[REL] Merchant Fleet Mod for Silent Hunter 3

[Robin40]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

If you've got all the ship names from Shipnames.cfg and use the Real Ship Names option in Commander, I don't think the "generic" quality of the display names will make any difference to the logs you end up with... Commander is going to give you real ship names anyway in that case.

yep...but the Recognition Manual displays Medium Merchant for every M01A, M02B.....

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Robin40

maybe we can put M01X=M01A in the [CLASSMAP]...and so forth

You could, but in IABL's mod, if a class ends with A it's strictly an American ship. Classes ending with B are British. I'm pretty sure Steve's set up the Ship Names files to reflect that fact, with US ship names for the ***A classes and British names for the ***B classes.

The ***X classes are not necessarily British or American, in fact I think they may only appear under neutral colors. So if you mapped those classes to their A & B counterparts you'd be limiting Commander to using US/British names for them if Steve has it set up the way I think he does. Of course as he's pointed out you shouldn't be sinking neutrals anyway and if you don't sink it Commander doesn't need to give it a name.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Robin40

yep...but the Recognition Manual displays Medium Merchant for every M01A, M02B.....

Well, I guess you can either see them in-game as "Medium Merchants" or just get the class names, personally I would rather have something that is at least a general description of what kind of ship it is than a cryptic alpha-numeric designation that is part of the "nuts and bolts" of the game itself and (to me) detracts more from the realism than being told I'm shadowing a Medium Merchant.

You're not going to get real ship names in the game, so AFAIK you're stuck with either the class designation or whatever you put in the EnglishNames.cfg for it. If you want to go through the files for every class and come up with a more specific display name for each one, that's up to you.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Robin40

maybe we can put M01X=M01A in the [CLASSMAP]...and so forth

Yes, that will work. The only problem is that if you sink a neutral the only name it will get will be American, no matter what the nationality of the actual ship. On the other hand, if you tie it to M01B you will get European names, so the choice is up to you.

[edit] Now I see Frau has already said the same thing.

yep...but the Recognition Manual displays Medium Merchant for every M01A, M02B.....

It doesn't matter what the RM says. The Ship Names aren't applied until the patrol is finished, which is why the names don't appear in the log right away. In real life the manuals had pictures with the actual classes (where they were accurate), but if you look at the actual historical awards there are no "medium" or "small", and sometimes not even "freighter" or "tanker", just "SS Onamonapeia, 2378 tons".

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

You could, but in IABL's mod, if a class ends with A it's strictly an American ship. Classes ending with B are British. I'm pretty sure Steve's set up the Ship Names files to reflect that fact, with US ship names for the ***A classes and British names for the ***B classes.

Due to the limitations of the game that is indeed the closest I could come. In the 'A' classes I include all 'American' names, including Central and South American, and the Caribbean (Cuba etc). The 'B' classes contain all European ships of each type, so you might get a British (or commonwealth), French, Dutch, Russian - all those.

Basically if you sink a 'B' ship you might get a name from any nation fighting from the beginning, and if you sink an 'A' ship the name might come from any country that joined in in after December 1941.

[Nicolas]

I know is a beta version but i can't shot them the stadimiter gives wrong readings and the lenght of some ships is wrong.

[Gryffon300]

Right, I've just finished reading the entire thread (my eyes are a little blury - you betcha!). And I feel safe in adding a thought and a question.

I've successfully downloaded onto my XP Pro SP3, 2.75 GB Ram Core 2 Duo 2.80Ghz, the 3.2 & Skin Pack s 1 & 2.
Loaded 3.2 over existing 6 mods in JSGME - crashed on load. Deleted 3.2 Loaded OK. Added 3.2 crashed. Moved ALL mods to inactive. Loaded OK. Loaded 3.2 Crashed Unloaded 3.2 Loaded OK. Deleted all profiles Loaded OK (from this point deleted new profile after every test) Added other 6 mods. Loaded OK Loaded 3.2 crashed. Unloaded all mods loaded 3.2 Loaded OK Loaded other 6 mods Loaded OK Deleted all mods loaded OK Loaded 6 mods loaded OK loaded 3.2 crashed. unloaded all, loaded 3.2 and then other mods. Loaded OK.

