"Naval Arms Race" mod overhaul. BETA v12.2 - for UAD v1.6.0.3R

[DougToss]

I don't know if you remember me, but I've been around since the closed beta, maybe even earlier. I just wanted to thank you for this mod, because it has singlehandedly brought me back to the game after 3 years. Sincerely, thank you. 

Some thoughts, 
I wanted to reach out to ask if you've had the chance to play the old Storm Eagle Software games, Jutland Pro and Distant Guns: The Russo-Japanese War at Sea? I've been experimenting with the pre-dreadnought era lately, and I must say, your mod has captured the feel of that period remarkably well. As much as I love those older titles, the improved visuals and UI give me hope that maybe the gameplay of that generation of sim can be brought over to UAD. 

Thank you for setting the range and accuracy to historical values. While I begrudgingly concede that offering an "arcade" version for more casual players was a smart choice, the historical accuracy really enhances the experience for those of us who appreciate the nuances of naval warfare. Playing custom battles with ships designed as close to the historical ones of the Russo-Japanese War, and then testing those against Distant Guns, feels spot on. You've done an outstanding job. For those who might be disappointed by inaccuracy, I suggest accelerating time in the game and closing range.

One thing that baffles me is the AI ship designs. Are there templates available similar to those in Rule the Waves 3? I'd be happy to help by recreating several historical ships if that would be beneficial—but would this need to be done for every nation and every year?

Once again, great job with the early gunnery. Thank you for reigniting my passion for Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts. I'm delighted to see an appreciation for the gunnery of that era. As you know, guns are longer-ranged and more powerful than smaller guns, but accuracy is a major factor. Beyond a few thousand meters, the targeting capabilities of the period were simply not up to the task of accurately aiming big guns at moving targets.

To address some of the comments I've seen in the past ten pages or so, it's important to know a few things to really appreciate what o Barão has done here. Effective ranges were limited, making smaller guns with higher rates of fire relatively more effective than they might seem. Moreover, the big guns of the period didn’t have the necessary penetration and fusing to deal effectively with armor, often causing shells to pass through targets with minimal damage.

While firing at longer ranges is possible and sometimes strategic, it’s important to manage ammunition effectively to avoid giving your enemy an advantage. Wait for better fire control systems and all big gun armaments to come around to play the way you're used to. 

Finally, I wanted to ask o Barão a question directly. In your opinion, what has improved the most in the game over the past three years since I've been away from the community?

Thank you again for your incredible work and dedication.

e: I've attached the manuals for the Storm Eagle games, there might be something useful in there, 

Distant Guns

Jutland

Edited May 25 by DougToss

[o Barão]

@DougToss yes, I remember you, thank you for the kind words!

The games you mentioned, no, but I played a lot "Fighting Steel" when I was a teenager.

 

35 minutes ago, DougToss said:

One thing that baffles me is the AI ship designs. Are there templates available similar to those in Rule the Waves 3? I'd be happy to help by recreating several historical ships if that would be beneficial—but would this need to be done for every nation and every year?

What we have is global parameters that will work with the individual hull parameters to create something different every time the autodesign feature is used. I made some improvements in this area, like increasing the number of main turrets, fewer torpedoes and lower the chance of seeing a turret firing arc blocked by other turret. The advantage from this mechanic is that it allows the AI to come with different things more often but have some disadvantages, as an example, not having a minimum armor protection values for different parts of the ship or the fact the AI doesn't understand that middle deck armor is more important than the aft or bow deck areas.

The other possibility is to use the shared design feature to create exactly what you want the AI to build, but the problem with this is that you need to design each hull for every year. So thousands of ships needs to be made this way. I also don't recommend doing this right now, since the devs and I are still working, and new ship parts can be added or change place.

 

49 minutes ago, DougToss said:

Finally, I wanted to ask o Barão a question directly. In your opinion, what has improved the most in the game over the past three years since I've been away from the community?

I don't remember if we had already a campaign 3 years ago, but apart from that must be the new hulls and parts added to the game that adds much needed variety.

