[REL] Thomsen's Ships V3.1 is out! All credits to H.SIE (10/12/2008)

[Philipp_Thomsen]

December 10th

New version is out!

Changed problems with ships losing too much speed while turning.
Also, the uboats are back in the game, with less pitch and roll and half engine power.
All credits to H.Sie for making up an amazing tool which turns remodding this very easy job.

November 18th.

10 days later, the new version is out, thanks to all your feedback.

Changelog:

1. Changed all the ships to lose 25% less speed while turning.
2. Changed all escorts to have twice turning ability. In RL, escorts had amazing turning radius.
3. Deleted the submarine folder. No longer changing the uboats simulation, it was causing too much complaints and bugs.

Hopefully I've killed the ship-running-aground-in-port bug.

November 8th.

The first version is finally out!

This is for testing purposes. I made all the changes in the 250 ships, but I didn't test much. I just don't have the time.

From what I've seen, it looks very good.

I didn't try torpedoing any of these ships.

I didn't tested every ship, so I need you guys to help me.

Report flaws about weird sailing behavior, informing which ship and what did you see.

It's uploaded in my FF page, by clicking in my signature.

It's JSGME ready and it covers all the ships in the community ships mod.

November 2th

Preview is live, at youtube.


Light weather and heavy heather. Ships are looking very good, bobbing almost zero. Solid as rocks at good weather and kinda good at bad weather. From some testing I can tell that this is pretty much all that can be done about the pitch and roll. The game mechanics and physics are terrible.

Thomsen's Chips are under production! Yeah, cheesy, crambling, tasty! Thomsen's Chips will be attached to some very nasty sauce, barbacue flavor, and...

ok... not funny...

Anyway...

This thread is about those ships I promise to make, turn those sport-car-ships into more heavy, slow and vulnerable ships, like they should have been. Tired of seeing a destroyer (that actually takes more then 10 minutes to reach it's top speed in real life) run away from your torpedos like a lamborghini? Don't worry, I'm fixing it.

Yeah, this post is very messy and not serious, but that's my mood at the moment. Plus this is fixable, I'll edit later when the mod is released. For now it's just a daily update of what I'm doing, why I'm doing, for what purposes and how.

This is also a good place where people can post complaints about the ships, ideas about the mod-to-come, suggestions about anything related and criticism about it. I'm sure there's people in this forum that prefer the sport-car-ships, I respect that, and I invite those people to come here and throw wrenches at thomsen. Believe or not, wrenches can be transformed into suggestions, and can give me ideas on how to make it even better. So, like samsung use to say, everyone's invited!

Now, for the important and interesting part...

1) What does this mod do?

It fixes the speed and maneuverability of the vessels (everything that floats, including u-boats) to more acurate and realistic values.

2) Why?

We at subsim are so concearned about realism, constantly making mods that improve the game to a higher level, and yet the ship's maneuverability are still at square one, since the beggining. How long to you think that a 12 thousand tons tanker takes to go from zero to max speed? The answer would be around 40 minutes. And in game? Around 40 seconds. And how long would a ship like that take to go from full speed to completly stopped? Well, you bet that it would take more than 10 minutes, and a lot of kilometers. And in game? The ship can stop in less then 300 meters, enough to avoyd a collision with other ship, in the middle of the night, with zero visibility.

Ships are huge, it takes the crap out of them to stop, or turn, or increase speed. In game, the lightning speed that they do that makes them feel like rubber ducks in a bathub. How can you ever get the feeling that a ship weights 40.000 tons if it can maneuver easily enough to avoyd torpedos and collisions, go from 30 kts to zero in 8 seconds flat as it watches your torpedo pass by.

Wanna see something funny? Find a neutral ship and cross your uboat in front of it. The ship will stop in seconds, and avoyd the collision. It's so realistic! :rotfl:

3) Is it GWX compatible?

No.

GWX's campaign is based on the current ship's maneuverability speed. This mod corrects the ship's maneuverability speed, so it breaks some gwx aspects.

What does that mean? Means that I will have ships behaving like crazy in my game?

No. Means that ship's actions will be 10 times slower. All ships. They will take longer to turn, longer to accel and longer to stop. How this will affect the convoys? I don't know... We'll have to test it out and discover...

By logic, while the convoy is moving in a straight line, there will be no problems. When they turn from one waypoint to another, we may have some strange behavior. But from what I've seen already, they make a pretty mess while turning in groups since stock game, and also in supermods. Not becouse the supermods were not built correctly, but becouse the game engine sucks. Sucks badly. Ships go everywhere, go backwards, go right and left, like a blind man in a shootout.

Maybe making them slower will make it better. Maybe not. I don't know if I'll have the time to test it. But 99.9% of the time we spot a convoy, they are running a straight line, aren't them? So I guess we are ok.

4) What will I see from stock/gwx/nygm/wac to change with this mod?

- Ships may collide with one another. I bet you never saw that happen!
- Ships won't be able to avoyd torpedos. In real life, when a ship spotted a torpedo, it was too close to turn/stop/accelerate and avoyd it. On a big ship, if you apply full reverse when going foward, you wouldn't even feel any difference. Takes a LOT of time for the ship to express any reaction.
- Ships will behave less like rubber ducks and more like solid icebergs. I'm improving their sailing behavior as well. This will fit perfectly with the Thomsen's Water mod, as the waves are also more realistic. You'll never again see a ship sinking on it's own, no matter how hard the storm is.
- Some other neat stuff... (surprises)

5) Where can I download it?

This mod is still under development. Note the title: WIP = Work in progress.
So why is this a thread for it?
So we can discuss about it, see how is it going, launch some beta-versions, have some feedback.

I really don't have time to play anymore, but I do have some time to mod. I'll mod, and you guys will test. The feedback will provide me the info I need to tweak the mod as necessary. But mainly this is a very simple mod, I don't believe that it will cause much trouble, and hardly incompatible with other mods. (in terms of files).

I believe that I'll have the first version of it to be released by the weekend. But as I said, I have short time to mod, about one hour per day. So I cannot make any guarantees. But I'll try.

I wish I had the time to finish the Sound pack V4 and the Water V4, but unfortunally those two mods take much more time to be made, compared to this. Plus, I think that both look pretty good already, not much to be fixed, and besides, SH3 days are counting down, not worth invest too much modding time into SH3 anymore. But this is a discussion for other threads.



Edit: New version 3.1 by h.sie Here