[Mod] The Dreadnought Improvement Project v2.0.0b1 Beta for UAD 1.5.1.6

[brothermunro]

The Dreadnought Improvement Project (DIP) Version 2 for Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

Download here: https://www.nexusmods.com/ultimateadmiraldreadnoughts/mods/7/

Credits: Massive thanks to the Baron (author of the Naval Arms Race mod) and Admiral Snackbar (author of the balance mod) for helping me understand how to mod the game and for letting me use some of their hard work in the mod. Thank you as well to lead developer Nick Thomadis (aka Dartis) for helping me understand how the game functions. And of course thank you to everyone who has helped test the mod!

Known Issues: Whilst I have made every effort to make the mod compatible with existing vanilla saves you can experience weirdness and errors (like all your ships getting deleted) loading the mod mid campaign. It is recommended to start a new campaign with the mod installed, and to make sure any shared designs you have in the shared design folder are designed for the mod.

If you encounter a grey screen at launch that means the version of the mod you have is not the correct one for the version of the game you have. I'm usually pretty fast getting updates out so check the Nexus to see if there is a newer version of the mod, previous versions of the mod are also archived there if you are using the 'previous stable version' feature.

There is something odd going on with the penetration calculations for certain HE shells - I’m looking into it!

Mod purpose: To make the game more fun! If you are jumping in from the vanilla game designing ships is very different and strategies that are very good in vanilla are perhaps not so great in DIP. Battles are much more dangerous and the AI has had a few pointers, expect the game to be more challenging but much less annoying. I will try and update the mod to the latest version of the game as soon as I can but they happen a lot and ususually when I'm away from my computer. The mod version number will work like this: X.Y.Z where X denotes major features being added, Y means something in the mod changed, and Z is a compatibility update.

Installation: Copy the resources.assets file into your Dreadnoughts Data folder, ususally located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts\Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts_DataYou can check if the mod is installed by checcking the news button from the main menu.
Uninstallation: Verify the game files through Steam

Optional Ship Pack: Highly recommended but completely optional is the ship pack. Currently this has about 1000 shared designs. Helps with end turn speed, custom battle loading speed, and AI design in general. Make sure your campaign or custom battle is set to either ‘selective’ or ‘always’ for shared designs.

DIP Version 2

This major update affects nearly all of the modded files, it is NOT compatible with v1 save games or designs so it is recommended to clear out any saved designs you have and start a new campaign.

What's new?

Gun stats have been completely reworked using some NAR data (thank you to the Baron for helping me with this). Guns should now perform reasonably predictably.
Effects of changing gun barrel length have been reduced significantly, you should no longer see long guns having terrible accuracy or short guns being extremely cheap for instance.
When new marks of guns are unlocked has been reworked. Expect to be stuck on mark 1 guns until the 1910's. Mark 3's probably won't show up until the 20's, 30's for mark 4's, & 40's for mark 5's and so on. You should see higher marks of guns unlock sequentially from smallest to largest for the most part.
Belt penetration has been reworked to generally make guns less punchy and to make realistic armour thicknesses viable.
Changes to how weights for light and heavy cruisers are calculated to make them more in line with bigger ships. Overall this means that cruisers should have less spare displacement.
Multiple torpedo tubes are now slightly more displacement efficient making quadruple and quintuple launchers a more attractive choice.
Mine laying, mine sweeping, and depth charge components have been 'removed' (by making them torpedo boat exclusives). This was done primarily to stop the AI wasting displacement on these parts.
Engine costs have been rebalanced, turbo electric is slightly more expensive, diesels are cheaper. Overall ships should no longer reach ludicrous costs unless they are very large and very fast.
Auxiliary engines have been cost rebalanced to make high end options more viable & to stop the AI making obscenely expensive ships.
Propeller upgrades have been rebalanced and are now slightly less effective but cheaper.
Standard bulkheads will now become obsolete, this forces the AI to use at least reinforced 1 bulkheads which helps it not make crippled designs.
Adjusted the appearance of auto loaders, sonar, and radar to be somewhat later (late 1930s to the 1940/50's). Radar 3 and autoloading guns will likely now become unlocked after you have mark 5 guns.
Standard reload will now become obsolete. The AI builder is also more likely to use better reload techs if it can.
Adjusted component weights for shell types to encourage better AI decision making. For AP shells this means the AI is most likely to pick the 'rightmost' AP shell it has access to.
Base detection of torpedoes lowered to 500m to make hitting AI ships more likely.
Increased ammo detonation damage, secondary ammo detonations are now quite dangerous.
Increased flooding sinking threshold to 75% of flood-able compartments (ships have 10 compartments). This means that ships are slightly more survivable but also sinking via flooding is more predictable and obvious to the player. A ship whose citadel covers at least 3 compartments should not be able to be easily sunk by hits to its extended belt/deck.
Reduced maximum speed of some ship classes to plausible but still very fast values. (BB 36, BC/CA/CL 40, DD 45 knots). This is primarily done to help the AI not build ridiculously fast ships with no armour.
Heavy Cruisers now have a maximum secondary gun size of 5" rather than 6" to avoid problems when ships were designed with both primary and secondary 6 inch guns.
Other attempted improvements to the auto builder, such as trying to persuade the AI not to put very large guns on small ships.
Increased the partial pen threshold to 80% and reduced partial pen damage. Whilst HE is still very useful for destroying the upper-works of a ship a properly armoured battleship can now withstand a considerable amount of punishment.
Rebalance of the fuse and ricochet effects of shells to make shells behave more predictably.
Rebalanced unrest modifiers to be lower overall. This makes AI countries quite stable unless they suffer a string of defeats and/or conquer too much territory.
Adjusted map colours of Spain to match the yellow of their flag and China who are now a darker orange.
Submarines have been removed completely from the research screen.
AI personalities changed to encourage AI nations to be more aggressive with bigger fleets.
The Naval Academy has been completely rebalanced to act as a tutorial rather than a challenge mode.