[TK3600]

Do you guys know how AI pick gun caliber for ship and how to mod it? For example, what if I want AI battleship to bias more toward 12in gun vs 11in guns, and avoid 10in guns entirely. But when 13in gun unlocks, favor over 12in guns?

Edited May 25 by TK3600

[o Barão]

35 minutes ago, TK3600 said:

Do you guys know how AI pick gun caliber for ship and how to mod it? For example, what if I want AI battleship to bias more toward 12in gun vs 11in guns, and avoid 10in guns entirely. But when 13in gun unlocks, favor over 12in guns?

In the "params" file you will see this:

gun_gen_caliber_max,0.45,autobuilder's caliber influence on gun's choice
gun_gen_caliber_min,0.4,autobuilder's caliber influence on gun's choice

*NAR values. Range 0.1-1

Smaller values will increase the chance for the AI to use smaller caliber guns and vice versa. Note that from my testings, I saw that max value around 0.5-0.6 was enough for the AI to go with huge guns if the hull allows it.

If you go with 0.1-1, the AI have all the freedom to choose.

If you go with 0.1-0.2, most likely you will see many BBs with 9" guns.

 

[DougToss]

4 hours ago, o Barão said:

The other possibility is to use the shared design feature to create exactly what you want the AI to build, but the problem with this is that you need to design each hull for every year. So thousands of ships needs to be made this way. I also don't recommend doing this right now, since the devs and I are still working, and new ship parts can be added or change place.

Is there some way to modify that, so it works like AI ship templates in RTW? 

I suppose if you had a table with scaling budgets, costs, build space and technology, by nation, by year, it might be possible to have design lineages progress, without doing it all manually? Though as you said, more hulls being added to the game and the mod, the techs and everything changing, would make this impractical. 

Unrelated questions:

Tech seems to be moving slower than I ought to. Playing from 1890 - 95 I haven't researched nearly enough of the hulls and tech that I would have if I started in 1890, assuming a 50% tech budget is "normal", and anything more than that is researching ahead of time. 

The other thing is, by August 1891, I have gotten messages about the heads of every other navy being sacked, and it seems like half the colonies in the world have risen up, with many winning their independence wars.  

Are these inherent to the mod, or the campaign at the moment? 

[XerMGGW-2]

Hey @o Barão, since I believe you've been doing quite some changes in guns element, can you please hint at what causes main caliber guns to have maximum –200% Range Found accuracy bonus upon acquiring new target, for a mk1 20" cannon per se, resulting in it never shooting even at point-blank range?

Or is it all about #,,Accuracy,,,,,,, line in the params element?

[DougToss]

This is what I meant about far too much going on. 

[TK3600]

17 hours ago, o Barão said:

In the "params" file you will see this:

gun_gen_caliber_max,0.45,autobuilder's caliber influence on gun's choice
gun_gen_caliber_min,0.4,autobuilder's caliber influence on gun's choice

*NAR values. Range 0.1-1

Smaller values will increase the chance for the AI to use smaller caliber guns and vice versa. Note that from my testings, I saw that max value around 0.5-0.6 was enough for the AI to go with huge guns if the hull allows it.

If you go with 0.1-1, the AI have all the freedom to choose.

If you go with 0.1-0.2, most likely you will see many BBs with 9" guns.

 

Thank you. What is the difference between autobuilder influence vs ai influence?

[Fangoriously]

On 5/25/2024 at 10:17 AM, o Barão said:

No, I usually don't keep old versions.

 

I think I found the issue. Well, more or less.

All BCs are limited to 37 knots, however in the "parts" file every ship have a "speed" value, and when using autoresolve, the game engine will use that value as a reference. In this example, we see an AI design with 37.5 knots.

Now the strange thing is, you are seeing a British BC with 44 knots max speed, but the biggest value I see in any British BCs is 39.5 knots.

Encountered one of these myself, built at least a knot and a half faster than what i can build. Was wondering why my maxed out speed heavy cruisers were losing ground on it.

 

also, HOLY $HIT!

