GWX time compression and air patrols

[pythos]

This might be common with all mods, but since I have GWX installed I wanted to know if anyone here knew whether or not hight time compression makes the air patrols null and void.

I have really never encountered random air patrols while transiting to my patrol zone. I usually use 64x, for the close to base patrols, but I use 256x to 512x for the atlantic crossings. Does this somehow negate the air patrols in the area?

I am in late 1942

[_Seth_]

I think that 128x is the max for the aircrafts to spawn. Anything over this, and there will be no air action, mate!:up:

[Lzs von swe]

Hmm, I have them coming for me at 512x. Both in vanilla and GWX:up:

[_Seth_]

Hmm, I have them coming for me at 512x. Both in vanilla and GWX:up::o Thats new to me...Dang, i have to be carefull when running at high TC..

[Ducimus]

I seriously think that the myth that aircraft don't spawn at higher TC is just that, a myth. Im a Total time compression whore, and ive seen aircraft in just about every incarnation of sh3 ive played.

The REAL danger with Timecompression and aircraft, is not spotting the plane until its right on top of you. That said, i personally beleive the aircraft count in GWX is too low. Most airbases only have 1, sometimes 2 squadrons, whereas in older mods i used to run, such as improved airpower, they'd have 3, to 5 squadrons. Another problem is that theres a very large gap in air coverage in biscay bay, and i also strongly suspect that the AI_Visual's on aircraft arent working very well with the enviormental settings. They seem like their damn near blind if the weather is anything other then calm.

Here i should note that my opinion is based on what i feel are an appropriate number of aircraft, and where aircraft are concerned, im probably masocistic, meaning i expect far more aircraft then what others might expect . :D

[Jimbuna]

I think that 128x is the max for the aircrafts to spawn. Anything over this, and there will be no air action, mate!:up:

Sorry mate...but they spawn even at x512 :yep:

[Brag]

At high TC I've gotten bombs falling on me before I knew what was happening. Now, I transit high risk zones where air attack is likely at no more than TC 64.

[Jimbuna]

You'd still need the reflexes of a cat :rotfl: :up:

[Iron Budokan]

The aircraft spawn at all TC but you will get more sightings at lower compressions.

[Corsair]

I think the problem is not they will not spawn at all, but that due to the way SH3 updates the objects outside the player bubble (like most sims do) the higher the TC, the more chances you have the planes will "hop" the player bubble, and will not enter the realtime calculated objects.

[Iron Budokan]

Yes, that's exactly right. There was a good thread on this explaining it a while back....

[_Seth_]

I think that 128x is the max for the aircrafts to spawn. Anything over this, and there will be no air action, mate!:up:
Sorry mate...but they spawn even at x512 :yep:
And i thought i was safe when running above 128...:dead::dead::dead: *Scared*

[ReallyDedPoet]

Got the crap beaten out of me at 256tc a little earlier tonight. Real nice first patrol in 42':damn:

[High Voltage]

I don't understand what the problem is running at higher TC? don't the settings revert to x1 as soon as your lookout spots the aircraft? How is this any different than running the game at lower speeds? Please explain the difference between the two...

[Corsair]

I don't understand what the problem is running at higher TC? don't the settings revert to x1 as soon as your lookout spots the aircraft? How is this any different than running the game at lower speeds? Please explain the difference between the two...

The fact that TC is higher means that in the time it takes for the game to revert to TC x1, the planes will be a lot nearer by that time, and therefore you will have less time to react to the attack. So the lowest the TC, the more aircraft you will see but also the sooner you will see them.

[ReallyDedPoet]

When I was at 256tc I still had enough time to Crash Dive without alot of damage. And yes it does come down to 1x but being being at a higher tc cuts down on your time to prepare, etc:o

RDP

[John Channing]

I don't understand what the problem is running at higher TC? don't the settings revert to x1 as soon as your lookout spots the aircraft? How is this any different than running the game at lower speeds? Please explain the difference between the two...

Think of it this way.

If you are running at 1024X TC then every second in real time is 1024 seconds (17 minutes) in game time. Let's say it takes as little as 1/4 of a second for the game to slow down to 1X. Even that quickly, that is over 4 minutes gone by in game time.

If a plane is closing at 200 MPH, that equals 3+ miles a minute. With the visual distance in the game at 9.6 miles (16KM) that means he will have travelled 12 miles in that quarter second.

The plane will have attacked you before the game can slow down.

JCC

[Slick Rick]

This is a real problem with TCing....at least it was for me....I would be going along at 256 and the next thing you know....my boat was toast because of a Sunderland attack....so I decided to download SH3 Commander and adjust the TC setting for an air attack....and a few others.....well now that I have done this....I have lost the speech function in the game.....any ideas?????

[Finback]

I've had aircraft come at me at all TC settings. That said, I mod airbases so I get more trouble from them, especially in '42. IMHO--planes during 42 are far too scarce. It's hard too imagine a boat going all the way through Biscay on the surface with no trouble during this period...

[ReallyDedPoet]

Lots of planes in 42'. First patrol, had to CD about four times so far, about a 1\3 of the way through.

[jaxa]

1939, TC max 256 and many planes detected near Great Britain
you should setup "tc 1x" when plane detected in SH3Commander

[gheistrotor]

I am running GWX 1.02 with SH3 set to pause when there is an air attack to buy me some more time. It works OK with the big slow planes but the fast planes still nick you. The Bay of Biscay does seem light in air traffic but go north to Iceland and you will find dozens of air attacks both day and night. The night ones are big two and four engine monsters with radar arrays on their fuselage. The four engine ones drop depth charges based on where their radar detected you last. This is July 1942 and I have had six air attacks in the last 36 hrs. I even vary my resurfacing times and they still find me. If I had let my batteries run low I would be up the creek without a paddle. I am just hoping to make it back to Bergen in one piece and that is the last time I patrol AE84. The other thing I notice in GWX 1.02 is all the air patrols have multiple planes 2 or 3 so jousting with a flak gun seems out of the question.

[CruiseTorpedo]

Learn somethin new everyday! I have always played at 1024 and let my crew look around for ships and planes as I cruised along. Sometimes I wouldnt fire all my torps before I had to RTB due to low fuel (I'd travel at the best cruise speed by specifying knots and still run outta fuel). Lowered to 512 and played some today and I've had much better luck!

Even ran into a battleship nelson class, I think, sunk her firing all 5 torps, 1 missed but the other 3 in the initial fan shot hit her bow to mid ship, then the fifth one finished her off. It was hard deciding to attack her, she was escorting 4 large tankers! I almost went for the tankers, but figured I'd get the BB then if there's time after shaking off the destroyers I'd come around and attack the tankers. Saved it at that point and I have yet to go back in to finish the patrol. Took some damage from a destroyer that snuck up on me right after I fired the 5th torp, had no idea she was 300m to the side and I turned away from her not realizing I setup a perfect run. Was lucky I didnt sink right there! I imagine if I had a % of damage meter it wouldn't be pretty so I have to be extra careful on my next run on the convoy.

[JetSnake]

So far with my setup GWX1.02 going across Biscay Bay 1943 I get them at 1052 tc. Oh and it was terrible watching the VIIC/41 Flak escort getting sunk by air patrols. I made it about 1 day west of port before I had to turn around due to damage from the unrelenting patrols. I didn't even install the increased air patrol mod.:doh:

[NefariousKoel]

I've been getting attacked from the air in GWX at least once, usually twice a day anywhere near the UK. I try to keep my TC at 256 or so when not in wide open ocean.

Those bastards keep getting near misses on my VIIB usually damaging my deck/flag guns a bit while I'm trying to dive. It's only my first patrol in 1939 too. :O

[joea]

Patch 1,02 has improved things (well for the Allies :shifty: ) for air coverage. The Bay of Biscay is pretty hazardous. :dead:

[NefariousKoel]

Yesterday I'm returning from my first patrol. It's 1939. I was cruising along at 256x approx. 130km-170km NW of Stornoway just past the deep depth line.

Here is a summary of that day's air attacks. :o

Sun-up, attacked immediately as I secured from red
1st) 0630
2nd) 0945
3rd) 1030
4th) 1300
5th) 2010 (at 280km distance from nearest base)


Needless to say, It's taking forever to travel. It seems my initial estimation was very low at 1 or 2 times a day once I started writing the approximate times down.

Were these amounts of air attacks common in '39? :huh: Also, is there a way I can tone them down a bit?

[Corsair]

The whole place up there is Hurricane Alley in early war. I use SH3 Gen and draw a circle 300 km from each airbase. Whenever I am inside these 300 km circles (even more when they overlap each other) I travel submerged at daytime (might surface for a short period of time for a chase on a nice target) which is from before sunrise to 1 hour after sunset. Travelling at 2 knots you can stay a good 12 hours under and it's a good speed to pick up sound contacts.

[d@rk51d3]

Get yourself a type IX with 2 sets of twin 38's and 1 set of quad 38's, and you can down almost anything before it starts it's attack run.:rock:


Just watch out for the debris, or in other words, planes falling out of the sky - onto your boat :damn:

[NefariousKoel]

I went into the data/cfg/airstrike.cfg file and noticed the default airstrike probability was set to 35, up from the 10 in a vanilla install.

I'm gonna lower it down some and see what my preferred setting would be.

[Jimbuna]

Patch 1,02 has improved things (well for the Allies :shifty: ) for air coverage. The Bay of Biscay is pretty hazardous. :dead:

Yep...that's all sorted now :yep:

[Heibges]

When I cross the Bay after May 1943 many times I get attacked less than 10 minutes after I surface, and I run at 1024X. I have almost fully depleted my batteries many times before being able to break into the Atlantic.

It also has to do with visibility.

Aircraft will not always spot you even at 1x TC.

Really, the Bay is no picnic after Spring 1942 although you can sometimes clear the Bay with no interference then.

[Jimbuna]

Put it down to 'the fog of war' matey :up: :arrgh!:

[CaptainAsh]

The AI technic is quite simple actualy.
Saw it like time jump on a time line...
At t0, your object (a plane in this context) as some property such as position, bearing, speed, etc... at t1, the AI is gonna compute what your object have done in the interval of time between t0 and t1 and what are his properties at t1 they he will triger event if his new properties answer some equation as for exemple being in a specific radius of your own ship. Thing is, AI have to compute the properties for every object in the game and pause a while (few millisecond to few second... for a sub sim, probably in second) between each computing to not take ALL the CPU resources.
In SHIII world, AI has a lot of object which need to have their properties refreshed. As a computer game developper myself, I guess it s not computing for every object each turn but have a dynamic cycle according to the range between the object and your sub. Which mean, the closer the object is, the more often is properties are refreshed.
Still for your plane you gonna have some real life time between two refreshes of properties. If you use a high time compression, the plane properties and your own sub properties are going to change so much that they gonna jump over each other. Just like closing your eyes, moving 30km, hopening your eyes. As the plane do the same, when you crossed each other you both have your eyes closed. And when you'll open them again, you'll missed each other.

Think is, the interval between each computing is dinamicaly linked to the time compression you use. At such point that if you use high time compression, the interval of time can be null in the code. But not in term of CPU time :). Because the game and you computer as other stuff to do than refresh object properties, you will always have a interval of time you can't decrease and logicaly, it s linked to the performances of your computer.
In SHIII you can actualy use the FPS counter to get a good idea I think. FPS are the refresh rate of what you re seeing. It s not linked to the AI computing, but if your FPS droped under 10 it s because your CPU is overused, then you can guess that the AI computing rate is also droping big time for the same reason and that you have more chance to miss stuff.

Hope it helps to understand the mechanic and sorry for my poor english.