Changes in version 1:

Shipbuilding
Weights and costs have been adjusted significantly from the vanilla game. You should now find that ships do not have very high pitch, roll, or offsets but including everything you want in terms of protection, firepower, and speed is not possible and you need to make compromises and decisions.
The stats of guns have been reworked completely from the vanilla game. Big guns are far more viable, deck penetration is much lower, and long x.9 inch guns are no longer the go to option, and high explosive penetration is lower.
Armour techs are now radically different and no longer give weight reductions but are significantly stronger. Armour limits are much higher than in vanilla. Armour techs become obsolete faster to help the AI with this change.
Propellants have also been reworked, with shell damage effects removed. Muzzle velocity, range, and penetration are now linked.
Rangefinders are now all the same weight and become obsolete faster. This helps the AI keep up to date with the player.
Torpedoes now do significantly more damage, roughly quadruple the vanilla values.
Changing beam and draught is now less impactful.
Anti-torpedo defences have been improved.
Heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships can no longer equip hydrophones/sonar. You will need light cruisers and/or destroyers to escort your big ships.
Citadel techs are now have a smoother progression, this particularly affects citadel 4 (turtleback) which is now inbetween citadel 3 and citadel 5 in terms of effectiveness.
A few of the campaign techs have been altered such as the starting communications tech and the late game hull survivability tech to prevent large changes to ships effectiveness.
Light cruisers must have at least 0.5 inches of armour on their main belt.

Battles
The damage from partial penetrations has been reduced, as has damage spread and the chance of fire. With the threshold of ship loss due to fire being raised to 95% ships will no longer be easily sunk with low calibre 'he spam' tactics.
The overpenetration threshold is now much higher, only very large shells going through very thin armour will result in an overpenetration, however overpen damage has been reduced.
Generally you can see ships further away and battle ranges are longer than in vanilla. Close range engagements are likely to be deadly and short.
The AI's ability to spot torpedoes has been greatly reduced torpedo attacks should be viable now.
Initial division layouts should be a bit more sensible.
Bad weather is now less likely and also not as impactful.

Campaign
Submarines have been removed.
Mines have also been removed (they can still appear very late game).
The governemnt modifiers have been adjusted to be less extreme and for provinces to matter more to the overall health of the economy.
AI personalities have been improved to be a little more realistic, and the scrapping threshold has been increased to 250,000 tons to help the AI maintain a decently sized fleet.
Naval invasions have been made slightly easier to pull off for the invader.
Denial zones have been significantly reduced to prevent task forces blocking each other. You may find that if you drop a fleet ontop of an enemy one it dissapears, this is the AI refusing battle and moving away in the background (no mission is generated). Task force denail zones are still big enough to block narrow straights and canals.
Allies are now more likely to buy a mothballed ship.
Peace agreements should now mostly follow what the player selects, and enemies will nearly always agree to your peace terms. There is still a small chance the goverment declares peace without you.
Blockades and transport losses are much more significant in terms of victory points. Maintaining a blockade long term can cause revolutions or collapse of enemy nations.
Technology research is much more even, tech spread is larger, priorities hurt less, and ahead/behind penalties/bonuses are set at 5 years.

