weapons production time of delivery modding

[AmbroseTecumsehLee]

Hi all, just some FYI. In the modding tool under the weapons tab and at the top of column AW it states it is obsolete as per update 1.06. Just want to let everyone know that as of my new campaign in 1.1232, that is in fact false. So far as I can tell the engine still uses the "Equipment Modifier" column to adjust the time it takes to deliver an order of weapons. It may affect the cost of weapons as well, though I haven't really tested this aspect yet.

My root goal and how I stumbled upon this discovery was I was trying to make the rebored muskets worthwhile as a stop gap until enough pure rifled muskets are acquired. IMHO they are useless in vanilla to try and produce, but historically rebored muskets were fairly ubiquitous for both sides throughout the war. I modded the weaponstock file so that I had 48,000 rebored muskets on hand at the start of my campaign, and roughly 18,000 springfield rifled muskets. However, when I simultaneously unlocked both respective projects, an order of 50k springfields was still much faster to produce than a 50k ordered of rebored muskets. This was despite a standardization value of 33 for the rebored muskets, and only 13 for the springfields. So I compared all their respective columns in the excel tool for things that may affect production, and all I could find was "production factor" and "equipment modifier" (but the file said this column was obsolete). The production factor was 1.25 for springfield rifled muskets and 1.00 for rebored muskets, and this did not account for the huge disparity in order times. For the equipment modifier column the springfield had a value of 8 and the rebores had a value of only 0.4, and this would possibly explain the discrepancy in order times. So, I matched the rebores to have a value of 8 with the springfield's value of 8. Voila, I reloaded the same campaign and now rebores have an order time much shorter than springfield rifled muskets.

Overall I intend to play around with "production factor" and "equipment modifier" columns a lot more because I have a lot of ideas on how I want to mod weapon types, but also mod their production times and costs.

If anyone bothers to respond to this post I will come back and edit it after further testing and hopefully refinement and revelations as to how "Equipment Modifier" affects weapons procurement at the campaign level. In fact I may even get around to making a guide to mod weapons on steam. Furthermore, I may publish my weapons overhaul mod once and/if the game ever reaches a final version.

[Stone]

This is a good find. I for one would be interested in knowing more. I also wonder what else in the code should be disabled but is still effecting game play.

[AmbroseTecumsehLee]

So here's some testing notes. I put weaponstock folder at 48,000 rifles for the richmond and fayatteville rifles. Played with some figures in the weapons file and even for some tests copied fayetteville info to richmond info line for line, and only changed one line at a time. Here's some lessons I learned, in no particular order. In general I just used the excel tool for reference as to which line did what in the weapons file, and was only changing values in the weapons file directly.

1. You can mod obsolete weapons to be producible. Weapons like the 1817 rifle, Smoothbore springfield, and the smoothbore springfield carbine. For the weapons that aren't unlockable through projects, their equipment modifiers are all set to 0. So if you want to make them producable at the start of the game, change the line that corresponds with column "AU" (researched at start column) and set the equipment modifier line to any value above 0. You can now produce these obsolete weapons. For me personally, I may mod these weapons to something else entirely. Like using the 1817 rifle entry for an 1855 springfield, as an example.

2. Production factor effects the price of the weapons and the amount of weapons needed to reach a standardization of 100. As an example, I'm trying to mod the plains rifle to become "match target rifles" some confederate sharpshooters used, that were originally civilian hyper accurate target rifles. I've discovered increasing the production factor by 6, will increase the cost of a weapon by 100 dollars. So I wanted to match my new "target rifles" to a price comparable to whitworth rifles. I had to increase their production factor all the way up to 36 to reach a price around ~1300 dollars per rifle.

3. The equipment modifier column effects how long orders take to get fulfilled as standardization becomes greater than 0. Pretty much what my original post says, but doesn't seem to effect the price of the weapon. Also if the weapon has an equipment modifier of 0, it will be unable to be manufactured at all.

4. The line corresponding to column I (ROF B) increases the cost of a weapon, but not the column AK. So changing the line for column I will increase the cost of the weapon the higher the ROF is. However, the line for column AK is only for battle purposes.

5. Length of weapon and weight of weapon (columns AB through AE), seems to have no effect on the prices or anything else. At least for non artillery weapons.

6. Changing the lines for columns E and F, the range of the weapon affects the price. So an increase of range makes a weapon more expensive, and the counter of lowering ranges does the opposite.

7. Caliber, columns J and K, seem to have no effect on prices or delivery time.

8. Type of melee weapon shown, column AS, has no effecting on prices or delivery times. I just wanted to be sure this line is used purely for graphics.

9. Accuracy under column AI doesn't affect prices or delivery times.

10. Unless otherwise specified in the above lessons, all other lines/columns seem to have no effect on weapons prices or deliver times or pace of standardization.

Some cautionary notes, I would manipulate the weapons file directly rather than using the excel modding tool for the time being. The excel tool is still tooled up for 1.11 so far as I'm aware. In particular they've set the machine guns to an equipment modifier of 0, and if you use the excel tool for weapons, it will manipulate these fields greater than 0. So instead of a set amount of weapons for unlocking the project, you enable production of the machine guns.

Disclaimer, these lessons are not gospel. They're prone to my testing error or my misinterpretation of the effects I was seeing through individual tests. Sorry if I get something wrong.