Vokarya's Workshop: Units

[Vokarya]

Ship Reconfiguration Part IV: Nuclear Ships Part I

There are two separate phases of Nuclear Ships: the Modern Era ships and the Fusion ships. I'm going to cover the modern ships first. Here, the benchmark previous-era unit is the Battleship at 96 strength. That makes the multiplier 96/64. This is a 1.5x modifier before adding in the ships' bonuses against diesel ships.

Ship | Old Strength | Diesel Bonus | Calculated Strength | New Strength
Supercarrier|50|15%|86.25|100
Stealth Destroyer|80|15%|138|130
Missile Cruiser|85|15%|146.625|150
Fast Battleship|98|20%|176.4|180
Littoral Combat Ship|110|25%|206.25|200

So this recalibration makes this first round of nuclear ships stronger than any diesel ship. The Missile Destroyer is also available at this tech level with 90 Strength, but it is intended as an anti-submarine ship. I raised the Supercarrier's strength a little because I like the nice round 100. The Supercarrier is defensive only so the exact strength can be pushed up a little. This also puts it a touch above the Battleship but it is still risky to use an unescorted carrier.

The one thing that the Supercarrier really needs is a speed bonus. The current speeds for Carriers are way too low at 5 (Carrier)/6 (Supercarrier)/8 (Fusion Carrier). Compare this to 7 (Battleship)/9 (Fast Battleship)/11 (Fusion Battleship) and 8 (Cruiser)/10 (Missile Cruiser)/12 (Fusion Cruiser). I am going to raise Carrier's speed to 6, Supercarrier to 9, and Fusion Carrier to 11. It's slower than the small ships but on par with the battleships.

The other thing that I found that does not work is putting an intercept chance on a stealth ship. I actually dug into the source code and found that when calculating the best interceptor, it does not count a unit that is invisible to the attacking air unit. This even applies if there is another unit nearby that can see the stealth unit. As an example, I set up a situation where I had a Fighter based in a city, with an enemy Stealth Destroyer and Transport nearby and my own Stealth Destroyer adjacent. I cranked up Stealth Destroyer's intercept percentage to 500% for this test. An airstrike mission from the Fighter was able to damage the enemy destroyer, but the enemy destroyer could not intercept the Fighter. So the Stiletto Boat, Stealth Destroyer, and Fusion Destroyer all lose their intercept chances.

 

[Vokarya]

Ship Reconfiguration Part V: Nuclear Ships Part II

The Fusion ships have two separate benchmarks that I want to recalculate for. I want to compare them to both the Battleship (at a new strength multiplier of 96/64) and the Littoral Combat Ship (at a new strength multiplier of 200/110), then average the two and round off.

Ship | Old Strength | Diesel Bonus | Calculated Strength 1 | Nuclear Bonus | Calculated Strength 2 | Average Strength | Final Strength
Fusion Transport|60|50%|135|0%|109.09|122.05|120
Fusion Carrier|75|40%|157.5|20%|163.64|160.67|160
Fusion Destroyer|110|50%|247.5|25%|250|248.75|250
Fusion Cruiser|130|50%|292.5|25%|295.45|293.98|300
Fusion Battleship|150|50%|337.5|25%|340.91|339.21|350

These numbers fit the patterns I am trying to establish. The Fusion Transport and Fusion Carrier still need to be escorted. The Fusion Transport is vulnerable to any of the earlier nuclear warships and the Fusion Carrier can be defeated by a Fast Battleship or Littoral Combat Ship.

I also did a ship-by-ship analysis of abilities. There are still abilities that need to be trimmed or modified. I mentioned some of these before, but the Fusion Destroyer needs some trimming. Not only do the "intercept aircraft" and "defend against sub" abilities not work because of the stealth, but also this ship should not deal collateral damage. I would like to reserve collateral damage from water units specifically for Battleships. In regular BTS, the Missile Cruiser has collateral damage because it upgrades from the Battleship -- it is basically the only Modern Era heavy warship. AND has the Fast Battleship and Fusion Battleship, and the Missile Cruiser has enough abilities already. So I'm trimming collateral damage from the Missile Cruiser and the Fusion Destroyer, but I did decide to go back and give a limited amount of collateral damage to the Dreadnought. It's only max 50% and 3 units, but I think it's a good level.

Also, the Fusion Destroyer needs to have a metal requirement. Industrial Era and later warships all have a requirement for both a metal and a fuel, until the Fusion ships come along. Transport ships don't require a metal and Fusion ships don't require a fuel, but the Fusion Destroyer should have something. It's not big enough that I am going to demand Durasteel, but Aluminum or Durasteel should be sufficient. Aluminum is the general proxy for high-tech modern metals.

