The ships in SH3 tend to behave like 'rubber ducks' when bobbing on the sea, bouncing around too much, and turning, accelerating and deaccelerating far too quickly. Philip Thomsen discovered in 2008 that alteration of four key parameters (eng_power, drag (of rudder), gc_height and 'LR'), found in the .sim file of each ship, could make this behaviour much more life-like. He published his findings at SubSim in its own thread, and distributed a number of modified .sim files.
Thomsen's findings were confirmed by others, including by H.sie who distributed some further modified files, but there was much debate about which values to use - indeed, no clear consensus ever emerged. Moreover, many other players of SH3 could not use the files distributed by Thomsen and H.sie, since they caused clashes with their own sim files.
Therefore, I have decided to make this THOMSEN PARAMETERS APP available for general use, since it can be used to modify ALL ships currently used by ANY user in their SH3 installation.
THOMSEN PARAMETERS APP searches through your SH3 'Sea' folder looking for ship.sim files (eg 'NKC3.sim'). It then replaces optionally any or all of eng_power, rudder-drag, surfaced left-right drag coefficient ('LR') and gc_height (= centre of gravity) with values specified by the user. Every .sim file in your sea folder will be examined and altered!
THOMSEN PARAMETERS APP does NOT make back-ups of files that it changes, since backed-up sim files would be loaded by SH3, and back-up files without the .sim extender would make a lot of clutter in your folder. Correct use of this mod is described below.
THOMSEN PARAMETERS APP starts by searching all the files and files-within-sub-folders lying within your 'sea' folder. It creates a file called 'DIR4.TXT' to store all the files it finds within all these sub-folders. These files will have been sorted into alphabetical order.
The player then sets up to four options in its own dialog box.
THOMSEN PARAMETERS APP then uses 'DIR4.TXT' to locate and reach each file to be searched. Search results are stored in text file 'SEARCHPLAINTEXT.TXT', and can be read separately in a word processor (e.g. Microsoft's WORD). Alternatively, the search results may be viewed on screen. A practical limit of 200,000 has been imposed on the maximum number of characters that may be viewed on screen at one time. A larger capacity would increase proportionately the memory usage required by the program. The user may select whether to restrict the viewing capacity further to 50,000 characters with the option VIEW - RESTRICT RESULTS). View very long files in a word-processor. There is no restriction on the number of characters that may be printed from THOMSEN PARAMETERS APP.
1. I would advise STRONGLY that you make a back-up copy of your existing SEA folder found in silenthunteriii\data\sea. Then make a SECOND copy and place it in your folder silenthunteriii\mods\ThomsenSea\data. (You will have to create this folder with Windows Explorer, or similar.) The idea is that you will install the modified collection of .sim files with JSGME. You should delete from this second back-up file EVERY file that is not a .sim file. An example of the required sim file that must be retained is NKC3.sim, found in folder silenthunteriii\mods\Thomsensea\data\sea\NKC3. And now make a back-up copy of your new folder silenthunteriii\mods\ThomsenSea!
2. Run the THOMSEN PARAMETERS APP (thomsenparamapp.exe). Click on FILE/Set-Path to locate the sub-folder that contains all the ships. In the example above, it will be 'silenthunteriii\mods\Thomsensea\data\sea'. Click on OK.
3. Click on SEARCH/Search-Option and select the necessary options. At least one replacement item MUST be set to a value other than zero (0), or THOMSEN PARAMETERS APP will not start a search.
4. Toggle the button 'Search sub-folders' ON. Then click on OK.
5. THOMSEN PARAMETERS APP will now generate its list of files in 'DIR4.TXT' before commencing the search. Wait for the generation phase to end (the pane at the lower left will say 'Generating files'), and then for the search phase to end (pane says 'Searching', returning to 'Ready' when search is complete).
6. View the results (VIEW/View-results) on screen, or print them to your printer (FILE/Print results). Alternatively, exit from the program and load the results file 'SEARCHPLAINTEXT.TXT' into a word-processor. (Note - it may take several seconds to display a large number of results in the VIEW box.)
7. If you wish, modify the number of characters that can be displayed on screen with the option VIEW-RESTRICT RESULTS (toggles between 50,0000 and 200,000 characters). This view-restriction has no effect on any other process within THOMSEN PARAMETERS APP.
8. An over-long search may be terminated by pressing and holding down the ESCAPE key. This option does not work when viewing long files.
Once the list of files 'DIR4.TXT' has been generated, THOMSEN PARAMETERS APP will re-use it each time without need to regenerate it. You should only regenerate 'DIR4.TXT' if you are modifying .sim files held in a folder different from silenthunteriii\mods\Thomsensea\data\sea, or if you have added/deleted new files to/from silenthunteriii\mods\Thomsensea\data\sea.
Place a value of ZERO (0) in any of the search box entries where you do NOT want the existing value to be changed. Otherwise, type in reasonable values as follows: Example:
Engine Power (eng_power), range is 0-100% of original value in the file. Rudder drag (drag), range is 0.0-0.5. IMPORTANT: THOMSEN PARAMETERS APP determines if the ship is a merchant or a warship by its speed (below 19.5 kts is merchant, above 19.5 kts is warship or liner) and adds automatically an extra 0.01 to the user value when it encounters a ship with a maximum speed above 19.5 kts. Centre of gravity (gc_height) is 0.0-10.0. Surface drag (LR), range is 0-0.5.Suggested values, as recommended by others in Thomsen's original thread at Subsim: Engine power = 30% of original value. Rudder drag = 0.02 (merchant ships; automatic increase to 0.03 for warships) Centre of gravity = 0 (means 'No change'). Surface drag = 0 (means 'No change').
Don't forget: engine power is altered by a percentage. Suppose the original value is 10000 for one of the .sim files. If you set '50' (= 50%) for the eng_power parameter, the new value you place in the same .sim file will be 5000. If you now think you have made an error, and wish to use 30%, then you will obtain a value of 1500, not 3000, since you have now taken 30% of 5000. Start again from your back-up copy of silenthunteriii\mods\ThomsenSea. Or do some maths, and set eng_power = 60 (5000 x 60% = 3000).
This help-file should be placed in the same folder/sub-directory as the THOMSEN PARAMETERS APP program.
Finally, when the program has finished, read through file 'SEARCHPLAINTEXT.TXT' to check that the results were what you wanted, and then install your new, modded, folder with JSGME over your existing folder in SH3.
1. No ship of fewer than 500 tons will have its parameters altered, as originally intended by Thomsen. 2. As stated above, any ship whose maximum speed is greater than 19.5 kts will automatically be assigned a higher rudder-drag value. 3. This program generates a file 'SEARCHRES.TXT' used for debugging. 'Read' the file (it should be empty!), then ignore it.
Stiebler, 13th May 2013.
END OF HELP.