*Julyl 2022 Update* Accipiter's Realistic Guns, Torpedoes and Armor mod V5.

[accipiter]

dowload link + instructions:

https://app.box.com/s/gijr2yt9k8opuu32el2786x48glg4bqx

it's been a while, but here's an update to my old mod because some people reported they were still using it. many of my improvements have been integrated in the vanilla game since then; but there are still a lot of important stuff (In my opinion) the base game doesn't do or gets wrong.

**V5 now compatible with current (July 2022) version of the main game, and add a few new features.
please re-download this version if you are currently using the older V4 version.

this mod should be compatible with most other mods, see instructions inside the download file on how to combine.
**please note: as of July 2022, this mod is NO LONGER compatible with the popular Tokyo Express (TTE) campaign overhaul mod.



**V5 changelog:

*GUNS*

-adds 2 new guns missing from the vanilla game:
12.7cm45 10th Year Type (secondary guns Furutaka/Aoba classes)
8cm60 Type 98 (secondary guns Agano class)


-makes dual purpose almost all the japanese guns as they were in real life, even Cruisers and Battleship mains (to represent the widespread Type 3 "beehive" incendiary/AA shells). only the submarine deck guns and the really old destroyers guns remain single purpose, as was the case in real life for those.


-changes the reload speed, turret rotation and barrel elevation speed, as well as max barrel elevation/depression angles of each guns in the game to their Historical real values.


-fine tuned the maximum turret rotation angles of each ship much more accurately than the TTE mod does, using real life max angles as guideline. precisely fine tuned every single turret, on every single ship.


-switched ammo loadouts to exact real life ammo count for each ship. also used a more useful mix of ammo types. now, approximately:
BB: 15%HE 85%AP
CA: 33%HE 66%AP
CL: 40%HE 60%AP
DD and secondaries: 100%HE
+a small handful of star shells for all guns that had them in real life.

also removed the AP shells for several guns that did not have AP shells in real life.



*TORPEDOES*

-implemented historically accurate failure rate for USA torpdedoes in the time frame of the game (1942 and early 1943). they are now:

82% duds for mk14 submarine launched.
80% duds for mk15 surface launched
50% duds for mk13 air dropped

there is an option to still use the vanilla game torpedo dud rate if you really do not want this (read instructions file).

also,
10% dud rate for Type 95 (submarine launched) torpedo, as the early war versions of these had some trouble with plumbing corrosion from pure oxygen, and leaky first air vessels.


-rebalanced the damage values of all torpedoes to now accurately represent the relative differences in their in real life warhead power.
the overall damage of torpedoes is also slightly increased compared to vanilla game, as the damage was a little low imo. (difference is small)


-added back thick bubble trail to Type 96 torpedo.
the Type 96 was not a pure Oxygen Torpedo, it was an Oxygen-enriched (Nitrox 38) Torpedo, with still a lot of Nitrogen in the exhaust that whould create visible bubbles.


-adjusted the ranges and speed of all torpedoes to their real historical values (difference from vanilla game is not large).


-Mutsuki and Nagara class now use the Type 8 No.2 (only a few ships of the Nagara class received the Type 93, and late in the war, so for the games's campaign in 1942/early43, them generally still using the Type8 No.2 is more correct).


-Fubuki class now use the Type 93, as opposed to the Type8 No.2, as i believe they did receive the Type 93 in WW2 in real life. (info on this is conflicting or missing on all sources i could find. if you know more on this, please share).
Fubuki and Akatsuki class now only carry 3 reloads as opposed to 9 (in wartime practice, only 3 were carried on those DD specifically, due to them being too top-heavy).


-Mutsuki, Kuma and Sendai Classes: added the missing torpedo reloads that they did have in real life.
also, for Myoko class, corrected the torpedo launchers and reloads to triple tubes as was the case in real life (in the vanilla game they had quad tubes).



