Ships altered by RUB 1.45?

[BladeHeart]

Last night I sunk my first T3 tanker since installing RUB 1.45 and SH3Cmdr 2.3; it weighed in at 7,700 tons! :o

Cannot find any mention in the readme for RUB of such alterations.

Does anyone know what other ships if any have been altered by the latest version, and how, i.e. tonnage and renown?

If the T3 has been altered then presumably the T2 has also been down sized? :hmm:

Thanks. :up:
:lurk:

[Jotte]

If you use the merchant variaty pack (or SH3 Commander, which have MVP included) it alters the tonnage of several types.

[The Avon Lady]

Isn't ship tonnage affected by the improved convoys mod, which is also incorporated into RUb?

[CCIP]

It's Commander's "Historical Tonnage Mod", created by Observer. It's been there for many previous versions already and alters the tonnage of common SHIII ships on accurate calculations of real tonnage averages over each month of the war.

[BladeHeart]

A T3 did have an avearge tonnage of 11,335t; to drop down to 7,700 is a decrease to about 68%. :o

Both the above mentioned mods in the replies have been around for a while and I am unaware of such a reduction happening before. Hence.......

[iambecomelife]

If you use the merchant variaty pack (or SH3 Commander, which have MVP included) it alters the tonnage of several types.

Actually the MVP only changes skins, not the tonnage of vessels. RUB alone does this.

[BladeHeart]

Just started checking the ships and found the following alterations in their files:

Troop transport is now 10,160 ts, draft 8.5m and max speed 16kts
Transport is now 7,750ts
Passenger Liner is now 13,130 ts
T3 is now 7,530 ts
T2 is now 6,700 ts
Small Tanker is now 4,910 ts

Getting tired so I'll check out the others tomorrow :zzz:

The renown values remain the same, so until the war tonnage mod is merged with RUB it should make little difference to game play. But will effect the relevance of comparing careers. :-?

Would still like to here Berry's take on this.

:lurk:

[999-Jay-999]

Jotte

If you use the merchant variety pack (or SH3 Commander, which have MVP included) it alters the tonnage of several types.


This is where I am uncertain... I have in my MOD enabler the variety pack merchants... so what your saying now that SH3 COM now has the early and later merchant packs incorporated ???, so I do not need them in the MOD directories anymore ???



Thanks.

[The Avon Lady]

Jotte

If you use the merchant variety pack (or SH3 Commander, which have MVP included) it alters the tonnage of several types.

This is where I am uncertain... I have in my MOD enabler the variety pack merchants... so what your saying now that SH3 COM now has the early and later merchant packs incorporated ???, so I do not need them in the MOD directories anymore ???
SH3 Commander includes the full MVP. Click on the help question mark icon on SH3 Commander's main screen and scroll down to read which mods are already included.

[Beery]

The mod in question is Observer's historical tonnage mod. It's been in SH3 Commander for a while. I'm not sure about the historically accurate tonnage of C3s myself. I just go by what Observer sent me.

[Beery]

As for the MVP, SH3 Commander contains every ship skin that Iambecomelife made, and a few extra ones, so the MVP is no longer needed.

[Jotte]

My bad on the MVP. Knew it was altered via SH3 commander though, somehow. :)

IIRC, C2 and C3 were US Maritime Commission ship types built for the US Navy and they had the tonnage given by original SH3. There were just under 200 C2's built.
The nerfing of the tonnage is not correct per se, T2 T3 C2 & C3 were ship classes, but as an intermidiate fix untill we get ~3000-5000 ton merchants (3d) models its quite ok. :)

[AG124]

Unrelated question, but was there also a C-1 design? I've never seen one before.

[Beery]

My bad on the MVP. Knew it was altered via SH3 commander though, somehow. :)

IIRC, C2 and C3 were US Maritime Commission ship types built for the US Navy and they had the tonnage given by original SH3. There were just under 200 C2's built.
The nerfing of the tonnage is not correct per se, T2 T3 C2 & C3 were ship classes, but as an intermidiate fix untill we get ~3000-5000 ton merchants (3d) models its quite ok. :)

There are always good reasons for adjusting games away from apparent realistic figures. Often these reasons have to do with play balance and 'big picture' realism. In this case I would guess that the tonnages were altered away from their real values because only a few ships were included in the game, and perhaps they tend to be bigger than the wide range of ships used in reality. In a game such as this, leaving the few ships that there are with their absolute realistic tonnage might satisfy the needs on the micro scale, but when you look at the big picture, such attention to detail might throw off the realism on the 'big picture' scale. For example, if the game only had one ship model, and if it was a perfectly historically accurate huge tanker, resulting career scores would be unrealistically high. The game would be super-accurate on the small scale, but one look at the big picture would show a big problem.

Anyway, only Observer can really answer the concerns in this thread. From my perspective, the career tonnage totals are my ultimate gauge for tonnage realism, and they are within acceptable tolerances.

[Jotte]

As i said, its an ok intermidiate fix for lack of the mid tonnage ships ingame. ;)

[BladeHeart]

Beery wrote The mod in question is Observer's historical tonnage mod. It's been in SH3 Commander for a while.

I'm use to Observer's mod and the effects it has on ships. But a 32% or so difference is quite substantial, and certainly not one that I have ever encountered to date since this mod was incorporated in RUB.

Does the T3 still have an unaltered 11,355 tonnage in the base file?

[Beery]

When we moved over from the date-based to the cfg-based method of implementing the random tonnage mod, the tonnages in the mod were strictly defined by Observer, based on his investigations into wartime tonnage. He gave me specific upper and lower limits for each ship in his mod. As I recall, nothng was changed from what he gave me. In fact he was VERY determined that nothing should be changed, and I was very sure to stick to his requirements.

As for specifics, I have no idea what C3 tonnages were in real life or in the standard game. I'm a big picture kind of guy when it comes to peripheral stuff like this, so I leave that stuff to others who know better. :)

[iambecomelife]

Unrelated question, but was there also a C-1 design? I've never seen one before.

They existed, but they were rare. IIRC they looked a lot like C-2's.

I'd love to resolve the inflated tonnage problem by creating some medium-sized ships but I still haven't mastered Pack3d resizing. I wouldn't mind it if some of the 400-plus foot ships we're making were scaled down to maybe 4500 tons or so when they're released.

[AG124]

I was having trouble resizing objects too, but under wings3d - when I do so, each surface of the objects comes apart.

BTW - What is the best way to change the actual shape of a ship's hull? I would like to make my Ammunition Freighter flush-decked. If the textures get screwed up, maybe the developers will fix them.

[BladeHeart]

I've PM Observer to get to the bottom of this. :)

[iambecomelife]

I was having trouble resizing objects too, but under wings3d - when I do so, each surface of the objects comes apart.

BTW - What is the best way to change the actual shape of a ship's hull? I would like to make my Ammunition Freighter flush-decked. If the textures get screwed up, maybe the developers will fix them.

You've got to use the "select adjacent vertices" function. Once I started using it I really managed to improve some of the ships I'd already created. What you do is click on the dotted pyramid in wings3d (should be on the left) and you'll see the model's vertices exposed. Drag a box around the deckhouse or whatever you want to modify, right click, and use the resize function. (You may want to move the object vertically so it's out of the way of the hull and doesn't mess up adjacent faces. For instance when I work on the NKGN I usually select the superstructure with the "adjacent faces" tab (pyramid #3), move it up, resize with the adjacent vetices pyramid (pyramid #1) and lower it back to the deck when I'm done. This allows resizing of ship parts without the faces shrinking away from one another. It's also a great way to reshape the hulls; I used it to give my old-fashioned merchants straight, WWI-era bows.

[Beery]

I've PM Observer to get to the bottom of this. :)

If it really bothers you, just change the values in the Ship displacements.cfg file. It's in plain English.

[Observer]

Hmm...must have missed this thread, but anyways.

I think the confusion might be based around the classes of ships chosen by the developers for SH3. Instead of generic classes of merchants, we are handicapped by specific classes of ships which are intended to represent the wide variety of merchants sailing the ocean during WWII.

Using the T2 tanker for example, this specific class of tankers, was built between 1942 and 1945 (also built after the war, but not relevant to the purpose of the discussion). If we used the T2 in it's absolute specific sense, we would have no medium sized tanker prior to 1942.

The random tonnage mod does not treat the specific classes of merchants included in SH3 as the class their name might represent. Instead, I use these classes to represent a variety of possible tankers sailing between 1939 and 1945.

The numbers used in the mod included with SH3 Commander uses data from about 3000 different ship sinkings to develop a range of possible tonnages for generic classes of ships. For the purpose of the random tonnage mod, the following are examples of rules I applied to ship classes (not all inclusive):

C3 Cargo - Represents a large sized dry cargo merchant
C2 Cargo - Represents a medium sized dry cargo merchant
Small Merchant - Represents a small sized dry cargo merchant
Coastal Merchant - Represents a class of tramp steamers
T3 Tanker - Represents a large sized class of tankers
T2 Tanker - Represents a medium sized class of tankers

The values for the tonnage variations are based upon some distribution curves for each class with a 2% increase per year in the seed tonnage value (the value used in the Ship displacements.cfg) and a possible plus or minus 15% variation in actual tonnage. This means it's possible to get some tonnage values at the low end, as well as the high end. In about 1000 different simulations of possible values (using Monte Carlo analysis) the average results were representative of each class ships using, for example, those classes above.

You are welcome to see the data, analysis and statistical basis for each seed value used in the Ship displacements.cfg. Let me know and I'll send you a link to the file.

If you are not satisfied by this answer and the low tonnage still bothers you I suggest:

1. Change the Ship displacements.cfg to tonnage values to stock and set the upper, lower and YearlyAdjust to 1.0. You could also tweak these down to provide a smaller variation, but I think variety is the spice of life, and I like not knowing how many torpedoes it's going to take to sink a big tanker/merchant and if it's going to be "worth" the effort.
2. Change the specific merchant class names to something more generic in the EnglishNames.cfg. If you don't want to make the changes I can post the version I use.

[BladeHeart]

Observer

I have already sent a PM to you regarding this matter. Intrigued rather then dissatisfied is how I would say I feel about this matter. :hmm:

May I take you up on your offer of the link to the file?

Cheers. :up:

[Observer]

Yes, I got the PM, but thought I would reply here for everyone to see at least the rationale involved in case there are other questions.

I posted a mod like this a long time ago when I did the first version of random tonnage, but haven't updated it since with all of the new ships that have been added. This is an updated version.

http://rapidshare.de/files/7711549/Generic_Merchant_Names.zip.html

Again, I am happy to share the data and analysis if anyone wants to see it.

:up: