Solving the Shore Bombardment issue

[LM+]

In the thread "Shore bombardment bonus?", King of Men suggested that fractional shore bombardment figures might work.

Well, they do. Shore bombardment can apply to any fighting ship, and can range down at least to 0.005. This means that you can easily fix the shore bombardment figures in your game.

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I suspect that shore bombardment figures were supposed to be 1% for each heavy cruiser, 2% for each battleship, and 4% for each dreadnaught. These figures allow Great Power navies to easily have as much or more impact on battles then any possible difficulty setting. If you want things to in fact work this way, then:

1. Go to the folder "victoria/db/units".
2. Open up the file "battleship.txt"
3. Change "shorebombardment = 2" to "shorebombardment = 0.02", and save it.
4. Repeat for "heavy_cruiser.txt" and "dreadnought.txt"

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However, we can go further than this. Based on my judgement of their historical bombardment effectiveness against the shore defences and other military targets of their era, I currently have the following figures for my fighting ships:

frigate: 0.005 (half a point for each unit offshore)
man-o-war: 0.01 (one (1) point for each unit offshore)
raider: 0.005 (half a point for each unit offshore)
monitor: 0.03 (3 points for each unit offshore) - there is now a historically valid reason to build them.
ironclad: 0.01 (1 point for each unit offshore)
light cruiser: 0.005 (half a point for each unit offshore)
heavy cruiser: 0.01 (1 point for each unit offshore)
battleship: 0.02 (2 points for each unit offshore)
dreadnaught: 0.03 (3 points for each unit offshore)


Comments and suggestions appreciated.

 

[King of Men]

Hey, I'm a genius! *High-fives LM+* In fact, we're both geniuses.

 

[unmerged(27576)]

huh what? I plan on building a huge steamer navy... what's this all about!?!?! You nerfing ShorebombarD?

 

[Sir Humphrey]

I released a MOD that solved the issue, but that was some time ago and no longer available.

 

[NikkTheTrick]

monitor: 0.03 (3 points for each unit offshore) - there is now a historically valid reason to build them.
battleship: 0.02 (2 points for each unit offshore)
dreadnaught: 0.03 (3 points for each unit offshore)

Comments and suggestions appreciated.

Battleships and dreadnoughts should have more (or all others less).
Dreadnought armament was a little bit more destructive that monitor's...

 

[MarkShot]

Thanks for explaining how to mod that. I think I'll add it into my configuration until the next patch or VIP fixes it.

I am neither a grog nor a historian, but it seemed to me that the shore bombardment bonus was overdone in the stock game and made a fleet an uber weapon of costal land warfare.

Certainly, the USA's experience in the Pacific in WWII would tend to indicate that bombardment alone is not such an overwhelming force multiplier. The enemy digs in and waits it out and unless you assault them almost immediately, they are still ready to greet you. And given the tremendous blast affect of naval guns, you wouldn't want to be following closely behind a rolling barrage.

Of course, this does bring up one thing ... that the entrenchment bonuses should probably convey a significant reduction in the effectiveness of shore bombardment.

Thanks again!

 

[oxmonsta]

Great work LM+ (and King of Men).

I am inclined to agree with Nikk the Trick in regards to the values for BBs and DNs. Both of these should be greater than for monitors. Sheer weight of shell that these ships could lay onto a target was far greater than for monitors, and their fire control systems were undoubtedly far superior also. Somewhere in the range of 0.04 for BBs and 0.05 or 0.06 for DNs would be my suggestion.

 

[OriginalRafiki]

I released a MOD that solved the issue, but that was some time ago and no longer available.

Why not give it a home at VickyWiki?

Rafiki

 

[LM+]

Battleships and dreadnoughts should have more (or all others less).
Dreadnought armament was a little bit more destructive that monitor's...

I quite agree that Dreadnought armament is more destructive then that of monitors. However, the improvement in capital ship armament was largely matched by ever-improving shore defences and changing protective tactics (like entrenchments, concrete, and by simply spreading troops out).

It's not how powerful the weapon is that matters, but the effect it has. Wooden ships firing iron balls, or shallow-draught iron-clad ships firing primitive shells often had a powerful impact on near-water operations, as great as anything achieved by more modern ships.

