[REL] FOTRS Ultimate Project

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by THEBERBSTER

Hi CS
No need to apologize.
I know with this thread the response time is very good and I am sure we all appreciate getting are questions answered as quickly as possible.

I thank you for your very in depth reply and at least it is gratifying to know that my problem is not one of my own making.

I notice that Bleiente has a high regard for OTC.
Is OTC something that might be considered for FOTRSU?
Peter

Yes, it's possible. As an add-on mod.

I've only checked a few ships in this huge inventory of Fotrs Ultimate. Mainly Stock game ships that I know are in need of correcting. I've not looked at any of the numerous ships added by FOTRS. I'm guessing their no better off than the stock game units. A bunch of figures that really don't come close to being reasonably accurate.

I'll admit, some of the Stock game ships in Ultimate are back to their original figures from version 1.0 of the game?!? Version 1.3 or 1.4 (I don't exactly remember) corrected some of the stock game mast height figures after I was asked by Maerean_m, "Why was it important for a player to have reasonably accurate "Height" measurements"? They were surprised to learn some of us wanted to play with manual targeting, simulating realistic conditions, instead of playing the game as if it were in an arcade?!?

Apparently, it was an oversight on the FOTRS members to use the older, less accurate measurements that version 1.0 once had for some of the stock units.

There's a debate that can be made....Why bother with range accuracy at all? I understand the concept, but if range wasn't important, why was it documented as one of the taught "fundamentals" in a Firing Solution? Seem's the Navy could have saved itself a lot of time by not requiring a Submarine Captain to learn those "fundamentals" and just told them.......Get Close, At 90 degree AoB, Get Lucky!!

[propbeanie]

If I'm not mistaken CapnScurvy, when Fall of the Rising Sun came out, the game was at v1.3. Again, if memory is rewinding to the correct location , v1.2 of the Mod was an update of the mod for v1.4 of the game... but it might have been the v1.3 mod got it up to v1.4 of the game... numbers, what do they mean anyway?... No! Wait! v1.2 got the mod to v1.5 Uboats?... - v2.0 of the mod was a roll-back to v1.4 of the game. I do not see ~any~ mention of updating the ships' figures in the ReadMe files for any of the versions... I can't remember if the mod overwrites the stock ships' files though...

[artuitus]

I do have duds on-yet I rarely have any dud torpedoes. Maybe because I turned of magnetic influence? I get about 85-90% reliable torpedoes. I haven't yet mastered the manual targeting so haven't been using it-maybe this is why my torpedoes are extra reliable? In subschool shooting at the cruiser I fired 4 torps and had 2 duds with manual targeting-with auto targeting I got 1 dud with same spread.

[THEBERBSTER]

Hi CS
That would be a good addon for those of us players that like to play a bit more realistically.

With a well protected convoy or task force you may not wish to get closer than 2 to 3000 yards.
This makes a 90 degree fast shoot more difficult than the one at 800 to 1000 yards.

Talking about yards, why does the watch officer give you the range in feet and not yards?

With Radar Depth is it no longer necessary to raise and lower the mast?

Peter

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by artuitus

I do have duds on-yet I rarely have any dud torpedoes. Maybe because I turned of magnetic influence? I get about 85-90% reliable torpedoes. I haven't yet mastered the manual targeting so haven't been using it-maybe this is why my torpedoes are extra reliable? In subschool shooting at the cruiser I fired 4 torps and had 2 duds with manual targeting-with auto targeting I got 1 dud with same spread.

It might be that artuitus... I experiment with the game in both manual and auto for the mod testing I do, and maybe I'll pay a bit more attention to the dud rate between them, though I don't know what would cause that... Early in the war, the torps ran deep and the magnetic trigger didn't work correctly. If a boat then used the impact detonator, they found they didn't work reliably either, especially if shooting for a near-90 angle, since the trigger pin would deform and not ignite the charge, so it shouldn't matter what you use, you should get failures. I have seen them do "streaks" though, which would be a side-effect of a random generator on the computer that's running the game, though real life does similar also...

Originally Posted by THEBERBSTER

Hi CS
That would be a good addon for those of us players that like to play a bit more realistically.

...

With Radar Depth is it no longer necessary to raise and lower the mast?

Peter

The last part I know, and that's because there aren't enough up / down "antennae" or "periscope" thingies in the game. There's three, the two periscopes and the schnorchel (radar). CapnScurvy took the snorkel (radar) one, and now uses it to turn the radars off and on separately... Now you can come back in to port and turn off the SJ and no more (in theory) interruptions from the crew about "Radar Contact!"... Looks good on my install thus far.

