[Mod] The Dreadnought Improvement Project v2.2.1 for UAD 1.6.0.5

[RattyB]

@brothermunro will you be revisiting your ship design series of videos to take account of the many changes in the game recently?

[brothermunro]

It’s on the to do list!

[RattyB]

2 hours ago, brothermunro said:

It’s on the to do list!

Huzaar! 

[RattyB]

Started using the V2 Mod, and so far I'm finding it impossible to make a British heavy cruiser broadly following your vid. Using either of the modern heavy cruiser 1 or 2 hulls - and it gets overweight with poor engine effeciency very quickly. There doesnt seem to be a compromise way out that dosent leave it stripped of armour.

[brothermunro]

If you’re referring to the ‘how to build heavy cruisers’ video I did a while ago there’s some significant changes for DIP v2, especially if you are building an early game Armoured Cruiser:

Speed: The ideal design speed of CA hulls is more of an aspirational target. You’ll need better engines and probably oil fuel to reach optimal speeds. Going over the design speed is going to make engines very heavy. Reducing beam helps a lot!

Armour: You need less armour in DIP v2 overall but it’s worth pointing out that iron plate is really bad. You probably won’t have really solid protection until you get decent steel. Generally speaking an 8” belt is actually very good on a CA now. You don’t need a lot of deck armour. Extended armour should only be enough to keep out HE shells from other cruisers and (optionally) 5” or lower AP shells - 1.5” does the job just fine.

Firepower: Depends on the hull but for a typical 10,000 ton ish modern heavy cruiser you’ll be looking at 8-10 8” guns as a sort of ‘medium’ balanced option. You don’t need a ton of armour on the turrets - 10/5/8 is plenty. Torpedoes and secondaries can add a fair bit of weight so if you upgun your mains that’s an area you can cut back on.

Best thing to do is to look at the bottom right of the info panel in the builder and look at the weights (it’s ordered by heaviest to lightest). I’d expect the top items to be hull, fuel, & bulkheads. If anything else is up there then that’s a good place to look to for weight reductions.

Edited July 1 by brothermunro

[RattyB]

42 minutes ago, brothermunro said:

If you’re referring to the ‘how to build heavy cruisers’ video I did a while ago there’s some significant changes for DIP v2, especially if you are building an early game Armoured Cruiser:

Speed: The ideal design speed of CA hulls is more of an aspirational target. You’ll need better engines and probably oil fuel to reach optimal speeds. Going over the design speed is going to make engines very heavy. Reducing beam helps a lot!

Armour: You need less armour in DIP v2 overall but it’s worth pointing out that iron plate is really bad. You probably won’t have really solid protection until you get decent steel. Generally speaking an 8” belt is actually very good on a CA now. You don’t need a lot of deck armour. Extended armour should only be enough to keep out HE shells from other cruisers and (optionally) 5” or lower AP shells - 1.5” does the job just fine.

Firepower: Depends on the hull but for a typical 10,000 ton ish modern heavy cruiser you’ll be looking at 8-10 8” guns as a sort of ‘medium’ balanced option. You don’t need a ton of armour on the turrets - 10/5/8 is plenty. Torpedoes and secondaries can add a fair bit of weight so if you upgun your mains that’s an area you can cut back on.

Best thing to do is to look at the bottom right of the info panel in the builder and look at the weights (it’s ordered by heaviest to lightest). I’d expect the top items to be hull, fuel, & bulkheads. If anything else is up there then that’s a good place to look to for weight reductions.

Yes, I follow your series of vids quiet dillegently. I'm starting off in 1930 as I've refreshed everything before run the V2 mod.

Cetianly I've found with the light cruiser design that 35kts isnt possible so I've had to scale that back to 30. - but that is using a  7" 50 cal main battery, rather than the more tradition 6". The heavy cruiser hull has an optimal speed of 33.1 kts, but that is entirely aspirational know. To get close the ship needs forced boilers and a minium of two funnels which adds to the size and overall weight. 

I'll have a look a redesiging using your suggestions

[brothermunro]

Let me know how it goes! V2 of DIP is a bit of a change from the first version, and radically different from vanilla in terms of feel and ship design it can take some getting used to but I’ve been finding it a lot more interesting and enjoyable

(If you’re curious as to why cruisers are harder to build now it is because they now follow the same under the hood rules as the bigger ships rather than having their own weird rules that led to the AI’s beloved hyper speed ships)

[RattyB]

I think I've made a reasonable CA now - however it's still being built so I havent tested it yet! It's a biggie; 13000tons 3x2 8" max length guns, 30kt top speed. To get to that I had to use the narrowist beam possible. I would say the biggest problem as it stands are the funnels for the CAs: they are all hugely heavy and expensive, I've used two with forced boilers G Turbine II engines which to my mind isnt a great compromise. I'd rather use small funnels and balanced boilers. 

 

I've attached a screenshot for your perusal....

 

 

[brothermunro]

Seems decent to me! If you did want to make any changes you could do any of the following to free up weight:

Reduce the gun length - DIP v2 makes long guns not terrible but they are heavier and slower to fire, sometimes a slightly shorter barrel gives you more bang for your buck

Your mid deck armour is very thick and quite heavy you light be able to shave it down a touch (or make the citadel smaller, see below)

The modern tower V is also very heavy, you might get some weight back with little performance impact from a smaller, lighter tower (especially if you can also get a smaller rear tower & shorten your citadel)

Hope that helps!

[RattyB]

16 hours ago, brothermunro said:

Seems decent to me! If you did want to make any changes you could do any of the following to free up weight:

Reduce the gun length - DIP v2 makes long guns not terrible but they are heavier and slower to fire, sometimes a slightly shorter barrel gives you more bang for your buck

Your mid deck armour is very thick and quite heavy you light be able to shave it down a touch (or make the citadel smaller, see below)

The modern tower V is also very heavy, you might get some weight back with little performance impact from a smaller, lighter tower (especially if you can also get a smaller rear tower & shorten your citadel)

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the pointers - I'll see what I can come up with. Your videos have alway been base to work from.

[TheSublimeGoose]

Hey, partner; Amazing mod, been enjoying it for the past week after having played vanilla for several years.

Quick question… would you consider adding an additional, super-late game auto-loader technology? E.g. an “Auto-Loader III” technology. This would be to simulate the IRL Des Moines- and Worcester-classes’ auto-loaders.

It would be a significant buff to RoF… IRL it allowed 8in guns to fire every 8-10 seconds, but you could make it extremely expensive. It’s not unfeasible to use them on big guns, as it would simply be a matter of scaling the machinery, but the cost could never justify it… but perhaps in-game, it could  

[XerMGGW-2]

12 hours ago, TheSublimeGoose said:

Hey, partner; Amazing mod, been enjoying it for the past week after having played vanilla for several years.

Quick question… would you consider adding an additional, super-late game auto-loader technology? E.g. an “Auto-Loader III” technology. This would be to simulate the IRL Des Moines- and Worcester-classes’ auto-loaders.

It would be a significant buff to RoF… IRL it allowed 8in guns to fire every 8-10 seconds, but you could make it extremely expensive. It’s not unfeasible to use them on big guns, as it would simply be a matter of scaling the machinery, but the cost could never justify it… but perhaps in-game, it could  

Thinking about firerate earlier myself when balancing the game, it's not going to work very well because,
firstly, it will be exceptionally easy to fit such autoloader on the biggest turrets anyway, even more so for battleship hulls that aren't cruisers thanks to higher displacement-to-hull weight ratio,
secondly, for non-balance mods that are DIP and NAR it's exceptionally detrimental to push the reload percentage any further up because of how the game calculates the reload time. When with all the tech and shells and whatnot it tells you that you have -70% reload time, you do indeed have only 30% of time to reload, and if you switch up the -30% reload with -40% reload autoloaders, you get -80%, which is 20% of time to reload, which is an immense 50% DPS increase.

It's a similar case with max hull form and minimum beam/draught cruisers capable of -100% engine weight and thus a completely free 49 knots speed.

Thankfully these are not affected further by separate groups, like crew skills and barrel lengths.

Just consider using Tube Powder III, shortest barrels and Light Shells, it already gives a very, very high boost.

[brothermunro]

18 hours ago, TheSublimeGoose said:

Hey, partner; Amazing mod, been enjoying it for the past week after having played vanilla for several years.

Quick question… would you consider adding an additional, super-late game auto-loader technology? E.g. an “Auto-Loader III” technology. This would be to simulate the IRL Des Moines- and Worcester-classes’ auto-loaders.

It would be a significant buff to RoF… IRL it allowed 8in guns to fire every 8-10 seconds, but you could make it extremely expensive. It’s not unfeasible to use them on big guns, as it would simply be a matter of scaling the machinery, but the cost could never justify it… but perhaps in-game, it could  

Adding components is a thing that can be done but it makes the mod more complicated to install so it’s not in scope until I can make some sort of installer package (which is a long way off!)

[TheSublimeGoose]

9 hours ago, brothermunro said:

Adding components is a thing that can be done but it makes the mod more complicated to install so it’s not in scope until I can make some sort of installer package (which is a long way off!)

Gotchya, makes sense! Just found your YT channel, as well, really enjoying your videos. Cheers, man

[TheSublimeGoose]

14 hours ago, XerMGGW-2 said:

Thinking about firerate earlier myself when balancing the game, it's not going to work very well because,
firstly, it will be exceptionally easy to fit such autoloader on the biggest turrets anyway, even more so for battleship hulls that aren't cruisers thanks to higher displacement-to-hull weight ratio,
secondly, for non-balance mods that are DIP and NAR it's exceptionally detrimental to push the reload percentage any further up because of how the game calculates the reload time. When with all the tech and shells and whatnot it tells you that you have -70% reload time, you do indeed have only 30% of time to reload, and if you switch up the -30% reload with -40% reload autoloaders, you get -80%, which is 20% of time to reload, which is an immense 50% DPS increase.