Beyond that, the Fusion Transport should not have a withdraw chance and the Fusion Carrier should not be invisible. I want these units to be somewhat vulnerable. They can shrug off enemy ships that are a couple eras behind in tech, but they need to be protected from ships of the same tech level.

 

[Vokarya]

Another thing I discovered doing this recalibration is that it is no longer necessary for Helicopters to have a penalty against water units. Helicopter strength is not changing, so these units' strengths are outmatched by the warships available at the same time.

• Helicopter is 55 Strength in the early Modern Era. The diesel warships of the late Industrial are in the 80+ range.
• Gunship goes up to 80 Strength in the middle Modern Era, but the nuclear warships have triple-digit strength.
  
• Hybrid Gunship has 115 Strength in the early Transhuman Era, but that is still less than the warships of the late Modern.
  
• Dropship is 150 Strength, but is at the same tech as the Fusion Cruiser with 300 Strength.

 

[Vokarya]

Ship Reconfiguration Part VI: Submarines

Submarines are probably the hardest ships to recalibrate. The Strength scores are strange. The first thing I did was to recalibrate each ship individually against all the other ship classes and average out the result. Some submarines have stats that are out of line with the surface ships surrounding them and therefore need to be adjusted.

Submarine

• Starting strength 35, +15 after Rocketry
• +100% vs. Wooden Ships, multiplier 20/32: effective strength 43.75 (62.5 with Rocketry)
  
• +50% vs. Steam Ships, multiplier 60/48: effective strength 65.625 (93.75 with Rocketry)
  
• +0% vs. Diesel Ships, modifier 96/64: effective strength 53.96 (75 with Rocketry)
  
• Not counting Nuclear Ships here as I expect Submarine to be totally outclassed.
  
• Average strength: 53.96 (77.08 with Rocketry)
  
• Final strength: 60, 75 with Rocketry

This looks right. Submarine will be dealing with Destroyer as its primary enemy. Destroyer is 45 Strength, +50% vs. Subs so the Destroyer has 67.5 which gives it the edge. After Rocketry the Sub has strength 75 which returns the edge to the Sub. The Missile Destroyer is available very close to this point and it is strength 90, +50% vs. Subs so it will win.

Attack Submarine

• Starting strength 80
• +100% vs. Wooden Ships, multiplier 20/32: effective strength 100
• +50% vs. Steam Ships, multiplier 60/48: effective strength 150
• +0% vs. Diesel Ships, modifier 96/64: effective strength 120
• +0% vs. Nuclear Ships, modifier 200/110: effective strength 145.45
  
• Average strength: 128.86
• Final strength: 130

The Attack Submarine is going up against Missile Destroyers. The edge goes to the Destroyer at effective strength 135, but this should be close enough. Furthermore, the Attack Submarine has such a larger edge over the basic Submarine that the +50% bonus is no longer needed.

Missile Submarine

• Starting strength 70
• +200% vs. Wooden Ships, multiplier 20/32: effective strength 131.25
• +100% vs. Steam Ships, multiplier 60/48: effective strength 175
• +50% vs. Diesel Ships, modifier 96/64: effective strength 120
• +0% vs. Nuclear Ships, modifier 200/110: effective strength 145.45
• Average strength: 147.75
• Final strength: 100

I'm stepping in and lowering Missile Submarine's strength to be more suited to its proper role as a boomer rather than a generic nuclear sub. You can use a missile sub as an attacker in desperation, and it can pick off transport ships like any other sub, but it is not meant to go toe-to-toe with enemy surface units.

Stealth Submarine

• Starting strength 110
• +200% vs. Wooden Ships, multiplier 20/32: effective strength 206.25
• +100% vs. Steam Ships, multiplier 60/48: effective strength 275
• +50% vs. Diesel Ships, modifier 96/64: effective strength 247.5
  
• +25% vs. Nuclear Ships, modifier 200/110: effective strength 250
  
• Average strength: 244.69
• Final strength: 170

Stealth Submarine's base strength was way out of line for its era placement. It looks to me like a Transhuman Era unit that somehow slipped into the Modern Era. Its effective strength is enough to break just about any pre-Fusion ship. 170 unmodified strength is enough to beat Missile Cruisers and Missile Destroyers, but not Stealth Destroyer (effective strength 195) or Littoral Combat Ship (strength 200).