Now, an objection might be made that "players will keep their monitors until the end of the game". They should. Think of them as gunboats, and remember that the Great Powers of the late Victorian era had lots of gunboats for good and sufficient reason.

 

[MarkShot]

Okay, I just changed my unit *.txt files and tested with a save game, but didn't see any difference.

(I have no modding experience.) I guess the values for units when they are instantiated in the game are taken from the unit files. So, I will only see a difference if I commission a new unit, correct?

But if I play one of the standard scenarios will the starting units reflect this mod when the game is started?

Sorry, I don't know much about how mods work!

Thanks.

 

[Lotus Lo]

You'd have to go into the save file and search for your nations section 'tag = XXX'. search for 'upgrade' and that will show you what new ships will do. While 'navalunit' ( i think, 'landunit' for armies, either way same section) will show you your naval units and can mod the value there.

 

[MarkShot]

Now, what if I start a new GC? I just started one as Portugal and I had set manowar.txt to have a shore bombardment capability, but I don't see any when I display the unit stats in the game. Am I going to have to edit dozens of files and lines to make this change effective?

I thought I could just edit the unit files?

Thanks.

 

[unmerged(36402)]

that i assume would be because the display rounds to the nearest whole number, so until you get to 0.5 you wont see anything other than 1.
Best thing would be to do a test game and invade someone with a mow next to the province.

 

[MarkShot]

Thanks.

Okay, I now see how it works. It works fine for a new scenario started for the initial units.

Here are my values (they seem okay to me):

Based on a progression of powers of two. Edited
into the unit files. The numbers represent the
actual percentage that will be applied for each
unit present of the given type. Thus, it would take
a fleet of six dreadnoughts to have approximately a
%100 impact. So, naval power can swing battles, but
not in an overwhelming way.

frigate: 0.000
man-o-war: 0.005
raider: 0.005
monitor: 0.010
ironclad: 0.010
light cruiser: 0.020
heavy cruiser: 0.040
battleship: 0.080
dreadnaught: 0.160

 

[MarkShot]

Time to start a new GC!

 

[LM+]

Thanks.

Okay, I now see how it works. It works fine for a new scenario started for the initial units.

Here are my values (they seem okay to me):

Based on a progression of powers of two. Edited
into the unit files. The numbers represent the
actual percentage that will be applied for each
unit present of the given type. Thus, it would take
a fleet of six dreadnoughts to have approximately a
%100 impact. So, naval power can swing battles, but
not in an overwhelming way.

frigate: 0.000
man-o-war: 0.005
raider: 0.005
monitor: 0.010
ironclad: 0.010
light cruiser: 0.020
heavy cruiser: 0.040
battleship: 0.080
dreadnaught: 0.160

I am sorry that my earlier comments seem not to have been fully accepted. I'll try again. There are three criticisms to be made of both the default values in the game and, to a lesser extent, to this set of figures:

1. The ability of navies to affect near-water operations was quite potent in the wooden ship era, and not overwhelming in the dreadnaught era. Both the standard shore bombardment values and the values above ignore this, weakening both the gameplay and fidelity to history. To the objection that "a dreadnaught is more powerful than a man-o-war", I will again assert that this truth cannot let us ignore another truth: that shore defence and overall resistance to fire improved drastically in the Victorian era. It is hard to choose which is worse: braving explosive shells in a modern, spread-out tactical configuration, or having iron balls shot at one while lined up cheek-to-cheek out in the open.

2. Late-game shore bombardment is too powerful. Even at 8% or 16% per ship, it is fairly easy to render any force near an ocean almost helpless, with a combat efficiency in single digits from shore bombardment alone. This is, to put it mildly, not at all historical.

3. Monitors deserve more respect. Giving them a good shore bombardment will simultaneously give this game element a valid reason for existing, deepen mid-game strategy, and improve the game's overall historicity. It's a win-win-win move.

 

[MarkShot]

However, my changes were not a community mod, but just the values I chose to try for my own game play.

Additionally, doesn't the ability to implement and value of province fortifications (which can be built in costal provinces) go up during the length of the game? (meaning to counter-balance the bombardment thing) Of course, I don't know if the AI will fortify it's vulnerable shores.