US "Strategic Control"

[CaptainHaplo]

I saw somewhere on here that while the uboat arm got control of some additional assets, the US side didn't - but that the "hooks" were all in place to make such things available on the US side as well.

Is anyone doing any looking into adding this on the US side? I know that reality wise its not historical, but it would be nice to vector in a warship or 2 in hopes of it taking out some escorts while you went for the merchies!

[CaptainHaplo]

OK- to answer my own question on starting "how" - the section under specialabilites.upc in both upccrewdata folders (upcdata and upcdatage) are where the abilities are initially listed. However, the "american" version already has ability 22-24 listed (though 23 still defines as control german cruiser instead of an american asset). The beginnings ARE there.

Cutting and pasting the data from one and editing it isnt the issue - apparently there are no "airfields" or surface assets defined as available for the player. What I havent found as yet is where this data is stored at - if anyone knows where its at - let me know. Once we know where to put the data, its wouldnt be hard to set up the proper assets.

Or am I the only one that would love to control an allied TF.

For all those who say "don't forget the contribution of (fill in the country here)!" - don't think that the forces made available must be US only, they could easily be other allies - so you could help insure that the efforts by others are properly honored (and even recreated)!

I know there is a New Zealander or Australian or Britisher out there that would love to control an ABDA force - well it could be done ya know....

[Ducimus]

Crew abilities arent a problem. Its player abiliites that are the heckler. I had an idea last night on something that *might* work, but i doubt it. Its one of those things that are a shot in the dark, probably wont work, but worth trying anyway incase your hunch is wrong.

That hunch, is *MAYBE* (big maybe) control of assest is being dicated by the sub. Theres a "special abilities" controller (or name similar to that) in a sub sim file. Now, this controller has always been there, but the thing is, the proprties of said controller isnt currently readable by S3D. If i was a hex editing genius i could tell you whats in there, but i cant. So the shot in the dark thought is, maybe theres a boolean switch in this controller that was added in the german uboats, but not in the US subs. The sim files weren't touched by the uboat addon for fleetboats, so its entirely conceivable.

IN sum, try exporting the properites of this controller from the german sub, into a fleetboat, and see what happends.

Really far fetched idea i know. I hate mentioning it cause it sounds really stupid, but i experiment with stupid crap like this all the time. Sometimes i get lucky. (most of the time i dont :roll: )

edit: Dont forget to set "is tactical" for US airbases to true in the air layer, and allow some player ablitlies at the lowest possible player rank so you can experiment.

[Lt commander lare]

i would like to see this implemented in the game it would make it that much cooler to play i would vote yes to change it

lt cmdr lare

[tater]

Cept it didn't happen that I know of.

[CaptainHaplo]

Thanks Ducimus - I think you hit on it with the layer assets set to tactical. I will try and test that this weekend! The Players special abilities are listed at the end of the specialabilities file if anyone else cares to try this as well. Thanks!

[skwasjer]

@Duci, the SpecialAbilitiesCtrl is an empty controller without properties. The purpose of empty controllers (there are more in the game) are to indicate some sort of (unconfigurable) state/behavior. I don't think this controller is related to the 'Player abilities' though. So, if S3D shows the name of the controller, it is supported. If it shows a byte array, it is not. As we speak, only mesh/character animations, and lip sync, are not supported. All other controllers are...

Anyway, there must be an undiscovered trick somewhere to this problem. I'm sure it's possible, the way the devs made this game doesn't make me believe this is hardcoded into the GER-campaign...

[Ducimus]

Thanks for saving me the time skwasjer :up:

I have to admit theres a number of things that id love to see, but can't. SO i do stupid experiments to see what happends.

For instance.. the tilt angle when diving. Its backwards! Ive always wondered if its in a controller in the interior sim files or a hardcoded issue. Ive even gone as far as to try and flip the conning tower interior around! Welll.. acutally i only rotated it 45 degrees, but the tilt angle was the same so i dropped that idea. :shifty:

[skwasjer]

I wouldn't call that stupid experiments, I'd call that try to figure something out ;)

I don't know about the flipped interior, the sounds are backwards as well aren't they? I remember privateer saying something about the direction of animations were related to the offset of an object vs the local axis (this was also why the props rotated in wrong direction). Possibly, the interiors must be moved for the game to inverse the animations like tilting... Don't know if the interior model(s) must be moved in 3D editor or just the offset value of the root node. It will probably also affect all the camera's start positions though...

[Ducimus]

:hmm:

Maybe ill look at that again, after i finish my current project. (stupid medals.. :lol: )

[CaptainHaplo]

Ok - a bit more info now - the controls for making this available are in the ranks.upc file = the special ability line under the standard one is commented out - just swap em -and now the ability shows in your "captain abilities" screen.

Now I still cant USE the bugger yet - however from looking at the german vs american campaign files - it looks like they created a few extra layers that will make this work - for example - the GeRaider.mis layer should be the axis raiders one can control. If so, then it should simply be a matter of creating a similiar layer for allied assets that would be "player controlled" and then inserting them into the campaign, or adding the units to an already existing layer.

I'm learning alot trying to do this - more by failure than success but that seems to be the way most do it. I am going to just make things simple to start and have one airbase and one at sea asset to see if this works.

If it does, then I will be interested to see some input on what could be a "reasonable" amount of assets to make available.

[CDR Resser]

The one aspect where special abilities would be historical would be during extended lifeguard operations. O'Kane writes about calling in air support during Tang's lifeguard operations in the vicinity of Truk. I'm not sure where else that this would be historical to implement.

Respectfully Submitted;
CDR Resser

[CaptainHaplo]

ok - I am getting closer - but now the question becomes how to I get the allied airbases that will provide support visible/selectable on the map - the axis fields are for the german campaign - so there has to be a way to show them on the map (setting em tactical doesnt do it). Ideas anyone?