a way to add minelaying subs to the mod. I also don't know if the mod from @NathanKell needs to be updated every time the devs release a new version.

[NathanKell]

3 hours ago, o Barão said:

I didn't have much time to test it. It works. Installation is very easy. But I had to quit because, for some reason, now I can't find a way to add minelaying subs to the mod. I also don't know if the mod from @NathanKell needs to be updated every time the devs release a new version.

In most cases it should still work. I know someone used this (built against 1.5.1.6) successfully on 1.5.1.4 so I would expect it to have about the same kind of compatibility as modified .assets files, i.e. it will be fine for minor updates but need to be rebuilt for major version changes.

(This is because the mod itself is actually just calling things in the game by name, and it's MelonLoader that handles the interaction between the mod and the game, and _that_ regenerates the bindings on launch if the game updates. So if the signatures of functions don't change, it should still work.)

 

@o Barão before I forget, I was going to ask--do you want me to do something so submarines can change their home port? One thing that annoyed me in my last campaign was I couldn't rebase subs, so I couldn't for example move a sub from the US West Coast (where it was built) to the East Coast. It would not be hard to have a sub's home update to whatever port it enters, and it wouldn't be _too_ much harder to add a "rehome subs" button to the UI or something.

[Pappystein]

5 hours ago, NathanKell said:

In most cases it should still work. I know someone used this (built against 1.5.1.6) successfully on 1.5.1.4 so I would expect it to have about the same kind of compatibility as modified .assets files, i.e. it will be fine for minor updates but need to be rebuilt for major version changes.

(This is because the mod itself is actually just calling things in the game by name, and it's MelonLoader that handles the interaction between the mod and the game, and _that_ regenerates the bindings on launch if the game updates. So if the signatures of functions don't change, it should still work.)

 

@o Barão before I forget, I was going to ask--do you want me to do something so submarines can change their home port? One thing that annoyed me in my last campaign was I couldn't rebase subs, so I couldn't for example move a sub from the US West Coast (where it was built) to the East Coast. It would not be hard to have a sub's home update to whatever port it enters, and it wouldn't be _too_ much harder to add a "rehome subs" button to the UI or something.

I just re-based (in range) from Anchorage Alaska to Guam.   If you are trying to go longer range than max range, that is the only time I have issues re-basing.

[NathanKell]

1 hour ago, Pappystein said:

I just re-based (in range) from Anchorage Alaska to Guam.   If you are trying to go longer range than max range, that is the only time I have issues re-basing.

Oh ok! I guess I just failed to do so correctly when I was playing and thought it wasn't supported.

[Pappystein]

On 7/5/2024 at 12:15 AM, NathanKell said:

Oh ok! I guess I just failed to do so correctly when I was playing and thought it wasn't supported.

I have had to spend a couple of months Daisy-Chain-deploying Subs to a new base.   Not the most IDEAL but it works as everything else in the game.

[YFH]

Hi everybody, 

I noticed that a 5 inch casemate gun with a enlarged diameter to 15cm is heavier than a standard 6 inch casemate (15.2cm)

Also it is possible to get more than 8.8cm of casemate side armour with the smaller gun while with the standard 6 inch casemate you can only get 8.8cm as a max. Although I must say that enlarging the diameter of the 6 inch gun makes more armour possible. 

It seems like the armour scales with the guns diameter from the same or similar base, with is atleast questionable in my eyes, but the weight scaling seems to be wrong since the smaller gun is heavier than the bigger casemate gun.

[DougToss]

There are a few things like that. I'm thinking of turret mounted guns with their barrels lengthened still having worse performance than casemate guns of the same calibre that are that length by default. I should have written down these examples. 

In terms of rate of fire or whatever, or even weight, I'm all for it, because there are naturally differences between the handling of the same (or very similar) guns in casemates, turrets, shielded mounts. There shouldn't be a difference in muzzle velocity though, I don't think.

[NathanKell]

On 7/17/2024 at 9:55 AM, YFH said:

Hi everybody, 

I noticed that a 5 inch casemate gun with a enlarged diameter to 15cm is heavier than a standard 6 inch casemate (15.2cm)

Also it is possible to get more than 8.8cm of casemate side armour with the smaller gun while with the standard 6 inch casemate you can only get 8.8cm as a max. Although I must say that enlarging the diameter of the 6 inch gun makes more armour possible. 

It seems like the armour scales with the guns diameter from the same or similar base, with is atleast questionable in my eyes, but the weight scaling seems to be wrong since the smaller gun is heavier than the bigger casemate gun.

Gun max armor is purely a function of gun weight (lol). Since the 15cm gun is heavier than the 15.2cm gun, it can take more armor.

