Additional Late-game AI Designs mod

[hipper]

Hello,

this mod adds some late-game Designs to the Ship Designer for the AI to use. They are based on various never-built Designs - or in case of the Cls and most DDs entirely fictious - and should make the late-game battles against the AI more enjoyable by giving its designs some more variety and much-needed armor.

BB: N3, South Dakota, No. 13, hypothetical Russian 3x4 BB Design
BC: Lexington, G3, Ersatz Yorck/GK 4542
CL: 12x6' 7000t lr , 6x6' 3000t sr
DD: 3x2 6' 8tt DD, 3x2 5' 9tt japanese 'special Type' DD, 5x5' 15tt DD

Credits and thanks for inspiration go to jma286 for the line drawings of the Lexington and No.13 and to skwabie for the drawing of the G3 from their respective shippacks for Steam and Iron.

Installation: unzip in your RtW folder

Feedback and Suggestions for future inclusions are welcome

Attachments:

aidesigns.rar (17.49 KB)

[JagdFlanker]

you can add ai designs and the ai uses them? i would have been doing that a looong time ago had i known...

[axe99]

Cheers hipper, nice work

[garrisonchisholm]

Wow. Pretty impressive first post!

I will dip my toes slowly into this pool, but if others say the water is warm I'm jumping in!

[cv10]

We've been getting a pretty good number of impressive first posts. I think someone just posted a bunch of new nations as their first post.

Welcome to the forum! It is nice to see our community growing.

[davedave]

I̶'̶v̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶t̶a̶l̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶s̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶1̶9̶3̶2̶ ̶s̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶;̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶t̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶e̶f̶f̶e̶c̶t̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶I̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶?̶ ̶

G̶r̶e̶a̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶,̶ ̶b̶t̶w̶ ̶(̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶I̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶s̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶ ̶s̶h̶i̶p̶s̶ ̶y̶e̶t̶)̶,̶ ̶&̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶k̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶d̶.̶

Ahem. Apologies. Got it working.

Thank you for making the mod!

[garrisonchisholm]

Has anyone any feedback yet on how this affects the game? How often does the game select something from this list? Are the Gangut lay-outs less likely to be seen, and do we still see the ABQXY as a "top end" design? - that sort of thing.

This mod seems ideal for my play-style, but I am innately hesitant to change something that already works and i enjoy. :]

[JagdFlanker]

havn't tried inserting ai ships yet, but if say i play a full game as Italy to 1950, then start a new game as A-H and copy all those Italian ships over to the new save does that mean the Italy ai will likely use my old designs for it's navy?

[hipper]

Aug 31, 2017 18:08:58 GMT -6 JagdFlanker said:

havn't tried inserting ai ships yet, but if say i play a full game as Italy to 1950, then start a new game as A-H and copy all those Italian ships over to the new save does that mean the Italy ai will likely use my old designs for it's navy?

The AI generates ships randomly from the designs (.tdf -files) in the /data/IDes Folder according to the time period. Your save-game folder isn't being used. The Designs are named after class (BB, BC, etx), time period (0-4), Nationality (X=generic, F= France, B= Great Britain etc.) and design number (0- 7). So a BC4F1 ist a battlecruiser design (BC) for late game (4) France (F)  and the second possible design (0= first, 1 = second etc.) You can modify the ship designs with a text editor; they're pretty similar to the ship design files in your save game folder. I first designed the ships in the ship designer and copied the data over to an correctly named .tdf file that I copied from the existing designs. The tonnage of your designs should be smaller than the maximum displacement (max. ca. 42.000 tons), because the AI will modify them - adding more tonnage for even more armor, machinery and weapons - and you'll get error messages if it designs ships with a displacement  over the hard-coded limit of 52000 tons.

[hipper]

Aug 31, 2017 11:17:38 GMT -6 garrisonchisholm said:

Has anyone any feedback yet on how this affects the game? How often does the game select something from this list? Are the Gangut lay-outs less likely to be seen, and do we still see the ABQXY as a "top end" design? - that sort of thing.

This mod seems ideal for my play-style, but I am innately hesitant to change something that already works and i enjoy. :]

The AI selects randomly from the designs according to the time period (0-4) and class (BB, BC, DD etc.) in the /data/IDes folder and builds a class of 2- 4 ships. So if you got 5 possible Designs with the mod there should be a 20% base chance for each design being chosen. Sometimes the AI also uses designs from earlier time periods. The ABQXY design still exists but I havent seen the Gangut Layout in the late game myself. In my test game the british fleet consisted of 5 N3s, 1 ABQXY, 1 AQY 3x4 and 2 ABXY BBs. The BCs were 5 Lexingtons and 3 Mackensens. The US built 7 3x4 AQY BBs, two south dakotas and 3 ABQXYs. Its BCs were mostly Mackensens. Some Screenshots:

[garrisonchisholm]

...wow. I am really impressed. This is a corner of the game that - to my knowledge - none of us had looked at. Bravo good sir. Also thank you for explaining the mechanism for selection, as a G3 launched in 1912 would imply a bizzarely forward thinking architect.
I am incorporating this into my next text game, and have something to look forward to.

[cv10]

How does one go about creating these files?

[hipper]

Sept 1, 2017 8:39:38 GMT -6 cv10 said:

How does one go about creating these files?

1) Design the ship you want in the ship designer and save it. Find the design in your save-game folder and open it with a text editor( Notepad++ or similar).

2) Copy a .tdf file from the data/IDes folder and save it somewhere else. Rename the file according to your plans, for example to CL4X1 for a late game generic light cruiser. If you want to add new designs you should look how many designs there are already for a time period and choose the next higher number (Example:if there is already a CL4X0 and a CL4X1 you need to name the file CL4X2 and so on).

3) Now open the copied .tdf file in a text editor. You can copy the data from your saved design into the .tdf file, but you need to change or delete some of the lines. The .tdf file is almost identical to the ship design file, but it doesn't use the EDL, Name and EnemyClassName lines and has a 0 for the BuildingNation = and Nation= entrys. If you study both files the differences should be easy to see. Save the file.

4) Drop the .tdf file in your /data/IDes folder. Start your game. If you have a save game in the correct time period you can auto-generate a ship from the correct class and you should eventually see your design with some small changes appear.

[garrisonchisholm]

Okie-doke, I think something is amiss Herr hipper . :] I have installed this for my most recent play-through, and I have seen no advanced designs and it is now 1942. Super heavy ships are still either ABQXY or Ganguts.

I wasn't sure where to unzip it, so I unzipped it in THREE places; NWS/RTW, NWS/RTW/RTW, and NWS/RTW/DATA.

What is the proper location, and what should the file look like when unzipped? It will just be a bunch of ships, correct?



Ok, never mind.  It is amazing what one can do if they actually OPEN folders.  

They belong in NWS/RTW/iDES.  I will copy them over there for my next game...

[dizzy]

Is this compatible with skwabie's 18"+ mod?

Thanks!