[REL] Thomsen's Ships V3.1 is out! All credits to H.SIE (10/12/2008)
 

Thomsen's Chips are under production! Yeah, cheesy, crambling, tasty! Thomsen's Chips will be attached to some very nasty sauce, barbacue flavor, and...

ok... not funny...

Anyway...

This thread is about those ships I promise to make, turn those sport-car-ships into more heavy, slow and vulnerable ships, like they should have been. Tired of seeing a destroyer (that actually takes more then 10 minutes to reach it's top speed in real life) run away from your torpedos like a lamborghini? Don't worry, I'm fixing it.

Yeah, this post is very messy and not serious, but that's my mood at the moment. Plus this is fixable, I'll edit later when the mod is released. For now it's just a daily update of what I'm doing, why I'm doing, for what purposes and how.

This is also a good place where people can post complaints about the ships, ideas about the mod-to-come, suggestions about anything related and criticism about it. I'm sure there's people in this forum that prefer the sport-car-ships, I respect that, and I invite those people to come here and throw wrenches at thomsen. Believe or not, wrenches can be transformed into suggestions, and can give me ideas on how to make it even better. So, like samsung use to say, everyone's invited!

Now, for the important and interesting part...

1) What does this mod do?

It fixes the speed and maneuverability of the vessels (everything that floats, including u-boats) to more acurate and realistic values.

2) Why?

We at subsim are so concearned about realism, constantly making mods that improve the game to a higher level, and yet the ship's maneuverability are still at square one, since the beggining. How long to you think that a 12 thousand tons tanker takes to go from zero to max speed? The answer would be around 40 minutes. And in game? Around 40 seconds. And how long would a ship like that take to go from full speed to completly stopped? Well, you bet that it would take more than 10 minutes, and a lot of kilometers. And in game? The ship can stop in less then 300 meters, enough to avoyd a collision with other ship, in the middle of the night, with zero visibility.

Ships are huge, it takes the crap out of them to stop, or turn, or increase speed. In game, the lightning speed that they do that makes them feel like rubber ducks in a bathub. How can you ever get the feeling that a ship weights 40.000 tons if it can maneuver easily enough to avoyd torpedos and collisions, go from 30 kts to zero in 8 seconds flat as it watches your torpedo pass by. :nope:

Wanna see something funny? Find a neutral ship and cross your uboat in front of it. The ship will stop in seconds, and avoyd the collision. It's so realistic! :rotfl:

3) Is it GWX compatible?

No.

GWX's campaign is based on the current ship's maneuverability speed. This mod corrects the ship's maneuverability speed, so it breaks some gwx aspects.

What does that mean? Means that I will have ships behaving like crazy in my game?

No. Means that ship's actions will be 10 times slower. All ships. They will take longer to turn, longer to accel and longer to stop. How this will affect the convoys? I don't know... We'll have to test it out and discover...

By logic, while the convoy is moving in a straight line, there will be no problems. When they turn from one waypoint to another, we may have some strange behavior. But from what I've seen already, they make a pretty mess while turning in groups since stock game, and also in supermods. Not becouse the supermods were not built correctly, but becouse the game engine sucks. Sucks badly. Ships go everywhere, go backwards, go right and left, like a blind man in a shootout.

Maybe making them slower will make it better. Maybe not. I don't know if I'll have the time to test it. But 99.9% of the time we spot a convoy, they are running a straight line, aren't them? So I guess we are ok.

4) What will I see from stock/gwx/nygm/wac to change with this mod?

- Ships may collide with one another. I bet you never saw that happen!
- Ships won't be able to avoyd torpedos. In real life, when a ship spotted a torpedo, it was too close to turn/stop/accelerate and avoyd it. On a big ship, if you apply full reverse when going foward, you wouldn't even feel any difference. Takes a LOT of time for the ship to express any reaction.
- Ships will behave less like rubber ducks and more like solid icebergs. I'm improving their sailing behavior as well. This will fit perfectly with the Thomsen's Water mod, as the waves are also more realistic. You'll never again see a ship sinking on it's own, no matter how hard the storm is.
- Some other neat stuff... (surprises) :cool:

5) Where can I download it?

This mod is still under development. Note the title: WIP = Work in progress.
So why is this a thread for it?
So we can discuss about it, see how is it going, launch some beta-versions, have some feedback.

I really don't have time to play anymore, but I do have some time to mod. I'll mod, and you guys will test. The feedback will provide me the info I need to tweak the mod as necessary. But mainly this is a very simple mod, I don't believe that it will cause much trouble, and hardly incompatible with other mods. (in terms of files).

I believe that I'll have the first version of it to be released by the weekend. But as I said, I have short time to mod, about one hour per day. So I cannot make any guarantees. But I'll try.

I wish I had the time to finish the Sound pack V4 and the Water V4, but unfortunally those two mods take much more time to be made, compared to this. Plus, I think that both look pretty good already, not much to be fixed, and besides, SH3 days are counting down, not worth invest too much modding time into SH3 anymore. But this is a discussion for other threads.

:up:

Edit: New version 3.1 by h.sie Here

You have me interested.

I remember people had problems trying to make this in the past.

How long to get a VIIC from 0-17knts?

Do you know how it effects destroyer difficulty?

Any chance of a version that only effects u-boats?

Thanks and regards.

This version will affect only the vessels you want it to affect. One ship, one uboat, all of them, none of them... you pick!

An uboat you take around 5 minutes to achive maximum speed. They cut thru the water very well and they're small and light.

About the destroyers, they will suffer less then the ships, the difference on their difficulty won't be great. They will just take a bit longer to accelerate and to brake.

:up:

PT is Ships not Chips ok.. I liked them pickled not all flavored lol.:up:

Great idea you have. I can't wait to see the finished product.

Ummmm
This

Is garbage
The GWX campaign is not built on ships going from 0 to max speed in 1 second or anything like
The GWX campaign - like the rest of the campaigns out there - assigns a ship a sped to travel at within it speed range

If you need any help understanding something just ask

:roll:

I think he was trying to play it safe and say that problems were expected with ship manuvering in the game. GWX would have thrown him overboard if he said it was compatible. Maybe it is none of my business, but can't we all just get along here?

I think he's operating on the understanding that altering a ship's ability to maneuver can break waypoints in GWX, bbw.

And with the hammering Philipp has taken lately about how his mods "break" things in GWX, I'm thinking maybe he added that remark to try and avoid such criticism again.

Philipp's battles with other modders may have made him reluctant to approach anyone involved in developing GWX so it's understandable why he didn't ask how his mod would affect waypoints for ships in GWX.

I know PT can be a bit rough around the edges but I really don't think he meant any insult this time. Philipp's still young and he hasn't fully mastered how to express himself in english.

I know my own mouth got me into plenty of trouble in my youth and I grew up speaking english as my native language!

I'm not asking you to cut the kid some slack for his own sake. I figure that would be unlikely, given all the bad blood. However, I'm asking for the sake of this community. We all need to be more forgiving and stop snapping at each other over these mods like a dog guarding a well-gnawed bone.

No matter who is to blame, I think that attacking a modder who has insulted a person's "professional pride", through ignorance or lack of language skills, only serves to make the community look ugly and leaves a black mark on the name of the modder or group that perpetuates the feud. It's not impossible to remain civil while you tell someone they're wrong or mistaken in their statements.

I admire all of the modders' efforts here and wish I knew even a tenth of what you all have learned about modding this game. The rest of us look up to you as heroes, of a sort. I pray you would keep that in mind.

Calm down you guys!

I'm not mad at anyone at gwx's, like you guys think.

I'm not picking a fight saying it's not compatible with gwx. I'm just saying the truth.