Tentative conclusion? Deleting active profile (as advised by iabl), is necessary AND (at least on my system) the ORDER of loading the Mod seems to make a difference! - I am staying away from Alternative Flotillas and English Maps for now as they interact.

Question - does anyone use a program like EndItAll to limit background applications during game play? If so, worth while?

[EmeAzul]

Gryffon, I use EndItAll before each time I play the game and it works great. I have a laptop with integrated graphics, so I need all the performance I can get out of the computer and this certainly helps.

Since you have read the whole thread, you might want to check out my instructions for avoiding CTD's with the original Merchant Fleet mod. I have 66 of these ships in my game and they are beautiful to behold (and sink). Cheers

[Gryffon300]

Yes, EmeAzul, I thought it may be worth a try. I have used it successfully on a previous computer and, given the apparent need for speed, I thought a little more CPU headroom couldn't go astray.

Re your anti CTD instructions, is ther a simple way to navigate the thread to find it? (I'm suffering battle fatigue right now....)

[Sailor Steve]

Gamebooster helps too. I use both together, and it makes a difference.

[Gryffon300]

Thanks, SS, will give that a go, too.

HEY! I just noticed! WE HAVE THE SAME NUMBER OF POSTS!!! Oh. Hang on. That's 29,000+ you have. AH. I have a ways to go. (Note to self: I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy....)

I hope you keep loving what you do here - it makes a difference to a lot of people. Just wanted to say, "Thanks."

While talking about maximising hardware performance (and no - I haven't looked at '3Gig' patches for my 2.86 Gig machine), I recall iambl suggesting that firewall (& antvirus?) software should be disabled (software that prevents files being altered) to speed up loading. At this point I don't play online at all, so no probs. Do people here generally follow that advice, and if so, do you disable for 15 mins or so (just to take care of loading issues), or do you disable for your entire game?

[fitzcarraldo]

Hi, kaleuns: I have a problem with MFM 3.2 full version. See the images, please:

Some americans (and other countries) merchants appears as "american", but the ships have the skins of others countries, and no american flags.

Still I didn´t install the skin packs in Commander; only MFM 3.2 full via JSGME and copy-paste the list in englishnames (as indicated in readme.txt).

I load (ever) SH3 GWX via Commander.





I think I have some wrong in my installation.

Many thanks and best regards.

Fitzcarraldo

[Robin40]

I got it too

[Gryffon300]

OK, just re-read all 32 pages of the thread (again - sigh) to try and make sure I wasn't totally being a dufus asking these questions - but here goes. Just bear in mind that I am a graduate of the Ten Pound Mallet School of Engineering, and playing with the cams on this Enigma machine is probably not something you would normally want me to do....

Still get the odd CTD, but, happy the way things are coming together, with one aesthetic query and one (much more significant) game play issue:

1)- This 'names' issue. I get M36B etc in the scope descriptor for MFM targets. I know from very early in the thread, people were asking about this, and I saw that one had to ammend the englishnames.cfg file. The only one I could find was a small 7 KB file in the SHIII/Data/Sea. Could not open it to read contents, cause my 'puter told me it didn't know how. Wasn't until post 406 & following that the pearl of wisdom was dropped by my new guru, that Word would open it. Doh!

So, now I see a nice long list, ending with 'TUS=Large Liner'. Now for the missing link. I have not been able to find any files in Readme's or elsewhere that would apply. (The full version 'Readme' doesn't even mention name files.) I see a smallish download of shipnames from Aug 2010 (181) that Frau Kaleun refers to in her erudite discussion with Rob40, but, is this short list all I need? Is there another readme somewhere that I need to 'get' all this?

2)- I mentioned in the general game-play forum (SHIII-Tell us what you are up to #2018 - http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...postcount=2018), that we had encountered the practically unsinkable S-class sub, but now I have had an encounter with a ''Battleship" Class ASW Trawler!! In limited visibility, I took on a MFM X class medium merchant, with deck gun. All was going according to Hoyle, when I started to take damage from an escorting ASWT appearing out of the mist. He had not been on hydro, or map, so he was a surprise. I sent a fish on the way to the merchant, went to flank & came about to high-tail it outa there (figuring I had range & speed on the trawler).

