Realism- and gameplay-related hardcode fixes for SH3.EXE

[h.sie]

I don't know whether this german source is reliable, but the writers sound competent:

http://www.binnenschifferforum.de/fo...p/t-12444.html

The discussion is about type VII U-995. My quick & dirty translation:

Person 1:

Äußerste Kraft (Flank speed) means "go to the absolute maximum". For that purpose, the chief manually had to make some changes to the fuel injector using a scewdriver, what resulted in 10-15% more power, but only for a short time period of 15-30 minutes.

Person 2:

Äußerste Kraft (Flank speed) at higher RPM can only be chosen for a certain time, depending on the manufacturer documentation, e.g. 10% power boost for 10 minutes.

[h.sie]

In this Uboat lexicon:

http://home.arcor.de/roberto.roth/UBootlexikon.html

and

http://www.kbismarck.com/u-boot/ulexikon.htm

AK = Äußerste Kraft = FLANK Speed is a synonym for "3 x Wahnsinnige", where E-engines are coupled together with the diesels, and diesels are overcharged momentary.

[Leitender]

h.sie

"Ahead full" ("Große Fahrt") is the point within the engine characteristic map at which the efficency is maximised, and specific fuel consumption is minimised. Note: This is NOT the point of minimised total fuel consumption. But this is the step to choose for 95% of the time when at sea (In real life, not in SH3, because in SH3 this engine characteristic map is wrong imo, and therefore our choice is "one third" ("Langsame Fahrt") or even a little bit less! Watch for WB´s very nice fuel consumption mod).

Typically this point of maximum efficiency is a little bit beneath the point of maximum (tolerable) rotation speed. One step further, we achieve "Flank", what ist maximum tolerable force and according rpm. Maybe, but that depends on engine layout, this is the point of maximum power.

But it is NOT the order of combining all engines and to overload them. This meaning only exists for U-boats because only they could combine different engines. Maybe this is the reason why your quoted persons attach another meaning to 3x wahnsinnige, or, maybe, they just imitated this order. Others btw say that 3x determines the time of overload (3x15s=45s). This would fit to your linked posts. But that overload has to be ordered seperately, otherwise i don´t know how to order max force within safety limitations.

I know that german U-Boats suffered from a long list of lacks, failures and malfunctions. But I believe the propulsion was not part of this list.

don1reed

I read some interesting things about this comparison. E.g. US-Subs used indirect driving systems, where the diesel engines were not direktly fitted to the propeller shafts but propulsed electric engines which were in use all the time, submerged and under water. This is also called a Diesel-electric propulsion. I would have rate this system the more modern because of its higher total efficiency, but due to improved controling at the moment a combination of direct diesel and electric propulsion like in our old boats is state-of-technique (or, at least state-of-fashion). By the way, now it´s called "Hybrid"

[LGN1]

Hi H.Sie,

nice work! I like the mod a lot!

@all:

Here is an old post from me containing two links with information about the diesels in the IXC:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...postcount=1318

Unfortunately, the data does not help a lot because the max. speed for the different power settings is not given.

I guess that the present mod is even more controversial than the torpedo fix mod and it's even more difficult to come up with hard data. Therefore, I think it's up to everybody himself whether he thinks the mod is realistic or not. And since no one is forced to use it, everything is fine

Cheers, LGN1

PS: I think a related problem is that players usually have much more fuel than in real-life and thus, they can use the highest speed setting much more than in real-life.

[LGN1]

Originally Posted by Leitender

The crewmembers and especially the machinists knew that with damaged propulsion they were lost at sea, so they certainly avoided overrevving or overloading the engines besides they were in an absolute devastating situation. I think we all agree about this.
We can argue about when and how often damage occured, but in my humble opinion the engines were very reliable. Remember that, though 70 years ago, even then the engineers had about 25 years or more of experience with developing u-boats and their propulsion. As they know, that survival of the crew, and, much more important, military value only maintained when in action-ready status, all efforts were te be done to gain reliable and secure propulsion engines.

I'm not sure how sensible u-boat commanders acted when they wanted to get a Knight's Cross or Dönitz told them to attack more aggressively. I also don't think that caution was a highly respected trait, at least later in the war.

