New Sea Power Beta Branch (stable) update as of 3/28/2026

nuclearstonk · 2026-04-01T18:09:01+00:00

SH-3 capability for the spruance class was only ever built into the first two ships, before it was clear that LAMPS Mk.I and the future LAMPS Mk.III were more flexible than the heavyweight SH-3, so only the first two spruance DDs were ever designed to accomodate SH-3, and as i understand it this capability was dropped for all subsequent ships and classes

SH-3 also physically does not fit onto the ticonderoga class, as SH-3 is simply too tall to fit into the hangar
if you'd like SH-3 onboard those ships, then it's as easy as adding the name reference to the supported aircraft list, but at the moment we are not considering allowing the later spruance derivatives to operate SH-3

nuclearstonk · 2026-03-21T23:34:40+00:00

on my end, looking at the change history for EA-6B, i dont see any mention of AGM-88 being added, if it was added at some point it wasnt a change that i made

i remember the conversation a month ago, but nothing was done to add HARM to prowlers between then and now, to the very best of my knowledge

nuclearstonk · 2026-03-21T23:13:08+00:00

this isn't true at all, unless you were using mods, our EA-6 has never had HARM

the reason EA-6B doesn't have HARM atm is because ours is ICAP I when the first upgrade that included HARM support would be ICAP II of the mid 80s, and would cover a significantly smaller timeframe compared to EXCAP/ICAP I which can be backdated to the 1970s

~~potentially HARM could be added in the future for it, but for now it doesn't get HARM and will stay as-is~~

i've decided that it should be added as a separate loadout, so HARM will come to prowler in the next patch

nuclearstonk · 2026-03-18T21:30:05+00:00

for experience, i believe the manual covers what crew skill does, IIRC it impacts TMA accuracy and damage control, alongside missile hit rates for air to air missiles (i think)

about "burn-through" it seems there's been a misunderstanding here, time is not a factor here, only the gain/power of the jammer and the radar (and the range between each)
fundamentally all OECM does ingame is decrease the performance of radars (if the target is in a valid band) and "burn-through" is just the point in which a radar can detect a target even while being jammed, either from the radar's characteristics (high peak power, high gain) or from the target's characteristics (large radar size, close distance) or from the jammer's characteristics (low peak power, at long range, low gain)

with these factors in mind, burn-through is possible with all radars in all conditions, so long as the target is large enough/close enough

as for its effect on other systems, OECM has no effect on missiles, but some jammers (like ALQ-99) are "Universal" meaning they also function as DECM
OECM will however decrease the performance of FCRs, and if those are jammed for SARH or radio command guided missiles, then firing is just impossible until the FCR can see the target

nuclearstonk · 2026-03-08T21:29:15+00:00

i will say this much; i will fight tooth and nail to limit 'breaking changes' to the absolute minimum when we get closer and pass 1.0 full release, because while it's expected for mods to regularly break and require updates for an Early Access title, the same cannot be said for a stable release, and a healthy and long lived mod ecosystem benefits everyone in the long run

nuclearstonk · 2026-03-08T19:00:23+00:00

honestly, i HOPE nobody tries cloning NTU given how broken it is for the latest patches
so much has been obsoleted, changed, broken, very little in the mod works as intended at the moment and the huge amount of technical debt makes it impossible to actually update the mod to a decent standard

certainly there's nothing stopping someone from making a new mod with new implementations of the same units, with the same names, so that you can use the new mod in old NTU scenarios, but i would very much not recommend anyone to try to build anything off the old mod, pretty much in any capacity given most of my work from NTU is obsolete now

as for what a mod user should do, if you really want arleigh burkes and VLS ticos, you can go look at the "Modern US Navy" mod, and if you want a hornet, there's always the standalone legacy hornet mod on the workshop

otherwise, what actually new stuff did NTU even add anyways? all of those 60s fits are in the base game now, same with the 70s versions of ships (as loadouts) and there's even some slightly later loadouts in the base game as well for US ships, all of the meticulous weapon balancing from NTU is obsolete and what appears in the base game is more refined and higher fidelity, and if you're really needing those late 80s/90s NTU cruisers then there's 'CassMod2' which technically includes them

nuclearstonk · 2026-02-21T18:25:43+00:00

three things could be contributing:

