Help with getting rid of sunk message.

[Armistead]

I've tried this before, but poor modding skills. I think the ship sunk message is very unrealistic and getting rid of it would make the game much more realistic. It would be nice to only know if a ship was sunk when you saw it go under. Last time I figured out how to get rid of the ship sunk message, but then quit. Other issues.

Target lock and ID when the scope aimed at target, obvious if it's sunk it won't lock. I guess the goal would be for it to remained locked until it sinks.

Shows up in the book, but no biggy, don't have to look.

Lifeboats spawn, be nice to spawn them after ship goes under.

[Galanti]

You can simply replace the message itself with a blank string (can't recall which file it is ATM, but a file search will pick it up). However, you will still see a blank entry in the ingame log, which gives it away anyway.

Another way would be to use RFB, which completely revamps the damage model for merchies and some DDs. It forces ships to be sunk by flooding, so that by the time you get that wretched message, you can tell the ship is finish just be looking at it.

However, a poor man's workaround for TMO users is to get Natural Sinking Mechanics, delete everything but the SEA folder and then enable through JSGME (after TMO). This way, all you get from the mod is WernerSobes .ZON files which dramatically up the HP each ship has, but still keep Duci's Zones.cgf changes. This forces ships to sink through flooding. Now, I just cooked this one up and I've been playing this way for less than a week. So far the results are encouraging, but needless to say I haven't torpedoed every ship in the roster, so I can't gurantee it will work 100% of the time.

To summarize, you just can't get the game to stop playing that message, but you can create conditions such that by the time you do, it's already painfully obvious the maru is doomed.

[Mescator]

I'm actually very interested in that system, but as a TMO user I've never had a chance to experiment. I'm under the impression TMO adds a number of ships so there's a variance of paint jobs and such. Would your workaround still work?

If i could force a sinking from flooding alone rather than HP Based sinking i'd be thrilled.

[Armistead]

NSM is pretty close to the idea. I once tried it with an older TMO and had problems. Not sure if there is a version now for TMO or how it would work. It was long ago and haven't followed the progress of NSM. Still would like to get rid of the message all together, but NSM is probably as close to the idea as one can get.

I did get rid of the line the way you stated, but still got the blank. I could never figure out how to keep the ship locked in after it sunk, but not yet sunk... If I had my way I would get rid of the lock function and yellow marker all the way.

[Galanti]

NSM is pretty close to the idea. I once tried it with an older TMO and had problems. Not sure if there is a version now for TMO or how it would work.

I should say it's not a proven workaround, it's a WIP at this point. The two potential problems I can think of are custom zones and balance, but these are not insurmountable.

There's no dedicated version for TMO. The only serious compatibility problem I can think of is if NSM has custom zones defined, but I don't believe it does. Even if it does, I can just add those to Ducimus' Zones.cfg and go from there.

There is a testing mission that ships with NSM, I'll try to give it a whirl tonight and see how it goes. (the TMO + pared down NSM concoction).

[Ducimus]

To summarize, you just can't get the game to stop playing that message, but you can create conditions such that by the time you do, it's already painfully obvious the maru is doomed.

This.

I started to work on my own version of NSM but gave up. It is an incredible amount of work to do it right. Truthfully, i do not like any of the existing modifications that have been published that touch on this area. The sinking is either too slow, unnatural IMO, or has an achillies heel where once touched, a sinking is garunteed every time.

So i started my own, but when it became painfully obvious i was going to have to redo the damage zones on each and every individual ship, with each ship requiring multiple testings and tweakings.... I gave up. I kid you not, it requires shooting multiple fish per trial, per ship, and each ship requiring multiple trials in a static shooting mission, and alot of trial and error in between). The scope of this project within a project was more then what patience and motivation I had left.

[Madox58]

What Ducimus said is as close to the Honest to God truth as you can get.
Doing a complete damage mod for anything is a work in it's own.
Now start doing damage models for each unit so each has it's custom damage model!
It becomes a major mod on it's own very quickly!
If you build a new Ship in 3D from scratch?
If you did not spend as much time on the damage model?
You probably did not do things right.

[tater]

Thirded.

The stock damage model is a bit fubar, but so are mods, frankly. I appreciate the work required for something like the RFB DM, and I appreciate the goal—a larger variety of sinking times (or sinking vs not sinking). But it is incredibly hard to get right.

The base coding that gives the "she's going down" nonsense is really the problem. Like most games it suffers from lack of "fog of war." Properly done (in some other sim or version) the skipper would have to make a claim in the log. The skipper's claim would include his claimed tonnage, and how he knew she sank (saw her, heard breaking up noises, contact disappeared on radar, etc). Then, on RTB, claims would be endorsed or not by comsubpac. At the end of the war, only then would the game reconcile your claims vs reality.

(I can dream, can't I?)

[Diopos]

This.

I started to work on my own version of NSM but gave up. It is an incredible amount of work to do it right. Truthfully, i do not like any of the existing modifications that have been published that touch on this area. The sinking is either too slow, unnatural IMO, or has an achillies heel where once touched, a sinking is garunteed every time.

So i started my own, but when it became painfully obvious i was going to have to redo the damage zones on each and every individual ship, with each ship requiring multiple testings and tweakings.... I gave up. I kid you not, it requires shooting multiple fish per trial, per ship, and each ship requiring multiple trials in a static shooting mission, and alot of trial and error in between). The scope of this project within a project was more then what patience and motivation I had left.

Now I am probably miles away as I havent got a clue on how these things are parameterized and so on but instead on doing the work on all ships can't you get the "numbers" - by trial- on a selected "group" and "extrapolate" for the rest.

:hmmm:

.

[tater]

Short answer is "no."

Open a ship dat file in S3D. While the dat is open, open the zon file for the same ship with S3D. Then click the zon editor button in the dat under model view.

The damage zones will become visible as boxes. They all need editing. The size matters in relation to the blast radius of each weapon. Since ships might also fight other ships, you need to mess with all ships, and likely all weapons.

It's an amazing mess.

[Armistead]

Thirded.

The stock damage model is a bit fubar, but so are mods, frankly. I appreciate the work required for something like the RFB DM, and I appreciate the goal—a larger variety of sinking times (or sinking vs not sinking). But it is incredibly hard to get right.

The base coding that gives the "she's going down" nonsense is really the problem. Like most games it suffers from lack of "fog of war." Properly done (in some other sim or version) the skipper would have to make a claim in the log. The skipper's claim would include his claimed tonnage, and how he knew she sank (saw her, heard breaking up noises, contact disappeared on radar, etc). Then, on RTB, claims would be endorsed or not by comsubpac. At the end of the war, only then would the game reconcile your claims vs reality.

(I can dream, can't I?)

Well your dream is what I would love to see...just ain't gonna happen. Still, I would settle for no real sinking until it's sunk. It sure would make you think about your torp usage, shoot or wait.

[Ducimus]

Now I am probably miles away as I havent got a clue on how these things are parameterized and so on but instead on doing the work on all ships can't you get the "numbers" - by trial- on a selected "group" and "extrapolate" for the rest.

:hmmm:

.

I tried that too. In fact, i had a WIP file i posted on my filefront account at some point that started to do just that. The hope was for some ships to be "close enough". In reality, not really. Groups of ships utlize the same damage zones who's behavior is defined by the zones.cfg file. Tune for one ship, and some other ship that uses the same damage zones (though in different geometric configurations) will behave out of whack in some way shape or form. My hats off to the RFB team for working on the damage model. I don't know how successful it is, but i know whats involved, and its alot of work.

How I wish i could just remove the ship sinking message from the menu.txt like you could in SH3. That, utlimatly is the only reason to work on the damage model IMO. The root inspiration for ship damage model revamps was to remove the explosion when they ran out of hit points in SH3. With SH4, it doesn't do that. By flood, or by loss of Hit points, they sink the same way. (my adhoc solution from a couple years ago was to drastically increase sinking time and its worked fairly well.) It's just that damn message. If it were easily removed, id have done it a couple years ago.

[tomoose]

If you could rely on the matching sound file ALWAYS occuring with it's related text message then you could simply hide the text box entirely.

I've slid the text box "behind" the HUD (which completely hides it) but as most if not all you are aware your sonar operator, as one example, does not always verbalize his reports and your only warning is the text message. i.e. the text may say "sonar contact, bearing xxx....." but the sonar operator sound file is not heard. If you don't hear him then you at least see the text message and still get the message so to speak. Resolve that problem then you could do away with the text box altogether.

A conundrum. Things that make you say, hmmmmmmmmmmmmm :hmmm:

[LukeFF]

My hats off to the RFB team for working on the damage model. I don't know how successful it is, but i know whats involved, and its alot of work.

All things considered, both I and Observer are happy with where it's at. Could it be improved? Sure, but the time required would be way out of proportion to what would be gained in return. Hence why stopped after just re-zoning a couple of the destroyers.

[Galanti]

Testing so far with TMO 2.0 and just the 'Sea' folder from NSM 4 is yielding some pretty positive results. Damage is just about the same, except that much of the time the 'She's going down' message doesn't occur until much of the ship is underwater. The one exception I've noticed was a large cargo ship in harbor, but sinking moored ships in all flavours of SH4 has always been a sketchy proposition.

I have played RFB 2.0 pretty extensively and the DM work there is very impressive.

[Caustic]

This is an interesting thread for me because I have been testing various damage models. The NYGM zones configuration(From RFB) is the best one, hands down. On the other hand, using NYGM with the RFB 2.0 ship.zon files hasn't really worked out for me. The ships sink to slowly and never capsize or reposition themselves realistically, even if another compartment is flooded. I have also noticed that critical hits are very rare. The sampans are the worst and are completely unrealistic. They often drift for extended periods of time with 85 % of the hull underwater, you might think they are submarines or something :hmmm:. My mods are installed correctly, BTW. No hard feelings against the RFB team. They did a wonderful job in all other areas. It seems like the designers just gave up after a point and simplified the damage models. I also don't like the fact that you cannot break the keel in RFB, on any vessel.

In fact, I experienced better results using the NYGM zones w/stock ship.zon files. The stock.zon files behave as they should in conjunction with realistic sinking times. Going to test the NSM ship.zon files tommorow. Mabye I didn't test RFB enough but there is nothing impressive or innovative about it, IMO. Most of the compartments are massive and span with the width of the vessel which creates vertical sinkings every time with little variability. You also only need to flood 2 or 3 compartments on most ships to create a fatal sinking.

At any rate, I just wanted to talk about my findings because I am totally unsatisfied with the RFB ship.zon files. Check it out for yourself. I think the key is to create more numerous compartments and this is what the stock.zon files do best. Another interesting finding is that I have continuously depleted the HP of some of the ships while using the stock.zon files without receiving the ship sunk message and the ships continue to sink realistically for whatever reason. It is most common with warships but the decreased flooding rates in the zones.cfg file minimize the effect, even if you receive the ship sunk message.