Improved Convoys Audit for IC, RuB, IuB, etc

[jasonb885]

Yeah, I'm back. Okay some people noticed.

Most of you probably don't know, but the basis of the random element of the campaign in many of the SH3 mods is ImprovedConvoys.

As such, if something in the random element sucks, primarily convoys, reply and let me know. I have some moments and if there's anything I can fix, I have some time.

Elements that can be adjusted include convoy composition including ship type, quantity, escort variety, column length, number of columns, nationality, and speed. Additionally, I can adjust spawn probabilities and contact report probabilities for both convoys, single ships, and task forces.

I can also adjust task force compositon in the same manner. On that note, if anyone's actually seen a task force recently and it's three columns instead of one, let me know as I've never had a chance to test my task force improvements. (Yeah, they should be 3 columns now with only a single BB and, 3 CLs, and more destroyers.)

If anyone has any other thoughts, let me know. If not, I'm fairly satisified with IC, so that'll probably be it forever.

(I never got around to redoing convoys AS, GUF, GUS, UGS, GUS, MKS, MKF, KMF, or KMS which are mostly Med convoys, as there wasn't much information on those -- but I haven't heard any complaints, yet...)

Thanks.

:up:

[jasonb885]

Heh.

Okay, I give up.

I guess SH3 really is about dead. Nine months ago people even cared.

I'll add Panama in proportions I consider representative and leave it at that.

Expect a final release of IC within the next week or so and I suppose that concludes my participation.

:roll:

[CCIP]

Hey, why did I miss this thread?

What do I want to see? I want to see the neutral convoy ships issue addressed.

Also, from WaW experience, where everyone used IC extensively - I'd suggest reducing the cruiser appearance in South Atlantic convoys a little bit, and especially reducing the appearance of Fleet Carriers in the arctic. (Everyone operating there seems to have sunk a carrier by now...)

[Ducimus]

I have a question regarding IC.

I know in your notes you said you reduced single merchant's, but honestly i think its overkill

I went through IC awhile ago, and found that much traffic groups, has say

a 15% chance to spawn. Ok no problem, but the kick in the teeth of that group that has a 15% chance to spawn, the single ship that the group consists of, has a 0% chance to spawn. Something i was always scratching my head about.

On a side (and somewhat debatable) note, i think reducing the single traffic as the war progresses isnt the way to go. Shipping didn't just stop, it became better protected. So on that basis, id recommend either upping the convoy frequency, or including alot of extra destroyer/aircover protection on shipping routes.

[VonHelsching]

Heh.

Okay, I give up.

I guess SH3 really is about dead. Nine months ago people even cared.

I'll add Panama in proportions I consider representative and leave it at that.

Expect a final release of IC within the next week or so and I suppose that concludes my participation.

:roll:

There are a lot of new people to the forums esp. after December, who do not know what IC is and what it does (hell, I don't know details either), so be a little patient. :up:

A re-introduction to the mod (at your first post) would be a good idea, since nobody is going to read a 19 page post in the Mods section. I fainted after the 6th trying to find out how to raise the probabilities of single traffic without asking. BTW, how can I do this; ie reverting back to the stock game spawn probabilities?

Thanks!

[jasonb885]

Hey, why did I miss this thread?

What do I want to see? I want to see the neutral convoy ships issue addressed.

Also, from WaW experience, where everyone used IC extensively - I'd suggest reducing the cruiser appearance in South Atlantic convoys a little bit, and especially reducing the appearance of Fleet Carriers in the arctic. (Everyone operating there seems to have sunk a carrier by now...)

Not sure -- Actually I think it's because of all the 'other' threads about some particular topic... anyway.

Your WaW experience is most helpful.

The neutral issue has been addressed since Monday when I stayed up until like 3 am and the Sunday before when I went to bed at like 6 am. I finally decided on up hacking Sergbuto's Nationality Mod v3.0 with some thoughts from him and others. I used the Chess set tool to unpack and repack the images and a hex editor to simply change the names to equal length alternates.

I was playing at whatever the SH3 default value is (reinstalled) and I had the silly ship contacts in realtime and they were all red, so I think it works. Although I think Norway wasn't neutral when I found that convoy. Anyway, it didn't crash and I double checked the RND layer and that ship was definitely one of my modified Norway ships and not a stock one.

