[TEC] What sets distance for Contact Reports?

[panthercules]

I was out testing some RFB tweaks tonight, and ran into a sweet-looking enemy task force - looks like it's probably several troopship/liners, with maybe a couple of heavy cruisers and a few destroyers. I'm shadowing on the surface at night, just at the edge of visual contact range. My crew are popping off with "ship sighted" contact reports like crazy, so i figure - now should be a good time to send a contact report before completing my end-around and closing for the attack. However, although I and my crew have spotted a bunch of the ships, the game won't let me send a contact report.

Does anybody know (1) what the maximum range is at which you can send a contact report, and (2) is that range moddable so that it can be increased to be in concert with how far your crew can spot the ships?

[leovampire]

for you to make a sighting report or contact report. You can see every DD but unless they are part of the main body you can not send a contact report.

So in a convoy 2 to 3 freighters and or tankers

In a task force 2 to 3 troop ships and or with a light cruiser or 3 large ship's like battle ship's.

If they do not show up in red on the NAV map you crew is not spoting them.

[tater]

Contact reports require that you be within some ridiculously close range, I think it's 4500m.

No RL sub would EVER use a radio that close to the enemy. Never.

Wish we could change it to something realistic. Like, for example extreme radar range, or at the very least bleeding edge visual range.

[Sailor Steve]

It's a radio report. You should be able to send it anytime, whether you can see the enemy or not.

Silly game.:nope:

[tater]

Radio report, yes, contact report... the game needs to know what you are reporting, so I can understand having to "lock" a target to pick it.

[Peto]

Yeah--It makes radio reports largely useless. It'd be nice (but I certainly don't expect it to happen) if you could have a drop down list of what you'd like to report in (convoy/ task force composition) and supply your own speed/course estimate as well. It'd be awesome to get points for a good report (as historical).

OT: I always dreamed there would be a subsim that didn't tell you what you had sunk, but that you created your own report (ships sunk and tonnage estimate) to turn in at end of patrol. The more accurate you are, the more renown you get--maybe resulting in more options open to you (such as picking a patrol area or getting a moral-raising ice cream maker :rock: ).

It'd be cool but I'm just dreaming instead of working on that virus laden computer on the bench behind me (the one begging for a wipe and reload :shifty: ).

Cheers!

[panthercules]

Some great ideas about how to turn the contact report task into something that could actually accomplish something in game. Right now I guess it's mostly a "cheat" sort of way of getting a fix on the range, speed and course by reading it on the contact report that you send. Maybe that's why they didn't make it doable from a decently long range, but it does sort of make the whole exercise pointless.

Maybe they could use some of these ideas for making it worthwhile to make contact reports in SH5 :o

In the meantime, I take it no one has figured out where this 4500 yard limit (or whatever it actually is) is stored in some .ini or .cfg or other such file, so we could take a whack at changing it? Do we know it's hard coded, or have we just not figured out where it is yet?

[leovampire]

Some great ideas about how to turn the contact report task into something that could actually accomplish something in game. Right now I guess it's mostly a "cheat" sort of way of getting a fix on the range, speed and course by reading it on the contact report that you send. Maybe that's why they didn't make it doable from a decently long range, but it does sort of make the whole exercise pointless.

Maybe they could use some of these ideas for making it worthwhile to make contact reports in SH5 :o

In the meantime, I take it no one has figured out where this 4500 yard limit (or whatever it actually is) is stored in some .ini or .cfg or other such file, so we could take a whack at changing it? Do we know it's hard coded, or have we just not figured out where it is yet?

#1: To add to the game playing with getting messages from Sub Command back saying yes attack and what to attack.

#2: To possably see an Airstrike from near by Alied airbases and or Task force's.

#3: The posability of a radio message intercept from the enemy wich make's trying to carry out your new order's that much harder to accomplish and test's your skill's a lot more.

[panthercules]

Leo - my thoughts exactly - I'd love to make the contact reports for exactly those reasons - just the thought of having to approach suicidally close to the enemy to be able to make such a report kinda spoils it for me a bit. I knew it wouldn't work if you tried to report smoke smudges on the horizon that the player could see but the crew could not, but I was really expecting/hoping that the ability to send the report would be linked to the spotting of the ships by your crew. Thus I thought I'd be able to send the report after the crew had popped off with a good 8-10 "ship spotted" reports. There aren't that many destroyers in the whole task force as far as I can see, so I figured they had to be spotting several of the larger/capital ships as well, but maybe for some reason they just keep "spotting" the same couple of near-side destroyers over and over again and that's not counting for enough for some reason.

Anyway, I'd still love to know where they "hid" this reporting range parameter so we could play with it. If anybody finds it or has any idea where to look, please let us know.

[leovampire]

Leo - my thoughts exactly - I'd love to make the contact reports for exactly those reasons - just the thought of having to approach suicidally close to the enemy to be able to make such a report kinda spoils it for me a bit. I knew it wouldn't work if you tried to report smoke smudges on the horizon that the player could see but the crew could not, but I was really expecting/hoping that the ability to send the report would be linked to the spotting of the ships by your crew. Thus I thought I'd be able to send the report after the crew had popped off with a good 8-10 "ship spotted" reports. There aren't that many destroyers in the whole task force as far as I can see, so I figured they had to be spotting several of the larger/capital ships as well, but maybe for some reason they just keep "spotting" the same couple of near-side destroyers over and over again and that's not counting for enough for some reason.

Anyway, I'd still love to know where they "hid" this reporting range parameter so we could play with it. If anybody finds it or has any idea where to look, please let us know.

2 to 3 freighters or 2 - 3 main task force ship's. No escort's count for contact report's. That is why the idea Duci uses for the nav map showing ship's dosn't work well because it hurt's in figuring out if you have the right ship's spoted by the crew to make a good report.

[Peto]

I think that all the radio contact data is hard-coded. I've poked around in a lot of the files (but not nearly as adeptly as other modders on this forum) and really haven't seen any settings that deal with radio messages.

While this type of functionality would be a great addition for SH4, it is actually more applicable to SH3 as the U-boats main function was frequently Shadow, Report and Send Homing Beacons.

These ideas would be great to implement but I'd put my money on the bet that it is hard-coded and very difficult to modify. It would certainly be a welcome addition to the planned expansion by UBI though.

[tater]

I got a dev answer in another thread regarding this. he said they were thinking about changing it.

tater

[Peto]

Thanks tater!!!

Why am I not surprised that you'd have looked into this already ;) ? Your input is appreciated and your continuing efforts to improve SH4 go above and beyond :rock: .

Salute!!!