v1.7x Feedback and suggestions

[Macroi]

Ran a naval battle with two British 74's against two Austrian 74's with rather strange results. First of all, I must say that I love the slower acceleration and turning! Definitely gives the ships much more of a "weighty" feel. I also concur that it didn't seem to hinder the AI, so far as I could tell.

So far as the battle, we exchanged long range shots then circled and closed. I tried to concentrate my fire on the Austrian flagship, and managed to sweep it with two close broadsides of grape - killing a lot of the crew. Then I had one of my ships grapple and board it. My attacking frigate had approximately 50% more men, so I felt comfortable letting them handle the situation while I concentrated on the other Austrian vessel.

I dueled around with the other vessel for a bit, rather enjoying the cat and mouse - before whittling their crew down to what I thought was a manageable level. Then I grappled and boarded them.

Checking back with my first two combatants, I was surprised to see that the Austrians had chopped my attacking English crew down to size, and now both crews were about even. I found this rather surprising, as I had a substantial advantage to begin with, but I was playing on hard, so maybe this was a factor?

The real surprise came when I went back and checked in on my other two combatants. Both had surrendered to each other! I have never seen this before. Not only that, but the Austrian ship had caught fire, and that fire quickly spread to my ship. Since my ship had already surrendered, I was powerless to move it away, or disable "fire at will" (which will free up sailors to extinguish the fires). So I had no alternative but to watch both ships burn until they each blew up in turn. Very pretty, but a tad disappointing.

Returning once again to my other battle in progress - I found that the combatants had apparently reached an impass. I had 61 sailors and the Austrians had 59, but after a couple of minutes of fighting, no more sailors were dying. I assume the crafty Austrians must have locked themselves in the captain's cabin, and my lads had no way to get at them. Feeling a bit foolish, there was nothing left for me to do but order my lads to board our own vessel and attempt to blow the cowards out of the water. Unfortunately, as soon as my ship pulled away, the battle ended - in a decisive defeat for me. I guess my lads surrendered.

It was only one battle, but my snap-judgment opinion is that the surrendering might need to be toned down a bit. Otherwise, great stuff. Thanks for all the hard work!

[sage2]

Ran a naval battle with two British 74's against two Austrian 74's with rather strange results. First of all, I must say that I love the slower acceleration and turning! Definitely gives the ships much more of a "weighty" feel. I also concur that it didn't seem to hinder the AI, so far as I could tell.

So far as the battle, we exchanged long range shots then circled and closed. I tried to concentrate my fire on the Austrian flagship, and managed to sweep it with two close broadsides of grape - killing a lot of the crew. Then I had one of my ships grapple and board it. My attacking frigate had approximately 50% more men, so I felt comfortable letting them handle the situation while I concentrated on the other Austrian vessel.

I dueled around with the other vessel for a bit, rather enjoying the cat and mouse - before whittling their crew down to what I thought was a manageable level. Then I grappled and boarded them.

Checking back with my first two combatants, I was surprised to see that the Austrians had chopped my attacking English crew down to size, and now both crews were about even. I found this rather surprising, as I had a substantial advantage to begin with, but I was playing on hard, so maybe this was a factor?

The real surprise came when I went back and checked in on my other two combatants. Both had surrendered to each other! I have never seen this before. Not only that, but the Austrian ship had caught fire, and that fire quickly spread to my ship. Since my ship had already surrendered, I was powerless to move it away, or disable "fire at will" (which will free up sailors to extinguish the fires). So I had no alternative but to watch both ships burn until they each blew up in turn. Very pretty, but a tad disappointing.

Returning once again to my other battle in progress - I found that the combatants had apparently reached an impass. I had 61 sailors and the Austrians had 59, but after a couple of minutes of fighting, no more sailors were dying. I assume the crafty Austrians must have locked themselves in the captain's cabin, and my lads had no way to get at them. Feeling a bit foolish, there was nothing left for me to do but order my lads to board our own vessel and attempt to blow the cowards out of the water. Unfortunately, as soon as my ship pulled away, the battle ended - in a decisive defeat for me. I guess my lads surrendered.

