[REL] FOTRS Ultimate Project

[gutted]

Just finished up patrol #2, no issues to report so far. But holy crap was it one of my most memorable missions.

note: I play with contact updates off, and no plotting for attacks. Purely visual attacks using the TDC. No external tools either.


Anyway as i was cruising along in my S boat, i ran smack into a double battleship task force west of luzon heading south. I was able to sneak in close and fire off 4 fish at the lead battleship. But my speed esitmate was off and half the spread went behind it. The 2 that hit weren't enough to knock it out of formation.

While i was playing peek a boo with the escorts, i hear another large group of ships coming from the NNW on the hydrophone some 28k yards away approaching fast. It was another task force with battleships!!!! I got to within 5k yards and had to fire off a luck salvo. Due to the extreme angle my torpedoes would be arriving i had to use mag fuses. half of them blew up and the others either ran out of steam trying to reach it or just missed altoghter.

Oh well. So i dove deep and silent and slinked off north. No sooner than i clear the searching escorts i hear ANOTHER group of ships approaching from the north. I hadn't even surfaced my boat yet!! LOL.

It turned out to be a european cruise liner with an escort in tow. Due to my batteries being half used up i couldn't make decent enough speed to get in range. So i surfaced just out of view and ran along side of them. They were slowly pulling ahead of me due to me only being able to make like 12 knots.

Just when i was about to lose hope, they made a tac turn straight towards me. Dove to periscope depth and drove in. Fired off 3 of my last 4 torpedoes. Forgot to switch them back to contact from the previous engagement, and one blew up premturely. The other 2 struck home forcing the liner down to a sultry 2 knots. Repositioned and fired the last fish putting her down and then snuck off before the escort could find me.

Headed for home with empty tubes. 18,765 tonnes in the bag.

Recorded the entire 2 hour mission too!

[gutted]

Which texture controls the color of the inside of the periscope housing? I want to make it black like it used to be. I hate the grey color.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by torpedobait

...
Second, on another patrol in July 1942, we had to run down to Brisbane from Guadalcanal for fuel and torpedoes. In the approach to the harbor, on the Eastern side of the bay were at least two, if not three, heavy cruisers, a Northampton and a Pensacola class. They were like conjoined twins or even triplets. It literally looked like a tri-hull ship with triple turrets, etc. rather than three ships docked side by side.

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

...
I would have loved to see a screenshot of the triplets! Thanks for giving us enough information to check that out.

From a PM I received. Especially check the 2nd shot torpedobait and Rocking Robbins (you might already have a copy of this in your Inbox).

These two need to call their insurance agent, 'cause there's been a fender bender, little fire...

I'm not sure if they're the same vessel, but they sure look quite similar... Both are flagged Australian. I cannot ID them without my RecMan ... but there are supposed to be two "GENERIC" Aussie CL parked by the US BB, across the slip

Then we have exhibit two (literally):


These two, while also similar, appear to be different. I don't know if it's because they spawned one on top of the other, or what, but it almost looks like the vessel on the right has an open upper level gun turret, and different stacks, though the lifeboat mounts are quite similar, as is the mast. Only one is showing it's flag, US, on the right hand vessel. Are they DD?? Anyway, we'll get more details on these later I hope.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by gutted

Which texture controls the color of the inside of the periscope housing? I want to make it black like it used to be. I hate the grey color.

My brain is very jealous of the data I've been giving it lately, and won't turn loose of it, but if you don't see CapnScurvy on here sometime on the 22nd, PM him and ask. He's the guru of all gurus (gurues?? Goo-Ri???) on the interior (and all other aspects of the game)...

[gutted]

Finished patrol 3 earlier. Moved to Freemantle and was given a chance to upgrade from an S boat to a Porpoise. Loaded up my save just now and was looking over my boat and it appears ALL of the torpedo types are available. It's only April of 1942.

So tempting to load up my stern tubes with the mk27's

[edit] Shut the game down and restarted. Loaded my save and all the newer torpedoes are gone. Back to just mk.14's. Must have been a fluke.

[gutted]

Apparently i can't assign anyone to my deck guns on this new ship?

Possible Bug? (screenshot taking while on patrol)

[s7rikeback]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

From a PM I received. Especially check the 2nd shot torpedobait and Rocking Robbins (you might already have a copy of this in your Inbox).

These two need to call their insurance agent, 'cause there's been a fender bender, little fire...

I'm not sure if they're the same vessel, but they sure look quite similar... Both are flagged Australian. I cannot ID them without my RecMan ... but there are supposed to be two "GENERIC" Aussie CL parked by the US BB, across the slip

Then we have exhibit two (literally):


These two, while also similar, appear to be different. I don't know if it's because they spawned one on top of the other, or what, but it almost looks like the vessel on the right has an open upper level gun turret, and different stacks, though the lifeboat mounts are quite similar, as is the mast. Only one is showing it's flag, US, on the right hand vessel. Are they DD?? Anyway, we'll get more details on these later I hope.

