incompetent watch crew

[Bosje]

sorry to make a thread about this but I remember reading about the issue in one of the readme files from one of my mods, or in one of the 60 pages of posts about one of the many mods. I just can't remember where I read it and I can't find it anymore, so I'm asking it here.

My boys refused to spot this thing and i couldnt even lock the uzo to it until it got rediculously close. it spotted me though and was already doing zigzags before i got my solution worked out (a real pain to get her course and speed without being able to plot her on the map) i wasted 8 torpedoes due to my own incompetence and after 45 minutes and manually firing about 70 shells into her waterline some wanker on the bridge suddenly noticed the commotion and shouted 'Ship Spotted!'

if i had not by chance noticed the time compression freezing up for half a second as this ship entered the rendering distance, it would have sailed right past me.

it's annoying to the point of being a game killer and I'd much appreciate some feedback on what is causing it and on how I can get rid of it

or is it because it's my first patrol on a new career? do they simply need some more experience or something?

PE4
RFB
RSRD
OpMon
RUIM

edit: resized

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/1290/watchincompetencemz8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/watchincompetencemz8.jpg/1/w1024.png (http://g.imageshack.us/img407/watchincompetencemz8.jpg/1/)

[vanjast]

In one of the files (cannot rmemeber which) there is a setting, which determines how long it takes for the watch to 'wake up'.

But yes the famous 'PAUSE' you're talking about is due to time compression, this ismore noticable with aircraft, as they can whizz by like flying saucers and never spot you (or you, them), or you drop out of 'hyperspace', sinking.

It was found that a time compression of 256X maximum helped resolve these issues, otherwise there's was not much one can do as this effect is embedded in the game engine.

Takes a while to get to Japan at 256x TC, but it's a nice cruise - sea water, sun , moon, flying fish, sun.. moon.. water...mermaids....:D

Some stuff from the Main.CFG file in ..GameFolder\data\cfg\
[TIME COMPRESSION]
TimeStop=0
RealTime=1
LandProximity=4
CriticalDamage=1
CrewEfficiency=128;1 Not sure here but this might be how good your creew is
AirEnemyDetected=1 When you/watch crew detect the enemy
SoundEffects=2
CharacterAnim=4
EnemyDetected=1 When you/watch crew detect the enemy
RadioReport=8
Particles=8
PrayState=8
HunterState=4 - When ships are looking for you
3DRender=32
Maximum=256 - Maximum time compression

[SteamWake]

some wanker on the bridge suddenly noticed the commotion and shouted 'Ship Spotted!'

Quoted cause it made me laugh..

[Bosje]

quote:
CrewEfficiency=128;1 Not sure here but this might be how good your creew is

that one tickled my fancy, anyone know what it does?
either way, i can clearly see the ships, i can even identify them and i want the crew to spot them too, dammit :arrgh!:

i already edited this file to 1x on contacts and to 128x on land proximity (because i hate coming back from the loo to find the game at 8x while the XO says something to the effect of: 'we didnt want to disturb you at the time, skip, but there was actually a sonar contact one hour ago' / and the kiel canal gets a bit boring after two runs at 4x tc, lol)

[Webster]

i thought RFB gave your crew better "eyes" but maybe not.

i would suspect its OP Mon that changed you screws detection abilty but look at RFB too just in case.

[Bosje]

well i have RFB underneath OPMON so that means I could just remove one of opmon's files to sort it out? or is that asking for a huge amount of trouble?

edit: like i said i remember reading about something from one of the mods which caused the crew to fall asleep sometimes but I can't find it anymore

[Rockin Robbins]

Go into the RFB and Op Monsun threads and ask the modders. That would be the best way to get help.

[Lexandro]

I get this a lot with ATO. I can be 10 feet away from a boat and no-one can see it but me. And I dont use time compression when ships are near me at all. The crew regularly "forget" or fail to notice ships sitting slap bang in view, that you cant fail to notice.

I dont get it much if at all with the US boats, so it seems to me to be the crap crew stats you get with ATO. I could be wrong of course, but this is my observation.

As a small tip for you, when this happens you can once or twice "force" detection by hitting the L key to lock a target. The lock may only last a few seconds before loosing the target again but if you do it right you can have a fish ready, force lock and fire to hit the target. Mind you this is with auto-targeting, I dont know what it would be like with manual targeting.

[Bosje]

well i can kill em on manual targeting, by plotting the speed and course with the L key. i lock it and press the stopwatch, mark on the map, lock it again after 3.15, mark. the lock will indeed only last half a second but the dot still appears on the map (using RFB with the very handy TMO plotting mod)
in fact, the dot will be exactly where it was when you locked, because it's not tracked by any of the watchcrew, so you get pinpoint accuracy for manual targeting

the problem is that i probably have a dozen ships sailing past me because i can't be arsed to check the horizon every bloody half hour. anyway i'll mention it on the OPMON thread, see what comes up

just ran straight through a convoy (the Kretschmer Experience, yay!) it was fun and they never spotted me either, but the interesting thing is that i got visual sightings from the crew as the ships passed me astern and started sailing away from me again, so i had a whole map full of contacts behind me with nothing in front of me as i was right in the middle of the convoy. weird

[Lexandro]

Yep had that to with the crew. On one convoy attack the entire convoy was invisible to my watch crew, until they passed astern. My thinking is it depends on where about in the watch crew pane where you place your best watchmen. By that I mean that the 360 degrees around the boat is split evenly between the deck crew. A crap crewman in a 0 to 45 degree view wont see anything but a good man in the 180 to 225 degree view will spot them. So now what I am trying to do is learn which man has which field of view and swap them accordingly. The watch leader seems to have roughly 300-000 field of view and I think it then works round anti-clockwise for the rest of the men.

[Bosje]

Interesting point, from what I can see it's the Officer of the Watch who is looking at the 270 area while some rating is standing right at the front of the bathtub, that would explain it and it would even be quite a good feature, except that I can't put the officer on the front without reducing the overall watch crew rating (green bar in crew management) to near zero, right?

[Lexandro]

Well what Im doing is taking anyone with half decent watchman skill points and then manouvering them around in the crew space so that the best are hopefully looking to the bow.

Although on thing does strike me as strange, that is spotting ships with the periscope. It seems like the watchmen affect this also, but surely it should be the conning tower crew or command crew that affect it?

I think further investigation of the crew, the compartments and the areas they tie in to should be done.

[Webster]

well i have RFB underneath OPMON so that means I could just remove one of opmon's files to sort it out? or is that asking for a huge amount of trouble?

edit: like i said i remember reading about something from one of the mods which caused the crew to fall asleep sometimes but I can't find it anymore

if you leave them at battle stations too long they will go to sleep on you :dead:

[Webster]

so if i understand what you guys are saying is this "bug" only happens on german subs correct?

and is it happening to anyone using the stock v1.5 or just those using op monsoon mod?