Post by bcoopactual on Feb 14, 2017 12:55:11 GMT -6
Hello everyone. I have noticed that some forum members have suggested that the game (or more properly RTW-2) support delaying introduction of dreadnoughts to extend the early portion of the game and I also noticed that a few forum members have remarked that the research rate pulldown menu doesn't correlate exactly to how long techs take to research. i.e. a 50% research rate doesn't take roughly twice as long to research through the tech tree that 100% does. Part of that is it appears that tech selling/buying and stealing are unaffected by the research rate. The major contributor I believe though is the date listed for each tech in the ResearchAreas.DAT file in the Data Folder. That date acts effectively as the "historical date" that that tech was invented. If you try to research too far ahead of that date i.e. it's 1902 and you are researching a tech that has a date of 1906, then your research points generated per turn, for that particular tech, gets throttled down by one half or more. In fact, I made a test game where I tracked the RP's accumulated for each tech each turn for about 4 years and then skipped ahead to check some other milestones through 1910 and I determined that in the ASW area where the first tech is a 1907 tech, I didn't accumulate any research points at all until January 1905 in game. Further testing determined that this only applies to the first tech (the level 0 tech) in the Research Area so in the standard game it only applies to ASW. I changed a level 9 tech to 1950 on a 1900 turn, set the game to research that tech in the savegame file and still accumulated research points on it at a significantly decreased rate.
{The other thing that the date does is actually accelerate research if you get past the date and it's not done. For example, if it is 1908 and you start a 1906 tech, you will actually receive bonus RP's in that tech until it is researched. That is why a 50% research rate doesn't take twice as long to get through the tech tree as a 100% research rate does. At 50%, you will quickly fall behind the listed dates and the game starts providing bonuses to the RP's for those techs to try to get caught up. In the standard game, the throttling and bonuses depending on where you are with respect to the listed date is a mechanism the game uses to help poorer nations keep from falling too far behind richer nations in the tech race.} [Edit - There is a question of whether this is actually true or if I misunderstood some built in randomness. I'll try to confirm and delete this one paragraph if necessary]
The other number in the ResarchAreas.DAT file that would be very useful to specifically change how fast a tech is researched is the number that precedes the tech number. Here is a snip of the ResearchAreas.DAT file.
The dates are obvious, they are the first number listed after the name of the tech. The other number I'm going to talk about is highlighted in the Ship Design Area (Area 6). It is the second to last number before the tech description. (The last number before the description is the tech ID number that the game uses to assign bonus techs to nations in the BNAT.DAT file. Not every tech has a unique number though, some of the ID numbers are used for more than one tech but that's a discussion for another day)
This highlighted number is the multiplier that determines how many RP's need to be accumulated in the tech before it is researched. That number multiplied by 20,000 is the number of RP's needed. So a 3 means 60,000 RP's, a 15 means 300,000 RP's, etc.
I shared the test game I mentioned above where I tracked the RP's for each turn with ddg and he's the one who figured out what this number did.
So, how can this information be used?
Well, first of course, make a copy of any file you plan to modify and keep it in a separate location so you can restore the game to normal if you get wonky results.
If you want to eliminate submarines from the game to remove any chance of sub-spam you can probably do so by changing the date for the level 0 tech in submarines (Pressure hull) to 1950 or whatever and none of the nations (who all start the game researching all of the level 0 techs) will accumulate RP's in submarines and subs won't be buildable in the game. You would probably want to do the same to the level 0 ASW tech so you are not wasting RP's later.
You could probably delay dreadnought introduction by modifying the year listed for the Three, Four and Five-or-more centerline turret techs. You would have to change all three in case a nation skipped one and landed on a later tech.
You can also slow down individual techs by making their date later in the game so that RP's accumulated towards them are throttled down. Or you could modify the multiplier described above so the game needs more points to complete research in that tech for all nations. If you want to delay triple and quadruple turrets for example you could double or triple the multiplier for each (you would have to get the regular and improved techs for both in case the regular triple or quad turret tech gets skipped by a nation).
A couple of notes with changing the multiplier. This is essentially the same as changing the research rate at the beginning of the game except that you are doing it for individual techs instead of all research. So if you double the modifier but don't change the research date you may find that it doesn't slow you down as much as you thought it would. Also, if you make it a ridiculously high multiplier you could essentially freeze research in that area for any nation including yourself that starts to research that tech. It's also possible that while you are stuck on that tech, another nation may have skipped it and be researching the other techs in the area at normal rate leaving you in the dust for areas that have gradual increments like fire control or damage control.
Also, keep in mind that what you change in the ResearchAreas.DAT file affects all nations in the game equally and I believe it will also affect games already in progress if any nation has not already researched those modified techs so I wouldn't make changes to the ResearchAreas.DAT file until you finished all previous games.
