TWoS Questions: U-boat Damage/Repair and Crew Health

[Turm]

Hello All,

I'm looking for advice on the damage modelling & repair in TWoS and also the crew injury/death system. I've searched high and low but am struggling to find answers. First a little background.

After a disappointing time playing SH5 at launch in 2010, I struggled on with it for a while with some of the early mods made that year. However, I have never fully 'dived' (sorry) back into the game since then, partly due to the lack of any GWX-style overhaul as for SH3, partly due to real life / other interests. Now, with UBOOT on the horizon (as well as the board game), I was in the mood to give SH5 another go. I had a quick look at vanilla SH5 to remind myself of what was - and wasn't - included, then installed TWoS. It looked a bit daunting, having not been around for the last several years of SH5 modding and being new to the many mod acronyms that have 'surfaced' (sorry once again), even though I'm quite happy editing files and folders as necessary.

Overall, getting goes with TWoS was quite a steep hill to climb. Several hours in total of reading documents and forum threads to get acquainted, plus experimenting in single missions. It's a pity there's no collective manual covering the main gameplay & interface changes, but I appreciate it's a mix of many mods made to be as compatible as possible. Overall it's a great effort.

Now, I've no issues with the complexity added by TWoS and started a campaign with real navigation and the Enigma enabled. The more in depth the better, for the most part! I enjoy the challenge...

Patrol 1: On reaching my patrol area near Danzig, I spotted two Polish DDs which disappeared into the fog. Whilst at periscope depth and 32x TC, it appears they came back some hours later - the first I knew about it was when one rammed me, 5 seconds after I dropped out of TC following a contact report. Grr! (Just like the old SH5 frustrations I remember with TC )

The bow section quickly flooded to 100%, others partially, and I sank to the bottom. On the seabed at 110m, I am now quite stuck. Can't even manage half a knot forward or back (seabed friction?), even with manual dive plane controls, and my compressed air's almost out. I accept my fate is likely to be sealed - and that I'm the first casualty of the war early on 1st Sept 1939 - but I'm not dead yet...

I've just spent a whole hour at 1x TC on the seabed (to avoid extra damage from collision glitches) trying to figure out the repair system, in the hopes of getting my sub off the bottom... maybe. But I'm still clueless. I activated the CE's abilities for faster repair and reduced flooding, for what it's worth.

So on to the questions about damage / repair:

1. Are red sections at 0% considered destroyed? Although they can't be repaired, I occasionally see one go from 0% condition to 1%, though it later goes back.
2. When selecting a sub-system, sometimes the animated hammer icon shows. Does this actually do anything at all? Or is the prioritisation of repair completely beyond the player's control? (As was reported in another thread, the hammer icon resets if you switch to another tab and back.)
3. Do repairs happen in multiple sections simultaneously, or do the simulated repair crew only work on a single item at at time?

I did have a section with a heavily damaged pressure hull (50-60%). The section slowly flooded up to 60% but by that time the crew had repaired the pressure hull to > 80% and the flooded amount started to reduce. So I see the correlation between rate of flooding with the pressure hull condition. But beyond that, but I want to actually understand the damage/repair feature. Unless it's fully automatic, I want to feel I have a vague idea of the best course of action.
(I have read this thread about RSD but it hasn't really helped: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...61&postcount=1)

Most of my crew were wounded (I think) by the impact. So on to the questions about crew health/condition:

1. Many of the portraits along the bottom of the screen flashed red, though often they returned to normal and turned back to red later. Does this indicate injury, or does it correspond to urgent messages which they report into the message log?
2. After a while, my radioman's portrait changed to a cross icon. I presume he's dead? The UI tries to block his commands if you click his icon but they are easy enough to make appear and use (move the mouse up above where the icons normally appear and then back down - the command bar pops up). As he's the medic (if I recall) how could he have been saved? Would he recover 'naturally' if he wasn't too wounded?

Again, I'm just looking to understand how the 'health system' works, if possible.

The crew status/skill percentages are another mystery, with their skill level etc. I know the original SH5 system was poor and has been overhauled, but not entirely sure how... perhaps a topic for another thread, I didn't search that topic yet).

