Indian and Ship combat minimod

[Disaray]

After the latest updates to this mod I found the indians to be a little to powerful in North America. So I under took the great adventure of moding this to make them a little more reasonable. I have noticed that some people have also thought that the indians could use a little tweeking too. I figured they may not have the tools, or the time, to change it for them selves so they might enjoy the changes I made as much as I have.

Any feed back you have would be cool, this bing my first endevor into moding and all. If some thing dosen't play right let me know and I will see about fixing it or adjusting it.

Curent change log
v1.21
-Now compatable with CA pach
-Changed moral for all ships, bigger ships will be harder to get to surender and smaller ones will be harder in some caises but are more or less the same; trade ships are at the lowest.
-Fixed 0 hull strength bug
v1.2
-Reworked ship hull strenght again. You should now notice a large diferance in hull strength as ships get bigger. Consiquently the smaller the ship the less hull strength it will have. The order is still basicaly the same: Gallies at the low end, then trade ships, then sloops, brigs, frigets, heavy frigets and finaly ships of the line geting tuffer as the line number goes down. Sinking a ship of the line should now be very rare, unless they explode.
-Increased range on most chain shot a little bit. Chain shot still won't out distance round shot but it dose make for a good medium ranger closing ammo so you can manuver in for the stern shots with the grape shot.
-Lowerd grap shot back to IS standard but added more bulets for increased efect, only slightly increased though.
-Bumped up the range on land artilery canaster shot 2x. Shouldn't see large number of kills at the extreem range of the ammo, if you are looking for that big punch hold fire till they get in close.
v1.1
-Increaced ship hull strenght for all combat ships, trade ships remain the same. Hopefuly the ships will surender befor they sink as was common. Ships should still explode, I hope. Capturing ships should now be the goal over sinking them.
-Fixed range problem on the first rate ships. These were the only ships that needed adjusting that I saw. In the process they lost about 200 firepower but are still suficiantly deadly I think.
-Grape shot now slightly mroe deadly. You will find it devastating on the smaller ships beacouse there is less ship between the crew and the shot.
v1.0
-Lowerd the stats on all the Indians in North America. It still isn't a good idea to engage them in hand to hand combat without softening them, but they will take a beating in the fight now.
-Increaced the damage done by chain shot. It now shreds sails and snaps masts at what I consider a realistic rate.
-Gallions and Flyutes have been toned down some what. Downsized the two bigest guns on the ships by one class each and lowerd the hull strengths to that of normal trade ships. No longer will they rule the waves in the early game as it should be being as these hull designs are
100 years old at the time of the game.

Installing:
Put pack file in the data folder.
Put line in the in the included script file into yours ABOVE the line for IS (Very important this bit, if you put it under the IS line some of the ship changes maynot take efect, principly the range fix)

Looking forward:
I would like to find a way to get the AI to make use of the Chain and Grape shot more often. As it is now I don't think I have seen them use it much if at all. Unfortunatly there is no way to do this as far as I know, if any one knows and is willing to clue me in that would be awsome.

As I play forward if I see any units that should be a bit more of a match than they are I will duely adjust them. In adision to any changes that you all feel need to be made if you can convince me.

Note: If you could be so kind as to keep an eye out for exploding ships for me. I am not sure how the hull strength changes I made are going to efect this aspect of naval combat. If you notice that they are hapening markedly less often let me know and I will play with some numbers to see if I can fix it.

[KindredBrujah]

Galleons and Fluyts don't even have the hull strength of a Fourth Rate in Imperial Splendour. Are you sure you were reading it right?

EDIT: Scratch that, you're bang-on. I don't remember that being the case within my game. Do the stat-changes not take effect on the unit card?

EDIT2: Nope, that doesn't show at my end. Both Galleons and Fluyts show Hull Strength 14 and Speed 10 in my Campaign game. Within the actual 'mod_is.pack' file it's showing as you suggested, however.

I did think those Galleons took a Hell of a beating.

[Disaray]

I made a mistake in the script file. There should be an underscore, "_", between the word "mini" and the word "mod" at the end of the line. So it looks like this: mod mod_indian_and_gallion_mini_mod.pack;

I don't know how it got muddled but I over looked it some how.

[cozmoisme]

Nice mini-mod .

[Disaray]

Glad you like it.