I hope this information is helpful for players that want to tweak their own games. Please be careful making modifications. I don't actually make these changes myself when I play the game so I can't speak for any long term game effects. If you get any bugs or freezes or crashes after this then change the files back to the originals and attempt to repeat the results. If you don't get them then obviously the problem was the modified file so we don't send the developers on any unnecessary bug-hunts.
Also, I reviewed the EULA and I don't think I'm violating it by sharing this information. If I am wrong I apologize and the thread can be deleted and I would of course accept any sanctions. I'm not trying to upset anyone or undermine the work the developers have put into the game, I'm just trying to give players who are interested in a little micromanagement the ability to modify the game to make it more fun for whatever style they want to individually play.
{The other thing that the date does is actually accelerate research if you get past the date and it's not done. For example, if it is 1908 and you start a 1906 tech, you will actually receive bonus RP's in that tech until it is researched. That is why a 50% research rate doesn't take twice as long to get through the tech tree as a 100% research rate does. At 50%, you will quickly fall behind the listed dates and the game starts providing bonuses to the RP's for those techs to try to get caught up. In the standard game, the throttling and bonuses depending on where you are with respect to the listed date is a mechanism the game uses to help poorer nations keep from falling too far behind richer nations in the tech race.} [Edit - There is a question of whether this is actually true or if I misunderstood some built in randomness. I'll try to confirm and delete this one paragraph if necessary]
The other number in the ResarchAreas.DAT file that would be very useful to specifically change how fast a tech is researched is the number that precedes the tech number. Here is a snip of the ResearchAreas.DAT file.
The dates are obvious, they are the first number listed after the name of the tech. The other number I'm going to talk about is highlighted in the Ship Design Area (Area 6). It is the second to last number before the tech description. (The last number before the description is the tech ID number that the game uses to assign bonus techs to nations in the BNAT.DAT file. Not every tech has a unique number though, some of the ID numbers are used for more than one tech but that's a discussion for another day)
This highlighted number is the multiplier that determines how many RP's need to be accumulated in the tech before it is researched. That number multiplied by 20,000 is the number of RP's needed. So a 3 means 60,000 RP's, a 15 means 300,000 RP's, etc.
I shared the test game I mentioned above where I tracked the RP's for each turn with ddg and he's the one who figured out what this number did.
So, how can this information be used?
Well, first of course, make a copy of any file you plan to modify and keep it in a separate location so you can restore the game to normal if you get wonky results.
If you want to eliminate submarines from the game to remove any chance of sub-spam you can probably do so by changing the date for the level 0 tech in submarines (Pressure hull) to 1950 or whatever and none of the nations (who all start the game researching all of the level 0 techs) will accumulate RP's in submarines and subs won't be buildable in the game. You would probably want to do the same to the level 0 ASW tech so you are not wasting RP's later.
You could probably delay dreadnought introduction by modifying the year listed for the Three, Four and Five-or-more centerline turret techs. You would have to change all three in case a nation skipped one and landed on a later tech.
You can also slow down individual techs by making their date later in the game so that RP's accumulated towards them are throttled down. Or you could modify the multiplier described above so the game needs more points to complete research in that tech for all nations. If you want to delay triple and quadruple turrets for example you could double or triple the multiplier for each (you would have to get the regular and improved techs for both in case the regular triple or quad turret tech gets skipped by a nation).
A couple of notes with changing the multiplier. This is essentially the same as changing the research rate at the beginning of the game except that you are doing it for individual techs instead of all research. So if you double the modifier but don't change the research date you may find that it doesn't slow you down as much as you thought it would. Also, if you make it a ridiculously high multiplier you could essentially freeze research in that area for any nation including yourself that starts to research that tech. It's also possible that while you are stuck on that tech, another nation may have skipped it and be researching the other techs in the area at normal rate leaving you in the dust for areas that have gradual increments like fire control or damage control.
Also, keep in mind that what you change in the ResearchAreas.DAT file affects all nations in the game equally and I believe it will also affect games already in progress if any nation has not already researched those modified techs so I wouldn't make changes to the ResearchAreas.DAT file until you finished all previous games.
I hope this information is helpful for players that want to tweak their own games. Please be careful making modifications. I don't actually make these changes myself when I play the game so I can't speak for any long term game effects. If you get any bugs or freezes or crashes after this then change the files back to the originals and attempt to repeat the results. If you don't get them then obviously the problem was the modified file so we don't send the developers on any unnecessary bug-hunts.
Also, I reviewed the EULA and I don't think I'm violating it by sharing this information. If I am wrong I apologize and the thread can be deleted and I would of course accept any sanctions. I'm not trying to upset anyone or undermine the work the developers have put into the game, I'm just trying to give players who are interested in a little micromanagement the ability to modify the game to make it more fun for whatever style they want to individually play.
_(edited)_Screenshot_(739).png?width=180&height=180&fit=bounds)