Lonely TMO

[rein1705]

I like TMO 2.5 (TW) a lot, but i have a heck of a time hunting. (maybe it's just me, i dunno).

These days it bothers me (coming from playing a U-Boat), that there are hardly any contact reports on the US side..... ever.

Is there any way to put them back in? a mod or something that gives contact reports back to TMO?
I feel like im the only US unit in the world when playing.

[cdrsubron7]

Originally Posted by rein1705

I like TMO 2.5 (TW) a lot, but i have a heck of a time hunting. (maybe it's just me, i dunno).

These days it bothers me (coming from playing a U-Boat), that there are hardly any contact reports on the US side..... ever.

Is there any way to put them back in? a mod or something that gives contact reports back to TMO?
I feel like im the only US unit in the world when playing.

What dates are you starting your careers from? If you start from the beginning of the war it can be hard finding targets depending where your ordered to patrol. Thing get better as you get further into the war.

[propbeanie]

I believe he's talking about the "Contact Report: Enemy Task Force, 25N 32' x 142E 12', traveling West, Slow speed". Which is controlled in the Campaign files. Each RGG (Random Generated Group) and scheduled group, along with all of the individual "Units" have "ReportPosMin=" and "ReportPosProbability=" lines in the Campaign and other MIS files. If "ReportPosMin=" is a negative number, then the group will not report, but any positive number means it will report in, as a Contact Report, after the number of minutes listed there, based upon the "Probability" percentage of the next line (0-100). Stock does the most reporting, TMO probably the least. RSRDC on top of TMO might give you a few more, but I do not remember... We have some set to report in FotRSU, and will be adding more to the Campaign, to simulate the "Ultra" messages skippers received. It is NOT an easy mod to do though, since there are probably over 2500 groups (easily) in Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate, with most other mods generally not too far behind in number, except RSRDC, which tries to emulate "historic" traffic levels, and naturally has less...

[rein1705]

Propbeany has it right.
I am playing TMO training wheels 2.5 and RSRDC and i have boats in 1942 and 43.
in the long long time ive payed i could probably count the convoy reports that i've seen on my map, and it wouldn't be a big number.
I wonder how hard it would be to go find those text lines and do something....
i'll give it a try.


Afterward: There is sooo many ReportPosMin=-1 so do i change this value from -1 to 1?


Now, i do have maps of convoy routs (not just the one that comes with TMO) and i am sometimes successful, but only after hours and hours (days and days in game time).
The hunt and the seemingly endless patrolling is sometimes worth it when you find something big, but i feel like there was more information available to a captain than just a chart.

I think realistically you would be able to tune in radio chatter and learn things and otherwise be better informed on where your friendly units where and if contacts were reported on the net. They weren't really completely alone were they?

[cdrsubron7]

Sorry, my mistake.

[propbeanie]

Well, rather meager details, but:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_Radio_Unit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_HYPO

The main station in Washington DC had a moniker like Hypo and Cast, but I cannot recall it... Wacky??... Anyway, early in the war, there weren't so many of the Ultra messages, but they did steadily increase in frequency, and their accuracy improved also, as they got better at decyphering IJN transmissions. The information was then sent via nightly encrypted messages, addressed to specific submarines, and was a closely guarded secret. If I understand a book I have correctly, even the radioman didn't know how to decypher them, only the Captain and a few other officers. No mention was made of the system outside the ONI until well after the war. So getting the reports is something I would consider very "realistic" in the game, though they are done a bit over-the-top.

I was writiing a script using Notepad++, meant to run through all of the 4Xx_Jap_* mis files I was experimenting with changing every fifth or sixth group. However, I never did figure out a way for it to NOT report the "DockedShip=true" RGG... I'll try to get further into that for FotRSU later. What I would like to be able to do is have the game specifically address the player's sub, based upon their location, and give them a message to be at a specific location at a specific time & date to intercept a given convoy, or submarine, that is actually part of the game, and have the player be close to where the units pass... but my idea involves the little-known-or-understood "DynamicMiss.cfg" file, and my experiments with it are in the very early stages. I might die before I finish with it... - and there's 20 other things in line ahead of that...

[rein1705]

I seem to think i use to play a version of Fall of the rising sun way back when...


I would love to play the one you are working on it sounds pretty awesome. Im so use to TMO, and i have several ships, and boats out in campaigns though.


anyway, the ReportPosMin= that i keep seeing mostly have a value of -1 in my game, although i have seen some with values as high as ReportPosMin=4560


what does the number value mean? -1 obviously means it wont be reported, but what, in this case, is the difference between 1 and 4000?

I was sure hoping for a 0 or 1 T/F lol.


I remember playing FOTRS and getting messages from ULTRA..... unless im going crazy in my old age. i dont think they were addressed specifically to my boat, but to the TF my boat was part of.... or i think so anyway.

This is part of what my issue with TMO is. It seems as if you are the only US Navy unit in the world in TMO untill you stumble across something happening.

[propbeanie]

Think of "ReportPosMin=" meaning "Report the Position of the ship / group in this amount of Minutes". Any negative number means "No, don't do it", while a positive number means to do so in that number of minutes. So a "ReportPosMin=6" means to report the group in six minutes, while "ReportPosMin=60" means to report the group's position is one hour. The "4560" figure you quote is equivalent to 76 hours, or over three days. Somewhat similar to what Doenitz did with the Uboats, quite a few of the IJN groups / ships were to report their positions at midnight each day. The US having the codes, could "read" where they were, and sometimes put that with earlier messages, and then calculate where the ship / group was going, and by which route... that was a ~lot~ of "intel" though, but actually something I'd call "data", until it's "filtered" and turned into "intel".

[rein1705]

Awesome! Thank you !
I'll start fooling around with this and try it out.

There are a whole lot of entries to look at, and change in several files.

[propbeanie]

Look for the lines "DeleteOnLastWaypoint=false" and "DockedShip=true". That means a ship that does not move, such as what you would find a LOT of in the Jap_HarborTraffic.mis file. In fact, if you skip that file altogether (or the "layers" of it in FotRSU), as well as the 4Xx_Jap_CoastalTraffic.mis file, then you'll save yourself a lot of work. You also wouldn't need reports from the "4Xx_Jap_SubHunters.mis", "4Xx_Others*.mis" and the "4Xx_US*.mis" files, so now you're down to 4 files in each "layer", for a total of 24 files. You could figure "tighter security" on the TaskForce" groups, so do much less of them, relatively tight security on the TroopTransports, for more reports, relatively minimal security on the Convoys, and downright lax security for the Merchants layers... Make it all up into a JSGME mod, put appropriate "thanks to" in a text file in it for Ducimus, lurker & the others, and share away.

[rein1705]

you know what.... im going to do that!


...


There are 129 items in the campaign folder i have, most of them are .MIS files. I've already went and changed values on a lot of entries in the 41a_Jap_Convoys.MIS and 41b_Jap_Convoys.MIS and in

BattleofGuadalcanal.MIS


But i will have to go back and redo the time in minutes because i set them to positive 1 and now i know more about what it does.
This might take me some time, and a lot of Cigarettes....

[propbeanie]

Just don't get into the scotch like Ducimus used to... It's a good thing I quit drinking, else I wouldn't have any money from modding ...