CapnScurvy
06-05-07, 10:06 PM
As anyone who had purchased the SH4 game knows, the range finding for the manual targeting system is terrible. I admit the calculations for range and distance is spot-on when playing the game in "arcade" mode. But, for both metric and imperial unit of measurement, with manual targeting system "enabled", this game couldn't hit a bull in the butt with a base fiddle. A good while back I was looking at the ship dimensions and calculating the metric to imperial conversions of feet and yards and came up empty handed. I couldn't find anything wrong but I couldn't find much right either.
The game couldn't have been released at a worse time with the advent of spring approaching. Too many jobs to do, too little time. I had thought of a proper test to run to see how far off things really were, but to do it on 50-plus ships was going to take time. Slowly, I have completed my testing and corrected the dimensions, not to any historical document but to whatever wacked formulation the dev. boys had put into the game. I admit my corrected figures are a "back door" approach to an ingrained problem but hey, it works!
To test the various ranges, I used the "mission editor" to pre-measure stationary ships with the sub in the center of a circle. Once I had a group of ships "docked", I ran the mission using the "arcade" mode of zero realism. I set the ships at 1500 yards (1371m) from the sub with my goal of 10 yards off plus or minus for accuracy. Then I locked onto each ship and recorded the range to target. The range finding is quite accurate with the computer doing the work. The target ranges with the computer in control is unaffected by whatever changes in the config files are made. That tells me the computer uses coordinates of latitude/longitude to find range to target distances, not ship dimensions.
Once I had the game computer range to target figures, I left the mission and switched game play options to "manual targeting system enabled" and WOW! what a dramatic difference. Only ONE ship was accurate, the MAYA CA, most others were shown in too short a distance to target, a few were too far.
An example: The HIRYU CV was 1507 yards from the sub with the computer finding the range. Using the stadimeter through mast height the range to target was 736 yards! The medium old composite (AKITA) was calculated at 1052 yards at a true distance of 1504. The CHITOSE Sea Plane Tender was 682 yards at a true distance of 1507 yards. Only a handful of ships were 50 yards distance difference or less. 50 yards difference within 1500 yards is too much to be accurate....that's the length of many of the ships.
To correct the problem I changed the mast height using the SWAG method. The "Scientific Wild-Ass Guessing" method with truthfully, just a "smidge" of science. If the distance was too short I added more to the ship config file mast height. If too long, I subtracted, each time going back into the mission to check the new result. Then back to the .cfg file to tweak some more.
One curious finding was at about the third or fourth time of using the stadimeter on the same ship, the range would move 15 or 20 yards from its previous reading, giving a true high & low range to the distance. On every ship a range of 15-20 yards difference could be found. I suspect this was designed into the game to give some unpredictability to your range findings. So, centering the mast height on this range became my goal. Since this would put the range of distance within the before-mentioned goal of 10 yards +/- in 1500 yards I used this as a mark to hit. With the 53 ships I have tested and changed, the goal has been achieved.
A change I made to the game instructions is: Where do you place the staimeter's second image on the ship? Some mast tops are hard to see at a distance so I made the following changes:
The Fuso BB
ISE BB
ISE(2) BB
All aircraft carriers
Furutaka CA
have prominent flag placements, so use the "top of the flag" to set the second image water line over them. ALL other Jap Warships use the "top of the tallest mast" to determine ranges.
For the Merchant Class use the "top of the smokestack(s)" to find range. This includes ALL merchants, cargo, freighter, tanker, passenger liners (troop carriers).
I did not elect to change allied warship dimensions, the German & Italian ships or the smaller vessels like fishing trawlers, tugboats, sampans. So if you feel inclined to fire at one of your own battleships, feel free to do so at the same blind-eyed accuracy our boys from Romania originally gave us.
The file's name is "Imperial_Ship_Fix-1.1" which will change over 50 ship mast heights. This change is only for the Imperial (U.S.) unit of measurement. The file is in WinRaR format and is compatible with the JSGME Generic Mod Enabler.
