Can the WO's Range Report Accuracy be Tweaked?

[panthercules]

In a thread on the general forum about plotting using a "maneuvering board" approach, the concept of possibly being able to change the accuracy of the WO's range reports came up - I thought maybe this should be the subject of a post over here in the mod forum - see the copy of the posting below: (from the following thread - http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=334367&posted=1#post334367 )

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dantenoc
If NYGM 2.2. thought that this was way to precise, then it should have changed this to a margin error of plus or minus 200 meters or more


Is this actually possible? I haven't loaded up NYGM 2.2 yet (still out on patrol with my old GW 1.0+ install), so I hadn't realized that they eliminated the ability to ask your WO for the range. I have thought (as they apparently did) that it was kinda silly that the WO could seem to give rather precise ranges of ships 10,000m+ way, so I have basically been using the WO's responses to let me know if the target was closing or receding (which I figured that he should be able to tell, whether or not his range numbers were actually correct). It didn't occur to me that there might be a "margin of error" parameter at work in the stock game that might be able to be modded to give a more realistic role for the WO's range reports.

Does anybody know if there is such a parameter and whether you can tweak it?

[Ducimus]

I dont know if you can tweak his accuracy to give general ranges, but removing his ranging is, i beleive, a simple line edit in the EN_menu.cfg. (or DE_menu.cfg)

[Dantenoc]

but that's not the point... having a watch officer that is too precise might be somewhat unrealistic, but havign a watch officer so incompetent that he can't even venture a guess at a target's range is clearly even more unrealistic.

The game clearly has some mecanism that transforms the target's range to an "aproximate" one that results by simply rounding to the nearest multiple of 100... perhaps this value could be tweaked to something bigger? (although it may be hardcoded)

[Ducimus]

810=Ship spotted, sir! Bearing %03d! %s range!
811=Aircraft spotted, sir! Bearing %03d! %s range!
812=Submarine spotted, sir! Bearing %03d! %s range!
813=Land unit spotted, sir! Bearing %03d! %s range!
814=Radar contact, sir! Bearing %03d! %s range!
815=Sound contact, sir! %s %s %s Bearing %03d! %s range!
816=Radio Report Received! %s %s, %s, Course %s, Speed %d KTS!
817=Detecting radar signals!

......


4616=Nearest visual contact at bearing %03.0f, range %.0f meters!


Im pretty sure you just can't swap variables. Id say your venturing in the realm of hardcoded. The en_menu.cfg is a very powerful file to play with, but it does have its limitations.

[Uber Gruber]

4616=Nearest visual contact at bearing %03.0f, range %.0f meters!

Interesting, i wonder what would happen if you replace the above line with:

4616=Nearest visual contact at bearing %03.0f, range %g\b\b\b000 meters!

In my quick test, using a range value of 4730 meters, it writes over the last three digits with zeros....i.e resulting in 4000 meters.

If it works "in game" then the WO will effectively be giving ranges that could anywhere between his stated value and +1000 meters. Anything below 1000 meters would not be displayed at all.....this would at least temper his accuracy somewhat.

Its crude and not very elegant but could someone give it a go to see what happens ?

Cheers, Hans.

[Ducimus]

Well, one thing ive learned about tweaking this game is you never know for sure until you try.

[Stiebler]

Uber Gruber said:

Quote:
4616=Nearest visual contact at bearing %03.0f, range %.0f meters!

Interesting, i wonder what would happen if you replace the above line with:

4616=Nearest visual contact at bearing %03.0f, range %g\b\b\b000 meters!

In my quick test, using a range value of 4730 meters, it writes over the last three digits with zeros....i.e resulting in 4000 meters.

I made the change, and it doesn't work. The problem is that SH3's code doesn't recognise the \b (backspace) command, and shows (for example) 4730 meters as '4730bbb000'. I presume your 'quick test' must have been done with a C-compiler, not with SH3.

I also tried using 'range %03.0f\b\b\b000' with the same result.

Pity, it was a good idea. I don't think that there can be a solution now, except in the hard code.

Stiebler.

[Uber Gruber]

Thanks for testing it all the same, shame it didn't work. I was mid clean install for Patrol 10 WaW, which I won't have time to finish :-(, so only tested it in C.

The game engine must parse the string and have its own mini number-format parser...shame really. Is there anyway we can isolate the parser in the game engine ?

Cheers, Hans.