Edited Monday at 02:52 PM by brothermunro
Update version number

[spinaker]

In the first battle, invisible ships appeared. The light cruisers set up a smoke curtain and disappeared. This is not good.
Тем не менее, впечатление пока положительное.

Edited January 1 by spinaker

[brothermunro]

Yeah it’s a known issue. I’m not sure how to fix it mind but it is at the moment purely graphical (you can still shoot them) and somehow related to smoke. 

Edited January 1 by brothermunro

[Dirtnap]

Oh man I've been waiting for this ever since you said you were doing your own mod. I've watched a lot of your content on YT and if anyone can figure out a decent mod I think you can. Thanks for this!

[brothermunro]

Just a word of warning; you can experience weird UI issues if you have any vanilla shared designs loaded, a clean install is recommended!

Edited January 4 by brothermunro

[spinaker]

I played a little, I will express my impressions. The mod is interesting, for those who don't want to bother with minefields and submarines. Artillery battles are quite comfortable, torpedo attacks are also very good. The main problem is the invisible ships. Maybe we should turn off the smoke screens before solving this problem? I am waiting for development, this mod can become a worthy alternative to the NAR mod.

[brothermunro]

I’m trying an experimental fix for the smoke in the next version, needs some more testing though!

[Astor]

How much will you mess with the gun and hull models or their compartments?

Do you want to go your own way, or use NAR as a base once Baron is finished?

[brothermunro]

I don’t have any plans at the moment to fiddle with the models, partly because it’s way outside my competency but also it makes going between the mod and vanilla tricky and could potentially break saves etc which is something I’d rather avoid

[Raf]

Just a small question, what did you modify in the files to remove the acoustic modules from the big ships?

[brothermunro]

That is in comp types I think, also lets you make components campaign only or not

[Raf]

Sorry for asking, but where in the files do i find this "comp types"? 

[brothermunro]

You’ll need to extract it from the resources.assets file using a tool like UABE (I’m working on a how to mod UAD video it those instructions don’t make much sense)

[Raf]

thanks

[bwc153]

Been playing with the mod, about 20 years across a couple campaigns.   Would recommend increasing the denial zone for task forces a bit more.  I had a game as Austria-Hungary and was unable to block access to my ports and convoys via blocking the Strait of Otranto, which is only 72km wide.  If the radius was increased maybe 50%, it would still be quite small, but 2-3 fleets would be able to block that strait.

Battlw-sie  definitely feels more decisive and enjoyable!

[admiral_admirer]

When you make a guide on mod making, can you include changing veterancy bonuses?

[brothermunro]

I’ll have a look the denial zones, you’re right you should be able to block those straights

[kjg000]

On 12/31/2023 at 10:12 PM, brothermunro said:

 

Download here: https://www.nexusmods.com/ultimateadmiraldreadnoughts/mods/7/

 

Looks like a great mod! however I have problems with using Nexus, 240+ "Legitimate Interest" partners seems excessive.

Do you have any other download sites? If not that's fine, still looks like a great mod.

FYI I'm also having problems with the NAR site. It won't accept any of my secure browsers and with Firefox, which they say they support, I just get a blank screen! C'est la vie.

[brothermunro]

I don’t have any mirrors sorry, it’s a lot easier to maintain just one download page & I’m the most familiar with nexus mods

[brothermunro]

I’m aware the game got updated to 1.4.1.0 Opt x1 but I’m currently on bed rest due to an emergency appendectomy I had on Monday so it’ll probably be the 15th before I’m able to update the mod at the earliest. For now I recommend using the ‘previous stable version’ through steam so you can stay on 1.4.1.0

[kjg000]

On 1/11/2024 at 6:58 PM, brothermunro said:

I don’t have any mirrors sorry, it’s a lot easier to maintain just one download page & I’m the most familiar with nexus mods

perfectly understandable, just thought I'd ask.

Get and stay well!

[Azerostar]

On 12/31/2023 at 7:42 PM, brothermunro said:

The overpenetration threshold is now much higher, only very large shells going through very thin armour will result in an overpenetration, however overpen damage has been reduced.

Very nice change, may I ask where did you modify in the files to do this?

[brothermunro]

I believe both are in params - the default over penetration threshold is 2 I upped it to 3 I think (same values that the balance mod used)

[admiral_admirer]

Query; how do I change GDP per province?  I notice you have improved this but it's not tied to population as your resources.assets file seems to have the same values?

[Azerostar]

11 hours ago, brothermunro said:

I believe both are in params - the default over penetration threshold is 2 I upped it to 3 I think (same values that the balance mod used)

Thank you very much!