Simple Naval Mod
+Increased Shipmaster exp & adds an entirely new way of obtaining Shipmaster exp.
+Sailing is 20% faster globally.
+Some Shipmaster perks have been reworked.
+Overhauled coastal patrols, all port towns now have them, they are stronger than in vanilla and replenish troops slowly.
+Adds a new party role, the "Navigator".
+Adds a fleet commissioning system to grant newly formed clan parties ships.
+Several other minor additions / changes please read on to learn more.
This mod fixes the shipmaster skill by increasing exp rates such that you are able to max the skill before you die of old age, at present in native you can only hit between 130-150 before your character wains away into the twilight of their life (dies, of being old). With this mod provided you have plenty of focus and int points invested, you should be able to max it within 10 or so in game years when playing with the fast mode module, on average anyway, that assumes quite a naval focus of ones playthrough.
This mod also increases sailing speed globally in order to encourage the AI to actually set sail, again, in native sailing is slower than land travel so the community at large have found that battles at sea are quite rare. Attached images show that higher speed at sea encourages AI to sail more. AI pathfinding preferences the quickest routes, by making sailing so slow in the official build, Tale Worlds have made all the AI lords only travel by sea as a last resort. I could wax lyrical about this for ages but you’re looking at a Shipmaster fix mod so you don’t need any convincing.
The mod makes the following changes to achieve what I’ve outlined in the summary:
Increases the exp multiplier by 6x, now that sounds mental but let me cook. As it stands, by my testing and as corroborated by the player base at large, you can only hit shipmaster 144~ before dying of old age, doubling the exp wouldn’t take you to 288 as you need exponentially more exp, unfortunately Taleworlds just buggered it up that badly, so as bananas as a 6x multiplier sounds, a 4x multiplier just barely makes it possible to get all the perks, x6 allows you to enjoy them for a little while before you croak too. This applies to all characters, not just player characters, so AI will sail faster too, especially if they take Old Salt’s Touch, which brings me onto my next change.
I have increased the speed for Old Salt’s Touch from a +2% bonus to a plus 4% bonus. Plus 2% worked out to be like 0.06 which is margin of error, this change brings you up to a modest yet noticeable 0.12 or so (although it states a flat % increase, it doesn’t increase when you’re in a storm or have the wind at your back, so it doesn’t multiply in choppy waters).
I’ve added a flat 20% speed bonus to all seafaring parties. You get about a +0.9 speed when sailing into the wind compared to native and a +2 or so when sailing with the wind (on average). In the images of this mod you can see two pictures, one denoting average south sea nautical traffic on normal sailing speeds and another depicting nautical traffic when the sailing speed has been cranked up to 500%. This is to more obviously illustrate the difference that faster sailing makes on AI pathfinding decision making. It resulted in pretty much double the amount of ships at sea, from my play testing it feels as though the actual changes this mod contains, increases the amount of ships at sea by around 10-15% but it feels even more active on account of being able to recon more of the sea in less time.
I have also increased the sight range granted by the perk Raven’s eye from 20% to 60%, illustrated in pictures. This sight range steroid in addition to a working Shipmaster skill and the associated speed that comes with it will reduce the rate at which players miss out on naval engagements rather a lot.
The final addition is that I have added a new way of earning Shipmaster exp. Once your Fleet Condition is below 50% you enter a critical ship state in which you gain double Shipmaster exp (a notification pops up). So it’s a risk/reward mechanic which has the added benefit of helping level up Boatswain, this is my favourite bit about the mod, it works so nicely together with Boatswain and makes an otherwise aggressively linear skill levelling experience considerably more dynamic.
1.3.6 UPDATE
– I’ve added coastal patrols to all of the port towns in the game. They are in the base game however they are always exactly 40 troops and are exclusive to empire ports. I played the base DLC for 100 hours without ever having noticed them. Now they can spawn a carefully curated, procedurally generated 85-110 troops, for balancing and thematic reasons these coastal patrols are largely made up of militia units with a modest amount of high-tier troops mixed in. The vanilla ones were wiped out instantly by corsairs & sea raiders, these new ones can hold their own but still struggle just enough that they don’t make a dent in the bandit population. I’ve added this to serve as a middle ground for the player between bandits and AI lords, a consistent way of getting mid-game naval battles. It also is another reason for lords to set sail, I’ve seen it in practice, lords are going after these patrols, so all of these changes compounded together has made the sea a MUCH livelier place to be. Also these patrols are state-owned and as such, are valid war targets. So you don’t need to worry about the honour and reputation hits you take when attacking privately owned trading vessels.
1.6.0 UPDATE
Added a new Navigator role where a companion can be assigned to taking care of both Boatswain and Shipmaster. Their perks and skill level benefits are used in place of the player’s and exp for those skills is redirected from the player to the Navigator while they are fulfilling this role. The player can chop and change navigator freely should they wish. Also added a naval commissioning system which gives the player the option to buy ships for a clan party upon creation. The final change pertains to my coastal patrol rework, for gameplay balancing and stability reasons I’ve reduced their size down from ~100 to ~80, this rendered them a little too weak so I’ve implemented a troop replenishment system and buffed their composition so that they’re made up of slightly more professional soldiers and slightly fewer militia.
*This mod requires Harmony.
If you experience any crashes:
– Please ensure that you have Harmony enabled and at the very top of your load order.
– The Simple Naval mod itself should be enabled at the very bottom of the load order.
– Please be mindful that any other mods you have installed could be conflicting.
– Make sure you’re on v1.3.13.106033 of Bannerlord.
If you get an error on startup, the .dll could be blocked by windows, just:
– Navigate to C:Program Files (x86)Steamsteamappsworkshopcontent2615503642337847
– Right-click on SimpleNaval.dll and select Properties.
– At the bottom of the "General" tab, look for a checkbox that says "Unblock".
– Check that box, click Apply, and restart the game.
If you have done all these things and are still experiencing crashes I’m afraid I cannot help you, it would likely be an environment based issue as there are over 1000 people using this mod without issue. Sorry that I can’t help those anomalous cases but please don’t clutter my mod’s comments with calls for technical assistance, I’ve worked really hard on this and would like the comments to be reserved for feedback, I hope you understand, thank you!
*Please be aware the perk tooltips remain unchanged visually so you won’t see the updated 4% / 60% figures when looking at the perks but the speedometer does accurately reflect the increase and the raven’s eye difference is pictured in the images section of this mod page.
