Large Cargo tonnage?

[VonHelsching]

How many tns are Large Cargos? I just sunk two close to Gibraltar and they counted approx 6700 tn each. I thought they were approx 17000 tns.

I have installed (of course) Additional Merchants, Harbour Traffic, SH3 Commander and Hospital Ship. Does any of them randomize the tonnage of ships? Thanks.

[Sailor Steve]

There are two different ones; the one with the tall funnel was 17,000 tons, but this has been changed in RUB (I think). Anyway, the Recognition Manual has them all listed and should tell you the exact tonnages in your game.

[VonHelsching]

Oooops! I just checked my recognition manual and it is indeed 6700 tons!!! I am definitly sure it was 17000 because I sunk one some days ago, right after installing Additional Merchants.

Somebody stole my tonnage! :huh:

And it gets worse! C2s are listed 3820 tns, C3s 5100 tns and Passenger Liners 13000!!!

Probably it was Harbour traffic...

Are these supposed to be historic values?

Is there any way to revert to the default without uninstalling HT?

Thanks

[JScones]

SH3Cmdr adjusts ship displacements. FYI the values used by SH3Cmdr are considered pretty much spot on, with variation of +/- 15% and yearly increase of 2% (some ships such as the Victory and Liberty are excluded from the variation - they maintain the same displacement throughout the war). Observer spent a fair bit of time researching the values to get them right. Read http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=43786&highlight= which discusses this topic in more detail, including an explanation from Observer.

But, if indeed you do want to remain the Tonnage King (LOL), you can simply delete or rename the SH3Cmdr 'Ship displacements.cfg' file and all will be removed. Of course, if you have installed some other mod that varies displacement, you'll have to look at it too.

[VonHelsching]

Thanks JS! I didn't know that SH3 Commander included mods. -Just visited your site and read all the documentation. - GREAT WORK!

It seems that Observer did a lot of statistical work for the random tonnage mod, but it made the game "flat". To explain myself

- C2s and C3s are very close
- Small merchants seem to get closer to C2s
- T2s are higher than T3s (at least this month of the war)
- Passenger Liners: 13.000 is a way small figure: Believe me
I live in Greece and we have a huge liner fleet for the islands.
Even the very old ones I remember in the early 70s should
have been close to that figure - and we are not talking about
Atlantic ships! -
- Large cargos were definitly larger than Liberty's in real life
(I would agree with 12.000, but not 6.700, less than a
Liberty)

As one person wrote in the thread you provided, SH3 is a Uboat Ace simulation, not of the average uboat captain.

- A lot of SH3 players ignore small and coastal merchants
Even if the proportion of small ships in the game was
greater to simulate the real life average, Sh3 players would
still ignore them to go for the big ships.
- A large number of SH3 patrols are made away from coasts
where you would expect to find small ships in real life
(very small merchants and masted ships of 150 - 400 tns). Many
RL uboat captains probably did not have a choice over big
and small ships because they were sent on patrol in places
where only small ships existed.
- Most serious: The game lacks the variability of smaller ships:
My best guess is that in order to simulate the real life average
tonnage, we would have to tweak convoy compositions. In
the hell of a convoy battle it was probably harder to target a
large ship in the middle collumn than in SH3. But, if these ships
existed in the game SH3 players would ignore them two times.

I'm more in the "enjoyability" side, than on the realism side, If you know what I mean...Making merchant tonnage "flatter" it is exactly
the same with making a 8 inch uboat deck gun fire every 60 seconds, just because it is the right figure on average.

[VonHelsching]

It just occured to me...Since SH3 includes some mods, does any one of them change the availability date of the XXI? I really want my XXI in April 1944 for some payback time... :arrgh!:

Thanks

[JScones]

As one person wrote in the thread you provided, SH3 is a Uboat Ace simulation, not of the average uboat captain.
Hehe. I should point out that later Beery (my co-developer of SH3Cmdr) saw it from Observer's perspective - hence why the figures are in SH3Cmdr! ;)

Anyway, as I said, feel free to delete or adjust 'Ship displacements.cfg'. It's your game, so make it the way you want it. :up: In which case you may also want to review the U-boat availability changes that SH3Cmdr implements which correct the dates that 1, 2 and 7 Flotillas get their boats, especially if you are not into the realism - you may not enjoy being stuck in a Type II in 1 Flotilla until Mar '41! Oh, and 'Miscellaneous.cfg' controls the randomisation of the time Destroyers spend looking for you after losing contact. By default SH3 has it set always to 15 minutes. SH3Cmdr randomises it to between 15 and 45 (about as realistic as the SH3 engine allows - make it any higher and you end up with free rein on an unescorted convoy).

