Couple of modding questions

[NormS3]

Hi folks and esteemed modders. Thanks in advance for any help offered and all the great work that you have done to this point. I have a couple of questions.

1) Is one able to make a class of ships up? For example stock does not have AMCs properly represented, I have read that various attempts to make them out of Cls, PCs, ect. But is there a way to make an AMC class?

2) There is an armor value in the device screen, if say I raised the value of the T-34 or other heavier tanks, would they preform more on a historical record?

3) For the armor value in the aircraft screen, I know that value of 1 means self sealing tanks and only a couple have value of 2 to show heavily armored, if higher numbers were used would that help to slow bloodiness of air to air combats?

Thanks again

[el cid again]

The pioneering work was done by CHS. We have continued with it in RHS. CHS made some AMCs MLs - so they can lay mines. We do that too. But to get code to make them aggressive like real AMCs - we made "ultra light cruisers" of them - calling them CLs. Both flavors can also carry aircraft. I think there may be one or two other flavors as well.

IF you use the armor on the device screen - it will apply to ALL units that get the device - and so it may mess up some other unit. That is the main issue. The other one is - we don't know exactly how armor is used - or if it might be used twice if we put it on the device and on the unit?

An armor value of 1 does not really mean "self sealing tanks." That is just a convention. Pretty much it is "armor = 1, no armor = 0" - a yes no field. We also use a special case "Sturmovik armor = 2" and "Later Sturmovik = 3". Stirling would = 2, but it was wrongly in the game - not a PTO plane. Whatever armor means - it pretty much means a lot - it is not mm like other armor fields. Inches?

[NormS3]

Thanks for responce. Guess that was kinda what I was expecting. I had been modding my commerce raiders as DMs and Q ships as PGs with a few CLs mixed in. (pretty sure that I got that idea from you[:)])

Guess I was wondering if anyone had modified the ship type folder by adding a new class (I think it is the third ship folder under the Art folder). Been thinking of doing that, but I did not want to damage anything with my impulsiveness.

Too bad about the armor on device screen, I have already added levels kinda like the aircraft, going with theory of ultra light (recon/armored cars) get a 1, light armor (most japanese/early war)gets a 2, medium (shermans and the like) gets a 3, heavy gets a 4 (T-34), ulta heavy gets a 5 (other russian models/Pershings). To date they seem to act the same, so I might play with higher levels, or just wait til AE.

Aircraft armor- Yeah i understood that it did not really mean self-sealing, but I somehow got the notion that the amount of armor equalled the number of hits that could be avoided in A2A.

Guess I will keep playing around with the editor til I kill game or find the balance that I am seeking.[8|]

[Nikademus]

Aircraft "armor" basically is a modifyer that plugs into a formula to determine whether an aircraft gets damaged or destroyed so the higher the number the more likely the former will occur. Its not exactly straight-foward (because its a still a formula and there are randoms in it) but its essentially linear in nature. Raising DUR along with armor can produce more "durable" aircraft but be warned that raising DUR too far triggers a bug that impacts aircraft servicability levels.

"armor" for warships is straightforward because the value is compared directly to the pen value of device weapons during combat resolution. Armor for land devices is abstract because it plugs into a formula. In Tank vs. Tank "tests" (only pitting tanks vs each other) the default values do allow greater survivability for the better protected vehicles but is independant of the odds calculation during combat resolution. What this means is that regardless of the armor value of the tanks, if a successful attack is conducted (which are heavily influenced by unit disruption and fatigue) and a tank unit forced to "retreat" your going to suffer losses regardless of the armor value you give the individual tank "device". In other words, don't expect "Steel Panthers" type detail from the land combat resolution. Its more abstract.

[NormS3]

Great! Many thanks.

I did not know that about air or land armor. I do believe that I will continue to experiment on them a bit more. Of course if it was all as easy as the ship armor, we wouldn't need help from little green men[:D]

Thanks again

[NormS3]

Sorry forgot to ask if you have used armor values higher than 3 for your aircraft?

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: Norm3

Sorry forgot to ask if you have used armor values higher than 3 for your aircraft?

I experimented with it but found that by itself, in order to get a substantial alteration from stock required values much higher than a 1-2 point increase in armor. For my mod i ultimately combined armor value 2 with higher DUR + reductions in aircraft device values all in combination to produce a less bloody result. (armor 2 that is only for planes equipped with armor/self sealing) By themselves.....small changes to both DUR and armor value do little to impact the overall formula for A2A resolution. Treespider created a very interesting spreadsheet that plugged in the values and gave an "estimated" kill value result. It was a estimate based on how the game works but it showed clearly how changes in one or more variables only impacts the kill value in small terms.....for example changing a kill result from 1.33 to 1.21 if you changed one variable, say armor from 0 to 1.

Similar to how Gary Grigsby's old "Kampfgruppe" used to come up with kill values.

[NormS3]

Thanks again.

Maybe I'll play around with moving the armor value up about 20 and see waht happens.

Hey thanks to all you have done this kind of reasearch and have been so willing to share. Wish I could find things a little easier when searching the forum.

[&o][&o][&o]

[Dili]

In Tank vs. Tank "tests" (only pitting tanks vs each other) the default values do allow greater survivability for the better protected vehicles but is independant of the odds calculation during combat resolution. What this means is that regardless of the armor value of the tanks, if a successful attack is conducted (which are heavily influenced by unit disruption and fatigue) and a tank unit forced to "retreat" your going to suffer losses regardless of the armor value you give the individual tank "device". In other words, don't expect "Steel Panthers" type detail from the land combat resolution. Its more abstract.

I am interested in getting further in this info . So how the game factors AFV's in battle resolution? It obviously makes sense that disruption gives losses when some unit is forced to retire: damaged and imobile vehicles are lost to the enemy. But to achieve that disruption is AFV armor taken into account?

Also how works air to ground(including heavy(30mm and over) aircraft guns strafing) or artillery diruption Vs armor?

[NormS3]

Oooooohhh!!!1

Did not even think about air Anti-tank weapons, guess I will have to play with those and find a balance there too.

Thanks alot Dili!!![:D]

Basically you saved me figuring out my own dumb self somewhere down the line.[8D]

Good question, hope that smarter people can answer it

[Nikademus]

I am interested in getting further in this info . So how the game factors AFV's in battle resolution? It obviously makes sense that disruption gives losses when some unit is forced to retire: damaged and imobile vehicles are lost to the enemy. But to achieve that disruption is AFV armor taken into account?

AFV "armor" factors into device survivability but is not directly related to the generation of modified combat odds.

For example. If you have two equal sized AFV units, one equipped with JS-III tanks, the other with Type 98A Japanese light tanks. The fact that the JS-III devices have superior values in defense and offense doesn't automatically mean they win because in the end, the values plug into a combat formula that factors in many other variables. If say, the JS-III unit fails in it's attack (0-1 odds), it will end with heavy disruption which in many cases would allow the enemy unit to get 2:1 or better odds if it immediately counter-attacks. The forced retreat will then cause automatic losses.

Does this mean the values are meaningless. A resounding NO. Outside of "forced retreat" which causes any unit to lose a % of it's devices destroyed/disabled the JS-III unit tends to lose very few AFV's due to it's heavy armor rating. The Type89's on the other hand, even in victory (2:1 odds) tend to suffer many times greater destroyed/disabled because they have far lower armor and anti-armor values.

But in the end, other variables will override these indiv stats because the land combat is considered "abstract", it doesn't assume JS-III's are directly fighting Type 89's, only they are sharing the same battle which involves many other elements (usually) and variables.
Also how works air to ground(including heavy(30mm and over) aircraft guns strafing) or artillery diruption Vs armor?
[/quote]

[Nikademus]

I found the link to the thread that discussed this. Be sure to read the whole thing however, especially the test I ran at the end of it. The thread can be confusing because the original poster was saying that his tests showed that "a tank is a tank is a tank" in WitP while my test sought to better isolate tanks to better see if a case of "generic" applies.

While the tests did show how device stats tend to get buried within a combat formula, and that WitP "abstractly" resolves battles based on many more factors than device attributes, when comparing specific damaged/disabled between tanks of highly disparate values in terms of defense and offensive strength, there was a noticable difference. So while final modified combat odds were not impacted.....losses/disablements were.

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[NormS3]

that's a great help Nikademus! I truely appreciate your work twice over now. Looks like I need to do far less work than I thought[&o][&o][&o]

[Dili]

Thanks Nikademus. And i must say while i liked more detail in combat i am mostly in agreement with WITP way.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

Aircraft "armor" basically is a modifyer that plugs into a formula to determine whether an aircraft gets damaged or destroyed so the higher the number the more likely the former will occur. Its not exactly straight-foward (because its a still a formula and there are randoms in it) but its essentially linear in nature. Raising DUR along with armor can produce more "durable" aircraft but be warned that raising DUR too far triggers a bug that impacts aircraft servicability levels.

".

There is a similar effect from high aircraft Max Load. I created the Me-264 for Nemo - and he didn't like it because of the high loading - which ate too many supply point on maintenance. He then had me create variants of the G5N. Ultimately he didn't use them - where as I got rid of the Me in favor of them - and he went back to the Me - just modifying its load. The plane got phenomenal range by carrying vast amounts of fuel - but this makes it impractical to use in numbers - which Nemo wants. [Germany never planned more than 60 - before attrition - they were to be neusance raiders and long range recon platforms - the former role to force disproportionate Allied costs in response - which surely would have happened] Anyway - be advised - max load can trigger massive supply requirements.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

ORIGINAL: Norm3

Sorry forgot to ask if you have used armor values higher than 3 for your aircraft?

I experimented with it but found that by itself, in order to get a substantial alteration from stock required values much higher than a 1-2 point increase in armor. For my mod i ultimately combined armor value 2 with higher DUR + reductions in aircraft device values all in combination to produce a less bloody result. (armor 2 that is only for planes equipped with armor/self sealing) By themselves.....small changes to both DUR and armor value do little to impact the overall formula for A2A resolution. Treespider created a very interesting spreadsheet that plugged in the values and gave an "estimated" kill value result. It was a estimate based on how the game works but it showed clearly how changes in one or more variables only impacts the kill value in small terms.....for example changing a kill result from 1.33 to 1.21 if you changed one variable, say armor from 0 to 1.

Similar to how Gary Grigsby's old "Kampfgruppe" used to come up with kill values.

As already explained, I use aircraft armor as almost a yes no thing - 1 for armor and ss tanks - 0 for not - with the exception of the exceptional sturmovik. I used durability for the rest of the effect - so there is a great difference between plane types and sub types in this respect. We let empty weight of the plane, number of engines, the presence of armor and/or SS tanks, the structure of the plane itself (is it wood? all metal? composite?) and then number of pilots be factors in durability - and then this is multiplied by the constant 2. That means that armor ends up being used more than once - once as armor and once in the durability value. This system results in a good deal less attrition than stock - but also very nice RELATIVE attrition between plane types. It is not pure - because maneuverability, speed and firepower also are factors in relative attrition.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Dili

In Tank vs. Tank "tests" (only pitting tanks vs each other) the default values do allow greater survivability for the better protected vehicles but is independant of the odds calculation during combat resolution. What this means is that regardless of the armor value of the tanks, if a successful attack is conducted (which are heavily influenced by unit disruption and fatigue) and a tank unit forced to "retreat" your going to suffer losses regardless of the armor value you give the individual tank "device". In other words, don't expect "Steel Panthers" type detail from the land combat resolution. Its more abstract.

I am interested in getting further in this info . So how the game factors AFV's in battle resolution? It obviously makes sense that disruption gives losses when some unit is forced to retire: damaged and imobile vehicles are lost to the enemy. But to achieve that disruption is AFV armor taken into account?

Also how works air to ground(including heavy(30mm and over) aircraft guns strafing) or artillery diruption Vs armor?

In the WITP system 'damaged' mean "worth half as much" - not lost.

[Dili]

I have wondered if more damaging air guns and more aircraft armor would somewhat make us able to have more degrees in airplane armor also making anti-ship strafing more efficient.

[el cid again]

Certainly the latter. I have 37 mm, 57 mm and 75 mm guns - also rockets which are misnamed guns with ROF = 1 - and they are very powerful strafers.

Nemo likes fighter bombers - and I worked up a whole bunch of them - from which he picked several for Empires Ablaze. We have a smaller set in RHS - including one of the versions not mass produced in EOS family scenarios (Ki-45 II).

I don't see how it relates much to armor - but it surely affects firepower. Curioiusly - and similar to IRL - very heavy cannon are not a great boon in fighter vs fighter combat. Moderation seems to be a virtue: large numbers of MG, or quad 20 mm cannon seem to be about the best weapon to bring down other aircraft in this system - and that may also be true IRL. The exception might be bomber killers - and the jury is out on that - not enough data to be sure yet. But I am somewhat skeptical it will be very noticable. OTH for STRAFING - you DO notice the big guns.

[afspret]

I've experimented adding some RN, RAN & RNZN AMCs to a mod I'm working on and designated them as CLs as well, mainly because they still had transport capabilities (if in a fast transport TF), which they loose if classified as any other type of warship. The problem I encountered is when the RAN ones were sunk, they respawned as USN cruisers. It was kind of not right looking at the ship availability list and see a US CA named Kanimbla and a CL named Manoora!