The latest files as of June 8, '07 can be downloaded from:
http://hosted.filefront.com/Capnscurvy/
Or try:
http://www.mediafire.com/?cbztdntw2xi
The game couldn't have been released at a worse time with the advent of spring approaching. Too many jobs to do, too little time. I had thought of a proper test to run to see how far off things really were, but to do it on 50-plus ships was going to take time. Slowly, I have completed my testing and corrected the dimensions, not to any historical document but to whatever wacked formulation the dev. boys had put into the game. I admit my corrected figures are a "back door" approach to an ingrained problem but hey, it works!
To test the various ranges, I used the "mission editor" to pre-measure stationary ships with the sub in the center of a circle. Once I had a group of ships "docked", I ran the mission using the "arcade" mode of zero realism. I set the ships at 1500 yards (1371m) from the sub with my goal of 10 yards off plus or minus for accuracy. Then I locked onto each ship and recorded the range to target. The range finding is quite accurate with the computer doing the work. The target ranges with the computer in control is unaffected by whatever changes in the config files are made. That tells me the computer uses coordinates of latitude/longitude to find range to target distances, not ship dimensions.
Once I had the game computer range to target figures, I left the mission and switched game play options to "manual targeting system enabled" and WOW! what a dramatic difference. Only ONE ship was accurate, the MAYA CA, most others were shown in too short a distance to target, a few were too far.
An example: The HIRYU CV was 1507 yards from the sub with the computer finding the range. Using the stadimeter through mast height the range to target was 736 yards! The medium old composite (AKITA) was calculated at 1052 yards at a true distance of 1504. The CHITOSE Sea Plane Tender was 682 yards at a true distance of 1507 yards. Only a handful of ships were 50 yards distance difference or less. 50 yards difference within 1500 yards is too much to be accurate....that's the length of many of the ships.
To correct the problem I changed the mast height using the SWAG method. The "Scientific Wild-Ass Guessing" method with truthfully, just a "smidge" of science. If the distance was too short I added more to the ship config file mast height. If too long, I subtracted, each time going back into the mission to check the new result. Then back to the .cfg file to tweak some more.
One curious finding was at about the third or fourth time of using the stadimeter on the same ship, the range would move 15 or 20 yards from its previous reading, giving a true high & low range to the distance. On every ship a range of 15-20 yards difference could be found. I suspect this was designed into the game to give some unpredictability to your range findings. So, centering the mast height on this range became my goal. Since this would put the range of distance within the before-mentioned goal of 10 yards +/- in 1500 yards I used this as a mark to hit. With the 53 ships I have tested and changed, the goal has been achieved.
A change I made to the game instructions is: Where do you place the staimeter's second image on the ship? Some mast tops are hard to see at a distance so I made the following changes:
The Fuso BB
ISE BB
ISE(2) BB
All aircraft carriers
Furutaka CA
have prominent flag placements, so use the "top of the flag" to set the second image water line over them. ALL other Jap Warships use the "top of the tallest mast" to determine ranges.
For the Merchant Class use the "top of the smokestack(s)" to find range. This includes ALL merchants, cargo, freighter, tanker, passenger liners (troop carriers).
I did not elect to change allied warship dimensions, the German & Italian ships or the smaller vessels like fishing trawlers, tugboats, sampans. So if you feel inclined to fire at one of your own battleships, feel free to do so at the same blind-eyed accuracy our boys from Romania originally gave us.
The file's name is "Imperial_Ship_Fix-1.1" which will change over 50 ship mast heights. This change is only for the Imperial (U.S.) unit of measurement. The file is in WinRaR format and is compatible with the JSGME Generic Mod Enabler.
The latest files as of June 8, '07 can be downloaded from:
http://hosted.filefront.com/Capnscurvy/
Or try:
http://www.mediafire.com/?cbztdntw2xi