EDIT: Test version of the WIP
DOWNLOAD v0.1
Use this thread for any further communication and feedback regarding this mod;
http://subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=239358
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I wonder how much time and effort has been put into this from the modding community already?
I've been quite unhappy with how the subs behave in the water (surfaced) in SH3 for a long time and decided to take matters into my own hands. I started my investigation in the data\submarine\NSS_UboatXX directories, using VIIB as guinea pig due to the faster loading times in the Naval Academy.
The interesting values to tweak, as far as I've discovered so far, is located at "6:unit_Submarine". The first value I tried tweaking was fr_ratio (Gravity center). It defaults at 0,5 on all submarines (and probably all boats) and putting it further forward actually made the boat ride waves quite good and behave more like in real life. On the surface at least. Diving becomes a real problem because the boat is not in balance and the aft hangs lower in the water the further forward you set the balance. So while the main objective was passed with flying colours, the adverse effects forces this number to remain at default, 0,5 (midship).
I then started to fiddle with surface UD-drag (up and down-drag). All subs are default at 0,1 so I tweaked it to 0,2. The submarine stopped bobbing on the smaller waves and behaves much better than default. The submerged UD-drag is by default 0,15. Having the submerged drag slightly lower than the surface drag creates the more realistic effect that surfaced vessels bobs up faster than they bobs back down.
I tested reducing submerged drag to 0,1 and the result were even better from a surface perspective. I don't really know if this causes any huge difference in the submerged agility of the boat but I haven't noticed any huge difference.
I'm very happy with the results at least and if anyone else wants to test the tweaks and weigh in with opinions, it doesn't take a minute to tweak your submarine file (7B for ease of access) with the same to check out for yourself.
data\submarine\NSS_Uboat7b\NSS_Uboat7b.sim
6:unit_Submarine
7:unit_Submarine
unit_Ship
obj_Hydro
Surfaced -> drag -> UD = 0,2
Submerged -> drag -> UD = 0,1 (or default 0,15)
Dirk
