[REL] Better And Realistic Flotation

[Arclight]

Yes, that does make it BARF, and yes, that is intentional. Though officialy the "a" has been dropped.


Let's see, mod changes 3 things: flotation, flooding time and HP (optional).

The results of messing with flotation should be obvious: rather than having to blast away all HP, causing a big explosion before she finaly sinks, you can now see some effect from your hits, in the form a greater affected pitch and roll (listing, and sinking by the bow or stern). With carefull aim, it should be possible to dispatch any ship to Davey Jones' locker before the fireworks display kicks in. I'm not saying that you will manage this everytime in 'real-world' conditions, just that it's possible.

Increasing the flooding times simply makes it feel a bit more authentic: rather than the ship slipping beneath the waves a minute or so after being hit, she will linger a while and contemplate her fate.


The HP tweak raises HP a little in most cases, lowered for most (if not all) warships and lowered for some small fry. Why is this done?

Because, for example, 1 of your torps caught a bad wave and didn't quite do what you wanted it to do. Result: target takes 2 hits, but where normally that should do it, it stays afloat. You fire a third fish and hit, but because the target now has 0 HP, a big hollywood themed fireball rips through the ship. We were trying to avoid that.

So that's what the tweak changes: allow for that extra coup-de-grace shot. Should even that not be enough, then the next hit will definitely finish it (few shells from DG will do nicely too), in a grand hollywood display. Note however that due to highly variable damage from torpedoes, it still might go down in blazing glory from that finishing blow, it's just a little less likely to happen.


Comes in 3 modules:

BRF full: flotation tweaks + flooding times increased
BRF lite: flotation tweaks only
BRF HP balance: changes HP to be more in balance with the mods objective


Just extract the contents of the zip to your JSGME 'MODS' folder and enable:

1. Either "BRF 1.3 full" OR "BRF 1.3 lite"
2. "BRF 1.1 HP balance" if desired


HP balance is optional, both for convenience and for avoiding possible incompatibility. Should another mod already mess with the .zon files for the ships, you can still use the core mod; ie. the HP balance is not strictly nescesary for proper functioning of the flotation tweaks.


Feedback is always appreciated, and I want to hear the bad stuff too.

Enjoy.


DOWNLOAD (216KB)


Alternate mirror (GameFront)

-.-. .... .- -. --. . .-.. --- --.

v1.3
- finalized testing and tweaking so all ships should now display proper behaviour, particularly battleships and battlecruisers
- minor changes to tweaks already in place (merchants and transports)
- HP tweaks extended to all ships (HP balance 1.1)

"Damage assessment" released as stand-alone module

v1.2
- further refinement on merchants

v1.1
- made a little more aggressive; ships were still hanging on

[Arclight]

Also put up a single mission that places you in a VIIC, with 4 targets in front. Can be used to give this a test, for example. That's what I've been using it for.

Extract into "SingleMissions" folder. (..\Ubisoft\Silent Hunter 5\data\SingleMissions\)


DOWNLOAD (2KB)

[charognard]

hey, i have a little question about it. Do a torpedo allway deal permanent flooding damages and sunk target, or flooding damages are inconstant ?

Can possible to add permanent fire damages too ??? I don t like see a boat firing 5h and don t "die"

[Arclight]

Maybe a video, but that's always a pita. I'll see about it.

Originally Posted by charognard

hey, i have a little question about it. Do a torpedo allway deal permanent flooding damages and sunk target, or flooding damages are inconstant ?

Can possible to add permanent fire damages too ??? I don t like see a boat firing 5h and don t "die"

Damage is a little variable as far as I know. You stand a far better chance to sink a ship by flooding with this though.

Don't know about fire damage, might be possible through scripting. But that is far beyond my capabilities at the moment.

[urfisch]

"a pita"? lol..."strg+f11" is taking a screenshot...cant be that complex...

[Arclight]

I said a video smartass, not a slideshow.

But yeah, here ya go:
1st shot, G7A, 5 meters, high speed, impact only. Target is a C2.



2nd shot, same set up;



The first series was made after she was no longer flooding. Second series was made during flooding, since I was pretty sure she was going down. I was right.

[urfisch]

thanks! but is it possible, to get some screens - to have a preview of your mods...?

[Caustic]

I have been lurking around the forums for some time now and BRF is definately one of my favorite mods for SH5. Nontheless, it could be improved and I am happy to see that you are still working on the mod.
IMO, It isn't quite as effective as NSM or the NYGM ship damage mod for SH4 but I think that could change. Realistic ship physics are a key immersion factor in any sub/naval simulation.

Best of luck and thank you for all of your contributions Arclight.

[shamuboy1]

Well yesterday night after I posted I was playing around with sinking Carriers and I should two torpedo's into her bow and she began to take on water. She listed to the left a bit and kept growing as he stern rose almost completely out of the water and then out of nowhere she turned all the way upside down and her stern rose higher into the air until it was almost vertical and then sunk. It was quite a sight and my heart pumped a little bit. If it happens again I'll try to get pictures. It was truly amazing!

I hope you get the chance to balance the capsizing because that would finish this mod completely up in my mind!

[Arclight]

Glad I could contribute, and there's certainly room for improvement. Thing is, we don't know where SH5 stands right now regarding support. And a lot of mods are still in very active development, so held back to avoid conflicts with other work.

For example, I'd like to tweak the torpedoes, but that would bring it into conflict with another popular mod.

[Caustic]

The HP Balance feature does make the floatation physics behave more realistically. I removed all of the warship HP tweaks because I like the stock values, for whatever it is worth.

Earlier, I flooded a merchant using only the deck gun for the first time(Before, I could only deplete the HP+Big Hollywood Explosion) and through careful shooting, I was able to disable the engines and destroy the propellor shaft, very epic indeed. The ship went down beautifully by the stern with a slight starboard list.

The way the fuel bunkers and cargo interact with the damage model in SH5 is amazing.

[Arclight]

Surprise! New module:


(Technical bit: Added a new "state" for a ship: Damage assessment, placed between "alert" state and "damage control" state. Reworked trigger thresholds for a quicker effect and proper functioning as a whole with the new state. Changes made to "Ship-crewstate.aix" in "..\Ubisoft\Silent Hunter 5\data\Scripts\AI\".)


Changes AI behaviour with regards to keeping speed and sensor effectiveness; enemies will slow down after taking some damage and be less aware of their surroundings.

The threshold depends on % of HP, so ships with higher total HP will need more hits before they slow down. The speed reduction is a percentage as well, so the higher their top speed, the faster they will continue.

In practice this works out to needing 1 hit on a freighter and 2 or more on a big warship to trigger the effect. Merchants, with their low top speed, should slow to a crawl, estimate 3-5 knots.

There's a further reduction in speed as the damage climbs, and eventually the crew will abandon ship, bringing her to a stop. Those are stock behaviours though, just a little tweaked.

!Enabling during patrol is not advised, it has not been tested outside single mission. Preferably enable in port, or at least make absolututely sure there are no ships in a 30KM radius!

Extract into JSGME "MODS" folder and enable.

Intended to work together with "Better and Realistic Flotation", but works perfectly fine as a standalone.

Damage assessment thread: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...90#post1327590


DOWNLOAD (3KB)


SPOILER
Here are the numbers:
Slow to 50% speed at 25% damage
Slow to 20% speed at 65% damage
Abandon ship at 85% damage

All sensor effectiveness reduced to 70% while in "damage assessment" state to simulate sending some crewmembers to investigate, captain focusing on getting the damage under control, shock from being hit, etc.

[sergei]

Wow, outstanding work!
Getting two good hits on a merchant and having it maintain course and speed with the convoy whilst listing heavily was getting old. Now they'll drop out of convoy and I can finish 'em off later. Brilliant.
Downloading now.

[Arclight]

Alright, the real deal:


More testing and tweaking done to include warships. Spend the tweaking on battleships/-cruisers only though; they needed some attention imho and share most of their zones. Heavy and light cruisers seemed to behave as expected during testing. Escorts are all over the place in terms of the zones they use; there's a lot of "unique" models (more than merchants ), and from my understanding the little suckers go down with 1 hit anyway, so not much to tweak there.

If you run into a ship, escort particularly, that doesn't seem to want to cooperate, put some feedback here or send a PM (ship class would be nice to know). Feedback can only make this better for everyone (well, it should), not just you and me.

HP rebalance is updated to 1.1, now affects all ships. Still modular and optional. Don't like it? Don't use it.

Messed with the merchants some more, trying to balance, but the outcome should still be the same.



Right, link updated in #1, or here


* Ah yes, "a" has been dropped, will be referring to it as BRF from now on (call it BARF if you want, doesn't matter ). Turning into a more serious project, so enough with the silly name.

[vonTorpitz]

I just got a nice 1 shot off on a Cimmaron Tanker in the English Channel. Split her in two with 1 shot. Down she went. I'm also using deck gun critical hits and torp. critical hits mods so that may have been what caused it but either way, nice.