I'm also not so sure about the quality of diesels produced in wartime. If you look into Blair's book, it's amazing how much u-boats aborted their patrols (especially later in the war) because of technical problems (unfortunately he does not give details about the problems, but I guess they must have been quite severe).

Cheers, LGN1

[h.sie]

Ship Collision Damage Fix V0.9 Alpha

Collision with surface ships (being rammed by a destroyer) now results in a total loss of the Uboat or at least in a severe damage of the pressure hull (depending e.g. on mass, speed, and impact angle). Diving deep won't be possible after that.

Only SurfaceShip---PlayerUboat-Collisions are affected.

All other collisions (with shells, land, other objects and not related to the player Uboat) are not affected.

Fix can be found in JSGME ready format on my mediafire page (-> Hardcode fixes / Alpha testing) . It contains only a single Collisions.act file. Tested with V16A3, but should work with any version of Sh3.exe

[h.sie]

The ship collision damage mod only works on Win 32 Bit systems. Will fix this issue soon.

[Fubar2Niner]

@h.sie

Got the files you uploaded and they're working like a doozy. Can't say thank you enough for the help. You sir, are a gentleman of the first order

Best regards.

Fubar2Niner

[Leitender]

Here is an old post from me containing two links with information about the diesels in the IXC:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...postcount=1318

Unfortunately, the data does not help a lot because the max. speed for the different power settings is not given.

Hi LGN1,

your linked post does help a a lot:

Please take a close look at the disk of the machine telegraph of U 505 (Type IXC) in Chicago:

http://www.ubootwaffe.net/u505/helmsman.jpg

and a then pay attention to the described steps of this display of the machine telegraph of U 995 (Type VIIC/41) in Laboe:

http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/display/14274711

Both have the same layout. We can see from up to down:

Äuß. Kraft__________Flank
Große Fahrt________Full
Halbe Fahrt________Standard
Langsame Fahrt_____OneThird
Kleine Fahrt________Slow
(voraus)___________(ahead)

Dieselmotor_________Dieselengine
Achtung___________Attention
Stop______________Halt

Now we can assign the above telegraph steps zu your quoted power data:

Rating with Gas Turbine Supercharger

Load ___________HP RPM MEP(PSI) lb/HPhr-----according telegraph steps

Highest 1/2hr_____ 2470 490 125 .381

Highest 2hr_______2320 480 119 .376

Highest Continuous_2170 470 115 .372-------------> Flank (!)

3/4 Rated Power___1630 426 95 .361---------------> Full

1/2 Rated Power___1080 373 72 .357---------------> Standard

1/4 Rated Power___542 295 45 .381-----------------> oneThird

1/10 Rated Power___217 218 24 .436----------------> Slow

Highest Continuous__1550 470 82.4-----------------> flank back

This chart exactly confirms my thoughts:

"AK" ("Äußerste Kraft") = Flank = Highest continuous Load!

All other telegraph steps beneath AK are of course permant safe, too. But beyond AK we have two steps of overload, with only a small increase in power and RPM, but a very strong decrease in durability.

Btw, in this case, the maximum rating of 2170 hp at 470 rpm is called "nominal rating" ("Nennleistung") at "nominal rpm" ("Nenndrehzahl"). This is different to what i wrote in a former post, so the engine seems to be dimensioned for maximum power (now, it seems to be clear for me).

Well, if we have the maximum speed at flank, we can estimate the max speed in overload status. It was a common method of speed estimating to check the engines´ rpm. In real life there was a chart out of which this values could be read for each unique boat.

So, what is the speed (in normal conditions) at 470 rpm? If we talk about the difference of full and flank for a type VII-Boat, we´ll see an acceleration of 1 or 2 knots for a type VII boat. So my guess is for a rpm increasement from 470 to 480 resp. 490, the accelaration should be very slow, maybe 1/2 to max 1 knot!

So much effort for such a micro improvement, you may think? Again it is to be repeated that this little difference could let the boat survive or send it to the bottom of the sea. So of course it´s worth to do this effort.

Maybe anyone may do some engine tests with a IXC with Buchi-Charger and publish the values? So we can compare them to real values? But this is getting off topic.

Greetings

[h.sie]

Ship Collision Damage Fix V0.9.6 Alpha available (Bugfix)

It now works with Win 32 and 64 Bit.

For testing and developing purposes only.

Instructions for those who decided to test and help me:

Although I spent hours to make sure that only SurfaceShip--PlayerUboat collisions are affected, I cannot be 100% sure. Thus, I programmed the Watch-Officer so say "Ping" every time this Fix is active when a collision occurs (it enlarges the damage applied to the pressure-hull by a certain factor).

Test procedure: Trigger all possible types of collisions (shells, torpedoes, run on sea ground, collision with whale, iceberg and so on) and watch the game console. The Watch Officer should ONLY say "Ping" when the Player Uboat collides with an surface ship, but not in any other situation.

Thank you.

P.S. The final version of course won't have the "Ping" message.

[Hitman]

Thanks for your research Leitender. So we agree that there are indeed a series of safe and ordinary orders, and then a certain margin for the crew to overload the engines at their risk. This aditional margin was in real life above the "flank" telegraph order, and not represented in the telegraph itself, but probably simply requested by the commander to the chief engineer verbally.

I think it is possible with a reasonable effort for H.Sie to put an aditional status where extra power is injected in the engine and also increased chances of failiure happen (As already shown), the question is however to what command can this be tied - as creating new buttons or commands seems out of the question due to the complexity of doing it.

This is why H.Sie tied it to the flank speed order in the first place, and it is actually only natural to do so, as I can't think of any order that would be better replacing. Maybe someone else has a better suggestion for a replacement, considering what the dialog buttons of the chief engineer actually offer? Replacing a useless one with this "overload engines" could of course be the perfect solution. But which one can be let out with no harm to gameplay?

[h.sie]

@Fubar: Glad it works now. Please check out what you did wrong, to be able to do it by yourself in the future.

[Fubar2Niner]

Originally Posted by h.sie

@Fubar: Glad it works now. Please check out what you did wrong, to be able to do it by yourself in the future.

I crosschecked both the en_menu and the campaign.scr files, but to be honest I can't see any difference between the files you sent and those I tried previously. I did however delete all my previous careers and reinstalled commander ( small price to pay methinks )

Many thanks kaleun.

Best regards.

Fubar2Niner

[Leitender]

We know how to adjust existing commands in the appropriate cfg, we know how to create a button via menu.ini, but creating a completely new order was never done, if i´m informed correctly. So replacing an existing order by another indeed seems to be the only reasonable way at the moment. But in this case you lose an existing regular order, as Jaeger already mentioned.

For my personal playing experience i often use flank speed in critical situations, but i hardly use more than two orders for backwards movement: Backslow for manoeuvring in narrow harbours, and backemergency for - emergency. Perhaps we can use

backstandard=1.03

for 2 hours overload at 480 rpm without getting damage and

backfull=1.05

for 1/2 hour overload at 490 rpm (the values not checked yet). I must admit that this is not a really convincing solution, but i´ll give my own suggestion a try Report about according values will follow.

btw. If the boat is equipped with a supercharger, this should be simulated by a factor of around 1.1 (found in basic.cfg) on top of each loadfactor. I think we have to take this into account, if we search for the critical value above which damage appear.

btw H.sie: Just saw you did a fix for the torpedo pistol bug. Unbelievable! Thank you very much! Will try as soon as possible and send a report.

[LGN1]

Hi,

as long as we don't know the max. speed with the different settings, it's pointless to discuss the power settings. Without the speed data we can always argue that the flank setting/speed is always safe.

Instead of using an existing button, one might change the flank-speed percentage in the u-boat's *.cfg file to, e.g., 0.95. The 'over-powered' mode might then be called by ordering the max. speed in the 'knots dial', not the 'speed-setting dial' But we still need to know what max. speed must be entered in the sim file.

Anyway, I'm not sure whether it's worth the effort. All that we want is a limit on running with max. speed (whatever we take as max. speed). By playing with the values in the u-boat's cfg file and the sim file, every player can adapt the mod (almost) completely to his liking.

Cheers, LGN1