[REL]The Wolves of Steel - SH5 Megamod

[vdr1981]

Promotional points are earned by completing secondary missions and by sinking enemy ships. They do not vanish into " thin air", only if you have already spent them...
Special abilities are significantly reworked in TWoS and most of them will have some effect on submarine performances...

24 days delay in port is "stock" in TWoS. Even this number is significantly lower than the actual average number of days in real life.

And is there anyway to not lose your camo paint job due to save/load?

This will happen mostly when you reload your gamesave without previous game restart...

[vdr1981]

What I mean is that all of the maps of British coastal batteries I found on the web, show that coastal gun emplacements were always in pairs, each emplacement being separated from its "twin" by a few hundres meters. I can model Brit coastal defense units as single emplacements/gun (just like the current large german bunker that I imported from SHIV), but then you should place two of them side by side, risking that they will hamper each other due to the known proximity bug, or I can place two guns/gun emplacements into a single unit. Doing it would make campaign editing easier, but the two emplacements would be recognized as a single unit in game (similar to a ship with two guns).

IMO, Two guns on one unit will cause problems when placing units near curved and uneven shorelines. It would be better to keep them as single gun emplacement, but it's your call...

Talking on them, it would be a nice idea gathering info on the web about actual location/type of coastal artillery guns, minefilelds and net blooms at various stages of the war. Following historical information where possible, would add a further level of realism to the upcoming campaign changes.

Sure why not...If you like I can send you a campaign layer (aprox 100 FWCD units) which I have already created so you can "move" them at your discretion. Just keep in mind that every "moved" unit has to be tested also (will it work on new coordinates)...

Take in mind that I also plan reworking nets and mines, making them granny objects. AS you know, there are many advantages in doing it, icluded an higher degree of stability. While I was waiting for feed-back by Trevally on the Ness Batteries I already started working on new nets, much more realistic (both visually and functionally) than the ones already imported in game. There will be both anti-torpedo and anti-submarine nets. I hope I can get them to act as semi-elastic nets rather than as invisible walls, something that a submarine can get entangled in, and letting torpedoes to pass through or not, depending onmesh size. of each net type. There's more: WWII allied anti-sub nets were composed by many unit called panels, each panel measuring 300 ft in length. Current subnet units featured in OH represent a single panel. Putting the usual bone/eqp file method into use, I could model the new sub/torpedo nets as modular units, each composed by a variable number of the same basic element. Doin it would make bloo defence placement much easier, when a large channel is to be closed.

I'm really looking forward to this because sub nets are largely unused in OHII campaign. There are just few pieces around Skapa and I have also added few but nothing significant...

Is there a simple way to do it? I thought contact report probability was a fixed parameter

[LanesGraph.Node 4.NodeGroup 1]
Type=SG2_
Name=SG2
Country=British
Speed=6.000000
StartDate=19380101
EndDate=19451231
ReportPosTime=1574
ReportPosProbability=35

This is from Campaign.mis layer...My hope is that this should work...

Each convoy series had its own frequency/speed. Some convoy types departed once in two or three days, whereas others were much more erratic. Some convoys, usually composed by modern vessels and/or war supply/troop ship,s were designed as fast whereas most of the remaining convoys were slow moving. You can deduce information on each convoy's average frequency and speed from convoyweb.org's records.

Already did some research and now, for example, all slow convoys (with S in designation, MKS for example) will be composed of "slower" and smaller units mostly, with speed settings of 5-6 kn. Same goes for fast convoys, only opposite...Other convoy will have random speeds between 6 and 9 kn with accent toward slower speeds...
I'm planning to add more historically inspired changes in time but complete reconstruction of WW2 sea traffic in SH game is something whichwould pose a problem for even much larger developments teams. This has never be done in any SH game, modded or stock...There's simply to much work to be done...

[Netscape Navigator]

Originally Posted by vdr1981

Promotional points are earned by completing secondary missions and by sinking enemy ships. They do not vanish into " thin air", only if you have already spent them...
Special abilities are significantly reworked in TWoS and most of them will have some effect on submarine performances...

24 days delay in port is "stock" in TWoS. Even this number is significantly lower than the actual average number of days in real life.


