Realism- and gameplay-related hardcode fixes for SH3.EXE

Originally Posted by CCIP

And how do you think some of the real U-boat captains felt about that prospect? If wolfpack operations were a piece of cake, why would you get into them in the first place? Noone's forcing you - just disregard BdU instructions and attack yourself!

HAH! Like real U-boat captains or navigators weren't capabe of calculating interception point by given location, speed and course!
When there gonna be radars in 1942 and after everywhere you will not get a chance to chase the convoy in first place. Not to mention about sending a contact after it's visual of 2-3 ships by game limitations ?

3 hours or 1 hour of surface activity is going to be an invitation for trouble. So it is correct in late war.

I planned to send reports at night during early war. But if visual sensors of Escorts remains unchainged - spotting 3 ships in convoy on surface will be a risky buisiness

Originally Posted by Capt. Morgan

In order to satisfy the players natural curiosity about what a Wolf-Pack attack will look like, perhaps you could include a demo mission (I'm assuminng you probably already have one for testing) rather than making an "easy" mode.

A simple video would be enough.

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by PapaKilo

HAH! Like real U-boat captains or navigators weren't capabe of calculating interception point by given location, speed and course!
When there gonna be radars in 1942 and after everywhere you will not get a chance to chase the convoy in first place. Not to mention about sending a contact after it's visual of 2-3 ships by game limitations ?

3 hours or 1 hour of surface activity is going to be an invitation for trouble. So it is correct in late war.

I planned to send reports at night during early war. But if visual sensors of Escorts remains unchainged - spotting 3 ships in convoy on surface will be a risky buisiness

Well, in a sense that's a completely separate issue with the AI - yeah, the AI sensors may need another look with this development. They ARE probably too good. I'm pegging my hope on people like Stiebler with his work on keeping up NYGM to have a look at that aspect of the game and balance it while accounting for this new development. Perhaps down the road some of the 'certainty' that the AI always seems to have about your position can also be watered down via these .exe fixes.

But other than that, 3 hours and necessity of keeping frequent contact doesn't strike me as excessive. What if the convoy zigs instead of zagging? What if you are indeed driven down and the pack has no idea where the convoy is for a while? What if indeed the enemy has very good radar? These are some of the real difficulties that ultimately defeated the wolfpacks. In a sense, if by later 1943 you can't win in a convoy battle, or even maintain contact, that's a sign that the mod is working correctly.

[h.sie]

@PapaKilo: No videos available in this thread.

For my work it is not relevant what could have been wise or logical for a Kaleun to do or not to do. For me it's relevant what happened in the past. We have historical info that homing signals had to be sent hourly - sometimes even every 30 minutes. Do you have any historical information that approve your point of view?

Using this Mod, you are free to decide how frequently you send contact reports. You can even send every 12 hours - or - more secure: never. But you have to live with the consequences - as in real life.

Using your style of argumentation, I could say: "From my point of view it would have been much more wise and logical NOT to start the second world war, thus, it makes no sense to play silent hunter at all".

I Love SH3 I love GWX. If I like something I will deffinetly discuss/argue about some aspects of it

Anyway the idea of wolfpacks is great certainly. Too great projection of it in my mind perhaps, but the cake isn't yet baked to judge about it's taste

Best of luck

[complutum]

Just only one thought, as Stiebler has made the smoke detection perhaps it would be possible to make that during daylight you could send the homing signal using it instaed needing to see the ships, while during night you can go closer to get visual range

[h.sie]

I think it is necessary to have environment/sensor - combinations that allow a shadowing of a convoy from large distances without risking to be detected. Makman94 said that his M.E.P.3 already works fine.

The time between the first contact report and the wolfpack attack of course depends on the distance between the UBoats and the convoy and in the Mod it will take between 2 and 24 hours of game time (hourly reports assumed). I think that is not too long.

Nevertheless, the forthcoming Alpha2 version will contain a switch to activate a LITE version for demonstration purposes that will halve this time.

@complutum: I discussed that with LGN1 in the past, but making contact reports independent from visual contact is a very hard task with bad side-effects. Thus, I firstly try without that idea.

[complutum]

I think, as far as i know by reading some sources, that reports hourly it's not unreal so i agree that it gives you more approach to reality

[Pdubya]

H.Sie:
I initially put a short inquiry over on the GWX thread as I thought my trouble lay in that direction. However, after some more testing today, I believe that there may be an issue with V15G2 I am running with a NonSF, GWX3 Gold, SH3 Cmdr setup.
Everytime I try to start a new career, either 1st, 2nd, or 7th, after I comply with the GWX special instructions to make a short shakedown patrol and dock again I cannot "advance" the Mission page. Instead of giving me the "start of hostilities" briefing, I am still getting the GWX intro page.

