Naval Ships Fixes, Suggestions, and Recommendations.

[You_Guess_Who]

1. Spinning Ship Destruction
Some ships wil spin incredibly fast when they are destroyed. Seems that this is caused by R2 ship destruction animation not working as it should in Attila. When I compared between the ships in the models_naval, ships that doesn't spin when destroyed have their "destruction_path" blank. So, I'd say that the easiest way to fix this problem is simply emptying the "destruction_path" of every models_naval (Attila ships doesn't use it too). Here's the list of ships I identified have a critical_destruct_anim.rigid_model_v2:
- egyptian_three
- egyptian_two_halfer
- greek_four
- greek_three
- greek_two_halfer
- pel_three
- persian_four
- persian_three
- persian_two_halfer
- roman_four
- roman_three
- roman_two_halfer
Editing models_naval would need taw's models_naval<=>xml converter. See here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ip-model/page6
and
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...models-editing


2. Dedicated Ramming Ship class
AE should add specialized ramming ship units, using ramming versions of their boarding cousins instead. They should be crewed by weak rowers instead of marines, and have their own unique battle entities with greater acceleration and charging_speed compared to the normal versions. It is frustrating seeing Roman Ships cannot board enemy ships in this build; separating between pure rammers and full boarders would be a good compromise.


3. Overcapacity Octeres
Octeres are overfilled. If Octeres are deployed on battle, there are around 2-3 men standing on the sea, in the center of the map. Reducing the number of men into 230 will rectify this.


4. Dysfunctional Harpax
The harpax isn't working. The harpax keep facing portside, and any ship targeted by the ship will go straight without able to turn or slowing down, ending up slamming into the border.


I check the tables, and I notice that the harpax in the battlefield_engines aren't connected into the harpax projectile in the projectile tables (it uses scorpio missile_weapons instead).


For Harpax to work as it should, it needs a> the projectile used by the battlefield_engine "is_grapple" set to "true", and b> the naval_weapon is a "grappling_engine". A ship shot by a grappling engine shooting non-grapple projectile will go straight uncontrollably at full speed. A grappling projectile shot by an autonomous engine would stop dead in the water, but the engine would not reel in the shot ship closer.


5. Hellenic Factions having Egyptian-styled Octeres
The R2 Octeres model was specifically made for Ptolemaioi faction, and do not look thematically fit to the rest of the Hellenic factions. Either remove them from the roster, or modify the model so it will look more generally hellenic. I am not a modeller, so I cannot help on this, but I know this is technically perfectly possible.


6. Automated Scorpio shouldn't be classed into Artillery Ships
The Trireme, Scorpio is currently classified as Artillery ship, even if the unit's main method of attack is precursor javelins + boarding. The Scorpio used is classified as an autonomous engine which cannot be controlled by the player. I suggest moving this ship into the "Melee Ship" class.


7. Ship Weight Classification
The ships haven't have their weight classifications; every ship is simply "Melee Ship" whereas land units have weight classifications visible in the tooltip, for instance "Super Heavy Shock Cavalry". I check into the naval_units, and all ships' weight are "medium". This is incredibly trivial, but heh, why not.


Also, I notice that since AE works on 1HP system, all Ship and Building HP are divided by the factor of 100. However, seems the team scaled down the mass of the Ships as well in the battle_entities, so entire Octeres can weigh less than 300kg (precisely 292kg). This doesn't effect the gameplay whatsoever though, since the relative mass difference between ships are still the same.


8. Ship Shield Arrays
AE should differentiate the ships for every factions with different shields strapped to the sides of the ships. For example, Roman ships using flat, blank red Principate-era scutum is just lacklustre - they should don Roman Navy's blue oval shields. Ship variants is still variantmodeldefinition files, can be opened with TWEAK (or when needed, PFM and notepad). The trick of editing ship VMD using TWEAK Variant Editor, is by extracting the VMD's off the .packs, and opening it in the Unit Editor via "Load definition" (instead of "Load Uniform") Then you can edit the ship variant just like man, horses, camels, elephant, and the likes.


I hope this helps.

[Petellius]

Just to make you aware the naval stuff is very W.I.P. and we aren't sure where we will take it as yet but I feel these suggestions will help us in the extreme! Thank you

[You_Guess_Who]

I understand. Still a lot to work on, and I shouldn't push you guys on dates, modding is not necessarily fast or easy, I know it.

About the WIPness of naval stuffs, its evident on this build. That's why I wrote this to help.

Peeking into the files; the speed, acceleration rates, and turn rates of the ships in AE interests me on how its well-thought. I hope the same attention and thoughtfullness be applied in the whole naval aspect of AE. The Mediterannean is the center of the their world in their age, after all.

[Petellius]

Sure will be eventually.

[Apio Claudio]

Eh one of my ships started flying after he got destroyed xD!!!!

The naval battles are nice, but as Petilius said it is still a WIP, some ships keep constantly ramming each other throwing most men out of the deck, the ships just ran due to the loss of men. Still better than Attila that had no Ramming of any kind.

Petellius can i ask you something will the Generals have more than one ability, since in Attila generals only have one core ability and most times they aren't useful, at least this is something Rome achieved nicely, since the generals were able to use more than one ability.

[You_Guess_Who]

Still better than Attila that had no Ramming of any kind.

No. Attila got ramming ship.

​http://attila-enc.totalwar.com/#/uni...ib_light_spike

[Apio Claudio]

Oh yeah, i forgot about those. I barely do any naval battles since the ai barely builds fleets. Most barbarians send their naval units, the only few civs that i ve seen building fleets are Aksum and Hymiar and Geats and Jutes. Apart from those i ve never encountered any naval forces. Understandable for historic reasons, but other bars could build some navies, like the picts, caledonians, ebdanians, franks. Regarding history accuracy might not be the best and as an historian and a roman law researcher i don't think they should build any significant fleets, but in the end this is only a game, i would like to see the seas with a little bit more activity than magical transports, i ve no idea why Seha thought magical ships were a thing back in the day. I liked the crusades in Medieval because you could recruit mercenary cogs and go and sack the holy land, but here you just spawn magical transport ships ;p