Submarine Warfare Mod

[NP300]

I think many would agree that the naval aspect of cIV is a bit lacking. I personally find the implementation of submarine warfare to be boring. Submarines are invisible but if a ship has the SeeInvisible flag it has 100% odds of seeing the submarine. I find this 100% certainty to be dull. A better way to capture the nature of submarine warfare would be to give ships like destroyers a chance of seeing the subs, say 50%. I think this would make the hunt for subs a lot more fun. If I recall correctly this is how it worked in Civ 2.

I am thinking of using something like the existing SeeInvisible and Invisible flags.

Variable Explanation:

D= DetectInv = DetectInvisible = SeeInvisible
I = Invisible
detectprob = Probability of the sub being seen.
invprob = Probability of sub not being seen.
Evidently: invprob = 1 - detectprob

The following rule could be used:

START

If D - I > 0 then detectprob = 1 = 100%

If D - I < -1 then detectprob = 0 = 0%

Else detectrob = 1 + D - I

END

Comments:

Detectprob represents the odds of the submarine being seen by a given unit. Notice that if SeeInvisible=1 and Invisible=1 then the odds of being seen are 100%. The same is true if both are zero. This is as the game currently exists.

The interesting part comes from different values for D and I. The odds of the submarine being detected are determined by the difference between D and I. If we want a Destroyer to have 50% odds of seeing the sub then D = 1 and I = 1.5.

Now, I also want promotions to improve the odds of destroyers seeing subs and to improve the odds of subs remaining invisible. I might want to create a 10% bonus promotion. So I could have an "anti-submarine" promotion which would modify the D from D=1 to D=1.1. Now the Destroyer's odds of seeing the sub would be 1 + 1.1 - 1.5 = 0.60.

I might also have a promotion for submarines. It may be "invisibility". Then we might have odds of being detected by a destroyer of detectprob = 1 + 1.0 - 1.6 = 0.40.

Anyway, I hope you get the idea. I want the detection of subs to have around 50% odds (or any other percentage). And I further want to be able to modify these odds with promotions.

In addition, I want to give subs bonuses against surface ships, bonuses to destroyers versus subs, and perhaps bonuses versus aircraft. Ideally the "surface ship" and "submarine" categories could be created in a manner similar to that for "melee" units and the like. Then bonuses could be applied to such broad groups.

What I want to know is if any of this can be implemented in Python. I suspect this is not doable with Python and that the SDK will be necessary.

 

[NP300]

Ok, now that the SDK is out, could any of the C++ wizards clue me in as to where is the code that controls whether or not a unit is invisible?

I'm guessing there must be some code that checks both, the "invisible" and the "seeinvisible" flags. The invisibility is determined based on this. If both are 0 then the unit is visible. If both are 1 the unit is also visible. If seeinvisible=0 and invisible=1 then it's invisible, and so on and so forth.