Edited May 28 by Fangoriously

[A.R.Euro XVIII]

Hey @o Barão after the game updated a weird glitch has been happening where the Gun recoil debuff doesn't dissipate fast enough and the main guns keep firing even though the accuracy is 0%, this happens after the first or second salvo from main guns with any ship. someone else has been experiencing the same problems on BrotherMunro's D.I.P. Mod

 

Edited June 2 by A.R.Euro XVIII
additional context

[XerMGGW-2]

18 hours ago, A.R.Euro XVIII said:

Hey @o Barão after the game updated a weird glitch has been happening where the Gun recoil debuff doesn't dissipate fast enough and the main guns keep firing even though the accuracy is 0%, this happens after the first or second salvo from main guns with any ship. someone else has been experiencing the same problems on BrotherMunro's D.I.P. Mod

Not a bug. Instead that's an old bug getting fixed rather, where the gun recoil has only been applied once every three salvos or so, for some reason. And despite the maximum recoil debuff % being set at 90% for me which is probably vanilla, it was reaching something like 270% in those instances, though dissipating rather quickly.
That's why before even entering the game I've preemptively shadow~updated the thing, reducing the recoil values, increasing dissipation.

I thought everyone was familiar with the issue that was fixed.

Edited June 2 by XerMGGW-2

[Nsalez]

2 hours ago, XerMGGW-2 said:

Not a bug. Instead that's an old bug getting fixed rather, where the gun recoil has only been applied once every three salvos or so, for some reason. And despite the maximum recoil debuff % being set at 90% for me which is probably vanilla, it was reaching something like 270% in those instances, though dissipating rather quickly.
That's why before even entering the game I've preemptively shadow~updated the thing, reducing the recoil values, increasing dissipation.

I thought everyone was familiar with the issue that was fixed.

 Did you go into the text files and change the recoil? Im getting the same -100% recoil debuff that AR Euro mentioned 

[XerMGGW-2]

33 minutes ago, Nsalez said:

 Did you go into the text files and change the recoil? Im getting the same -100% recoil debuff that AR Euro mentioned 

Yes it's in params.

In my values it's factor is less, and dissipation is faster. Maxfactor never touched. (Compared to older game versions that is)

gun_recoil_factor,0.65,gun recoil factor,,,,,,,
gun_recoil_maxfactor,0.9,gun recoil maxfactor,,,,,,,
gun_recoil_dissipating_speed,0.000135,gun recoil dissipating speed,,0.000011,,,,,

Edited June 2 by XerMGGW-2

[o Barão]

On 5/26/2024 at 12:54 AM, DougToss said:

Is there some way to modify that, so it works like AI ship templates in RTW? 

I suppose if you had a table with scaling budgets, costs, build space and technology, by nation, by year, it might be possible to have design lineages progress, without doing it all manually? Though as you said, more hulls being added to the game and the mod, the techs and everything changing, would make this impractical.

I don't know exactly how it works in RTW, what I can add is that in the "parts" file there are modifiers rules for the AI to follow when designing a ship. A rule that will tell the AI to use side main guns in a specific hull, as an example. There are many different parameters, however without the devs explaining what they do exactly it is impossible for me to know.

 Then, as I said before, there are also the global modifiers from the "params" that the AI will use to generate a new ship, but they are very limited. There is no option to use a minimum armor for a specific ship area as an example.

 

About tech progression, the only thing you need to know about how it works in NAR, is that the penalty for using focus tech is smaller. This should help the player that wants to invest more in a specific area. Also, there is an improvement for researching old techs.

 

"I have gotten messages about the heads of every other navy being sacked, and it seems like half the colonies in the world have risen up, with many winning their independence wars. "

I think @brothermunro will know what is the modifier responsible for the AI spending. I can't remember know what it is. I am not worried about AI spending or if the Admiral was sacked, If the AI is building ships then it is good for us. About the independence wars, I didn't change anything, what I did was improved the way major nations fight against minors. In theory, major nations should use more troops against minors now. I did that because I was tired to see A-H losing the war against Serbia, but I don't know if the changes I made are enough for A-H to win the war in the Balkans now.

