Ship Names February 2011

[Sailor Steve]

Well, after six months of other interests, burnout and sheer boredom, I finally have enough new names to warrant a new release. Not too many (about 200), but at least it's something new. And we're on our way again.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=2981

[EmeAzul]

Steve, thank you for this work. Cheers

EmeAzul

[Magic1111]

Many thanks !!! :salute::salute::salute:

[Damo]

Thankyou Steve for your continuing work on what must be a somewhat monotonous task, monotonous but I imagine interesting finding out about all the various ships and their stories (or lack of, i bet). Anyway, it seems you have picked the exact wrong time to release this as I'm currently adding MFM to my mods and now I'm going to pick your brain (I convinced myself your brain needed picking, I'm very persuasive...:O:)

You may remember I had an issue with names, crew and cargo not showing in my patrol log when it came to the MFM ships (this was using the Interim version). I've done a little snooping (yes, I did TRY to work my way half way to you, lol), and one thing stands out to me, in that in every ship's .cfg file it has a 'Class Name', and in your list (august one, not downloaded the latest yet), it has a section in the Ship Names.cfg under [Class Map]. At first glance, it would appear that the classes listed in this area correspond to some of the folders in my Sea folder and your file tells Commander what sort of ship it is and what list of names to take the sunken ship from. Am I right?

If this is the case, then let me give an example from one ship I had the issue with, Tanker 07, here's it's .cfg:

[Unit]
ClassName=T07B
UnitType=101
MaxSpeed=14
Length=142
Width=19.5
Mast=22.5
Draft=7.0
Displacement=7300
RenownAwarded=332

[2DCompartments]
UnitPos=56,8,403,20
NbOfComp=4
Name1=Propulsion
Area1=58,5,30,18
Name2=Keel
Area2=164,2,187,10
Name3=Engines Room
Area3=207,13,52,18
Name4=Fuel Bunkers
Area4=261,13,30,18

So, my question is, do I need to add 'T07B' (and T07A (US), T07X (Neutral)) to the [Class Map] with =GenericMerchantsAndTankers for Commander to then acknowledge the MFM ships and add a name and cargo/crew? It's a lot of work as there are many extra ships that would need to be added to [Class Map] if I am indeed right. I await your answer before I start modifying anything though as I'm well aware that it's never as clear cut as it first seems, especially with this game.... :damn:

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Ok, scrap that, I just looked further down and can see T07A/B already in the list, will install the latest and see if it fixes things.

[NoGoodLandLubber]

Thanks Steve!!

Again, let me know if there's anything I can do to help you with this.

:salute:

[Sailor Steve]

in every ship's .cfg file it has a 'Class Name', and in your list (august one, not downloaded the latest yet), it has a section in the Ship Names.cfg under [Class Map]. At first glance, it would appear that the classes listed in this area correspond to some of the folders in my Sea folder and your file tells Commander what sort of ship it is and what list of names to take the sunken ship from. Am I right?
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=170741&page=31

Especially #455, and Frau Kaleun's response in #460.

I don't think the problem you're having with information showing up will be fixed by making the changes you propose. I say this because you seem to be one of a very few who are having these problems. On the other hand I'm unable to use MFM, so Frau Kaleun will have to confirm that it shows up for her.

[frau kaleun]

I'm pretty sure that 4-5 of the ships I sank on my last patrol were from the MFM, all of them got names/cargo/etc. when I updated my files in Commander after the patrol. None of them were tankers, though.

[HW3]

I have sunk 2 MFM tankers on my present patrol in WaW V. When I finish this patrol I will check to see that the info shows up.

Thanks doing the lists for us Steve!:up:

[Damo]

Yeh sorry for the kneejerk post, it seems that now I've installed the MFM again and put the latest shipnames cfg in commander all the info is now showing up. Have no idea why it didn't before but now I've updated my personnel file the ones that previously had no info have now been rectified. Weird, but it works, so just a quirk I guess.