Fusion Submarine

• Starting strength 120
• +200% vs. Wooden Ships, multiplier 20/32: effective strength 225
• +100% vs. Steam Ships, multiplier 60/48: effective strength 300
  
• +50% vs. Diesel Ships, modifier 96/64: effective strength 270
  
• +25% vs. Nuclear Ships, modifier 200/110: effective strength 272.73
  
• Average strength: 266.93
• Final strength: 280

The original Fusion Submarine was strong enough to match up evenly with the Fusion Battleship. I don't want that level of strength on a submarine. 280 means the Fusion Cruiser (300 strength) escort and the Fusion Destroyer (effective 375 strength) hunter get the edge, but anything less advanced gets destroyed. I am considering bringing Fusion Destroyer down a little, but its primary niches are hunting submarines and fighting other stealth ships.

 

[Vokarya]

One more thing about Submarines is that we need to lower the base withdrawal chance for the later subs. According to the old RoM_2.92_changelog.txt file, there is a potential infinite loop that results when a unit gets more than 100% withdrawal chance. The only promotions that grant withdrawal chance to subs are the Flanking line. Getting the entire Flanking line gives +40% withdrawal chance, so I think we should cap the base withdrawal at no more than 50%.

What I am going to do is this:

• The regular Submarine gets its withdrawal chance lowered to 30%. This gives the other subs some room for improvement.
  
• All other submarines have a base withdrawal chance of 50%.

 

[Vokarya]

I was looking at ship requirements in detail for a side project and I noticed some very small holes that I want to patch.

• Ironclad: The Ironclad is kind of a curiosity. It upgrades to Destroyer, but in the probably extremely rare situation where you have Coal and Iron but not Steel (maybe you only built one Ironworks and just lost its city), Ironclad would appear on the build list even though it is effectively obsolete once the ocean-going steam warships appear. However, the Ironclad's resource requirements match up exactly with the Battlecruiser. I am going to add an Ironclad -> Battlecruiser upgrade path and a <ForceObsoleteTech> for the Ironclad at Industrialism.
• Destroyer: The Destroyer can be currently fueled by Coal or Oil Products. I am going to cut it a little slack and allow it to also be fueled by unrefined Oil.

 

[<Nexus>]

I just received this bug report in my CoM thread and I thought you might be interested in it also:

i can build helicopters, tank and heavy tank when i dont have acess to oil products, meantime i cannot build light tank, because it require oil products

 

[Vokarya]

I just received this bug report in my CoM thread and I thought you might be interested in it also:

How modular is your code? I have found that sometimes unusual things happen with modular code or if you don't code things the right way. Examples:

• I was experimenting with a module to add additional building prerequisites to warships. It worked very well except that it completely erased the units' cargo capacity. Copying the XML code for the cargo into the module restored them.
• If you specify a unit group of a particular size, but don't specify enough models, the game cycles through the remaining models to fill up the group. I set up a group of 5 with 1 of model A, 1 of model B, 1 of model C, and 0 (supposed to be 2) of model D. I wound up with 2 A's, 2 B's, and 1 C as the game went back to the beginning to fill up the groups.

I ran a quick check in AND and I lost access to tanks and helicopters as soon as I removed access to Oil Products. I find the easiest way to test access to manufactured resources is to put the resource on the map and put a Fort on it. There aren't any improvements that can specially tap manufactured resources, but a Fort can tap anything because it acts as a city.

 

[<Nexus>]

Well, at first I thought that it was just a missing requirement issue but after checking the xml I saw that everything is set up properly.

 

[Vokarya]

I am looking at the strength ranges of units and I noticed that Hybrid Tank is showing up way too early. Its only tech requirement is Modern Warfare. The original model for this unit is the T-95 which only began development in 1988 and ultimately canceled in 2010. As a unit, it is both faster and stronger than the Main Battle Tank that is closest in technology. I am going to move the Hybrid Tank all the way up to Superconductors. This gives Superconductors a third trick but still leaves Modern Warfare with 3 units: Gunship, Modern Marine, and Minigun.

 

[Vokarya]

Also as I said before, I would like to trim special abilities off of units that don't really need them. I especially want to avoid unit strength penalties. I think these create "gotcha" situations and I don't think those are very good for the game. So here are some ability removals and some unit reworks.

Bazooka: Currently this is Strength 45 with +75% vs. Tracked units and -50% vs. Gunpowder units. I can see what this is trying to accomplish but I don't like the penalty. In regular BTS, the Anti-Tank is one of the weakest Industrial units still intended to see direct combat. (The Explorer is always buildable, even with Future Tech, but its Strength is so low that it doesn't count.) Anti-Tank's 14 Strength is even less than Cavalry, but its effective +125% bonus vs. Armored units (+100% innate along with the Ambush promotion) means it beats Tanks (effective 31.25 vs 28) but not Modern Armor (strength 40). I'd like to rewrite the Bazooka so that it has a single baseline stat along with a matchup bonus.

• Lower base strength to 32
• Increase bonus vs. Tracked to 100%

This means Bazooka is effective Strength 64 vs. Tracked units, enough to beat Heavy Tank (Strength 60) but not Main Battle Tank (Strength 72). At only 32 Str, it loses to any other Gunpowder unit, although it's a close match with Modern Grenadier's 34.

Anti-Tank: The same deal as the Bazooka, except that I'm not perfectly sure what the base Strength should be. I'm looking at 55 with +100% vs. Tracked, and lowering Modern Armor to 100 and Hybrid Tank to 90. This means you would have to use another unit type to deal with enemy Anti-Tanks.

Anti-Aircraft Gun, Anti-Aircraft Halftrack: Both of these units have a -25% vs. Tracked units that I don't think is necessary. The AA Gun doesn't appear until Automatic Weapons which is very close to Mechanized Warfare, and at only 29 Str, still loses to Early Tank. The Anti-Air Halftrack appears after the regular Tank appears and its 50 Str beats the Halftrack's 45. I actually would like to give the Halftrack a bonus of +25% vs. Helicopters as the basic Helicopter's Strength of 55 and +50% vs. Tracked beats any other early Modern unit.

Early Tank: Has a similar -50% vs. Tracked that I don't think is necessary. I think the Early Tank should be able to beat the Armored Car in a direct fight. All other Tracked units defeat the Early Tank in turn, with even the Light Tank being Strength 41 to Early Tank's 36.

 

[<Nexus>]

Do you plan to do something about Siege units? In my CoM thread it was reported that the AI is building too many of them compared to other units.
I made quick calculation:

Ballista to Cannon: Their strength/cost ratio are around 12; 13; 15; 21 and 19.
But then it greatly drops at Artilery to 9; 9 and around 7 for the rest.

I was thinking of something like this:
Ballista to Cannon: decrease their strength by a few points (~25%)
Artillery and the rest: Increase cost +50% or even +100%. Not sure.

Since you are so good about these balancing things I am curious about your thoughts.

 

[Vokarya]

Do you plan to do something about Siege units? In my CoM thread it was reported that the AI is building too many of them compared to other units.
I made quick calculation:

Ballista to Cannon: Their strength/cost ratio are around 12; 13; 15; 21 and 19.
But then it greatly drops at Artilery to 9; 9 and around 7 for the rest.

I was thinking of something like this:
Ballista to Cannon: decrease their strength by a few points (~25%)
Artillery and the rest: Increase cost +50% or even +100%. Not sure.

Since you are so good about these balancing things I am curious about your thoughts.

At this point, I think we would be better with increasing costs over lowering strength. I think it's important for unit strengths to be at the numbers they are.

 

[Vokarya]

I have a few remaining ideas that I am thinking about adding as modmods for anyone to play with, but there are some that are so simple that I think they may be better incorporated into the main mod. One of them is requiring a Shipyard or its upgrades in order to build warships. This would not apply to work boats or transport ships. It just doesn't completely fit that a brand new city could build a battleship or carrier out of nowhere. It does mean that you would have to jump through several hoops before you could build a true navy, as you would have to first build an appropriate port, then the shipyard, and then start building warships.

We would have to retool the Shipyard building line as well, because the various abilities don't fit together very well. I do not like combining a requirement with a bonus. The choice should be between spending the hammers on the bonus or on the actual units.

What do you think?

 

[<Nexus>]

I have a few remaining ideas that I am thinking about adding as modmods for anyone to play with, but there are some that are so simple that I think they may be better incorporated into the main mod. One of them is requiring a Shipyard or its upgrades in order to build warships. This would not apply to work boats or transport ships. It just doesn't completely fit that a brand new city could build a battleship or carrier out of nowhere. It does mean that you would have to jump through several hoops before you could build a true navy, as you would have to first build an appropriate port, then the shipyard, and then start building warships.

We would have to retool the Shipyard building line as well, because the various abilities don't fit together very well. I do not like combining a requirement with a bonus. The choice should be between spending the hammers on the bonus or on the actual units.

What do you think?

I had similar thought but we could do this for most units: Aircraft needing Airfield or better, to take off from the ground; mounted units needing Stables to keep the horses, etc. And what is the right level of infrastructure? Are Factories also needed for tanks and modern ships?
Basically I don't feel like it's worth bothering but that's just my opinion.