It was only one battle, but my snap-judgment opinion is that the surrendering might need to be toned down a bit. Otherwise, great stuff. Thanks for all the hard work!

Hmmm... okay. The change I made to morale was very small, but I'm definitely in getting more feedback.

Regarding the boarding outcomes: that's a vanilla thing, and I'm not sure there's anything I can do about it.

[Beastro]

Regarding the boarding outcomes: that's a vanilla thing, and I'm not sure there's anything I can do about it.

Yeah it bloody well pissed me off when i attacked a pirate fleet full on damaged galleons and fluyts. My ships men which had more than double the enemies numbers were cut apart while boarding while any attempt to assist them via grape shooting the enemy ship only ended up killing my crewmen and none of theirs.

I lost three frigates from the fight including the death of Vitus Bering which was my best admiral but I ended up capturing 9 of the 12 pirate ships for a mass of loot so I decided the victory outwieghed the cost.

[mikeCK]

I liked the naval changes. Seems less "arcade" with the slower movement. I would like to see maybe slower reloading time to go along with it? Maybe Tomsin has some input but reloading seems way to quick. makes it so there is really no reason to hold your fire until close since the other guy can unleash volley after volley.

I am also enjoying the mass fire for the grenadiers although it doesn't always work. depth doesn't seem to matter....sometimes half of the unit fires, other times the whole unit...

Finally, i am suprised at how "smooth" the AOR system is working. I have a UP army consisting of Hessians Jaegers, French line, westphalian line, saxon line and Dutch line. Very....empirial!
Is there anyway to get the cannons on ships to fire more in succession. What I mean is, a full broadside fires all at once whereas "fire at will" seems to fire them all within 2-3 seconds (almost just a broasides by another name). Tomsin might correct me but from what I have read, all but the newest ships were unable to fire off all of their cannons this quickly due to the stress on the seams of the ship. Is there anyway to produce more of a "slow-rolling" volley...maybe one cannon every second or so? The naval equivalent of platoon fire....

[sage2]

I liked the naval changes. Seems less "arcade" with the slower movement. I would like to see maybe slower reloading time to go along with it? Maybe Tomsin has some input but reloading seems way to quick. makes it so there is really no reason to hold your fire until close since the other guy can unleash volley after volley.

I am also enjoying the mass fire for the grenadiers although it doesn't always work. depth doesn't seem to matter....sometimes half of the unit fires, other times the whole unit...

Finally, i am suprised at how "smooth" the AOR system is working. I have a UP army consisting of Hessians Jaegers, French line, westphalian line, saxon line and Dutch line. Very....empirial!
Is there anyway to get the cannons on ships to fire more in succession. What I mean is, a full broadside fires all at once whereas "fire at will" seems to fire them all within 2-3 seconds (almost just a broasides by another name). Tomsin might correct me but from what I have read, all but the newest ships were unable to fire off all of their cannons this quickly due to the stress on the seams of the ship. Is there anyway to produce more of a "slow-rolling" volley...maybe one cannon every second or so? The naval equivalent of platoon fire....

Yeah, mass fire is just a bit buggy in game -- there's not much do I can do about that.

Glad to hear your feedback on the naval stuff.

Reloading for naval combat is very, very fast compared to reality. At some point, I may slow it down a bit, but I also don't want naval battles to take hours (even if that's what Beastro wants!!!).

There is the 'broadside' button in the UI for firing your cannons all at once. That said, remember that fire would very quicky devolve into 'fire at will' as each gun crew serves its cannon as fast as it can. You can do get the rolling broadside sometimes, if you look closely. There's not a lot that can be done here in terms of changing the fire patterns. All of this stuff is hard coded. I wish they had defined an xml schema for it.

Glad to hear you are joining the AOR -- I'm really enjoying it as well in my Russian game. It seems to work very well.

Best,

Sage

[JaM]

mass fire works ok, the only time when not whole unit fire is, if target is flanking you and is too left or right for whole unit to fire, or there is some terrain preventing them to see the target.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Wouldn't it be reasonable to give the grenadier units the ability to form squares?