:88)

Currently on my next patrol so will recheck things once I'm back dockside.

[Sailor Steve]

Good to hear it! :rock:

[Jimbuna]

Nice one Steve :sunny:

[STEED]

Thank you, you old sea dog or is that pirate. :arrgh!: :up:

[Sailor Steve]

Thank you, you old sea dog or is that pirate. :arrgh!: :up:
I am a respectable retired gentleman of the sea. And old sailors never lie. :D:O::sunny:

[Jimbuna]

I am a respectable retired gentleman of the sea. And old sailors never lie. :D:O::sunny:

Pull the other one....it's a wooden leg :DL

http://www.scale-models.co.uk/images/smilies/pirate.gif

[frau kaleun]

@ Sailor Steve:

BTW, re that thing we were discussing in other threads about having different versions of the file for early war and late war, to avoid having sunk British ships of this or that class show up in patrol logs with US ship names prior to Dec 1941... I don't think it would be as simple as just working with the "mixed classes" and not worrying about IABL's ships.

I sank several British ships on my last patrol (1939), all were clearly flying a Brit flag and the game considered them enemy tonnage. But Commander pulled US names for them from the list for class M01A (which I'm assuming is supposed to be a "US only" class?). I'm still trying to figure out how M01A ships ended up being British in the game, that class doesn't appear in the Roster\British\Sea folder and there don't appear to be anything but US skins for it in the skinpacks. I don't know if there's something else that would factor into the nationality/appearance of a particular class when it spawns in the game, so I'm not sure where else to look.

I are now cornfused about the whole thing again. :06:

[Sailor Steve]

I don't get it either. It seems like it shouldn't do that. It might be something that IABL got wrong in the files, or it might be...I don't know, gremlins maybe.

I'm sure JScones will be around soon enough to at least try to clear it up.

[Damo]

Ok Steve, back to pester you again... :yawn:

Further to my earlier post about ship types and names not displaying in patrol logs, I discovered that a couple of MFM ships were not listed in the englishnames.cfg that came with the Interim version of MFM, as such when identifying them the display name in the rec manual and UI used their folder names, i.e. M33B instead of Medium Merchant 33. After adding the required entry (M33B=Medium Merchant 33) in englishnames.cfg they now display correctly in game.

Now, with the full version of MFM, you also have neutrals (M33X), but there is no englishnames.cfg included like it is with Interim. What I have done, is to open the Sea folder from the mod and then add each ##X ship to englishnames.cfg so that now, the neutrals also show up as Medium Merchant 33 instead of M33X in the UI. So that's that sorted out.

I realise none of this really concerns your shipnames.cfg so I'll get to the point. MFM adds some of the neutral ships to the US and British rosters, so now you have to investigate seemingly neutral ships and judging by it's behaviour, deck cargo and possible armament, make a decision as to whether it's a disguised enemy ship and then sink it. My problem lies with how these disguised ships are handled by the patrol log, in that they will be listed as Medium Merchant 33 now but again, there will be no Name, cargo or crew. Also, I can't alias the X ships to the A or B ships as there is no way of differentiating between the British and American names, causing wrong nationality ship names.

What I'd like to do, and here's my point (finally), is add another entry to shipnames.cfg that caters for these neutral ships. First I'd need to add the neutrals into [Classmap] and alias them to a new type. What I was thinking is that as disguising a ship by painting a neutral countries flag on the side and not flying a flag (as in MFM) would be a contravention of the rules, it would make sense that the British or Americans would deny knowledge of the ship ever existing. Therefore, I'd like to create a new class in shipnames.cfg that would result in a patrol log entry as follows:

Ship Sunk! Unidentified (No markings present) (Medium Merchant 33) #### tons Cargo: Unknown Crew: Unknown Crew lost: Unknown

My questions are; as commander tries to not re-use ships names, if I put a name entry under [M33X] as 0001=Unidentified (No markings present), would Commander only ever use this once? Also, under the Cargo_en entry would I be able to add 'Unknown' to the cargo list and using the [M33B] cargo entry replace the cargo values with the number that corresponds to 'Unknown'? Finally, where the crew entry is, it gives numbers similar to 64 / 38, would I be able to change that to Unknown / Unknown? It doesn't make sense to use numbers as this information would be buried like the rest of the ship's details.

I know it's a lot of effort for such a small detail but as you seem to spend a lot of time also with a 'small detail' I'm sure you get my mentality... :88)

Of course, if I succeed in this task I'll gladly provide my edits to you if you wish to include it in any future shipnames, or make them available to other MFM users to 'fill in the blanks' in their patrol logs with your permission.

:salute:

[Sailor Steve]

Further to my earlier post about ship types and names not displaying in patrol logs, I discovered that a couple of MFM ships were not listed in the englishnames.cfg that came with the Interim version of MFM, as such when identifying them the display name in the rec manual and UI used their folder names, i.e. M33B instead of Medium Merchant 33. After adding the required entry (M33B=Medium Merchant 33) in englishnames.cfg they now display correctly in game.
If I remember rightly IABL says in his instructions to do that for all his ships.

As to the rest, I don't see the point for the whole thing. Neutrals are neutrals, and shouldn't be attacked anyway. If an enemy ship was disguised as a neutral, and (as you say) they didn't acknowledge its existence, then the logical extension for me would be that you don't get any credit at all, since it doesn't exist.

I think you're overcomplicating this.

I also think that something like this would work far better in SH4, which lets you add different countries without any penalties to frame rate or loading times.

[Damo]

The Interim version of the mod (no neutrals) has the details to be added into englishnames.cfg whereas the full version does not, but that's beside the point and not the reason I posted. What IABL has done is add the 'X' ships to the British and American rosters so actually 'Neutrals are NOT necessarily neutrals', I just sunk a merchant with Argentinian markings simply because it had Tanks on deck and zig zagged when I approached it. My suspicions were correct as it showed as an enemy ship on the map after it sunk. The reason I want to do these edits is because a sub captain would add these ships to his patrol log for the simple fact that he knows he sunk them, and that he considered them legitimate targets.

Given that it's only after you finish a patrol and update your patrol log in commander before the names and cargo info is added simulates to me a checking of details by Bdu where the patrol log and details of allied ship losses are compared to get a reasonably accurate record of what was sunk. It's a little detail I know but it's something I wish to implement so I guess I'll just go and experiment myself by editing shipnames.cfg.

Thanks anyway. :salute:

[Sailor Steve]

The Interim version of the mod (no neutrals) has the details to be added into englishnames.cfg whereas the full version does not, but that's beside the point and not the reason I posted. What IABL has done is add the 'X' ships to the British and American rosters so actually 'Neutrals are NOT necessarily neutrals', I just sunk a merchant with Argentinian markings simply because it had Tanks on deck and zig zagged when I approached it. My suspicions were correct as it showed as an enemy ship on the map after it sunk. The reason I want to do these edits is because a sub captain would add these ships to his patrol log for the simple fact that he knows he sunk them, and that he considered them legitimate targets.
Okay, that's pretty cool! :rock:

Given that it's only after you finish a patrol and update your patrol log in commander before the names and cargo info is added simulates to me a checking of details by Bdu where the patrol log and details of allied ship losses are compared to get a reasonably accurate record of what was sunk. It's a little detail I know but it's something I wish to implement so I guess I'll just go and experiment myself by editing shipnames.cfg.

Thanks anyway. :salute:
Sorry I misunderstood. Also sorry I can't help, because we're way outside my knowledge of how it works. Best of luck with it, though. :sunny:

[Damo]

Also, I was just wondering about Frau's post about British ships taking American names. Is it possible that what she thought were British were actually Canadian given the similarity of flags? Given that in MFM there are only M##A (American), M##B (British) and M##X (Neutral) classnames, where do Canadian ships draw their names from? I haven't actually checked whether MFM adds ships to the Canada Roster as I'm not at my gaming PC but if it adds M##A ships to the roster, and Frau mistook the Canadian flag for British, it might explain the situation.

:hmmm:

[frau kaleun]

I'm actually playing around with possibilities for the Shipnames with regard to the neutrals and "neutrals" in the MFM, for the same reasons Damo has stated.

And also still wondering why three British ships got those American ship names. I wondered if maybe they were the neutral 'X' class for that ship but showed up in-game flagged as British because the class was also included in the British roster, but I guess the idea is that they would be British (or aiding the British) and NOT look British in that case... so that doesn't seem to make any sense. Also wouldn't explain why they got 'A' names from Commander. :hmmm:

I may actually redo the Englishnames.cfg and do a patrol so I can see what specific class it was that I sank and what happens with the shipnames afterwards.

Plus I'm still looking at making a different Shipnames file for different time periods in the game.

Actually right now what I do mostly is open the Shipnames.cfg, open the "working" txt file Steve sent me, look at the huge amount of info contained therein, sigh, and close both files and then play Purble Pairs for a couple hours. :O:

[frau kaleun]

Also, I was just wondering about Frau's post about British ships taking American names. Is it possible that what she thought were British were actually Canadian given the similarity of flags? Given that in MFM there are only M##A (American), M##B (British) and M##X (Neutral) classnames, where do Canadian ships draw their names from? I haven't actually checked whether MFM adds ships to the Canada Roster as I'm not at my gaming PC but if it adds M##A ships to the roster, and Frau mistook the Canadian flag for British, it might explain the situation.

:hmmm:

I'm wondering about that too. BUT the thing is, I'm still using the Contact Color Mod, which means that other ships are coded red/green/blue on the map. Those ships were red when they appeared on the map, long before I made any attempt to ID flags, which means the game recognized them as enemy shipping as soon as they spawned and were sighted or reported.

[Damo]

Britain join the war on the 3rd of Sept, Canada joined on the 10th of Sept. The only time Canadian ships would show as green icons would be in the period between those dates, which is only a week. If you know you sunk them in that time then it's a mystery to me as to how they drew American names as the 'X' neutrals are not included in the shipnames.cfg and don't draw any info whatsoever, which kind of ties in with what I'm trying to achieve.

[frau kaleun]

Britain join the war on the 3rd of Sept, Canada joined on the 10th of Sept. The only time Canadian ships would show as green icons would be in the period between those dates, which is only a week. If you know you sunk them in that time then it's a mystery to me as to how they drew American names as the 'X' neutrals are not included in the shipnames.cfg and don't draw any info whatsoever, which kind of ties in with what I'm trying to achieve.

Yeah, that's the thing. The real mystery is how they ended up getting names from the list for M01A, which AFAIK is a class of US ships only and which should not be ID'd by the game as "enemy" shipping in 1939.

I don't think any of them could've been Canadian, wasn't their merchant naval flag at that time the Red Ensign with the Canadian coat of arms or other emblem on the right hand side? AFAIK the only flags I've seen on ships I've sunk have been the "plain" Red Ensign of the UK Merchant Navy and the RN White Ensign. I think I would've noticed a Red Ensign with some other emblem on it besides the expected Union Jack in the top left corner.

[Damo]

Well I'm gonna be spending a fair few hours buried in the relevant files so it's highly probable that I'll stumble across the answer by accident, if so I'll let you know.

[nikbear]

Thank you for the update SSteve:salute: Much appreciated:yeah:

[iambecomelife]

Yeah, that's the thing. The real mystery is how they ended up getting names from the list for M01A, which AFAIK is a class of US ships only and which should not be ID'd by the game as "enemy" shipping in 1939.

I don't think any of them could've been Canadian, wasn't their merchant naval flag at that time the Red Ensign with the Canadian coat of arms or other emblem on the right hand side? AFAIK the only flags I've seen on ships I've sunk have been the "plain" Red Ensign of the UK Merchant Navy and the RN White Ensign. I think I would've noticed a Red Ensign with some other emblem on it besides the expected Union Jack in the top left corner.

That's pretty strange; nothing like that has ever happened to me. Maybe the naming file is automatically giving certain ships American names...?

As for naming neutral ships, I modified my SH3 Commander files to give generic names for the "_ _ _ X" class disguised neutrals, such as "Neutral Merchantman" or "Neutral Tanker". I also tweaked crew sizes & cargos (neutrals were a bit less likely to carry war supplies than British & American ships).

The game can reuse these generic names with no problems. If there's enough interest & with Steve's permission I could modify the next release to do this.

[Sailor Steve]

where do Canadian ships draw their names from?
Anybody at war in 1939 gets their names from the British set. Anybody joining in December 1941 draws theirs from the American set.

What are some of the names you've been getting?

If there's enough interest & with Steve's permission I could modify the next release to do this.
No problem. You'll have to update me when it's out, just so I don't turn around and screw it up again. :D

[frau kaleun]

That's pretty strange; nothing like that has ever happened to me. Maybe the naming file is automatically giving certain ships American names...?

Ya, really odd. And I know several of the names came from the list for M01A. The ships in question were all Medium Merchants, but unless there's some game file where I can find what class I actually sank, I don't know which list (if any) their names should've come from. :hmmm:

I do know for sure they were not American ships, lol.

[Damo]

Ya, really odd. And I know several of the names came from the list for M01A. The ships in question were all Medium Merchants, but unless there's some game file where I can find what class I actually sank, I don't know which list (if any) their names should've come from. :hmmm:

I do know for sure they were not American ships, lol.

As a test you could try doing a test patrol in the same period but this time remove the M##B / A / X=Medium Merchant ## entries from the englishnames.cfg. Then the patrol log will list them, and the game will display them with their folder names. Then do a comparison afterwards.

[frau kaleun]

As a test you could try doing a test patrol in the same period but this time remove the M##B / A / X=Medium Merchant ## entries from the englishnames.cfg. Then the patrol log will list them, and the game will display them with their folder names. Then do a comparison afterwards.

That's kind of what I'm thinking of doing, as a test.

What I'm curious about now is what the game uses to determine whether a ship is friendly, enemy, or neutral. Is that controlled by the roster it spawns from?

[Damo]

It has to be, otherwise there'd be no point in placing the MFM neutrals in the allied roster folders. One thing that occurred to me as well was that when I had the trouble of having my logs show M#B instead of Medium Merchant ##, I rectified it by updating the englishnames.cfg with the needed edits (M##B=Medium Merchant ##) and then reupdating my personnel files. Maybe, if you remove your edits, effectively putting them back to M##B, and update your personnel file for that patrol, it would work in reverse, showing exactly what ships you sunk? Just a thought.

My money's still on Canada though....LOL.

[frau kaleun]

Well, I changed up the EnglishNames.cfg in my other GWX install and did a test patrol. Here's what I sank by ship class, along with the ShipNames class used for name/cargo (if any), the Allied/Axis/neutral designation, and nationality based on visual ID:

M03X
unnamed
neutral
no flags/markings

M27B
M27B
Allied
British

Granville-type Freighter/GRA
GRA
Allied
British

M07X
unnamed
Allied
no flags/markings

Medium Cargo/KLS
C2 (KLS=C2 per ClassMap)
neutral
American

M15B
M15B
Allied
British

M14X
unnamed
Allied
British

M20B
M20B
Allied
British

M01X
unnamed
Allied
no flags/markings

M37B
M37B
Allied
British

M34X
unnamed
Allied
Swedish

I can confirm the enemy/friendly/neutral status of these ships was exactly as noted above since I was using Contact Color and the Allied ships were all red icons on the map while the two neutral ships were green. My tonnage totals at the end of the patrol also confirm that everything I listed as Allied was counted as enemy tonnage while the two "green" ships were counted as neutral.

I used the external cams to do a thorough 360° sweep around all the ships before attacking, and can say without a shadow of a doubt that those listed as British were flying the Red Ensign of the British Merchant Navy. Three of the M**X ships had no flags or markings of any kind, and IIRC two of them were spotted or attacked at night and were running without lights. The American ship was running lit and had her US flag spotlighted, so no doubts about her.

Of particular interest was the final ship, by class an M**X "neutral" that spawned with Swedish flags and markings (as seen in the file data\Sea\M34X\M34X_T01.tga) but the game gave her a red icon and counted her among the Allied tonnage sunk. She was heading ENE in grid BF17, presumably heading for the Irish Channel; in theory I assume this could've meant a destination of either an enemy UK port, or a neutral Irish one. It was daylight so her being lit/unlit was not a factor. If this had been a "real" patrol (and I hadn't been shown a red icon on the map) I don't know if I would've attacked her since I think her status as an enemy ship might have been debatable.

If nothing else I think the use of the MFM mod will be the nail in the coffin of the Contact Color mod for me, as much as I hate to give that up. :wah: Pushing me ever closer to more realism, which I don't mind really. Having it enabled sort of defeats the purpose of using a mod like the MFM, which requires you to make difficult decisions about whether or not to attack a ship that may or may not be a legit target regardless of its flags/markings or lack thereof. But that would also mean losing the navigational "tails" on my ship icons, which would be really tough at this point. I wonder if there's a way to keep just those and not have the color coding. :hmmm:

For me personally, like Damo, it will probably also mean doing something with the ShipNames file to provide names for all those M**X classes, since it's clear that they are going to show up not just as potentially legit targets but as obviously legit ones (the M14X I sank was most definitely flying a British flag).

Sadly, all of the above does nothing to explain why several of the ships I sank in my last "real" patrol got names from the ShipNames list for M01A ships when I know they were flying enemy flags. British or Canadian (and I still believe they were British, as there was nothing on them to indicate otherwise, but whatever - GWX shows Canada as Allied starting Sept 3) they were still enemy ships sunk in Sept 1939 and therefore not American. And class M01A is not in the British, Canadian or any other UK/Commonwealth rosters I checked. So where that's concerned, I still got nothin'. :doh:

[Damo]

Nice post Frau :up:.

I really like the MFM's tendency to make you wonder about the neutrals, I know that the Uboats would check vessels for contraband and would likely sink them if they carried war materials etc (early war anyway, before they started shooting back). I kind of emulate this by approaching the neutrals and if they start evading by zig zagging I assume they have something to hide and I send em to the bottom.

I've not had a chance to look at the files or do any edits but I did manage to get a few hours on SH5 at my friends house last night while I babysat his son. Initial impressions?

5mins=:o
10mins=:doh:
30mins=:hmm2:
1hour=:damn:
2hours=:/\\!!
2hours, 1min=:nope:

Although I will miss the graphics when I return to sea in SH3......

[Robin40]

Nice post Frau :up:.

I really like the MFM's tendency to make you wonder about the neutrals, I know that the Uboats would check vessels for contraband and would likely sink them if they carried war materials etc (early war anyway, before they started shooting back). I kind of emulate this by approaching the neutrals and if they start evading by zig zagging I assume they have something to hide and I send em to the bottom.

I've not had a chance to look at the files or do any edits but I did manage to get a few hours on SH5 at my friends house last night while I babysat his son. Initial impressions?

5mins=:o
10mins=:doh:
30mins=:hmm2:
1hour=:damn:
2hours=:/\\!!
2hours, 1min=:nope:

Although I will miss the graphics when I return to sea in SH3......

ihihih...:DL...I agree:up:

[brabham85]

I'm here just for congratulate Steve for this work!