MOD RELEASE Semi-Historical AI Designs Update(4/21)

[seawolf]

This mod has been down since the summer for maintenance, but I think its ready for reuploading.

Latest Version is V1.6
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Download instructions are included inside


This mod entirely revamps, replaces, and expands DDs, CLs, CAs, Bs, BBs, BCs, CVs, and CVLs across all time periods, adding or changing 445 templates.  Most of these designs come from my historic legacy fleet mods. 

Almost all of the in game designs are based off of Historical Ship designs, with the following changes
1.  Turret armor and belt armor increased in cases where ships were under-armored (See British BCs)
2.  Some speeds increased for slow ships or decreased for really fast ships (See Japanese CVs)
3.  Aircraft Capacity increased for most carrier designs
4.  Some gun caliber changes (17" late game ships instead of 16")

How this mod affects gameplay:
1.  Especially in the early years, AI ship layouts will be better (IE no 3 turret BBs)
2.  Across the entire game, AI ships will be larger, more powerful, and with less weaknesses
3.  AI Battleship design will increase displacement more rapidly than stock, meeting or surpassing player designs.  Expect to face 60,000 ton ships around 1921, as well as heavier ships in the late game.
4.  AI aircraft carriers will be much more able to hold their own, with 100 aircraft or more starting in the 1930s, a number of armored carriers, and the removal of some non-sensical 40-60 aircraft CVs
5.  The game includes many designs specific to each nation.  Expect to see British armored carriers, American standard battleships, and many other designs that will be prominent in each nations fleet.
6.  The AI will start adding AA in the late 1910s in the mod, compared to small loadouts in the mid 1920s, and full AA loadouts in the 40s from the stock game
7.  AI CLs and CAs have many of their design flaws fixed, such as short range, cramped accommodations, and other weaknesses.  They also tend to carry heavier gun batteries
8.  AI and autogenerated Fleets will no longer contain illegal designs

How this mod interacts with AI ship mods
1.  In general, this mod will make the game harder, with larger and better ships in the late game, and super battleships being introduced earlier, both compared to stock and other mods.
2.  This mod is mostly compatible with other mods, but you will need to choose which one has priority, by overwriting the files of one with another.  Note that this only applies to small percentage of ships in the mod, and most use different files

One final note:
As a result of the massive increase in ships size to its historical level, this mod will break the 1920 auto-generator, unless you install the attached file that increases dock size in the 1920 start

Feel free to leave any questions, comments, suggestions, or bug reports in this thread.


Pictures
Late 1920s battleship

Late Game super-battleship

[tornado1555]

Hello! (Soon to be) First time player of RTW2 here, looking around for some initial mods. Anything that expands a base game like this is an impressive work, and I'm assuming it's will be of good quality considering your other mod entries and your willingness to withdraw a mod if it's causing problems somewhere. I might use this mod for my first playthrough but I don't want to entirely lose the chance of more historical results occurring by WWII [with the ship classes from that period of time].

Also, I've got a concept idea to pitch (assuming it's not in the game): If displacement limitations are in effect from treaty, perhaps a nation's maximum docksize should fall gradually or convert to something. This might be hardcoded but in case it isn't I figured I'd throw it out there with my appreciation for quality mods such as these by yourself.

Thanks again!

[seawolf]

Jan 17, 2021 15:34:38 GMT -6 tornado1555 said:

Hello! (Soon to be) First time player of RTW2 here, looking around for some initial mods. Anything that expands a base game like this is an impressive work, and I'm assuming it's will be of good quality considering your other mod entries and your willingness to withdraw a mod if it's causing problems somewhere. I might use this mod for my first playthrough but I don't want to entirely lose the chance of more historical results occurring by WWII [with the ship classes from that period of time].

Also, I've got a concept idea to pitch (assuming it's not in the game): If displacement limitations are in effect from treaty, perhaps a nation's maximum docksize should fall gradually or convert to something. This might be hardcoded but in case it isn't I figured I'd throw it out there with my appreciation for quality mods such as these by yourself.

Thanks again!

Thank you!

Eventually I want to add more preview pictures, but most of the historical WWII ships are in the game, like Iowa, North Carolina, Littorio, Bismarck, Lion, Richelieu, Yamato, etc, and the carriers in this mod are, in my opinion, much more accurate to real life than the base game.  Smaller ships like KGV and Scharnhorst are included, but moved to an earlier era.  The super-battleship in the preview is actually an AI modified design of what will be Montana in my WWII mod.

As to the second point, unfortunately that's hardcoded, but I'm sure the devs would take it as a  suggestion.

[tornado1555]

If I get acquainted a bit with the game I'll probably put the suggestion forward. One more question I have is: Does a lower research speed cause more gradual use of the templates? As an elaboration, would I see certain ships later on if I restricted dock size [via save game editing, which I can do at a basic level] or research rate?
Either way it's likely that I'll want to go with this mod because it assumes a lack of the Washington Treaty and that's good for a base game sandbox where the treaty might not happen.

[seawolf]

Jan 18, 2021 3:37:56 GMT -6 tornado1555 said:

If I get acquainted a bit with the game I'll probably put the suggestion forward. One more question I have is: Does a lower research speed cause more gradual use of the templates? As an elaboration, would I see certain ships later on if I restricted dock size [via save game editing, which I can do at a basic level] or research rate?
Either way it's likely that I'll want to go with this mod because it assumes a lack of the Washington Treaty and that's good for a base game sandbox where the treaty might not happen.