[Beastro]

(even if that's what Beastro wants!!!).

Hehe, I want a game to last for ages, not battles.

Tomsin might correct me but from what I have read, all but the newest ships were unable to fire off all of their cannons this quickly due to the stress on the seams of the ship. Is there anyway to produce more of a "slow-rolling" volley...maybe one cannon every second or so? The naval equivalent of platoon fire....

I don't know about hull stresses but gunners would fire at their leasure to make sure that their shots were as accurate as possible.

This usually was waiting for the downward roll of the ship and the British really shined here because the flintlocks on their guns allowed them to fire straight away at the right moment in the roll whereas everyone else had to predict when the wick they lit would fire the gun which they could never do with total precision and it badly effected the accuracy of their shots.

[tomsin]

Tomsin might correct me but from what I have read, all but the newest ships were unable to fire off all of their cannons this quickly due to the stress on the seams of the ship.

Absolutely true! I always laugh when I see all cannons firing at once on pictures - that's a very common thing for modern painters Of course broadsides quickly turned into fire at will, because it gave more shots in an hour - fast crews didn't have to wait for slow ones.

[sage2]

Wouldn't it be reasonable to give the grenadier units the ability to form squares?

Agreed.

[JaM]

btw, naval combat looks better with those gun reductions. One thing i would love to see is a reduction of penetration effect against hull - those big square like holes looks totally wierd. i'm not sure who came with that idea but it looks too boxy... holes should be more roundy.. after heavy fight ships tend to look like unfinished buildings... i even tried to change damage effects to light, but it had no visible effect..

(CA, was is that hard to came with more realistically looking ship damage model?)

[sage2]

btw, naval combat looks better with those gun reductions. One thing i would love to see is a reduction of penetration effect against hull - those big square like holes looks totally wierd. i'm not sure who came with that idea but it looks too boxy... holes should be more roundy.. after heavy fight ships tend to look like unfinished buildings... i even tried to change damage effects to light, but it had no visible effect..

(CA, was is that hard to came with more realistically looking ship damage model?)

Agreed, but this would require modeling changes, which aren't possible yet.

[JaM]

that would be probably the most needed update for naval combat...

[mikeCK]

How has everyone found the AI's use of the intial financials boosts it gets now? Does it seem to spend it wisely? Has it made a noticeable impact? I haven't tried it yet as I am in a great game and hate to start over.

[Johan217]

v1.30 out now

[mikeCK]

Are the skins a seperate pack that can be left out or is it included in part 1? (UP, Russian and Polish that you mentioned)

[Johan217]

The skins are part of the (obligatory) trom_core_part_2.pack
They are basically the default game skins, adapted for use with the AOR system (i.e. they do not change colour when another nation recruits a unit).

If you want to use third party skins they will be overwritten, so you can simply use a retexture mod if you don't like them.

[JaM]

one little suggestion - what about making naval guns more accurate at short distances, but also making them to have higher dispersion? Hitting something at sea at long range was quite a feat - it was different from land aritlery, because gunner was not able to guess a distance by comparing the trees, or buildings and then calculate aproximate distance. at sea it was purely luck, so guns were used only in direct fire, max with slight elevation.

what about using 200 for a 50% hit chance for naval guns(from 100), and also increase dispersion radius value from 50 to 100.

I changed it for my game, and now its much harder to hit something at long ranges, most of the time roundshots fly too high, sometimes damaging sails - which is exactly how long range gunnery was done - at ranges greater than cca 400m guns were tought to be aimed at topsails..

I also changed both values for land artilery to 300 acc and 100 radius, so artilery is good at short range, but at longer ranges dispersion is higher.

[Johan217]

JaM,

Thanks for your ideas, they are worth looking into.
But it will have to wait a bit...

Now that Sage is mostly offline, we're a bit understaffed... Sage normally does all the major unit stats and AI stuff, while I do the AOR stuff and some minor tweaks. So updates will be slower in the next few weeks.

But if you could send me the tsv exports of the files you modified, I will be happy to test them out

[JaM]

ok,np, i will send you mine when i get home from office.