Tiered Naval Construction

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SGTscuba
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Tiered Naval Construction

Post by SGTscuba »

Hi all,

I'd like to propose a tiered system for naval construction. This would have potentially 3 tiers and would provide an easier way of expanding numbers of ships, and providing a way for smaller countries to get on the ladder of naval production. I was thinking of using the tonnage of ships but I think this may be a bit complicated to handle in the game, so maybe it would be tied to particular classes at least for now.

A tier 1 naval production would be permitted to build any type of ship. This yard would take longer to build then current, and cost more. If we could use tonnage, it would build any type of ship.

A tier 2 naval production would be permitted to build up to cruiser size ships. This would use the current production stats. Unfortunately cruisers are considered capital ships which means it would be harder to separate. If we could use tonnage, it would build ships up to 20-25k tons.

A tier 3 naval production would only be permitted to build escort ships and smaller. This would be a relatively cheap, relatively quick to build facility in line with the land fabrication. If we could use tonnage, it would build ships up to 5k tons. This would allow rapid expansion of fleets with escorts, and would represent some of the smaller yards not currently in game.

I think by limited types to particular sizes, it would make it easier to get the AI to focus on building a balanced fleet rather than going capital ship heavy.
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Nerei
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by Nerei »

It would mean that we can have shipyards on the map without everything being a Newport News Shipbuilding or a Hyundai Uslan shipyards clone (yes I am using modern times as examples mostly). That is good as you will find that most shipyards are in fact not capable of building giant battleships or aircraft carriers.

Bangladeshi shipyards would suddenly not be as capable as say modern western or east asian shipyards.

It would mean African, South american and parts of Asia could actually get enough shipyards to be able to build more than 2 patrol boats each year without them suddenly being a rival in shipbuilding to Britain or France.

If done right it could mean that building small ships is easy while building large ships for a blue water navy is hard.

In case anyone was in doubt I very much like this idea.


The issue is it means we have to evaluate all shipyards in terms of their size. For modern times though we can largely do this by looking at satellite photos and huge dry-docks are fairly easy to spot. For the Great War we will probably get quite far by assuming everything outside major European countries, the US and Japan are almost exclusively tier 1.


Tonnage is a good way to limit this. Another is length as that will put a physical restriction on the dry-docks or slipways. They are related though and in any case it will be an abstracted setup.

I am fairly certain the game already allows us to restrict building from building certain types of units however this type classification is fairly broad.
Carriers include everything from Long Island class escort carriers and Thailands Chakri Naruebet STOVL carrier to giants like the US Nimitz and Gerald R. Ford class.
There is also a long way between an España class dreadnought battleship and say Yamato or Iowa class battleships.
A holland class submarine is not exactly close to the size of a soviet era Typhoon either.

How exactly this should be is hard to say as some compromises would have to be made (e.g. where does submarines belong. Is it based on the Holland or Typhoon?).

Still though I would consider it better than having the Israeli shipyards which can technically only build large patrol boats building supercarriers.


One way to do it which would allow more distinctions would be to have the .unit file defining some sort of size for the unit which could just be some abstracted integer (e.g. Iowa is size 5).
The same value could then be used to define how large units a building could build.

E.g. Gerald R. Ford is size 5 as are Yamato class battleships and only tier 1 can build size 5. Chakri Naruebet, España and cruiser sized vessels could be 3 which would be tier 2. Tier 3 would build size 1 which would be small transports and patrol boats mainly although some escort vessels might be small enough.
I would say going for more options than just 1-3 in this case as say a Colorado class battleship could be somewhere between España and Yamato (in this case it could be 4) and at some point you might want to make that distinction.

Also this system could be used to tier ground units in a similar fashion prevent every single central african ground units factory being able produce high-tech T-14 Armata MBT's should their owner buy the design from Russia.


Naturally actually implementing any such system on the map is gong to be a laborious process. However BG could at least initially just let it be a toy for modders and if something good where to be made with it copy it over into the base game.
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Balthagor
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by Balthagor »

I think this is already possible. What a facility can build is bitmasked such that you could create a facility that can produce only certain classes of units. Now that the map editor is unofficially out, it could be done. Been a while since I reviewed the bitmask though.
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SGTscuba
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by SGTscuba »

Balthagor wrote:I think this is already possible. What a facility can build is bitmasked such that you could create a facility that can produce only certain classes of units. Now that the map editor is unofficially out, it could be done. Been a while since I reviewed the bitmask though.
So what your really saying is, this is already modable and all we would have to do is add 2 extra facilities with changing the bitmask and some other parameters? Which bitmask would it be? The need to know more intensifies!!!

I'd probably want to see it done officially, but if we can get some of the groundwork done for you guys, it would be a good start.

Out of interest, is it possible to increase the number of slots each one provides?

I was more thinking of limiting to displacement, given those numbers are already in the game whereas length isn't, but simply settings it to classes might do for now.

I did have the idea of a "capacity" so you could build multiple ships in the same yard as long as it doesn't exceed the capacity, but I think this would quite a big engine change to facilitate this unless we did what Nerei suggested and make them have a size similar to missiles and then use size to determine slots rather than purely facility numbers.
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dax1
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by dax1 »

If you open default.unit with excel in column DS there is "uBuildClassMask"
if you look land production in that column we have 127...it's the sum of: 1(Infantry)+2(Recon)+4(Tank)+8(Anti-Tank)+16(Artillery)+32(Air Defense)+64(Land Transport)=127
other classes:
128 - Helicopter
256 - Missiles
512 - Fighter/Interceptor
1024 - Fighter/Bomber
2048 - Fighter/Multi Role
4096 - Strategic Bomber
8192 - Patrol/AWACS / Recon/Surveillance / Surveillance / ECM/Recce
16384 -Transport / Tanker
32768 - Naval Unit Classes;
65536 - Submarine
131072 - Carrier
262144 - Battleship / Cruiser / Destroyer
524288 - Frigate / Corvette
1048576 - Patrol/Recon
2097152 - Transport/Support
Con forza ed ardimento
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Balthagor
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by Balthagor »

SGTscuba wrote:Out of interest, is it possible to increase the number of slots each one provides?
There is a build cap value, but don't recall how moddable that is...
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Uriens
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by Uriens »

I do remember creating 3 types of factories for my mod. One had only 1 unit production, second 2 and third ... well ... 3. I tested them in game and indeed they had production as intended. I didn't limit them to only one certain type of units but I do remember AI favoring to build the factories with capacity 2.
SGTscuba
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by SGTscuba »

I still think this should be an "official" patch. Make the current naval production the top tier for now, the map can be changed later to add the smaller yards.
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Nerei
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by Nerei »

It probably needs to be official as I got a nagging feeling that as the AI is right now it will just pick a single type of facility either limiting its production capability or blue water capability depending on what it picks.

Also I agree that additional shipyards can be added or exiting ones changed along the way. Mr. Latour already have a spreadsheet and it can just get a page there. Shipyards needs an overhaul anyway as countries like the ROK is missing something like 8-10 shipyards if memory serves me right.
SGTscuba
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by SGTscuba »

Nerei wrote: Mar 04 2018 It probably needs to be official as I got a nagging feeling that as the AI is right now it will just pick a single type of facility either limiting its production capability or blue water capability depending on what it picks.

Also I agree that additional shipyards can be added or exiting ones changed along the way. Mr. Latour already have a spreadsheet and it can just get a page there. Shipyards needs an overhaul anyway as countries like the ROK is missing something like 8-10 shipyards if memory serves me right.
I think all the maps would need to be looked at. Both the UK and France had many smaller yard which would be ideal for building escorts and patrol craft.
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Balthagor
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by Balthagor »

SGTscuba wrote: Mar 04 2018 I still think this should be an "official" patch. Make the current naval production the top tier for now, the map can be changed later to add the smaller yards.
Having multi-tiered naval fabrication would notably increase the complexity of the game. It would also involve a lot of work. Not something we're likely to do at this stage of development.
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SGTscuba
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by SGTscuba »

Balthagor wrote: Mar 04 2018
SGTscuba wrote: Mar 04 2018 I still think this should be an "official" patch. Make the current naval production the top tier for now, the map can be changed later to add the smaller yards.
Having multi-tiered naval fabrication would notably increase the complexity of the game. It would also involve a lot of work. Not something we're likely to do at this stage of development.
I thought it would be easyish judging by what you said if we went by classes rather than a more complex system for now. Maybe something for a expansion?
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number47
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by number47 »

SGTscuba wrote: Mar 05 2018 I thought it would be easyish judging by what you said if we went by classes rather than a more complex system for now. Maybe something for a expansion?
Maybe something for a mod? :P
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Uriens
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by Uriens »

I plan to do some changes to factories for my own mod. I'll do some testing and if i find anything useful i'll post it here. I know that AI for some reason favored factories with production of 2 units but IIRC those factories had similar costs as normal factories do i vanilla SRU. I'll see if i can separate infantry and armor production and how AI responds to those changes.
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Re: Tiered Naval Construction

Post by georgios »

Very innovative idea!

You can also change the given classification from unit types to unit tech levels. For example Land Fab Level 1 can produce only small arms for the foot infantry, not engines for vehicles (Level 2), or big guns for artillery (Level 3). Air Fab Level 3 capable of making jet engines may be found only in USA and Russia...
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