I'm not sure I fully grasp what you're saying -- not because you provided a poor explanation, but rather, because I'm a bit slow 😅 -- but I appreciate the explanation!

I would still advocate for the addition of a special (very) late-game tech that would significantly increase the reload in whatever way doesn't fundamentally 'break' the game. Des Moines- and Worcester-class ships -- among others -- were very real, and would be just barely within the scope of the timeframe the game covers (pre-missile age).

Wouldn't there be a way to limit the module to only certain gun sizes? Say, 8-inch guns and smaller, as-in IRL? (I believe auto-loaders were tested with larger calibers, but their weight, expense, and complexity simply could not be justified in the twilight of the gun-era) Or, at least, limited to certain ship classes? DDs, CLs, and CAs, as we have with ASW/mining/minesweeping equipment?

Anyways, thank you for your thoughtful and robust response 😁

[TheSublimeGoose]

9 hours ago, brothermunro said:

Adding components is a thing that can be done but it makes the mod more complicated to install so it’s not in scope until I can make some sort of installer package (which is a long way off!)

Oh, I almost forgot! Quick question; I've noticed that the enemy AI is designing ships with fore- and aft- belt armor (and I believe deck armor) values of 0.1-inches. Don't think it's the base game, but I'm about to un-install the mod and test it it out. Any thoughts/were you aware of this?

cheers

[XerMGGW-2]

4 hours ago, TheSublimeGoose said:

Wouldn't there be a way to limit the module to only certain gun sizes? Say, 8-inch guns and smaller, as-in IRL? (I believe auto-loaders were tested with larger calibers, but their weight, expense, and complexity simply could not be justified in the twilight of the gun-era) Or, at least, limited to certain ship classes? DDs, CLs, and CAs, as we have with ASW/mining/minesweeping equipment?

No, guns being one of ship "parts" entities have zero connections to limitations to other "text resources", they can only depend on each other, like certain hulls only having certain barbette groups.

The way it's done with ship classes is via a separate entire component group being unique to whichever ship classes, not one of specific components within a group that exists on ship class and thus cannot be hidden with how the game currently is.

[brothermunro]

4 hours ago, TheSublimeGoose said:

Oh, I almost forgot! Quick question; I've noticed that the enemy AI is designing ships with fore- and aft- belt armor (and I believe deck armor) values of 0.1-inches. Don't think it's the base game, but I'm about to un-install the mod and test it it out. Any thoughts/were you aware of this?

cheers

Boy am I aware of it. I had the auto builder working pretty well and then the developers ’improved’ the builder logic and now it’s back to tin foil ships. It will take me a while to work out how to make it be sensible again.

[TheSublimeGoose]

16 hours ago, XerMGGW-2 said:

No, guns being one of ship "parts" entities have zero connections to limitations to other "text resources", they can only depend on each other, like certain hulls only having certain barbette groups.

The way it's done with ship classes is via a separate entire component group being unique to whichever ship classes, not one of specific components within a group that exists on ship class and thus cannot be hidden with how the game currently is.

Hmm. Is this why we can't have separate ammunition types for secondary and primary guns?

[TheSublimeGoose]

15 hours ago, brothermunro said:

Boy am I aware of it. I had the auto builder working pretty well and then the developers ’improved’ the builder logic and now it’s back to tin foil ships. It will take me a while to work out how to make it be sensible again.

Okay, haha, just wanted to make sure!

I hope it is an easy fix 🙂

[Suribachi]

Looks like 1.6 Beta is out.  Looking forward to the update.  I have gotten so used to playing with DIP I don't remember how to design in vanilla lol

[brothermunro]

After my experience with the last beta I’ll probably wait until the devs start talking about ‘release candidates’ before I start work porting DIP v2 over to 1.6 so please be patient 😇

[brothermunro]

A little update, trying to help the AI remember that armour is in fact important. I've upped the armorminhint in shiptypes (which probably won't doo much but it might) and I have doubled the importance of armour in the auto resolver. It is now the most important thing for auto resolve, meaning that weak ships should get themselves sunk pretty quick. 

[Vholes]

Looking at DIP version 1 for vanilla 1.5.1.6, there may be an error? On a quick check, the same problem is in the current DIP V2 beta.

In DIP Citadel II is only hull weight +0.5%, where Citadel I is hull +5% and Citadel 3 is hull +12.5%.

In vanilla Citadel II is hull weight +7%, Citadel I and III are +5% and +12.5%, the same as DIP v1.

You may have been misled by the embedded Citadel II "description", which reads

"The ammo storage is armored with thicker steel plates protecting it from shells that penetrate the hull. *Hull weight +0.5%, Reduces chance of magazine detonation -30%*"

I'm sure you are aware that misleading or outright wrong rubbish has been cut'n'pasted from pillar to post in the vanilla resource file, this is one of those cases.

Keep up your sterling work!

Vholes

[brothermunro]

Of course the instant I make an update there's a fix to do 😅 Thank you! Will adjust.