[THEBERBSTER]

Hi pb
My question is:
At radar depth with the mast down am I still getting the same advance warning as if the mast was fully up?
Peter

[propbeanie]

That, I'm not certain of there, THEBERBSTER. We'll have to wait for the good Capn to come by and comment. My guess is that he is using an "invisible" up / down to control the on / off, so probably getting the same "range", and I haven't a clue where to look in the files, so I don't really know.

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by THEBERBSTER

With Radar Depth is it no longer necessary to raise and lower the mast?

Peter

Yes, that's correct Peter. For both SJ (Surface Search), and SD (Air Search) Radar antenna's, think of them as stationary, attached to the conning towers. To have them receive signals you either need to be surfaced or at "Radar Depth" (use the "R" key). They also will need to be turned "on" to work. The SJ can be turned "on/off" with the Task Bar Command Button in the Radar section, the actual toggle "switch" on the Radar units themselves, or the "T+Ctrl" key. You'll know its operational if the PPI screen or A-Scope is functioning. The SD is toggled "on/off" with the "T" key, or again, a Task Bar Command button. Your Watch Officer will report whether the SD is on or off in the Text Message Box.

As propbeanie stated, the reason for turning off the SD (or SJ) is to allow a player to return to a friendly base without having Time Compression slowed due to friendly contact detection while surfaced. It's up to the Captain to decide when to turn on/off the Radar. Up to now we had no choice in the matter.

Due to the limitations of the stock game, there can be only one additional "Extendable" function besides the two periscopes.....the U-boat Snorkel. It was this German Snorkel extension that first gave us the idea of having a raised SD antenna on an American sub. Although this was "authentic", there lacked authenticity with this approach since the later subs also had their SJ antenna's doing the same.....yet the game doesn't allow for more than the three Extendable functions to be present on a sub at one time. So much for authenticity!

It's note worthy to point out there ARE several other named "Extendable" features that could have been used by the developers, but are in-active in the game. In other words, they had planned to make additional "Extendable" things, but never got around to it within the hard coded files! Once again the haste of pushing out the game to "start producing revenue" stopped this game from becoming what the developers truly wanted.

Originally Posted by THEBERBSTER

My question is:
At radar depth with the mast down am I still getting the same advance warning as if the mast was fully up?

Yes, absolutely. As long as its "On", and you're being careful in bad weather to adjust your "Radar Depth" to keep the Antenna's above the breakers.

==============

I took a look at my previous Stock game versions....I've got each on a backup drive. The "Mast Height" changes came with Version 1.3 patch....a feeble attempt, but I'll give them credit, they did try to fix their mistake in pushing out inaccurate measurements with the original game. Although I have to admit, their first 2 version "patches" were stinkers too. Version 1.1 patch, pushed out the same month as the games release, brought this American Submarine game to using yards and feet instead of meters?!? Yes that's right, the original game only used meters to measure with! I'm surprised they bothered to give us English speaking crewmen!!

Version 1.2 was soon required because after adding the Imperial unit of Measurements, the games Metric system read everything in Yards! They added the right type of system (wrongly named), yet they screwed the Metric side by not using the correct "conversion" for them. So, patch v1.2 was released.

By the way folks, it's not Imperial units of Measurements. We tossed that "Imperial" part out with the day we just celebrated...July 4th......when we declared no more "Imperials"! Our American unit of measurement is called "United States Customary".

Originally Posted by THEBERBSTER

Talking about yards, why does the watch officer give you the range in feet and not yards?

Good question, why did the developers do a lot of what they did??

Unfortunately, we can't do anything about these kinds of things. Their hard coded (like that metric "conversion" error), it can't be changed without getting into the areas of the game we mere modders can't go. Here's another, I'd love to see the German Radar "digital readout" actually read in Yards when the Imperial unit of Measurement is used......but it only reads in Meters! If it read in Yards, I'd have it on the American PPI screen (I've had it there before...but why bother?). That's just another not well known error that can only be corrected by getting into the hard coded files.

To think we paid for the last patch, yet the game still had so many other issues, yet unresolved!

[propbeanie]

Most probably what happened with the different data types is that they had different people or teams, working independently on the different portions of the game. When it came time to assemble the pieces, one person / team came back with 'feet', the next with yards, the next with meters and another with nautical miles and the last with kilometers (might have been "The Meters Team"). Some things they resolved, others they may not have noticed, and others it was "too late, it's out the door!". Same thing with other parts of the game. Project management. ~Say~, we could blame RR for everything, couldn't we?...

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

... To think we paid for the last patch, yet the game still had so many other issues, yet unresolved!

That irked me so much... they were flinging the patches out of the door like a monkey does excrement, ruining mod after mod, and then they added a few German vessels, with an incomplete Campaign, called it an Add-On and charged money for it, still laced with little bugs and other weirdness. I don't remember when it was that I bought the v1.5 Add-On, but it was ~years~ (2012??) after it came out.

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

That irked me so much... they were flinging the patches out of the door like a monkey does excrement, ruining mod after mod, and then they added a few German vessels, with an incomplete Campaign, called it an Add-On and charged money for it, still laced with little bugs and other weirdness. I don't remember when it was that I bought the v1.5 Add-On, but it was ~years~ (2012??) after it came out.

Yes, me too!! I refused to go there for a long time. But, broke down as more players went to v1.5 and I found my original mods being obsolete with the older versions of the game. I felt I had to keep up with the game.

But here's the kicker, the plan all along was to do what they did!! SH4 was designed to offer the "Nazi's in the Pacific" from the very beginning....for an additional cost to the player! Some marketing accountant convinced them to make the game accordingly......after a year, offer an additionally priced Add-on to bring in extra revenue! The proof is in the game files themselves! The American Pacific Campaign game was "short sheeted" for the idea of pushing out the German side of play already developed from SHIII. And, we bought it like sheep going to slaughter.

[propbeanie]

Yeah, kind of figured it the same myself, since about half of the game is SH3, and some of it is not used. The thing of it is, there's a LOT of it ~still~ not used, even in the German Campaign... - What I've discovered, mostly on my own file diving (think of "dumpster diving", which can be messy, but fun... ), and thankfully, some well-timed reading finds on this site, is that one of the difficult things of the menu_1024_768.ini file is that there is SH3 stuff in that is not used. That would explain why experimenting in some areas of the file does nothing in the game. Apparently, even the "hooks" in the game are dead... I was always taught that if it's not used, get rid of it... - I still can't format text in "menu_1024_768.ini" though... - I do have more links to threads here to read-up on though... What's gettin' kiinda scary, is that the research is more than half the fun now... Yikes! I used to ~detest~ school... Mrs Moonie was sure correct about using studying techniques later in life. why oh why did I not listen back then?...

[Capt Dave J. Harper]

soo i nuked(read erased) my entire SH4 folder on my pc (via shift delete) after uninstalling both SH4 and the UBM they cant get anymore virgn then thwey are at this moment i also reinstalled JSGME and my mods(which i ripped out before i nuked my files) how do i install large address aware do i just run the progra that came with FOTRSU or do i gotta drag and drop or??? im gonna give this one more time so nows the chance to make sure i get it right (i also redownloaded all the mods just to be safe and am replaceing the ones i dragged outta mySH4 wwith those copys

i should note my install is defult to steam so if FOTRSU wont wotk cause of that,save me the headache and tell me now while the games virgin and unrun so i dont screw up TMO and runsilent run deep

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Bleiente

For me, OTC is one of the most interesting works for SH4.
For a player with manual target solution, this great correction by CapnScurvy is actually indispensable.
I myself would not want to play without OTC...

OTC is planned as a plugin mod. The fact is that the stadimeter in real life was crap too for the same reasons. We had ships out there that were twice the length and half the length of their nearest recognition manual representations. When Dick O'Kane's radar went out he sent a snappy message back to Pearl along the lines of "Oh joy, there goes half my torpedoes, wasted!" He wasn't that nice, but he was truthful.

The advantage of the American sub was that recognition was not needed and radar range was darned accurate. In fact it was accurate to within the same range regardless of range, where optical range finders are less and less accurate as range grows.

I can understand why a skipper would want OTC. Personally I enjoy the fact that I can do everything right and still miss. The real guys wanted OTC too but CapnScurvy was sleeping at the switch. We won't be. This will be a player choice whether to use it or not. We're not telling you how to play YOUR game.

[Rockin Robbins]

24#^&%#@!!!! I missed it!

Propbeanie, you asked "btw, is anyone doing an Alaskan campaign?..."
Do you mean the War Patrols to the Aleutions ?
Or is there an Alaskan Campaign ?
I've played a couple of those War Patrols, no problems so far.