[WIP] Japanese Merchant Marine

[tater]

Originally Posted by sergei

And don't forget we have the Moscow from BFTB, further diluting the tanker pool.

True!

That's gonna help for sure. I have a few random test groups I use (BTW, the skins are randomizing nicely), and last time I loaded it up, of the 5 tankers I had in the group, 3 of them were Paula, so it was on my mind (damn you, random number generator! ).

I also want to remove those bloody crates from the flush deck part. It's really not immersive in rough weather to see those little crates, and they're not even lashed down

If the roster worked the way they were clearly thinking about—but never finished—then we'd put the 2 ship names in, then that would be it, Paula would stop showing up after those 2 were gone. As it is, I will change the Roster so that they appear with a start date that matches when they were floated in RL as in gerrit's mod. That alone will make them pretty rare.

[GerritJ9]

The Japanese only got their hands on "Paula" herself and not on her three sisters, so there is only one (albeit to the end of the war)- though historically they did have two "War Melodys" i.e. "Ryuun Maru" and "Syoryu Maru". This type shouldn't appear any longer after the second has reached her DOD date. "Paula/Arare Maru" should only start appearing after her Japanese DOC in 1943- that the class entered service in 1927 is only relevant in this respect for the class while under Dutch and British flags.
The Japanese did capture/salvage several other tankers such as the "Genota"- I'd have to check whether there were any trunkdeck tankers similar to "Paula" among them.

[tater]

Originally Posted by GerritJ9

The Japanese only got their hands on "Paula" herself and not on her three sisters, so there is only one (albeit to the end of the war)- though historically they did have two "War Melodys" i.e. "Ryuun Maru" and "Syoryu Maru". This type shouldn't appear any longer after the second has reached her DOD date. "Paula/Arare Maru" should only start appearing after her Japanese DOC in 1943- that the class entered service in 1927 is only relevant in this respect for the class while under Dutch and British flags.
The Japanese did capture/salvage several other tankers such as the "Genota"- I'd have to check whether there were any trunkdeck tankers similar to "Paula" among them.

Doers the roster file DOD date actually work? I suppose I should actually test this vs the DisappearanceDate at the top.

[tater]

gerrit, I just tested the DOD dates added from your mod with a random group in 1942 (cfg date BEFORE Paula should appear). Paula appeared.

The DOD does nothing at all, as I suspected.

Only the AppearanceDate and DisappearanceDate matter.

So to do anything, your mod needs to set the AppearanceDate for the first date of a ship of that class, and the DisappearanceDate for the last of that class.

I will make those changes and fold it in.

[GerritJ9]

Wonder what the individual DOC and DOD dates were intended for, then........ Perhaps a proposed feature that was to ensure that at no time more than the historically correct number of a type could appear- a feature that did not make it to the sim as released? Obviously it would look a bit silly to see, say, four "Akizukis" at a time when only one was actually in service for instance. This would most probably have to be hard-coded somewhere and is therefore not something we could activate/add unfortunately.
Anyway, thank you for the info- I always assumed that the individual DOC and DOD dates governed the appearance/disappearance of ship types. I'll take a look at the "Akizukis" roster- wonder what the relevant entries are. Now, where's my Jentschura?

[tater]

Originally Posted by GerritJ9

Wonder what the individual DOC and DOD dates were intended for, then........ Perhaps a proposed feature that was to ensure that at no time more than the historically correct number of a type could appear- a feature that did not make it to the sim as released? Obviously it would look a bit silly to see, say, four "Akizukis" at a time when only one was actually in service for instance. This would most probably have to be hard-coded somewhere and is therefore not something we could activate/add unfortunately.
Anyway, thank you for the info- I always assumed that the individual DOC and DOD dates governed the appearance/disappearance of ship types. I'll take a look at the "Akizukis" roster- wonder what the relevant entries are. Now, where's my Jentschura?

I always assumed the same thing, actually, and whenever I changed a roster file, I've always added all the ships and dates, lol.

Like texture frequency, it doesn't work.