This will happen mostly when you reload your gamesave without previous game restart...

I loaded multiple saves yesterday. I noted on paper what points I had, when I had them, what I spent them on, and when I didn't have them. Docking after my first patrol is where I lost them, and I did lose them for sure. Oh well We'll call it 'my crew drank one too many simulation'

A few weeks in port seemed ok to me and I'm rollin with it.

My camo magically appeared again after 3 days on patrol.

[gap]

Originally Posted by vdr1981

IMO, Two guns on one unit will cause problems when placing units near curved and uneven shorelines. It would be better to keep them as single gun emplacement, but it's your call...

Okay, I will start by setting them as single gun emplacements because it is simpler for me. If we notice any problem when placing two units side by side, we will try the other method.

Originally Posted by vdr1981

Sure why not...If you like I can send you a campaign layer (aprox 100 FWCD units) which I have already created so you can "move" them at your discretion. Just keep in mind that every "moved" unit has to be tested also (will it work on new coordinates)...

Yep, I understand that

Have you put coastal defenses in a separate campaign layer? Can it be set as a single mission for quick testing in game?

Originally Posted by vdr1981

I'm really looking forward to this because sub nets are largely unused in OHII campaign. There are just few pieces around Skapa and I have also added few but nothing significant...

I see, but before we start placing net blooms and/or additional minefields in game, we should find a way to locate main shipping lanes set in OH, for making sure that we wont obstruct any of them. I know nothing about traffic nodes, maybe Trevally can help us with them

Originally Posted by vdr1981

[LanesGraph.Node 4.NodeGroup 1]
Type=SG2_
Name=SG2
Country=British
Speed=6.000000
StartDate=19380101
EndDate=19451231
ReportPosTime=1574
ReportPosProbability=35

This is from Campaign.mis layer...My hope is that this should work...

Isn't that parameter meant as the probability of a convoy being reported by B.d.U. on captain's log?

Originally Posted by vdr1981

Already did some research and now, for example, all slow convoys (with S in designation, MKS for example) will be composed of "slower" and smaller units mostly, with speed settings of 5-6 kn. Same goes for fast convoys, only opposite...Other convoy will have random speeds between 6 and 9 kn with accent toward slower speeds...
I'm planning to add more historically inspired changes in time but complete reconstruction of WW2 sea traffic in SH game is something whichwould pose a problem for even much larger developments teams. This has never be done in any SH game, modded or stock...There's simply to much work to be done...

Excellent! The dictated cruising speed of some convoys can be found stratight on the web, but for most of them you can divide the average distance they had to travel from the departure to the destination port (measured in google earth) by the number of days they needed for covering that distance. Supposed that you do this on the base of "regular" trips (with no enemy attacks/storms reported) you need to do this calculation once per each convoy series. Obviously, the same trips in the SH5 world will take less time or longer than in real world, depending on convoy lane's latitude and course, but what really matters for our purposes is speed, not time...

[Trevally.]

Originally Posted by gap

Isn't that parameter meant as the probability of a convoy being reported by B.d.U. on captain's log?

Yes - this is the % chance that a convoy/ship will have an update position and travel info placed on your map (if within the pre-set distance).
The para before that is the timer for another roll of the dice.

[gap]

Originally Posted by Trevally.

Yes - this is the % chance that a convoy/ship will have an update position and travel info placed on your map (if within the pre-set distance).
The para before that is the timer for another roll of the dice.

Thank you John, am I correct in supposing that the time is in minutes?

What can you tell us about this topic:

Originally Posted by gap

before we start placing net blooms and/or additional minefields in game, we should find a way to locate main shipping lanes set in OH, for making sure that we wont obstruct any of them. I know nothing about traffic nodes, maybe Trevally can help us with them

P.S: here is an updated preview of the Ness Battery, complete with interiors and railings:



This dates back to a few days ago: lately, due to the Christmas holidays my home was quite busy with sisters, brothers in law, nephews, etc, and we were too busy eating heaps of food for taking anything else seriously... you know Italian traditions

EDIT: I would be grateful to you if you could draw on this preview any missing detail

[fitzcarraldo]

Little question: Is there some way to have an emblem in conning tower at the start of a campaign without renown? TWoS uses Nozaurio's skins; I applied via JSGME a Nozaurio skin with emblem and In game I see the vanilla TWoS paint.

Best regards and Happy New Year!

Fitzcarraldo

[vdr1981]

Originally Posted by Trevally.

Yes - this is the % chance that a convoy/ship will have an update position and travel info placed on your map (if within the pre-set distance).
The para before that is the timer for another roll of the dice.

Excellent, this means that my settings should probably work...With new settings, probability of contact reports will increase until mid war and then decrease again.

[gap]

Originally Posted by vdr1981

Excellent, this means that my settings should probably work...With new settings, probability of contact reports will increase until mid war and then decrease again.

Good idea

When I first read your post I had thought you were talking about the probability of us being reported by enemy units

[Trevally.]

Originally Posted by gap

Thank you John, am I correct in supposing that the time is in minutes?

Yes - I am sure that is in hours

What can you tell us about this topic:

When the player is in render area where a port is blocked by nets, I think there will be issues unless a gap with set travel nods are added.

I am not sure if the ships will just stop or if they will ram the nets

You could move the gen nodes spawn circles to outside the netted area.
Most harbours in OHII have this circle set very close or within the harbours.

P.S: here is an updated preview of the Ness Battery, complete with interiors and railings:
EDIT: I would be grateful to you if you could draw on this preview any missing detail

Looks fanstastic Gabriele

Here are some more pics




And here is where the a, b, and c goes



B is just a simple blast door


Both A and C have these style sunken buildings attached

This dates back to a few days ago: lately, due to the Christmas holidays my home was quite busy with sisters, brothers in law, nephews, etc, and we were too busy eating heaps of food for taking anything else seriously... you know Italian traditions

Its a great time of year when the family can get together
I am still busy eating heaps of food

Glad you had a good xmas

[gap]

Originally Posted by Trevally.

Yes - I am sure that is in hours

I hope Vecko is recording this piece of information

Originally Posted by Trevally.

When the player is in render area where a port is blocked by nets, I think there will be issues unless a gap with set travel nods are added.

I am not sure if the ships will just stop or if they will ram the nets

You could move the gen nodes spawn circles to outside the netted area.
Most harbours in OHII have this circle set very close or within the harbours.

I can provide net barriers (a barrier being composed of several repeated net panels, each measuring ca. 300 ft) with some bottom net panels, i.e. deep nets not extending to the surface. This kind of nets were used for letting surface vessels to transit through a net bloom, and they were moored at a depth slightly bigger than the draft of the bulkier vessel which had to transit them. In theory an enemy submarine could take advantage of these gaps, but it would have been forced to transit them on the surface or very close to it, thus exposing itself to the risk of enemy detection. See the document below for more details on it:

http://archive.hnsa.org/doc/netsandbooms/index.htm

The next step would be making boom gates and traffic lanes to coincide. What files need to be edited for moving around traffic nodes?

Originally Posted by Trevally.

Looks fanstastic Gabriele

Here are some more pics

Thank you John
Your pictures are very insightful!

I have a couple of additional questions though.
- You told me about a stair connecting the two levels of the gun emplacement and a metal boardwalk covering the open corridor. Do you have any picture showing their position and how they looked like?
- Can you provide me with approximate wall heights: from the undeground level to the ground level, and from the ground level to the rooftop?

Originally Posted by Trevally.

Its a great time of year when the family can get together
I am still busy eating heaps of food

Glad you had a good xmas

It did, and I am likewise glad for you

[palmic]

Originally Posted by vdr1981

Hi Gap!
I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean quite well...
Anyway , by porting generic bunker shape from SH3/4 (and platforms), you've already gave me what I need.
Anything extra will certainly be welcomed but it's up to you. In any case , to have those British bunkers in game would be cool for sure.

Dont have much time these days to do much work in SH5 but I'll try to provide you as much support as I can...

I'm also slowly working on a new 1.05 version of TWoS megamod which will consolidate all the patches and tweaks so far and also add few more tweaks/changes/mods, especially with certain campaign mission layers...

Some of them will ,for example, be:
- FW Coastal Defenses layer (of course)
- Improved mines and nets layer/s
- Contacts reports probability variations dependent of war period/campaign
- Units/warships crew skill variations dependent of war period/campaign.
- Revised/decreased convoys/traffic spawn frequency
- Revised/better distributed convoys/traffic speeds, before they were almost always 6 or 9 kn.
- Complete revision of port defenses campaign layers for all campaign.

The last one tweak is the most time consuming but once I'm finished I really hope that enemy coastal waters will finally become something that players will wish to avoid (like it was the case actually) even with the fact that overall number of units in these layers will be significantly decreased...

Thank you for your time her Kaleun!!!!

[Trevally.]

Originally Posted by gap

I hope Vecko is recording this piece of information

I meant to say minutes

I can provide net barriers (a barrier being composed of several repeated net panels, each measuring ca. 300 ft) with some bottom net panels, i.e. deep nets not extending to the surface. This kind of nets were used for letting surface vessels to transit through a net bloom, and they were moored at a depth slightly bigger than the draft of the bulkier vessel which had to transit them. In theory an enemy submarine could take advantage of these gaps, but it would have been forced to transit them on the surface or very close to it, thus exposing itself to the risk of enemy detection. See the document below for more details on it:

http://archive.hnsa.org/doc/netsandbooms/index.htm

The next step would be making boom gates and traffic lanes to coincide. What files need to be edited for moving around traffic nodes?

The gen spawn areas can be edited by right clicking on the gen nodes from convoy, task-force and (can't remember the name for single ship layer) Edit - it is called "traffic" for the single ships

To set paths for the open gates in the nets - use the common layer to reduce node area and fit path to the gap. These common nodes can attach to the gen spawn area.

The task-force has its own "common nodes" - again I cant remember its name, but these will also need to be adjusted

Thank you John
Your pictures are very insightful!

I have a couple of additional questions though.
- You told me about a stair connecting the two levels of the gun emplacement and a metal boardwalk covering the open corridor. Do you have any picture showing their position and how they looked like?
- Can you provide me with approximate wall heights: from the undeground level to the ground level, and from the ground level to the rooftop?

The steps are cement and if you look at the first pic from yesterdays post, you will see a space in the hand rail. the is where the steps emerge.
The steel cover was just a checkered normal steel plate that bridged the gap you can see.

Both heights are about 2 to 2.5m

[palmic]

Originally Posted by palmic

Is it able to remove map "click" sounds?
I tried to replace wavs in data/sounds/menu which are very similar by void wavs, but it not did it.

I want to replace only that zoom/click sounds on map, its pretty annoying to change the volume between map and hydrophone..

If someone would be interested, my problem here was about to remove click sounds on map controls.
I am hydrophone addict and i mostly hunt with my AKG MK 240 on head with volume highly up without textual indication of ship on hydrophone GUI :-)
So everytime i had to be switching into map GUI for some geometry my ear was suffering that sounds..

I removed it by replacing this files by void wav file which you can easily find by google:

data\Sound\HUD_Click.wav
data\Sound\HUD_ZoomIn.wav
data\Sound\HUD_ZoomOut.wav
data\Sound\Hydrophone_Enter_Station.wav
data\Sound\Radar_Enter_Station.wav
data\Sound\Weapons_Enter_Station.wav
data\Sound\Weapons_ZoomIn.wav
data\Sound\Weapons_ZoomOut.wav

[Netscape Navigator]

On the subject of audio... the vanilla 20mil sfx ARE HORRIBLE...it sounds like a peashooter... does anyone remember Close Combat III? We need that 20 mill sound! I'm using the deck gun sound mod, which is nice but needs to raised in gain/or compressed to match other sound fx of game. (or we could use warthunders sfx since they also have the larger calibre's as well)

So far my main issue with twos' additional sound fx is the rain. (unless that's a vanilla fx?) There is an obvious loop point and that's some weird sound that doesn't really sound like rain or rain hitting steel...

In general the issue with mods audio is lack of normalization; apparent loudness, audio quality and tone.

I compose music but simple sound design tasks shouldn't be an issue. Hit me up if you need some help. Audio is something I can contribute.