Simple SH3 Commander question

[panthercules]

OK - finally got some time to mess with this stuff and got RUB 1.45 loaded up and then installed SH3 Commander 2.3.

Fired up SH3 Commander, picked my latest career, created a personnel file for my Kaleun (very cool :D ), set up my SH3 options (also very cool :D ) and then launched SH3. Loaded up the in base/after last patrol saved game, re-issued the medals and stuff, and set out on my next patrol.

So far, so good - too early to tell much, but everything seems to be working and things are looking good - did have some problems with my first couple of salvos (user error - forgot to open doors on my second salvo that I tried to squeeze off in a hurry after the first one missed for some unknown reason - and of course, missed just astern) in heavy seas (15m/s winds, and waves set to 1.25 multiplier - also very cool :D ) but finally did manage to sink the Norwegian C2 I found in my assigned patrol grid off the coast of Norway (early May 1940), after which I plan to head down toward France 'cause scuttlebutt has it that the Sitzkrieg down there is about to get real in a few days :)

Now for the question - it got real late and I had to quit and save mid patrol. Next time, am I supposed to launch SH3 using SH3 Commander, or are you supposed to only launch the game via SH3 Commander when you are starting a new patrol? If you use SH3 Commander to launch the game even mid patrol, is there any time now that I would ever launch the game using the normal SH3 icon instead of using Sh3 Commander, or do you just always use SH3 Commander to launch the game from this point on?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but something I read in one of the other threads (I couldn't find it again though) got me confused about this point.

Thanks to all the incredible modders who have put so much time and effort into these great mods - can't wait to really put them through their paces when I get some more time to play.

Good luck, and good hunting!

[JScones]

You can launch SH3 via SH3Cmdr every time.

[joea]

What if your game crahes and you ahve to restart in port (erase the subsequent saves will it still work)?

[JScones]

You can launch SH3 via SH3Cmdr every time.

;)

In your case SH3Cmdr will still (correctly) report the career as "At sea during patrol", but once you load SH3 you can quite happily resume from your last in-port save. The worst thing that *may* occur is that you will get news reports for the current month instead of the previous month. But this is nothing to be concerned about and is the exception rather than the norm in these circumstances.

[panthercules]

OK - another quick question or 2:

1. How/when do you get to see "real" ship names for the ships you sink? Do you have to wait till you're back in port and the patrol is over? I selected the option to use real names in the SH3 Commander options section, but I just loaded my game back up and the C2 I sank last night is just listed as a C2 in my log book (that you get during patrol using the "k" key).

2. Does SH3 Commander contain the ability to make your own free-form log book entries like SH3 Companion was supposed to have? I thought I read that this was going to be incorporated into SH3 Commander, but I didn't see it anywhere so far. That was a great feature of IL-2 Stab, and I'd love to see it for SH3, but I couldn't use the Companion thing because it didn't support German language play and also required some beta version of the .NET framework that screwed up my Shoot voice command set up.

Thanks again for all the great mod work :up:

Good luck and good hunting!

[JScones]

1. How/when do you get to see "real" ship names for the ships you sink? Do you have to wait till you're back in port and the patrol is over? I selected the option to use real names in the SH3 Commander options section, but I just loaded my game back up and the C2 I sank last night is just listed as a C2 in my log book (that you get during patrol using the "k" key).
SH3 isn't flexible enough to record different ship names during a patrol, so the standard names will always be recorded.

However, when you next create a Personnel File for the selected Commander, the names are updated. Then the new names will always appear both in SH3 and in SH3Cmdr. So the best way to go is to always create a Personnel File after each patrol.

2. Does SH3 Commander contain the ability to make your own free-form log book entries like SH3 Companion was supposed to have? I thought I read that this was going to be incorporated into SH3 Commander, but I didn't see it anywhere so far. That was a great feature of IL-2 Stab, and I'd love to see it for SH3, but I couldn't use the Companion thing because it didn't support German language play and also required some beta version of the .NET framework that screwed up my Shoot voice command set up.
There's an alternative solution that Beery and I are pursuing which will provide much more detailed log files. It's slated for the next release. It will avoid the need to ALT-Tab in and out of SH3.

[P_Funk]

There's an alternative solution that Beery and I are pursuing which will provide much more detailed log files. It's slated for the next release. It will avoid the need to ALT-Tab in and out of SH3.

That sounds enticing. I've always facied the idea of a log book which I can update while playing the game. I decided to use a paper and pencil book but that got tedious. It is especially cool because during the tedious hours that the boat is driving around the empty seas kaleuns could be creative and detailed. I hope this is what you're getting at.