 

On 5/26/2024 at 5:11 PM, XerMGGW-2 said:

Hey @o Barão, since I believe you've been doing quite some changes in guns element, can you please hint at what causes main caliber guns to have maximum –200% Range Found accuracy bonus upon acquiring new target, for a mk1 20" cannon per se, resulting in it never shooting even at point-blank range?

Or is it all about #,,Accuracy,,,,,,, line in the params element?

I am almost sure that is an internal code, not available for us modders to edit.

I lowered many accuracy penalties, so it should be easier for the guns to work inside the mod in most situations. Share with me a screenshot when you see that, for me to know exactly what are the modifiers values at that moment.

 

On 5/26/2024 at 5:23 PM, DougToss said:

This is what I meant about far too much going on. 

I see that Ottoman Empire is having an easy time. Is that an issue for you? Or is about your losses in Armenia?

I edit all province's defense values. Armenia being a mountain region have a small bonus but still nothing crazy. You should have an easy battle in conquering that province.

 

On 5/28/2024 at 1:59 PM, Fangoriously said:

also, HOLY $HIT!

OMG....

 

I really hate the mines mechanic in UAD. It is so stupid the way it works. Fun fact, I think I found a way for the player to be forced to fight all sub battles, this in theory would solve the issue I have with subs using mines and I could add them to the mod, but why should I do that if the mines mechanic is so broken in this game?

 

On 6/2/2024 at 12:21 AM, A.R.Euro XVIII said:

Hey @o Barão after the game updated a weird glitch has been happening where the Gun recoil debuff doesn't dissipate fast enough and the main guns keep firing even though the accuracy is 0%, this happens after the first or second salvo from main guns with any ship. someone else has been experiencing the same problems on BrotherMunro's D.I.P. Mod

 

The mod is not updated for the newest game update. I am abroad for the next 3 months and I don't know when I will have the time to see what it changed and adapt the mod to work with the game newest version. At this moment, I really don't have an answer for that. I can only recommend blocking steam updates and wait.

[DougToss]

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I just meant the level of conflict seems a bit much for 1890-1914, with what seems like every colonial power fighting (and often losing) wars in the colonies. I suppose more general stability with regard to AI wars and so on would be ideal. 

[o Barão]

16 minutes ago, DougToss said:

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I just meant the level of conflict seems a bit much for 1890-1914, with what seems like every colonial power fighting (and often losing) wars in the colonies. I suppose more general stability with regard to AI wars and so on would be ideal. 

There is a rebellion_chance modifier in the "provinces" file. I didn't change those values, but for anyone interested, it is possible to change how many colony wars will happen or where.

[NathanKell]

4 hours ago, o Barão said:

I don't know exactly how it works in RTW, what I can add is that in the "parts" file there are modifiers rules for the AI to follow when designing a ship. A rule that will tell the AI to use side main guns in a specific hull, as an example. There are many different parameters, however without the devs explaining what they do exactly it is impossible for me to know.

Let me know if there's any you want me to look up, I should be able to figure out what any given one does

 

4 hours ago, o Barão said:

The mod is not updated for the newest game update. I am abroad for the next 3 months and I don't know when I will have the time to see what it changed and adapt the mod to work with the game newest version. At this moment, I really don't have an answer for that. I can only recommend blocking steam updates and wait.

Did you edit things other than the TextAssets? If not it should be fairly easy to do a 3-way merge between the extracted text of 1.5.1.3, 1.5.1.4, and NAR to import the 3->4 changes into NAR (as long as NAR isn't also changing that value), yes? I can do that when I have a sec if you like.

[brothermunro]

You give me far too much credit sir! I did have an issue with the AI admirals overspending in the early game which often caused their entire nation to implode. I solved that by making the ‘collapse’ of a nation very difficult by setting the GDP to province income threshold 0.8 which makes countries extremely stable. If the AI overspends they can usually recover, or just go massively into debt which will stall out their crew training and tech development (this is because I also raised the scrap threshold to 500,000 tons otherwise they’ll just delete their navy which is no fun).

[PalaiologosTheGreat]

Barao, do you have any plans for 1.5.1.5/6?

