[Workshop] Navy Tweaks - Rome 2 Mod

[Daruwind]

Navy Tweaks (Vanilla Rome 2) - Everything about floating wooden stuff in Rome 2

There is plenty of naval overhauls, mods, compilations.. I have tried all of lower mods and after produced one mod with almost all meaningful things. This mod is meant for vanilla game without any complex overhaul mod. If is anything touching ships, then there might be oddities...

Download
Default version
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=270888408
+Increased movement version
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=350476303
((+Realistic ship colors version ))
-suspended

1) Ship Balancing

Transport Class
In Vanilla there are 3 ship types - Light, Medium, Heavy with transports belonging into lights. I´m adding transport class with lower ramming potencial versus other ship classes. Slower ship speeds,turning speeds...

Barbarian Ships
Naval strengths/weaknesses between Barbarian and classical Hellenistic ships. Barbarian now behaving more like a heavier transports. Hellenistic ships are able to ram effectively with harder maneuvering. This is putting Barbarian fleets at disadvantage on open sea battles against Hellenistic fleets. Transport ships are on one hand similar in construction to classical hellenistic ships but lack naval parameters of actual combat ships.

Hitpoint
Ship HPs remain the same as moving this will influence how much damage will ship recieved from artillery (even land artillery..). I manage to balance ramming in corresponding tables so this might be without changes. Barbarian ships also keep original values, their construction is more sturdy in comparison with corresponding Hellenistic ships.

Ignition
Ignition Threshold is way up (1,25x up to 2x) so ships are starting to catch fire a little slower and will not sink afer one fire arrow salvo. Still Ships are from wood and especially smaller ships could still sink pretty quickly under heavy fire.
Barbarian ships have defaul values. Hellenistic ships use increased values bigger ships higher bonus.

Speed
Slower speed for majority of ships, turning speeds, charge distances...together it means slower battle pace which allow player to match AI. It´ s no more ramming click fest. You have to position your ships more carefully. Re-ramming for light ships is causing less damage, for bigger it is harder to manauver.

Campaign speed
Differencies in campaign movement. Heavy ships are the slowest now (3900points), Transports are a little faster (4500) while the light ships being the fastest of them all (5100). In default everything has 4500 points.

Firepot Damage
Fire pot ship damage is increased 2x so they are a little more useful now.

Credits to authors of all lower mods as this mod is based around their work.

Naval Battle Mod

Realistic Land & Naval Battles

Naval Overhaul for Divide et Impera (great inspiration by fellow Hetairos and Sirandrewdrake)

Historical Naval Overhaul Vanilla

2) Roman Harpax
Hexarem ship with Ballista like weapon which is firing instead big harpoon with a rope to pull enemy ships close and board them afterwards. I make it playable as many other mods do, this ship was already in game but was never use by CA. Ship´s parameters are similar to other Assault & Tower Hexarems, so I let the crew be similar firstly with Triarii > Vet. Legionaries > Evocati Cohort as other roman Hexarems. These ships excel in boarding actions but have some limitations. Ships already engaged in boarding will be not pull to you. If there are some collisions of pulled ship and some other factors, the action could fail...There is nothing more I can do here. So better try to catch something alone like quicky moving archers ship around you. Harpax ships have the same multiplayer/campaign cap limit of 1 / 6. What´s more, in custom battle is presented only Triarii Harpax version as Rome could in custom use only Triarii Assault /Tower Hexarem with same 1 ship per battle limit. So I keep it same for Harpax version. In campaign you can recruit them alongside with other hexarems at similar cost.

HOW TO USE HARPAX:
-Use button for Boarding/Ramming action. You need to be in boarding mode (else the ship is behaving like normal ship.) Now you can attack enemy ship manually as the ship doesn´t have "fire at will" as other Missile/Artillery, yet when it´s in range with target ship it will fire harpoon and pull hit ship near so crew can board it after that. Harpax ship will remain static during this operation. Another problem - there is no red circle showing max range of harpoon. From experimenting it looks like archers range. This ship definitely need some skill yet it´s fun to play when you know how. (Check Pictures. There are some taken in short time window to show how it looks like.)
-OR you can ram enemy ships like standart Hexarems...it´s still really big ship.

Gallery

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Operation

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Original idea: Roman Harpax + Melle triremes, Naval walfare realism (credits to Kronuxen)

3) Little fix for Roman Hexarems
In Vanilla campaign Roman Tower Hexarems have campaign cap limit of six ship for Triarii and Evocati crew versions but Veteran Legionaries version has no limit (so clever player could create a lot of them in campaign)... So I set this version to share the same cap limit.

4) Artillery Ships
Crew of artillery ships was considered to be fixed artillery instead of naval artillery and thus the engine disable for them option to reinforce other armies. This small change will change it (Especially good for bigger port assaults leaded from sea where you need new artillery units)

Original idea: Fixed Artillery Ships (credits to crzyrndm)

5) Instant Transport Fleets
Increased the movement point cost of transition from land to sea for all units/agetns. So armies should leave only from ports and will not spawn instantly as fleets. Armies still are able to disembark at all current location back transition back to sea is prevented. So far AI is able to calculate movement correctly.

