Preview of LME mod contents at an unclassified level...

[Iutland]

Greetings! this thread is meant as an informative description of the LME mod and some of the unclassified information will be "disclosed" to the public The hope is to enlighten LME players in the world of LME as well as the dynamics of the game.

First up are the LME Technologies
The mod has its own custom technology tree with the original technologies in the same positions and linking and they are only tweaked slightly.
22 custom technologies are added with different pros and cons for the player. A little presentation is included here and with links to wikipedia pages for further information:

Tier#1 Administration:
Systematic Smallpox Vaccine: A government paid Smallpox vaccine for all citizens.
Lithography: Lithography in art works.
Workers living conditions: Improve factory workers urban living conditions.

Tier#1 Military:
Foraging: Allows your armies live off the land in foreign countries.
Great repairs of ships of the line: Perform mid-life-update of the major warships.

Tier#1 Economy:
Jacquard loom: Jacquard loom used in textile manufacturing.
Carcel lamp: Carcel lamp replaces argand type lamps.
Power loom: Power loom used in textile manufacturing.
Threshing machines: More widespread use of agricultural threshing machines.

Tier#2 Administration:
Active intelligence: National intelligence service is formed.
University reforms: Reforms the Universities.
Abolish mercantilist policies: Government will exercise less control of foreign trade.

Tier#2 Military:
Tactical reconnaissance: Implement tactical reconnaissance in the army.
Common gun carriages: Use common limbers and caissons for artillery.
Field training exercises: Army soldiers conducts field training exercises.

Tier#2 Economy:
Bandsaw: Bandsaw used for ship building and industry work.
Spinning mule: More widespread use of spinning mules in textile industry.

Tier#3 Administration:
Utilitarianism: Utilitarian ethical theory.
Modern local government: Reforms the current local government.
Religious uniformity: Convert the population to the predominant religious belief.
Diplomatic mission: Establish a permanent diplomatic missions in foreign countries.

Tier#3 Military:
Artillery firing drill: Artillery peacetime firing practices.
Naval gunnery drill: Naval peacetime firing practices.
Naval supply chain: Structure the naval supply chain.

Tier#3 Economy:
Steam road vehicles: Use of steam technology in land based vehicles.
Milling machines: Invent industrial milling machines.
Puddling furnaces: Invent dry and wet puddling processes for use in puddling furnaces.

Tier#4 Administration:
Democracy: Public demand for democratic reforms.
Stock exchange: Establish a national stock exchange.
Directoire exécutif: Overthrow the French Directory and replace it with the Consulate headed by Napoléon (1796 only).
White Terror: White Terror is the violence carried out by groups as part of a counter-revolution (1796 only).
Local theatres: Grant permission to establish local theatres.

Tier#4 Military:
Morphine as Analgesic: Use of morphine as analgesic by field surgeon.
Live firing exercises: Foot soldiers and cavalry conducts live firing exercises.
Admiralty: Establish an admiralty to control the naval fleets.

Tier#5 Administration:
Secularism: Reforming the nation to a secular state.
Nationalism: Adopt the nationalistic ideology.

Tier#5 Military:
Professional Army: Reform the standing army to become a professional army.

[Iutland]

Naval warfare in LME

In LME you will get a first hand experience of naval warfare that is not quite like what you experienced in vanilla NTW. What is implemented or changed in LME are the following properties or features:

Added many historical ships to main seafaring nations of the “Napoleonic” age.
Complete replacement of vanilla ship units.
Changes the hull colours of ships loosely based on historical sources.
Realistic naval gunnery as defined by LME team.
Realistic sailing characteristics and combat inspired by Rebellion’s shipyard ETW mod.
Change visual appearance of other ship aspects
Custom text for some unit info cards.
Custom starting navies for included factions in Campaign of the Coalition.
Custom Marine units.

Historical ships and vanilla replacements
LME features many named historical ships and you can see the included ships for each faction here. Besides that all vanilla ships are replaced with custom ship classes for the major shipfaring nations and you can also see the included ships for each faction here. Regard a class of ships as a number of ships with almost identical size and armament and the classes are introduced so the recruitment roosters are not cluttered with named ships.
LME doesn't include steam powered ships as it is several decades too early and rocket ships are only available to Britain.
There are many good web pages on historical ships and two of my preferences are wikipedia and 3decks as well as different publications by Osprey.
Some information on tactics in the age of sail here, naval warfare in general here and TWC's own guide here.

Hull colours and colouring of details
LME comes with it's own hull colouring scheme for the major seafaring nations and furthermore there are changes to colouring of details, decks and sterns and you can see some images below (from LME 1.0) to illustrate it.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Realistic Naval Gunnery
The named ships and the ship classes implemented in LME are as close as possible modelled with the armament they had in 1805 within the game engine constraints and limits. Naval cannons are assigned to a deck or position and one of the positions on each class of ship is the master position defing the maximum range. So putting a short range cannon on the master position limits the maximum firing range of the ship, therefore the cannons are distributed on the positions based on the historical references but without limiting the maimum firing range of the ship. For more information read this thread by Bethencourt. One Using Ospreys New Vanguard 090 Napoleonic Naval Armaments 1792-1815 as basis and tailoring it to the mod the following armament is included with listed ranges:

4 pounder, 500m
6 pounder, 666m
8 pounder, 700m
9 pounder, 716m
12 pounder, 733m
18 pounder, 615m
24 pounder, 650m
32 pounder, 633m
36 pounder, 620m
24 pounder carronade, 360m
28 pounder carronade, 370m
30 pounder carronade, 375m
32 pounder carronade, 380m
36 pounder carronade, 395m
48 pounder carronade, 430m
68 pounder carronade, 500m

All projectile damage models customized and each grape shots contains 3x3 smaller balls. The smaller balls increase by size and damage model with increasing gun size. You will not see exploding shells as it is also several decades to early.

Sailing charactheristics and combat
Realistic sailing charactheristics and movement in the water is included in LME so bigger ships can't sail directly against the wind and will have to cross the wind to move. Bethencourt and Sharp made some descriptions on the subject here and here. Below is an illustration of Points of Sail.

In LME you will also experience prolonged naval encounters and ships will not catch fire and blow up without notice as often as in vanilla NTW due to a different hull strength and morale implementation matched with projectile damage model. So manoeuvring your fleet and keep your sails are more important than before.

As an example a French 74-gun ship of line has different hull strength and sailing charactheristics than a corresponding British ship so ship stats are differentiated among the nations and so is the crew quality as well. British crews have a slightly higher morale and reload speed than most other nations and Spanish crews have a slightly lower morale than the mean value etc.

Starting navies and unit cards
The 1805 campaign starting navies resembles closely some of the ships participating in The Battle at Trafalgar (Britain, France and Spain). In the 1807, 1812 and 1813 campaigns the starting fleets do not include the ships sunk, captured or burnt at or after Trafalgar. All other starting fleets edited to match the LME units.

Horatio Nelsons fleet:
HMS Victory (106), flag ship
HMS Royal Sovereign (106)
HMS Temerraire (98)
HMS Dreadnought (98)
HMS Tonnant (80)
HMS Bellerophon (74)

French main fleet:
Océan (122), flag ship
Achille (74)
Redoutable (74)
Frégate (38)
Frégate (38)
Frégate (32)

Spanish main fleet:
Santissima Trinidad (140), flag ship
Santa Ana (106)
Rayo (106)
San Juan Nepomuceno (74)
San Joaquín (74)
Fragata (32)

Some of the included ships comes with custom text for the unit cards as illustrated (image from LME2.1) below and HMS Victory will report to you as "Victory" and not as 1st rate.

Custom Marines
LME comes with it's own custom naval marine uniforms and differentiated stats among the nations. Below are a couple of illustrations (from LME 2.1) of the uniforms.

French Marines



Generic Marine uniforms replacing vanilla uniform (based on the England Expects mod uniforms by SirDCC) and colours vary between factions

[Iutland]

Dominating the Battlefield

In LME as well as NTW you can dominate the battlefield with ranged weapons, that is your artillery.
LME includes many customized artillery units to supplement the vanilla ones to make the roosters of all nations diversified. In addition to that a number of elite artillery units are included for those nations that fielded such units.
To implement the diverse roosters the following calibers/guns are included in LME:

1-pounder cannon (amusette)
3-pounder cannon
4-pounder cannon
6-pounder cannon
8-pounder cannon
9-pounder cannon
12-pounder cannon
14-pounder cannon
18-pounder cannon
20-pounder cannon
4.4" Howitzer
5" Howitzer
5.5" Howitzer
7-pounder Howitzer (corresponds to 5.7")
10-pounder Howitzer (corresponds to 6")
6" Howitzer
20-pounder Howitzer (corresponds to 8")
10-pounder Unicorn
20-pounder Unicorn
4" Mortar
8" Mortar
Experimental Howitzer
Rocket launcher

In 1805 a pound (mass) didn't weigh the same in London as in Paris, Vienna or Moscow and if we convert the mass to The International System of Units (SI) kilogram with Osprey's Artillery Equipments of the Napoleonic Wars as source information we get the following values (relation of pound to faction is also listed):

Imperial/Generic pound used as baseline. Used by Britain, Scotland, Ireland, German minors (except southern most) and Courland etc.
Italian as 0.65 Imp.pound. Used by Italian peninsula states.
Prussian (Leipzig weight) as 0.85 Imp.pound. Used by Prussia, Saxony and Poland.
Russian as 0.9 Imp.pound. Used by Russia, Romania and Crimea.
Spanish pound as 0.9 Imp.pound. Used by Spain and Catalonia.
Swedish pound as 0.93 Imp.pound. Used by Sweden.
Portuguese pound as 0.95 Imp.pound. used by Portugal
French pound as 1.1 Imp.pound. Used by France, Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Brittany, Netherlands, Belgium.
Danish pound as 1.12 Imp.pound. Used by Denmark and Norway.
Austrian pound as 1.2 Imp.pound. Used by Austria, Hungary, Greece.
Note: Ottoman projectile weight is listed in "okka" and 1 okka is appr. ~= 1.28kg.