[Azerostar]

Didn't played UAD for a while, just want to ask, did the Dev fixed the AI targeting choice yet?

[brothermunro]

29 minutes ago, Azerostar said:

Didn't played UAD for a while, just want to ask, did the Dev fixed the AI targeting choice yet?

I’m not sure when they did but currently the targeting is a lot more sensible, prioritising ships that are close, the AI isn’t as obsessed with sinking a destroyer on the other side of the battlescape anymore 😅

[o Barão]

On 6/3/2024 at 6:30 AM, NathanKell said:

Let me know if there's any you want me to look up, I should be able to figure out what any given one does

Yes there is. If you can find the answer, I will be very grateful!

There are AI rules to follow when designing the ships. You can see them in the "parts" file. I added a few notes from my observations when I was trying to understand what they do.

 

Typical_Modern_BB
Typical_Modern2_BB - AB-X layout?

Warspite_Var - Tries to use AB-XY layout before going for side guns?

german_sides - The AI will use main guns in pairs on the sides in the same axis.
Late_Cross_Deck_plus - The AI will use main guns in pairs on the sides in the same axis, but smaller caliber?
Cross_Deck_Guns - The AI will use main guns in pairs on the sides in the same axis.

battlecruiser_forward

Small_Foredeck - The AI needs to place the main tower and one main gun in the limited area at the ship bow.

RussianCenterline - Gangut Style. Can favor Big superStructures with main guns in the middle and the main tower closer to the bow.

BB_Flat

Big_SuperStructure - Adds many barbettes for small guns in the centerline and in the sides.
Middle_Big - Similar to Big Superstructure, but favors more barbettes for small guns in the center?

Small_Deck

Narrow_Deck - Fewer barbettes on the sides?

barbette_need - If not enable, the AI will only use barbettes in fewer situations.
No_Barb - No barbettes for the main guns
Side_Barbettes - Adds many small guns on barbettes in the sides. Not good.

BB_Fuso_sec

Middle_Superstructure - To place main guns between the towers?

Torpedo_Sides - Will use many torpedo launchers

Command_Forward
Coastal_Ship

CA_Gun_Sides_Few
CA_Gun_Sides
CA_Gun_Sides_Main

[o Barão]

BETA v11.3 "updated"- N.A.R. changelog:

• Updated to UAD 1.5.1.5
• Added "key" modifier for all sub battles.
• Nerfed the mine damage.

 

Note: Experimental. If working properly now, the player will now be forced to fight all sub battles. This is important for me to consider adding mine laying subs to the mod.

[NathanKell]

On 6/11/2024 at 1:08 PM, o Barão said:

Yes there is. If you can find the answer, I will be very grateful!

There are AI rules to follow when designing the ships. You can see them in the "parts" file. I added a few notes from my observations when I was trying to understand what they do.

 

Typical_Modern_BB
Typical_Modern2_BB - AB-X layout?

Warspite_Var - Tries to use AB-XY layout before going for side guns?

<snip>

Sure! These aren't done in code. It's just simple tag-matching against (a) the parts themselves, and (b) the part classes in the randParts (or randPartsRefit) TextAsset.

In particular, as you've doubtless seen, a part is treated as available for a hull only if:

• There is overlap between the hull's set of param tags, and every single need() block in the part.
• There is no overlap between the hull's set of param tags and any exclude() block in the part.

Example. Consider two hulls. Both are bb and they have the following params:

Hull bb_6_iowa: "type(bb)         BB_Modern_Iowa         bb         g4         Only_Quads         quad_guns_need"

Hull bb_5_iowa*: "type(bb)         BB_Modern_Iowa         bb         g3"

*modified for this example

Now consider three parts, A, B, and C

A - "need(bc;bb;ca)         need(g4)" 

B -  "need(bc;bb;ca)      need(BB_Modern_Iowa)   exclude(g4)"

C - "need(bb)   exclude(BB_Wide)"

Part A will be available for only bb_6. (Well, it'll be available for _any_ hull that has "bb" in its params and "g4" in its params; it will not be available for a hull that has bb but is generation 3). Part B will be available for only bb_5, because the exclude knocks out bb_6. Part C will be available for both bb_5 and bb_6.

