i think i fixed the storm gun problem

[redbrow]

i noticed that in IuB the wind values for using the guns were increased. i increased mine to JUST where when moving at FLANK in heavy wind the waves would come to the gunner's lower legs on average, and mid chest at random high wave points. Ok, that would be silly except there could be times when captains or crews really wanted to take silly chances - SO I FIXED IT:

i raised the normal fatigue values for all guns, since i think those locations would be very demanding anyway. But what i did most was greatly increase the BadWeather values. That combined with the slower gun fire rates and larger chance of missing, means that if a captain wants to risk his grunners in a storm, he can, but, if he is not real carefull those men are going to waste away to the point that they are either dead or almost so. which in my mind means they either drown or almost did. In order to sink a ship in a storm with the deckgun alone means a captain would have to use up most if not all of his crew manning the gun.

therefore in most cases a captain would only risk using the deckgun to quickly finish off ships that were already hit by eels.

i also noted that when water went over the gun itself, the gun usually did not fire.

i more than tripled the sh3 default bad weather value on the gun and i more than doubled the regular fatigue on the gun.

i am still tweeking it.

[redbrow]

Never mind... i was wrong. what i thought was happening wasn't. the storm factor wasn't doing anything. it was the fact that i had set the regular fatigue highter in the gun. what i thought was a smooth increase of fatigue in the gun crew wasn't, i had tested it by speeding up time so that 15 minutes pasted real fast. and then i saw that my men had lost 1/4th their strength so i figured that in one hour they would be wasted. but the truth is they lost all that strength the instant i dropped them in to the gun. then for the next 2 or 3 hours very little else happens. it doesn't make a lot of sense.

i'll keep quiet until i solve this or give up :doh:

[Panama Red]

Keep playing with it, that is part of the fun of the game. Who knows what you may find in the end. :hmm: :hmm: :hmm:

[redbrow]

i realize that the BadWeather value listed in fatigue for the deckgun is merely a bit of 'relic programming' left there by the Devs. Since its impossible to put men into the deckgun slots when the weather is OFFICIALLY bad, that coefficient never gets used. that's to bad, cause if one could place men into that position during storming, one could allow the deckgun to be manned in storms but at a high cost to the captain. Actually what would be needed is a scaled version of the BadWeather numeric value, increasing the damage to the gunners depending on the level of the winds or waves. ideally i would like to see a system where the sub's speed, deck-wash and wind all came into play. It appears the DEVs had once intended to allow men into the deckgun slots during bad weather, then decided to drop it.

The whole fatigue system is more complex than it seems at first glance. i note that none of the fatigue mods, such as RUB, Vitamins, or IuB really deal with it correctly or seem to understand just how the system works in its subtle aspects. there are at least three and perhaps four areas - 2 are inside Basic.cfg - where fatigue is controlled. The so-called "RegularFactor" fatigue_coef effects a sailor's fatigue level the very first moment the man is dropped into a position!! :doh: You can see this by ramping these RegularFactors up to high values. this of course is not very 'elegant' when it comes to programming. but the original sh3 game settings were so small that this system was undetectable in the game.

How the clock effects this system after that is anything but smooth. there are time-step factors that seem to be designed trying to capture short term and long term fatigue. this makes the fatigue build up move in fits and starts.

one goofy thing i found is that SH3 and Vitamins treats all the positions about the same as regards storm fatigue and regular fatigue. i find found this to be silly. A man on watch on the tower with huge waves of cold water pouring over him should get fatigued at a much greater rate than the radio man in his private warm cabin listening to radio tunes. Any physiologist will tell you that loud constant noise creates stress, and stress increases fatigue. So the men in the engine room should, because of noise and fumes, get tired at a much faster rate than the officers sipping coffee in the command room. SH3 took this into account, but not to the degree i think it should have. Vitamins took little account of this. RUB seemed to handle it best, but still treated the noisy engine room as equal to a torpedo room.

for my self i intend to remedy this and for one thing i am making my storm factors extremely high for the watch on the tower.

i think i finally inderstand why RUB and IuB went to the fatigue systems that they did. those who made RUB saw that the SH3 fatigue system in no way reflected reality, so they created a pseudo-system that attempted to model fatigue over a long period. In the short term this system did not square with reality, but did go long way toward creating a valid long term system. but in the short term the RUB system does create strange effects now and then.

IuB system simply says, 'yes, the SH3 fatigue system is hosed, so let's just dispense with it entirely!'

Vitamins philosophy was, 'yes, its kinda screwy, but let's make it work a bit better and more fun for the short term just so we have some excuse for promotions and awards.'