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Post by ccip on Oct 7, 2016 22:02:49 GMT -6
I've yet to play with the research rate setting. How do you find it effects games? The idea of slowing down research is interesting, but without also being able to slow down shipyard construction, it sounds like it'd just result in some very strange things. Yeah, that's something that I'd like to mention for a possible quick patch (or mod?) - it'd be great to slow the shipyard construction too. Otherwise, I think the research rate option works well. The 60% doesn't even feel like 60% but faster, so next game I think I'll be slowing it down even more (maybe to 30-40%) - and not even for playing past 1925, but just in general because I think it makes tech way more valuable and gaps between nations even more obvious in games. I think it actually creates more varied fleets between different nations, and makes things like foreign-built ships and tech trades (for which you have to keep up good relations), or stealing blueprints with espionage(which usually ruins those relations) a lot more meaningful. I hardly bothered with those aspects of the game before, but this game I was actually excited to get trade offers.
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Oct 7, 2016 22:48:13 GMT -6
These arguments just won me over to trying lower tech- my current game is at 90%, and I was thinking it doesn't feel like it is making it more interesting.
Beautiful Austrian ships btw. I love that color scheme.
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Post by ccip on Oct 7, 2016 23:03:40 GMT -6
Credit to Nuno dos Santos for all the colour options!
And I did figure out why it felt faster than 60% - because espionage and trade made up the difference. Which is actually interesting in itself, because I think it says that those mechanics were being under-used in the game before. So a 60% game actually ends up being more of a 75-80% game due to that - a bit slower, but not by very much.
Variable tech does throw some interesting curve balls too - other than those turrets, I also had things like DD development jump around. It took only a couple of years to go from 500 to 600 to 700t, and then destroyer technology basically froze there for the next 15 years, across all nations too. All my old destroyers stayed perfectly relevant and went in for refit. Then suddenly around 1917, 1100t destroyers showed up for everyone (skipping everything in between), and a year later it was up to 1500t. So the combination of slow and variable in research definitely seems pretty neat for me.
[edit]
And after looking through the data files, I haven't found anything on the cost/construction time for docks - looks like that might be hard-coded in. Time for a quick patch suggestion, perhaps?
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Post by ddg on Oct 8, 2016 1:09:43 GMT -6
ccip, I think a lot of what you're seeing isn't actually part of Variable Technology, but the inherent variability of the standard tech system. I certainly had a very similar experience with destroyers long before variable tech was an option. All techs seem to have a chance of being skipped (admittedly, for some this chance is 0%), perhaps to be returned to later under circumstances I don't yet fully understand. It's possible variable tech is exacerbating this, however.
If the reduced research rate setting does what I think it does—reduce budget contributions to research by direct scaling, and only that—there's another reason why 60% rate doesn't feel like it takes 67% longer: Each technology has a defined year, and budget contributions to that tech are reduced geometrically for each year earlier. If variable tech doesn't change the year, then as you proceed through the tech tree, your techs will be getting full contribution more often, as each tech appears later in time, meaning that research should start slower but accelerate more strongly in a reduced research game when compared with standard settings.
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dang
New Member
Posts: 27
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Post by dang on Oct 10, 2016 13:00:19 GMT -6
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dang
New Member
Posts: 27
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Post by dang on Oct 10, 2016 14:05:26 GMT -6
Any chance we could get an accessory for these odd catwalks on the Charlemagne class?
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Post by galagagalaxian on Oct 10, 2016 15:24:14 GMT -6
You mean these kind of elevated/solid framed platforms? A piece for those would be nice, but in the meantime you can probably get away with using some of CCIP's "brush" pieces and or that one pair of accessory pieces that look similar to these. Looking at this photo another set of pieces I can suggest, to go along with the rigging, is a series of lengths of mast in various diameters that we can use to construct our own masts with.
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Post by Nuno dos Santos on Oct 10, 2016 17:27:56 GMT -6
Any chance we could get an accessory for these odd catwalks on the Charlemagne class? You mean something like this: Charles Martel.bmp (300.05 KB) (Or this, in case the above one doesn't work: www.mediafire.com/view/ub4w9u9wj44vvw8/Charles%20Martel.bmp# ) I used, as Galagalaxian said, my own flying bridges accessory, available on each sets acessories, as accessories 20, 21, 22, and 23, with some railings from ccip's accessories too. The medium turrets are also from his acessories. I aimed at making it look like the photo Galagalaxian posted above, extra funnel though.
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Post by galagagalaxian on Oct 10, 2016 18:47:54 GMT -6
Very nice. Obviously what we really need is pieces to make French-style tumblehome hulls.
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Post by galagagalaxian on Oct 10, 2016 21:44:40 GMT -6
Would boats ever be stowed *on* a mid-ships turret? I mean, obviously once the fighting starts they could be shot away no matter where they're fixed, but would the general discharge of firing pop their seams and render them useless? I've never seen any evidence of boats mounted on turrets - I think it's possible, but it was probably not done because of what you mention, and also because there's probably more of a risk of them falling on/interfering with sighting hoods, and because of difficulties launching them from that position anyway - you can't just put it on davits there, it would have to be lifted by a crane or otherwise somehow taken off the turret and lowered over the side. So all of that would make it fairly useless in an emergency, while the ship already has better places to put launches for non-emergency use. I have seen lots of examples of carley floats mounted on the top and sides of turrets - that's what would more likely be put there for emergency rescue purposes. Maybe a silly thing to dig back up, but I finally stumbled on the picture I saw of boats on turrets. A colorized photo of the Spanish Dreadnought Espana:
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Post by Nuno dos Santos on Oct 11, 2016 14:42:54 GMT -6
Very nice. Obviously what we really need is pieces to make French-style tumblehome hulls. Now that you've mention it, I have been trying to make that for some time, but they never look quite right. Not yet at least. With some luck I'll come up with something, and release it with my next set, military green. After that, I'll probably retire from active duty. For a while at least. (as for the boat on top of the turret, of couse it had to be on a spanish dreadnough: they were the smallest ever built, and you can see from the photo, there wasn't that much space elsewere.)
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Post by ccip on Oct 11, 2016 16:45:06 GMT -6
I actually find it depends on the colour scheme used - some of the darker ones seem to give that illusion better. One good way to create that impression, too, is to add some diagonal lines, stagger the portholes, and use sponsons/barbettes over the hull to reinforce the illusion. I think the closest I got is things like this (made before I even created my new accessories): Meanwhile, I've started working on a new project, but one that might take me quite a while, especially since I'm very busy with work lately - but one that sort of goes in the opposite direction of what I was doing before, taking the work out of putting together detailed-looking ships by creating easy superstructure templates. Any guesses as to how many parts had to be placed to create this ship? (hint: it's less than two ) Another example: What I'm hoping to achieve with this is taking out most of the effort involved from where you don't want to spend it - for example, with easy complete superstructures like this, you could put together profiles for all the AI ships with just a few clicks. I'm basing them off real ships as much as possible, making it possible to mix and match fore, aft and mid structures from different ships if you want - or just plop down a whole ship structure and adjust as needed. I've been slowly creating early Russian ship templates, so this might take a while. However, if anyone wants to join or has some good ships to contribute - I invite you to! Just post a .bmp picture of your ship, either with a default background or even better, pure white background, preferably not too complicated, and I'll happily do the rest of the work Nuno dos Santos - A quick question for you: do you have any advice or easy ways to change colour schemes for ships/ship parts? It'd save a lot of time if I could just put together a superstructure once and then automatically convert it to all the other schemes!
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Post by galagagalaxian on Oct 11, 2016 18:08:52 GMT -6
An example of my process Kaiserliche Werft's 1906 Battleship design competition proposal Project 686 "Groß Schlesien", an enlarged version of KW's Project 631 which won the 1904 Battleship competition and became the Schlesien class. Both from a Let's Play/AAR I'm participating in where members of the audience have broken into various German shipyards/design teams (KW, Germaniaweft, Vulcan, Blomm & Voss, etc) and present designs in competitions, with the guy actually playing the game picking his favorite. Teams score points whenever ships are built at their yards and score bonus points for winning competitions and if one of their own designs is built in their yard. The most frustrating part of this 1906 competition is we were STILL limited to just 3 centerline turrets. It really hurt designing a ship when we knew wing turrets are probably just months away and that no matter who won, its probably a near waste to lay down a new class now....
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Oct 11, 2016 20:35:11 GMT -6
Those are amazing, and that AAR sounds like a blast!
How do you make a second dec... ...one of the parts sets must be casemates.
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Post by ccip on Oct 11, 2016 21:58:30 GMT -6
Wow, that's a great idea! We should do something like that here And actually, the casemate guns are part of all the sets (at least all of Nuno dos Santos' sets).
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