In the immortal words of Ali G ‘Respect’, a new way of playing…

[Der Teddy Bar]

Previously we could approach a convoy with little regard to being detected and worse yet little concern that it had 4 escorts. We could travel up and down the English Channel as if we owned it, or at least had our name on the lease.

We could attack a convoy and resurface and attack it again all before brunch.

The NYGM Tonnage War 2 will go a long way to address these short comings.

The previously visually blind Escort AI will now detect you at greater distances, when at a normal alert condition. Your profile and even your approach speed will go a long way to either you remaining undetected or in you getting detected.

While improving the daytime distances we have also reduced the night time distances that an escort might detect you at.

While improving the Escorts Visual abilities we have in relation to the improved Escort Visual abilities reduced the Merchant Visual abilities especially in regards to the night time. We have done this by adding an additional Visual Sensors for the merchant ships and another for the smaller craft.

As previously mentioned your aspect and speed will play some part in you being or not being detected.

When you show your smallest aspect, bow or stern, then your chances of being detected are reduced. Once you start showing the side aspect of your u-boat the chances of being detected are increased substantially.

For example, if under certain weather conditions you might get detected bow on at 3200 metres when you show your profile that would almost double that distance over 6000 metres.

Speed has also has an impact on your ability to remain undetected. At ahead standard you are at the compromise speed, fast enough to get around and not excessive in allowing you to be detected.

However at flank speed you might be detected at ranges that when at ahead standard you were not. Alternatively at a speed less than 7 knots you might not be detected till much closer or at all.

Elaborating on the new additional Visual Sensors…
- The Merchant Visual Sensor has in comparison the Escorts Visual Sensor a reduced range and capability. The reduced capability is most evident at night.
- The Fishing Vessel Visual Sensor is the same as the Merchant Visual Sensor with reduced range to be in line with the vessels height.
- The Elco Visual Sensor is the same as the Escort Visual Sensor reduced range to be in line with the vessels height.

When the AI goes into a High Alert state the detection ranges will greatly increase as the AI is now actively looking for you. This means that where as previously you might have been able to get within 2000 metres of the ship undetected you might now find that you are being detected at 5000 metres.

The AI can now see your periscope and snorkel. While the detection of these items when the AI is in normal alert mode is very low, when the AI is in a high alert mode the detection of your periscope may occur up to several thousand metres away. Remember, on high alert the escort AI is actively looking for you.

I have no idea how long the AI will stay in High Alert.

Underwater detection has been greatly enhanced with the Glingon Cloaking Device now a thing of the past. That is, ahead slow and silent running will not allow you to sail right up to an escort undetected.

Now to remain undetected by a close by escort will require <2 knots and silent running and if the escort is on high alert, 1 knot and silent running.

ADSIC, the escorts now use it, a lot!

I cannot stress enough, the escorts are not super impossible, they are not all seeing, BUT, they are more effective.

So how was it really? In the video interview with Jurgen Oesten he relays how in 1939 while submerged, inferring that he was just not found due to any previous action, he was detected and attacked by a lone destroyer.

He goes on to say that the destroyer was very accurate and that the destroyer knew exactly where he was. This destroyer gave his u-boat a massive work over with him eventually ending up on the bottom at 134 metres with his u-boat extensively damaged and unable to move. He also relates that the hull was buckled in from a depth charge that also knocked the port diesel engine off it mounts.

It is inferred to have been over many hours possibly in double figures. On the 3rd night they surfaced to find that a trawler had been left there to watch for the u-boat possibly surfacing!

Shallow waters were a very dangerous place for the u-boats, yes there were sound detection difficulties, but compared to deep water, shallow waters were very dangerous.

With the AI now more actively using the ADSIC shallow waters are now very dangerous. It is not impossible to survive 1 maybe 2 escorts with skill and some luck when in shallow waters of 50 metres or less, but more often than not, you will find that it will end tragically.

With ADSIC the key to minimising your chances of detection will be minimising your profile, stern on or bow on is key.

I would like to point out that using speed when appropriate is now as important as staying silent and slow. I am not referring to using speed to avoid depth charges, but using speed to move away from the escorts search area.

Before the NYGM hydro/sonar update it was simply a matter of going slowish and silent running. This is now not enough.

It is now very important to remove yourself from the search area a soon as possible. This can only be done by increasing speed when the escort is in a position not to detect you, i.e. in his baffles or far enough for a small speed increase. This is very hard to judge and requires a lot of attention.

It also requires a cool head as hearing the ping does not always mean that you are nailed, even if the u-boat warning icon goes red. I can confirm that even when the u-boat warning icon goes red and the pinging is driving you up the wall that the escort will at times continue on. This has been confirmed through external view testing. It can be a battle of nerves and speeding up as you are already detected may actually ensure that you are!

I want to stress that the escorts are not all hearing or all seeing and that when you think that you have escaped you may find that sometimes bad luck will find you. For example I had removed myself from the basic search area of the escort (confirmed by external view for testing purposes) and had thought myself to be home and hosed as they say. When the escort was either moving away or changing to a new search area and I was redetected as it pass close by. In the end I did manage to escape, but we must not confuse bad luck with all seeing and all hearing.


What I am trying to say is that the AI is to be respected and that if your game play does not change to a more historical way then you will find yourself in whole lot of pain most of the time.

So if the escort sees you hide as soon as possible and stay hidden for as long as possible.

[Salvadoreno]

Are all these values going to work with the next SH3 Commander and Heminiscents thermal layers and other sensor changeS?? Or do they not conflict at all?

[HEMISENT]

Teddy
This sounds great, can't wait for TW version 2. I know this requires humongous amounts of testing and we all want it to be as right as possible, but...

The question is.. When?

ps. just kidding, take all the time you need

[Der Teddy Bar]

Originally Posted by Salvadoreno

Are all these values going to work with the next SH3 Commander and Heminiscents thermal layers and other sensor changeS?? Or do they not conflict at all?

We will have to check that out after launch as I/We have not looked at these.

I will say that the values are so interlocked that changing one value by as little as 0.02 can result in changing the detection possibilities from low to always...

I feel that the new hydro/sonar settings bring into play a real cat and mouse experience where you the player do actuall have some bearing on the result.

As such, I am hoping that these values might be such that the need to constantly change them will no longer be required.

[Der Teddy Bar]

Originally Posted by HEMISENT

The question is.. When?

Actually that is a tough one. It is ready to go, but I am not sure that we have prepared the end users enough.

It really is a step up in intensity and one cannot race through an escort encounter anymore.

[THE_MASK]

I am going to hold my breath until its out . READY SET GO

[HEMISENT]

Originally Posted by Salvadoreno

Are all these values going to work with the next SH3 Commander and Heminiscents thermal layers and other sensor changeS?? Or do they not conflict at all?

As for Thermal Layers the only line that is edited in the AI.Sensors.dat file is the Min Height= setting for Hydrophones and Sonars. Whatever settings NYGM uses in the entire AI.Sensors.dat file remains as default.
If Commander loads a TL file then only that particular line will apply.

Example: Launch SH3 thru Commander(you have been randomly issued the TL file for 260m but you don't know it yet) Using the TW mod their AI.Sensors.dat is now the default. All their settings remain as advertized. If/when you are detected and are forced to dive deep the NYGM sensors are all operating per NYGM specs. When your boat gets close to 260m the
the sensor effectiveness will gradually degrade(providing you are going very slow and don't do anything stupid). Keep in mind that different year sensors all have variations to the Min Height=. This was done to avoid the hard ceiling effect. since you have no idea what boat has what year/model sensor degradation may occur as early as 250m or as late as 280m.
Of course once NYGM v2 comes out I'll test Thermal Layers, Malfunctions and Sabotage files to make sure everything is compatible.

Hope this helps.

[HEMISENT]

Originally Posted by Der Teddy Bar

Actually that is a tough one. It is ready to go, but I am not sure that we have prepared the end users enough.

Well, this end user is prepared. I recommend two versions for release. A hard core version and the standard NYGM TW version for those who are not into the really intense gameplay.

[Salvadoreno]

Originally Posted by HEMISENT

As for Thermal Layers the only line that is edited in the AI.Sensors.dat file is the Min Height= setting for Hydrophones and Sonars. Whatever settings NYGM uses in the entire AI.Sensors.dat file remains as default.
If Commander loads a TL file then only that particular line will apply.

Example: Launch SH3 thru Commander(you have been randomly issued the TL file for 260m but you don't know it yet) Using the TW mod their AI.Sensors.dat is now the default. All their settings remain as advertized. If/when you are detected and are forced to dive deep the NYGM sensors are all operating per NYGM specs. When your boat gets close to 260m the
the sensor effectiveness will gradually degrade(providing you are going very slow and don't do anything stupid). Keep in mind that different year sensors all have variations to the Min Height=. This was done to avoid the hard ceiling effect. since you have no idea what boat has what year/model sensor degradation may occur as early as 250m or as late as 280m.
Of course once NYGM v2 comes out I'll test Thermal Layers, Malfunctions and Sabotage files to make sure everything is compatible.

Hope this helps.

Awesome Hemisent I hope everything will go swimingly :rotfl: with NYGM V.2 and the new SH3 Commander. I love what you do and i love what Teddy does, but i cannot choose because both of you guys have tried to capture ultimate realism with the destroyer aggression, AI, etc..

[Der Teddy Bar]

Originally Posted by HEMISENT

Well, this end user is prepared. I recommend two versions for release. A hard core version and the standard NYGM TW version for those who are not into the really intense gameplay.

Not a practical idea, a good one, but not practical.

[Der Teddy Bar]

Originally Posted by sober

I am going to hold my breath until its out . READY SET GO

:rotfl:

[panthercules]

Oh man does this sound great - one thing I have noticed so far in this career (on my 16th patrol so far - January 1942) is that something does seem to have happened for the worse as far as escort AI goes when compared to my earlier careers (which were generally run using various old RUB versions before I started messing with NYGM and GW on this career). I am always pretty conservative with my approaches and don't do anything stupid to attract them, so I don't expect to get hammered all that often. However, I have still made quite a few convoy attacks (and several against the same convoy over the space of 2 or 3 days), and have been surprised by a few escorts looming out of the fog/mist at 400m range when I zigged and the convoy zagged while I was trying to shadow them in heavy storms, and in all those many DC attacks I was never really hurt badly or even very often felt that the escorts had much if any idea where I was - no protracted escapes, just an hour or two of creeping away at 2 knots and silent running while they dropped DCs behind me and then gave up and headed off.

I have been detected on the surface by escorts a few times this career at about 7 or 8,000m range, when my speed and profile would lead me to believe I should not have been spotted visually, so I have suspected that those verdammte British must have some of that newfangled radar on some of their ships by now, but as far as I can tell I have never had my scope spotted so far this career at any speed or distance. I'd love to see this kind of thing really work to improve and make more uncertain the experience regarding detection. I'm amazed that you have been able to address all those varied detection scenarios, and I especially like the idea of a meaningful difference between daytime and night time spotting and escort vs merchant spotting chances. I can't wait for this thing to come out - bring it on

BTW - almost forgot the one item from my wish list conspicuously missing from the list of great things about to happen - somehow, you just gotta figure out how to make the moon state (phase and relative position) matter - it would just be too cool if you had to worry about that too during those early war night surface attacks. Come on - how hard could it be?

[Observer]

Tonight I updated the Randomised Events.cfg and the Miscellaneous.cfg with the next hex offsets in order for the randomized crush depth and thermal layers portion of SH3 Commander to work. These optional files will be included in the next release of NYGM TW 2.0. Please note that it will only impact crush depth and sonar min depth.

[Der Teddy Bar]

panthercules,
You are right that in 1942 most of your issues will be radar related.

I was testing elco visual detection in late 1940 and was getting detected at distances that were excessive and was at a lose to explain why, until to my surprise I discover that the Elco gets a radar set in June of 1940!

[Sensor 5]
NodeName=R01
LinkName=TypeSC
StartDate=19400601
EndDate=19430601

It is most likley that NYGM will have a look at the radar after the release of TW 2. It is hoped that we may be able to reduce its 'instant' detection ability without knee capping it and have heavy sea states play a bigger part in reducing its excessive abilities.

If I remember correctly, it was not until some time in 1944 did the allies finally attain a set that was not adversly affected by rain etc. After all, it was with the HuffDuff that the allies were able to ‘see’ the u-boats on or over the horizon, not radar. It was something that the allies allowed the world to believe for many decades.

When the AI in in a normal alert state the persicope detection is not as high as we would have liked, but it is not invisible. This is a direct result of making the night time vision less effective. Yes it is hard to see how they could be related but they are.

That said, they are not totally blind to the periscope and when the AI are in a high alert state, well, I suggest not using it.

Moon phases, never going to happen in SHIII.

[JScones]

Originally Posted by Observer

Tonight I updated the Randomised Events.cfg and the Miscellaneous.cfg with the next hex offsets in order for the randomized crush depth and thermal layers portion of SH3 Commander to work. These optional files will be included in the next release of NYGM TW 2.0. Please note that it will only impact crush depth and sonar min depth.

Note that there are data file changes to SH3Cmdr R2.6, which will be released within the week. Miscellaneous.cfg is one of a few files that will no longer exist. And R2.6 will also come with eight different Randomised events files (one for each war year plus an optional "whole war" file).

This is one of the reasons why I announced quite a while ago the availability of an SH3Cmdr PR2.6 for modders to test for compatibility with their creations. Perhaps even more important for your team now that R2.6 will include by default the ability to commence careers with "experienced" crew - I suspect that it may impact your finely tuned crew configs. There's a thread about this in this forum if you haven't seen it.

I do recommend that you test NYGM 1.03/2.0 with the latest SH3Cmdr R2.6, because once it's out, I don't intend making "compatibility" changes because modders didn't test it adequately beforehand - the offer's been there to all for a month or more now and the NYGM team is about the only crew not to have taken the offer up.

Another thing I welcome from the NYGM team, or any mod team, is updated "Ship displacements.cfg" and "Ship names.cfg" files containing any extra ships that their mod may include. I feel that as the files have never been updated, they may be somewhat out of date. I need you modders to help keep it current, not for my benefit, but for the benefit of your users.