Yeah, I'd say that's the biggest change this mod makes, is changing mid-game ship development to what it would be without the WNT.

Its my understanding that lower research speeds slow down progression of templates, but dock size does not.  For example, if a 60,000 ton template is chosen when the AI has a 56,000 ton dock size, the ship will shrink to 56,000 tons before the AI produces it.  However, if the AI chooses that same 60,000 ton template when it has a 30,000 ton dock size, it will simply ignore the dock size and build a 60,000 ton ship.  This had to be done (In the stock game) so the game doesn't break on the relatively simple AI design format.

[tornado1555]

I see, and that's interesting. As I wait for 1.25 I've been wondering about battle variety, having read about its limitations, and I have seen a reference to a program from RTW1 [which I did not find, back when I played the game] that one can use to create battles [as in battle templates].

Maybe I could perhaps gradually add battles to possessions / areas to increase variety for players (though that might be a task too monumental to produce results for some time). I'd have the same starting position as with other battles so that one could not tell whether it was a new type of battle. Have you heard of this program?

[tornado1555]

I want to note that I'm still very much looking forward to trying my first playthrough out with this mod and would love to give feedback as I initially explore the game mechanics. It will be interesting to see the AI build and use your designs. Can hardly wait!

[w2c]

So I'm curious. I tried a few other design mods and ran into issues where the AI was building ships they neither had the dock size, nor the tech for. I see what you say about the dock size in your answer above, but I'm assuming you've tried to balance these designs to scale with what the player will be building assuming a natural progression of techs and dock size increases? Or will this likely have the same issues those other mods have based on game limitations and I'll run into 20k dreadnaughts long before anyone even has 20k dock sizes or the tech necessary to build them? Because if you've managed to work around the game limitations so it scales well then I'll definitely use in my next playthrough!

[seawolf]

Feb 16, 2021 22:31:42 GMT -6 w2c said:

So I'm curious. I tried a few other design mods and ran into issues where the AI was building ships they neither had the dock size, nor the tech for. I see what you say about the dock size in your answer above, but I'm assuming you've tried to balance these designs to scale with what the player will be building assuming a natural progression of techs and dock size increases? Or will this likely have the same issues those other mods have based on game limitations and I'll run into 20k dreadnaughts long before anyone even has 20k dock sizes or the tech necessary to build them? Because if you've managed to work around the game limitations so it scales well then I'll definitely use in my next playthrough!

That's a stock thing, but it's possible as the player to match the AI dock size progression.  Just don't pay too much attention to the AI dock size in game, it doesn't really matter.

[w2c]

Well my issue with it was that they weren't even just exceeding their own dock size, they were blowing past mine. The best ships I was putting out at the time were barely over 20k while theirs were 24k+ from that mod and included weapons systems that weren't available to anyone yet meaning that no matter what I did I couldn't match the kinds of ships they put out. That's the main thing that turned me off to that other mod which wasn't really their fault because as you said it's a stock issue and I'm not sure if there's anything mods can do to avoid it. :/ Really sucks because I'd love for them to build better designs but I don't want them to be completely unreasonable either.

[seawolf]

Feb 17, 2021 10:10:18 GMT -6 w2c said:

Well my issue with it was that they weren't even just exceeding their own dock size, they were blowing past mine. The best ships I was putting out at the time were barely over 20k while theirs were 24k+ from that mod and included weapons systems that weren't available to anyone yet meaning that no matter what I did I couldn't match the kinds of ships they put out. That's the main thing that turned me off to that other mod which wasn't really their fault because as you said it's a stock issue and I'm not sure if there's anything mods can do to avoid it. :/ Really sucks because I'd love for them to build better designs but I don't want them to be completely unreasonable either.

This is from the early dreadnought era, correct?  In this mod you basically have to build docks every year to keep up for at least the first two decades, because that's the historical progression of size.  AFAIK the AI is still fully limited by guns and tech, but I might be wrong.

[w2c]

I'll give it a try with my next playthrough to see how it works out. I like the mods you put out so I have little doubt it'll be the best I can hope for considering game engine constraints.

[w2c]

seawolf 1 more question. I'm uncertain how this mod plays with your 1900 start date mod. You've made reference to the 1920 start date and I assume it was built specifically for that?

[seawolf]

Feb 22, 2021 14:05:56 GMT -6 w2c said:

seawolf 1 more question. I'm uncertain how this mod plays with your 1900 start date mod. You've made reference to the 1920 start date and I assume it was built specifically for that?

It's designed for use in both stock starts and all of my Historical Starts.  It has ship designs going all the way back to 1900, so it plays well with that start.

[seawolf]

Updated to V1.5
Features:
Full changes to every AI ship design (DDs,CLs,CAs,BCs,CVLs,CVs,BBs)
Strengthened AI ship designs by fixing some flaws(Like unarmored heavy secondary's that commonly flashfire)
Fixed overweight legacy designs
Fixed some tech issues
Added anti-aircraft guns to AI designs when they become available(Usually they would have less than a dozen until the forties)