Note of course that these are purely data-driven; you can add whatever strings you want, and as many need and/or exclude clauses as you want.

 

So that sets out what's available. As to what the autodesigner picks, that's controlled mostly similarly, i.e. by a lot of cross-linked strings. After a couple hours of digging, here's what I see:

Let's look at a line in randParts. Well, the header plus a line.

@name,enabled,shipTypes,chance,min,max,type,paired,group,effect,center,side,rangeZFrom,rangeZTo,condition,param,#,#

40/gun//mc/main_center/c//main_cal/and(tag[danton_style]),,"bb, bc",,1,1,gun,,mc,main_center,c,,0.5,1,main_cal,and(tag[danton_style]),,

The name is just a concatenation of its row. Enabled is the usual. shipTypes is self-explanatory, as is chance, the min and max number, and the part type. Paired means should it be paired across the deck (i.e. side guns, torps). Group is so that the same partdata (to be clear, a Part is the game object that get has the model etc; PartData is the data that it uses, it's in the parts TextAsset) gets used for all lines sharing that group. So as the designer walks the list of randparts to try to place, whenever it encounters the first line with a group it stores the partdata it picks; when it sees that group again, it uses that partdata again. (For example, everything with group "mc" will be the same gun part, so all the main guns are twin 6in guns once the first one is).

Effect is used for figuring out which parts (amongst all the available parts, see above) fit this rule. In addition, certain effects are used for matching center/side guns together. So if you put main_center here, and there's already a part with param main_side on the ship, then the randpart will select from those partdatas with main_side or ms with a matching caliber. This is like a gun-specific version of group, above. That special handling is in addition to the normal funcitoning, so if you put main_side here, the eligible parts are only those which have main_side in their params, and whose caliber match any previously-placed parts with main_center in their params (and, of course, if this rule has a group, the only eligible part will be the one whose data matches a previous placed part of that group).

Center and Side determine where the part is placed; f means free placement, c in the center column means center-only, s in the side column means side-only. RangeZFrom and rangeZto control where along the Z axis (length) of the ship the part can be placed; ZFrom of 0 and ZTo of 1 means only in the front half, -1 to 0 means the back half, -0.333 to 0.333 means the center third, etc.

Condition, like effect, allows only certain values. I didn't look exhaustively but the randParts file should give you a decent idea of the options. Note (and this is true for mount below) ! means "not", so !casemate means not casemate. Note that the main/sec/ter calibers mentioned here vary by ship size and year, I can walk through the formula later if you care, but it's tunable by a bunch of params which I assume you're already touching in params.

Finally, params has the rest of the logic. delete_unmounted is self-explanatory; mount() means the randpart needs a mount of that type; and then there are the and and or operators, each of which take one or more tags. And means all the tags must be met by the hull (i.e. the hull's params must contain all those strings), or means, like the discussion of part availability, that at least one tag must be present in the hull's params.

 

So there you have it. As with all this stuff you can add as many new rand parts as you like, so long as the tagging all links up with the other stuff. So if you want to add a new layout to bb_5_iowa you can add a tag in its params and make sure no other randparts apply similarly (or just put your new rule at the top of the file) and make it reference that tag, and there you go.

Edited June 13 by NathanKell

[NathanKell]

Annoyingly, there's some special rules:

• For a ship of g4, you can't ask for a barbette or funnel between -0.3 and 0.625 until after the main tower is placed
• For a ship of g4, you can't ask for a gun, barbette, or funnel between -0.45 and 0.25 until after the sec tower is placed
• You can't ask for a funnel aft of -0.5 until the secondary tower is placed (or if none is needed)

Also weirdly it will only add parts up until the funnel limit (where there's a max number of funnels per ship type, for low, high, and very high-generation ships--haven't figured out where this is set yet, or whether it's just set to infinity or something. EDIT: Checked ingame and the values for all shiptypes in all three dictionaries is 38979520 so yep, it's not relevant. So ignore this paragraph.

Edited June 14 by NathanKell