End patrole in different port

[Senf-Man82]

Ahoy,

maybe someone in this community could provide an idea on that.

My goal is to add the 'end patrole' button to every friendly port simular to your home port when approaching it. So this would not be an actual transfer at sea, but to put you back to your base just from any other friendly port. Could it be possible?

[CTU_Clay]

Agree. Not very realistic to teleport.

[Senf-Man82]

The purpose is not to teleport!

It annoyes the crap out of me that you cannot change your base. For german campaign it should go like this:

Start in a german/french port, deploy to a far east port and carry out your patroles from there and deploy back or get sunk before.

Since changing your base does not work, I thought "teleport" back and then transfer from office (also very realistic!).

And beside, my modding effects nobody, so why are you bothered?

I am just looking for a way to do this and I won't publish anything, should it offend anyone.

[aanker]

Study how SH4 transfers the Flotilla home base at Manila, Philippines to Surabaya, Java, and then down to Fremantle, Australia at the beginning of the War over a period of a few months on the US side.

There are other examples; some mods transfer the Pearl Flotilla to Midway, and then later in the War to Guam, etc.

You'd have to edit the *.upc files yourself to begin your patrol at one Home Port (base) and end your patrol at a different/new Home Port and know the time-frame that you wanted this to happen.

With transferring the home base using the Phone, the first patrol out would be to a patrol area that would typically be assigned from your former home base. The way to work around this is to plug in a different mission ID number to get a patrol closer to your new Home Port before you go out on your patrol.

You would need to make a database of the missions and their ID numbers which isn't that hard, it's just time consuming, and edit the ID# change to your in port Saved Game file that keeps track of what your next mission is.

Happy Hunting!

[Senf-Man82]

Well,the question would be, what files would I have to check? What files are related to the docking function, when approaching a homeport?

[propbeanie]

On the Fleet Boat side, you would be editing files in the "Data / UPCData / UPCCampaignData /" folder - on the German side, it's "Data / UPCDataGE / UPCCampaignData /":

1. "CareerStart.upc", if you add-in career start locations.
2. "Flotillas.upc", for the dates of the active flotillas, and the outline of assigned missions
3. "PatrolObjectives.cfg", which hold the information for the missions assigned in Flotillas

If you study the Stock files, and compare them to say TMO, you'll see some changes. Compare those to RSRDC, and you'll see even more.

All three of the files work together, and a simple mistake in any one of the three can wreak havoc, so always work from copies of the files, and build your changes into a JSGME mod, so that you can more easily back-out of an issue.

If you're mostly doing the German side in SH4, try Operation Monsun, since lurker did what you describe in it... This is the same issue that keltos01, Peabody, myself and others have been trying to overcome for the Japanese submarines in Climb Mount Niitaka. Their boats went all over the place and change home ports like I change socks. Ya know? At least once a month...

[aanker]

A good place to start is Flotillas.upc in the \Data\UPCData\UPCCampaignData\ folder on the US side. It will show you the changes Flotilla 2 makes from Manila to Surabaya to Fremantle over a relatively short period of time.

Tied in with Flotillas.upc in the same folder is CareerStart.upc and (not as important right now) CareerTrack.upc

Use a text editor like Notepad to look at these files.

If you do a search for "Flotillas.upc" you may find some tutorials and good explanations posted by people struggling to understand this information (even years ago) in the SH4 forums and sub-forums:

SH4 Fleet Boat Mods Workshop
SH4 Mission Designers' Forum

I see propbeanie and I are repying at the same time. Add his name to a search because he posted some good information on this Topic recently.

------ also in your SaveGames folder - in Port and on patrol with some of these:
(from Kim Ronhof)

Replayinfo.rep this file saves the name of the mission (the name you save the game under in SH4)

ActiveUserPlayerUnits.upc - the name of the boat is saved here.

SaveData.clg – the ships that have been sunk are saved her with date time and location. This is where the actual information is located.

SaveData.crp – many crew remarks are saved here – the Torpedo firing data is taken from the crew remarks (ex. "Firing tube 2, sir!")

GamePlaySettings.cfg – the information of the level of realism is saved here

CareerTrack.upc – Career information, your Name, Rank, Boat and patrol Area is stored here.