[REL] FOTRS Ultimate Project

[Bubblehead1980]

About to fire up FOTRS for first time.Any advice?

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by jldjs

Got it. Just to add, following this encounter I moved north and three passenger liners traveling east on track 097, fast(15 kts) spawned. Managed to sink these and with in minutes game time, 3 more liners appeared on that same track. I saved at this point wishing I had more torps! One could really run up a big tonnage hanging around here.

Were they traveling by themselves - no escorts?... This is strange.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

About to fire up FOTRS for first time.Any advice?

Have fun... - keep a pencil and paper nearby, and if you run into anything (what you consider) strange, right it down, trying to get the date and location at least. Oh! and before you go out with the mod activated, if you aren't using MultiSH with a fresh Save folder, then empty your My Documents / SH4 save folder so that you don't cross-contaminate things. It's best to use multiSH, so you can keep saves to other mods if so desired. Or, you could copy the save folder elsewhere, then delete the real one...

[Immelmann]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

First off....Welcome to SubSim Immelmann!!

A couple of things.

You did a good report on dates, where you were

I'm an idiot. It is 28 nm SE of Takanabe, not SW, lol. Drinky drinky ship sinky. ha ha! Thanks for the welcome CapnnScurvy. I promise to eat my oranges. I love this sim and so happy that 10 years in it has such a dedicated community.

Originally Posted by propbeanie

Were they traveling by themselves - no escorts?... This is strange.

No escorts!

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

About to fire up FOTRS for first time.Any advice?

Enjoy! And remember that we found a game which had been rewritten for multiplayer. So they cranked up the difficulty twice as far as TMO. You can be 30' below the layer on silent running and a DD will charge you from a mile away. He will drop without pinging and hit you on the nose with the first drop sometimes.

We're working on cranking the difficulty down a bit but are presently working on campaign issues, both resulting from flawed stock game files, TMO files AND FOTRS 2.0 files.

In the meantime, our three horsemen of the apocalypse, propbeanie, cdrsubron7 and s7rikeback have become the best campaign and ship wizards in the history of SH4. And our eagle eye CapnScurvy catches their mistakes!

The deciding factor that made us a real mod team is Jeff-Groves--Privateer of GWX days. We owe an unpayable debt to the GWX team and all modders who have come before.

We have a ways to go but have a fun, playable and beautiful mod as it sits today. Sounds great too, thanks to Maddy's great work.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by jldjs

No escorts!

wow... thanks though... maybe there's a group in this mess I'm looking at that calls for some unescorted passenger ships... They'd be troop transports in this sense, but those were never unescorted... For now, we'll assume that the Wahoo is just a few files North and West of you, and took out half of the convoy, and has all of the escorts on top of them, dropping their boom-cans... sounds good, anyway...

Originally Posted by propbeanie

wow... thanks though... maybe there's a group in this mess I'm looking at that calls for some unescorted passenger ships... They'd be troop transports in this sense, but those were never unescorted... For now, we'll assume that the Wahoo is just a few files North and West of you, and took out half of the convoy, and has all of the escorts on top of them, dropping their boom-cans... sounds good, anyway...

I guess, Mush and his penchant for destroyers leaves the juicy ones for me

If you start a campaign at beginning 1944 you can selct Midway, but if start middle of 1944 you cannot select Midway.






Why not?

[propbeanie]

That is one part of the original Fall of the Rising Sun mod that we have not attempted to tweak a bit. Let us do some research, and see what's up with that. My guess would be that Pearl is still there to "simulate" the new construction coming from the West Coast (and for tradition), and that Midway was not needed because of the forward bases, but I don't know that for certain. Never have tried to start there, though there was a group there...

[Bubblehead1980]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Enjoy! And remember that we found a game which had been rewritten for multiplayer. So they cranked up the difficulty twice as far as TMO. You can be 30' below the layer on silent running and a DD will charge you from a mile away. He will drop without pinging and hit you on the nose with the first drop sometimes.

We're working on cranking the difficulty down a bit but are presently working on campaign issues, both resulting from flawed stock game files, TMO files AND FOTRS 2.0 files.

In the meantime, our three horsemen of the apocalypse, propbeanie, cdrsubron7 and s7rikeback have become the best campaign and ship wizards in the history of SH4. And our eagle eye CapnScurvy catches their mistakes!

The deciding factor that made us a real mod team is Jeff-Groves--Privateer of GWX days. We owe an unpayable debt to the GWX team and all modders who have come before.

We have a ways to go but have a fun, playable and beautiful mod as it sits today. Sounds great too, thanks to Maddy's great work.

Here is my honest review after spending some playing time. This review is positive and hope it is taken as such, just pointing out from a players perspective.

First, I really enjoy the mod's feel and absolutely see the potential of it growing into something amazing(even more so than it is).I'm aware its a BETA so just giving my feedback, great so far though.


