SH3 Commander 2.5 and Thermal layers.

[mike_espo]

I searched through the forum posts, read the readme in the cfg file, but I still don't understand the thermal layer randomization. :nope:

I looked through that random events cfg file, I don't understand, how do you edit it?

I have played a few scenarios and it seems even late war, escorts drop one pattern or two, then It is way too easy to escape. 30 minutes tops.

I want to edit the files to make AI sensors more accurate to allow more a challenge late war.

Can someone please explain how this could be done with SH3 Commander? :yep:

Thanks

[Georg_Unterberg]

I want to edit the files to make AI sensors more accurate to allow more a challenge late war.

Can someone please explain how this could be done with SH3 Commander? :yep:

Thanks

I think the easiest way is to reduce the odds to get a thermal layer:

By increasing this value under 0_data\Library\AI_Sensors.dat:
ChooseFrom=10 (50% chance to get a layer effect)

to e.g. ChooseFrom=50 (10% chance to get a layer effect)

or even higher for more worse odds.
If you want to change only late war sensors its better to ask Hemisent, cause he knows what to change.

[mike_espo]

Thanks! :up: I don't know where you got those numbers from, but Ill try.

[gouldjg]

I searched through the forum posts, read the readme in the cfg file, but I still don't understand the thermal layer randomization. :nope:

I looked through that random events cfg file, I don't understand, how do you edit it?

I have played a few scenarios and it seems even late war, escorts drop one pattern or two, then It is way too easy to escape. 30 minutes tops.

I want to edit the files to make AI sensors more accurate to allow more a challenge late war.

Can someone please explain how this could be done with SH3 Commander? :yep:

Thanks

You must be like me. Never happy with the DD :damn:

Soon I am hoping to get a sensor configuration and randomisation so I am occasionally challenged. I do however want to try and get them as close as possible to what their realistic values should be without getting back the uber DD effect.

This is very hard to do if I was to try and create a fixed number in the ai-sensor file as I am stuck by the limits of having those settings perm. I may just set a small percentage randomisation on the sonar arcs, Hydro ranges etc and apply this through SH3 Commander randomised events.

The other way is what Georg_Unterberg descibes but that is if it is the thermal adjustments and not the actual DD sensors as they stand in GW.

Lets hope for aquick resolution,

I will keep you posted as I learn the limits

[Beery]

I've had numerous careers and my commanders seem to be getting killed about 80% of the time, which is far too high, given the historical survival rate. Also, I tend to get depth charged to death in almost every case, and usually when I'm very deep and silent, which seems wrong to me.

All my knowledge of the game files leads me to believe that the cause of this is an unrealistically high sensor ability on the part of destroyers, so Hemisent's mod (combined, of course, with SH3 Commander) is a godsend to me. The standard 50% chance of a layer (the ChooseFrom=10 value) will, I'm convinced, reduce casualties to more reasonable levels - in my case it should allow around 50% of commanders to survive careers, which is close enough to the real life figure of 75% for me. I'm tempted to take it down further, perhaps to a ChooseFrom value of as little as 6 (mostly because I'd like to get to that 75% commander survival rate, but also because the #4 thermal layer value is still deep enough to prevent all boats in the game from getting beneath it except perhaps the XXI).

Anyway, I'm going to give the stock settings a go.

[JScones]

I want to edit the files to make AI sensors more accurate to allow more a challenge late war.

Can someone please explain how this could be done with SH3 Commander?
Before you start editing Randomised events.cfg, I recommend that you become fully conversant with AI_Sensors.dat. Use TT's Mini Tweaker to look inside the file. That way you will see that there is far more stored in the file than just what is included in the randomised file. TT's Mini Tweaker will also give you the required hex offset value (titled Displacement) to include into Randomised events.cfg if you want to add new values.

You may also like to set the lost contact time to 45 minutes standard - if so change:

AI Detection|Lost contact time=I|15|45|Y ;Randomises the time Escorts spend looking for you after losing contact, in minutes

to

AI Detection|Lost contact time=I|45|45|Y ;Randomises the time Escorts spend looking for you after losing contact, in minutes

[irish1958]

I agree with Berry. I get killed about 90% of the time. I think the destroyers are plenty strong. In the war weren't most of U-Boats sunk by air later in the war?
irish1958

[Beery]

I agree with Berry. I get killed about 90% of the time. I think the destroyers are plenty strong. In the war weren't most of U-Boats sunk by air later in the war?
irish1958

That's right. In the late war period U-boats were mostly victims of aircraft attack. The final tally for the entire war comes out about 50/50 with half of U-boats sunk by ships/mines and half sunk by aircraft. Also, a lot of confusion regarding the survival stats occurs because of the difference between a commander's chances of survival and that of the crew. Since a crew tended to stay with a boat for the duration of the war, their survival rate was much less than that of a commander, who retired from front-line duty after at most 16 patrols. So in the game, if you run a simulation of a crew's or boat's experience (by doing patrols until the war's end) the survival rate will be far lower than if you simulate a commander's experience (by retiring the career after a limited number of patrols). This is why we read that only 20% of crewmen survived the war, while 75% of commanders survived.

In the standard game the survival rate for a crew was close to zero. That of a commander (assuming the player limited patrols realistically) was around 10%. Using RUb the survival rate for a commander is more realistic (something like 20% to 40%), but it still needed work. With SH3 Commander's automated career limits, now that we have thermal layers in SH3 Commander as well as a variable time to lose track of a U-boat AND the possibility of surrendering while under attack it makes things far more realistic. We now have a realistic way of making the survival statistics of the game match reality exactly.

One problem we still haven't figured out is the aircraft attack issue. Aircraft in the game tend to be ineffective, and it's related to the time compression. At high TC aircraft are rarely generated, whereas at low TC they are generated too often. It seems ridiculous to me to balance air attacks by chugging along at 64x TC, but that is the only method that is effective at present, and it doesn't seem that this will ever be solved. I tend to think that the only way to resolve the issue to any level of satisfaction is to balance the game based on a general U-boat survivability factor rather than trying to balance aircraft to be as effective as ships, given the fact that aircraft effectiveness will always be governed by the time compression at which a player is running.

[gouldjg]

:ahoy:

I remember in one of the threads that by setting 3d render up to 1024, the planes behaved much better in the sense that they appeared as they were supposed to even in time compression.

That was a long time ago and I think that not long after, the guy desperetly wanted the Air radar mod so he could be warned :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:. Init it amazing how chinese whispers get started

If this was to be the case, then door open but so does the need for a new crew model.

[Beery]

I think that not long after, the guy desperetly wanted the Air radar mod so he could be warned :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl.

Yeah, that's likely to happen because the airstrike lethality is probably on the nasty side, since no combat simulation developer in the history of the world has ever got combat lethality anywhere near realistic levels. Every sim ever made has given the player a combat situation that's basically suicidal. If real life combat was anywhere near what simulations are like there would be no combat veterans - they would all be dead within an hour of going into enemy territory. IL-2 is the worst offender by far, with its pilot life expectancy measured in hours, rather than the months that real pilots survived.

[joea]

I think that not long after, the guy desperetly wanted the Air radar mod so he could be warned :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl.

Yeah, that's likely to happen because the airstrike lethality is probably on the nasty side, since no combat simulation developer in the history of the world has ever got combat lethality anywhere near realistic levels. Every sim ever made has given the player a combat situation that's basically suicidal. If real life combat was anywhere near what simulations are like there would be no combat veterans - they would all be dead within an hour of going into enemy territory. IL-2 is the worst offender by far, with its pilot life expectancy measured in hours, rather than the months that real pilots survived.

Interesting thread, but I've played DiD campaigns in Il-2 and survived a fairly long time sometimes...unless you are talking about AI? Agree about the u-boot observations in game it matches my experience too. I've only been killed once in campaign by aircraft. (More often in single missions but I can't really count that).

[Beery]

Interesting thread, but I've played DiD campaigns in Il-2 and survived a fairly long time sometimes.

Sure, but the point is that historically MANY pilots survived the entire war. In IL-2 it's virtually impossible to survive for more than a few weeks. Surviving an entire campaign 'once' (as I did, ONCE out of about 100 careers, and I fly super-conservatively) is very unrealistic if the real life chances of survival for the entire war were something like 50%. For it to be realistic, something like half of your pilots should survive the entire air war. There is no way that IL-2 achieves anywhere near that level of survivability, EVEN if you cut down mission frequency to the minimum using the IL-2 Manager utility. Hehe, and don't even get me started on the anti-aircraft model and AI survival routines, or the fact that IL-2 is non-mod-friendly, so we can't even attempt to solve these issues in a mod.

[joea]

Ok understand, just one thing the AA has been brought up before elsewhere, main problem is the number of AA to be realistic would bring all current comps to their knees. Just like trying to recreate the D-day armada in SH3 would bring the same result. :-j

I honestly think one of the most realistic wargames I ever played is Steel Panthers World at War, air attacks rarely take out tanks, trucks though do get hit. Anti-tank guns are the best way to take tanks out, tanks can't spot them or infantry very easily, arty takes out the most infantry etc.

[Beery]

just one thing the AA has been brought up before elsewhere, main problem is the number of AA to be realistic would bring all current comps to their knees...

It's a matter of flak efficiency, not numbers of flak batteries, and the problem is that it's far too deadly in IL-2. In reality flak was very inefficient, but if you go near any flak in IL-2 you're bound to lose aircraft from your flight. This makes career survivability very unrealistic. WW2 combat flying was dangerous, but in IL-2 every mission is about 3 times more dangerous than even the most dangerous real life missions were. We know this because multiple losses per mission caused by flak were rare in reality, but in IL-2 multiple losses to flak are very common indeed. I realise that people are misled by movies like Memphis Belle and Das Boot that need to make combat seem suicidally dangerous in order to enhance the drama, but when we're talking about a simulation of reality, the results should come a lot closer to the reality, not the fantasy of the movies. If IL-2 was advertised as an arcade game, such unrealism would be fine, but it's supposedly a simulation.

[joea]

Well trhis is not the thread and we could go on about the issues (as we do for SH3) but I think this is partly an AI problem and a player and mission designer problem. Later on in the war flak got very dangerous indeed (Clostermann mentions this ) and the Kamikazes were in part a way to deal with the powerful light AA of the USN. In any case pilots made one pass and tried to use up all their ammo then...I doubt multiple passes were the order of the day. AI unless you can tell in not to will do that plus some missions are badly written and many players in every sim play in an unrealistic manner.

[Myxale]

This whole DD and DC thing is confusing me. I mean there are people that find them to easy and other say they get offed' most of the time.

In GW i had the feel at the beginning that they were somewhat dumbed down Cuz i escaped every DD within 10 min. And that three times in a row in late war with an standart VIIC.
A fellow Kaleun told me it might just be luck...and well it was just luck :)

But they still could use some more agression.

It's the planes imo that get me most of the time!
:hmm:

[Beery]

This whole DD and DC thing is confusing me. I mean there are people that find them to easy and other say they get offed' most of the time.

In GW i had the feel at the beginning that they were somewhat dumbed down Cuz i escaped every DD within 10 min. And that three times in a row in late war with an standart VIIC.
A fellow Kaleun told me it might just be luck...and well it was just luck :)

But they still could use some more agression.

It's the planes imo that get me most of the time!
:hmm:

All of what you've described is historically accurate. Contrary to popular wisdom late war was not a turkey shoot for destroyers. Anyway, destroyer AI ranges from bad to seriously deadly. There are more of the seriously deadly ones in the later war, but that doesn't mean you won't come across quite a few novices. The only real way to judge whether the destroyers are realistic is to measure how often you get killed in careers. Basically, if you run twenty careers (with the career length limited using SH3 Commander, in order for it to be historically accurate you should get results something close to this:

15 careers completed where your commander survives the career.
3 careers where you were killed by ships.
2 careers where you were killed by aircraft.

If you're simulating the boat's history (i.e. without limiting career length) after 20 careers you should see results something like this:

4 careers where your crew survives the war.
9 careers where you were sunk by ships.
7 careers where you were sunk by aircraft.

These figures reflect historical reality. If you're getting killed more often than the above, then the game is too deadly compared to the reality.

[mike_espo]

I want to edit the files to make AI sensors more accurate to allow more a challenge late war.

Can someone please explain how this could be done with SH3 Commander?

You may also like to set the lost contact time to 45 minutes standard - if so change:

AI Detection|Lost contact time=I|15|45|Y ;Randomises the time Escorts spend looking for you after losing contact, in minutes

to

AI Detection|Lost contact time=I|45|45|Y ;Randomises the time Escorts spend looking for you after losing contact, in minutes

Thanks JScones! :up:

Why is the 45 minute value so important??

[Beery]

Why is the 45 minute value so important??

If the search time goes much over 45 minutes the escorts have a hard time catching up with the convoy they're supposed to be escorting. This leaves the convoy open to attack, so that after getting away the player would know for sure that the convoy was unescorted. Limiting the search time just removes the opportunity to exploit this.

[mike_espo]

Thanks Beery. The main thing I was trying to accomplish is the agonizing long depth charge attack and keeping the boat under. I read from a number of sources it was on the order of 6-24+ hours.

So far, with RuB 1.45, the longest an escort stuck around was on the order of 1 hour...and this was in summer 1944. I hate to go back to the stock game, but it seems that escorts should stick around longer.

[Beery]

Thanks Beery. The main thing I was trying to accomplish is the agonizing long depth charge attack and keeping the boat under. I read from a number of sources it was on the order of 6-24+ hours.

So far, with RuB 1.45, the longest an escort stuck around was on the order of 1 hour...and this was in summer 1944. I hate to go back to the stock game, but it seems that escorts should stick around longer.

Hehe, in the stock game escorts stick around only about 1/3 of the time they do in RUb (SH3 = 15 minutes, RUb = 40 minutes). In RUb we changed the lost contact time to make escorts stick around LONGER, not shorter. But we came up against a hard-coded limit to escort stick-around ability - that limit is about 45 minutes. There's no getting around that limit unless you're willing to accept the fact that with longer search times you'll 'know' that once you escape from the escorts the convoy they were protecting is now defenceless.

You can make the change yourself - the data is in data\Cfg\sim.cfg. Change "Lost contact time=40" to "Lost contact time=360" for 6 hours or "Lost contact time=1440" for 24 hours. But be aware (or maybe try to forget) that once you get free (and it usually takes less than an hour) no one's guarding the convoy.

[mike_espo]

I did change that value. I have been doing testing with RuB 1.45. Playing stock scenarios and a few of my own....U-505 and some I made up myself with veteran crews. Even though I have min stick around time at 2 hours, DDs still lose contact with me after roughly one hour. Then I sneak off at silent speed, 32x TC and I peek with scope to see escort still staying around...although they are back a couple of kilometers .....Scenarios are spring-summer 1944.

I know this has nothing to do with SH3 Commander which is a great program, its probably Hard coded AI behavior...


I have not tested this with careers as my IXB career is in Spring 1940.

I also tested destroyer agression mod...same results.

[Heibges]

Once, with RuB and Hollywood damage I had a single DD follow me for 2 hours, and even at 200m it shook the boat every time, and sometimes even caused minor leaking.

This was my single best escort experience in the game.

[Beery]

...I know this has nothing to do with SH3 Commander which is a great program, its probably Hard coded AI behavior...

Once the escorts lose contact the "[AI detection] Lost contact time" value in sim.cfg determines the precise number of minutes they will keep searching after losing you. After that time they will try to rejoin the convoy. As I said, in unaltered SH3 the value is 15 minutes; in RUb it's 40. In SH3 Commander the value is randomized, between 15 and 45 minutes (this randomization can be switched off or adjusted in the SH3 Commander\Cfg\Randomised events.cfg file. Nothing else relating to escort stick-aroundness has ever been altered from stock SH3 settings - that is true of all mods ever made.

If the convoy reaches a certain distance from the escorts the escorts will not speed up to catch the convoy, and instead they will simply go at the convoy's pace until the game session is over. Probably the hard-coded one hour limit that you've noticed is an attempt to make the escorts catch up with the convoy, but they don't. This one hour limit that you've observed HAS TO BE a hard-coded value, because I'm 99.9% positive that you're the first person to even notice it, and it certainly isn't in any of the config files.

I guess what I'm saying is that changing back to unmodded SH3 cannot possibly permit you to have escorts that stick around longer than in any of the mods I've mentioned. All mods and unmodded SH3 are the same - in that if you can't adjust it to meet your needs by using the "[AI detection] Lost contact time" value, then (sadly) it simply can't be adjusted to meet your needs.

[Beery]

Thanks Beery. The main thing I was trying to accomplish is the agonizing long depth charge attack and keeping the boat under. I read from a number of sources it was on the order of 6-24+ hours...

I doubt that was true of a convoy escort. Hunter-killer groups would stick around for days if they thought they could get a kill, but convoy escorts rarely stayed away from the convoy hunting a sub that had gone deep. The game doesn't distinguish between hunter-killers and convoy escorts, so unfortunately you're gonna have to accept a compromise. With a convoy escort, the best compromise I've found is 40 minutes, which is probably about right for a convoy escort anyway. However, if you want every escort to act like a hunter-killer, then you can change it to be longer, but then your convoy escorts will stick around too long (and, as discussed previously, too long for the convoy's good too).

Added to this is the fact that it was incredibly rare for a DD or DE to have a successful hunt if the hunt went on for more than a few hours. I think most kills were most likely achieved with the first few DC or hedgehog salvos before the boat could get deep. Some hunter-killer groups managed to keep enough of a bead on the sub they were hunting until it was forced to surface and surrender, but those cases would be a very small minority. The vast majority of U-boats got away fairly easily if they could get deep fast enough.

[Heibges]

Ah, the escorts don't speed up if they get too far from convoy. I wondered what they problem was.

[mike_espo]

Thanks Beery. The main thing I was trying to accomplish is the agonizing long depth charge attack and keeping the boat under. I read from a number of sources it was on the order of 6-24+ hours...

I doubt that was true of a convoy escort. Hunter-killer groups would stick around for days if they thought they could get a kill, but convoy escorts rarely stayed away from the convoy hunting a sub that had gone deep. The game doesn't distinguish between hunter-killers and convoy escorts, so unfortunately you're gonna have to accept a compromise. With a convoy escort, the best compromise I've found is 40 minutes, which is probably about right for a convoy escort anyway. However, if you want every escort to act like a hunter-killer, then you can change it to be longer, but then your convoy escorts will stick around too long (and, as discussed previously, too long for the convoy's good too).

Added to this is the fact that it was incredibly rare for a DD or DE to have a successful hunt if the hunt went on for more than a few hours. I think most kills were most likely achieved with the first few DC or hedgehog salvos before the boat could get deep. Some hunter-killer groups managed to keep enough of a bead on the sub they were hunting until it was forced to surface and surrender, but those cases would be a very small minority. The vast majority of U-boats got away fairly easily if they could get deep fast enough.

Yeah. What you said, I suspected. :nope: I tried to make a Brit Hunter-Killer group attack a VIIC late war...They did not stick around long...about an hour or so....It would be nice if the escorts would keep contact indefinately so we would have the added complication of running out of air.... :)

[Heibges]

As long as they keep contact with you they will stick around, won't they?

If this is true, then a group 6 DD's with good ASDIC skills might keep contact for a very long time, as long as the ASDIC skill is can be adjusted seperately from DC/Hedgehog accuracy.

The Allies were better at finding uboats later in the war because they had more escorts to make a bigger circle around the suspected position, but I don't believe their accurary improved a whole lot.

In real life, 1 elite dd crew probabaly wouldn't be able to keep contact with a uboat for very long under most conditions.

In the SIM folder you can adjust your crew's visual sensitivity to make your watch crew work correctly (changing from .01 to .02). I think you can adjust AI modifiers in this same file.

Also, I believe convoy escorts did stay around for about 40 minutes, at least before Black May 1943. Having some extra escorts to "stay around for as long as it took", was one of the big surprises for the Germans during Black May. They were no expected to have to stay submerged for as long as they often had to.

[Beery]

As long as they keep contact with you they will stick around, won't they?

Yes.

The Allies were better at finding uboats later in the war because they had more escorts to make a bigger circle around the suspected position, but I don't believe their accurary improved a whole lot.

Accuracy must have decreased (or German evasion techniques improved), since, in 1944-45 they were putting about three times as many depth charges in the water as they had been in 1939-42 for only about twice the effectiveness.

In real life, 1 elite dd crew probabaly wouldn't be able to keep contact with a uboat for very long under most conditions.

I agree. I think many people seem to think that ASDIC was a sort of infallible U-boat detector. The truth is very different. Even in 1945, only 30% of U-boats that were attacked were destroyed. That means that 70% of the time, if you were attacked by surface ships, you would escape. Not bad odds.

[mike_espo]

So, theoreticaly, if in SH3 Commander, you set the random time escorts spend looking for you after contact lost to 24 hours min, they will stick around for that long?

[Beery]

So, theoreticaly, if in SH3 Commander, you set the random time escorts spend looking for you after contact lost to 24 hours min, they will stick around for that long?

Supposedly, that's what's meant to happen. As far as I know, no one has tested it beyond an hour though.