*AIRCRAFT BOMBS*

-more damaging HE bombs in general (about 1.5x~2x more than in the base game). as bombs were way too weak in the base game. also gave them a little more AP so they aren't rendered completely useless by even light armor. only BB and some modern Cruisers now typically have enough armor to negate most of a 500Kg bomb's damage.
it's still possible to survive bomb attacks, with good damage control and dodging.
armor penetration of all HE bombs in game have been adjusted, but here is a few exemples if you want to have a general idea:
+250kg HE bomb: 42mm
+800kg HE bomb: 90mm
+1000lbs HE bomb: 58mm
+2000lbs HE bomb: 100mm

-way more AP and Damage for AP bombs. now they are actually good (they were TRASH in the base game). they can now actually penetrate deck armor, even of Battleships. they do less damage overall than an HE bomb of the same size, so use them mostly on CA and BB too armored for HE bombs, just as they were designed for in real life.
deck penetration is now ~around~ like this:
+250kg AP bomb: 150mm
+800kg AP bomb: 210mm
+1000lbs AP bomb: 190mm
+1600lbs AP bomb: 220mm



*ARMOR & RADAR*

-Big tweaks to armor and torpedo defence value on all ships to much more historically accurate values, and better balanced too.
also added the missing roof armor on turrets and armored bridge on all ships (How does the Vanilla game gets wrong something so important ?!). added fire control director armor, small armor to DD turrets that had Gun shields, funnel armor to ships that had it, and much more!


-carrier deck armor maxed at 40mm, so they are now actually vulnerable to HE bombs.

this is due to how the game's damage model work: there is no distinction for carriers between the runway (upper deck) armor and the machine room deck's armor way below. As such, the vanilla game WAY overestimates the surface deck's armor of many carriers, they effectively acted as armored aircraft carriers: being invulnerable to HE bombs and shells. This was obviously wrong, as none of the carriers currently in the game had an armored flight deck. As a result, maxing-out the deck armor at 40mm (just enough for a 250Kg/500lbs HE bomb, or a CL's HE Shells to penetrate it) is much more authentic, and better balanced too.


-Added Radar to several Japanese ships that did receive a radar in the time frame of the game (Summer 1942 to summer 1943):

Akizuki Class (autum and late 1942)
Myoko, Mogami and Tone Class (January through May/earlyJune 1943)

adimttedly, most of those received Radar through early 1943, but i think it's still somewhat needed partly for game balance, and also not "Wrong" either, as the game's campaign technically can go into summer 43.
also, take note that even the base game does give their Radars to the Takao class, even though those ships also received theirs in spring 1943.


-Added Radar also to Fuso, Nagato and Yamato class BB. even though those ships received them after the summer 1943 time frame of the game. my reasoning to do this is the following:
the only reason those ships received Radars so late in real life is precisely because the Japanese had no plans to use them in combat during the Guadalcanal campaign. so the small number of Radars they could produce was prioritized to the ships that were on the front line, actually fighting ( such as the Kongo Class, the Heavy Cruisers, and even some Destroyers).
if the Japanese DID decide to send any of those BB in the fight, there is no doubt whatsoever they whould have also prioritzed Radar to them, as they were all precious capital ships, just as they did for the Kongo class. even if there was no new Radar available immediately, then they whould have even dismounted Radars from destroyers or cruisers if needed, to make absolutely sure every Battleship sent to battle had one.


-represented the real life dual use capability of the Type 21 Radar (as a result, the japanese ships with this radar also have a very limited capability surface Radar, only about 20km, in addition to 80km Air Radar.)


-Japanese radars now give a smaller bonus (only half as much) to firing solution compared to USA Radars. Because these were all pure search Radars with no fire control mode, and virtually no lock-on or track capability (unlike USA Radars).


-also adjusted the range on japanese radar to their historical values, (ie: generally much worse than US Radars as was the case in real life). so don't worry, the real life massive Radar advantage of USA is overall still very much
there and represented in the game.



*COMMENTS*
-don't worry about the dual purpose japanese main guns, this doesnt make japanese AA op, and won't waste your main guns HE shells too much, because with the realistic slow rotation,elevation speeds, and fire rate, these big guns are VERY ineffective as AA weapons, as was the case in real life too.
-USA small DP guns especially are scary now (3 to 4 seconds reload)! be very afraid of the cleveland/brooklyn/atlanta class, or large groups of DD's, if you have unarmored ships! and be careful when attacking with planes!
if ,playing as USA, be careful about ammo managment to not run out of ammo too fast with those. leave them on spotting fire if you want reduced fire rates, especially at long range.

my sources for all the data that went into this is mostly Navweaps.com and the pacific war online encyclopedia, and a few others. don't hesitate to ask if you have doubts or question on any of the values i used for this mod.