I have been playing with some things after I saw this show on the history chanel. They were going on a bout ship combat of the 18th century and said some thing that I found intresting. Acording to a guy they intervewed, who was some naval historian, it was damn near imposible to sink a wooden ship like modern ships do. Being as the ships were wood and that wood floated and all. He said the only way they sank was to put some realy big holes in them, like from a powder magazene going up or otherwise breaking the ship in two like in a storm. So I set out to see if I could mod it into the game. The first thing that ocured to me was to increase the hull strength of the ships. So I increased the numbers by 75% and ran some tests. It works, kind of. The biger ships surender befor sinking but sloops and the like don't seem to last long enuf to surender befor they sink. So I figure I have to balance it more, but that is expected I guess. My question is, an maybe some one here knows, dose raising the hull strength of a ship in the game decrease the likelyhood of it exploding? Beacouse ships realy did explode and all that so I don't want it to be droped from the game by my moding.

I have also delved into making the grapeshot more efective. This too is rather tricky. I uped the damage from .99 to 3 and it didn't realy do much diferance. Then I thought, maybe if I add more pellets it will do the trick. So I uped this by six across the bord. The differance was noticable, but not much on the bigger ships. I got kill rates of 8 men on a foruthrate ship dead from one broadside from a fourthrate ship with standard IS and after I uped it I am getting around 10 per broadside. In smaller ships the efect is much more exagerated, in sloop on sloop fire the efect is about 29% casualties and in sloop on gally fire it can be as high as 45-50%. It is certanly more efective on small ships, maybe a little to efective, but I figure there are fewer places to hide from the grapeshot on the smaller ships, vertualy no where on the gallys, so I don't realy know what to make of the results.

[Seraph07]

Does anyone else have the problem of the higher rated ships , like first and 2nd having an extremely short range? I notice the larger the ship, the lower the range, anybody else have that problem?

[Disaray]

I saw an awnser for that earler in some thred. I guess it has to do with the guns. The range of the ship is dictated by the "main batery". What ever range that particular set of guns has is the range for all the others on that ship. I guess I could play around with that, try and find a way to set the main battery on the larger ships to diferant guns and see if that dose the trick. In fact that will be my project now, untill I can sort out this whole explosion question.

[Bumbar]

Glad you like it.


I have been playing with some things after I saw this show on the history chanel. They were going on a bout ship combat of the 18th century and said some thing that I found intresting. Acording to a guy they intervewed, who was some naval historian, it was damn near imposible to sink a wooden ship like modern ships do. Being as the ships were wood and that wood floated and all. He said the only way they sank was to put some realy big holes in them, like from a powder magazene going up or otherwise breaking the ship in two like in a storm. So I set out to see if I could mod it into the game. The first thing that ocured to me was to increase the hull strength of the ships. So I increased the numbers by 75% and ran some tests. It works, kind of. The biger ships surender befor sinking but sloops and the like don't seem to last long enuf to surender befor they sink. So I figure I have to balance it more, but that is expected I guess. My question is, an maybe some one here knows, dose raising the hull strength of a ship in the game decrease the likelyhood of it exploding? Beacouse ships realy did explode and all that so I don't want it to be droped from the game by my moding.

I find that very hard to believe. Even if ships were made of wood, they were loaded with heavy weaponry, cannonballs, crew and various cargo. Once they started taking water, it was only a matter of whether the crew could pump out water fast enough. Besides, the buoyancy of wooden ship doesn't come only from wood. It comes from displacing water. Once water gets inside, bouyancy decreases. These are ships we're talking about, not rafts.

[Disaray]

Yes, there is the matter of displacment but bouyancy plays a very large role in the matter as well. Lets use a smaller craft for the sake of argument. A wooden canoo. The canoo has the same basic properties as a wooden ship in the way it floats, they are both maid of bouyant materials and they both dispalce water. If you take a drill and put a hole in the botom of a canoo it will flood. If what you say holds true, and water displacement were the only thing keeping our wooden canoo afloat then once enuf water has enterd the canoo it will sink to the botom. However this dose not hapen. The canoo simply rides lower in the water untill it reaches the point that the top of the canoo is no longer above water, it resetels at it's new point of bouyancy. Now if the canoo were to absorb water into the wood, as it would if left swamped like that for long enuf, it would eventualy lose bouancy and sink to the botom. Wooden ships did this as well, with the added stresses on the ship from the extra weight on bord they eventualy broke apart and were no longer ships but peaces of wood, some of wich were too dence to float on their own, the keel for example being maid of dence sturdy hardwood, and sank to the botom. This proces takes a long while if the holes that the water is coming in from are smal, say cannon ball sized, and of corse the more holes the faster it will be. If, on the other hand, a hole that is large, say a gaping hole where a ship was ramed by another ship, this proces can be very quick, not to mention the extra structual damage to the ship from the raming itself would cause the ship to break up much quicker.

