Neutral traffic

[oRGy]

I was looking through the SCR and RND layers today, to see if any traffic from my native land (Ireland) was included. This means the RuB 1.43 w/ Harbour Traffic versions, by the way.

Was rather dissappointed to find nothing at all. :(

It seems the coasts around Ireland (and most other neutral countries) are completely devoid of life.

This seems a shame; I'd imagine that in reality you'd have random groups of fishing boats around small harbours, and from larger ports (like Cork/Dublin) you'd have regular services of Irish ships (small merchants and the like) going to Holyhead, or America.

I was also reading the KTB of U-505 - describing their patrol around Freetown, coast of Africa - and its quite interesting how they patrol around a lot but never find anything except

a) fishing boats
b) the occasional plane - which never sees them
c) neutral lone merchants
d) allied lone merchant, travelling too fast

This was in 1943 I think. So was just wondering if people have any plans, like the Ops mod people for example of doing anything along these lines. I'd do the coasts of Ireland if I could get some historical information.

[CCIP]

Well, the only real plan I've heard is adding some Irish and Spanish fishing boats out there. For practical purposes, I'd avoid any heavy traffic around Ireland, since we technically have a lot of traffic in that area already - British traffic that is.

If you have anything in mind though, by all means. I could definitely add a few random groups or some wandering small fry along the coast.

And if my recent experiences in the South Atlantic are any indication - minus the fishing boats, the results in RUb 1.43 are certainly close enough :)

[oRGy]

Interestingly about 20 Irish merchant ships were sunk by U-Boats or the Luftwaffe during WW2, despite clear markings:

http://www.mii.connect.ie/pictures/ship/kyleclare.jpg

Can't find many books about it in my university library though, which is a shame.

In addition to Spanish and Portugeuse waters, the Mediterreanean could do with this sort of thing and some Russian naval operations would be nice if sergbuto released his destroyer - the lack of ships for some classes and countries in this game is quite amazing, though one must remember Aces of the Deep was a lot worse, if you ever care to recall.

[sergbuto]

And this kind of skin quite easy to implement specifically for Irish ships when using a SCR layer.

[Type941]

what's EIRE EIRE stands for - SINK ME? What were they thinking...

[oRGy]

Hehe, EIRE is the Irish for "Ireland".

Sergbuto: I was actually wondering about that possibility. Easy skin to make as well. How do you do it exactly? My main concern is if only I could find some actual info about the Irish war merchant fleet, mainly a list of the ships with info on

a) class
b) route sailed
c) dates sailed (until sunk or '45)

That's all one needs really. Random fishing boats around the coasts are of course easy to add and don't require much research.

[CCIP]

Well the best way to implement them would be as a random group or two, spawning certain types of ship at certain periods.

But yes, we do have at least one irish port in Ops mod - don't see why we couldn't use it to put up some irish traffic - the only question is to where. Give me some destinations, and sail they will!

And if someone can make that obvious "EIRE" skin, that'd be even better (but I can sense that being a bit difficult with the awfully awkward texture patterns in the game). :hmm:

[oRGy]

Well, like I said I'd mess about with the skin, I might even try if someone could tell me how to

a) unpack the skin (say a coastal merchant)
b) save it and configure it so only Irish ships of that class use it

As for the research, it seems a bit thin on the ground. I know that some of them went down as far as Africa, others sailed the North Atlantic, one ship was in the Bay of Biscay and rescued some German sailors and others just sailed across the Irish sea.

[Shadow9216]

To unoack the skin, use the dat extractor tool- either Chessmaster or the SH3 unpacker. Editing skins is something I'd like to learn to do myself.

[oRGy]

I know how to unpack the skins.

Packing them in is somewhat more difficult unless they're exactly the same size (in bytes), it seems.

As for how to get the skins based on nationality...? Sergbuto? Anyone?

[sergbuto]

As for how to get the skins based on nationality...? Sergbuto? Anyone?

You can only use the SCR layer of the campaign for that. The skin of the unit can be selected by putting the corresponding number at the end of unit name:

[Group 1.Unit 5]
Name=BR DD V&W#2
Class=DDV&W
Type=4
Origin=British
Side=1
Commander=0
CargoExt=-1
CargoInt=-1
CfgDate=19380101
DeleteOnLastWaypoint=true
GameEntryDate=19380101
GameEntryTime=0
GameExitDate=19451201
GameExitTime=0
EvolveFromEntryDate=false
Long=3129880.000000
Lat=3910800.000000
Height=0.000000
Heading=271.934998
Speed=15.000000
CrewRating=0
DelayMin=0
ReportPosMin=-1
ReportPosProbability=100
RandStartRadius=0.000000


#2 in line "Name=BR DD V&W#2" means that the game engine should pick up the number 2 skin. Each skin needs to be stored inside the corresponding ship folder in the SilentHunterIII\data\Sea directory. The skin texture TGA file name should end with _TXX where XX=01, 02, 03... is the skin number.

However, if there are more than three skins in the folder, the correspondence of the #X number and the skin number become less obvious and you would need some testing to establish that.

[iambecomelife]

Well, like I said I'd mess about with the skin, I might even try if someone could tell me how to

a) unpack the skin (say a coastal merchant)
b) save it and configure it so only Irish ships of that class use it

As for the research, it seems a bit thin on the ground. I know that some of them went down as far as Africa, others sailed the North Atlantic, one ship was in the Bay of Biscay and rescued some German sailors and others just sailed across the Irish sea.

For the coastal merchant you just need to go to the data\sea\nksq folder and select one of the existing tga's. It is one of the ships that has its tga's out in the open, and not embedded in the dat file.