 

[Vokarya]

I had similar thought but we could do this for most units: Aircraft needing Airfield or better, to take off from the ground; mounted units needing Stables to keep the horses, etc. And what is the right level of infrastructure? Are Factories also needed for tanks and modern ships?
Basically I don't feel like it's worth bothering but that's just my opinion.

That was one of the issues I had too. This game is the view from high overhead, after all, and what level of development are we not seeing? There's a spectrum from no-requirements-at-all, such as your basic defensive unit, all the way up to the most complex like the mecha units or the various nukes. I'm wondering where these mechanical units really do fall.

 

[Vokarya]

There are a few other things that I am still not happy with. One of them is the massive number of bullet point adjustments on cavalry units. I can see the idea of trying to more carefully model the effects of terrain on cavalry units, but I don't think it is actually necessary. Here is what I found out:

• The attack bonus on flat lands and the attack penalty against cities cancel out.
• The attack penalty onto terrain with features overrides the attack bonus on flat lands. I think this is confusing.
• The net result is that cavalry is better at attacking on flat lands than it is in BTS. It is not better against features with terrains as AND has lowered the feature defensive bonus from +50% to +25%.

The problem here is that cavalry is already strong enough. I compared the base strength of a cavalry unit vs. the typical vanilla defending unit of its time period, dividing eras into 2-3 sub-eras based on the number of techs. This is how cavalry stacks up against defending units in BTS:

Spoiler BTS Cavalry Table :

Era	Attacking Cavalry	Strength	Defending Vanilla	Strength	Ratio
Ancient Early	Chariot	4	Archer	3	1.33
Ancient Late	Chariot	4	Archer	3	1.33
Classical Early	Horse Archer	6	Archer	3	2.00
Classical Late	Horse Archer	6	Archer	3	2.00
Medieval Early	Horse Archer	6	Longbow	6	1.00
Medieval Late	Knight	10	Longbow	6	1.67
Renaissance Early	Knight	10	Musketman	9	1.11
Renaissance Late	Cavalry	15	Rifleman	17.5	0.86
Industrial Early	Cavalry	15	Infantry	20	0.75
Industrial Late	Tank	28	Infantry	20	1.40
Modern Early	Tank	28	Infantry	20	1.40
Modern Late	Modern Armor	40	Mechanized Infantry	32	1.25
Average					1.34

Rifleman includes the bonus vs. Mounted. Cuirassier and Cavalry are so close together that I just skip over Cuirassier.

Spoiler AND Cavalry Table :

Era	Attacking Cavalry	Str	Defending Vanilla	Str	Ratio
Ancient Early	None	0	Slinger	2	None
Ancient Late	Chariot	5	Archer	4	1.25
Classical Early	Horse Archer	7	Archer	4	1.75
Classical Late	Heavy Horseman	8	Archer	5	1.60
Medieval Early	Rider	10	Longbow	8	1.25
Medieval Late	Knight	12	Longbow	8	1.50
Renaissance Early	Dragoon	15	Arquebusier	13	1.15
Renaissance Late	Cuirassier	22	Musketman	20	1.10
Industrial Early	Cavalry	27	Rifleman	32.5	0.83
Industrial Middle	Early Tank	36	Rifleman	26	1.38
Industrial Late	Tank	50	Infantry	34	1.47
Modern Early	Tank	50	Infantry	34	1.47
Modern Middle	Main Battle Tank	72	Modern Infantry	50	1.44
Modern Late	Modern Armor	105	Modern Infantry	50	2.10
Transhuman Early	Hover Tank	150	Bolter Infantry	110	1.36
Transhuman Middle	Plasma Armor	180	Bolter Infantry	110	1.64
Transhuman Late	Plasma Armor	180	Bolter Infantry	110	1.64
Average					1.43

Archer includes the Str bonuses from techs. So the Late Ancient Era Archer is 4 Str because of Warfare tech.

So cavalry is already a touch better in AND than it is in BTS. It doesn't need a further attack bonus. This is enough to say I can remove the flatlands attack bonus and the city attack penalty. I'd like to remove the feature penalty as well.

 

[Vokarya]

One more small tweak. The Rider does not need to have a metal requirement in addition to the Horse requirement. I did a study of all the resource requirements for units and the Rider is the only unit in the light cavalry line that needs metal. The light cavalry units are scouts and skirmishers, not shock troops. The Rider is Strength 10 which means it is already outweighed by Pikemen and by Longbowmen on city defense. That makes the metal requirement another hoop to jump through (a very minor hoop, but still a hoop).

 

[antgeorg1982]

What about field commanders in later games. If you group an army with a field commander you tend to be restricted by the shorter distances they can travel. It feels like field commanders are designed for early to mid games. Would be good to upgrade them through the era's even for a best in range.