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Realism mod for GOF 2.0

Narushima

Landlubber
Hi all, for a while now I've been playing the latest beta release of GOF 2.0. While I love the mod, 1 thing that always didn't sit right with me was the arcade like feel of naval battles.

So I did some research and modified some files, in the hopes of making naval battles feel realistic.

What I did:
-Increased cannon damage. A broadside from a 3rd-1st rate is a killer. It will ruin anyone's day.
-Increased reload times. Reloading now takes about as long as it would to reload a real cannon. Some liberties were taken for balance reasons.
- Exploding shot now works like double cannon shot. Does a ton of damage (about 160% of regular shot) but has very low range. I might remove it completely in the future.
- Made ship steering dependant on speed. A ship with no speed will turn very very slowly (this goes for de-masted ships as well). The sweet spot for turning is between 4 and 6 knots.
- Modified the cannon balls for balance reasons.

Bellow is a more in-depth explanation of changes done to the cannons:

I calculated the kinetic energy for each size of cannon and then tried to implement this into the game. I took some liberties with this, because I believe that cannon damage is not dependant on only initial kinetic energy. There's also splintering, bouncing and drag which cannot be modelled in the game, therefore I reduced the damage of lower cannons a bit to represent this.

Observe:
hUyo6PL.png


As you can see, a broadside from heavier guns is absolutely devastating now.

But, this does not mean battles end super quickly now, because:
xIdwhM4.png


Cannons take a long time to reload (Culverins even longer; +10 seconds for all of them). It's now very important how and when you place your shots.

Fire too soon and you might find yourself reloading while a frigate parks right beside you to fire of a broadside.
Wait too long or miss your shot and you may fail to submit the enemy before they are reinforced.

Battles are now more about manoeuvring with the wind to get the perfect shot and less about dropping sails and spinning around while your machine-gun cannons do all the work.

As for how much damage is actually done:
URXUrKA.png


As you can see damage per second is actually pretty comparable to the old model. In actuality you will probably do less damage per second that before because you won't be shooting as soon as you reload most of the time.

You can download the mod here.


Extract the contents of the .rar file into your AOP2 folder. If you want to use the mod with an existing GOF 2 save game click "Full Reinit" under mod options while in the game.

Fell free to to modify and redistribute this mod as you like.

Post any questions, comments and suggestions in this thread.
 
:ahoymate!

1. The old damage per second thing was set that way because fast firing small cannons were doing more damage than slow firing large cannons. What does this mod do for/against that?

2. My gripe is that a ship can have fine hull and sails but no crew after a few shots. What does this mod do for/against that?
 
Very interesting concept; I like how you are taking into account kinetic energy! I am also currently working on a small balancing mod for GOF where I have re-balanced, added features and fixed quite a bit of bugs. One thing that has always bothered me is what Hylie posted above. Sea battles in GOF are almost pointless - a single broad side wipes out entire crews, while Hull and Sail HP is almost left unaffected. Ships with small cannon are also like machine gun nests, they reload so fast yet deal so much damage even with the realistic toggle on. I have been trying to find the relevant code with no success... :shrug
 
1. Damage per second remains largely the same, with the increase being a bit more linear than before. Meaning, you will always want to have the largest cannons now. The only time you might want to consider taking a smaller cannon is at the very top (28lb instead of 32lb or 36lb) where a slightly faster reload time might give you an edge if you have a very manoeuvrable ship.

2. That depends on ammo type really. With regular cannon balls crew and hull go down at about the same rate now. Though further tweaking can be done in the initGoods.c file.

@N3H3C

Yes, finding a good balance between crew casualties and hull damage is hard. Especially because character experience and skill plays a big part in this. Try out the mod and let me know what you think. Further tweaking will probably be needed.
 
Last edited:
Downloaded this and had a look into the files.
Basically it is the same idea I had with vanilla (big guns Need more time to reload).
I like the 30 seconds the 4-lbs Need to reload, that is what I set the 8-lbs to, it ended with 32-lbs-culverines at 70 seconds, 42-lbs-cannon at 50 and 48-lbs-cannon at 60 seconds reload time, so cannons could be a bit better than culverines in reloading, while culverines do less damage at a longer range.
I will definitely try your Settings, Feedback will follow.

greetings
 
I'm raising this old thread on the off chance that the opening poster might see it - I would very much like to have a look at the changes and the downloadable file has expired.

How do you make ship steering dependant on speed? Is that "refship.TurnDependSpeed" or is it something else? And if it is a number, should it be high or low to make a ship need more speed to turn?
 
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