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View Full Version : Why lose the boat when your original Captain retired? Hmmmm . . .


Albrecht Von Hesse
01-27-08, 02:44 PM
I have an ideer I want to toss out and see if anyone's considered it before and see if anyone has any implimentation suggestions and/or warnings.

One of the (many!) things I like about running SH3Commander is the 'simulate a realistic career length' option. After all, at some point experienced Captains would be promoted and reassigned from commanding an operational boat on combat patrols. They didn't just keep running patrols until Fate finally caught up with them.

But what I did dislike was losing the boat after that. So I pondered, and came up with this idea.

When you finally get the message that the current Captain (you, of course :p ) has retired, and after the beer have stopped flowing and the party is over . . .

My idea is this: when that happens, take a look at your current crew, and select one of your officers to be promoted to the boat's new commander. (I use SH3Commander to keep cuurent logs of my crew, which makes it easy for me). For instance, my current WO is Georg Schnabl. So to start off I load up SHIII and select a new career, and enter "Georg Schnabl" as the new player's (and thus, new Kaleun's) name. Then go at least as far as you need (I'm not sure how far that actually is, alas, which is why I'm asking for help) in order to get a save in base before first patrol, and for the game to establish the necessary folders for the new 'player'.

Then exit the game completely, then go to the folders containing career information (should be something like C:\Documents and Settings\My Documents\SH3\data\cfg\Careers)

Now here is where I need both advise (and to do a bit of experimenting :p ) There should be a way of copying the current crew configuration and the boat's current configuration from the retired Captain's folder and pasting that into the new Captain's folder. In effect, transferring boat and crew from one to the other. Yet not the accumulated renown of the former Captain.

Assuming this is workable, the only thing left to do once you reload the game is to go to the barracks and dismiss the officer that has been promoted to Captain and replace him with a new officer.

Now if this works (and I don't see why it shouldn't) you could now play out the life of a particular boat, all through it's different Captains.

Any comments?

snwcrsh
01-27-08, 02:49 PM
SH3 Dynasty Mode! I like it :-)

NealT
01-27-08, 03:41 PM
I would want to take my crew with me :)

antikristuseke
01-27-08, 06:56 PM
This is an exelent idea, think im going to give this a go with my curent career.

Albrecht Von Hesse
01-27-08, 07:09 PM
Before anyone just up and starts going copying and pasting (--grins--) I've got to investigate this a bit to find the exact file(s)/folder(s) that need to be transferred over (especially since, as you're using SH3Commander, there are likely to be files involved there as well). It's not just the crew; it's also the boat, and things like used ship names, etc. Also I have to make sure of the sequences, etc., so that the boat's 'new' Captain doesn't start off as if he already has 5-7 patrols under his belt.

Soon as I finish my current patrol I'll start monkeying around and figgerin' out which files and folders need to be copied and where to put them. Stay tuned. :p

Koondawg
01-27-08, 07:52 PM
I do believe I have let a Kpt go before to further his career but cannot remember loosing my boat :damn:

JScones
01-28-08, 04:11 AM
This has been raised numerous times.

Utilising the existing crew in a new career is easy - here's one thread where I explained the best way to do it... http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=403653

There's even instructions in the SH3Cmdr help file. ;)

However, replicating the sub and equipment that you ended the previous career with can potentially be the fiddly part. If the boat is stock standard, then there's no problem; when you start your new career you just select the same boat type and number and you are set. However, if you tweaked or upgraded any equipment, then you'll need to manually make changes to Basic.cfg before starting your new career. These changes are required to force SH3 to see your upgrades as standard on the new boat.

OTTOMH to do it manually you need to open up your Careers_0.cfg file and query the *last* entry. Look for lines like this:

SuperChargerUpg=-1
BatteriesUpg=1265
HydrophoneUpg=1270
SonarUpg=-1
RadarUpg=-1
RadarWarningReceiverUpg=-1
Decoy_LauncherUpg=-1
SnorkelUpg=-1
SonarCoatingsUpg=-1
RadarCoatingsUpg=-1
Note any with values that are > -1.

Then open Basic.cfg and look for the appropriate SUBMARINE_AMMO block (for both your boat type and year of new career) and scroll to you see the same lines.

Plug your > -1 values into the corresponding lines in Basic.cfg (where they differ).

This is potentially fiddly if you are not computer savvy nor understand the SH3 files and how they work. Accordingly, the usual disclaimers apply. ;)

FWIW I was intending to add this feature to SH3Cmdr a while ago, but found the equipment aspect just too boring.

Albrecht Von Hesse
01-28-08, 04:59 PM
. . . .
FWIW I was intending to add this feature to SH3Cmdr a while ago, but found the equipment aspect just too boring.

Somehow I just couldn't believe that this idea had never occurred to you before. Now I know why. :p

U49
01-28-08, 05:27 PM
This has been raised numerous times.

And this has been working a numerous times :rotfl: (teaser, I know)
That was my regular way to move on in the war with my careers #7 to #12 :lol:
(current #15 :yep: )

That's a nice way to get a boat full of trained battle veterans...

I prefered the way:
copy directory to a new commander
clean up your personal record
clean up log and patrol records
clean up your lost officer in the crew

(I made a paper checklist to remember all steps, but lost it :damn: )