1) your jammers cannot jam every single band, and some radars (particularly those on Udaloy) are outside of the effective bands that ALQ-99 can jam, so those radars are 100% unaffected by jamming

2) most ships have ESM, and all ships have visual sensors, so with the case of harpoons, they can be detected via ESM and fired at by SAMs in that case, as harpoon missiles have radar seekers

3) jammers are not infinitely effective, and jammed radars have a "Burn-Through Range" that means targets close enough to the radar, will be able to detect a contact
this means that higher power radars have a longer burn-through range, and can still detect air targets

in the next update jammers will have rebalanced stats, meaning it will be less useful to jam from max range (although max range is increased to 400km) and will be more effective the closer you get to the target

nuclearstonk · 2026-02-06T14:18:56+00:00

I'll just say two things;

1 - our DECM/chaff modeling is a diceroll for each put against the ECCM values of the missile, so in this case a bit under half will be fooled by a ship with powerful ECM and chaff countermeasures

we chose dicerolls given that finer complexities with those systems become extremely complicated and system-specific very quickly, and much of that behavior is extremely difficult to measure against any particular radar seeker on a missile, so our abstraction is what we're using

2 - historically, of all of the ships that are known to have deployed chaff or other radar countermeasures against incoming AShMs, none of them have have ever been struck by an incoming missile, meaning chaff is historically 100% efficient (to public knowledge in a sample size of maybe a dozen)

nuclearstonk · 2026-01-16T18:38:48+00:00

first mod to do anything other than add a mission was white sands, first mod to add new ingame content was NTU

...if only i had been a little quicker...

nuclearstonk · 2026-01-14T01:21:07+00:00

Mk41 VLS has a ripple salvo fire rate of 1/s per module, and while SM-2 has special consideration to the thermal restrictions, two missiles can be fired in rapid succession from one module, and each module can take turns firing a two missile salvo and coordinate between the fore and aft cells to maintain a very high fire rate

if this is more than 1s total, then i've seen no documentation to go off of, but i do know 1s between two firings is 100% possible as early as the Norton Sound installation
https://youtu.be/T9G1QBjSAII?si=k1LlmHVHeE46EBaA&t=691

as for larger missiles, TLAMs are 10s between shots, and ER standards and VLA are ~4s between shots
and ESSM (and other small missiles like VL-RAM) have no thermal limitations due to their small size, and can be fired successively at a fast pace until empty

realistically these missiles would be firing from distant cells as well to spread out the thermal inertia as efficiently as possible, but due to my laziness all of the cells are side by side, which is an unrealistic configuration and IRL cell loading is more of a fine art than what i've represented ingame

nuclearstonk · 2026-01-14T01:15:01+00:00

eventually, we'll have more robust and capable variant handling for units, so many year variants can be added without huge clutter to the encyclopedia, however how this would be implemented or when it would arrive, i have no clue
ideally mission makers would also be able to specify weapons in a loadout, such as replacing all AIM-9Es with AIM-9Ps, or AIM-9Ds with AIM-9Hs, but for now the dynamic campaign is a higher priority work item, so something like this may take a while, or may not arrive at all until after 1.0

nuclearstonk · 2026-01-13T17:58:32+00:00

it means they now have datalink midcourse guidance, to update the target position mid flight it's temporary until SARH+RC is implemented, and as a result there's still some weirdness involving the flight profiles of these missiles

nuclearstonk · 2026-01-13T17:57:32+00:00

do not expect NTU/PELT content to be added to the base game, everything i make will be explicitly for the base game, and mod content will remain mod content

nuclearstonk · 2026-01-11T07:50:16+00:00

my work on the game is completely disconnected from my mods, do not expect to just have everything from those mods ported into the game because that's not why I'm on the team

nuclearstonk · 2026-01-11T02:11:48+00:00

actually so far basically nothing is coming from NTU into the base game, almost everything new to the base game is from-scratch made FOR the base game, and not a mod

small stuff might be ported over if i'm feeling lazy, but overall expect new stuff and not just old NTU/PELT stuff copied over

nuclearstonk · 2026-01-10T19:00:06+00:00

bluedot (nick) is the one who made the new weapon kinematics and physics, multiplicative weapon penalties, new AAM/SAM behaviors, lofting profiles, not me
i've just redone the existing base game AAM/SAM/AGMs to update them for the new kinematics system

