When talking about cannons damage compareason in a game like Aop2, like in most games, we need to know the damage per time value. What is it good for knowing this ship does that damage, if you don’t know if it’s once every second or once per minut.
After one minut of fighting, two parrarel ships among which one’s cannons make 1 damage and take 10 seconds to reload and the other, 2 damage and 30 seconds to reload, the first would have done 6 damage and the second 4, hence the importance of the so called “damage per second”.
Probably most of you did understand that yet, but i needed to make the nuance before going on. Actually, whenever i say the word “damage” i actually refer to “DPS” or damage per time.
And that is the main reason why i made this mod. Cannons statistics in this game have some enormous inconsistencies in their basic state. Some bigger cannons don’t do more damage,
Some cannons relatively similar by their caliber have a damage output difference from simple to double, and some cannons with double caliber than others do the same damage.
8lbs cannons reload slower than 12lbs and do as much absolute damage (damage multiplier:1).
When comparing a caliber’s cannon and culverine, the difference can be simple/double, and , in other cases, one third difference only.
B) Unboxed game unmodded cannon balance
1)Culverines
I think one of the worse inconsistencies in cannons damage balance can be demonstrated with this simple graph:
This graphic represents basic unmodded values. As you can see the damage in function of caliber first proportionally increases until 16lbs caliber and then start to proportionaly decrease (relative value still increases but increases much less compared to first calibers evolution.)
Either you think that IRL cannons damage increases each time more over caliber evolution- in that case you would have an exponential curve- either you think it increases but each time less-then the curve would be logarithmic- or you just think it increases proportionally( that is the most choice of balance in videogames)- in that case you would have a flat straight line.
But EITHER WAY this curve is inconsistent,it’s neither one case, nor the other. Damage first increases each time more with caliber and then suddenly stops increasing more and starts increasing each time less??
The damage output gain from switching your 8lbs culverines for 16lbs one is 170%. The damage is nearly doubled!( From 2.6667 it passes to 4.444 dps.)
But switching your culverines from 16lbs to 32lbs would give you a damage gain of 22% only!( from 4.4 it passes to 5.3)
Wait but the caliber proportion change is the same, in both cases caliber has been doubled.
And what is the consequence to that?: Switching from 8lbs to 12lbs(25% gain compared to 8lbs) or better,to 16lbs(33% gain compared to 12lbs) when you start a game will give you nearly twice as much damage power compared to 8lbs. To the contrary, once you get 16lbs culverines, you don’t need to hurry to upgrade them to 24(15% gain) and even less to 32(6% gain).
2)Cannons
We were talking about culverines, but actually looking into cannons statistics we find an even bigger curve coefficient variation.
This one is even more impressive. The damage difference between 8lbs and 12lbs is more than double, it passes from 3 to 7.5(250% gain). But the damage difference between 24lbs and 42lbs is............none (0% gain).
Just imagine two warships shooting at each other, one with 24lbs and the other with 42lbs. You could think the 42 one not only would win, but would smash the other into pieces. Actually both do exactly the same damage, first could as much win as the other.
And if you captured a ship with 24lbs cannons, are you going to spend the 200000piasters cannon upgrade for absolutely....nothing?
How is this possible?
The only reason i could give for developpers to do such unlogic tweaks is the purely rounded argument. Guns rate of fire is fixed to a proportional rounded value (20s,30s,40s,50s for cannons and 30s,45s,60s,75s for culverines) and as such then wanted guns to have rounded damage values (damage multiplier 1 for 12lbs, 2 for 16lbs, 3 for 24lbs, 4 for 32lbs etc etc). The problem being that when you want to have both reload time AND damage value rounded, you obtain such subjectives DPS values as a result.
Consequences: This time we have three major negative consequences. The first and most obvious being the total uselessness of above 24lbs cannons(32 and 42). The second is the relatively low deadliness of class1 ships,manowars, warships, linships and 74s which are the only ships supposed to use 42lbs cannons...as powerful as your fregate 24lbs. I could easily see a fregate and a galion take out a class1 ship, which sounds a little silly. The third negative consequence is that the 8lbs cannon damage is so much broken that there is no reason to take the cannon over the culverine version. They do nealry as much damage (2.6667 and 3) while cullverine has a nearly 200% range difference. I am the type of person to prefer cannon over culverine, but really, the 8lbs cannon has no reason to be chosen over culverine such as it is.
The armor value problem, or the lack of it...
The lack of an "armor value" ingame adds even more weight to my argument.
The armor value would have been a feature that would have made an real actual difference between cannon calibers, for example a 24lbs and 32lbs cannon of the same damage output, the 32lbs would still have more effectiveness on a warship(heavy “armored”) type vessel
because of its "armor percing" capabilities (the expression "armor percing" is not adapted but used to make you understand what i mean); while attacking a small ship would be as effective with a 24lbs cannon or maybe even better due to higher 24lbs rate of fire compared to 32's.
Actually, some sources claim that the minimum caliber to do actual damage on a warship type ship was the 32lbs cannon. This makes thinking that 8lbs or 12 lbs cannon ship sinking a Manofwar hardly believable. Right now it’s possible ingame, although difficult. And this because there is no armor value in addition to ship’s HP value. Two things can be done to “emulate” an armor value ingame, first is gving a substantial HP bonus point to bigger ships; Higher HP values than what they should. This has been done by developpers, bigger ships have WAY more HP. But the second thing need to this “armor emulation” is an increase damage power in caliber evolution i would even say an exponential damage increase, to compensate the HP bonus. That way a small cannon (8lbs) while being effective against small ships, would do so small damage to a 3000HP ship, while the 32lbs cannon exponential damage would make the actual damage needed to that 3000HP. And THIS HASN’T been done by the developpers, actually they did the contrary: volunteerly or not, they made the damage not even proportional, but LOGARITHMIC!! Which means the increase in damage caliber grows each time more slowly, as we have seen above.
And that’s when my mod enters into action...
C)Mod features
v1.05:
-8lbs Cannons weight readjusted.
v1.04:
-8lbs cannons and culverines have now properly been unlocked
-8lbs cannons and culverines are now buyable at shipyard
-Manual mod installing made clearer
v1.01:
-Keeping the original spirit of the game cannon balance proportional damage idea, biggest inconsistencies corrected, damage curves flattened to the usual proportional pattern.
-I tried to keep changed values as close to the original ones as it could, while fixing what needed to be fixed. The curve type chosen, proportional curve y=ax+b type will basically means that a bigger cannon will do more damage over the time, as generally expected. The damage difference between 8lbs and 16lbs will now be proportionally the same that between 16 and 32.
-Upgrading cannons from 16lbs to 24lbs and from 24lbs to 32lbs is now perfectly justified and useful.
-8lbs cannons and culverines unlocked \\disabled at the moment
-8lbs cannons aren’t anymore useless compared to 8lbs culverines. Culverines have more range and less power now.
- Differences between culverines and cannons are now proportionally the same for each caliber. No any caliber culverine is advantaged or any other caliber cannons advantaged anymore. For each caliber each gun type has its pros and cons.
(32- 8lbs culvs were advantaged over cannons as 12-16-24 cannons were over culverines)
-42lbs cannons equipped Class1 ships will be actually deadly. You won’t be able to attack them with total impunity in a class2/class3 ship as much as before, unless you have high caliber cannons.
Attacking them with high caliber cannons (32lbs and above) will be more effective now though.
-Your class1 ship will be slightly more effective against class1/2/3 ships now as a result. Attacking forst with such ships will also be slightly easier.
-Small caliber cannons more effective on small ship than on big ones; High caliber more effective on medium/Big ships.
-Rates of fire fixed (8lbs cannons fired slower than 12lbs ones etc..) and damage output fixed as a consequence to match the supposed DPS.
-8lbs culverine durability fixed ( it had 40HP instead of 35HP)
1) Culverines
a)Culverines before
b)Culverines now
2)Cannons
a)Cannons before
b)Cannons now
Mod download
http://www.pyratesahoy.com/coas/Nixarass/
alternative http://forum.piratesahoy.net//index.php?app=downloads&showfile=68 // unavailable at the moment
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