So, yeah, it's fixed.

Check out the IC thread for that.

I'm pleased someone finally found an Arctic convoy. Those were my first. I can adjust the CVEs there. It would've worked better if silly SH3 actually had a close escort group feature, but it doesn't, so CVEs just show up in the convoy!

I didn't know there were still too many CLs and AUXs in the South Atlantic convoys. I tried to tweak that out a bit, reducing the levels by some 10 or 15%. It's in the changelog somewhere exactly what I changed them to. I can reduce them more, though.

It's good to actually have playtest reports to use, otherwise I had no idea what to do.

;)

I'll do the spawn things tomorrow or Saturday night and release a new version. Hopefully I'll get to the Panama addition as well.

:|\

Oh, and no one's see any of my ITs yet? (Improved Task Forces...) I never had time to see if they actually spawn, although I got a contact report for on on my second test patrol on Tuesday but couldn't catch up.

[jasonb885]

Heh.

Okay, I give up.

I guess SH3 really is about dead. Nine months ago people even cared.

I'll add Panama in proportions I consider representative and leave it at that.

Expect a final release of IC within the next week or so and I suppose that concludes my participation.

:roll:

There are a lot of new people to the forums esp. after December, who do not know what IC is and what it does (hell, I don't know details either), so be a little patient. :up:

A re-introduction to the mod (at your first post) would be a good idea, since nobody is going to read a 19 page post in the Mods section. I fainted after the 6th trying to find out how to raise the probabilities of single traffic without asking. BTW, how can I do this; ie reverting back to the stock game spawn probabilities?

Thanks!

Not a bad idea, actually, but I didn't want to play up like someone just lookin' for publicity. But, I just didn't have any more time to play it low and hope someone notices I'm actually working on this again. I'm just too busy with my new job, so...

Anyway, if you have questions, certainly, ask. I'm happy to address whatever I can.

As to the single ship traffic, the original goal was to also include a realistic reduction in single ship traffic.

If you wanted the stock game's values, you'd probably need to use the stock game's Campaign_RND.mis and skip IC entirely.

Or, if you were really bored, you could use something like Wordpad and do about 6,000 search and replaces for


SpawnProbability=20
ReportPosProbability=20


And replace them with, say, 90 and 90.

The first is the likelihood that it will spawn in the game world. The second is how often you actually hear about it via the radio reports.

Unfortunately, reverting is not an easy task.

:-?

[jasonb885]

I like your signature.

:)


I have a question regarding IC.

I know in your notes you said you reduced single merchant's, but honestly i think its overkill


It could be. It was discussed a while ago, but I'm always open to new facts and figures.


I went through IC awhile ago, and found that much traffic groups, has say

a 15% chance to spawn. Ok no problem, but the kick in the teeth of that group that has a 15% chance to spawn, the single ship that the group consists of, has a 0% chance to spawn. Something i was always scratching my head about.


Yes, that's because I got sick of finding tug boats and small coastal merchants on the high seas. I was too lazy to correct the routes for all these dozens of ships by hand, so I just set them to zero. No harm, no foul. Nothing else should have a SpawnProbability of 0. If anything else does, it's an error on my part and should be corrected.


On a side (and somewhat debatable) note, i think reducing the single traffic as the war progresses isnt the way to go. Shipping didn't just stop, it became better protected. So on that basis, id recommend either upping the convoy frequency, or including alot of extra destroyer/aircover protection on shipping routes.

Could be.

There was a lot of discussion about that as well. Initially there was a lot of single ship traffic, but eventually it was just ships fast enough that they couldn't sail with convoys. There was certainly a reduction in their number, with, as you said, an increase in the number of coastal convoys and things.

I think CCIP originally modeled coastal convoys, but that never made it into my RND layer as I think I was getting bored by last August or so... it's a thought, though.

Anyway, if anyone has numbers or links, these items are certainly open to renewed discussion.

[Salvadoreno]

complaint i have is the composition of ships, i'd like more danish ships and norweigan ships in convoys, not just british and american. Maybe some Greek ships too, i rarely see any of those countries ships. And convoy AI can still improve, but its been improved a lot.

[VonHelsching]

Not a bad idea, actually, but I didn't want to play up like someone just lookin' for publicity. But, I just didn't have any more time to play it low and hope someone notices I'm actually working on this again. I'm just too busy with my new job, so...

Anyway, if you have questions, certainly, ask. I'm happy to address whatever I can.

As to the single ship traffic, the original goal was to also include a realistic reduction in single ship traffic.

If you wanted the stock game's values, you'd probably need to use the stock game's Campaign_RND.mis and skip IC entirely.

Or, if you were really bored, you could use something like Wordpad and do about 6,000 search and replaces for


SpawnProbability=20
ReportPosProbability=20


And replace them with, say, 90 and 90.

The first is the likelihood that it will spawn in the game world. The second is how often you actually hear about it via the radio reports.

Unfortunately, reverting is not an easy task.

:-?

Thanks Jason! I understand about the realism scope of your work, but my 5 year son can't. In the 15-20 minutes we play SH3 before he goes to bed every night we *have_to_find_a_ship*. No offence. I just wanted to grab just the good stuff from your mod, i.e. some juicy targets like light cruisers inside a convoy.

I didn't realise that the probabilities were in the rnd file :88) . BRB
.
.
.
Man, that's a lot of work you have done :o
I just imported the stock rnd it to MS Word and it is 6.380 pages :doh:

Not a simple task...

And a final question: What about the new ships introduced like the large transport, the converted whale factory and the coastal tanker. How are they treated in the rnd file?

Thanks! :up:

[Der Teddy Bar]

Thanks Jason! I understand about the realism scope of your work, but my 5 year son can't. In the 15-20 minutes we play SH3 before he goes to bed every night we *have_to_find_a_ship*. No offence. I just wanted to grab just the good stuff from your mod, i.e. some juicy targets like light cruisers inside a convoy.
Thats the joy of single missions?

[VonHelsching]

Thanks Jason! I understand about the realism scope of your work, but my 5 year son can't. In the 15-20 minutes we play SH3 before he goes to bed every night we *have_to_find_a_ship*. No offence. I just wanted to grab just the good stuff from your mod, i.e. some juicy targets like light cruisers inside a convoy.
Thats the joy of single missions?

Well, that trick was working say 6 months ago. Now he remembers the exact spot on the map we saved the game the previous day. He even remembers the voices of the crew and the individual officer's faces. He knows the two active campaigns I have, and every night I let him choose.

SH3Gen helped a lot, pinpointing convoys and other contacts. Also, I'm not into realism much, so this helps.

*Jason, sorry for hijacking*

[gouldjg]

Hi Jason

There was a long thread created a while ago concerning the DD behaviour(you may have missed it).

Me, CB and others were playing with their sensors to try and make them more aggressive/reactive to the sub.

Sometimes in many tests, we only were attacked by one out of the pack etc and sometimes it was a good attack with 3 ships hunting. Same convoy!

Without going into too much tiny detail, some have changed DD crew to veteran in hopes to compensate but I was wondering if you would maybe have any suggestions/ideas in making convoy escorts or attached hunt class DD react better/smarter.



That maybe too wild,

Primarily what was noticed was random and we could not suss it out.

Some times just one escort hunted you and sometimes three did. The best times were when the three escorts communicate or look like they are communicating.

Maybe you could suss out a more aggressive formation/composition, realistic or not but at least plausible. This is a major gameplay issue I would love to be improved.

The sensors were tweaked to death but although they could slightly improve detection probability, they could not improve the non responsive DD's or way/how many attacked so I would not waste too much time looking into that.

Just a thought,

If it is a total ai hard code issue, I will just have to continue as it is.

When I finished my course work, I am going to look at turn radius of the escorts to see if that could alter their attack styles and if so, set random folders similar to Hemisent’s thermal layers, but that’s a while of for me yet.

Thanks for all your hard work: up:

[jasonb885]

complaint i have is the composition of ships, i'd like more danish ships and norweigan ships in convoys, not just british and american. Maybe some Greek ships too, i rarely see any of those countries ships. And convoy AI can still improve, but its been improved a lot.

Interesting.

I don't believe Denmark is in the stock game. It's in Nationality Mod v3.0 I think, so I could possibly add ships, but I need some information on their numbers in convoys.