Also, another request. In the latest versin of SH3 Commander I like the new html records but I'd like a more printer friendly option in addition. THanks

[JScones]

For the main Personnel File and Crew List pages, change the page orientation to Landscape - they're set up to print better that way. The rest will print fine on Portrait.

[panthercules]

So the best way to go is to always create a Personnel File after each patrol..

Ok - that's good to know - I'm still mid-patrol, but I'll do that as soon as this one ends - this probably answers another one of my questions - I could never find any way to just go check/read my Kaleun's Personnel File - just the button to generate a new one, and I wasn't sure if generating new ones every time was really what you were supposed to do or if it would screw something up - I take it from your response that if you ever want to read your Kaleun's file you just hit the "create" button and get a new one?


There's an alternative solution that Beery and I are pursuing which will provide much more detailed log files. It's slated for the next release. It will avoid the need to ALT-Tab in and out of SH3.

Awesome !! :) Please make it work for German language players if you can (even if this part had to be in English, at long as it is compatible and works with playing the game in German that would still be a big step forward)

Thanks for the response and all your hard work - now I've got to go try to finish this patrol so I can see which ships I've sunk :)

Good luck and good hunting!

[JScones]

I could never find any way to just go check/read my Kaleun's Personnel File - just the button to generate a new one, and I wasn't sure if generating new ones every time was really what you were supposed to do or if it would screw something up - I take it from your response that if you ever want to read your Kaleun's file you just hit the "create" button and get a new one?
All Personnel Files are saved under your ..\SH3 Commander\Personnel Files\ folder. Re-generate whenever you want to update one.

Please make it work for German language players if you can (even if this part had to be in English, at long as it is compatible and works with playing the game in German that would still be a big step forward)
And French... ;)

[panthercules]

Very cool - just went to look at my Kaleun's personnel file in the folder you mentioned - I tried clicking on the individual patrol links for the first time, and lo and behold, there are "real" names for all the ships I had sunk in my previous patrols :) I thought that might not kick in until I finished this first patrol using SH3 Commander.

Just one question - I think I've seen a discussion about this before, but I can't remember it and can't find it again - anyway, it had to do with issues about the nationality of the ships and names. I noticed that the one warship I have sunk (a British Fiji-class light cruiser) was designated as "HMS", but all the merchants I sank (combination of British and Norwegian) were designated as "S.S." something. Is there a significance to the "S.S." prefix? I always thought that was limited to designating U.S. merchants. I assume that there should really be different prefixes for the different countries' merchants. Or is "S.S." some sort of standard German designation for merchant? (can't think of what it would stand for if that's the case)

Can SH3 Commander not distinguish between the countries of origin? If not, can this be modified in some way to just dispense with the "S.S." prefix and use only the name of the ship? It's somewhat jarring to see all these U.S.-looking ships sunk during my 1939-1940 patrols. Small point, but if it's a reasonably simple fix/change it would really add to my immersion factor.

Thanks again for all the great work :up:

Good luck and good hunting!

[Ula Jolly]

SH3Cmdr differs between countries. There's HMS blablabla for a British warship, and USS blablabluh for an American one.
The designation "S.S" is standard in SH3Cmdr, but not correct. In Norwegian, there are the following designations:
D/S = steam ship
D/T = steam tanker
M/S = motor vessel
M/T = motor tanker
T/T = turbine tanker

[panthercules]

OK - I'd be willing to do some research/work to try to make these names line up better with the respective countries of origin of the sunk ships, but I have no clue how SH3 or SH3 Commander works in regard to putting these names in these logs. Depending on how this process works in the game/SH3 Commander, I think it would be cool to be able to group the actual names by time periods so that (for example) during any given year of your career the game would pick from the list of names of ships that were actually sunk during that time frame IRL (sounds like probably more trouble than it would be worth, but might be fun to try to make it work that way).

What are the chances of tweaking this a bit so that country-appropriate prefixes and/or names are used based on the nationality of the ship was sunk (or of just suppressing the "S.S." prefix and just using the name alone, if that's the best that can be done)?

Good luck and good hunting!

[JScones]

The problem is that SH3 does not store nationality details with sunk ships. If you sink a Norwegian C3, it stores "C3 Cargo", a UK C3, "C3 Cargo", an American C3 "C3 Cargo" etc.

Hence, SH3Cmdr has no way of knowing either. It's OK for the warships that weren't shared, but not for those that were (ie Flower and Clemson DD) or indeed for any merchant ship or tanker sunk.

This has come up once before, with the tentative solution being perhaps that some of the more nationality specific ship names are removed from the ship names list. But this won't address the "S.S." aspect.

I'm open to suggestions. :hmm:

[panthercules]

The problem is that SH3 does not store nationality details with sunk ships. If you sink a Norwegian C3, it stores "C3 Cargo", a UK C3, "C3 Cargo", an American C3 "C3 Cargo" etc.

Hence, SH3Cmdr has no way of knowing either. It's OK for the warships that weren't shared, but not for those that were (ie Flower and Clemson DD) or indeed for any merchant ship or tanker sunk.

This has come up once before, with the tentative solution being perhaps that some of the more nationality specific ship names are removed from the ship names list. But this won't address the "S.S." aspect.

I'm open to suggestions. :hmm:

Hmmm - that's too bad about SH3 not keeping track of the countries for the ship sinkings. Is there any way to make the names in the log/personnel file editable later on? Once we have the ability to make our own entries into our logs during the game (assuming you mod geniuses get it working, per the above posts), I figured that ship nationality would definitely be one of the things I would be writing down in my log entries whenever I had been able to determine it during the attack - and if so then I would be able to go back later and add the nationality to the corresponding ship names 'cause I would in essence be tracking them manually already in my log entries.

At any rate, where does the "S.S." come from? Is it hardcoded into some game function, or was it just included with all the ship names in whatever text or .cfg file or whatever file stores those names? I wouldn't mind going through and editing out stuff if that's all it takes.

Thanks again for all the great work.

Good luck and good hunting!

[JScones]

Is there any way to make the names in the log/personnel file editable later on?
The HTML log file simply picks up what it finds in your career Log_*.cfg files. So if you adjust any of these files, the changes will be reflected in the HTML log file (and in SH3 for that matter). New ship names are written direct to these files before the HTML log file is created. You can manually edit these Log_*.cfg files and add the nationality of each ship sunk, but just don't add the nationality before the default ship name entry, add it after (ie NOT "...|British C3 Cargo" but "...|C3 Cargo - British" or somesuch). Otherwise you'll interfere with the ship name function and won't get any new names! How you enter the nationality will continue to exist even after a name change, so "...|C3 Cargo - British" would become "...|S.S. Minnow (C3 Cargo) - British". At this point you can re-edit the files as you want and remove/replace "S.S." or the nationality text. Your next created Personnel File will be just as you want.

At any rate, where does the "S.S." come from? Is it hardcoded into some game function, or was it just included with all the ship names in whatever text or .cfg file or whatever file stores those names? I wouldn't mind going through and editing out stuff if that's all it takes.
Under your SH3 Commander installation folder is a sub-folder called "Cfg". In it you'll find a file called "Ship names.cfg". Open it and brace yourself. Observer has created a list of literally thousands of ship names. Of course, if you don't want S.S. prefixes, it's simply a matter of Edit|Replace. ;)

[panthercules]

Very cool - thanks for the replies - I just opened up the ship names.cfg file in Word, did a quick search/replace on "S.S. ", and bingo! (some 6,000 plus replacements later, hehe) - fortunately I only had done 5 patrols so far this career, so manually editing those log files to remove the "S.S." in those was simple. The personnel file looks much better without all those "S.S." prefixes before all my Brit and Norwegian ship sinkings.

Of course, I'm not exactly sure why the Brits were sailing a ship called "Missionary Ridge", but I figure that must have been one of those lend lease type things that they just didn't have time to rename before I got to it :)

I guess I'll have to try the nationality thing on my next patrol, 'cause I wasn't tracking that myself in the prior patrols.

Since it seems to be possible to add new ship types to the game via mods, I wonder if it would be possible to basically add several new categories of each ship type (for example, one new type of C2, etc. for each nationality), as a way of accomplishing two things - (1) trick the game into keeping track of the nationality of the ships sunk (since it seems to keep track of the type of ship sunk), and (2) allow SH3 Commander to assign "real" names that are more nationality-appropriate to ships sunk (since it looked like the names in that ship names.cfg file were grouped separately by ship type). What do you think - any chance this might work?

[Happy Times]

Since it seems to be possible to add new ship types to the game via mods, I wonder if it would be possible to basically add several new categories of each ship type (for example, one new type of C2, etc. for each nationality), as a way of accomplishing two things - (1) trick the game into keeping track of the nationality of the ships sunk (since it seems to keep track of the type of ship sunk), and (2) allow SH3 Commander to assign "real" names that are more nationality-appropriate to ships sunk (since it looked like the names in that ship names.cfg file were grouped separately by ship type). What do you think - any chance this might work? Just what i was wondering also :hmm:

[JScones]

It wouldn't be a problem for SH3Cmdr. Only the ship names.cfg file would need to be edited to recognise the new ship types. How easy/possible is it to add new/cloned ship types to SH3? I don't know, that's out of my league. It would need the support (and time) of one of the expert ship creators here to run with.

But theoretically it could be workable.

[panthercules]

It wouldn't be a problem for SH3Cmdr. Only the ship names.cfg file would need to be edited to recognise the new ship types. How easy/possible is it to add new/cloned ship types to SH3? I don't know, that's out of my league. It would need the support (and time) of one of the expert ship creators here to run with.

But theoretically it could be workable.

Well, I have no idea how one would do this, but if it's just a matter of dull repetition to add maybe 10 new C2 types, 10 new C3 types, etc. for the key 6 or 7 freighter/tanker types (I'm assuming that doing enough countries to cover maybe 80-90 percent of the ships typically encountered would be enough - Brits, Americans, Norwegians, maybe 4-6 more should probably suffice -I've played maybe 30-35 patrols in my 3 careers so far and probably only ever seen 4 or 5 countries' ships out there) and someone can tell me how to get started, I'll be glad to give it a shot. I think it would be waaaayy cool to be able to have the logs track the right nationalities and actually have names that would be country-appropriate to boot.

[panthercules]

bump - anybody got any ideas about how this could be done?

[iambecomelife]

It wouldn't be a problem for SH3Cmdr. Only the ship names.cfg file would need to be edited to recognise the new ship types. How easy/possible is it to add new/cloned ship types to SH3? I don't know, that's out of my league. It would need the support (and time) of one of the expert ship creators here to run with.

But theoretically it could be workable.

I've been debating whether or not to make ships nationality-specific myself. I've been aware of the problem with vessel names for some time - there's no way to prevent, say, American ships from having "Empire" name prefixes, or British ships from being named after famous Americans. The main reason I considered doing this, though, was as part of my replacement for the Merchant Variety Pack. Just as names are currently assigned incorrectly, paint schemes for the MVP have the same problem. I'd like the MVPII to be more realistic; commanders should be able to ID vessels based on funnel markings, company names on the hull, etc - as was the case historically. Creating nationality-specific ships would essentially kill two birds with one stone - we'd have appropriate names AND ship colors.

It would literally take about ten minutes to get this done with Pack3d, since it wouldn't involve 3d editing. However, there are a couple major "cons" -

-Filesize. A mod like this will incorporate a lot of DAT, SIM, ZON, and other files, making it difficult for some users to download.

-It will also add a very large number of unnecessary pages to the ID book. I'm already having some difficulty with the book because of the new merchants I've created; it will be really annoying to have 10 pages for the C-2, 10 for the T-3 tanker, and so on.

I think we'll need a pretty advanced file compression program to take care of this, especially for 56k users. Does anyone know of anything better than 7zip and WinRAR? It may also be necessary to use a printed-out copy of the original ID book to avoid thumbing through dozens or hundreds of duplicate pages ingame.

[JScones]

It would literally take about ten minutes to get this done with Pack3d, since it wouldn't involve 3d editing.
I knew you were da man! :up:

However, there are a couple major "cons" -

-Filesize. A mod like this will incorporate a lot of DAT, SIM, ZON, and other files, making it difficult for some users to download.
Would there be any duplicate files that could perhaps be included once with a batch file copying and renaming after extracting? Or (and excuse my naivity here), if we had ten sets of each ship type, all different ship skins are included but only one set of controlling files are included? Then, after extraction, a file is run which makes the appropriate copies of each file and modifies them for each nationality (I hope this is clear)? I'd volunteer to develop such a tool if needed.

I think we'll need a pretty advanced file compression program to take care of this, especially for 56k users. Does anyone know of anything better than 7zip and WinRAR? It may also be necessary to use a printed-out copy of the original ID book to avoid thumbing through dozens or hundreds of duplicate pages ingame.
lzma/ultra (ie 7z with ultra compression) is the best that I am aware of.

[iambecomelife]

It would literally take about ten minutes to get this done with Pack3d, since it wouldn't involve 3d editing.
I knew you were da man! :up:

However, there are a couple major "cons" -

-Filesize. A mod like this will incorporate a lot of DAT, SIM, ZON, and other files, making it difficult for some users to download.
Would there be any duplicate files that could perhaps be included once with a batch file copying and renaming after extracting? Or (and excuse my naivity here), if we had ten sets of each ship type, all different ship skins are included but only one set of controlling files are included? Then, after extraction, a file is run which makes the appropriate copies of each file and modifies them for each nationality (I hope this is clear)? I'd volunteer to develop such a tool if needed.

I think we'll need a pretty advanced file compression program to take care of this, especially for 56k users. Does anyone know of anything better than 7zip and WinRAR? It may also be necessary to use a printed-out copy of the original ID book to avoid thumbing through dozens or hundreds of duplicate pages ingame.
lzma/ultra (ie 7z with ultra compression) is the best that I am aware of.

Okay. What we COULD do is include one set of cfg and eqp files per unit, as long as there was a way of extracting them to each nationality during install. However, this might be more trouble than it's worth, since these files are pretty small to begin with. The larger files in the data\sea\ [unit] folders, like the DAT's, DSD, SIM, ZON must be unique for each ship to avoid ingame crashes. You may remember how I couldn't release the hospital ship when I first made it; this was because it had an identical ID to the NPTR, its parent unit, and was causing crashes.

As for the ID book, we can whip up a DOC file with the default ships in no time. If time allows, I'm going to create a more substantial version of a printable ID book that will hopefully include all the new cargo ships being made, as well as tips for identifying the MVPII's paint schemes, funnels, and structural features - just like WWII merchant ID books. This will hopefully make it interesting, and make up for the hassle of needing to print out a hard copy of it.

I'm going to take a look at that zip program you mentioned to see how well it works. Thanks for pointing it out to me.

[JScones]

Okay. What we COULD do is include one set of cfg and eqp files per unit, as long as there was a way of extracting them to each nationality during install. However, this might be more trouble than it's worth, since these files are pretty small to begin with. The larger files in the data\sea\ [unit] folders, like the DAT's, DSD, SIM, ZON must be unique for each ship to avoid ingame crashes. You may remember how I couldn't release the hospital ship when I first made it; this was because it had an identical ID to the NPTR, its parent unit, and was causing crashes.
OK, scrap that idea then. :)

As for the ID book, we can whip up a DOC file with the default ships in no time. If time allows, I'm going to create a more substantial version of a printable ID book that will hopefully include all the new cargo ships being made, as well as tips for identifying the MVPII's paint schemes, funnels, and structural features - just like WWII merchant ID books. This will hopefully make it interesting, and make up for the hassle of needing to print out a hard copy of it.
And perhaps someone could convert it to PDF for maximum flexibility?

I'm going to take a look at that zip program you mentioned to see how well it works. Thanks for pointing it out to me.
Cool. There's a number of programmes that handle the 7z compression method, most notably 7-zip, WinRAR, PowerArchiver, TUGZip and IZArc. Apparently, 7-zip with ultra solid LZMA setting provides the highest compression out of all of these tools. Some people are against solid compression because if one file becomes corrupt, then the whole archive after that point becomes unreadable, but my argument is that if one file is corrupt there's every likelyhood that I'll need to re-download the whole archive anyway!

[panthercules]

Well, I'm glad I bumped this - really good to see you mod wizzes might have a way of making this work. I had wondered if you'd have to wind up with multiple pages in the recog manual (I agree, having to page past 10 pages of C2s before getting to the next basic ship type in the book in game would be a crappy solution).

Not knowing how this stuff works, this could be a dumb idea, but do all the countries' C2s have to all wind up in the one "handelschiff" section of the book? Could you not just leave one (the original) set of generic cargo types in that section of the book, and have the country-specific versions of (for example) C2s show up in their country-specific section of the recog manual?

It seems to me that if you could have all the new, country-specific cargo ships show up in either (1) a second cargo ship section you'd basically ignore and never really have to look at since you can get all the vital stats you need for targeting your shots from the original generic section, or (2) their own country's section of the manual (in which case when you look at the Norwegian section of the manual you would see both the cargo ships as well as any war ships, but who ever really needs to look in the Norwegian seciton of the manual?), that you would still have a workable, in game manual.

Any chance that this might work?

[panthercules]

bump :up:

Looking at my personnel files logs in SH3 Commander with the ship names next to my victims, as way cool as that is, has whetted my appetite to be able to have them ID'ed with country-appropriate names (I did manage to get rid of the extraneous "S.S." prefixes - that helps a lot). Unfortunately, I have the appetite but no skill/knowledge about what it would take to add ships like this - anybody got any encouraging angles on making this work maybe?

Thanks to all you mod masters for all the great work :rock: