[REL] Realistic Sinking Physics

[WernerSobe]

I might be missing somethign obvious, but is this compatible with Trigger Maru 1.4? They both affect some Zones file...

TM has just trippled flooding times from stock zones.cfg. Since all flooding times are reworked by this mod anyway it doesnt bite with TM. Just make sure to install NSM over TM. You wont lose anything from TM.

TM has tweaked some hitpoints and armorlevels in .zon ship files. This mod set all hitpoints to 20000 to make sure the ships sink by boyancy and not by hitpoints. So this will neither bite with TM as long you install NSM over it.

[WernerSobe]

3. Compartment hitpoints. Each compartment has its own hitpoints and armor level. This system still appears in this mod. In stock sh4 these hitpoints are less important, in most cases overall hitpoints are consumed before enough compartments are destroyed. In this mod the hull hitpoints has been set to a very high value so compartment hitpoints became much more important. The compartments can be just damaged and only flood to half. Or they can be destroyed and damage compartments nearby so they start flooding too.
Again the compartments hitpoints cannot be defined for every single ship but only for entire class.

I think some tweaks in the compartment hitpoints section will complete this mod. The current rate of sinking (v1.3, no mods besides NSM) feels right-- you get a variety of sinkings depending on hit location, criticals, etc. Adjusting the compartment hitpoints will make multiple hits to the same location more effective than they seem to be now.

Ive been tweaking there a lot. It doesnt have much impact because the compartment hitpoints and armorlevels in stock were set close to nothing so compartments were always destroyed from a torpedo hit. Ive increased compartment hitpoints for all warships but let the ones for merchants almost untouched. Tweaking there is not easy because it must be balanced with floatability for every compartment.

[CCIP]

This is an outstanding mod which was one of the biggest things I was missing since NYGM's damage model in SHIII. I've sunk about a dozen merchants with it so far and have not run into any bugs.

Please keep it up and squash whatever problems there were. I can't play without this anymore :up:

[Bando]

CCIP, haven't seen you for a while.
Hope your PC is up and running and you're doing good.:up:

[WernerSobe]

BREAKTROUGH

Ive found where the compartment layout is defined for every single ship. That opens up huge possibilities. Till now all ships were using compartment groups and i could only change compartment setup for all warships or all merchants. Now i can design a compartment layout for every ship. It will make possible to tweak a single ship or add effects to a single ship without affecting other ships of same class. This will be a lot of work and take a while so be patient.

Just imagine how often ill need to restart the game when changing and testing every single compartment for every single ship.

[Anvart]

BREAKTROUGH

Ive found where the compartment layout is defined for every single ship. That opens up huge possibilities. Till now all ships were using compartment groups and i could only change compartment setup for all warships or all merchants. Now i can design a compartment layout for every ship. It will make possible to tweak a single ship or add effects to a single ship without affecting other ships of same class. This will be a lot of work and take a while so be patient.

Just imagine how often ill need to restart the game when changing and testing every single compartment for every single ship.
It's zon-file ...

[WernerSobe]

yes but its quite confusing i couldnt figure out how its put together. Now i see the structure behind it.

Anyway there is a problem. The compartment index is a byte value. Meaning we are limited to a maximum of 255 compartments. That doesnt provide enough compartments for every single ship. Ill need to make groups :cry:

Current groups looks like this:

small merchants
merchants
escorts
warships

i think ill extend it like this:
small merchants
medium merchants
big merchants
patrol crafts
destroyers
cruisers
cariers
battleships

[ReallyDedPoet]

Just imagine how often ill need to restart the game when changing and testing every single compartment for every single ship.

That's dedication :yep:


RDP

[Frederf]

I was playing this mod and TM1.3A and I came across the JUICIEST task force ever. More battleships than Japan ever made all in a row.

Any way I sunk one, hit anther (which sunk a few min later) , and hit a third pretty hard. Making an end around at 11 kts (dumb stock layer) I noticed a "light but no noise" contact on the hydrophones trailing behind where the TF should have been. Now I generally know that this means a dead-in-the-water ship. Hoping to get a good kill on a disabled BB I ignored the TF and drove right at it.

And past it. And past it again. I bobbed up and down from PD to surfaced making exact-as-I-can course adjustments and I still always pass the contact with no visual. My theory was that the BB I hit sunk but never died. So it was resting on the ocean floor turning a screw over or something but perfectly alive.

Is this possible for a ship to be below the surface but still be alive?

[Ducimus]

WernerSobe, you may want to search the SH3 modding forums for info on Der Teddy Bar's nygm ship damage model. Your's seems similar and you might find a bit of info that may help you in your efforts.

Ship damage models was one of those areas where i meant to do my own version of, but just dont have the time. I was thinking about including yours, but with a few tweaks to speed up flooding time, that is, if you don't mind?

My personal opinnion is i want realistic sinkings, but i dont want it taking excessivly too long. Primarly for two reasons, its annoying (to me), and it makes harbor raiding a moot point since nothing will sink. Ships in harbors can acutally be tougher to sink then in deep water as it, even without a damage model added.

[WernerSobe]

WernerSobe, you may want to search the SH3 modding forums for info on Der Teddy Bar's nygm ship damage model. Your's seems similar and you might find a bit of info that may help you in your efforts.

Ship damage models was one of those areas where i meant to do my own version of, but just dont have the time. I was thinking about including yours, but with a few tweaks to speed up flooding time, that is, if you don't mind?

My personal opinnion is i want realistic sinkings, but i dont want it taking excessivly too long. Primarly for two reasons, its annoying (to me), and it makes harbor raiding a moot point since nothing will sink. Ships in harbors can acutally be tougher to sink then in deep water as it, even without a damage model added.

are you talking about including it into TM?

I dont mind at all. But id rather wait little more. Next release will provide a "light" version with higher sinking rates then "classic".

[Ducimus]

Yeah , including it into TM. Im trying to wrap up what i intend to be the final version before i call it qutis for awhile and i want to make it as all encompassing i can. As for waiting, i dont mind, if your making a light version it just allows me to focus efforts on other areas of the mod. I have to wonder though, what sort of timeframe on sinkings do you consider "light"?

Personnaly im all for knowing for sure if it will sink or not within an hours time frame, maybe even as little as 30 minutes. Im such a micromanaging jackass with my torpedos, i quite litterally would wait 5, to 10, 24, or 48 hours for a ship to sink if it meant not using another torpedo. In the process i just go nucking fut :rotfl:

[chopped50ford]

BREAKTROUGH

Ive found where the compartment layout is defined for every single ship. That opens up huge possibilities. Till now all ships were using compartment groups and i could only change compartment setup for all warships or all merchants. Now i can design a compartment layout for every ship. It will make possible to tweak a single ship or add effects to a single ship without affecting other ships of same class. This will be a lot of work and take a while so be patient.

Just imagine how often ill need to restart the game when changing and testing every single compartment for every single ship.

This is awesome news. I check this thread everyday for updates. Cant wait to see the next version?

does this mean that the "classic" version will incorporate these changes? I saw you mentioned a "Light" version...is that for faster sinking rates only?

[chopped50ford]

I was playing this mod and TM1.3A and I came across the JUICIEST task force ever. More battleships than Japan ever made all in a row.

Any way I sunk one, hit anther (which sunk a few min later) , and hit a third pretty hard. Making an end around at 11 kts (dumb stock layer) I noticed a "light but no noise" contact on the hydrophones trailing behind where the TF should have been. Now I generally know that this means a dead-in-the-water ship. Hoping to get a good kill on a disabled BB I ignored the TF and drove right at it.

And past it. And past it again. I bobbed up and down from PD to surfaced making exact-as-I-can course adjustments and I still always pass the contact with no visual. My theory was that the BB I hit sunk but never died. So it was resting on the ocean floor turning a screw over or something but perfectly alive.

Is this possible for a ship to be below the surface but still be alive?

good point, I had a med, rear smoke stack, merchant that I shot up to all hell, put 3 torps into it, waited 5 days and it finally sunk. I noticed afterward I did not get a sunk ship symbol on my map and no recorded info that I sank it in my log....I wonder what happened there?:hmm:

I have run into (2) capitol ship convoys...each time scoring a BB and maybe (1) destroyer. They sink pretty slow, but that's anticipated, especially the "roll over" which is the cool part. If I could just manage my shots a bit better, Maybe I can hit (2) or more in one spread. Practice, Practice. :D

[Xypher]

hmm, i had one very strange problem with this mod. well i think it might be the mod, but anyway onto my story since i forgot to take a shot of it.

i found a solo merchant out by it self, large class and so on. but i had dumped two torpedos into it. but it wouldent sink, and 2 hours later is ENTIRE deck was under water. all except for its bridge, while still running at 6 knots i followed it for a few days before from exasperation i just turned around and went to find more targets. this is the first time i have seen this happen so i dont think its a huge issue.

just wanted to share a strange story and let you all know there are some very hardy crew in those merchant fleets.

[WernerSobe]

Yeah , including it into TM. Im trying to wrap up what i intend to be the final version before i call it qutis for awhile and i want to make it as all encompassing i can. As for waiting, i dont mind, if your making a light version it just allows me to focus efforts on other areas of the mod. I have to wonder though, what sort of timeframe on sinkings do you consider "light"?

Personnaly im all for knowing for sure if it will sink or not within an hours time frame, maybe even as little as 30 minutes. Im such a micromanaging jackass with my torpedos, i quite litterally would wait 5, to 10, 24, or 48 hours for a ship to sink if it meant not using another torpedo. In the process i just go nucking fut :rotfl:

In light version you will need less torpedoes and the sinking rates will be about 50% faster.

[WernerSobe]

BREAKTROUGH

Ive found where the compartment layout is defined for every single ship. That opens up huge possibilities. Till now all ships were using compartment groups and i could only change compartment setup for all warships or all merchants. Now i can design a compartment layout for every ship. It will make possible to tweak a single ship or add effects to a single ship without affecting other ships of same class. This will be a lot of work and take a while so be patient.

Just imagine how often ill need to restart the game when changing and testing every single compartment for every single ship.

This is awesome news. I check this thread everyday for updates. Cant wait to see the next version?

does this mean that the "classic" version will incorporate these changes? I saw you mentioned a "Light" version...is that for faster sinking rates only?

It means i will release two versions with next release. The one with sinking times similar to what they already are so it will be just tweaking. The light version will contain same tweaks but in addition increased sinking rate and floatability.

[WernerSobe]

Update news: Ive been looking closer into compartment layouts and already found many bugs that explain sometimes strange sinking behavier. Kasagisan Maru in example has 4 main compartments. Two in the front, two behind one to each side. They have flipped x and y value for the back-left compartment which made it slightly bigger and overlapping another compartment. Im sure ill find more bugs, i expect more in warships.

[Fearless]

Awesome stuff WernerSobe. I look forward to having it incorporated into the TM mod.:rock:

[WernerSobe]

progress news: i was able to resize and reposition some compartments in existing layout for kasagisan maru. It works. Moving main compartments more to left and right made the vessel flip over and capsize instead of normal sinking. That opens up a lot of pissibilities to add different sinking behaviers. Next step will be trying to add new compartments to existing layout.

[Ducimus]

Now your cookin' with gas! :up:

[Anvart]

yes but its quite confusing i couldnt figure out how its put together. Now i see the structure behind it.

Anyway there is a problem. The compartment index is a byte value. Meaning we are limited to a maximum of 255 compartments. That doesnt provide enough compartments for every single ship. Ill need to make groups :cry:

Current groups looks like this:

small merchants
merchants
escorts
warships

i think ill extend it like this:
small merchants
medium merchants
big merchants
patrol crafts
destroyers
cruisers
cariers
battleships
I think, that it is possible to add new items in zones-list too...?
But it's hard work ...:nope:

[Farinhir]

Primarly for two reasons, its annoying (to me), and it makes harbor raiding a moot point since nothing will sink. Ships in harbors can acutally be tougher to sink then in deep water as it, even without a damage model added.

Heh. I gave up on sinking in harbors since I can not seem to get enough hits spreadout on most of the ships in them. I have sat and looked at a ship that was half awash for 3 ingame days without it going under. This was after hitting it with 4 torpedoes in separate spots. Adding that dificulty to using the hardcore torpedo tweak that CCIP setup (I think it was him) it becomes too hard to sink the moored ships.

Well, I am going to wait for the new NSM (looking forward to it also). Take your time Werner. I know you are reworking a lot of the compartments to get a better result. Good luck
~F~

[Frederf]

Just got all my mods pretty and running and had a run with your mod again now that I'm TM1.4.

Everything went pretty well running your test mission. 30 minute sinkings on most things, faster with a 2nd torpedo. AI got a lucky hit when I accidentally left the deck gun on killing a med or large (back center) merchie in only a few rounds. Total devistation sale.

The near left large merchie and the near center small/medium merchie did something weird though. The left near was hit center by a surface torp and leaned over toward the hole after 10-20 min. Looked good so far. It didn't look damaged enough and had stopped sinking so I put a few deck gun rounds into it.. then some more, then some form the far side. Eventually I got a "Unit Destroyed" signal from the game and the game considered it dead but it NEVER SANK. It just stayed there at the original 30 deg list or so looking actually quite healthy despite being legally declared dead.

The center near merchie also took a single torp to the center and settled squarely down into the water, water well above decks. It stayed alive this way for a long long time and then eventually did the ghost death due to a few deck gun rounds. No sinkie.

I was happy with the test except for basically one thing: Merchie's turning into submarines either alive or dead without sinking. Could you adjust the crush depth of a compartment or two so that it crushes/ catestrophically fails at a certain depth? Something has to give once some or all of the hull compartments are below water level.

The more water gets in the faster the ship should sink right? It seems just the opposite in SH4 where they sink to a certain level and stop. Maybe it's a problem with the bridge/superstructure acting as floatation?

Also I found quite a few bow first sinkings tended to bob up and down quite a number of times. 5-6. I know the Titanic did it but it seems silly to have it going up and down like a cork. Any trapped air pressure in the aft compartment would have insane pressures as it was being dragged down with the ship, unlikely to be contained by deck hatches.

Overall a big awesome from me, I realize you're working on an overhaul and wanted to give you a thumbs up and the best info I could to help you along. I'm keeping RSP installed despite the few quirks. A testiment to your work!

[switch.dota]

While you're overhauling the system, could you please look into Medium Old Split Freighters? I've had those eat 4 torpedoes or so without sinking (even after 2 days). They also flooded very fast after the torpedo hits yet they never sank, purring along at 5 knots as usual.

[rascal101]

Dear Sir,
Just a small thank you for your efforts, you mod is a breath of fresh air, it and the trigger maru and patch 1.3 have made this game playable in the same way that NYGM and GWX mad me dust off SH3 and have another go.

I now look forward to playing SH4 whereas before I couldnt be bothered, thank you.

progress news: i was able to resize and reposition some compartments in existing layout for kasagisan maru. It works. Moving main compartments more to left and right made the vessel flip over and capsize instead of normal sinking. That opens up a lot of pissibilities to add different sinking behaviers. Next step will be trying to add new compartments to existing layout.

[Rattail]

Hi Werner,
I get an error that says Invalid password. Do you perhaps please have an alternate download link for me?

cheers,
Rattail

[WernerSobe]

Hi Werner,
I get an error that says Invalid password. Do you perhaps please have an alternate download link for me?

cheers,
Rattail

hm strange there is no password required. Can someone else confirm?

[WernerSobe]

I think, that it is possible to add new items in zones-list too...?
But it's hard work ...:nope:


Yes adding new items to zone list is not that hard. Connecting the compartments in ships.zon file to new compartment list is some work. But most time takes the resizing and reallocating the compartments. Ive figured out already that there are major bugs with compartment size and location in most ship files. You can clearly see it, when in example 4 compartments of same type are located symetricaly and one of them has x and y values flipped.

[WernerSobe]

progress news: I could balance two small ships sofar. They sink in a lot more realistic way. I could destabilize them by displacing more weight to the upper parts of the ship. That makes them swinging a little more in waves and they tend to capsize more often. Also completely reworked flooding for those two ships. The idea is to make small ships sink faster then others. It is possible now because i have separate compartment list for different ship size. It is possible to balance small ships without affecting the compartments of medium and big size ships.

[Anvart]

I think, that it is possible to add new items in zones-list too...?
But it's hard work ...:nope:


Yes adding new items to zone list is not that hard. Connecting the compartments in ships.zon file to new compartment list is some work. But most time takes the resizing and reallocating the compartments. Ive figured out already that there are major bugs with compartment size and location in most ship files. You can clearly see it, when in example 4 compartments of same type are located symetricaly and one of them has x and y values flipped.
I understand you and envy your patience ... http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/237/okyn8.gif

[WernerSobe]

problem with taihosan maru (small modern composite).

I have CTD when hiting its ruders or propellers. Its not coming from the mod i tried it with original file and it crashed too. I remember there was a CTD fix for that ship when it was loaded with ammo. Maybe it is the same problem because when a ship is destroyed by ammo explosion the rudders are destroyed too.

Anyway i cant find the thread where that fix first appeared. I must know who made it so i can ask what he has changed.

[CaptainCox]

MY BAD, Jace11 did it, Tater posted it
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=118781&highlight=taihosan

[WernerSobe]

yea tnx. looks like its just a file from 1.0 version so the reason for ctd was never discovered. Anyway the CTD is gone. Just the work of 3 hours balancing the compartment layout is gone too.

Well my bad i better test the ships for all bugs before i start moding them.

[chopped50ford]

thanks...so far looking good, cant wait to get the update. Im a huge fan of this Mod.

[LukeFF]

yea tnx. looks like its just a file from 1.0 version so the reason for ctd was never discovered. Anyway the CTD is gone. Just the work of 3 hours balancing the compartment layout is gone too.

I take it the fix for the Taihosan will be part of your next release? Or, rather, the need for that fix will no longer be needed?

[WernerSobe]

yea tnx. looks like its just a file from 1.0 version so the reason for ctd was never discovered. Anyway the CTD is gone. Just the work of 3 hours balancing the compartment layout is gone too.

I take it the fix for the Taihosan will be part of your next release? Or, rather, the need for that fix will no longer be needed?

yes the next release will include that fix.

[Rockin Robbins]

This is amazing work! The sheer variety of outcomes possible from an attack are wonderful. You can put 4 torpedoes into a ship that won't sink and steam about the unfairness of it all. You can fire one and the ship goes down. You don't complain about the unfairness of THAT. Hmmmm.... Sounds like real life to me.

It reminds me of a RL story I read about a sub turning a cargo ship into swiss cheese and finding out that the floatation of the cargo itself was preventing the ship from sinking. Chin up Werner! If people are complaining, you're on the right track.

[Rattail]

Yo!
Will the new update include the sinking physics of the one I am battling to download? (Access denied. Invalid usernamke or password)

;)

[WernerSobe]

prorgress update: Im finished with small merchants and now working on medium ones. I can already tell you where the mod is heading to. Compared to 2.6 you will need less torpedoes for merchants and sinking rates will be slightly increased. Sinking for hours will be an exception, but possible. A light version will be added with greatly increased sinking rates for those who find that to slow. Ships that are hit at about center will instead of slow infiltration rather capsize and flip over. All ships will show less stability and sink much faster when water comes over decks. The strengh of bulkheads will be reduced so nearby compartments will start flooding sooner. When the ships are broken in two parts, the parts will corectly sink like a "V" not like an "A". Holes from torpedoe hits will appear smaller.

This list is not complete there will be more changes maybe. And im not sure sofar how much changes i need to do to warships. In any case i will separate main compartments of light cruisers, heavy cruisers, carriers and battleships. Now they are using the same setup which makes them take about the same amount of damage. I want battleships take more then light cruisers...

[Seaman_Hornsby]

Sounds promising, Werner. :up:

I'm looking forward to trying the new version! :arrgh!:

[kikn79]

I am looking forward to trying out the new ship settings. I have greatly enjoyed this so far and I REALLY appreciate the time and effort you have put into this.

Thanks,
Chuck

[Digital_Trucker]

Thanks for the update, Werner. Sounds like you're on a roll now:up: Can't wait to get it into play.

[Warden]

Sounds like you're doing one hell of a job, can't wait to test it out myself. :up:

[Ducimus]

I never realized the damage model was that bad. Good work WernerSobe, your making huge advances for SH4!

[Fearless]

Great stuff WernerSobe :rock:

[chopped50ford]

again, thanks again for the update. CAnt wait for the next version. :up:

[CaptainKobuk]

Yeah as Decimus correctly said it is a huge advance to the game.

For your info WernerSobe, in stock SH4, it often takes up to 4 straight on bow hits on a chasing destroyer to convince them to back-off and die. At the moment i don't have your mod installed but the new improved version everyone is talking about sounds like a definite must have mod.

Since Destroyers even without your current mod can absorb a lot of bow hits don't sweat it trying to figure out if your new mod correctly models damage etc.

If anything, since your mod models compartments that fill with water and not "total hitpoints damage' to the whole ship, bow hits on DD's will at least slow them down.

Which reminds me. One of the worst aspects of the "hitpoints model" in the stock game, is ship speeds too often seem oblivious to any torpedo hits that don't push the total hitpoints number over the limit and sink that ship. So i'd like to start to see with your new mod a ship slow down if a torpedo or two blast it's propellers.

It would be a useful crippling strategy to hit the props of ship if proper effects were achieved in the game. The strategy could shift the need away from having to have to kill DD's first to have free pickings of the rest of the entire convoy. We could shot for props, cripple several cargo ships and pick'em off later with the deck cannon after the DD's give up the search. . Destroyers always eventually return to the main fleet and leave the crips behind to fend for themselves.

[tater]

This looks like it will surely become another must have mod.

:up:

tater

[nimitstexan]

Sounds very promising.

[WilhelmTell]

I am respecting your hard work on this and looking forward to get the new version of this great mod.
:up:

Regards,
Tell

[switch.dota]

Which reminds me. One of the worst aspects of the "hitpoints model" in the stock game, is ship speeds too often seem oblivious to any torpedo hits that don't push the total hitpoints number over the limit and sink that ship. So i'd like to start to see with your new mod a ship slow down if a torpedo or two blast it's propellers.

It would be a useful crippling strategy to hit the props of ship if proper effects were achieved in the game. The strategy could shift the need away from having to have to kill DD's first to have free pickings of the rest of the entire convoy. We could shot for props, cripple several cargo ships and pick'em off later with the deck cannon after the DD's give up the search. . Destroyers always eventually return to the main fleet and leave the crips behind to fend for themselves.

Hitting a ship with a single torpedo just below the aft-most smokestack or hitting it damn close to the propellers will usually cripple the ship, even in stock SH IV. This is something I strive for when I get the chance to line up a proepr shot (usually using sonar since I can get within like 500m of the target. Just home in on the loudest engine sound and use that bearing for your firing solution. If you hit home the ship should stop dead in it's tracks.

[billko]

WernerSobe:

Amazingly, I just came across this mod just late last night and, boy, am I stoked! Even if the mod works half as good as everyone says it does here (but there's no reason for me to believe that the experience will be anything but amazing), playing SH4 will be so much more rewarding!

I'm tired of sinking a disabled ship just by shooting it a few times with the deck gun and magically sinking it in one massive explosion due to the ship running out of hit points.

Thank you for this super-mod, and I can't wait for the next version to come out! I applaud your devotion to the SH4 experience!!!

Bill

[CaptainKobuk]

[quote=CaptainKobuk]
Hitting a ship with a single torpedo just below the aft-most smokestack or hitting it damn close to the propellers will usually cripple the ship, even in stock SH IV. This is something I strive for when I get the chance to line up a proepr shot (usually using sonar since I can get within like 500m of the target. Just home in on the loudest engine sound and use that bearing for your firing solution. If you hit home the ship should stop dead in it's tracks.
Yeah i think the goal has to be maximizing tonnage sunk with the strategy pivoting on the escorts. Do we eliminate the low tonnage escorts at the expense of torpedoes and the risk, or cripple high tonnage ships if that can be accurately done?

At the moment i've no strategy to maximize like i should. It has to be well thought out. I tend to favor knocking out all destroyers. But in the real war and not the game, i think that could have quite possibly been an insane plan. I'm now into 1943 for the first time in a campaign and have never been sunk. But i've fought a lot of wild duels with Destroyers that in real sea warfare i'm guessing would make a crew mutiny with the help of ships physician to declare insanity:rotfl:

[nimitstexan]

There were a handful of captains that seemed to go out of their way to shoot at escorts, but they were a miniscule minority.

[tater]

I shoot at the biggest targets first assuming I have a shot.

Course I always play with the hardcore torpedo mod on, so before mid 1943, I expect maybe 70% of my fish to fail.

[Jhereg]

I tend to take out all escorts if it is a convoy of merchant ships, but if a task force just to target the biguns and skeedaddle out:yep: Most importantly, screw the MK14 I am done with wondering if they are gonna work LOL......MK X all the way:up: Every now and then I load up the first salvo as 14s to check and Meh...maybe one outta six works, they are certainly useless for anti DD work as they always seem to run deep under them.:doh:

[nattydread]

I love this mod, but I was wondering if the ships can have their back broken by mag pistols or have ships obliterated by secondaries if carrying avgas or ammo? Granted if shouldnt happen all the time, but could hit points be adjusted to allow for smaller ships to take catastrophic damage on occassion and as appropriate considering the magnitude of secondary explosions for volatile cargo.

Im not trying to step on anyone's toes, but structural failure was a contributing factor in sinking ships sometimes...just sometimes:D

Anyway, ill sayit again, great mod, I love, its one of the most immersive mods I have.

[kikn79]

There were a handful of captains that seemed to go out of their way to shoot at escorts, but they were a miniscule minority.

I have read somewhere that in somewhere between late '43 to mid '44, the captains were told to target the DDs ahead of merchants (except tankers).

Again, thanks for this mod!!! It ROCKS!!!

Chuck

[tater]

That's true, they did target escorts for a while. Course real skippers were lucky to sink a couple ships in a patrol, too. In the stock game you might as well be shooting photon torpedoes in a shooting gallery ;)

tater

[leovampire]

and let the game decied what you should shoot at? That is what I do when I find a convoy and it switche's back and forth between killing the escorts and killing the freighters in orders.

That way there it adds a little more variety and makes it seem like you are answering to someone instead of free form playing. Plus doing that there is a better chance that the escorts might come after you before your ready to take the shot due to the radio message and creates more of a challenge in the game. Then try and sink what you were told to sink.

It's much harder trying to get 2 escorts and 3 cargo ships into view to make a radio report on a convoy to sub command and then take a chance on being spoted or what not.

Doing those things and dealing with WernerSobe's sinking mechanics add's much more to the realism of the game.

[chopped50ford]

and let the game decied what you should shoot at? That is what I do when I find a convoy and it switche's back and forth between killing the escorts and killing the freighters in orders.

That way there it adds a little more variety and makes it seem like you are answering to someone instead of free form playing. Plus doing that there is a better chance that the escorts might come after you before your ready to take the shot due to the radio message and creates more of a challenge in the game. Then try and sink what you were told to sink.

It's much harder trying to get 2 escorts and 3 cargo ships into view to make a radio report on a convoy to sub command and then take a chance on being spoted or what not.

Doing those things and dealing with WernerSobe's sinking mechanics add's much more to the realism of the game.

[raises beer into the air] Here, Here...nicely said.

[sneekyzeke]

and let the game decied what you should shoot at? That is what I do when I find a convoy and it switche's back and forth between killing the escorts and killing the freighters in orders.

That way there it adds a little more variety and makes it seem like you are answering to someone instead of free form playing. Plus doing that there is a better chance that the escorts might come after you before your ready to take the shot due to the radio message and creates more of a challenge in the game. Then try and sink what you were told to sink.

It's much harder trying to get 2 escorts and 3 cargo ships into view to make a radio report on a convoy to sub command and then take a chance on being spoted or what not.

Doing those things and dealing with WernerSobe's sinking mechanics add's much more to the realism of the game.

Wow, that's something I didn't know! If I spot a convoy and fire off a report, higher authority will dictate what I'm to shoot at? Neat! Do I have to visually ID the entire convoy or will radar suffice? Regards, Zeke.

[billko]

and let the game decied what you should shoot at? That is what I do when I find a convoy and it switche's back and forth between killing the escorts and killing the freighters in orders.

That way there it adds a little more variety...<snip>

Wow, leovampire - I didn't know the contact report was so interactive! That is way cool. Thanks for this tip!!! :up:

Bill

[leovampire]

or for a task force at least 3 large war ships. Then you have to be at radar depth or above which is 35 feet to full surface to make a radio contact report nothing deeper. Then dive to pariscope depth and wait for the radio report from subcompack.

Depending on how your airstrike file is set up there is usualy a 50/50 chance that your radio message will be picked up by the enemy and when that happens there could be inbound planes to bomb your possition and escorts will come and take a look around your reported possition then the convoy or task force what ever you reported on the radio will go into a zig zag.

Again it is a 50/50 chance that it happens that they pick up your message but either way you will get instructions from subcompack they may even tell you good find but do not attack further assets will attack. Like if we have an airbase colse enough they will attack them or if there is a carrier force they will attack.

You can still attack even if your told not to do it with no worries.

If your told to attack escorts you have to sink at least 2 of them.

If your told to attack tankers you have to sink at least 1 medium to 1 large one.

If you are told to sink freighters then you must sink at least 8,000 to 10,000 tons worth of cargo ships.

If you are told to sink a capital ship in a task force or attack them in general you must sink over 10,000 tons.

[sneekyzeke]

Thanx, Leo!:up:

[billko]

Awesome stuff, leovampire!:rock:

Bill

[WernerSobe]

Progress Update: I have less time to spend on the project so its going slow. At the moment still reworking the compartment layouts. Here are some pictures of how they will look like. This is an example on Kinposan Maru (medium modern split)


1. Compartment Layout. ALL
http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/1822/kinposanallpq2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)



2. Only Main Cargo Compartments and Keel
http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/8543/kinposanmainkeelhp4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Notice the mid-aft cargo compartments higher then others for destabilisation in roll momentum. This wakes the vessel weak agains capsizing.



3. No Cargo Compartments
http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/7947/kinposanothersun7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[chopped50ford]

thanks for the update. I make out roughly what your doing and all I can say is WOW!, cant wait to see the finished product.

What program are you using to see these compartments?

[Frederf]

I was going to mention the slightly goofy sinkings with the existing RSP mod, small merchants taking water well over the decks for days, DDs surviving insane damage, BBs going down due to minimal damage, etc but I can see that the existing version of the mod is the end of "teaking numbers around" and the next is going to be an overhaul.

By the way that visual compartment model is beautiful. Something I have been wondering though, do warships have an armor belt or blisters modeled? If not and it's not a tremendous amount of trouble (which is most likely would be) could you add 'em?

[tater]

Interesting point. The whole idea of the magnetic pistol was to defeat belt armor. The fact that all you do is set shallow and sink everything is a big part of the problem in terms of tonnage excess. If you have a range of deep running, but you know ou need to actually aim low (even contact) to really hurt them, it changes attacks greatly.

tater

[WernerSobe]

adding a belt is not possible. The way the damage system is designed is a little bit confusing it took me a while to understand how it works. One can remove all compartments from the layout and it will become unsinkable. Compartments are designed as "weakness spots" not as "armored bags".

ill try to explain.

The most important is to understand that dimensions of compartments and their bouyancy are not necessery connected. Meaning that the bouyancy is defined for each compartment type in zones.cfg, while their dimension and location is defined in vessel.zon.

When a torpedo strikes a ship it generates a min dmg and a max dmg bubble. The damage gradualy increases from the smaller max dmg bubble to the bigger min dmg bubble. Every compartment that is inside that bubbles get more or less damaged and starts flooding. The flooding parameters are defined not by the size of compartment but by its type. So if there are two compartments of type NFlotMain flooding they will flood up at same time (assumed they are equaly damaged) even if their size is different. The flooding parameters for each compartment type are defined in zones.cfg. The most important parameter is the floatability or if you want call it buoyancy. So if the "floatability" of that damaged compartments is set to 20. It will slowly reduce the total buoyancy of the vessel by 2x20 during a time period which is defined as the "flooding time". Simultaneously the physics engine will gradualy change the center of mass from the balanced center towards the center of mass of the damaged compartments, again during the flooding time period. This is the point where the size and location of compartments matters. Bigger compartments and those that are farther away from balance point will cause a greater change to center of mass. The vessel will start showing list towards damaged compartments. And finely the third important parameter comes into play "crush depth". This is the depth where undamaged compartments get damaged from water pressure and start flooding. The crush depth for both stock and NSM 2.6 was set way to high. That explains why the ships keep going with decks awash.

Now the hard thing about it is to balance all parameters and compartment dimensions together to realise most realistic sinking.

However a solution can be worked out. Making the lower compartments weaker then the upper ones. So basicly making the main compartment strong with low floatability and the keel weak with high floatability would have the same effect. I will try to realise it for capital warships.

[tater]

That explains a lot. Warships of course have damage control crew (in Real life) so they can be made harder to sink artificially to get a realistic result.

I posted this in my making AAA dangerous to subs thread, and now it makes more sense to me, perhaps it might help in your studies of this:

Hmm. This is very very interesting.

So I dialed the damage down (for 20mm damage mod---made min ~5 to 8 and max ~10). The radius, too. 20mm AP I gave a radius of... 20mm, for example. Others have damage radius 0.02 to 0.4 or so.

Sub is getting hammered for a while. So far so good. I put the skipper below near the chart thinking my spinning death cam might have been "me" on deck getting killed. Below, there are leaks everywhere. Check damage. NOTHING on DC screen. Go back below. More leaks. Lights start blinking. Lights go out. We start taking flooding.
I look at the DC screen. compartments start to flood, stern to bow. flood, systems all go red (water part way up, not total flooding) in that compartment. Next floods, same, then next, then next, all the way to bow, spinnign death cam follows.

I assume what's going on is that the 20mm I made is not actually doing internal damage, but IS taking away hitpoints. At some point, the hitpoints get used up, and the compartment fails totally.

This would actually explain a lot of myster deaths people get. You duke it out with planes, or whatever, and get hit with loads of AAA. No crew are hurt (ever) so there is no reason to avoid autocannon. No damage is ever done---THAT YOU SEE---so you assume all is well. Head towards max depth to avoid ashcans... domino effect.

I'm not sure what yo do. If you make 20mm so it can do any real damage, there is enough of it flying the hitpoints are likely very low. Drop it below the amount that it shows damage to systems without wiping out the whole compartment, and you never know you are damaged until the hull fails catastrophically.

tater

[WernerSobe]

well this is not new to me tater.

There are also compartment parameters for sub compartments.

So when you get nailed by a 20mm gun some hitpoints from a certain compartment are consumed. It is damaged. Not enough to start flooding but when you get below crush depth it will get more damage until all hitpoints are lost then you will have flooding.

[tater]

Yeah, your previous post, and other stuff I had read before, but not really understood became clear to me once I started testing this.

The hitpoints seem like a problem in general, don't they?

[tater]

I think it became clear because unlike a torpedo, which I expect to possibly do very catostrophic damage, the 20mm is tiny pin-*****s. Setting up a situation to be SUNK by 20mm really puts the issue in relief.

[WernerSobe]

maybe i have a solution for you.

If you make the AA guns do as low dmg as possible. Something that is so low that it wont hurt ships much. Then set the hitpoints for plane compartments (yes they have compartments too) to something like 0.00000015. That should make the flaks being only usefull agains planes. I warn you thats a lot of tweaking, restarting the game over and over :-)

[tater]

Yeah, I know the restarting, lol.

(as an aside, I notice that after a CTD, the game reloads in a fraction of the time...)

As for the AAA, I'm not working on the AA vs planes, I'm working on the AA vs our SUBS.

If you surface your sub next to a small combatant with AAA guns, or even a CV, loaded with AAA, they will shoot and shoot and shoot at the sub---and do no damage* to the sub, and more importantly zero damage to the deck crew.

This makes surface actions very unrealistic. If a sampan or trawler fought back with machine guns or 25mm in RL, the sub would back off out of range. In game, you can safely ignore AAA.

*caveat, now I understand that each one of those hits removes hitpoints, weakening the hull.

tater

[WernerSobe]

bad news: im stuck for two days already with the fuel bunker explosion under water. When the ship is sinking by flooding and the fuel bunker gets under water it explodes always. Then you have that stupid looking explosion sticking out of the water.
The problem is old you can see what i mean on page 4. There is a screenshot.

I dont know what triggers it. The game seems to ignore compartment parameters for fuel bunkers completely. It doesnt make sence but it ignores crush depth, hitpoints or any other parameter. When the game sees its a fuel bunker it ignores the other settings and just make it explode as soon its under water.

The only way out is to remove the fuel. Then they act like normal compartments. So there is also no explosion by a direct hit. Seems there is no other way to fix it.

So my question is: Whats better? No fuel explosions at all, or stupid looking fuel explosions every time the ship is half under water? I could also try to replace the fuel explosion by big fire. big fires do not trigger under water.

[Fearless]

bad news: im stuck for two days already with the fuel bunker explosion under water. When the ship is sinking by flooding and the fuel bunker gets under water it explodes always. Then you have that stupid looking explosion sticking out of the water.
The problem is old you can see what i mean on page 4. There is a screenshot.

I dont know what triggers it. The game seems to ignore compartment parameters for fuel bunkers completely. It doesnt make sence but it ignores crush depth, hitpoints or any other parameter. When the game sees its a fuel bunker it ignores the other settings and just make it explode as soon its under water.

The only way out is to remove the fuel. Then they act like normal compartments. So there is also no explosion by a direct hit. Seems there is no other way to fix it.

So my question is: Whats better? No fuel explosions at all, or stupid looking fuel explosions every time the ship is half under water? I could also try to replace the fuel explosion by big fire. big fires do not trigger under water.

Treat it as if there were still air pockets in some compartments filled with fumes. There still could possibly be sparks going around even when the ship went down.

[WernerSobe]

lol ok ive got a fix you wont believe.


I thought the last chance would be to use the backup files and see if that still happens with unmodded compartment layout and same compartment parameters. Guess what? It did not happen. So the problem was in compartment layout and i started looking at the diferences.

The first thing that jumped in my eyes was that fuel bunkers in original files are very small (smaller then lifeboats). Ive found it odd and increased their dimentions to a more realistic size. So now ive changed the fuel bunkers in my layouts back to original "small" size. The problem disappeared...

It realy doesnt make sence but it works.

Another interestning find. Ive been also looking into ship files from 1.1 to find out what they have changed and why and i remembered seing bigger fuel bunkers. I wondered why they have changed their size to some unrealistic value. Now i know hehe. Looks like Ubi have been working on that problem too and that was their fix. Maybe its a serious problem and that was the easiest way to fix it i dont know. The game seems to crush only those compartments that are bigger then lifeboats :-). Anyway i know how to fix it for my ships that matters...

[tater]

I'm one who thinks the big explosion is pretty ugly. I guess that's why the small craft explode as well?

tater

[WernerSobe]

hm i havent been looking into small crafts. Do they?

well the explosion effect can be easily changed for every single ship. Or could be completely removed for small ships like pt boats.

[tater]

I was looking at fishing boats, etc. Sink a fishing boat and it looks like it's an ammo ship, lol.

BTW, there are some smaller ships worth looking into as well, some not japanese in the stock game but none the less very useful.

The trawler (and armed trawler). The tug, the NF_boat, and the fishing boats.

The sampans and junks also blow up. It seems like those would be the least likely do do so in the entire game. The catch on fire from AP hits, too.

[WernerSobe]

well sofar ive been ignoring ships that are smaller then small old split merchant. I thought it was a waste of time because youre basicly trying to sink bigger stuff then sampans. Actualy i never sink them.

I always tried to avoid them because tweaking them would endanger the balance for small merchants since they were partly using same parameters. Of course now i could separate the parameters but thats to much work to be honest just for the sampan. Maybe in future release but for now i need to finish the merchants and all the warships. Thats realy lots of work. One ship takes me up to 6 hours.

[tater]

Gotcha. Makes sense.

I guess I could go the "old" RSP way and up their hitpoints and force them to sink by flooding. Might be better than the Nth round making them explode when the hitpoints are zero.

[switch.dota]

Please leave the sampans alone. They are about the only boat you can sink with AA fire. And the only reason i ever use my AA ammo :lol:

[tater]

They'd still sink, it's just absurd that they explode.

Leaving them wallowing or burning is perfectly fine. Read real reports, and they decided that the best thing was bombs. First they made molotov cocktails, then they got real charges, it was easier than using the deck gun.

tater

[switch.dota]

They'd still sink, it's just absurd that they explode.

Leaving them wallowing or burning is perfectly fine. Read real reports, and they decided that the best thing was bombs. First they made molotov cocktails, then they got real charges, it was easier than using the deck gun.

tater
In-game, 20mm fire is unlikely to cause REAL damage to sampans & fishing boats. Also, ingame we have no grenade launchers.

[billko]

<snip>Thats realy lots of work. One ship takes me up to 6 hours.

Is that it? Just six hours? Where's your sense of dedication to the project???Grrr... Just kidding!

As far as I'm concerned, I'm nominating you for Medal of Honor!:up:

Bill
:lurk:

[tater]

They'd still sink, it's just absurd that they explode.

Leaving them wallowing or burning is perfectly fine. Read real reports, and they decided that the best thing was bombs. First they made molotov cocktails, then they got real charges, it was easier than using the deck gun.

tater
In-game, 20mm fire is unlikely to cause REAL damage to sampans & fishing boats. Also, ingame we have no grenade launchers.

20mm in game can sink a SUB.

Regardless, if the armor value is low, it will make holes, and water will come in.

[switch.dota]

Well TM 1.4 20mm fire from merchants don't seem to do anything to my little Salmon class. I surfaced inbetween 3 merchants and ate 20mm rounds for 6 hrs till the last merchant sunk.

[tater]

It takes a lot, but it happens. I have been testing the 20mm vs subs lately. It happens very fast with double and triple 25mm mounts, but you need to be hit quite a bit.

None the less, in RL small craft were sometimes surprisingly hard to sink. I for one don't like console game mode where you put a couple rounds in it and it blows up like an ammo ship. YMMV.

[Bill Nichols]

1 torp and the Large European Liner is immediately reported as going down. Is that the intended behavior with this mod?

[WernerSobe]

1 torp and the Large European Liner is immediately reported as going down. Is that the intended behavior with this mod?

youve been lucky

[Bill Nichols]

1 torp and the Large European Liner is immediately reported as going down. Is that the intended behavior with this mod?

youve been lucky

Double lucky. I did it twice in a row (second time from a saved-game) :D

[Seaman_Hornsby]

1 torp and the Large European Liner is immediately reported as going down. Is that the intended behavior with this mod?
youve been lucky
Double lucky. I did it twice in a row (second time from a saved-game) :D

Where are you hitting her with that single torpedo? Inquiring skippers want to know! :arrgh!:

[billko]

or for a task force at least 3 large war ships. <mega-snip>

Thanks for the tip, leovampire! I happened upon a big task force on my way to my objective and sent a contact report, and I got back a comm saying something like: "It looks important. Engage enemy task force." or something similar, and it added it to my list of objectives! Unfortunately, I failed miserably. Spent most of my time near the bottom of the sea trying my best to sound like a piece of coral. ;)

Bill

[WernerSobe]

progress update:

you wont believe what kind of stupid bugs i come across when remodeling the layouts. Imagine some ships have their main compartments all the way above the water line. LoL now that makes sense why those ships were so hard to balance.

In stock game that ships were sinking only by keel damage. Ubi has just set the keel for those ships extremely weak.

Anyway i just fix bugs and replace every compartment where it makes sence. You will be stunned by results :-). Right now finished with small and mediums and now working on large ones. That being the hardestnto balance because they have most bugs and they have more compartments by nature.

[switch.dota]

The ship with retarded compartment layout... are you perhaps talking about the Medium Old Split Freighter?

[billko]

WernerSobe:

This is awesome news! Thank you so much for taking your time with this thing, fixing the stuff the devs didn't have time to.

Bill

[Bando]

He WernerSobe, you're doing a hellovejob CHEERS

[Digital_Trucker]

Yessir, thanks for taking all the time to make this game that much more realistic. When all the mods in progress get done, I'll have to re-enlist just to play:arrgh!:

[tater]

This is turning into an extremely important mod.

<<S>>

tater

PS---I wonder if the seemingly random placement (or lack of) of damage textures (thinking torpedo hits here) has something to do with the FUBAR models...

[WernerSobe]

progress update:

finished with all merchants now working on destroyers.

look at a funny bug that i have found in shiratsuyu destroyer.

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/3434/bug1io7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)


this little ff was risponsible for shiratsuyu destroyer being so much stronger then other. Let me explain...

The selection defines armorlevel for a certain compartment. Its a floating point value that says how much armor is applied to that compartment. If that value is set to -1 the game automaticly ignores it and takes the armor value which is defined in zones.cfg for that type of compartment. This is actualy always the case. Its just a placeholder if you wanted to override the properties set in zones.cfg you could do that here.

Now lets look at the value. FF 00 80 BF is converted to decimal
-1.00003039836883540

when the FF is replaced by 00 the value 00 00 80 BF becomes exactly -1

Now the game expects either -1 or a positive value here. If its zero or a negative value the armor becomes infinite. That little mistake made some compartments of that vessel being undestructuble.

[rascal101]

I second that I recon this guy should win any mod competition

This is turning into an extremely important mod.

<<S>>

tater

PS---I wonder if the seemingly random placement (or lack of) of damage textures (thinking torpedo hits here) has something to do with the FUBAR models...

[WernerSobe]

check this out :-)


http://img488.imageshack.us/img488/5610/sh42007081104311039mp0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)


notice the extra fire effects and smoke development. This is stock fire and smoke no mods over it. Ive just added more effect generators to every ship. Also notice the ship has been broken in two parts, while both parts are sinking correctly like V not like A. They will now also be considered as two different objects following their own physics. So it can happen that one part sinks faster then other if it took more damage.

btw. finished with destroyers. I get used to the numbers so it goes faster now, and i read the .zon files like books already :-). Ive evolved some kind of "feeling" for the right values. I need less testings now till i have what i want.

[tater]

Nice!

Amazing work.

<S>

tater

[Canonicus]

What we have here is the single most important modification for SH4.. A work that goes to the very heart of what it means to simulate reality
Thank you for the extraordinary effort your putting in to this.
You should be very proud of the work your doing. :up:

[rascal101]

My underpants are becoming really tite, I just cant wait for this , plus the updated enviro mod which is also on the way then theres the Atlantic
Sharks mob who seem to be brewing up something, its a cornnacopia for sub simmers at Sub sim radio room go the modders!!!

What we have here is the single most important modification for SH4.. A work that goes to the very heart of what it means to simulate reality
Thank you for the extraordinary effort your putting in to this.
You should be very proud of the work your doing. :up:

[billko]

WernerSobe - you're having entirely way too much fun with this thing. :rotfl:
At this rate, we'll *never* get the next version. j/k tak as long as you want... this is amazing stuff!!!

Bill

[chopped50ford]

Wernersobe, this is awesome news.

There has to be something the SH4 community can do for you when this is completed.

I know time is valuable, and you should be paid back with some gratitude or pizza night.

Cant wait to D/L this thing, my pants feel like thier shrinking w/ all the excitement.

Thanks again!

SALUTE.

[WernerSobe]

maybe ill be finished today but i dont promise.

cruisers exposed to be easy. Their layouts look good not much to change there. Also not many bugs. im almost finished with them. Only battleships and carriers left.

[Michael Simmons]

I respect what you are saying here, and you make a good point.
However, before we become too sure of ourselves in saying that a ship would be abandoned, we should ask ourselves what alternatives the crew faces.
I assert that many would stay with a ship as long as it were floating, because the alternative of getting into a life boat and taking your chances are worse.

In reading 'Bitter Ocean' by David Fairbank White, I came across the case of the San Demetrio. After she was torpedoed, she caught fire and the crew manned the life boats, thinking she was done. Days later, the crew somehow drifted back to the wrecked tanker, then decided to re-board her. They fiexed her up... somehow and sailed her back.

Anyway, this example shows that crews may choose a badly damaged ship over a fully functional life boat. :hmm:

err.....well, I supose a ship in that state would be abandoned, no mater how much disciplined was the crew. I mean, if half-ship is underwater, there's no hope left.

[Michael Simmons]

Werner,

I thank you very much for taking the time to put this mod together. in my opinion, this is the most valuable of all the mods. Your mod has taken some of the most maddening aspects of this game (invilnerable enemies) and made it one of the most enjoyable.

I have read some of the posts in this thread, and i know a little about hex math. From some of your supplemental posts, it is clear to me that you have really invested a huge amount of your time digging into the guts of this game and getting to the bottom of some of it's most fundamental problems.

Thank you very much for your efforts! :up:

[Jhereg]

Hi Werner, did you find the Fubuki class DD to be as FUBAR as the Shiratsuyu?

In TM 1.5 I have only managed to sink one Fubuki with a luck critical hit and the ensuing fireworks LOL.... All four other Fubuki's I have encountered have taken three or four torps and lit up the night sky while still running around at 38 Knots:huh:. I eventually give up and sneak away.

Thank you so much for your work, it has made an immesuarable difference to my enjoyment of this title! :up:

[tater]

Werner, assuming I understood correctly, the compartments are areas that take on water, etc, and sink the ship. No compartments, no water, no sinking.

Is the hull of the 3d model a surface where torpedos explode, or is it just visual, and the torpedo explodes when it hits the underlying compartment? I ask because it seems like on a BB or other ship with armored belt you could intentionally make compartments behind the belt stay far away from the outside of the hull. then a torpedo (assuming it blows when it hits the edge of the visual model) might not have the explosion radius to hole the actual compartment behind. I'm sure you have thought of stuff like this already but I thought I'd throw it out there.

tater

[WernerSobe]

Hi Werner, did you find the Fubuki class DD to be as FUBAR as the Shiratsuyu?

In TM 1.5 I have only managed to sink one Fubuki with a luck critical hit and the ensuing fireworks LOL.... All four other Fubuki's I have encountered have taken three or four torps and lit up the night sky while still running around at 38 Knots:huh:. I eventually give up and sneak away.

Thank you so much for your work, it has made an immesuarable difference to my enjoyment of this title! :up:

Thats right! shiratsuyu and fubuki were both suffering of that bug. Also some light cruisers. That was also the reason why the torpedoes left no visual damage sometimes. All fixed in new version.

[WernerSobe]

Werner, assuming I understood correctly, the compartments are areas that take on water, etc, and sink the ship. No compartments, no water, no sinking.

Is the hull of the 3d model a surface where torpedos explode, or is it just visual, and the torpedo explodes when it hits the underlying compartment? I ask because it seems like on a BB or other ship with armored belt you could intentionally make compartments behind the belt stay far away from the outside of the hull. then a torpedo (assuming it blows when it hits the edge of the visual model) might not have the explosion radius to hole the actual compartment behind. I'm sure you have thought of stuff like this already but I thought I'd throw it out there.

tater

The 3d model has nothing to do with collision model. Actualy the 3d model is in the dat file. The zon file contains both, collision and compartment model which are not the same. You can move compartments around or make them bigger or smaller it will only affect the sinking behavier not the collision. The collision is also defined in the zon file but its working with spheres not with boxes.

So basicly the answer is yes. It is possible to resize the compartments of battleships and make sure they are further away from the hull.

But that exposed to be not neccessary. Ive separated battleships compartment proparties from other warships and can do with them whatever i want without making cruisers or carriers to strong. Actualy im almost done with BBs. You will love them they have strong armor now. Much stronger then cruisers. Sinking them will be possible but it will be always a great challenge, after all these ships are designed to take some torpedoes.

[tater]

Wow, that is so cool.

I wonder if any of our submarine damage issues are compartment related...

tater

[WernerSobe]

update:

finished with BBs only carriers left and then final testings and minor tunings.

another feature that you will love. All capital warships will have simulated damage control. So in example you have better chances to sink a battleship when you hit it with 6 torpedoes simultatously rather then hiting it with two then waiting then another two and so on. Because the crew can fight agains two holes more effective then agains 6 at once.

The goal on capital warships will be to destabilize them. Its almost impossible to sink them by neglecting the bouyancy they have to strong bulks and good damage control. Their weakness are their heavy superstructures making them weak agains capsizing. So if youre smart and hit them with a fan of 6 torpedoes spread through entire broadside, the crew will be unable to save the ship from losing stability and it (maybe) will capsize. On the other hand, if you try a crippled battleship with single torpedoes one by one, the crew will fight agains single hits much more effective and you will need to make more holes.

ive realised it by setting the flooding in the first minutes after impact higher then later on. So if there are many impacts at once the total flooding will be higher then from single hits.

[Warden]

I must confess that I'm wondering if maybe you're overdoing it a little with regards to battleships. Look at the historical data, Barham and Shinano for example. Also remember how badly damaged the Yamato was by USS Skate.
[EDIT]: And I completely forgot, the Kongo, sunk by just 2 torpedoes.

[WernerSobe]

shinano was actualy a carrier.

barham was an exception. In new version it will be possible to kill a battleship with a single torp. But you must be extremely lucky. It worked for me once during testings. In most cases you will need at least 4 more likely 6

[Warden]

Shinano was a converted Yamato class hull and is therefor very relevant to the discussion.
Can you point to even a single case where a battleship in WWII survived being hit by 4 submarine (or destroyer) launched torpedoes?

[Misfit138]

another feature that you will love. All capital warships will have simulated damage control. So in example you have better chances to sink a battleship when you hit it with 6 torpedoes simultatously rather then hiting it with two then waiting then another two and so on. Because the crew can fight agains two holes more effective then agains 6 at once.

What?! :o Are we still talking about Silent Hunter 4?!

This really sounds great! :up:

[tater]

Shinano was hit by 4 fish. Took 5 hours to sink.
29 November 1944:
At 0309 near position bearing 198 degrees 108 miles from Omae-zaki lighthouse struck by four torpedoes in the starboard side fired by USS ARCHERFISH. At first the damage - though severe -- is judged manageable, and the carrier is able to maintain speed and course. However, progressive flooding through incomplete fittings spreads, and a heavy list to starboard develops. Captain Abe orders the three outboard port boiler rooms flooded to take some of the list off. At dawn SHINANO had steamed 36 miles from where torpedoed and was still making 11 knots, when boiler feed water failed. At 0745 the SHINANO goes dead in the water. At 0850 HAMAKAZE and ISOKAZE take in tow, and building to 3 knots start to move toward Cape Ushio to beach her. However, the strain grows too great and the tow has to be abandoned. The list to starboard resumes and increases, and at 1018 Captain Abe gives the order to Abandon Ship. The YUKIKAZE comes alongside to starboard to remove the crew.

Kongo (really a BC) made 17 knots after being hit with 3 fish (not 2 according to the TROM). She sank after a magazine detonated about 2.5 hours after being torpedoed.

Yamato was still making 12 knots after 7 torpedoes (and more bombs). Mk13s were nearly identical in warhead strength to mk14s, BTW.

Mushashi was hit by ~11.

After 2 mk15s, Yamashiro was still able to make 18 knots. She took 2 more and sank.

Hiei was hit by 5, 2 were from a DD. She was also hit by bombs---she was scuttled, she did not sink from the damage.

I think Yamato and her sister (as functioning BBs with their decent crews) should be able to possibly soak up a bunch of fish. The other BBs... ideally well placed (below the belt?) fish should take them out with less trouble that the 2 Yamatos.

Part of the problem is lack of progressive damage, and things like poor DC resulting in a fire restarting, etc.

I'll be happy if the CVs don't capsize with 1 fish every time like they do now.
tater

[WernerSobe]

I'll be happy if the CVs don't capsize with 1 fish every time like they do now.
tater

yea im doing the CVs atm. You wont believe it. All CVs in stock were using the properties of medium merchants. There is a lot of changes to their compartments required too.

[leovampire]

and don't burn yourself out! What your doing is apreciated and very cool but like all good things it takes time so you don't make mistakes.

[tater]

Does the compartment arrangement have anythign to do with the way the ships act in the water? How they move in rough seas, etc?

tater

[WernerSobe]

yes. But all ships are by nature designed stable, otherwise they would capsize.

However some ships rock more in waves then others. You can see it even in stock game during time compression.

[WernerSobe]

update:

finished with all ships. Now from my final testings ive discovered a problem...

The deckgun cannot penetrate the hull of merchants. Actualy its not a big issue, i could just reduce the armor rating for every ship. Or i could increase the armor piercing rating for the deckgun.

Now can someone point me to the right values for the deckgun? to tired to find them on my own.

[tater]

This post might help (better if I could read it at all in blue on dark grey, lol):

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=617517&postcount=52

I think an AP round from a deck gun could likely overpenetrate a merchant hull in RL (to see that in game sometimes where a splash is behind the ship (assuming it is overpenetration and not a bug). I know in the case of some light AFVs, guns like an 88 could go in one side and out the other with straight AP.

The in game AP value is AP x PT + HPValue/ALF; The PT value is randomly generated and can be a + or – and from 0 up to the Zones.cfg specified value.

PT = Penetration Threshold=0.2 ; ALF = Armor Level Factor=4

The results of this mean that for the 4” AP shell with the AP value of 25 and a HP range of 10 to 25, then using the maximum PT values the armour that will be penetrated for each HP

tater

[ubik]

My first post here, first of all, let me say thank you for an excellent mod that goes great with TM 1.5.


Now for the questions:

Will explosive rounds still be usable even if not penetrating the armour?

Is flamability considered in the damage model?

What are the present effects of a ship on fire? Pure eyecandy or can we expect some kind of continual damage to the object?

Is it possible for the damage control parties to put out a fire?



Thanks again for the hard work!

[Schultzy]

Just another quick question. Is it RFB compatible? I'm guessing not but better to ask. :)

Looks like a massive step forward so whether I can use it or not! Keep up the great work Werner!

[WernerSobe]

Just another quick question. Is it RFB compatible? I'm guessing not but better to ask. :)

Looks like a massive step forward so whether I can use it or not! Keep up the great work Werner!

actualy it should be compatible with anything as long its installed last. The files used in this mod are only touching the damage system. When you override the files you simply override the old damge system by the new one without touching anything else.

[WernerSobe]

This post might help (better if I could read it at all in blue on dark grey, lol):

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=617517&postcount=52

I think an AP round from a deck gun could likely overpenetrate a merchant hull in RL (to see that in game sometimes where a splash is behind the ship (assuming it is overpenetration and not a bug). I know in the case of some light AFVs, guns like an 88 could go in one side and out the other with straight AP.

The in game AP value is AP x PT + HPValue/ALF; The PT value is randomly generated and can be a + or – and from 0 up to the Zones.cfg specified value.

PT = Penetration Threshold=0.2 ; ALF = Armor Level Factor=4

The results of this mean that for the 4” AP shell with the AP value of 25 and a HP range of 10 to 25, then using the maximum PT values the armour that will be penetrated for each HP

tater

tnx yea i forgot about pt and alf maybe thats a solution. I just dont want to change armor ratings because it might screw the balance somewhere.

[WernerSobe]

My first post here, first of all, let me say thank you for an excellent mod that goes great with TM 1.5.


Now for the questions:

Will explosive rounds still be usable even if not penetrating the armour?

Is flamability considered in the damage model?

What are the present effects of a ship on fire? Pure eyecandy or can we expect some kind of continual damage to the object?

Is it possible for the damage control parties to put out a fire?



Thanks again for the hard work!

1. no, the shell must pass the hull or it does no damage. Its not finished yet i will fix it so the HE shells will penetrate all merchants.

2. not sure what you mean. But yes ships will catch on fire.

3. no its just an animated effect it doesnt add more damage over time. To be honest i doubt that its possible with sh4, anyway maybe there is a workaround that i dont know about but i think i can see the entire picture of the damage system already (i even dream of hex codes at night and know what they mean) and i havent found a way for damage over time.

4. fires will disappear on their own after a while.

[tater]

Just as a reality check, since progressive damage is not part of the engine, I guess that means that "regular" damage should err on the side of too much rather than too little. There are certainly many cases of ships that should have survived coming to a bad end later due to progressive damage (usually fire).

<S>

tater

[WernerSobe]

final tests show good results. I think im finished... cant believe it, it was so many hours of work.

well preparing a release.

[WilhelmTell]

Spitze !
Can't wait to see your mod working ingame ... :up:

Regards,
Tell

[jaketoox]

This has been great mod...not everytime instantly exploding ships when hitpoints are used...huge variety of how they sink, sometimes you get lucky shot,and sometimes you need to finish them with deckgun. In the last mission what i did,there was quite optimistic crew on one ship, i think it was old small freighter....the ship was in some 45 degrees angle,bow under water some 25m....3/4 of the ship was underwater...and crew still thinking they could just make it home..:rotfl:...used the deckgun to solve their problem....:rotfl:

...and now back to sink some....
______________________________________
"When a girl is under 21, she's protected by law. When she's over 65, she's protected by nature. Anywhere in between, she's fair game." (Lt.Cmdr.Matt T.Sherman:Operation Petticoat)

[Tobus]

Just an observation so far:

I use TM1.5 and this mod, to great pleasure I might add. But what I've observed so far, is that when using this mod with TM, sometimes a sinking ship triggers a crash to desktop. This is only when a target sinks, I don't know how because the moment I get the "target destroyed" message the game crashes. I do not get this all the time, but now have had it twice in one tour. After reloading the same target might sink differently, not prompting a crash.

The crashing never happens when not running this mod, only TM1.5.

I know it's sketchy at best, but thougth I'd let you know.

[WernerSobe]

Just an observation so far:

I use TM1.5 and this mod, to great pleasure I might add. But what I've observed so far, is that when using this mod with TM, sometimes a sinking ship triggers a crash to desktop. This is only when a target sinks, I don't know how because the moment I get the "target destroyed" message the game crashes. I do not get this all the time, but now have had it twice in one tour. After reloading the same target might sink differently, not prompting a crash.

The crashing never happens when not running this mod, only TM1.5.

I know it's sketchy at best, but thougth I'd let you know.

this happened to taihosan maru. The ship was bugged, its fixed in new version. make sure to get version 3.0.

[WernerSobe]

the discussion will be continued here

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=120269

ive decided to start a new thread because the new version is to different from 2.6 so the discussions here might confuse new visitors.

Enjoy... And dont forget to rate it :-) if you like it vote for sticky.

[Tobus]

this happened to taihosan maru. The ship was bugged, its fixed in new version. make sure to get version 3.0.

Ok then, great, thanks! Beautiful work!:up:

[pepe3w]

Hi, where can I find this mod?

Thanks

Jose

[LukeFF]

Hi, where can I find this mod?

Thanks

Jose

Look at the stickies...

[silent fan]

Hello,

I have a few questions:
1: Wil this mod work with patch 1.4 ?
2: without the u-boat add-on ?
3: where can i download this mod because the link to filefront isn't working :shifty:.

Thanks for your time and i look forward to play this mod.

[Tyronster]

I'm running TMO 2.2 and I've heard that it will cause problems if I run them together. Is this true?

[Hylander_1314]

Yes, if you're running TMO 2.2, don't use any other mods that aren't noted as compatable. Or if you do, run them at your own risk, of having to delete the mod files, and possibly the game files and reload the game.

If you are unsure of a mod, look to see if anybody is running it successfully.

As a final note, this thread is from 2007. A lot has changed over the last 4 years.

[max-peck]

I'm running TMO 2.2 and I've heard that it will cause problems if I run them together. Is this true?

If you run this on top of TMO 2 (any version) you will break something.

NSM overwrites the zones.cfg, which controls lots of things in the game.

I'm currently looking at NSM 4, attempting to get it to work with TMO 2.3.
Initial signs look hopeful, but it's a fair amount of work.

[Stary Wuj]

Great JOB! Thank You very much!

With Best Regards

Stary Wuj

[Webster]

the discussion will be continued here

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=120269

ive decided to start a new thread because the new version is to different from 2.6 so the discussions here might confuse new visitors.

Enjoy... And dont forget to rate it :-) if you like it vote for sticky.

please go to the correct thread for info on this mod