Heating up the cauldron for a run tonight on v0.72.



Have to make sure the soup is up to temp and bubbling with extra goodness!

Lock and Load, boss. :salute:

Sink'em ALL! :arrgh!:

“We must fight
We must shoot to kill
For our enemies
Have pointed the way
To swifter surer
Crueler killing.”

Thank you!

Thank you, Capn.


Open question: It seems that most of the merchant ships do not have front and quartering views in my recognition manual; is that common to everyone or did I mess my install up? For me it's effecting the old ships, the added ones have views that work.


Thanks again everyone!


SilentPrey

So AI-ships can spawn planes now? Cool! Is there a way to adapt this feature, so that a player ship/sub can spawn planes?

For years now I've been trying to get my Takao-mod to be able to spawn recon planes from it simular to call them from airfields or carrier groups on the map. Any clue or advice will be very much appreciated!


:subsim:

This is a "spawn", not a "launch" of a plane. ie: Each AI vessel has an "AirGroup" with a set number of planes, and the ship is re-classified basically as a "Carrier", as can be seen by the re-naming of the Type=18 vessel Group to "Light Warship with Scout Planes" and the Type=19 Group into "Heavy Warship with Scout Planes". The AI submarines are now Type=17. In "Stock" trim, the Type=17 is an 'Elite Destroyer Escort', and that "behavior" translates now to the AI submarine taking on the "Attack!" tactic of a DE vessel, instead of the "Avoid!" tactic. Likewise, the Type=18 in Stock was 'Elite Escort Carrier' and the Type=19 was 'Super Fleet Carrier'. Therefore, these Warships now take on the "Attack!" behavior of said vessels (CV launch airplanes). You can count on an active air response from them when your submarine (or any other 'enemy') is detected. Airplanes will "spawn" as appropriate for the groups, which does include four of the IJN AI submarines... You will NOT "see" airplanes 'launch' from the catapults (yet), and if you are in too close (within the "spawn" radius) to the vessel, they will not generate a detectable, immediate air response. ~BUT~... it seems that if you go below "communication" depth, which is somewhere below periscope depth, but above crush depth, planes ~seem~ to spawn, but I cannot confirm this behavior...

In other words, you need to change your Takao into a Type=19 vessel with its "Type=" line in both of its CFG files. You also need to add an appropriate "AirGroup" to its Sea folder CFG file. You can copy the 'pattern' from a carrier, only you'd just have a few float planes in one group... Then the ~fun~ part (at least for me) is to change ~all~ the campaign files to match your new "calls" for the Takao. But, I don't think the technique would work for a player-controlled vessel... We are currently once again trying to find that "balance point" with this in FotRSU. This is our 2nd attempt at this, with the first try being too "light"... CapnScurvy may have a further / more-detailed response...

Thanks for the quick responds.
Yeah, spawing would be just fine, I just want them to work simular to the campaign recon planes.



I tried it with defining air groups in the cfg-file of the main directory:

D:\Daten-D\Daten-Depot\SH4-Mods\0-EigeneMods\IJN-Takeda_HQv8\Data\Submarine\IJN_Takao\IJN_Takao.cfg


"
[AirGroup 1]
StartDate=19400602
EndDate=19460101
Squadron1Class=FBA6M2N
Squadron1No=1

[AirGroup 2]
StartDate=19400602
EndDate=19460101
Squadron1Class=FBA6M2N
Squadron1No=1
"


by default the palyer ships (for actually being converted subs) is 200, so not sure, if a change of that value might cause it to crash:06:


Are you refering to its cfg-file in the roster path?


Well, the tricky part is also, how to adjust the HUD in order to klick on your ship icon, get to radius and set its destination :/

Yeah, the Type=200 for a player "sub" will preclude any airplane "spawning". You have to have a "Carrier" to launch airplanes, even if it is just a "spawn". btw, you only want the one AirGroup active at a time, but you could put 2, 3 or 4 (or more) planes in it. But AirGroup 1 could be say a Nakajima E8N, from 19380101 to 19420601, and then AirGroup 2 could be an F1M2, from 19420602 to 19451231. Both AirGroups can have more than one Squadron though, also...

The Recognition Manual primarily follows Fotrs's attempt to put "something" into the book, but it's not as detailed as the SH4 Stock game having a 90; 45; and zero degree image. With any new ships we may have made for Ultimate, we pretty much just followed what the Fotrs guys did. Some of their pictures come directly from SHIII.....so the RM is in all kinds of different looking configurations.


When I get around to it, I'll be looking at the ship measurements and redoing the RM to suit my idea of what an RM should look like. I've actually had a plan for some time to put measurements onto the RM ship pictures to coincide with the ability to use the Stadimeter to "pick" a spot on the target to get a measurement from....not just the mast. You'd have a dial to "set" the spots height figure, then take a reading from that spot, giving you a reasonably accurate Range to target. I know there are some measurements that aren't even close to providing an accurate measurement of Range if your using Manual Targeting, so a "make over" is needed for more than one reason.

A ClassType=200 ship unit can not spawn planes. Their player controlled, you have no way of having the unit produce a plane as an "AirBase" of an AI unit. As propbeanie stated, you have to have the ClassType changed to an "AirBase Typed" unit before a plane is produced, and then you have to make sure your Campaign Mission files coincide with the "ClassType" change for the ship to not cause a CTD when reproduced.

My advice is to forget thinking a ClassType=200 ship unit can spawn planes....they won't.

So I would have to change the type to 19 as suggested above then? Did I at least put the air groups in the right cfg-file?


What campaign files would be involved? I don't want an AI version of my ship to spawn somewhere.


I just can't let go of the thought how awesome it would be to send out your own planes to spot contacts:ping:

You're making a player controlled ship right...the Takao? The only way you can make a player controlled ship is to have it as a ClassType=200....or it doesn't become player controlled.

Yes, you put the [AirGroup] in the correct .cfg folder. However, just having the Takao in the Submarine folder means you're asking it to become a player controlled "sub"; plus the ClassType=200 designation...….changing the ClassType will lose your ability to control the ship unit.....which is what you want to do in the first place. You can't do both....you can't have a ship unit "player controlled" as a sub would be; and have it behave like an AI unit like an "AirBase" (Land or Sea) unit would be.

Quite a few of us have had that dream, Senf-Man82 - and for a while too, I might add. Peabody did this a few years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcneBeK0Rws

that is an animation attached to a node on the ship. It just keeps playing over and over and over... Tagging a game condition to "show" the animation would be an idea, make a sound maybe even, having it go faster at the initial "catapult launch", drop a bit as it comes off the ramp, then start the climb... but you still really don't have a "scout plane". Just an animation of a launch. Another idea is that the UBoat side of the game has that "calling" feature, to ask for assistance from a plane or another ship, but I haven't even looked into whether that's possible to do on the US side. Put that "call-in" together with the launch animation, and you could have a simulation of a scout plane... As I've mentioned to someone else, if you do it, you would be world famous, and all SH players the world over would be eternally grateful to you...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZLkBznAijk

:salute: