[WIP] Japanese Merchant Marine

[Mescator]

Originally Posted by GerritJ9

Mescator, the ship you are referring to is most probably the "Montevideo Maru", see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montevideo_Maru

Aha, good find. That's her. As an Australian that one has special significance. Guess that's why it stuck in my mind.

[GerritJ9]

Feel free to incorporate part of my British Medium Old Tanker mod into this work- "Paula" was scuttled at Tandjong Priok in March 1942, but salvaged by the Japanese and added to their tanker fleet. It's not much of an addition, but I assume you will also be looking at tankers and every little bit helps I suppose

[tater]

Originally Posted by GerritJ9

Feel free to incorporate part of my British Medium Old Tanker mod into this work- "Paula" was scuttled at Tandjong Priok in March 1942, but salvaged by the Japanese and added to their tanker fleet. It's not much of an addition, but I assume you will also be looking at tankers and every little bit helps I suppose

Does it actually do anything?

Since it only changes the

[Unit 1]
Name=Arare Maru
DOC=19430101
DOD=19450816

stuff, and that is not used by the game at all as far as I can tell, I think we need to change the top bit of the roster for it to work.


[UnitClass]
ClassName=OMPaula
UnitType=101
AppearanceDate=19270101
DisappearanceDate=19470101
DisplayName=BR Medium Tanker

to

[UnitClass]
ClassName=OMPaula
UnitType=101
AppearanceDate=19430101
DisappearanceDate=19470101
DisplayName=BR Medium Tanker

I'm interested to know if it does work, though. If it does, then all that typing I like to do in the roster (I add all the right names, too ) isn't for naught.

This does bring up an interesting point, the eqp files would really require clones for the non-japanese versions so the guns/crews are not japanese. I have to say, there are a few SH4 ships I just want to get rid of, and Paula is one of them---it is not the least bit "generic" looking, and there was only the one in the Japanese Merchant Fleet.

[tater]

Needs work (specular was set way high on the texture), but these were places with 2 Y nodes in the eqp file (one for each level).

So The same ships can have different looks with just cfgdate changes.

[keltos01]

Originally Posted by tater

Needs work (specular was set way high on the texture), but these were places with 2 Y nodes in the eqp file (one for each level).

So The same ships can have different looks with just cfgdate changes.

this is really interresting Tater !

keltos

[Fish40]

I definitly can't wait for this! It's mods like this that make this sim one of the greatest!

Very nice work tater.

[tater]

Thanks, privateer <S>. Sergei has done the really pretty stuff, though.

BTW, one by-product of this mod will be player-produced skins. Sergei's new maps are far easier to skin than the stock ones (though some are still tricky). Heck, I even managed a skin for Biyo, and have messed around with some others—this says a lot abut sergei's templates, trust me .

The end result is that if anyone wants a specific scheme (say an Allied dazzle measure), it will be easy with the "clear" versions provided to do so themselves.

[tater]

Hey, I'll ask you lot, particularly those of you used to Allied ships as targets.

The textures will work on the stock ships, and sergei has _O01.dds in there so the AOs will work as linked.

That said, we have some schemes that are exclusive to the Japanese (dazzle and green), but the gray and some civilian paint schemes can also be used (the ones without meatballs on them ).

How late should any civilian schemes be seen if I add them to the allied rosters? Should the grays be cleaner grays for the most part?

All involved are doing a very nice job!

It's nice to see things rolling with SH4 much like SH3 did.
(Not that it was ever slow mind you!)
It gives hope for SH5 if you look at things right.

I respect anyone who takes time to 'fiddle' with a simple Game.

[tater]

Doing this reminds me of al the little things that would have made such a HUGE difference in the quality of SH4. Note that many of these small fixes were never fixed for SH5 as far as I understand... The roster file ship names actually doing something... the skin frequency (dan said it doesn't work), auto-generate rec manual, etc, ad nauseum.

We're lucky that we actually have a decent number of ships I suppose, but so many of the choices made for SH4 merchants boggle the mind.

Zinbu? WTF, seriously, WTF? I hope that model was cheap, or already done for some other problem, it's a 1-off hull that looks like nothing else with a jap flag on it in RL. Paula? Ditto (useful in the ATO, I hope?). Haruna? A refer ship, of all the small, engines aft ships they could have done---say a wartime standard 2D (over 100 built), or a 2E (457 built!), they do a 1-off. Taihosan M. is arguably the prettiest merchant in SH4, but there were other small MFMs that would have been far more representative. Also, what's with all the lifeboat davits on well decks? Sigh.

[GerritJ9]

According to this page http://www.red-duster.co.uk/royden2.htm "Zinbu Maru" was originally the British "Indrani (2)" of 4994 GRT built in 1894 and eventually sold to the Japanese. She became a war loss in 1942, though no further details re where/when/how. So far I haven't found a photo of her so I can't comment on whether she was modelled accurately or not.
"Paula"/"Arare Maru" was used as a shuttle tanker between Palembang and Singapore after the Japanese salvaged her, though she may have made an occasional voyage to Batavia or other destinations in the area. The devs modelled her quite accurately, though they did forget her mainmast!!!!

While they WERE one-offs in the Japanese Merchant Navy, as they are already in the sim why not use them ? Ditto for the "War Melody"- as "Ryuun Maru" she was most probably a one-off as well.

Adding the war-built standard types will mean modelling them from scratch- unfortunately my skills are nil in this regard, otherwise I would have started on Hr.Ms. "Java/Sumatra" long ago.

[GerritJ9]

Actually, "War Melody"/"Ryuun Maru" might be a TWO-off type in the Japanese merchant navy. According to http://www.mariners-l.co.uk/WWlStand....htm#Shipindex "War Dream", which entered Japanese service in 1938 as "Shoryu/Syoryu Maru", was built at the same yard (Harland & Wolff, Belfast) and shares GRT and dimensions with "War Melody" so it seems quite likely that they were identical- both are type "N". I don't have the ONI documentation unfortunately so I can't confirm this 100%- plus, she might have been altered in some way.
"Shoryu Maru" was sunk by USS "Parche" on 4/5/1944 at 20.48N 118.0E.

[tater]

There are a few other Ryuun Maru sisters in ONI 208J.

We're in the "might as well use them" camp as well, the problem is that most merchant encounters are random "type=102 units. This means that if there are 10 type 102s in the game, 10% will be War Melody types. This is one reason for adding clones. We will NOT be cloning ships that we don't want to show up as often.

So if we double the number of classes, then we ~half the chance of seeing stuff that doesn't belong as much.

Paula is worse, because there were only the 3 tankers, so she'd show up 25% of the time. My plan is to clone the others so she appears less.

My Wartime Standard Type 2D will NOT be ready for this mod, but I will probably put in the BftB "Road Schooner" as a fill in (I will later simply replace the model and skins, so it will be a seamless transition). One possible thing I might do is to change all the "tankers" to "engines aft," and put my Standard Type ships in there (the ones that are engines aft). The names will look the same as they do now (defined in Names.cfg for each ship), but it will dilute the random tanker pool. Since the Wartime Std ships don't show til later in the war, I think this should be OK. I will need to check the top speeds vs RSRDC tanker convoys that employ random tankers. to make sure this won't break anything. If it is a problem, I will do something else.

[sergei]

And don't forget we have the Moscow from BFTB, further diluting the tanker pool.