difool2
01-24-08, 08:17 PM
I think that the contact report system, while improved significantly over stock, can still be tweaked a bit for both realism and immersion. Typically the vast majority of contacts that I get are either those two British twits who spend all their time racing around the British Isles, a bunch of DDs who patrol endlessly around Newfoundland, and two German destroyers who like to hang out around the west coast of Norway. I do get occasional reports of a convoy but the vast majority of the time the Atlantic seems empty.
[I think I have a pretty good grasp of how the variables "Important Radio Contacts", "Opportunity Radio Contacts", "ReportPosMin", & "ReportPosProbability" all interact to decide whether you see a ship/convoy icon show up on the map. If I am ignorant about something I apologize in advance. And I'll point out that I like the No Tails feature, as an intercept is no longer a sure thing]
The Realism Tack: the Kriegsmarine would get information on enemy ship movements from 4 main sources: U-boats, aircraft, spies/coastwatchers in ports and along coastlines, and code breaking. The rate of contacts should go up or down according to the following variables:
1. Number of u-boats on patrol, going up through middle '43, then going down after that.
1a. Positions of u-boats that are on patrol. Ex. Dec '41-May '42 should see a huge rise in contacts reported along the American coastline.
2. Presence of nearby Axis airbases. Ex. after June '40 the Biscay approaches and waters around Ireland should experience a rise in reported contacts.
3. Spies around ports reporting the departure of convoys. IIRC they were more sucessful on the Canadian end than the British end.
4. The ebb and flow of information from German codebreaking and radio intercepts, as first the Germans break a British code, then the British devise a new one. This stuff is more or less a matter of historical record.
I realize that some of this cannot be modeled accurately. A convoy has nonchanging constants for ReportPosMin & ReportPosProbability from the time of spawning to when it despawns, so that can't be varied to model spies reporting convoy departures. But much of the other things can be modeled, based on spawn date and area of operation. What I would like to see is both the Important Radio Contacts & Opportunity Radio Contacts variables significantly increased with a concomitant decrease in ReportPosMin & ReportPosProbability for both convoys and single ships. It is the height of egotism and unreality to pretend that my boat is the center of the universe and only reports which are near me count.
Right now if I increase both to say 5000 km while I don't exactly get the Spy Sat mod I get far more information than I should, with a couple of dozen contacts all over the place. But nor should I have an information desert most of the time covering the majority of the Northern Atlantic. What I'd like to see is a smattering of contacts here and there, maybe about 1-3 a day in the places I would expect to see them, both giving me a chance to intercept if I am in position and at least giving me a feeling that I am not alone out there. Having a few friendly sub contact reports probably couldn't hurt either, so as to let me know that I have some friends out there.
Right now I am doing a very "quick & dirty" mod of the Campaign RND and SCR files, dropping contact probabilities anywhere from 1/2 (task forces and HK groups, but a big drop for those bozos patrolling shallow coastal waters) to 1/4 (convoys) to 1/6 to 1/8 for single merchants, along with doubling the report time, and will combine that with a 5000 km radius for both Important and Opportunity contacts. Once I get those finished (yeah will take awhile!) I'll run a patrol and see what happens.
[I think I have a pretty good grasp of how the variables "Important Radio Contacts", "Opportunity Radio Contacts", "ReportPosMin", & "ReportPosProbability" all interact to decide whether you see a ship/convoy icon show up on the map. If I am ignorant about something I apologize in advance. And I'll point out that I like the No Tails feature, as an intercept is no longer a sure thing]
The Realism Tack: the Kriegsmarine would get information on enemy ship movements from 4 main sources: U-boats, aircraft, spies/coastwatchers in ports and along coastlines, and code breaking. The rate of contacts should go up or down according to the following variables:
1. Number of u-boats on patrol, going up through middle '43, then going down after that.
1a. Positions of u-boats that are on patrol. Ex. Dec '41-May '42 should see a huge rise in contacts reported along the American coastline.
2. Presence of nearby Axis airbases. Ex. after June '40 the Biscay approaches and waters around Ireland should experience a rise in reported contacts.
3. Spies around ports reporting the departure of convoys. IIRC they were more sucessful on the Canadian end than the British end.
4. The ebb and flow of information from German codebreaking and radio intercepts, as first the Germans break a British code, then the British devise a new one. This stuff is more or less a matter of historical record.
I realize that some of this cannot be modeled accurately. A convoy has nonchanging constants for ReportPosMin & ReportPosProbability from the time of spawning to when it despawns, so that can't be varied to model spies reporting convoy departures. But much of the other things can be modeled, based on spawn date and area of operation. What I would like to see is both the Important Radio Contacts & Opportunity Radio Contacts variables significantly increased with a concomitant decrease in ReportPosMin & ReportPosProbability for both convoys and single ships. It is the height of egotism and unreality to pretend that my boat is the center of the universe and only reports which are near me count.
Right now if I increase both to say 5000 km while I don't exactly get the Spy Sat mod I get far more information than I should, with a couple of dozen contacts all over the place. But nor should I have an information desert most of the time covering the majority of the Northern Atlantic. What I'd like to see is a smattering of contacts here and there, maybe about 1-3 a day in the places I would expect to see them, both giving me a chance to intercept if I am in position and at least giving me a feeling that I am not alone out there. Having a few friendly sub contact reports probably couldn't hurt either, so as to let me know that I have some friends out there.
Right now I am doing a very "quick & dirty" mod of the Campaign RND and SCR files, dropping contact probabilities anywhere from 1/2 (task forces and HK groups, but a big drop for those bozos patrolling shallow coastal waters) to 1/4 (convoys) to 1/6 to 1/8 for single merchants, along with doubling the report time, and will combine that with a 5000 km radius for both Important and Opportunity contacts. Once I get those finished (yeah will take awhile!) I'll run a patrol and see what happens.