Given all the grey areas in TWoS and difficulty getting started, I do feel like switching back to a lightly modded vanilla game. It's limited, but most of it works and the interface is clear. After all, I have limited time and want to enjoy it. For the hours I've spent faffing with TWoS so far I could have done a few patrols. With TWoS there are lots of tricks that you have to know or watch out for, e.g. starting a campaign, a lengthy process just to set your U-boat number & name, being on patrol on certain dates and so on). Some UI aspects are a bit clunky. The forums here contains lots of "how-tos" (click this, do that) but not many "whys". If I don't know "why" I do something I don't really understand it.

I really want to use/like TWoS but I'm finding various quirks with the crew interactions that I don't understand, making it hard to get to grips with.

Also, I couldn't find any way to send a radio contact report like in vanilla SH5? But I did notice that after I spotted the Polish DDs, my primary objective had been completed, as if a report had been sent. Didn't understand that either...

Sorry for the long post. I'd be glad for any tips!

[Rosco74]

I had several times the issue with the hammer going on for days and nothing more happen. I dunno what that means, the general sub systems remains at 99%. I thought the hammer icon meant that a damage team was working on it but apparently no..

I would love a clear answer on that as well :p

[XenonSurf]

TC will work fine when surfaced and you encounter ships: TC should change to 1 with a maximum of 64 allowed. But underwater, hehe... no.

Damages:
The damage in SH5-TWoS is straight-forward, there is nothing complex you could do: red systems are out and gone if red with 0-15%, you can 'almost' forget them or return to bunker to repair them. And only thing to do to stop the flooding more quickly and speed-up repairs is to set Battlestations Level 2 (via WO icon) and talk to your engineer to accelerate repairs; be sure to revert this order once the sub is ready to navigate again, else the crew will stay on high-repair state and be less effective elsewhere. That's pretty it for repairs, nothing else you could assist, but just watch the repair screen. The 'hammer' seems to be broken, even repairs at a high state (50%+) remain stucked and no, you cannot set the hammer to prioritize repairs, it doesn't work...
I think (don't remember): You can use the crew promotion points to increase some of the repair abilities, but don't expect any miracles...

Radio Reports:
There are several reports you can order via the radio man icon, but you need that optional mod for TWoS installed (download the package; there is a mod which allows to identify ships & order radio man outside of its station.)
The reports are quite different, and you need to chose them when appropriate:

- Send Status Report: I don't use it, it does nothing good I know about and I could get detected. Ignore the BDU request...
- Send Contact Report: Will sometimes send-in planes to attack your contact;
- Send Convoy spot Report: Should send-in planes and/or other subs for a wolfpack; useful only for convoys, not single targets.

Be careful with these reports because enemy is also listening, so you could soon see enemy planes attacking you.

Documents, manuals:
There is no TWoS manual, but what I do is: I have copied the TWoS thread in a text file and search for it using keywords when having problems. It saves a lot of time and posts
Also the mod has a lot of readmes inside.

I hope this answers some of your questions..
Good hunting,

[Cyborg322]

Originally Posted by Rosco74

I had several times the issue with the hammer going on for days and nothing more happen. I dunno what that means, the general sub systems remains at 99%. I thought the hammer icon meant that a damage team was working on it but apparently no..

I would love a clear answer on that as well :p

You cannot do repairs out at sea to 100% in certain compartments. The Sub needs to be in dock [ As in reality] , the Hammer should stop really but its nothing to worry about

[bstanko6]

Since we are on this topic I have a graphical question regarding being seriously damaged. Once I hit a mine and had catastrophic damage. My command room was flooded and smoke everywhere. The FPS were horrible (when smoke fills the room). My graphics card is already set to performance levels. What do you guys do or recommend?

I can still get around in the sub. I usually go to a less effected area. Is there a graphic setting that eliminates this?

[Turm]

Originally Posted by XenonSurf

TC will work fine when surfaced and you encounter ships: TC should change to 1 with a maximum of 64 allowed. But underwater, hehe... no.

Indeed! Since there was medium fog, and I was in my patrol area, I decided to sit at periscope depth to let the hydrophones do the work instead of my watch crew. I knew the destroyers were around but didn't expect them to detect me after sailing so far away as to go far out of range. Maybe a fluke that the did detect me, or maybe it's connected to the fact I shot a torpedo across the bow of one of them some hours earlier and they came back to hunt... who knows?

Anyway, the first decrypted Enigma message did ask me to attack Polish shipping... it didn't specify merchant shipping and I was feeling brave (but I paid the price).

Originally Posted by XenonSurf

I think (don't remember): You can use the crew promotion points to increase some of the repair abilities, but don't expect any miracles...

Yes, you can spend morale points with the chief engineer to get reduced flooding rates (for a period of time) and better repair rates (indefinitely until cancelled). I guessed that battlestations level 1 would also help (the tooltip says crew are more efficient). The new battlestations level 2 option says it's for readying the crew to fire the topside guns, so I didn't think this would help...?

Originally Posted by XenonSurf

Radio Reports:
There are several reports you can order via the radio man icon, but you need that optional mod for TWoS installed (download the package; there is a mod which allows to identify ships & order radio man outside of its station.)
The reports are quite different, and you need to chose them when appropriate:

- Send Status Report: I don't use it, it does nothing good I know about and I could get detected. Ignore the BDU request...
- Send Contact Report: Will sometimes send-in planes to attack your contact;
- Send Convoy spot Report: Should send-in planes and/or other subs for a wolfpack; useful only for convoys, not single targets.

Be careful with these reports because enemy is also listening, so you could soon see enemy planes attacking you.

Yes, I'm well aware that radio reports can let enemy units hone in on you and I would tend to use them sparingly, but for immersion I tend to report convoys and such like. My primary objective was to find/report the Polish task force so I figured I needed to radio it in - however this objective completed without me doing anything, so that's why I was confused.

Anyway, you're right - they are optional JSGME entries which I had spotted during the TWoS install but didn't enable. I wonder why the options were removed as part of the 'standard' TWoS install; it's not like they are unrealistic options?

Originally Posted by XenonSurf

Documents, manuals:
There is no TWoS manual, but what I do is: I have copied the TWoS thread in a text file and search for it using keywords when having problems. It saves a lot of time and posts
Also the mod has a lot of readmes inside.

I hope this answers some of your questions..

Yes, you were a great help, thanks for the tips!

I've looked up plenty of tips in the forums so far. There are loads.

One new question, having trawled through the THEBERBSTER's massive tips & tricks thread. Do I need to activate the 'developing' flag described here?
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...&postcount=418
The new UI is a standard part of the install but nothing in the installation guides pointed this out. I just happened across it. It's currently disabled. But I don't seem to be suffering any ill effects.

As mentioned, there are LOADS of tips in the forum, but none of them tend to say "if you don't do this, then this bad thing will happen", so it's hard to know when a glitch is because of my error, or because it's just the way it is. Perhaps it's just me, but I don't like to follow instructions unless I know why I'm following them!

Any ideas about the crew wounding & death system? I haven't extensively searched for that topic yet, but after my recent sinking I'm keen to learn more

Now to go further off-topic...

Meanwhile, I've downloaded the standalone RSD mod to get the UPC files with the English sub-system names. Bit confused though as there are two sets of files and I've no idea which are the important ones (those in "data\submarine" or those in "data\UPCDataGE"). So I added both via JSGME. I'm happy to have a lots of German language in my game but found the sub-systems page a little heavy going with the titles all in German. Works in historical missions, but I need to start a new campaign for changes to take effect there, but given my immediate fail in my new campaign, that's no problem!

I also looked into using the OFEV to set my submarine name & captain name (as in this post), but it wants to update all my save game files, including my old campaigns. That seems... odd. I'd be happy to set this data manually but I've idea which files are the right ones. There are loads of files containing the ship number and captain name in my Documents\SH5 folder. This is the kind of info I sometimes struggle to find.

I could try using KSDCommander but I'm not sure how to 'start' a campaign with that. I found I couldn't load up any save games in SH5 if this program was running, or was used to launch the game. Odd...

Anyway, that's all for now. Thanks for the help so far everyone!