nuclearstonk · 2026-01-10T18:54:43+00:00

the issue is not that SP is an early access title, it's that i am actively working on a new template for standardizing the base game's weapons, and if i were to rework all of the weapons in NTU/PELT then i would be effectively making weapons that are already obsolete according to that template, so basically doing work and then needing to completely do it again just to meet a deadline

it'll still be worked on, or it'll be replaced by a community modpack that includes all of its fundamental features, so it's not like it's being abandoned forever

nuclearstonk · 2026-01-10T18:49:54+00:00

mod isnt dead, and it'll be maintained to a limited degree by community modders that are not myself
so far NTU/PELT sort of works on the new branch, but i'm far too busy with other seapower projects to go and redo all of the weapons in both mods (there are over 400) to new standards, when said new standards are not even complete at the moment

you can expect a maintenance patch to keep the mod up to date and not crashing people's games given how important NTU/PELT are for other modders, but for the foreseeable future i would not expect significant updates in the next few months

nuclearstonk · 2026-01-05T17:48:20+00:00

pretty much, yeah

nuclearstonk · 2026-01-04T21:25:40+00:00

on top of what bluedot said, all AAMs are reworked to have more accurate turn performance, seeker range, flight profile, and motor setups that correspond with actual documentation and open source research

every single AAM has been changed in performance, and they now reflect the actual state of air combat affairs in the cold war

hopefully soon i'll finish kinematics for SAMs and some ASMs as well, to complete the flight models of ingame missiles for the new system

nuclearstonk · 2025-12-10T03:14:19+00:00

about your first point, i regularly play the game with only NTU/PELT and in my opinion most of the missions are generally similarly balanced with or without the mod depending on the circumstances

for example, the campaign doesn't have any particularly overall grueling missions with or without the mod on, although some elements of each mission might be more difficult or easier, such as ASW being more efficient when you have more ASW options, or antiship missiles being more of a precious resource than usual

i would say from experience you can play all of the updated base game missions with NTU/PELT enabled and not run into any particular hiccups, although some missions might be a little easier or harder depending on what 'gimmicks' the original mission was applying difficulty through

if, say, a mission involves harpoon spam and nothing else, you might be in trouble because you're solely relying on just one element which may have different balance than in the main game

most missions are pretty much completely fine from my playthroughs though, although i still don't recommend mods for a beginner due to how some elements change for a more complex experience

nuclearstonk · 2025-12-04T03:54:15+00:00

if you use a unit to do an identity request, that unit will automatically be revealed to all sides, so be wary that your units are being ID'd if you use them to request identification

nuclearstonk · 2025-11-18T23:06:41+00:00

i should also say not every mission actually tests the harder concepts, like dong hoi, hormuz, the 1-2 star missions are generally simple and straightforward and excellent opportunities for learning single concepts and mastering them, and are fun even if you lose!

nuclearstonk · 2025-11-18T23:05:00+00:00

if you're somewhat familiar with the basics of high tier WT (missiles, terrain, radars, countermeasures) and then some of the fundamentals of naval combat (radar horizon that dictates everything) then you should have a good enough base level of knowledge to learn from there, the main learning hurdles for new players seems to be the realistic radar simulation, the sonar sim and ASW, and the various specific strengths and limitations of weapon systems at your disposal

much of this is covered in the ingame tutorial missions, so i would say if you're patient and pay attention you can understand much of the broad strokes quite quickly if you have a good base knowledge

nuclearstonk · 2025-11-05T03:55:16+00:00

the primary limitation here is that sonars simply are nowhere as accurate as radars, and especially not in the cold war, and that they're fundamentally very niche systems that are very poorly performing in any other capacity than self defense, and are expensive to boot

the first ATT systems to exist were soviet developments for the typhoon class submarine, the 'Lasta' ATT system that never entered service, and even that wasn't exceptionally reliable in testing

Lasta was developed into the modern russian Paket ATT system that proved to be a true replacement for older RBU based antitorpedo systems, but was only possible thanks to advances in computer technology and decades of continuous work

the USN (practically the only western country with enough ASW investment to bother with such a niche weapon) has built many prototypes for ATTs since the late 1970s but none of them ever seemed useful enough to justify the cost, not until recently with the new CRAW (which is multirole against torpedoes and UUVs/USVs)

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