[GerritJ9]

Hmmm..... this one is going to require some work! For starters, only two ships are listed, "Akizuki" and "Natsuzuki", not the twelve that were commissioned. Next, the first,""Akizuki", was completed on 11/6/1942...... but the roster's Appearance Date is 19410701!!!!! The rosters of the merchies will probably require even more work to set straight- "War Melody" and "Hog Island" have only one (generic) entry in their British rosters- the rosters for the other merchies won't be much better I suspect

[tater]

I set the akizukis later in my campaign. It's not a problem in RSRDC, as there are no random DDs.

RSRDC is obligatory, IMO, so I don't care in the least how it is in any other mod (or stock).

[tater]

One reason it's so hard to make the Hog Islander look like any japanese ships...

It doesn't actually look very much like a Hog Islander as far as I can tell.

Once I make it look right, it will also be more generic to ships used by Japan...

[GerritJ9]

With ships that were one-offs, AppearanceDate and DisappearanceDate should then match DOC and DOD so no problems on that score...... but if number of individual entries in the roster does not matter, isn't there something to prevent more than one ship of such a one-off type from appearing in a convoy? If the individual entries are irrelevant, why have more than one entry in the first place? The stock "Mutsuki" roster, for instance, has four individual entries, yet the IJN had twelve in service on 8/12/41, all of which had been sunk by December 1944 (though their stock DisappearanceDate is 19451231!!!!). Does the number of individual entries limit the maximum number of "Mutsukis" you can find escorting a convoy to four? Or the number of "Heito Marus" to three (three individual entries in the "Heito Maru" roster)? In short, what is the function of the individual ship entries, and their DOC and DOD, in the roster, if they have any function at all????

[GerritJ9]

You could also add the "Schliemann" to the Japanese tanker roster if you haven't done so already, though I have no idea whether she resembles anything the Japanese actually had in their merchant navy.

[tater]

Originally Posted by GerritJ9

With ships that were one-offs, AppearanceDate and DisappearanceDate should then match DOC and DOD so no problems on that score...... but if number of individual entries in the roster does not matter, isn't there something to prevent more than one ship of such a one-off type from appearing in a convoy? If the individual entries are irrelevant, why have more than one entry in the first place? The stock "Mutsuki" roster, for instance, has four individual entries, yet the IJN had twelve in service on 8/12/41, all of which had been sunk by December 1944 (though their stock DisappearanceDate is 19451231!!!!). Does the number of individual entries limit the maximum number of "Mutsukis" you can find escorting a convoy to four? Or the number of "Heito Marus" to three (three individual entries in the "Heito Maru" roster)? In short, what is the function of the individual ship entries, and their DOC and DOD, in the roster, if they have any function at all????

The only way to do this is to explicitly name all ship classes in a group. This is what RSRDC does for most all ships. The exception is merchants, where many are called as a random type=102, or whatever.

The individual ships entries do nothing at all as far as I can tell. Sad, isn't it.

There are many cases in SH4 where clearly the devs had some great ideas that never got finished. Look at some of the damage descriptions for submarines... "bent shaft" all kinds of stuff you have never seen in game.

So, to be clear, if you write a campaign file, and put 4 random DDs in a group, you will get 4 random DDs that have the right appearance dates. Nothing else constrains them at all.

[tater]

Originally Posted by GerritJ9

You could also add the "Schliemann" to the Japanese tanker roster if you haven't done so already, though I have no idea whether she resembles anything the Japanese actually had in their merchant navy.

She doesn't look like a japanese tanker.

In general, I'm only interested in adding ships that at least look like a few real japanese ships, since we'll see lots of them

[tater]

Tyohei gets some gun platforms.




Her RL appearance:


The rear one needs to come town a tad.

Note also that that picture above is about the best you can expect for realistic rec manuals.



RANT

You'd think the guys that made these models in the first place might have considered measuring the deck heights. You know, just get them in the "plausible" ballpark. 1.5 meters might be a good deck height for a Hobbit ship, but even the WW2 Japanese were not that short.

/RANT

[tater]

Turns out there are a few ships near 400 feet long that are Raised 1-2-3 types with a long forward well deck---like Zinbu...



Maybe I can put some lipstick on this pig.