Historical Starting Navies

[Dansk viking]

Hey IS developers and fans,


I've long wondered why nobody, in any mod that I know of whether for ETW or NTW, has endeavoured to set up the starting navies of the major European powers as historical as possible. Even a mod such as Le montée de l'Empire that has put in so many historical ships has simply given basic starting ships to all nations, with puny amounts of ships even in the 1805 start with the impending Battle of Trafalgar.

Is there some technical reason why this hasn't been done, or gameplay reasons, or just nobody taking the time to do the research and modding work?


I've explored the possibilities of adding more ships to the startpos.esf, and it's clearly doable, though not at all as straight forwards as I'd like (having mostly done RTW and M2TW modding before).

[Keinpferd]

Hey IS developers and fans,


I've long wondered why nobody, in any mod that I know of whether for ETW or NTW, has endeavoured to set up the starting navies of the major European powers as historical as possible. Even a mod such as Le montée de l'Empire that has put in so many historical ships has simply given basic starting ships to all nations, with puny amounts of ships even in the 1805 start with the impending Battle of Trafalgar.

Is there some technical reason why this hasn't been done, or gameplay reasons, or just nobody taking the time to do the research and modding work?


I've explored the possibilities of adding more ships to the startpos.esf, and it's clearly doable, though not at all as straight forwards as I'd like (having mostly done RTW and M2TW modding before).

I recall, in a Youtube Let's Play on an ETW mod called Colonialism 1600 AD, it seemed, all default ships given to each nation at start were unaltered in place including the regular vanilla Frigates, Brigs and Sloops. None of them fit into the 1600 mod theme all too well. The Youtube reviewer regrets that, but it looks like the modders just did what they could within modding confinements. They were certainly aware of this anachronism, for it's even more disturbing and unimmersive to find "modern" looking Frigates in this 1600 setting than in our early ETW 1700 Spanish Succession War atmosphere. If you know how to improve that (and readjust fleet sizes more according to the historic power levels), maybe in the shape of a submod, I would be happy to try that out .

[Quintus Hortensius Hortalus]

Hey IS developers and fans,


I've long wondered why nobody, in any mod that I know of whether for ETW or NTW, has endeavoured to set up the starting navies of the major European powers as historical as possible. Even a mod such as Le montée de l'Empire that has put in so many historical ships has simply given basic starting ships to all nations, with puny amounts of ships even in the 1805 start with the impending Battle of Trafalgar.

Is there some technical reason why this hasn't been done, or gameplay reasons, or just nobody taking the time to do the research and modding work?


I've explored the possibilities of adding more ships to the startpos.esf, and it's clearly doable, though not at all as straight forwards as I'd like (having mostly done RTW and M2TW modding before).

I recall, in a Youtube Let's Play on an ETW mod called Colonialism 1600 AD, it seemed, all default ships given to each nation at start were unaltered in place including the regular vanilla Frigates, Brigs and Sloops. None of them fit into the 1600 mod theme all too well. The Youtube reviewer regrets that, but it looks like the modders just did what they could within modding confinements. They were certainly aware of this anachronism, for it's even more disturbing and unimmersive to find "modern" looking Frigates in this 1600 setting than in our early ETW 1700 Spanish Succession War atmosphere. If you know how to improve that (and readjust fleet sizes more according to the historic power levels), maybe in the shape of a submod, I would be happy to try that out .

We won't change the number of ships each nation has at the start but we'll change which ship each nation has at the start (so much more 74's and not those 'useless' 58's). We won't add more ships because changes to the startpos in that scale are very difficult can result in an unstable campaign (as with RotR 1.1).

[Dansk viking]

I recall, in a Youtube Let's Play on an ETW mod called Colonialism 1600 AD, it seemed, all default ships given to each nation at start were unaltered in place including the regular vanilla Frigates, Brigs and Sloops. None of them fit into the 1600 mod theme all too well. The Youtube reviewer regrets that, but it looks like the modders just did what they could within modding confinements. They were certainly aware of this anachronism, for it's even more disturbing and unimmersive to find "modern" looking Frigates in this 1600 setting than in our early ETW 1700 Spanish Succession War atmosphere. If you know how to improve that (and readjust fleet sizes more according to the historic power levels), maybe in the shape of a submod, I would be happy to try that out .