If ships went down whole, like modern ones have a tendancy to do being made out of material that dosen't float in of itself, there would be much more evidance on the seafloor of them near the site of major battles, where as in reality there isn't much to be found in the way of ships at ship wreck sites of this period, mostly just guns, cargo, and perhaps the keel or skelitons and other dence less bouyent things.

On a nother note I have made some progress on this range problem. It took me a while to figure it out and I still don't fully understand why it isn't working like I thought it should have but here is what I have. The method I have arrived at to solve the problem is to switch the guns in the catagories. The first rate ships for example are amred with a set of six pound guns that have a range of 300. This set of guns is the one that the game is useing to dictate the range of the ship. They are also armed with a set of 32 pound guns with a range of 750 or so. If you switch these sets of guns the range of the ship is 750, or what ever it hapens to be with the 32s. I suspected this would work from the outset. The queer part is the change dose not take afect when I apply the change to my minimod file but only when I apply it to the IS file in my data folder. I checked every thing out and my naval_stats file should overwrite the IS naval_stats file. The script line for my mod is lower on the list than the IS line, witch should as I understand it give my changes president over those of IS. Anyway I know how to fix the ranges now, I just have to figure this new puzzle out.

[KindredBrujah]

It might also be worth noting that ships in the Eighteenth Century didn't have torpedoes and as such rarely breached the hull of enemy ships below the water-line.

[Jihada]

I was thinking of playing Britain next so I'll try this. Have you edited the script file as mentioned above ? The original has 'ship' on the mod pack but here you have 'gallion'.

[Seraph07]

Sweet, looking forward to that change

[Astalder]

To stay off topic for a minute, you know you could probably run a couple physics problems to answer your ship question more definitively. I think it's really more of a matter of blowing the ship apart.

Last night I engaged my first stack of Indians as the 13 Colonies, I went into the fight knowing what I was up against and my line infantry still routed almost instantly. Add on to that the fact that units (Native Auxiliaries) are limited for the 13 Colonies and I can't say I'm too keen on the current IS balance there.

I figure I can research line of fire and swap back to a more traditional shooting formation (trying to engage them with rangers and native auxiliaries seemed pointless given the numbers of those units I could produce), but I don't know, when the computer's rolling around with full stacks of super soldiers the "better melee fighter" argument loses some of its merit.

[Disaray]

I have actualy been considering changing the name of this project, I just haven't come up with anything better just yet. When I do I will make sure to change the name and the script file acordingly. I figure by the time I chase down what is causing my changes to not override the IS changes in the gun placement I will have a new name.


OK! I puzzled it out, the gun change problem that is. It seems my changes take palce only if the script file is in reverce order. That being my minimod listed befor IS. I have to do some more changes to get the ships to have the proper ranges that still need the change and a little tweeking to return some fire power back to them, I lost about 300 firepower on the first rate ships in the process of changing the guns around. And I still don't have a new name, seems I am better at problem solving than I am at naming things. When I get the update ready I will add it to the OP along with a general change log and one of those fancy version numbers that all the cool mods have. Should be all done soon enuf, with in a hour I should think unless this name isue realy sticks with me.

[Jihada]

I installed this as it is in the first post but not sure if it's right.Mod manager didm't work when I changed script as above. Ok if I leave it as in the download. I have early rank fire installed so I always research that first which makes a bit of difference against Indians.

[Disaray]

I am just about to update the OP with a new version of the mod that makes some changes to ship combat, the instal instructions are diferant as well and hopefuly less confusing. I don't know how well this will work with the mod manager sence I don't use it myself.

[Seraph07]

Ill def try it, I wanna get those ranges right

[Disaray]

update is up with compleet change log and fancy version numbers.

[Jihada]

Great thanks. I'll try it now.

[pdx]

I find that very hard to believe. Even if ships were made of wood, they were loaded with heavy weaponry, cannonballs, crew and various cargo. Once they started taking water, it was only a matter of whether the crew could pump out water fast enough. Besides, the buoyancy of wooden ship doesn't come only from wood. It comes from displacing water. Once water gets inside, bouyancy decreases. These are ships we're talking about, not rafts.

Hey I'm a long-time lurker who rarely posts.

I'm a bit of an amateur historian on 18th c.

Disarray is right.

Ships very, very, very, very rarely sunk before they surrendered in this era. Ships could almost literally be beaten to a pulp before they sank. For instance, at Trafalgar all ships which sunk did so because of the storm which took place after the battle. 18 Spanish and French ships (of 33) were captured by the British, but none were sunk by them during the battle.

Most ships that were destroyed were done so by either a) intentional breaking up (if they had been so beaten as to become useless); b) fire / magazine explosion; c) grounding or storm.