8 march update
fri and sat nights have become my most productive
finished (i think) are the sea units...exhausting as they were. i put in a handful of classes (5 or 6 iirc) for the Lowlands. i also surveyed other midling civs who may be up for some mid-era-to-late era additions; of course, this type assessment (i.e., determining whether specific classes warrant addition) has been done a few times over the years. but there's always the chance we may have overlooked certain minor classes of ships for these midling civs.
i had a few sticking points for these extra naval additions. by this i mean i had to sort of weigh the effectiveness of any proposed class to add against the pre-existing generic sea units. for example, should i have left A-H to the simplistic and generic
torpedo boat-->early destroyer line or do i add in the handful of actual classes of vessels they actually built? more specifically, what differences, if any, do these proposed classes have compared to the generic line? displacement, gun sizes, armor thickness, speed, gun sizes, fire control skill, sea worthiness (blue water?), crew competence, and actual numbers of ships either planned (capital ships only) or built were most of the considerations i had on the table...i mean, in comparison to the generic lines. so the new dd's and cl's that, for example, A-H and Lowlands rec'd all have better stats than their generic counterparts (very slight but still better). it wouldn't even be worth adding if this was not the case
capital ships recieved a more alt history course as i used a pile of 'what if' ships. but the treaty is really what wiped these designs out. so w/ the 'no treaty' aspect of v4.0, all's fair
i have 3 little pet experiments i want to observe during beta testing. the first is the introduction (re-intro from v1.0!) of coastal arty (2 generations).
Coastal Battery: generic "sea" unit, req's iron & Ind II tech, 1A/28D, immobile, 28 Bombard, 1 range, 2 rof, lethal sea bombardment, zone of control, 0 HP bonus (4 hp's as reg, 5 as vet)
Improved Coastal Battery: generic "sea" unit, req's iron & Ind IV, 1A/36D, immobile, 36 Bombard, 1 range, 3 rof, lethal sea bombardment, zone of control, 2 HP bonus (6 hp's as reg, 7 as vet)
both units' costs will be on par w/ BBs and BCs. my fear would be that the AI or even a human would be compelled to build these things in droves. that i would not want...although what i do want would be to have them provide some counter to massing gigantic fleets at the doorsteps of certain coastal cities turn after turn after turn...
these coastal arty units would be destroyed - or engaged in combat - w/ other sea units. so the high D value assigned to them will be against arty shots (ships in port getting hit etc). 28-36 seems about right to me (in connection w/ the same sizes on the BBs and BCs of the era).
now, as a disclaimer of sorts
i should post that the effectiveness of these units will have to be tested in beta. so no guarantee they make the "cut"
it'll boil down to how well (or poorly) they integrate into the exisiting gameplay framework.
below is a shot of the 1st gen coastal arty unit - and of the "Convoy" unit seen off the coast some
this convoy unit has been subbed in for the original "Adv Transport" unit that is in v3.0. it's a 3rd (last) era tech, +2 mvmt over the Steam Transport. now, i want to strip away those extra movement points some b/c almost all transports from this era were sloooowww. and the 6 mvmt they have as it now stands is a stretch (it is fudged a little w/ our 'knots per mvmt pts' chart). so an 8 mvmt for these units was just too much for me to digest. therefore, convoys are a viable alternative imho. they're similar in speed and were historically accurate for the time period, too.
here are some specs on it:
2A/4D, +1 HP (TR is -3), 6 mvmt (same as reg TR), 200 cost (10 for TR), capacity same as TR (4), req's iron & coal, and req's Ind III tech
the gist will be to have a costlier yet similar (capacity-wise) transport system. again, it'll need to be tested some.
the last thing i want to experiment with - and it's probably more radical than the other 2 things - is to introduce a colonies-only "commerce raider" w/ hidden nationality via a single wonder (letters of marque?) it'd be equivelent to roughly a light CL but it could pick off unescorted or lightly escorted TR units...and it'd also get every navy on the map in active pursuit (the AI will hunt to the ends of our civ maps for HN units). so not sure how this'll play out in testing. if it shows benefits to gameplay, i'll keep it. but if it proves not worthy, out it'll go