Yeah, it does seem like almost all mods just run with the default navy setup sadly. I might look more into it, and perhaps a submod would be the path to take.

We won't change the number of ships each nation has at the start but we'll change which ship each nation has at the start (so much more 74's and not those 'useless' 58's). We won't add more ships because changes to the startpos in that scale are very difficult can result in an unstable campaign (as with RotR 1.1).

Fair enough. I totally understand that you don't want to risk destabilising the campaign.

However, I'd be very grateful if anyone with experience in startpos modding would give me some pointers in terms of what to look out for, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel so to speak. I've got lots of modding experience in other games, including the old RTW/M2TW engine, but almost no prior experience with WarScape. I've got the tools set up (DB and ESF editors) so I definitely do want to give it a shot.


EDIT:

So, I easily managed to change the ship type of existing ships (and giving correct crew size etc. by looking at the unit_stats_naval_tables using the DBE). A problem arose (CTD when going back to main menu from campaign) when I duplicated a ship (trying to add an extra 6th rate to the starting Danish navy for example):

I found out that you have to give the new units a unique ID value in the first row of the UNIT tab. It turns out there's a gap (probably intentionally left there) between the IDs of units, so e.g. one would have 335469576 and the following 335469896, leaving the span 335469577-335469895 free. I used 335469577 for the first test one.

Then it appears I also had to give the new unit an unused name for a commander (found in names_tables with DBE) and a ditto for the ship (found in local_en.pack using Pack File Manager).

After doing those things the CTD stopped occurring. So, this is good, and means I'll continue working.

EDIT2:

Disregard that. It appears the CTD persists and is independent of the unique ID and names (unless I've somehow picked already used ones). What prevents the CTD when going back to main menu appears to be moving the added unit out of the army(that is, moving the ship out of the fleet obviously). No idea why. Will have to investigate further...

[Dansk viking]

So, I tried another approach: to start a new game, recruit ships, merge them at sea (leaving them in the port resulted in the ships being stuck when transferring to the startpos) save game, import first the save with ESF Editor, then the startpos, then copy pasting both the ARMY_ARRAY of the new fleet and the CHARACTER_ARRAY of the new captains. To be on the safe side I also edited the DATE in the UNIT_HISTORY to correspond with the starting date and season. Lastly I deleted the CAMPAIGN_SAVE_GAME and saved as a new startpos file which I then replaced the original IS one with.

This seems to be working, and is honestly a faster and easier method than making new units from the ground up. I get no CTD either from going back to main menu, ending turn, or using the units in an engagement. So it seems completely stable as of now. Note that it did CTD when going back to main menu if I tried to move the new ships into an existing fleet and transferring that to the startpos, so perhaps that was were the problem was all along.

The method used here was inspired by this approach to removing fog of war.

[Dansk viking]

I've tested it further and it still seems stable even when doing the procedure several times, and for several factions.

Due to the success I've started compiling a list of all the SoL present in ~1700. Currently I've completed it for all the minor nations and the Netherlands, still missing the UK, France, and Spain (which had a surprisingly small fighting navy at the time apparently). You can see what I've done thus far, and follow the progress here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x79ys9x76b...Lists.ods?dl=0


If you have any comments, suggestions, or corrections, I'm very willing to hear them!


PS. My plan is to do this for the original IS2 first, and if it works out really well, I may move on to RotR if there's any interest for it.

[Quintus Hortensius Hortalus]

Sorry, I didn't have the time to look at your files yet. But I have one question, how do you add the correct number of guns when changing ships to a higher class? For me, after I 'upgraded' a 4th rate to a 3rd rate I still have only 58 guns.

[Dansk viking]

It appears to be tied to the crew number, perhaps specifically the "Gun_Crewmen" found in the unit_stats_naval_tables (the crew numbers are applied in the UNIT and SHIP_DAMAGE_INFO tabs in the ESF, don't know why they're applied twice in both places though... and neither do I know what the fourth value is in the UNIT tab, but it seems to be tied to ship types somehow).

Now that I checked it again, it does appear that the gun count of my upgraded ships doesn't correspond exactly with the ones advertised in the shipyard building browser's recruitment - missing just a couple for the 1st and 2nd rates (upgraded from 5th rates and sloops/brigs). I don't know why this is....