[REL] Better And Realistic Flotation

[kylania]

Kinda silly that the ships you sink during the "British Supplies" mission wouldn't have, ya know, supplies in/on them!

[Arclight]

Anything loaded with fuel or ammo goes up after 1 hit most of the time.

I set up the ones in that shooting range with "freight" as cargo. In practice, ships loaded with freight act the same as empty ones. Doesn't really matter what they carry (as far as flotation goes; same compartment, same value), though ammo and fuel have a very high chance of increasing the damage and setting off secondary explosions.

About Cimmaron taking 3 hits: Like I mentioned before, my aim is to make it possible to sink a ship without having to resort to reducing it to 0 HP: Cimmaron can take 4 hits before blowing up, so I aim to sink it with 3. If your aim is off or your having bad luck, it still will be looking like it's in big trouble after 3 hits. The 4th shot will definitely finish it off, be it through flooding or 0 HP.

To be fair: I haven't touched Ranger yet, so that one is all Ubi.



I was thinking about increasing HP on ships so they could take more hits, making it nescesary for the player to hit ships in such a way as to unbalance them; ie. make sinking by flooding mandatory. But it's nice to have the HP system to fall back on: if you're having bad luck, you can still count on the thing going down after a few hits.

My aim remains on subjective realism, maybe do a more 'hardcore' realism mod after this (if noone else does first), but that would require much more tweaking, far beyond the confines of the zones.cfg.



Currently gathering more data with Goblin, extending the scope to everything but dedicated warships.

[sergei]

Yep. Did some more testing today.
Like you said, an empty Cimmaron takes 3 to sink. Occasionally 4.
I like this. It SHOULD be difficult to sink an empty tanker.

I like the idea of increasing hitpoints making sinking by flooding mandatory.

Just FYI I tested the two liners too.
They work just fine. I would expect this as they use the same zones as the merchants, but I just thought I'd let you know.
2 torps, sinking time approx 10 minutes.

[Kromus]

Very nice mod! I hope you will do other ships in near future too

[Arclight]

A lot of stuff is affected already, more than I tested in fact; a lot of zones are shared by ships. For example, nearly every class classified as "freighter" in the game shares the same engineroom. When I make a change to that, it affects them all.

Compiled a spreadsheet listing all the zones used by individual classes:

http://www.filefront.com/15845937/SH5_FlotZones.ods/

Maybe someone has use for it. Sorry about using FF, forgot my Rapidshare login.

* I changed NFlotMain and NCargoFuel. So as you can see, most ships you run into on a regular basis have been altered already. Just need to do a lot of testing to fine-tune (hence the request on feedback).

[McHibbins]

Man you did a good job so far Teated this mod few hours and many merchants sank after the first Torpedo......15-25 minutes later through flooting. They made 8 or ten knots after the hit, sowed down after a while and in the end they were dead in the water sinking a few minutes later.

Much better than stock mate

[Arclight]

Thanks.

Working on a more balanced version, which will become the release/1.0. Affected are all freighters, tankers and transports; basically all your regular targets. After that I will push on to first include escorts and then larger warships.

Sadly , I figured more out regarding the GoblinEditor, and know how to move, create, shape, edit, etc zones, so after that I'll start on rebalancing the individual ships, rather than using global changes. But that's really a different project for now.

The more I learn, the greater my ambitions. Quickly balooning out of control.

[GDFTigerTank]

Thanks Arclight, this is great work!

[U-Bones]

Originally Posted by Arclight

Thanks.

Working on a more balanced version, which will become the release/1.0. Affected are all freighters, tankers and transports; basically all your regular targets. After that I will push on to first include escorts and then larger warships.

Sadly , I figured more out regarding the GoblinEditor, and know how to move, create, shape, edit, etc zones, so after that I'll start on rebalancing the individual ships, rather than using global changes. But that's really a different project for now.

The more I learn, the greater my ambitions. Quickly balooning out of control.

Lol, don't let feature creep get the best of you

I really appreciate this mod, and even more so, I appreciate and agree with your take and additude on "subjective realism".

[Arclight]

'Feature creep', that's a good one.

Jeesh, gonna have to learn python as well... damage-over-time-from-fire anyone? Oh wait, getting ahead of myself again.

[schurem]

while you're at it (letting the features creep a little further), how about a visual feedback that the ship is indeed finished off? Like how in SH4 the crew would abandon ship into the lifeboats if it changes to a sunk ship icon on the map. It would be great to have something like that in SH5 as well.

[Arclight]

You mean like a sunken ship icon on the map?

I'm not familiar with creating effects, or even coupling them to objects in the editor, but I'll keep it in mind, something to do once they sink properly.




Freighters done, moving to tankers.

Can this be expanded to affect ships pitching and rolling over? In modified SH4 i have seen merchant ships sink with no damage from the player in heavy seas. Ships rolling over and capsizing is a must-have as well for high speed impact detonations near the waterline.

No ship is as safe as our u-boats....

side note: is it game-y for me to finish off small convoys mostly with the deck gun? They are unarmed and shining spotlights at me, but with no escort why should i dive? Bagged a bunch of tonns im not sure i deserve

[Arclight]

Not gamey of you, problem is the deckgun is too powerfull. Comes down to the whole HP-based system again, which is something I'm kinda trying to work around.

As far as I know, merchants rarely capsized: machinery is below the waterline, all cargo is inside the hull, very little superstructure. Could happen with a ship that's pretty high above the water when loaded, and with cargo on deck. Much more likely with warships: ammo bunkers near the deck, big gunturrets and pretty massive superstructure.

It's about center of gravity. I could add a zone to the merchants superstructure to make it ridiculously heavy, then you'd probably see some capsizing. Maybe something for later.



Tankers done, thank god it's only 2.

Transports next...

[GDFTigerTank]

Originally Posted by Arclight

Tankers done, thank god it's only 2.

Transports next...

WOAH! WOAH! WOAH!



There are 3 tankers! - check the recognition manaul

Medium
Cinnabon
And One Other I can't name off the top of my head