 

If you look a ways back in this thread (or the start of my Tweaks mod thread) I go over how the game calculates stats for guns, which explains thy there's that weight difference (there's a hidden factor of 0.875 for example, and other fun things). You also should remember that for non-even caliber guns, the game interpolates between that size and the next size _of the same grade_, so if your 6in is not the same mark as your 5in, that's another source of discrepancy.

and re: your second post, see above regarding how all that's calculated. Tl;dr guns of the same caliber length will have difference stats if one is manually altered (via the Length percent thing) and the other is naturally that caliber. Yes, I know. :]

Edited July 18 by NathanKell

[alphajedi16]

Is this the correct turret model for a French 5 inch Mark 3 gun? The year in-game is 1914 and, to me, seems like an outdated design. This obviously isn't a big deal but I'm just curious about it because I'm not very knowledgeable on this particular thing.

[SwissAdmiral]

Ok, I've played this mod for about 75 hours and can positively say I love it. I've come to offer my feedback points, both good and what can be improved, as well as features I think would fit nicely for this mod (assuming its still actually in development, though it seems to be pretty active with chats so I'll assume it is).

What I love, not limited to this list but these are the especially notable things:

1. The more detailed descriptions for certain components. It helps to inform choices during shipbuilding by a decent margin.

2. The extra propellants and shell fillers. Its no longer a "just choose the latest" and is instead something you will need to actually pay attention to. Being myself a studying chemist, the mentions of chemical properties are interesting to me as well.

3. No more smoke. The smoke was just not fun to play with or against. 

4. Gun and armour rework. I cant tell you how irritating it was to see 35000 tonne battleships with 550mm of Krupp IV that just shrug off everything short of a Tsar cannon. Thank you very much for fixing that. A side effect is that you can work up some truly amazing damage values against transports and destroyers with 15 inch nose fuse HE.

What I believe can be improved:

1. Sonar detects torpedoes again. I entirely understand why it was removed to begin with, though its pretty reasonable for a ship with a good underwater sensor suite (say, Sonar II+) to detect torpedoes when travelling at or close to cruise speed assuming the torpedo isn't off the aft of the ship. In the vanilla game, the range at which these torpedoes are detected are often just enough to dodge while still being hit if you're not careful. Perhaps the mechanic could be added back but with a 30° cone behind the ship where torpedoes won't be detected? I make this point because I *constantly* find myself being hit by torpedoes that my ships only see 100-200m early despite having good sonar, and this isn't helped by point 2

2. (This may be a vanilla game issue, unsure if you modified this) The AI is really terrible at avoiding torpedoes. I've seen ships turn directly into the path of a torpedo that it was completely safe from otherwise, particularly with lighter, more responsive ships like Light Cruisers and Destroyers. Its to the point where if my destroyers spot torpedoes headed for my battle line, I will detach every single capital ship and steer them myself individually, to varying results.

3. Anti-flooding equipment seems to either barely or not work. Its understandable for a compartment to fully flood after being struck by a torpedo, though in a few cases I've had compartments only breached by relatively small rounds (127mm-203mm) flood completely, taking out my steering or engines much to my own annoyance. It seems as though partially flooded compartments no longer have the ability to unflood themselves using the pumps that each compartment should have. 

4. Torpedo launchers tend to detonate too often. In one instance I saw 4 torpedo detonations in one battle. Torpedoes, despite being filled with hundreds of pounds of explosives, are actually remarkably stable and are only likely to detonate if a shell were to breach the warheads and explode amongst them, see the torpedo hit to Nelson's torpedo room by an Italian torpedo for an example of their stability. Generally, when a torpedo has exploded in the past, its been as a result of the torpedo containing oxygen as a propellant rather than the warhead itself failing, see any of the hits to Japanese destroyer torpedo tubes. I propose that a torpedo detonation should be made much rarer, though for ships that use oxygen fueled torpedoes the torpedoes would be liable to burst and cause a flash fire-esque scenario on the destroyer. 

5. This may be down to a misinformaty of my own bringing, but transports (as far as I am aware) almost never carried torpedoes, with a few notable exceptions of auxiliary cruisers like the Pinguin. I sometimes find transports with 6+ dual torpedo mounts on their decks. If I am indeed wrong, do tell so.

6. This one is pretty minor, but the GFX for ships seem to be mismatched with their actual hitboxes, leading to a few confusing moments with torpedoes passing close and seemingly missing only to then explode before I discovered the disconnect. Tangentially, the model for transports seem to be about 1/3rd of a ship ahead of the hitbox. These may also be vanilla issues, but I hadn't noticed it in vanilla before using the mod.

7. The AI still seems to prefer having loads of smaller guns, making their designs pretty ineffective. 

8. APCBC and APC shells should have the same bursting charge. This is because APC shells and APCBC shells were often made from the same base AP shell, just with a cap or ballistic cap designed to go over the tip of the shell. This means that the bursting charge of the shell has not been changed, as there are no significant changes to the shell's internal volume between the addition of either shell cap.

Features I'd like to see:
1. Oxygen rich or high concentration torpedo tech. The allies, particularly Britain, were experimenting with or otherwise using torpedoes that were fuelled with concentrated oxygen torpedoes, somewhat of a halfway house between using compressed atmospheric and pure oxygen. This would give stats somewhere between oxygen and regular torpedoes, as well as much reduced risk of the aforementioned torpedo fire as oxygen's flammability when in contact with other materials sharply drops as its concentration drops.

2. CA armour for 1930s and 1940s allowed to 254mm, as well as the guns up to 305mm. I ask for this so that I can design some of the more theoretical "superheavy cruisers" or "light battlecruisers" like the Alaska, B-65, and the dutch Design 1047. Upping the maximum displacement limit to 28000 for the last designs of the CA the player can unlock would also help make these a reality.

3. Add technology for the different designs of boilers developed slowly over the late 1890s through to the 1940s. Drachinifel, who I see you've cited as a source (very nice) has an amazing video going into good depth on the different designs of boilers on ships and the improved performances therein. 

 

Edited July 20 by SwissAdmiral

[DougToss]

I was just reading about torpedoes in the First World War, and I think the game is just too good at calculating accurate firing solutions under battle conditions. If you look at Jutland, everybody expected mass torpedo attacks but they never really materialized. Similarly, in the Russo-Japanese War, despite some dramatic successes, torpedoes weren't quite what everyone thought they would be. 

 

Rule the Waves just put up a dev diary on the subject, but I think introducing more error in the shots themselves, particularly in early periods would help greatly. 

 

e: I have to agree that arming merchantmen like AMCs, particularly with torpedoes, but also with the heavy gun armament, turbine engines etc. is ridiculous, and I'd much prefer to see saved/fixed designs for merchants that are slow (8-9kts) and use VTE engines all the way through the 1940s. 

 

ee: and when armed have manually loaded and traversed 2-4 inch guns for the most part, with no rangefinders or other fire control systems. 

Edited July 19 by DougToss

[YFH]

Thank you everyone for your replies. I almost thought that the gun weight and gun armour calculations were just wrong from the base game.

I have another question: in the campaign almost always when I get a enemy ship from the peace treaty I do not get its design. That means I cannot refit the ship. 

Is there a way to edit the json save file to add the design to my own campaign designs? I had a look through the "ships" folder but I couldn't get it done.

 

[o Barão]

13 hours ago, SwissAdmiral said:

Thank you for the kind words.

 

"I entirely understand why it was removed to begin with, though its pretty reasonable for a ship with a good underwater sensor suite (say, Sonar II+) to detect torpedoes when travelling at or close to cruise speed assuming the torpedo isn't off the aft of the ship"

The problem is that the game engine can't tell the difference if the torpedo is coming from stern or somewhere else, or how the ship speed would make the sonar man life harder. Game engine limitation. But to be fair, in battle conditions, most likely all ships would be travelling at speeds impossible to detect any torpedoes with sonar.

 

 (This may be a vanilla game issue, unsure if you modified this) The AI is really terrible at avoiding torpedoes.

Avoiding maneuvers is the same as vanilla, however in NAR the AI doesn't have the intel to predict torpedo attacks from long ranges. Basically is the same as the human player. Also in vanilla when a torpedo is spotted the entire AI fleet goes nuts, in the mod only the ships close to the torpedo will start maneuvering. This helps in maintaining the battle lines.

 

"I propose that a torpedo detonation should be made much rarer, though for ships that use oxygen fueled torpedoes the torpedoes would be liable to burst and cause a flash fire-esque scenario on the destroyer.  "

There is already an ammo detonation penalty for oxygen torpedoes, and it is not possible to create flash fire from torpedo detonations. Well I think not.

 

"5. This may be down to a misinformaty of my own bringing, but transports (as far as I am aware) almost never carried torpedoes, with a few notable exceptions of auxiliary cruisers like the Pinguin. I sometimes find transports with 6+ dual torpedo mounts on their decks. If I am indeed wrong, do tell so. "

I removed all the torpedo components from transports for the next update.

 

"6. This one is pretty minor, but the GFX for ships seem to be mismatched with their actual hitboxes

Vanilla issue.