Working on Naval mod

[Hairog]

I'm working on a Naval mod that tries to address some of the concerns mentioned. So far it's looking good in SCE.
1. Gave some naval units 6+ Zones of Control to cut down on ships zooming in attacking and then disappearing. It seems to be working and gives a purpose and a reason to put out pickets and screening forces. See picture...
2. Increased attack and defensive avoidance dramatically to simulate the hit or miss of meeting in the open ocean.
3. Gave capital ships 2 attacks per turn. Combined with high avoidance this seems to simulate actual damage reports and negates frustration.
4. Planes are deadly against ships as they were historically
5. Gave CV 2 intercepts and 2 escorts to simulate the frantic pace of air ops. They all use supply as well. If you have well supplied carriers you may survive an air attack.
6. Increased spotting zones of CV, CVL, CA and Maritime Bombers to simulate searches and float planes
7. Instituted strength limits...CV-10, BB-10, CC/BC-9, DN-8, CA-7, CL-6, DD-5, MT-5 to simulate how fragile the smaller ships were. Literally hundreds of DDs and CLs were lost in WWII while only dozens of Capital ships were.

I'll post a naval only mod soon for beta testing in SCE and later for SCWW

[Hairog]

And conversely...

[Hairog]

Works in open ocean as well

[Hairog]

Cuts down on hit and run as well

[nnason]

I look forward to this mod.

What does everyone else think about it?

[mroyer]

> What does everyone else think about it?

Very interesting ideas - looking forward to it as well.

[Sugar]

Looks nice, but the main issue is: you can't spot an enemy ship without aircraft, so you'll bump into the enemy, getting surprised, lose your action points, and even can't sink the enemy, because you're blocked by your own ship. If you'd take another approach, you'll bump into the next enemy ship and so on. After enemy`s turn you won't have a fleet anymore. By exceeding the ZoC the only ships which can reach the enemy are CVs and CVLs by aircraft in the shown scenario, reducing naval combat to the question: how much carriers do you have, who`s able to strike first, and will weather allow to launch the planes. Since the question who`s got the most carriers is already answered, Axis` fleets become sitting ducks. Suggestion: let the ships have a spotting range according to their speed (or reversed proportional to their combat value), and skip the extended ZoC.

Next issue: sinking ships in ports by shore bombardement, with minimal losses, because for unknown reasons enemy ships can fire into the port, but you can't retaliate.

[nnason]

ORIGINAL: Sugar

Looks nice, but the main issue is: you can't spot an enemy ship without aircraft, so you'll bump into the enemy, getting surprised, lose your action points, and even can't sink the enemy, because you're blocked by your own ship. If you'd take another approach, you'll bump into the next enemy ship and so on. After enemy`s turn you won't have a fleet anymore. By exceeding the ZoC the only ships which can reach the enemy are CVs and CVLs by aircraft in the shown scenario, reducing naval combat to the question: how much carriers do you have, who`s able to strike first, and will weather allow to launch the planes. Since the question who`s got the most carriers is already answered, Axis` fleets become sitting ducks. Suggestion: let the ships have a spotting range according to their speed (or reversed proportional to their combat value), and skip the extended ZoC.

Next issue: sinking ships in ports by shore bombardement, with minimal losses, because for unknown reasons enemy ships can fire into the port, but you can't retaliate.

You have spotted one of the biggest flaws in Naval combat in SC. However, as a student of Naval combat one only has to look at the roll of naval air and its importance in spotting in the Pacific theater to see how important ground based search and carrier based search is. And then there is D-Day which was a surprise to the Germans who could have been searching the channel. A key point is all BBs and many CAs had sea plans for search and spotting. Another key point is local weather (one hex) could significantly affect search. Lastly as radar got better and more widely deployed during the war at least nearby ships (2 hex) distance would be seen.

So... what to do.
1. As time goes on ships spotting range should be increased by ship type and country in consideration of radar.
2. Weather should not be absolute. Clear weather should not guarantee spotting and fowl weather shouldn't always preclude spotting.
3. Destroyers and light cruisers are scouting elements. The wise admiral who uses them such should not be penalized when they bounce off of an enemy ship. Maybe 50% DDs don't bounce and 25% for CLs don't bounce.
4. Need to think about how to do land based search.

All these changes need to be tested but if they work without unbalancing the game play would be great to get into the official version of SC.

[TheBattlefield]

ORIGINAL: Hairog

7. Instituted strength limits...CV-10, BB-10, CC/BC-9, DN-8, CA-7, CL-6, DD-5, MT-5 to simulate how fragile the smaller ships were.

A variation of the unit strength for a simpler representation of size ratios is also very helpful from the experience with my mod. Unfortunately, the editor engine is still significantly below its potential. From my humble point of view, building up to three "elite" strength points is not urgently needed, and the steady improvement in combat values/combat behavior would be absolutely sufficient on the way to becoming a veteran unit. In this way, editor-reduced "elite" reinforcements could be used to more clearly differentiate sizes in ship and troop organizations. For example: Garrison= 3, Division= 6, Corps= 9, and Army= 12. That would make the (game)world quite different...and would even provide one "elite" strength as an additional reward for reaching the preset highest Veteran score. [8D]

[Hairog]

Here is the first Beta to be tested.

Ignore the loss of Gibraltar for this test. It was getting in the way and was easier to eliminated it than move all the ships.

LINK

ReadMe

I'm working on a Naval mod that tries to address some of the concerns mentioned. So far it's looking good in SCE.

I chose Case Blue because it had lots of naval units already and I added more for testing purposes. Please have at it and give me feedback on what works and what doesn't.

Ignore loss of Gibraltar, it was getting in the way.

Land units can be ignored except for air units... watch out for them.

1. Gave some naval units 6+ Zones of Control to cut down on ships zooming in attacking and then disappearing. It seems to be working and gives a purpose and a reason to put out pickets and screening forces.

2. Increased attack and defensive avoidance dramatically to simulate the hit or miss of meeting in the open ocean.

3. Gave capital ships 2 attacks per turn. Combined with high avoidance this seems to simulate actual damage reports and negates frustration.

4. Planes are deadly against ships as they were historically

5. Gave CV 2 intercepts and 2 escorts to simulate the frantic pace of air ops. They all use supply as well. If you have well supplied carriers you may survive an air attack.

6. Increased spotting zones of CV, CVL, CA and Maritime Bombers to simulate searches and float planes

7. Instituted strength limits...CV-10, BB-10, CC/BC-9, DN-8, CA-8, CL-7, DD-6, MT-5 to simulate how fragile the smaller ships were. Literally hundreds of DDs and CLs were lost in WWII while only dozens of Capital ships were.

[Hairog]

Video of First shot at hotseat against myself.

Part One


Part Two

[nnason]

Hairog,
Keep up the great work!

[seydlitz22513]

Hairog,

For too long now the naval game has been needing a major overhaul, and thanks to your excellent ideas and tweaks, I can finally see light at the end of a very dark tunnel. I really hope Bill, Hubert, and all the Strategic Command design team look very carefully at your superb mod. The naval game cannot be played like the land & Air campaign, naval warfare is a completely different beast altogether.

[Hairog]

If you want to see if we can improve the naval game, we have to test the proposed mods. Download the Mod, and test it. Then leave feedback.

[JagdFlanker]

just finished watching a 30+ hour AAR of SC:WIE which i loved so about to buy the game - apologies if my observations are wrong since i havn't played yet

out of curiosity DDs (destroyers) counter SS (subs) in the game, yet DDs are now sized 6 while no mention is made of changing SS size - are SS are still size 10? Does that make DDs much less effective against SS, or does the 6 sized DDs have the same attack power as a size 10 DD?

[Hairog]

You do understand that this is all for a Mod and not the stock game?

If so than that was a good catch. I have reduced the SS in the mod to 8 and given the DD increased hit points (3) for anti-sub attacks. The CVLs have also had an increase in ASW hit points (6). But this all needs testing.

Historically Subs were sunk by the hundreds along with Destroyers.

[Hairog]

I'm proceeding to mod the 1940 scenario in total using the proposed changes. Please speak up and save me a lot of time and effort if you have come across any problems.

[Emporer]

How did you change the names on units, haven't find this yet.

Cheers

[Hairog]

You do it in the "localization.txt" which is in the folder the campaign is in along with the bitmaps etc. They are all located in the "Campaigns" folder.

Example: Campaigns/1939 World at War/localization.txt

The one for the Naval mod looks like this

#UNIT_ID_35= Bombardment Task Force
#UNIT_ID_36= Strike Task Force
#UNIT_ID_37= Covering Task Force
#UNIT_ID_38= Raider Task Force
#UNIT_ID_39= Recon Task Force
#UNIT_ID_40= Screening Task Force
#UNIT_ID_41= Hunter Killer Task Force
#UNIT_ID_42= Fast Carrier Task Force
#UNIT_ID_43= Wolf Pack
#UNIT_ID_44= Off Shore Squadron

[Emporer]

Ah... ok thnx a lot.

Cheers