Here is my JSGME list:
GWX - 16km atmoshere/Enhanced Damage Effects/Integrated Orders/No Medals on Crew/Open Hatch Mod
Merchant Fleet Mod 3.2
O2-Gauges v2
Supplement to V15G2

Saving the career and starting up the save (via SH3Cmdr) in port before the next mission had no positive effect- no mission advancement.

I did a small test by rolling back SH3Cmdr, unloading all my mods and reloading all except your O2 and Supplements. Resumed career in SH3Cmdr and loaded last save in port. Advancing the mission now works correctly. I got the "commencement of hostilities" short message.

By the way, time was advancing normally. Started 01.08.39; docked in Wilhelmshaven 06.08.39. Choosing mission advanced the date to 28.08.39, but not the briefing orders.

Let me know if there are other tests I can try for you or if you have any other questions I may have overlooked.
pw

PS. Windows 7 64-bit/4Gb ram Nvidia 460 with latest drivers. Intel Core2Duo E8400 chip. Using 4gb option in selector.

[h.sie]

@Pdyubya: Since until now 99% of the problems that seemed to be related to my patch, at the end were caused by corruted game installations, I ask you to

1) do a fresh GWX3 install without any further mod. (Also, compress your fresh install into a ZIP, RAR or 7z archive for later use. This will save a lot of time for re-installing a fresh GWX.)

2) Then try whether all works fine.

3) Then apply V15G2+Supplement. Start NEW mission and try again. Does it work as intended?

Do NOT load a saved game with V15G2 that has been saved without V15G2 and vice-versa.

Often enabling / disabling mods and forgetting a Rollback in SH3Cmdr rises the risk to corrupt the installation.

Originally Posted by h.sie

Often enabling / disabling mods and forgetting a Rollback in SH3Cmdr rises the risk to corrupt the installation.

True, and if you ever had CTD, check the SH3Cmdr, you have to make roleback manually, despite your settings says "Rollback automatically after exiting SH3"

[h.sie]

@Stiebler:

You wrote that you did your tests with TC=32. The convoy zigzags, so maybe your reaction on a course change of the convoy was too late due to high TC, so that the distance between your Uboat and the escorts accidently became too small. Maybe shadowing maneuvre needs TC=1 and full player concentration all the time. It could be worth to try out if shadowing is possible at TC=1.

If I have to choose, I would optimise the mod to work for TC=1, not TC=32.

Looking forward for your test results next week, hehe.

[Hitman]

Regarding the difficulty of shadowing, we know that the problem is that you need to get too close for your crew to be able to "detect" at least three ships. We have been discusing the idea of decreasing or revising enemy AI sensors, and that is a solutionthat will certainly need studying, but also an alternative would be to INCREASE our own crew detection capabilities (visual sensor). There is no need for it to fall again into the dreaded vampire vision, but allowing them to see the smoke in the horizon even if youas player can't really see it would help a lot.

It is important to note that real crews were able to follow convoys over the horizon by just seeing tips of masts, and that means sometimes even 30 kms and if smoke is involved, even 50 kms

One more thing H.Sie, have you by chance during your study of the code seen where the rendering limitation of the units is? SH3 will not render anything beyond 20kms, but the units are IIRC spawned and considered individually by the game up to 40kms (Beyond that they are just a theoretical dot travelling in the map, as seen in the mission/campaign editor). If we could have them be rendered even at 40 kms, that would be a huge improvement because we could easily add a 40kms environment mod with corresponding sensors.

From what I understand reading about how far is the horizon by altitude:

1.7 meters above ground - 4.7 km

100 meters above ground 36 km

Theoretically dstance till horizon in plain surface is somewhat where h is eye level altitude

[Hitman]

@PapaKilo,

distance to horizon from a uboat's conning tower is aporximately 8-9 km. That means simply that any object you see at more distance will appear cut by the horizon line, but the upper part of it will still be visible as long as it is high enough. A typichal destroyer/merchant mast tops at 25-30 metres high (Like a 9-10 levels building), and as such if conditions were adequate -exceptionally clear air- you would be able to see it really far away, not to mention a smoke column that might raise as much as 100 metres above the water level.

Realistically, and due to air and humidity conditions as well as size of objects and background colours and clouds, you'll at most spot funnel smoke (And that a heavy one) at 40-50 kms and a ship's mast at 20-25 kms and that in absolutely perfect conditions. In the more frequent weather of the North Atlantic, 30kms for smoke and 15-20 for masts and superstructures seems OK.