[WIP] Japanese Merchant Marine

[tater]

Japanese Merchant Marine for RSRDC, TMO and RFB.
By Sergei and Tater

Additional content by:
Keltos1 - Japanese small arms.
Miner1436 - Japanese small arms and the Type A Dihatsu landing craft model work.
Poul and the SOM Group (for the use of some of their merchant ships)
Others have some WIP we hope to add

Thanks to:
Skwasjer for S3D, without which this simply would not have happened.
Lurker_hlb3 (for RSRDC)
Ducimus (TMO dats)
LukeFF (RFB dats/sims)
Observer (RFB dats/sims)
Nisgeis (for helping to set me straight on a number of issues )
Motoyuki Iwashige (for his amazing models and book that provided such inspiration) http://ww6.enjoy.ne.jp/~iwashige/
The credits are by no means complete, but they will be sorted out for release.

The additional content has been altered by sergei and tater, and we accept any problems that might have resulted as our own.

Background
This all started with Sergei's wonderful ship skins. Doing them in the stock game is, well, a nightmare. So Sergei rebuilt all the texture maps on the actual 3d models so that the hull was as continuous as possible. I immediately started bugging him with images of Japanese dazzle paint schemes, colors used, etc. The result was a stunning collection of skins by sergei.

Given that this mod requires a new DAT file for all ships that are reskinned, I decided that my contribution could be to do any work in the DAT files that might make the merchants better, and more variable to the player. What we have done is to place many "Y" nodes in the dat that allow gun platforms, deck cargo, or anything else we'd like to be placed with just changes to the eqp file. This means we can have variant ships with so-called "BP-clones." These are cloned ships that borrow an existing model. All they have are cfg, eqp, sns, _sil, and _shp files.

Scope
New skins for all merchants including:
Civilian skins, which will be rare, and will slowly disappear as the war progresses. Around 4 per ship.

Wartime Grey. Common throughout the war, though less likely late in the war when green takes over as the standard. 2-3 variants per ship.

Dazzle schemes. The Japanese used 2 and 3 tone dazzle schemes in shades of grey. Sergei has replicated real patterns in use by the japanese.
Around 4 per ship.

Later war Green. Starting in '44 (late '43?) you'll see the green measure used. 2 per ship. The green was possibly used earlier on new construction, but in June of 1944, it was ordered to be applied on ALL merchants over 500 grt. By the end of '44, get used to green

Humanitarian schemes. Hospital and POW supply ship schemes.

There are 20 stock merchant hulls, so the total skin count is huge; over 260 skins are included!

New equipment:
Most ships have revamped eqp files and dats. This means that they will have gun platforms that vary or change over the course of the war, even possibly alternate mast arrangements, false funnels, deck objects, etc. Some will even draw different amounts of water, so the stock heavily laden ships, and "light" ships riding high.

New Ships:
We're going to add a few ships from Battle for the Baltic with their team's kind permission, because they bear a strong resemblance to Japanese units. As we have brand new ships we will add those as well.

Miner1436's Type A landing craft is in as deck cargo, and will be included as a functioning ship as well.

Campaign changes:
JMM will use some "zero file size" layers in RSRDC to allow for some traffic outside the initial scope of RSRDC. The Hospital ships, for example. To start these are not TROM copies, but they are informed by the places they went in the TROMs. I'll try to get some precise TROM based content in there as we go forward. As we see more small coasters, we'll likely need to add in more coastal traffic (sea trucks, barges, etc).

The benefit of using the zero file size .mis files is that it doesn't mess with the RSRDC campaign.cfg.

New Recognition Manual:
Because we will be cloning many (nearly all) ships at least once for variant versions, we need to do something with the rec manual since rec manual entries are auto-generated for all ships (which is unfortunate). Since we don't wish to clutter the rec manual with 2, 3, or even more entries for a single ship, I have taken a different tack with the rec manual. The mod will rewrite all the merchant rec manual files (the _sil images) with direct copies of ONI manual pages reformatted for SH4.

Also, some ships were better known by ONI, and had more data. We might have some ships with more than one rec manual page per ship. Such a ship might look like the following as you click through the manual:

You'd get to page one for Kasagisan and see:

Click to the next ship, and you see:


The lower "page" of a single entry will, instead of computer generated perfect matches of the SH4 ship, look like this to start:


The reason for ONI images is twofold. One, I like them, and the stock manual makes ID too easy. Two, I want to have non-repeating entries for our cloned ships. As a result SOME entries in the rec manual will be dummies. I might make a variant designed to actually look like another class of merchant, in which case the rec manual will refer to the ship in question, or it might be a similar sized ship that is not yet in game. In the above Kasagisan example, the two ships are identical, but might have variant gun platforms, paint schemes, or even different drafts.


More later...

[tater]

Reserved.

[tater]

Yet another reserved bit.

[virtualpender]

First things first, a huge thank you to Sergei and Tater for investing the time in research and production to make this mod happen. The community thanks you.

Second, a suggestion. Tater - I love where you are going with the recognition manual but have a thought - rather than formatting the ship names as KASAGISAN MARU SPLIT what about entering them as SPLIT KASAGISAN MARU? This would have the advantage of allowing the recognition manual to be used the same way the actual ones were - gradually narrowing down to class after identifying the type and construction details.

Thank you again and we are all eagerly looking forward to the release!

[tater]

Interesting idea.

The rec manual is arranged in the following way:

All the merchants are together, then it looks at "unit type" as defined in Names.cfg.

Merchants are types 100-109.

So "replenishment" first (100), then tankers, then cargo, transports, coastals. Types 105 and 106 don't show, 107-109 are the "rare" types... which might not actually show, I need to check that.

Within each type, it is alphabetical by the class name.

So KMSSKinposan.cfg would come after AKMSSKinposan.cfg

We can rename them so they change order, but renaming classes will FUBAR the campaign (I think).

Still, an interesting idea we can very easily try since that name is merely the descriptor in Names.cfg.

Another thing I might try is to replicate the ONI photograph IN GAME. So if we have a quartering bow show at sea of a ship, we take the same image as a SS, then scale it, make it B&W, etc.---with a similar civilian scheme applied.

[virtualpender]

Yeah exactly - I was just thinking changing the entries in Names.cfg. I know altering the class names would present an endless number of problems.

Great idea of using B&W screenshots in place of the ONI photos.

Your comments about recognition being too simple are spot on - these improvements will add a new level of realism and authenticity that has been needed. Once fully released, this mod plus Nisgeis' TDC will take what the devs were able to do and what Ducimus, Lurker, LukeFF, Skwas, et al built upon and make this the penultimate simulation of the US submarine campaign.

[cdrsubron7]

This mod is looking totally awesome, can't wait to give it a try. If you guys should by any chance need some beta testers, I'd like to volunteer my services.

Totally looking forward to this, well done on a great job.

[Sailor Steve]

[tater]

We'll likely release a version that is usable, then add more stuff in a "dot release" down the road. We're trying to do this in a sustainable way so we don't feel deadline pressure (such pressures are for work, not fun ).

Stuff that is on my list of things to do—anyone who wants to help is welcome!

Finish my Standard Type 2D model.

Finish my kitbashed Aux Seaplane tender.

Improved (and varied) tarps for on deck (sun protection for men on deck).

Some outhouses for the cargo-troopships (yep, you read that right).

Hammock mantlets (hammocks used as splinter protection, you've seen them on pictures, they look like sandbags). (this is already in progress )

Canvas ventilator extensions (seen on ships in the tropics, they frequently look like large arrows hanging above deck).

Add in a lot of coastal traffic (barges, coasters, etc close inshore).

Make some new gun platforms (my 3d skils aren't that good yet, and these relatively simple structures will go a LONG way).

[tater]

Hammock mantlets:





Tedious to add, but you get the idea.

RL:

[Mescator]

Originally Posted by tater

Humanitarian schemes. Hospital and POW ship schemes.

Did Submarines attack Hospital ship and POW ships? I remember reading of a few subs spotting hospital ships and leaving them alone. I do recall an instance where a American sub sunk a POW ship and killed hundreds of prisoners though.

[tater]

The Japanese used Hospital ships as troop transports in some cases. Near the end of the war, a hospital ship was stopped and boarded by 2 USN DDs. They found ammunition, guns, and troops aboard. She was taken as a prize (later used for repatriation).

Sometimes they were not properly marked (unlit), the POW ships early on were not marked at all in many (Most? All?) cases.

Hitting them can be made not worth your while... a negative renown value. We'll ask Luke and Ducimus what they want for that for their respective mods

The point of having such schemes is to make it interesting. You get a radar contact, hunt it down, it comes into view... and it's a hospital ship.

Looking at the TROMs, some were escorted, as well.

[keltos01]

Very very nice work, I just wish someone would take the time to work as well on the allied merchant marine..

Great Work Tater!

keltos

[sergei]

Originally Posted by tater

Another thing I might try is to replicate the ONI photograph IN GAME.

That's what I was thinking Tater, in case you didn't have enough real photos to use.

[GerritJ9]

Japanese hospital ships were marked according to international regulations- white hull and superstructure, green band round hull, red crosses on hull and funnel(s), lit at night etc (which does not mean that the Japanese did not use/misuse these ships for more warlike purposes. The Japanese had little regard for international law regarding hospital ships, witness their illegal seizure of the Dutch hospital ship "Op ten Noort" in the Java Sea, and later commandeering her for their own purposes as the hospital ship "Hikawa Maru No.2"). Ships carrying POWs/Asian slave labourers, however, were not marked as such in any way at all; the Japanese simply appointed an available vessel as POW carrier and crammed the unfortunates in the holds. I certainly have never heard of any hellship such as "Kachidoki Maru", "Rakuyo Maru" or "Junyo Maru" receiving any kind of special paint/markings. To be fair, though, the "Laconia", sunk in the Atlantic by a U-Boot while carring Italian POWs, wasn't specially marked either as far as I know.