Original idea: Transports only through ports! (credits to illuminatirex)

6) Autoresolver
Because my mod is lowering stats for transport ships I try to update autoresolver to reflect these changes.

Original idea: Better Naval Autobattle (credits to NiKuTa)

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7) Realistic Ship Colors
This modification will make all ships look in more wooden way. They should be closer to historical reality. This change is available only in particular mod pack.

Original mod: Realistic Ship Colors (credits to Naja)

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8) Sea Sickness
Land units on transport are now subject to special debuff which is lowering their combat statistics (attack,defence,damage).


Original mod: Sea Sickness (credits to Magnar)

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9) Increased Movement Range
For testing purpose this version has 2x Movement points for all ships. It is greatly enhancing CAI´s ability to plan and move army/fleets around. This change is available only in particular mod pack.

Compatibility
- Designed for Vanilla at the moment. Major mods have their own floating stuff all around...
- Any graphical mods
- Any mods that change turns per year, or technology tree changes
- Patch 16.1 + EE + WoS
- Not compatible with other battle overhauls

[ABH2]

It's nice work and as I've said, should be end fully incorporated into Antiqua Imperium. Thanks for the contribution. Despite calling it just a tweak, I know you are pretty thorough on these sorts of things and have taken the naval aspect as far as anyone. Hopefully more people pick up on your work as its always useful stuff.

Just some of the things/goals I have for naval combat in the future, some of which may not be possible and would be beyond the scope of this project:
1. Larger and more diverse ships. The Romans and Greeks built vessels much larger than Hexaremes and were doing so even before the time frame of this game. I would imagine this would be very time consuming and difficult for modellers to pull off.

2. Ships that can hold larger numbers of men. Whether this can be accomplished through animations, models, or what...I'd like to find a way to do this. Not just for transports, but to make naval vessels in general more useful and realistic.

3. Oh, something else - I'd still put the campaign map movement ranges of navies higher than what I think you've set them as. From a realism standpoint, it's accurate. I also found it helped greatly with gameplay and made navies far more useful.

In general, the the fewer turns the AI needs to plan ahead, the more aggressive and capable it is. It's poor at moving large distances because it is bad at planning more than a turn or so in advance.

When I increased land and naval movement points, I found myself getting AI stacks hurled at me. It was never safe for me to move an army or small numbers of units in enemy in territory. I had to scout ahead. I needed another stack. I was also able to attack coastal cities with navies and fought far more (and larger) naval battles.

Most people think more movement points makes the game easier for the player. From experience, I disagree. The AI was greatly improved and it made have to think before I acted.

[Daruwind]

Despite calling it just a tweak

Personal joke on my side....it all started with point 3) - Little fix to the roman Hexarem. Just one value change in the whole DB.....after weeks it ended as total overhaul... :/ That´s happening sometimes...

Just some of the things/goals I have for naval combat in the future, some of which may not be possible and would be beyond the scope of this project:
1. Larger and more diverse ships. The Romans and Greeks built vessels much larger than Hexaremes and were doing so even before the time frame of this game. I would imagine this would be very time consuming and difficult for modellers to pull off.

f men. Whether this can be accomplished through animations, models, or what...I'd like to find a way to do this. Not just for transports, but to make naval vessels in general more useful and realistic

I´m afraid we lack all neccesary things at the moment...

3. Oh, something else - I'd still put the campaign map movement ranges of navies higher than what I think you've set them as. From a realism standpoint, it's accurate. I also found it helped greatly with gameplay and made navies far more useful.

Well, it´s for Vanilla at the moment. For more TPY versions of the game of course the points should be lowered (and increased perhaps) so it is just sort of balancing. After buildings and other things I would like to have "Dresden´s Hardcore mod" which will adress even these things for campaign. But that is far future...

In general, the the fewer turns the AI needs to plan ahead, the more aggressive and capable it is. It's poor at moving large distances because it is bad at planning more than a turn or so in advance.

When I increased land and naval movement points, I found myself getting AI stacks hurled at me. It was never safe for me to move an army or small numbers of units in enemy in territory. I had to scout ahead. I needed another stack. I was also able to attack coastal cities with navies and fought far more (and larger) naval battles.

Most people think more movement points makes the game easier for the player. From experience, I disagree. The AI was greatly improved and it made have to think before I acted.

Honestly that sound interesting..may be it´s reason for Hetairos and DeI having their points so high...I will note it for later testing!

[Daruwind]

Updated to patch 16, no changes made.

[Daruwind]

Added two new version of mod. One with Realistic Ship Colors and second one with 2x Movement Range for all ships.

[Petellius]

Thankyou

[Daruwind]

Thankyou

I´m not done yet with balancing according to your battle mod. ;-)

[ABH2]

Ok, I've take the liberty of updating all three versions you posted (plus an extra version with the @ naming convention). It only really needed the new Pel ships added with WoS added in the new naval_units table (new schema, I mean). I also made the Pel_transports your tm_ships category. All other data was of course copied over from your naval units table to avoid errors. All the other tables should be fine, if I'm not mistaken. Wasn't very hard, and pretty sure that's all that requires changing.

Normal:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/wv...nd_update.pack
2x:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/9e...nd_update.pack
Realistic Ship Colors:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/d0...nd_update.pack

[Daruwind]

Finally updated to 16.1 patch and WoS DLC.