@BBW, I'm not saying anything about if the ship's maneuverability is right or wrong in gwx, that's not the point. All I said is that gwx is based on the ship's maneuverability IN gwx, which is obvious, and I don't know exactly what I'll be breaking by changing the way ships behave. All I'm trying to say is that gwx's ships have X aspects, and I'm changing all the ships to have Y aspects, so I'll be breaking *something* in gwx's engine. I'm not trying to pick a fight here, for pete's sake. I had enough of my share of fights, and I want none, ever again. I just said what I said cos I think it would be easier to pick a fight if I hadn't mention the compatibility with GWX. People would eventually ask or say something about it anyway, I just wanted to make it clear from the beggining. I'm really HOPING it doesn't break anything, but I'm not sure yet. And I didn't ask you guys cos I really didn't want to bother you with this, since you guys are filled with duties on gwx 3.0, gwx 4.0 and real-life stuff.

Really guys, no harm meant. You need to chill, I'll solve any issues and arguments with patience, honesty and kind words from now on.

:up:

yo PT stop being sorry again, u're doing fine. it's just your hot character makes u rush and leave lots of mistakes behind unfixed and sometimes hard words comes to life where on the second thought could of been avoided :) If I would start modding something myself I would deffinetly make loooots of mistakes on the way of reaching perfectiness. It's just good idea to leave details (as u do sometimes) in unknown state if u're not sure how things works in one or other circumstances so ppl would know that this mod has a chance to mess up something and let users use it on their own risk.

"Per asper ad astra" :up:

And all I was saying is makes no difference to GWX\WAC\NYGM or LSH3 if the ships manouverability is altered
As long as no ships max speed is lowered it makes no difference to waypoints or anything else
Adjusting the speed ships take off at is long overdue and been an issue from day 1

Well, if you're saying that the script is not a problem, then it's ok. I figured that changing the ships wouldn't mess the campaign, but I had a feeling that it COULD mess a little bit the point where ships start to turn when heading for a new waypoint. But I know what you mean. They do it slowly and the ocean is vast. There'll be no problem.

Do you mind sharing what was the difficulties with changing the ship acceleration, breaking and turning abilities?

@Contact, I'm not rushing, I'm just being transparent about what I think. As I said, I don't have time to play the game, that means I don't have time to test my mods. That said, the best way around this would use the logic to build the best I can, and rely on the community to beta-test it for me. That's what I meant.

:up:

Phil, why you don't just do your Mojo, and well see how well it works out!

I'm dying to see where this is going.
Considering how fast a DD can go from "ridiculous speed" to a totall stop, its a worth try!!

I dont know anyone who has looked at reducing the acceleration of the top of my head
so nothing to share
But am sure someone in 3 years must have taken a look at it

@PT

One thing in particular you may want to keep an eye on is the tendancy for vessels that collide with one another to 'blend/intertwine' together, as opposed to bouncing off one another.

If you succeed in your goal of slowing them down it is possible that two or more vessels. once having collied may look unsightly/unrealistic for an awful length of game time. :hmm:

I wish you well in your efforts and hope you achieve a successful outcome. http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...s/thumbsup.gif

You can relax now, PT. I did not intend any sort of tone that could be mistaken as combative, hence my lack of exclamation marks or typing in all capital letters. ;)

I know we can all be intolerable at times. You have to be a bit of a character when your temperament is the sort to get involved in a game and community like this. We're all eccentric to a certain degree. :p

I know that fellows like jimbuna and bbw are stand-up guys, as are the vast majority of the regulars here. If you ever have any doubt about your words or the mods you're working on, do not hesitate to ask someone you trust, Philipp. :yep:

Now, get to work or I'll have jimbuna bring out the commando penguin chorus line! :88)
(uhh...you do have commando penguins, right, jimbuna?)

REALLY looking forward to the results and I will gladly put my system at risk to test this mod! :up: