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Old 05-19-17, 11:38 AM   #16
Sniper297
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Beginning to think there's nothing about this that's UNbugged. I added a random group starting in Borneo heading up to Formosa and Luzon Straits, with 4 to 6 generic tankers as group contents. Started new career, proceeded to an intercept point to wait (what the Brits call "Loitering With Intent") and when the first one came along, it consisted of five small old engine aft ships. So I took a look at the Japan roster, sure enough;

TK Large Modern Tanker
TK Medium Old Tanker
TK Small Old Engine Aft

Apparently when you're doing generic you got to check their screwy classification.
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Old 05-19-17, 12:27 PM   #17
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All ~five~ were the same?... what are the odds of that? 4%?? or am I doing my math correctly????

What kind of "Random" is that?... We need a "randomizer" for the Random Number Generator in the game... I've seen the "seed" number in there somewhere... I wonder if we could do some of the old SH1 modders tricks, and actually have a random "random"...
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Old 05-19-17, 05:40 PM   #18
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Astonishing, hey? Never saw a convoy with five total merchants and all five were the same type, so that's a first.

Back to basics, forget generic and use the actual ships;

1X Large Modern Tanker 100%
1X Large Modern Tanker 75%
1X Large Modern Tanker 50%
1X Large Modern Tanker 50%
1X Medium Old Tanker 100%
1X Medium Old Tanker 50%
1X Subchaser 75%
1X Fubuki Destroyer 40%
1X Minekaze Destroyer 50%

Most of the accounts I read the convoys were small, and whatever size they were there were few escorts, most common was 2 to 4 ships with one or two escorts. So that seems to be working okay so far.
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Old 05-19-17, 10:49 PM   #19
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Somtimes, the simple things are best...
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Old 05-20-17, 01:50 AM   #20
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And sometimes they're not enough. The random group works okay, but this convoy 12 is still nuts. The turn at WP4 is less than 30 degrees, but they're actually missing the turn, then they stop and do the waterbug waltz again. Instead of turning at WP4 they continue on the original course 20-25 miles or so before stopping. One possible factor is the complete lack of discipline in the escorts - instead of staying in the screen with one or two destroyers doing a sweep occasionally, every last one of them scatters off sightseeing far far away at the same time. When I first picked up the convoy on radar it had no escorts, they came along later far behind the convoy. I guess the next thing is to redo the whole group, designate the center cruiser as the leader instead of the lead escort. If the leader of the group steams off for a joyride the main body can hardly be expected to stay in formation and follow the waypoints.
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Old 05-20-17, 08:15 AM   #21
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Have you got that old v17 SH3 Mission Editor pdf? They go somewhat into escort assignments and leaders of the pack, not in great detail, and they never do explain why a tanker reacts differently from a liner, differently from a freighter, but... I've got the thing here somewhere... probably on the other computer. Anyway, between that thing and the experiments I've been doing, and reading just about every thread / post on this, including yours over the years, you get an idea of what ~might~ happen... In your case there? I dunno... You could a cruiser the leader, if there's one in the group, though the CA seem better at it than the CL. However, I'd use one of the tankers that are in the middle of the group. The number of, and order vessels are added into a group matters on where they end up in "the grid", as has been documented multiple times on this site, quite often with conflicting advice. The escort vessels do not make good leaders.

I made some test missions when s7rikeback and I were trying to sort out the issues with the AOTD Pensacola CA, and we got all sorts of "strange" out of some "Tafee" groups. Each one stranger than the previous it seemed. I never did figure out why the DD would just go wandering off like that, but just put it off to independent "sub-hunting", since they would usually be doing a bunch of knuckles out there somewhere. It might be just one that did it, or two, but sometimes it was all four in the one group I'd made... Sort of like that RGG of yours that generated all 5 vessels the same... but they left a CL, a CA and a CV without a screen... "There will be no investigation, there will be no court martial, this will go directly to the punishment phase"...
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Old 05-20-17, 07:26 PM   #22
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Need a court martial to decide between keelhauling and flogging at the gangway, it ain't seamanlike to just flip a doubloon for that.

Yeah, I got sh3_missioneditor_v17.pdf and have read it, particularly amusing is about setting the speed to zero with "docked ship" unchecked so they'll attack when they get a contact;

You can simply set the speed to 0, and then rely on the AI to do something. For example, if a destroyer, destroyer escort, patrol craft or frigate are alerted to the presence of a U-boat, they will increase speed and head towards it. This is fine in harbours, where destroyers can be parked with 0 speed and then they will head towards the U-boat, if it is detected. (You do need to be careful, as the destroyer AI is not smart enough to cope with obstacles, such as docks, wharves or land)

Section 8.1.4 covers spreading them out to avoid having them break formation, recommending 700 to 800 meters separation, but even with 1000 meters minimum it doesn't do anything about escort captains who get bored and want to do bizarre stuff like sweeping 6 miles BEHIND the convoy then rejoining at high speed and colliding with bigger ships and sometimes each other. Near as I can tell there's no cure for that, I completely remade convoy 12 with 5 destroyers instead of 7, 5 ships instead of 11, 1000 meters minimum spread. Start tracking them on radar they're in a perfect formation, one escort peels off for a sweep, then another, then the lead escort doubles back to cut through the convoy and gets rammed and sunk by one of the passenger liners, eventually you have five ships in formation with the remaining 4 escorts sniffing around so far behind the convoy they don't even notice when you start sinking the ships they're supposed to be protecting.
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Old 05-20-17, 09:38 PM   #23
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Funny thing is, if you sink their convoy, they no longer have a convoy to protect, and will sometimes just sit there in the middle of the ocean. It was like 0300 or something, almost pitch black dark and I was back on the surface when my radar picked up two blips, and it was the escorts from a convoy I'd been hitting every few hours for the previous 24, and had eventually sunk their six charges. There they sat, about 1.5 apart, still as you please, dead-calm sea, so I did ahead one third, closed to about 3800, with the two about 12 degrees to either side of my bow, giving me a near square-on broadside of each. Set the four bow torps on slow and 9 foot and sent them on their ways, with two apiece, one under the bridge, the next about 100 out in front of them, and then I did back one third while the torps lolly-gagged their way there. I had to do a Save Replay to actually see what happened, but they saw the first torp each, at about the same time and started to go ahead, saw the 2nd torp and basically stopped. The first torps hit 'em both in the aft, and the next two hit under both bridges. Real perty, but lucky... Like a couple of dum-dums, ya know. That morning, about 3 hours later, an airplane came out of nowhere apparently, with my deck watch about as observant as the DD had been just a few hours before... One bomb through the aft torpedo room and a bunch of strafing before we could get under the water and out of sight, and then we just kept going down - to a black screen... ... rotten game.
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Old 05-21-17, 04:11 PM   #24
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Well, here's why spacing the ships out to prevent problems and collisions doesn't work;



Silly cans zip through the formation, paying no attention to collision courses, and eventualy a bigger ship won't be able to avoid it. Can't count how many times I've seen that. Solution appears to be forget about looking for a solution and just live with it.
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Old 05-21-17, 05:11 PM   #25
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This was in one of cdrsubron7's missions that I ran in FotRSU. I'd torpedoed the CV's neighbor, another CV further up in the line, and the DD came after me. He was the closest one, and would have probably have been on top of me pretty quick, but this slowed him down... - It didn't hardly slow down the CV but maybe scrubbed off a few knots. When I saw it, I did a quick turn and brought my stern tubes to bear on the CV, and got him with one torp of four, but he did manage to limp off. It really should have been sufficient to sink him, what with the hole that should have been in his bow... The DD did slide off of him after the torp hit and the CV slowed (none the worse for the wear either), and then he came to try and get me... Very strange stuff.



I do so like screen shots...
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Old 06-07-17, 06:41 AM   #26
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Back to the Mission Editor.

It's my opinion the editor is only good for constructing single missions....not "Dynamic", or regular "Campaign" mission (.mis) files. The addition of the extra lines (just to name a few) when saving a normal mission points to this fact:

Quote:
GameEntryTime=0
GameExitDate=19421011
GameExitTime=0
MaxInst=10000
MaxUnitsCreated=1000

DockedShip=false
TacticalGroup=false
AvailStartDate=19411204
AvailEndDate=19421011
ControlZoneRadius=100.000000

NextWP=0
If the stock game doesn't have these lines within the Campaign .mis files.....neither should your new Campaign mission files. It's my thought the devs only assumed players would use the ME for single mission play........little did they know we wanted to play outside of the "sand box" they created, and change the world!!

My best advice is to use the ME for figuring out where to place your routes, waypoints. But, don't save using the ME. As already mentioned, hand edit your .mis file to the structure you wish.......following the stock games process of which lines to include....... which lines to make sure you eliminate, if extra lines are added somehow (especially if you're reworking someones else's campaign mission).

Ok, back to you two's fine thread.
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