Date: Brisbane - Jan 14 - 1942

The BBQ'ing duo Kent Class - something 7 of these in and around the harbour.

Forgot to add, just past the BBQ, was a single Kent Class also having a BBQ on it's rear deck.
Thre was a further 4 kent class in a line, with the fourth ship drifting towards the quay

And the dancing DD are a Benson & Sim Class.
I will revisit later and get better lighting and angles.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by gutted

Finished patrol 3 earlier. Moved to Freemantle and was given a chance to upgrade from an S boat to a Porpoise. Loaded up my save just now and was looking over my boat and it appears ALL of the torpedo types are available. It's only April of 1942.

So tempting to load up my stern tubes with the mk27's

[edit] Shut the game down and restarted. Loaded my save and all the newer torpedoes are gone. Back to just mk.14's. Must have been a fluke.

Originally Posted by gutted

Apparently i can't assign anyone to my deck guns on this new ship?

Those are two new situations...

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by s7rikeback

Date: Brisbane - Jan 14 - 1942

The BBQ'ing duo Kent Class - something 7 of these in and around the harbour.

Forgot to add, just past the BBQ, was a single Kent Class also having a BBQ on it's rear deck.
Thre was a further 4 kent class in a line, with the fourth ship drifting towards the quay

And the dancing DD are a Benson & Sim Class.
I will revisit later and get better lighting and angles.

So basically, run-away spawning gone mad and like an evil scientist, trying to graft vessels together... Why now, and not in v40?...

[Rockin Robbins]

It appears that mixing the many campaign mods may be problematic. Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse, your job is to take the entire herd mess gaggle....er....collection of campaign files in the Some Assembly Required directory and fashion a single JSGME compatible campaign fix. Time to mix up 0.51 to fix whatever's wrong there. Complexity leads to error. Simplify please!

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by gutted

Which texture controls the color of the inside of the periscope housing? I want to make it black like it used to be. I hate the grey color.

The reason its grey my friend is so you can "see" and adjust your relative compass bearing to match a bearing coming from other sources (like the hydrophone, or radar) or, you may just want to shot from the hip and send a torpedo in a certain direction. With the scopes background being lighter in color when its retracted, you can read the relative compass bearing without raising the scope at all. The relative bearing and range of a target is "sent" together to the Position Keeper/TDC. For an accurate firing solution, you need to know what relative bearing your sending to the PK/TDC. With the scope black....you don't know what the relative bearing sent is until after reading it on the PK dials.

There's a reason for everything....if its done right.

[Rockin Robbins]

When it's black, in order to read the bearing you had to raise your scope to let light illuminate the gauge. You should be able to read it with scope fully down. That makes a non-black background necessary.

[torpedobait]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

See your inbox for a PM torpedobait for a quick rundown for editing. Also, as info, I think we found the issue with that Pensacola. We have the Force wielding the Force on it now...

[propbeanie]

Alright, we need some volunteers... guinea pigs... Crash Test Dummies (everyone but you takes a step back)... beta testers... to try out

199_FOTRSU50_Patch.7z
This is a DropBox link, so it'll pop-up a log-in screen for you, but just click on the "No thanks, continue to view" text at the bottom of that pop-up, then hit the download link for the file named. This is supposed to be JSGME compatible.

This has not been fully tested yet. Your mission, if you choose to accept it "Jims" (that's pural Jim), is to continue to try to crash test your game. Get shot at by shore installations, be seen by airplanes, depth-charged and rammed by DD, and for you and your crew to shoot at everything that moves or doesn't, with every weapon available to you and yours...

But seriously, it has not been tested, but it is all the files from the v40 patches put together into one grouping, so you will most likely have at least a few files that this will overwrite that might not be needed, dependent upon what you do have installed. If you're like most SH4 tweakers, if you have anything else on top of FotRSUbetaV.50, take it out first, because this may very well ruin what you have. If you install anything else back in on top of this, you may well ruin the patch. Your mileage may vary. We prefer that you NOT do anything else with at least one install of your FotRS U mod, and let us know your experiences from the un-modified mod, other than the mods we put out... mod?...

Edit: I forgot to mention that this will NOT fix the Brisbane Harbor issue. I'm about ready to take a small, tactical nuclear device to that area of the game, and do it over... But we'll wait and see if what s7rikeback wrenches on will do the trick.

[Rockin Robbins]

We might be seeing part of why FOTRS was abandoned by the AOTD. Or not. Anyway it's a bit of a mess. We could just splice in the TMO campaign and be done with it but we're a bit obsessed with leaving the mod as pure Maddy as we can without leaving in any groaners.

Unfortunately the campaign has been THE groaner. Our successes have led us to stay the course and we're sure pretty sure fairly confident encoursged naively optimistic that we can pull this puppy out of the fire or be very entertaining while we fail gloriously!

Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain! I will now entertain you with this snazzy shadow puppet show. Bark! Bark!