Quote:
Originally Posted by suitednate
(Post 2269554)
Whenever I come across enemy ships in heavy seas (13+ wind), it never fails, they WILL sink even if they haven't been hit yet.
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I consider this to be a feature, not a bug.
That is not a flippant answer. A prime objective of ISP was to have realistic sea-keeping. This means having heavy seas that really do cause operational problems for the player. With stock or RFB alone, they do not. To accomplish this, I had to crank up waves pretty high. I wanted them as high as I could have them without them being entirely ridiculous, or making the game unplayable. If the waves are not high, you won't get any significant speed reduction.
I made a final proof test of the weather by having a couple convoys plow through the weather with 13 m/s force waves, for 24 hrs. and evaluating them at that level. Note that these were ocean-going ships, not small coasters, fishing boats, or luggers. Of the ones I checked, only the minesweeper (I forget if it was the No. 13 class or another one, but they are not much different) had difficulty. All the more sea-worthy vessels tested did very well.
So, that leaves the question of small ships, and ships in weather, with winds above 13 m/s. Certainly, some ships will sink as winds climb above 13 m/s. I structured the Scene.dat so that wave effects should increase steeply above 13 m/s. I did not do extensive testing of ships at higher levels, but can say that at 15 m/s levels, the Hog Island, Clemson, and Flower corvette, will sink fairly quick. This is not caused by changes to the ships, nor will all ships suffer the same difficulties. Any ship with low freeboard will be more vulnerable.
As long as most ships can survive in weather at 13 m/s levels, I consider this to be an acceptable model. In very severe weather, you would not be able to make a successful torpedo attack, and you certainly couldn't use your deck gun, so it isn't unrealistic to have operational limitations in this way. You can consider these sunk ships to be victims of the weather, other subs, or just consider that the weather has forced shipping to stay in port. The way I see it, if ISP doesn't cut down tonnages bagged, it isn't doing it's job.
As far as weather getting stuck, there is nothing I changed that is related to intervals between changes. AFAIK, the only thing we can mod related to change intervals, is in the mission/campaign files, and I didn't touch those. I agree, having never-changing weather is a drag, especially when it is bad weather, but that isn't related to ISP.
I had a short career, where I was stuck for a week or so with 14 m/s winds, and yes, it was a drag. I couldn't make a torpedo attack. And yes, I had ships sink before I could get to them, but such is life. I believe this was due to the mission file having "no changes" for the wind, in the file. I'm not sure how the bulk of the mission/campaign files are written in this regard. Beyond changing the mission files, I'm not sure what could be done. In spite of being inconvenienced at times, I still like ISP and the waves. I would rather have it this way, than go back to vanilla weather, where it is basically a non-factor.
Perhaps, I should have warned people of this, but thought it would be better for people to discover some of these things themselves.
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