There are definitely Greek ships in convoys where they appeared in approximate percentages. If you're curious, I encourage _everyone_ to look at the root directory of Improved Convoys and read the IC Inventory file. It explains the composition of each convoy in the game in detail. Everything I changed is included per convoy.

:up:

[jasonb885]

...

Thanks Jason! I understand about the realism scope of your work, but my 5 year son can't. In the 15-20 minutes we play SH3 before he goes to bed every night we *have_to_find_a_ship*. No offence. I just wanted to grab just the good stuff from your mod, i.e. some juicy targets like light cruisers inside a convoy.

I didn't realise that the probabilities were in the rnd file :88) . BRB
...

And a final question: What about the new ships introduced like the large transport, the converted whale factory and the coastal tanker. How are they treated in the rnd file?

Thanks! :up:

Actually, my bad. Easy task.

Open the stock RND and delete entries RND Group 65 - Rnd Group 118 I believe. Then, copy those from Improved Convoys.

Boom, you have the Improved Convoys.

You _must_ also install all the Roster files and other included files in IC, too, but only the campaign itself needs to be modified.

Essentially, you're taking just the IC convoy definitions and putting them in the stock game campaign. Everything else will be as it was.

Just make sure you use the original Campaign_RND.mis and then place 65 - 118 from IC into it.

As for the new ships, those aren't used in IC as they require that I ship new ship DAT files and such. They're big, and they'd require that I make modest modifications to the way I postprocess the RND layer to include them in some sane fashion. Things like a Whale ship probably rarely showed up in convoys, not knowing the details. Same with a costal tanker. A new transport would rarely show up. I only have transports in a couple convoys in the '42+, maybe one or two. Transports were pretty rare.

:up:

[jasonb885]

Hi Jason

There was a long thread created a while ago concerning the DD behaviour(you may have missed it).

Me, CB and others were playing with their sensors to try and make them more aggressive/reactive to the sub.

Sometimes in many tests, we only were attacked by one out of the pack etc and sometimes it was a good attack with 3 ships hunting. Same convoy!


Yes, I followed that thread with interest.


Without going into too much tiny detail, some have changed DD crew to veteran in hopes to compensate but I was wondering if you would maybe have any suggestions/ideas in making convoy escorts or attached hunt class DD react better/smarter.


The RND layer itself doesn't really have any control over these aspects. I can only control the number, type, and rated crew difficulty. I tended to include more escorts in IC than in the stock RND, although I did an overall reduction in difficult so never see Elite escorts at all, as that's nearly 100% fatal. I was hoping having more escorts would at least increase the chance that you will get detected, even if not effective prosecuted.


That maybe too wild,

Primarily what was noticed was random and we could not suss it out.

Some times just one escort hunted you and sometimes three did. The best times were when the three escorts communicate or look like they are communicating.

Maybe you could suss out a more aggressive formation/composition, realistic or not but at least plausible. This is a major gameplay issue I would love to be improved.

The sensors were tweaked to death but although they could slightly improve detection probability, they could not improve the non responsive DD's or way/how many attacked so I would not waste too much time looking into that.

Just a thought,

If it is a total ai hard code issue, I will just have to continue as it is.

When I finished my course work, I am going to look at turn radius of the escorts to see if that could alter their attack styles and if so, set random folders similar to Hemisent’s thermal layers, but that’s a while of for me yet.

Thanks for all your hard work: up:

I don't know much about game mechanics or hex editing, so there isn't much I can do, other than change the number, type, and difficulty level of escorts in each convoy.

But I'm happy to introduce changes to those items if there's sufficient evidence that there is a serious issue with convoy escort, like there being too many easy to sink CLs. (Oops.)

:up:

[VonHelsching]

[quote=VonHelsching]...


Open the stock RND and delete entries RND Group 65 - Rnd Group 118 I believe. Then, copy those from Improved Convoys.

Boom, you have the Improved Convoys.

:up:

Jason! You're the man. Thanks! :rock:

BTW, since you were away for some time, and you're into realism, check this out:

http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=49412

VonHelsching (my real name is Jason too :sunny:)

[jasonb885]

...

BTW, since you were away for some time, and you're into realism, check this out:

http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=49412

VonHelsching (my real name is Jason too :sunny:)

Sweet.

:up:

[VonHelsching]

Made the changes.

Also I reviewed the changes between the stock and your rnd files.
Just two questions:

1. The TF 1717 (last one) you added is the group of Cpt \Walker?
2. JSGME popped a message sayintg that flag.dat and defcide.cfg will overwrite the same 2 files of Harbour Traffic 1.47. Is it OK to overwrite?

Thanks.

[jasonb885]

Made the changes.

Also I reviewed the changes between the stock and your rnd files.
Just two questions:

1. The TF 1717 (last one) you added is the group of Cpt \Walker?
2. JSGME popped a message sayintg that flag.dat and defcide.cfg will overwrite the same 2 files of Harbour Traffic 1.47. Is it OK to overwrite?

Thanks.

1) Yes.
2) Worry.

I don't know anything about HT, but I imagine it's using some version of the Nationality Mod. I removed some nations and replaced them with new named nations to fix the neutral convoy 'feature', so if HT uses any of those nations such that ships spawn under those flags, my guess is at the very least those ships will no longer have any flags.

If you end up with no flags, it probably isn't the end of the world. In fact, I think that will be the result, as you can add a new nation under the Roster and visit the museum and it will appear, but the ships will be flagless. So, you'll probably be safe insofar as you won't have a CTD. But, some ships will be missing traffic in some harbors out there in the world, somewhere.

I have a list of the nations I pruned, I think.


# Need

Greece 24 -> Croatia -> GreeceC
Netherland 24 -> Latvia -> NECnvy
Norway 24 -> Czechia -> NOConvy
Russia 16 -> Colombia -> RussianC
Sweden 24 -> Estonia -> SwedenC
American 16 -> RSI -> USA


So those nations are now gone. If you find the SCR has any of those nations, they now have no flags. (The middle entries on each line.)

Same deal with DefSide.cfg. Some of the nations HT defines don't exist in my mod -- probably all of them as missing -- this may be more serious, or the game might simply decide unlisted countries are neutral, friendly, or enemy based on some game default.

The worst case scenario with DefSides.cfg is you need to copy my additions into their DefSides.cfg and renumber so each has a unique number. May be necessary, may not. Depends on how often you come across odd, non-stock-game nations in harbors you visit frequently.

:up:

I guess the HT issues are something anyone wanting to include the latest IC in a larger mod would have to address. I always found excess harbor traffic to slow down my system, so I've never used anything that increases it. Whatever makes the game fun, though.

:yep:

[jasonb885]

...
Also, from WaW experience, where everyone used IC extensively - I'd suggest reducing the cruiser appearance in South Atlantic convoys a little bit, and especially reducing the appearance of Fleet Carriers in the arctic. (Everyone operating there seems to have sunk a carrier by now...)

Okay, I reduced the CLs and AUXs by about 20% to around 30%, except for tanker convoys. I reduced the CVE spawns to about 20% for all the Arctic convoys. I left HG41's CVE at 90% since it was quite historic that a CVE sailed and performed so effectively in that convoy before being sunk. Seems reasonable.

I'm going to add some Panama tankers to the tanker convoys. Not sure where else it should go as no one's provided any infos and I lost all of Observer's stuff, except for 1943+.

:up:

[CCIP]

Do you know if the task forces in the Arctic about '42-'43 are in the RND layer? Those are also... a bit too frequent. That's where they catch the fleet carriers in WaW.

And oh, I've seen many of your new task forces. More than I needed to, I think. I've no problem with them and, in fact, think they're very cool. Hard to catch, but always worth a try.

Actually, I was nearly killed by escorts from one on my most recent patrol :dead:

[jasonb885]

Do you know if the task forces in the Arctic about '42-'43 are in the RND layer? Those are also... a bit too frequent. That's where they catch the fleet carriers in WaW.


Not sure -- I'd have to load the crappy SH3 Mission Editor.

Is it the usual 1 or 2 BB and CLs with many DDs? That's mine.


And oh, I've seen many of your new task forces. More than I needed to, I think. I've no problem with them and, in fact, think they're very cool. Hard to catch, but always worth a try.

Actually, I was nearly killed by escorts from one on my most recent patrol :dead:

One of these days I'm going to find one. Maybe I'll set them to 100% spawn and just camp for one. They're kind of a throwback from when I used to purposefully hunt TFs near Gibraltar every patrol. It was cheap, but you did have to wait for maybe an hour or two, realtime, to score big...

I don't think they spawn more often, I just increased the report probability from the default which was -1 or 0 to like 20%.

:up:

[jasonb885]

I have adjusted the spawn rates for CLs, AUXs, and CVEs. I fixed HX42 no-spawn for 9 months in '42. I added Panama to some convoys at around 10%. I fixed the neutrals in convoys issue.

I'd suggest this be tested for inclusion in TWM, GW, et al. It does trample on some of the Nationality Mod v3.0 nations to allow for the convoy neutral fix, so that might cause some issues or a rejection. I can rework it if it's a significant conflict, but people might be happy enough with IC from RuB 1.43 that no one even cares about this release.

Be that as it may, I'm playing with the latest IC on top of WTM and will continue to do so.

:up:

[malcymalc]

As to single ship contacts I may be alone but I do not think there are enough. Most of my kills now are from convoys, I might pick up one or two lone merchants on the way to my petrol area but that is it.

In reality if you look at the stats more than half of Uboat kills during the course of the war were from single ships, so statistically speaking, perhaps we should be adding to single ships and reducing the convoys?

Obviously the single ship kill does not have the same frisson as avoiding escorts and sinking merchantmen so that may well make this a "realism" mod that does not attract much interest....

Regards
Malcolm

[Happy Times]

I have adjusted the spawn rates for CLs, AUXs, and CVEs. I fixed HX42 no-spawn for 9 months in '42. I added Panama to some convoys at around 10%. I fixed the neutrals in convoys issue.

I'd suggest this be tested for inclusion in TWM, GW, et al. It does trample on some of the Nationality Mod v3.0 nations to allow for the convoy neutral fix, so that might cause some issues or a rejection. I can rework it if it's a significant conflict, but people might be happy enough with IC from RuB 1.43 that no one even cares about this release.

Be that as it may, I'm playing with the latest IC on top of WTM and will continue to do so.

:up:Thank you, downloading.. :up: Hope you can find the info you need. :)

[jasonb885]

As to single ship contacts I may be alone but I do not think there are enough. Most of my kills now are from convoys, I might pick up one or two lone merchants on the way to my petrol area but that is it.

In reality if you look at the stats more than half of Uboat kills during the course of the war were from single ships, so statistically speaking, perhaps we should be adding to single ships and reducing the convoys?

Obviously the single ship kill does not have the same frisson as avoiding escorts and sinking merchantmen so that may well make this a "realism" mod that does not attract much interest....


I'll hear out any logical argument, but I need links and figures.

If someone had a good argument for increasing single merchants, it's quite easily done in perhaps thirty minutes or less.

IC eventually got the pass and included in RuB1.43 and before that the straight 20/20 was applied to the original campaign, so the values seemed reasonable at the time to some.

[VonHelsching]

Made the changes.

Also I reviewed the changes between the stock and your rnd files.
Just two questions:

1. The TF 1717 (last one) you added is the group of Cpt \Walker?
2. JSGME popped a message sayintg that flag.dat and defcide.cfg will overwrite the same 2 files of Harbour Traffic 1.47. Is it OK to overwrite?

Thanks.

1) Yes.
2) Worry.

I don't know anything about HT, but I imagine it's using some version of the Nationality Mod. I removed some nations and replaced them with new named nations to fix the neutral convoy 'feature', so if HT uses any of those nations such that ships spawn under those flags, my guess is at the very least those ships will no longer have any flags.

If you end up with no flags, it probably isn't the end of the world. In fact, I think that will be the result, as you can add a new nation under the Roster and visit the museum and it will appear, but the ships will be flagless. So, you'll probably be safe insofar as you won't have a CTD. But, some ships will be missing traffic in some harbors out there in the world, somewhere.



Thanks for the detailed answer. I finally gave up. I just installed the 200510080418 version, used the stock RDN file and updated sections 60 to 118 with the juicy convoys.

It doesn't matter about the neutrals, anyway. It will be better for my kid to understand that we cannot shoot anything we see moving; that there are some general rules. He was used not shooting the ships with the flag with the stars and stripes, while using Type IID. Some conceptsare difficult to explain :yep:

Great work :up: