S-Class: No AA gun?

[jlacy94]

Hi,
I noticed the S class boats are the only ones without an AA gun. I read somewhere, however, that they were equipped with one .50 caliber machine gun for AA defense. Is there a file I can edit to equip the S18 or S42 boats with a machine gun?

[Sniper297]

Yep. Silent Hunter 4 Wolves of the Pacific\Data\UPCData\UPCUnitsData

Two files;

UpgradePacks.upc
UnitParts4SClass.upc

Both are text files, can be edited with notepad.

What I would suggest is change the first part of the S class file;

ID= SClassConning1
Type= SConningTower1

Change that to;

ID= SClassConning3
Type= SConningTower3

So you have the late war tower at the beginning.

I haven't tinkered with this yet, but the upgrade pack slot in mine shows NULL NULL NULL indicating the 50 cal and 20mm are available any date.

[jlacy94]

Edited the file as instructed, still not showing an upgrade slot for AA gun. There must be something else we're missing.

[Sniper297]

Hmm, I just tried it and got an S boat hull with no conning tower at all.
I'll be back.

[propbeanie]

What mods have you got loaded, if any, jlacy94?

[Rockin Robbins]

What you have is the fantasy of just about every sub skipper of the war: a submarine with no deck gun. The things were useless except for hanging laundry on. In practice they were more hazardous to the submarine and its crew than the enemy's guns. The very first man killed on an American sub during the war was manning the stupid thing when the enemy opened up and disassembled the poor guy who shouldn't have been there anyway. More effective than the deck gun was pointing your finger at the enemy and yelling "Bang! Bang!"

Deck guns subtracted underwater speed and contributed to louder submerged travel, making the submarine more detectable to enemy sonar. Cdr Dealey of the USS Harder, when asked whether he wanted his deck gun mounted fore or aft said "I don't care which, so long as it's on wheels so I can roll it overboard."

So let's check my FOTRSU S-boat and see if I have a deck gun. Never use the thing and I don't even know if I have one. Hmmmmmm.....


Crap! There it is, silhouetted against the control tower. Roll it overboard, boys!

[DicheBach]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

What you have is the fantasy of just about every sub skipper of the war: a submarine with no deck gun. The things were useless except for hanging laundry on. In practice they were more hazardous to the submarine and its crew than the enemy's guns. The very first man killed on an American sub during the war was manning the stupid thing when the enemy opened up and disassembled the poor guy who shouldn't have been there anyway. More effective than the deck gun was pointing your finger at the enemy and yelling "Bang! Bang!"

Deck guns subtracted underwater speed and contributed to louder submerged travel, making the submarine more detectable to enemy sonar. Cdr Dealey of the USS Harder, when asked whether he wanted his deck gun mounted fore or aft said "I don't care which, so long as it's on wheels so I can roll it overboard."

So let's check my FOTRSU S-boat and see if I have a deck gun. Never use the thing and I don't even know if I have one. Hmmmmmm.....


Crap! There it is, silhouetted against the control tower. Roll it overboard, boys!

Interesting . . . I was under the impression that quite a few sinkings (particularly of unarmed merchants) were acheived with deck guns, no?

[Sniper297]

Well, sort of, mostly they were used to finish off damaged ships not worth another torpedo. The OP is talking about AA guns though, and I did find a mod for that;

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...do=file&id=555

Which gives a single or double 20mm for the sugar boat, but no .50 cal. Which is odd, since all the subs had mountings on the bridge bulwarks for machine guns, that was a simple matter of welding a hollow cylinder to the side.

[BarracudaUAK]

Originally Posted by Sniper297

Yep. Silent Hunter 4 Wolves of the Pacific\Data\UPCData\UPCUnitsData

Two files;

UpgradePacks.upc
UnitParts4SClass.upc

Both are text files, can be edited with notepad.

What I would suggest is change the first part of the S class file;

ID= SClassConning1
Type= SConningTower1

Change that to;

ID= SClassConning3
Type= SConningTower3

So you have the late war tower at the beginning.

I haven't tinkered with this yet, but the upgrade pack slot in mine shows NULL NULL NULL indicating the 50 cal and 20mm are available any date.

Originally Posted by jlacy94

Edited the file as instructed, still not showing an upgrade slot for AA gun. There must be something else we're missing.

Originally Posted by Sniper297

Hmm, I just tried it and got an S boat hull with no conning tower at all.
I'll be back.

Just a quick question and something I've found....

Jlacy94, Did you edit the files and check your work in your current career?

If so you will need to edit some additional files, in C:\My Documents\sh4.

Every time I make a tweak to any of the subs files, I either have to start a new career, OR edit the same files in the following directories:
Under ..\My Documents\SH4:

UPCInitial
UserPlayerContext
(if playing Uboat addon)
UserPlayerContextGE

And finally, check:

SaveGames\ < Specific Save Folder > <-- these are listed as a Hexadecimal number.


If you are waiting until you get it "right" before you start a career, then make changes to the files Sniper297 mentioned, and then start a new career to check.

As far as Sniper297's missing tower... I think the drydock workers misunderstood your directions.
You should make sure they are sober BEFORE you let them work on your boat.

Barracuda

[Sniper297]

"You should make sure they are sober BEFORE you let them work on your boat"

What fun is that?

Seriously, I've modded my original game over the years beyond recognition (rum was involved) so I got the wrong files. Looking at the mod in the downloads, he just edited;

Data\Submarine\NSS_s18\NSS_s18.upc

and

Data\Submarine\NSS_s42\NSS_s42.upc

and that was it.

Still got the old problem if you start a career in an S class you get 12 Mark 10s, but second patrol they automatically give you Mark 14s, which in real life wouldn't have fit in the tubes (IIRC the Mark 10 was about 16 feet long, the 14 was over 20, so there would have been no way to shut the doors.) No fix for that I've found.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by DicheBach

Interesting . . . I was under the impression that quite a few sinkings (particularly of unarmed merchants) were acheived with deck guns, no?

Well, according to Michael Sturma in his book Surface and Destroy: The Submarine Gun War in the Pacific, here is the complete tally 1942 to end of war:

Note that it does not say these were sunk, it only says they were attacked. Each submarine received 75 rounds of deck gun ammunition at the start of a cruise. Sinking a merchant took more than an hour and several dozen rounds. Do the math. It's not a pretty sight. In addition, getting the ammo to the deck gun was a hand to hand bucket brigade where at least one man had to manhandle a 65 pound shell over his head to pass it on deck.

These numbers reveal the futility of deck guns on submarines. 45 cargo ships fired on in three years! No destroyers or larger warships. Lotsa wooden stuff turned into toothpicks.

The deck gun was for drying laundry.

[propbeanie]

... and you can see they were running out of "substantial" targets by the increases in some of those rows in 1945... The sampan stayed about the same, but the junk went way up... 'course, if they're like me, what's the difference between a junk and a sampan?... besides the spelling...

[Sniper297]

"No destroyers or larger warships"

Seriously? Again the main intention was finishing off damaged ships/boats, attacking any kind of warship with the deck gun would be a spectacular way to commit suicide. Secondary weapons and small arms had a purpose, there was nothing stupid about the weapons themselves.

Same thing with the machine guns on a tank, you don't use them to fight other tanks, that's what the primary weapon is for.

[Rockin Robbins]

Yet we have people on Subsim claiming that their whole strategy is to charge at convoys, picking off the destroyers with the deck gun, then taking the merchies at their leisure. That's why I raise the point. That and a strange comment on You Tube about how stupid those real submariners must have been and how their brains were atrophied because they lacked computer joystick experience, followed by the typical Rambo deck gun bragging.

The deck gun in SH4 is MUCH more effective than the real one except for the fact that laundry is not modeled in the game.

As for AA guns, that is even MORE overstated in the game. Again, pointing with your finger and saying "Bang! Bang!" was the preferred method of shooting at planes. Because you had about three seconds to get to the hatch before it closed on you and the sub dove without you. Any sub that elected to stay on the surface to battle even one airplane at a time would have come home to have their captain assigned to a shore battery. The ridiculous cost/benefits ratio: a cheap, easy to replace airplane with one crew against an expensive, difficult and slow to replace sub with 80 men aboard automatically makes never allowing yourself to be seen by an aircraft and diving before you are spotted the right thing to do every time. Even being seen by an aircraft, forget about being attacked by one, is a grave error in tactics.

In plane vs submarine, the plane is casually expendable, the submarine not expendable. That's all you need to know.

[propbeanie]

Very interesting shots in some of the war clips I've seen are when an airplane landing on a carrier makes a hard landing and breaks something. Say they got hung in the wire. The deck crew scrambles, gets the pilot out, and pushes the plane overboard. Get it OUT OF THE WAY!!!! That's the "worth" of an airplane, when it's broke or in the way of the rest of a group landing.