Originally Posted by
George LeS
The readme is out of date. Sorry.
The tech values were once much higher. There are 2 things going on here:
1. I want shorter battles, for 2 reasons. (a) The way the game works, you can reinforce a naval battle, off Alexandria, from Dover, which is absurd. (b) Now that routing doesn't kill ships, if they rout fast enough, you get few sinkings and far more survivors. Up to a point, higher values do seem to help. But it's not straightforward (I posted on this recently).
2. I dislike the way positioning works, so to alleviate the problem, I have cut cannon values. In theory, at max tech, all ships will have equal values. That means that a big ship (120 guns) will be no stronger than an Indiaman. This in turn means that the table values must be much higher for the big ship. My idea was to work out the total discharge of each ship type in lbs, and use that, along with crew size, as the basis for number of cannon.
But that isn't exactly how it works, because there are hidden factors in the program which move the values further. So, though I started with relative multiplers of 9-5-2-4, I had to change them, upping G's and T's a bit. Experience with the game showed them not fighting well enough. This was also needed because the relative values of the ships changes over time. At start, I have bigs (caravels) being garbage. I really would prefer them to be lights, but that would make them too fast. (It also makes tariff support a bit more costly until the barques show up--a side benefit.) My intention was that galleys would rule at 1st, transports would become powerful when Carracks show up (T's in my game, not B's--again, speed was decisive here), and bigs not counting for much until Galleons.
It's kinda sorta working, but not so well as I'd like. And I don't exactly test, I kind of play/test. I'm not constituted to do either, purely. Every game is stopped for tweaks. The closest I come to true testing is taking POR, 1433, and trying to use every exploit to explore & colonize as fast as I can. I hope my changes will slow that enough. (But I think you are more interested in the navies, as opposed to the explorers' side of RM.)
And of course, help yourself.
EDIT: another version will be out tomorrow, but the glitches fixed don't affect naval combat, anyway.
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