Re XXI availability, to a degree it depends on what other mods you have installed. But at the least, with SH3Cmdr you will not get it until Mar '45 if you stick around in the 7th Flotilla. Basically, you need to be in 11 or 33 Flotilla to get it at the stock date of Apr '44. But again, you can adjust the dates SH3Cmdr uses - refer to the SH3Cmdr FAQ thread here (http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=45430).

[VonHelsching]

Many thanks JS! Especially for your prompt response.

I did the changes you wrote and everything is OK.

I'll do my best to mod your mod :D and get my beloved XXI just in time!

BTW, realism or "enjoyalism" (c), the Typ II is really FUN!

[JScones]

I'll do my best to mod your mod :D and get my beloved XXI just in time!
Everything else you may want to change should really be no more than selecting or unselecting an option in SH3Cmdr. It's only the above three inclusions (U-boat availability, Lost contact time variation and Ship Displacement variation) that the SH3Cmdr interface doesn't provide options for and always includes.

Anyway, enjoy!

[VonHelsching]

Back again... :88)

I read the FAQ and it was quite clear:

I quote:

"Q: This realistic U-boat availability stuff sounds good, but I want my new U-boat now! What can I do?
A: U-boat availability in the stock SH3 applies equally to all Flotillas even though some Flotillas often received a U-boat type months after the type was available to other Flotillas. In addition, the stock SH3 really got it wrong with the 1st Flotilla!

SH3 Commander corrects these anomolies by providing availability dates that reflect the real dates experienced by each individual Flotilla.

...

So, want to revert back to the stock SH3 U-boat availability dates? Simply edit or delete 'U-boat availability.cfg', located in your SH3 Commander\Cfg folder.
...

quote end.


I did delete that file. But...

I searched the file structure in /program files/sh3 commander.../roster and found a file concerning XXIs: It's SSTypeXXI.cfg. I opened it and:

"[UnitClass]
ClassName=SSTypeXXI
UnitType=200
AppearanceDate=19440627
DisappearanceDate=19450621
DisplayName=Type XXI

[Unit 1]
Name=U-2501
DOC=19440627
DOD=1945050

Does this affect the availability date? It says June 1944, not April...

Or does it have to do only with the individual u-boat numbers?

[Sailor Steve]

As one person wrote in the thread you provided, SH3 is a Uboat Ace simulation, not of the average uboat captain.
Not for me. RUB includes a version of the 20/20 mod, and I see so few ships I take 'em where I can get 'em. I'll go after any merchant, as long as he's over 2000 tons. I might not see another one for weeks, if at all.

Of course this means that sometimes I'm almost out of eels when I run into that big convoy, but... :damn:

[malcymalc]

Not for me. RUB includes a version of the 20/20 mod, and I see so few ships I take 'em where I can get 'em. I'll go after any merchant, as long as he's over 2000 tons. I might not see another one for weeks, if at all.

Of course this means that sometimes I'm almost out of eels when I run into that big convoy, but...

Me too - I am running RuB1.45 and SH3Cmdr plus some mods to improve the look of the game. I looked at my patrol history to date (09/39 to 09/40) and did some comparisons with my last stock game patrol history. The two are not directly compatible because I was driving a Type VII in the stock game and a IIa in my new game - all my activity has been in the North Sea with the new game so no fat convoys for me.

So far in 11 patrols I have sunk the following merchantmen - 1 small coastal vessel, 1 tug, 4 coastal merchantmen, 6 small merchantmen, 4 C2s, 7C3s and 1 large cargo. Total tonnage 98,510. Average tonnage per ship 4,104 (if you strip out the two small craft - deck gun & calm weather - you come to 4,420 tons).

In the stock game looking at the same period I sank 45 ships totalling 232,721 tons (Kretschmer - who's he?) for an average of 5171 (I have not gone through to remove small craft that I took with my deck gun but obviously there were a few).

These numbers seem to fit with reality perfectly well to me. In short I think the tonnage mod is an acceptable route to reducing the bloated scores that one can run up with SHIII.

The new ships being developed by the modders will increase the variety of small to medium merchantmen that appear in the game - the tonnage mod adds uncertainty about the size of what you have actually whacked - which is as it should be in my opinion...

Regards
Malcolm