4th Rate Frigate

[Quintus Hortensius Hortalus]

Thank you, that's helpful - yes, your theory about the Minerve makes sense.

I'll attempt to make Fourth Rate Frigates recruitable by tweaking my mini-mods and will report back.

[Edit] Reporting back: the Fourth Rate Frigate uses the same model as the Fourth Rate Ship of the Line, the 2deck64 model. In my test, I allowed Britain to recruit Fourth Rate Frigates, because Britain starts the game with a military dockyard which is capable of building Fourth Rates. I recruited a Fourth Rate Frigate and sent it with a Fourth Rate Ship of the Line and a Fifth Rate frigate to attack a French warship, just to see what the Fourth Rate Frigate looks like in battle (probably the lamest casus belli/cause for war in history!). Images of the ships are in the spoiler.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Here is Circe, a Fourth Rate Frigate in British service:-



This is Triton, a Fourth Rate Ship of the Line:-



For comparison, here is Valiant, a Fifth Rate Admiral's flagship frigate:



In case anyone is interested, the statistics of the Fourth Rate Frigate were:



and the statistics of a Fourth Rate Ship of the Line were [Edited to add - the image above was taken on the campaign map while the image below was taken in a battle, which is why the Firepower figure below is much higher. The firepower for these two ships is actually the same. Sorry about that]:

It's worth knowing that I'm using some mods which affect how ships appear (Pdguru's Briney Ships Mod and the AUM graphics mod). I'm also using a tweaked version of my navy mod (I removed 6-lber guns). Even allowing for that, these images seem to indicate that a Fourth Rate Frigate uses the same model as a Fourth Rate Ship of the Line and that its statistics are almost identical (except that a Fourth Rate Frigate has slightly fewer crew, different recruitment and upkeep costs and a weaker hull).

If I wanted to make the Fourth Rate Frigate interesting and worth recruiting, I'd need to adjust its statistics and perhaps choose a different model (e.g. the model for the Razee).

All right sound interesting. And yes it's always fun to browse through the db-files and find something which must have been canceled by the CA.
And here is a link to a part of a painting showing the Minerve:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_...ort_mg6975.jpg
But I don't how accourate the painting is. It was painted years after the frigate got broken up, if I'm right.

After some quick research I found out that the 4th rate Frigates where very neer to razees (maybe this was the reason they got canceled?) And that even the heavy US frigates like the Constitution were considered equivalent to be 4th rates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-rate

Here is another example of such a super-heavy frigate-class (rerated 1817 as 4th rates):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endymion-class_frigate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Liverpool_%281814%29

[Alwyn]

Thank you, those sources look very useful.

While you were doing that research, I adjusted the statistics of the Fourth Rate Frigate (since in vanilla it is just an inferior Fourth Rate). My thinking (just based on my imagination, not historical research) was that the designer of Fourth Rate Frigates wanted to combine the strength of the American heavy frigate/razee design with the sailing qualities of French warships - and the resulting ships had some but not all of the qualities which the designer wanted. I gave Fourth Rate Frigates 85% of the firepower and hull strength of US 24-pounder frigates and the same top speed, with the better sailing characteristics (turn rate and ability to sail into the wind) of French frigates.

Your research provides a historical justification for these changes: the Fourth Rate Frigates could represent Endymion class frigates. These frigates were "built to the lines of [a] captured French frigate", with a "stronger construction" and reached "the highest recorded speed during the Age of Sail." (Bearing that in mind, I should probably make the Fourth Rate Frigate faster.)

The spoiler below shows a Fourth Rate Frigate (using the razee44 model) in the US Navy, followed by the USS Constitution and a 24-pounder frigate in a custom sea battle against a British fleet (I played the US so that I could compare the three frigate designs in action).

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I sent these three frigates attack the rear of a line of British Third Rates. Below, the Fourth Rate Frigate rakes the stern of an enemy Sixth Rate (which is just outside the field of view).



The Fourth Rate Frigate got there a bit more quickly (with its superior sailing qualities) and did significant damage before one of the Third Rates and a British steamship returned fire, causing the Fourth Rate Frigate to run.

(I was using Pdguru's Briney Ships Mod and the AUM optional graphics mod together with Bran Mac Born's Nap Effects mod to improve the appearance of the ships)

[Quintus Hortensius Hortalus]

For the Top-Speed the HMS Liverpool from 1814 (Endymion Class) could reach a top speed of 14 knots against which the Constitution could only reach 13 knots. Therefore the Contitution had 30 24-pounder guns, the Liverpool only 28.
The screenshots are looking very promising! and the razee model does fit better then the model from the ship of the line.

[Alwyn]

Those figures look encouraging. In case anyone would like to try using Fourth Rate Frigates or look at how I added them (if you are considering adding them to your mod), there's a link (below) to my Fourth Rate Frigate Unlock mini-mod.

To make Fourth Rate Frigates available, I simply used Pack File Manager to:-

In the units_for_factions mini-mod (which is based, with vadik_1st's permission, on a mod by vadik_1st):

1. In the building_units_allowed table, I added these entries:-

Building ID Ref: drydock; naval_hospital; steam_drydock
Effect ID Ref: 4th_rate_frigate_standard; 4th_rate_frigate_standard; 4th_rate_frigate_standard

Spoiler for building_units_allowed table: 

2. In the units_table, I added these entries:

Unit ID: 4th_rate_frigate_standard
Screen Name: Fourth Rate Frigate
Category: naval_frigate
Class: naval_fourth_rate
The next two entries (MP cost early and late): 1490, 1230
The next three entries (turns to build, cost, upkeep): 3, 1810. 450
The next three entries (campaign map movement points, recruitable, voice): 78, True, naval_captain
The next three entries: razee, razee, america_heavy_frigate
Region ID Ref: global
Unit Limit: 0
MP Category: mp_naval_line_of_battle
The remaining entries: True, True, True, 0, False, 0
--

Spoiler for units table: 

3. In the units_to_exclusive_factions_permissions_tables, I added entries such as:-

Unit ID Ref: 4th_rate_frigate_standard
Faction ID Ref: ireland; united_states; [and other IDs of various factions, pretty much selected at random for a quick experiment]
[third column, showing as unknown in my version of Pack File Manager]: True

Spoiler for units_to_exclusive_factions_permissions_table: 

I also edited my Equal Navy mini-mod, to give Fourth Rate Frigates the characteristics indicated above (initially giving them naval_18_pounder guns, to give them 85% of the firepower of an American 24-pounder frigate; subsequently I gave them naval_24_pounder guns instead). In this mini-mod, there are a few other changes, e.g. frigates are the fastest ships, not brigs and sloops; 6-pounder guns have been removed because they were overpowered; long range guns have been removed because they seem unhistorical to me, etc - plus the changes which were already made in v104 of the Equal Navy mini-mod, see the Early American Revolution page (link in my signature) for more information.

I'm testing my mini-mods using the following mods by other people: husserlTW's Empire Total Factions, Pdguru's Briney Ships mod, the Additional Units Mod (AUM) optional graphics pack (but not the AUM itself), Bran Mac Born's Nap Effects mod and p.jakub88's no naval wind indicators mod (for nicer screen shots, plus another 'work in progess' mini-mod (included in the attached pack) which alters some land units. I'm afraid that these mini-mods are probably not compatible with other navy mods or overhaul mods (e.g. Imperial Destroyer) or the big hosted mods (e.g. DarthMod or Imperial Splendour).

[Edit to add] I made a simple Fourth Rate Frigate Unlock mini-mod which is available here.

My other basic guides to modding ETW are listed here.