[coderbob0101]

Thanks for your work. I am a little worried about the anti-aircraft fire of USN task forces, because with vanilla, there is already about a 40% loss rate overall with about a 60% loss rate of torpedo bombers.

[accipiter]

i agree i was a bit worried about AA too.
but after play testing it a bit since last time, it's not AS bad as i imagined, so i think i'll leave it as it is.
besides, i think the reason losses are so high is because the AI auto attacks are totally suicidal (flying super slow and tropping torpedos and bombs at point blank, then circling back over the ship while running away, ect...) not so much because AA is unrealistically strong. if you do the atack manually and drop at top speed from 2 - 1.5 km away and turn away immediately, you can still get away with a lot even with my mod.
so i guess when thee devs update the AI (or someone mods it) it won't be as much of a problem anymore.
besides, super high loss rates for japanese (especially B5N Kate) are not nessesarily unrealistic. at coral sea and midway the loss rate on the succesful Lexington and Yorktown attacks were still from 20% to 50% of the attacking kates.

[accipiter]

*Bump because updated version released

[the Baron]

Good morning Accipiter.

I want to say i have the most respect for your work and i would like to try the next campaign with your mod. However can you explain this more in detail?

"fine tuned the maximum turret rotation angles of each ship much more accurately than the TTE mod does"

Maybe can you give me just one example to understand the data you are using? I am more interested the horizontal arcs values used.

[accipiter]

hi, and by the way, thanks a lot for the TTE mod, i'm enjoying a lot of the features in a campaign i started recently!

so, the horizontal angles where probably the most questionnable part of it as finding precise data was often not possible (hence why i said "as a guideline" in this case as opposed to using the real thing.)
Navweaps.com , in the "mount data" section for each gun gives training angles. but this seems to be generalized in most cases. i also tried to look at the US Navy ONI ID manual from 1942, but as we all know this one contains a fair bit of known inaccuracies so i was wary of trusting it as well.

navweaps did have good data for some mounts like the USA 5inch/38 gun, where it says "from 284° up to 330° for all mounts, depending on position on the destroyer". but for most guns, typically it says "approximately +/-150 dgrees").

-typically, my logic was: i ended up using around +/-150 degrees in most ships, then fine tuned it to avoid any visual clipping + leave just a little bit of clearence room for the muzzle blast from superstructure elements, depending on the gun size (bigger= more clearence).

-for all the broadside secondaries, i took the best angle possible that avoids clipping as much as possible and gives reasonable muzzle blast clearence to the other secondaries next to it, and to the superstructure. (note: perfect fine tuning was not always possible because groups of 4+ secondary guns or more with different position on the ship are treated as one in the gamefile... so sometimes, like with baltimore/cleveland secondaries, i made the best possible compromise to not completely ruin the arc of fire of all 4+ side secondary guns when only 1 was slightly obstructed.)

practical exemples:

-yamato: the arc for the main guns says +/-150° on navweaps.
so i tried that in the game and this was possible (no clipping) but also resulted in the barrels being alarmingly close to the superstructure. these guns use over 1 TON PER TURRET of explosive as the propellent charge for every single broadside... and i do not belive the captain whould order to fire so close to the superstructure unless in extreme dire straights or as a total desperation move. so i used +/-140 instead, which is still an excellent angle but gives a bit more clearence (even this angle whould still result in severe self-damage to the ship if shot a lot at that angle IMO... but in a battle situation maybe some compromise like this is acceptable.)

-Benson/gleaves: the arc for the main guns says "+/-330° or less depending on position" on navweaps.
so i set turret 1 2 and 4 each to the best possible angle that give a tiny bit of muzzle blast clearence to the superstructure (not much since its a small gun) and set turret 3 to the best possible 330° arc since this one has no nearby obstruction whatsoever.

-also for some ships like the English/Australian CL, it says +/-120° on navweaps, but without quoting a source, and this really seems weirdly bad, and you can clearly see that the superstructure was build to allow better angles, so , i made it around +/-130° which is still much worse than most ships but a little more reasonable imo.


-for rate of fire, i typically start by taking something slightly above the avereage of the given range by naveaps, then take barrel elevation speeds and loading angle into concideration.
practical exemple:
-Kongo/Yamato/USA BB: all of those ships can reload at best in 30s under ideal conditions and at the loading angle. 40s if firing at max elevations.
-the loading angle is +3° for yamato, +5° for USA, -5/+20° for kongo.
-the barrel elevation speed (in degrees per seconds) is: 8 for yamato, 12 for USA, 5 for kongo.
i used a slightly worse 31s for each as the baseline to represent less than ideal battle conditions; then:
*chose 32s for USA to represent the need to elevate/lower the barrel about 6 to 10 degrees for each firing. (11° to 16° of elevation gives a range of about 15-20km which is typically the max range at which most ship to ship shooting happen in the game).
*chose 33s for Yamato to represent the slower barrel elevation speed and lower loading angle
*chose 31s for Kongo, as, regardless of the bad elevation speed, the best loading angle of +20° already corresponds to a range of 25km anyway.



PS: if planning to play it, i also noticed the 2 new torpedoes i added, for some reason, have a Very Short bubble trail (almost invisible). i'm looking into a way to fix it and maybe exploit it to remove the bubble trail of pure oxygen torpedoes in a later version. i also noticed i forgot to adjust Kongo's 152mm secodaries arc of fire, so i'll hotfix it later today.

[accipiter]

*Kongo's 155mm secondaries angles now Hotfixed.

*also, after further experimenting, the super short torpedo trail thing isn't due to the 2 torpedoes i added, but rather, is a time-compression related bug that affects all torpedoes.
whenever accelerating time with a torpedo in the water, the bubble trail becomes much shorter, slow torpedoes aree more heavily affected. not sure if this is a bug related to my mod or in the vanilla game too.

[Youdontknowmeatall]

accipiter の投稿を引用：

i agree i was a bit worried about AA too.
but after play testing it a bit since last time, it's not AS bad as i imagined, so i think i'll leave it as it is.
besides, i think the reason losses are so high is because the AI auto attacks are totally suicidal (flying super slow and tropping torpedos and bombs at point blank, then circling back over the ship while running away, ect...) not so much because AA is unrealistically strong. if you do the atack manually and drop at top speed from 2 - 1.5 km away and turn away immediately, you can still get away with a lot even with my mod.
so i guess when thee devs update the AI (or someone mods it) it won't be as much of a problem anymore.
besides, super high loss rates for japanese (especially B5N Kate) are not nessesarily unrealistic. at coral sea and midway the loss rate on the succesful Lexington and Yorktown attacks were still from 20% to 50% of the attacking kates.

Hi mate, just discovered your mod and will try it from now on together with Barons TEE and my own ridicilous modding attempts... ;P

Didnt looked over the changed data, but i guess, you did NOT change the "setup" - folder but ONLY the "unit" - one ?! Is this correct ?

You might know, why i am asking: if the latter is true, i dont have to start over a new campaign, if the former...then yes^^


About AAA efficiency:

For my taste, the AAA is still too weak and thats coming from me, who is mainly using Planes to sink Ships !
If someone letting his kate squadron fly an torpedo attack against a full enemy fleet, well he deserves that ALL of his planes get shot down^^

I use ALWAYS maximum altitude level bomb attacks as long as the Fleet has most of its AAA firepower left (especially the Atlanta is very nasty and should be so)

Here comes my 2nd question:
I think as soon as you attack from more than 3 km altitude, the AAA drops significantly ! Not only the accuracy, which is fine as it is, but also many ships dont seem to fire on you at all anymore...is this also changed with your mod ? So can we expect more AAA also in higher altitudes ??


many thx in advance

[accipiter]

-you can go into the download link to just look at which files it changes if you want (without having to download it yet)

-nope you don't have to start a new campaign at all. :)

-in terms of AA, my mod changes the fire rate of dual porpose guns (especially for USA, they are alot faster now). not the aa range, or damage of each flak burst.

in my experience, this doesnt make AA OP at all, though more scary than vanilla.
however the TTE mod DOES increase the flak damage + range, so in combination wit my mod this may be a little much. i do not use that part of the TTE mod while playing, so cannot confirm if it's still fine or not.

[the Baron]

accipiter の投稿を引用：

-you can go into the download link to just look at which files it changes if you want (without having to download it yet)

-nope you don't have to start a new campaign at all. :)

-in terms of AA, my mod changes the fire rate of dual porpose main guns (especially for USA, they are alot faster now). not the aa range, or damage of each flak burst.

in my experience, this doesnt make AA OP at all, though more scary than vanilla.
however the TTE mod DOES increase the flak damage + range, so in combination wit my mod this may be a little much. i do not use that part of the TTE mod while playing, so cannot confirm if it's still fine or not.

The flak range increase can sound nasty but is in fact for most situation only fireworks at long distances. Yes sometimes you can destroy a plane at 6k but is very rare. In normal situation flak is only dangerous at close ranges. This is how flak works in game.

[Youdontknowmeatall]

the Baron の投稿を引用：

accipiter の投稿を引用：

-you can go into the download link to just look at which files it changes if you want (without having to download it yet)

-nope you don't have to start a new campaign at all. :)

-in terms of AA, my mod changes the fire rate of dual porpose main guns (especially for USA, they are alot faster now). not the aa range, or damage of each flak burst.

in my experience, this doesnt make AA OP at all, though more scary than vanilla.
however the TTE mod DOES increase the flak damage + range, so in combination wit my mod this may be a little much. i do not use that part of the TTE mod while playing, so cannot confirm if it's still fine or not.

The flak range increase can sound nasty but is in fact for most situation only fireworks at long distances. Yes sometimes you can destroy a plane at 6k but is very rare. In normal situation flak is only dangerous at close ranges. This is how flak works in game.

want to second this !

In my experience with Barons TEE flying at 3,3 km altitude, its really rare that you get a plane shot down...the slower and tighter the formation is, the higher the chance...so everything looks right here :)


Speaking of which, #Baron, i am beginning to think that AAA at moderate altitudes may be even a bit too weak:

Last time, i attacked a 10 Ship BB Fleet with 5 CLs with 24 Kates and 20 bettys at the same time, all doing high altitude level bombing at 3,3 km...and i lost only 2 or 3 of the 44 planes attacking !

Sounds a bit too less for my taste

[the Baron]

Youdontknowmeatall の投稿を引用：

the Baron の投稿を引用：

The flak range increase can sound nasty but is in fact for most situation only fireworks at long distances. Yes sometimes you can destroy a plane at 6k but is very rare. In normal situation flak is only dangerous at close ranges. This is how flak works in game.

want to second this !

In my experience with Barons TEE flying at 3,3 km altitude, its really rare that you get a plane shot down...the slower and tighter the formation is, the higher the chance...so everything looks right here :)


Speaking of which, #Baron, i am beginning to think that AAA at moderate altitudes may be even a bit too weak:

Last time, i attacked a 10 Ship BB Fleet with 5 CLs with 24 Kates and 20 bettys at the same time, all doing high altitude level bombing at 3,3 km...and i lost only 2 or 3 of the 44 planes attacking !

Sounds a bit too less for my taste

Sounds right to me. You can always change the flak radius in the ammunition folder to anything you like.

[Youdontknowmeatall]

the Baron の投稿を引用：

Youdontknowmeatall の投稿を引用：

want to second this !

In my experience with Barons TEE flying at 3,3 km altitude, its really rare that you get a plane shot down...the slower and tighter the formation is, the higher the chance...so everything looks right here :)


Speaking of which, #Baron, i am beginning to think that AAA at moderate altitudes may be even a bit too weak:

Last time, i attacked a 10 Ship BB Fleet with 5 CLs with 24 Kates and 20 bettys at the same time, all doing high altitude level bombing at 3,3 km...and i lost only 2 or 3 of the 44 planes attacking !

Sounds a bit too less for my taste

Sounds right to me. You can always change the flak radius in the ammunition folder to anything you like.

Cool, thanks alot ! Didnt know up to now, where it is^^

[63rdstarcorp]

so I'm having a problem with the mod: when you go to a ship's weapon statistics, it will mark a lost of it as an "error" with a long string of text behind it. Can anyone help me fix it?

[Herr Flick]

63rdstarcorp の投稿を引用：

so I'm having a problem with the mod: when you go to a ship's weapon statistics, it will mark a lost of it as an "error" with a long string of text behind it. Can anyone help me fix it?

I had the same problem dont know if Accipiter knows about this? but to fix go to

Language. English.Dictionary.weapons and type in

Depth_Charge=depthCharge and save

message solved and the Cruisers and DD have Depth charges back :-)

[accipiter]

my mod has not been updated in a long time and the devs kept rolling a bunch of updates which is why some stuff like that happens (i didn't play the game in a long time so i wasn't aware).
since there are still people who use my mod, i'll update it to make it compatible to the latest version.
might take a day or 2. thankss for noticing me.