I like the little differences, the sounds are great...engines, deck gun, AA gun. The ambient noise inside adds feel but can tell its cut from Das Boot, so hearing the obvious german accents in a US sub, repeating itself constantly during a patrol, not for me BUT its not the biggest deal really.Not a huge fan of the dive and surface dialogue taken from U-571 . I laugh every time I hear Matthew McConahey's voice ordering a dive. Actually one thing I port over from stock is the dive alarms. Two for dive, three for surface as it was, but its no huge deal, can simply replace it on my install.


Love the sonar ping and depth charge sounds, rather immersive. Love the feel though .Overall, sounds help provide a great environment.Appreciate it has great models of the subs and the excellent revamped interiors that vickers put out.


I love that you actually have AA shells for the AA guns, so can see flak bursts finally. Not sure if the 20 MM actually fired AA shells but its cool.Unfortunately did not encounter any planes to use it on yet.Want to try out the 40 MM bofors with AA shells soon.

Crew placement is nice but have had to learn it all over after years of running TMO. A "hogans alley" to store crew when submerged would be nice, since if leave them on "deck watch when under attack, they can be injured, even though not showing on deck.


One issue and not sure if its a bug or is my career was January 1944 and I had SV radar, which was not available until 45 if I recall.Prefer the improved SD radar to be standard. Because of this, my radar was never actually turned off, since SV even in other games picked up both air and surface contacts. I like the option to turn SD radar OFF.


Enjoy the periscopes, beautiful view.

Environment wise, could use some different water and needs darker nights. One thing stock really aggravated me with was how night surface attacks were basically impossible due to crazy enemy visual abilities at night and how light it was at night. TMO was first mod I saw that adjusted this to a degree but still needs to be darker.Allowing to get in close, attack and have a chance to disappear into the night.

Navmap needs facelift. Perhaps could be NBJACKSO to create a FOTRS version of his excellent nav map makeover, it would go great. Includes Sofu Gan, Panama Canal, Truk, Sub Base at Pearl Harbor(trying to figure out how to make patrols start with sub docked at the sub base) labels in places that were missing etc.Coloring is nice. Best nav map makover I ve seen in SH 4.


Gameplay-

I noticed you admitted enemy skills need to be toned down so wont stay on that too long, Ill give you my encounter.

I was heading West towards my patrol area in East China Sea in a Gato Class(Harder) in January 1944.in the Northern Philippine Sea about 1100 hours on January 7 1944 I made radar contact.Soon could tell was moving fast to the NE. I raced ahead and closed, could tell I had a task force(!). At 16 miles, I noticed two pips moving ahead fast while others stayed somewhat stationary, looks like we had been detected at 16 miles away(lol) radar?(Japanese wish they had radar that good)

Now if were not playing a "test" career I would have went deep and tried to sneak away, close the main body and attack if possible but I stayed at scope depth a minute to observe. I could see what was now three destroyers moving in at high speed, soundman confirmed this.I went deep and before long they were overhead pinging away dropping charges, I escaped several volleys of depth charges and went to 375 feet.

Then since in "testing" mode, I went to look at the task force's main body, impressive force of heavy cruisers, lights cruisers and one BB of unknown class. Back on board noticed on last run some charges came close and caused some damage, then then the next one laid a pattern out that caused way too much damage for not being that close, including heavy damage to forward torpedo room and flooding. I know said game was optimized for multi player so perhaps charges are too powerful? I created a mod for TMO that made charges where they were not so many "golden bbs" but caused damage over time from beating the boat up. I could work on one for FOTRS if you guys are interested.I'll prob make one anyways for my own use at some point

few more runs and i was sinking too deep out of control, blew ballast repeatedly until surfaced and was gunned to death by the DD's.

I dont mind the tough escorts at all esp far as when submerged(like tough on surface but balance is important so can pull attacks off under right circumstances), makes things interesting.I have my TMO install set where they will hunt for hours.Not like the allies did, but they dont give up.Also as mentioned, have depth charges where are a definite threat but unless one is incredibly close, not going to be the golden BB. Also have early war depth charges set to mimic behavior of early war ijn depth charges(much as possible)



Like I said in first part of this review, love it, plenty of potential, I know its a WIP. Hope I can help you guys be it with testing etc.

I could it growing into THE supermod for SH 4, just needs some adjustments(mentioned you are working on it) to be more optimized for single playerThank you guys for the work and look forward to seeing this mod grow more. Hopefully soon I can try another patrol in different time period , different sub, area and try it out.

Bugs:

Did not observe any bugs really, other than SV radar too early and no option to switch back to SD. Also, SJ would not be active until turned on SV radar.

Suffered lag and CTD around Pearl Harbor.Perhaps too many ships? My rig is strong and runs well, first CTD ive suffered in game since been back and had not slowed down anywhere , except when in time compression and nearing task force as is normal I believe.

Once again, great mod, great future.Thanks!

[Moonlight]

Just a normal day at the office then Bubblehead, and I can strongly suggest that you don't want to duke it out with those aircraft boys either, two of them ended one of my earlier careers and I've kept away from them ever since.

I wonder if anything has been done to the fly boys of Japan, such as tone them down a bit, if that's a yes I might have another crack at them, if its a no I'll keep giving them the cold shoulder.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

Here is my honest review...
...I like the little differences, the sounds are great...engines, deck gun, AA gun. The ambient noise inside adds feel ...

I have a sound mod planned, basically a "plain" one, but with a "best of" approach. We have been finding more, other sound issues (there have been a few already), and are working at those as we speak (CapnScurvy, Jeff-Groves). We'll see what's left to do upon mod completion, but the interior was going to be my main target. But If you get between a couple of surface ships duking it out, it is ~very~ impressive hearing the shells traveling to and fro...

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

...I love that you actually have AA shells for the AA guns, so can see flak bursts finally...

CapnScurvy worked those up. Looks great, but I still can't shoot down an airplane, no matter how hard I try. They always seem to hole my deck without too much effort though. Needless to say, SOP would be to hide anyway...

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

... Crew placement is nice but have had to learn it all over after years of running TMO. A "hogans alley"...

Another separate mod, most likely, unless there are a lot of user requests, because we've already overworked CapnScurvy with just about everything else. In fact, we may have to put CapnScurvy's name on the mod, alongside AOTD_MadMax's and Jeff-Groves (who's name will be flashing really big on the screen)... tic

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

...Navmap needs facelift. Perhaps could be NBJACKSO to create a FOTRS version of his excellent nav map makeover, it would go great. Includes Sofu Gan, Panama Canal, Truk, Sub Base at Pearl Harbor(trying to figure out how to make patrols start with sub docked at the sub base) labels in places that were missing etc.Coloring is nice. Best nav map makover I ve seen in SH 4.

I was already mangling it to conform with FotRSU... There are several things though that may not be "set" yet that would influence its completion. Including the extra "docks" are a goal of mine also, and starting over there is easy-peasy to set up, so long as it's done correctly, else you CTD the game ( - not that ~I've~ ever done that... ahem). Hopefully, not too much longer. If the current experiment works, we'd have to ask permission yet...

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

...I could see what was now three destroyers moving in at high speed, soundman confirmed this.I went deep and before long they were overhead pinging away dropping charges....

... I could work on one for FOTRS if you guys are interested.I'll prob make one anyways for my own use at some point ...

... few more runs and i was sinking too deep out of control, blew ballast repeatedly until surfaced and was gunned to death by the DD's...

That is the usual... There are so many little nooks and crannies for the sensors to be altered, and the Capn (again... ) has been doing some ~real~ testing - I mean he strips the mod down to nothing ~but~ the sensor he's testing, and has some ideas, but we've distracted him all too often for other things... - in the meantime, if you want to do any mods for the game, you are more than welcome to. I would PM Rockin Robbins though, with your proposal(s), and see if he has any "special requests" for conformity to the "FotRSU ®© Standard of Quality (SOQ)"... ahem. Some mornings, I'm more full of it than normal...

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

... Suffered lag and CTD around Pearl Harbor.Perhaps too many ships? My rig is strong and runs well, first CTD ive suffered in game since been back ...

Now, that shouldn't ought to be... we've done quite a bit of work around Pearl... Some good, some bad (apparently)... Do you happen to remember the date? What boat you had, and were you starting in the harbor, or out?...

Thank you much for your post, it helps us tune things in...


@Moonlight = Keep away from the birds... they bite, as you know... They really should have their "superman" status turned down a pinch also, but we haven't gotten to that yet. I could see them "holing" your boat every once in a while, doing some near-miss damage quite often, but to but a bomb down your conn hatch every drop is just an unbelievable accomplishment... - of course, you could always look at it from the other perspective... we're just ~that~ good at driving our boats, that we can get them into the path of a dropped object that often... I mean, it takes a LOT of twisting and turning, speeding up and slowing down, to do that...

[torpedobait]

Originally Posted by jldjs

I guess, Mush and his penchant for destroyers leaves the juicy ones for me

In v0.53 and 56 career mode I have encountered many instances of "Small Convoys" consisting of unescorted troop ships and/or liners in 1942-43. I didn't think it was all that unusual for FOTARS. Almost never happened in TMO.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by torpedobait

In v0.53 and 56 career mode I have encountered many instances of "Small Convoys" consisting of unescorted troop ships and/or liners in 1942-43. I didn't think it was all that unusual for FOTARS. Almost never happened in TMO.

There shouldn't be hardly any unescorted passenger-type ships. That was one class of vessel that the IJN protected rather well, especially if their SNLF troops... I'm still trying to find the culprits...