He followed me at 15knots to my 18 at 1900m and growing. As he was directly in my 180, I let him have one with my aft tube. I got a hit - no worries! Came about to re-engage my escorted friend when I copped another hit! I crash dived to sort it out, and saw the little creep, dead in the water still firing! Good for him, but REALLY?! So, I lined up and put another one into him. Fantastic, but he is still letting fly at my periscope. COME ON!!??

So, I downed scope, stayed submerged, and manoeveured 7 ks to put the dead-in-the-water merchant 2ks away from me, between me & the ASW (now, barely visible at 4.7ks, just peek-a-booing out from behind the merchant's stern). I surface & finish the merchant with gun fire & then take out the ASW. I must have hit him maybe 10 times (?) with 60 shells (a lot of misses at that range with such a small target) before sending him to The Locker. He got me a couple more times too, taking my hull integrity down to below 90%, but it was worth the satisfaction!!! There was NO WAY I was going to 'waste' another torp on the little twerp. It had become a matter of pride and Germainc Honour to finish the little lamprey eyeball to eyeball. I know you understand. (I did a 'save' before committing to my little adventure - I'm not THAT foolhardy.)

So, What's the go? From previous posts, I expected that there may be an issue with 'hit points' or torpedo damage with the MFM fleet, but both of these incidents are with original unmodified (?) SHIII stock vessels. I run the Enhaced Damage Effects MOD - does someone over there have a twisted sense of humour? Is this normal? Or do I got a bug?

[kraszus]

Are all these ships compatible with the recognition manual from GWX?

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Gryffon300

1)- This 'names' issue. I get M36B etc in the scope descriptor for MFM targets. I know from very early in the thread, people were asking about this, and I saw that one had to ammend the englishnames.cfg file. The only one I could find was a small 7 KB file in the SHIII/Data/Sea. Could not open it to read contents, cause my 'puter told me it didn't know how. Wasn't until post 406 & following that the pearl of wisdom was dropped by my new guru, that Word would open it. Doh!

So, now I see a nice long list, ending with 'TUS=Large Liner'. Now for the missing link. I have not been able to find any files in Readme's or elsewhere that would apply. (The full version 'Readme' doesn't even mention name files.) I see a smallish download of shipnames from Aug 2010 (181) that Frau Kaleun refers to in her erudite discussion with Rob40, but, is this short list all I need? Is there another readme somewhere that I need to 'get' all this?

I think the downloadable Ship Names list that was discussed was for SH3 Commander - it's actually a .cfg file that is already in Commander and it's what provides all the real ship names & data if you are using the "real ship names" option in Commander to flesh out your patrol logs with data from that file. It is updated periodically with more ship names & data so if you download the most recent one you just replace the file already in Commander with the new one. This file is only used by Commander to add data to your patrol logs, it does not do anything to the display names you see for any ships, including MFM ships, when you are IDing them in the game.

That is where the englishnames.cfg file comes in, located as you already know in the game's data/Sea folder. That file assigns a 'display name' to the classes of ships in the game, and since MFM adds a ton of new ship classes, if you want to see "Medium Merchant" or "Large Tanker" on your screen instead of their alpha-numeric class designations, you've got to add entries for each new class in the englishnames.cfg file as per my previous post:

Anyway, here is a list of display names for all the ships included in MFM 3.2 except for class LL=Liberty Cargo, as a version of that class is included in GWX3 and should already be listed somewhere in your EnglishNames.cfg file. Also some of these ships are included in other mods, so I'd recommend going over the list and comparing it to your existing one to make sure there aren't any unnecessary or conflicting duplicates. Just copy and paste what you need of it at the bottom of your existing file and save the new version to your data\Sea folder. AND BACK UP THE OLD VERSION FIRST!

And please note that I make no guarantees of success with using this list, I haven't done anything but load a patrol and sail a few meters into the harbor with it and the MFM mod enabled. I haven't encountered any of the ships in the game, much less sunk one to have it show up anywhere in the logs. I haven't gone into the Museum either to look at any of them there.

AK01A=Naval Cargo Ship
AK02A=Naval Cargo Ship
AK03A=Naval Cargo Ship
AM01A=Ammunition Ship
AO01A=Fleet Oiler
AO02A=Fleet Oiler
L01B=Heavy Merchant
M01A=Medium Merchant
M01B=Medium Merchant
M01X=Medium Merchant
M02B=Medium Merchant
M02X=Medium Merchant
M03A=Medium Merchant
M03B=Medium Merchant
M03X=Medium Merchant
M04B=Medium Merchant
M05A=Medium Merchant
M06A=Medium Merchant
M06B=Medium Merchant
M06X=Medium Merchant
M07A=Medium Merchant
M07B=Medium Merchant
M07X=Medium Merchant
M08B=Medium Merchant
M08X=Medium Merchant
M09A=Medium Merchant
M09B=Medium Merchant
M09X=Medium Merchant
M10A=Hog Islander
M10B=Medium Merchant
M10X=Medium Merchant
M11B=Medium Merchant
M11X=Medium Merchant
M12B=Medium Merchant
M12X=Medium Merchant
M13A=Medium Merchant
M13B=Medium Merchant
M13X=Medium Merchant
M14B=Medium Merchant
M14X=Medium Merchant
M15A=Medium Merchant
M15B=Medium Merchant
M15X=Medium Merchant
M16B=Medium Merchant
M16X=Medium Merchant
M17A=Medium Merchant
M17B=Medium Merchant
M17X=Medium Merchant
M18B=Medium Merchant
M18X=Medium Merchant
M19B=Medium Merchant
M19X=Medium Merchant
M20B=Medium Merchant
M20X=Medium Merchant
M21B=CAM-Ship
M22A=Medium Merchant
M22B=Medium Merchant
M22X=Medium Merchant
M23B=Medium Merchant
M24B=Medium Merchant
M24X=Medium Merchant
M25A=Medium Merchant
M25B=Medium Merchant
M25X=Medium Merchant
M26B=Medium Merchant
M26X=Medium Merchant
M27B=Medium Merchant
M28B=Medium Merchant
M29B=Medium Merchant
M30A=Medium Merchant
M30B=Medium Merchant
M30X=Medium Merchant
M31B=Medium Merchant
M31X=Medium Merchant
M32B=Medium Merchant
M32X=Medium Merchant
M33X=Medium Merchant
M34A=Medium Merchant
M34B=Medium Merchant
M34X=Medium Merchant
M37B=Medium Merchant
M37X=Medium Merchant
M38B=Medium Merchant
M39A=Medium Merchant
M39B=Medium Merchant
M39X=Medium Merchant
M40A=Medium Merchant
M40B=Medium Merchant
MLaunchB1=Motor Launch
MLaunchB2=Motor Launch
O01B=Ore Freighter
O02A=Ore Freighter
Q01B=Medium Merchant
SLaunch01=Steam Launch
T01A=Tanker
T01B=Tanker
T01X=Tanker
T02B=Tanker
T02X=Tanker
T03A=Tanker
T03B=Tanker
T03X=Tanker
T04B=Tanker
T04X=Tanker
T05B=Tanker
T05X=Tanker
T07B=Tanker
T08B=Tanker
T08X=Tanker
T09A=Tanker
T10A=Tanker
T10B=Tanker
T10X=Tanker
T13A=Tanker
T14B=Tanker CAM-Ship
T15B=Tanker
T16A=Tanker
T16B=Tanker
T16X=Tanker
T17A=Tanker
T17X=Tanker
T18A=Tanker
T18B=Tanker
T18X=Tanker
T19A=Tanker

The new entries for the MFM need to be added to the englishnames.cfg so the proper display names will show up in the game. As noted above, AFAIK the list I've given includes everything but an entry for class LL, the Liberty Cargo, which should already be there if you are playing GWX. Some other mods also include some MFM ships, so if you've already got an entry for, say, class T09A, you don't need to add another one. Just add the ones you don't already see listed.

And the easiest way IMO to open a .cfg in Windows is using Notepad, try rightclicking on the file and choosing "Open with..." and then selecting Notepad. Why it would want to use Word instead I can't imagine.