[vdr1981]

Originally Posted by gap

I am glad to learn that you have started working on some of the ideas we have been discussing in the past. Please note that all ships in/out bond to/from British ports whether they are darkened or not should be valid targets.

For completeness, I will mention my own elaboration of German prize rules:

• smuggling goods to from the UK or sailing too close to British territorial waters (this included neutral fishing trawlers coming too close to the UK);
• darkening lights;
• sailing within Allied convoys or under escort by an Allied warship;
• displaying no clear neutrality markings nor national ensign;
• sending distress signals or on spotting an U-boat.

In essence, that's pretty much how early traffic around British waters is set now but for now all fake neutrals will have navigational lights turned off. The Captain who is trying to smuggle goods for Britain with his lights on is not a sane person IMO... Probably something similar had happen in the real life but we have to draw the line somewhere...

Just for the pleasure to confuse our uring the first few months of the conflict I would let a few lone enemy vessels illuminated, especially non-British ships and fishing boats.

That's actually a nice idea and interesting touch... I think it can be done...

After the Fall of France, a number of French vessels ("Free French" by then) escaped the Capture by rushing to England. I hope that, after your changes to TWoS' ship traffic layer, the running French ships can be found and sunk in British waters. Since, in game, Free France is a distinct nation with its own ensign, no confusion with Vichy French vessels would be possible.

No, I was talking about regular French ships which are bound for British ports for example one day before French capitulation. Due to SH world map projection, they may need 10 and even more days to reach their destination. Unfortenattely, SH AI can not reverse course and get back to port... In theory, they can suddenly become "friendly" at the moment when torpedo leaves the tube which is not good (remember recent friendly kill incident, it was french ship).

Sicily is my home place, the chocke point that you are talking about is named Strait of Messina

Out of curiosity, can you explain more in detail what was the problem and how you fixed it?

In my recent BoM testing I noticed large FPS drop while I was returning to La Spezia, just north of Sicily . It turned out that it was large convoy from Gibraltar to Alexandria which decided from some reason to take a shortcut trough Messina Strait?! It's strange because when I simulate campaign in the mission editor this wasn't the case. Anyway, one small axis threat zone placed in the appropriate place in common.mis file solved the problem...

Ships being surprised by sudden switches of diplomatic sides and finding themselves in potentially hostile waters, was a common circumstance during WWII and I hope this will still happen in TWoS campaign. Nonetheless, it would be odd for ships of a given nation to keep sailing in enemy-controlled waters (or, even worse, to visit enemy ports) long after such a switch had happened. I am glad that you have addressed this problem

Yes, they could even be seen in Kiel kanal sometimes and some axis controlled ports as well. Just like in previous French scenario, canceling or redirecting problematic traffic few days before side switching has proved as a good solution...

Campaign Advance Verifier_Testing addon? Non directional beacons?
Sorry if my question might sound silly, but what's that?

Yes, One of the modders created this addon, Old Codder IIRC... He noticed some whichcraft in SH/uplay process or code (I have no idea really) which is responsible for activating campaign transfers when time comes. The savegame actually requires several reloads in order to wake up this process from some reason and this is what this addon is for, to inform the player is this process active. It not perfect but its's quite helpful when nearing campaign transfer date...


And for NDBs, eeeeeeh...Finally someone to ask.
Do you remember strange "report nearest radio contact" command from TDWs NewUI which never actually did anything?

I discovered that on this command, the radioman will give us the bearing and the approximate range of received radio contact BUT only for static units with "docked" status?! Unlike normal radio reports on sea, these are quite rare and that's why it took eternity to figure this out...
I was wondering what to do with these since it didn't seem to me as a quite useful function. What should I do with it? To home in on bored radio operators in British ports? I already know that there is a port there and that ships are probably there, together with coastal installation and hundreds of mines which I have placed there...

Then I remembered that I have read on Uboat.net that German U-boats actually used radio navigation and I also remembered my troubles while trying to find Lorient in dense fog and bad weather while I was just few kilometers from harbor entrance.
As an ex hardcore flight sim enthusiast, I then immediately knew what to do with those "un-useful" reports...

I took the antenna from one of the imported dat coastal installations, organized it as a single ground unit, placed it on the most appropriate locations and set it in ME to send radio reports every day.
I properly renamed mentioned command to "report nearest land based contact/beacon".

It's a small geeky touch IMO, kind of non precision approach for U-boats, but it can be very immersive for real nav captains...



Although it isn't very realistic to have range reported in this case, I didn't remove it because it's heavily randomized and I needed some kind of confirmation that we are homing on a correct beacon from Lorient and not from Brest for example...