The differentiated weight values are used to define the following in a "linear approximation":
Projectile damage value
Projectile range
Projectile velocity
Projectile reload time
Projectile canister “size” (Note: Howitzers fire canister shots horizontal and not with high trajectory)

Visual representation and unit size
If you play LME with normal unit sizes you will notice that unit sizes varies between small caliber cannon/large caliber cannon; horse/foot; cannon/howitzer and as an example a 6-pounder foot cannon has 5 pieces per battery (France, Russia and Denmark-Norway have +1), whereas a 12-pounder foot cannon has 4 pieces per battery (again France, Russia and Denmark-Norway have +1).
Unit cost and upkeep is calculated in a formula based on the above variations so France will pay more for a 12-pounder battery than Britain.

Artillery unit uniforms are also customized in LME with the following examples:

King's German Legion Horse Artillery, Howitzers (Britain)


Guard Horse Artillery (Russia)

[Iutland]

Area of Recruitment (AoR)

LME features an AoR system that totally revise the vanilla game recruitment versus province system.
This is implemented using a combination of different methods:

• Almost every vanilla unit shared by minor factions (same stats but different uniforms of course) are replaced with a custom LME unit so Batavian (Netherlands) Line Infantry as an example can be named "Infanterie van Linie" instead and being "unique" then only possible to recruit in Holland by an entry in the units database table

• The campaign startpos.esf files are then updated with an entry for the Holland region that is linked directly to the units database entry for "Infanterie van Linie" unit mentioned above. This method is then used for all the remaining unique AoR units

• The major and bigger factions like France, Russia etc. have many more regions at the beginning of the campaign and a more diverse and varied unit rooster. Therefore the units are distributed between different regions based on two factors: 1. Avoid cluttering up recruitment line in capitals like Paris, Berlin or Moscow, 2. Special units are only available in native regions like Tirailleurs Corses only recruitable by France on Corsica and Vyborgskii Mushketerskii Polk (Finish Line Infantry) only recruitable by Russia in Finland

The same applies for naval units where all vanilla units are replaced by custom LME units, therefore Ship-of-Line ships available to larger sea-faring factions are only recruitable in home regions.

What are the impacts on gameplay with this AoR implementation compared to vanilla NTW?
First of all you can't recruit quality units to protect your newly conquered territories but you need to bring them along with your main army. However replenishment of units works as in vanilla NTW.
Secondly many units (especially artillery) are limited in numbers and care should be taken to put your army stacks together with the right mix of troops.
Finally the rebels you may encounter are of a lower quality than in vanilla NTW.

Below are three AoR screenshots.

10th Prince of Wales Hussars only recruitable in Wales


2nd Royal North British Dragoons (Scots Greys and not the CA unit) only recruitable in Scotland

27th Foot Inniskilling only recruitable in Ireland

[Iutland]

Land Combat Mechanics

LME includes many changes to land combat and features and features it's own unique Battle AI (BAI).

• Unit sizes, stats and equipment are based on information obtained from various web sites (like the ones featured here), books (including George F. Nafziger's Imperial Bayonets) and magazines like Osprey's Napoleonic series etc. The objective has always been to make it historically correct as possible but still make it a balanced gameplay. As the mod includes "tons" of special units the unit properties varies accordingly

• Projectiles, reload times and misfire rates are also modded in LME

• The BAI is a hybrid between the LME BAI settings and UAI mod BAI from The Hedge Knight combined in the LME mod pack. The LME BAI will give a different experience compared to playing vanilla NTW

What are the impacts on gameplay with this BAI implementation compared to vanilla NTW?
First of all you should not run your units around the battlefield as they will get tired with a lower stamina. Secondly deploy your forces as they did in those days, square up when attacked by cavalry and protect your artillery as they are a valuable force multiplier. Finally use your skirmishers and light cavalry in a screening role to protect your main force.


Below are a few LME mod battle screenshots:

Swiss Cavalry and Infantry makes a combined attack on Austrian Infantry

Dutch Cavalry and Infantry make a combined attack on Prussian Infantry

[Iutland]

Visuals and Audio

Artwork by KDK

LME features many changes, or with a more bold expression, improvements of the in-game graphics both 2D and 3D. Below are screenshots of some of these changes.

All vanilla "Halloween" portraits replaced by correct, a late 18th Century or early 19th Century portrait by Iutland

Campaign map ships re-coloured by Iutland








Campaign map, battle map and naval vessel flags changed by Iutland



Re-coloured campaign and battle UI by KDK



New event images by Iutland




New deck and ship cannon graphics by Icebear77




New saddle cloth graphics by Iutland


New ship hull colours by Iutland and Bethencourt

LME comes with it's own unique music pack made by ReignTerror and some tunes are even composed, performed and recorded by her.