I am not sure, but depth precision is souposed to be the precision of the DDs sensor in to determine your depth.

I use 25 from many months ago, so the original setting of 5 is too much precision.

Any way, DDs do not launch all depth charges at same depth.

In example if you are runing at 100m, their sensor will determine your depth between 75 and 125, and launch depth charges asumming in example 80.

But if for a normal launch at 80, they launch some ones from +/- 20m anyway they will be able to hit you.

I tested with higer values, and anyway they are able to hit you, then decide to set an aceptable value of 25.

Cheers for info Redwine

I was hoping it was some form of error figure and was about to set hedgehog to 300 explode depth and 200 presision in hope for some duds.

Anyway Back on topic.

I had my first crash ever with thins game and I do suspect it is bacause I left out sim.cfg all together.

What can I say.

The bloody things were absolutely uber. I could not and I mean NOT break free from being hunted.

This was great as the DC seem to be on my side lately.


Another possible side effect though quite humerous is below. Half the planes were not in the shot, neither were half the DD's :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: I spent twenty minutes trying to break lock untill game crashed. Maybe crash was something other than this but it is too risky for me. Still it proves some good points.

http://img449.imageshack.us/img449/7987/untitled0kk.jpg

So for me, the renaming is a no, no. But does this mean we are lost. I think not. It just goes to show how much effect the sim.cfg can have in the game.


Well guys, what do we do next?

I am personally going to tweak the sim.cfg hydrophone settings and maybe even remove them.

I do not want uber vision which is what I got lol.

I do not want uber sonar which is what I got.

I do want a good hydrophone though. I have a funny feeling that the water is messing it up to much due to settings. Maybe it was sensitivity all the way.


My final resort is to change all DD to elite and veteren only as well as tweaking the turn of DD so it is more delayed than present.

I personally think I am slowly getting satisfied for my own benefits of playability, what about you guys.

Any ideas?????

I am not sure about what i had done, but i set all sensivity values into AI-Sensors.dat to zero.

The long hexe number looks as a secuence of many numbers :hmm: , about 5 or 6, what about if they are a secuence of diferent sensivities, aplies by random ? :hmm:

I just putt them all to zero. what can we lose ? :rotfl:
I used the TT File Analyzer to edit the file, and put all secuence with all zeros. :88) :know:

I use the original Sim.cfg, and my AI_Sensors.dat with sensivity zero, and with reduced search beams.

Well, run the U-505 mission with the Sim.cfg original, and .......

........ no visual or radar trigger needed. :smug:

Above 1/3 they hear me, and start pninging for me, y was able to shoot the carrier and evade 4 of 5 escorts, finally the number 5 kills me, but in time compresion and ahead flank speed attempting to scape.

Any way they still good to detect me at silent running, but original Sim.cfg as sensivity 0.03 in both sensors, i need to do more tests reducing the sensibility in Sim.cfg.

This is weird, I see some of you can't run with the sim.cfg renamed and now Red has changed a few things and he has good results also.
I just run another mission, I just place the U-boat in grid AM53 and sailed, I got detected by 5 dive bombers, I manged to evade them, then I got a contact of a DD but he was a long way off, he did head in my direction but I dove and went silent he kept coming but eventually I must have lost him.
Then I got a lone merchant, I kept a 15mts till I was close, the moment my scope went up I was detected, he fired straight away and damn close too, I did the same and lowered the scope, I scored a hit.
But back to the renaming of the sim.cfg, my game runs fine like this, the only mods I have is Serge's AI U-boats and a couple of new ships plus the 1.4 patch.

I renamed the sim.cfg to zzsim.cfg, thus keeping the name in case I want to go back.

Not so good enought, i still having aleatory, random results.

Before, they never detect me if i do not give them a trigger as visual or radar contact.

Now they detect me some times just after start up the mission (U-505), and some times not.

Well. it is astep forward for me, but not enought, they never detect me when submerged before....... now they do it, but only some times, we need to stop that random behavior.

I am near to finish with a psiquiatrician :doh:

I recommend that when you guys make backup copies of files, that you do NOT leave them in their original folder.

Sometimes, renaming a file will not stop SH3 from calling upon that file. For instance, in the library folder, I had two files: cameras.dat and copy of cameras.dat. The copy was meant to be my backup, and I made all of my tweeks in camera.dat, but SH3 was still pulling values from my backup copy.

So just FYI, be safe and remove your backup copies from their original folders.

I cant believe :damn:

Thanks Marhkimov

CB & Redwine

I have been looking into the hydrophone issue and think this is what is failing this game. (probably just getting niffed off now and going round in circles but I want to wrap this up soon before my head explodes).

I set up happy times mission but lined myself to face oncomming DD's.

I had already nerfed hydrophone so was expecting to be picked at 4-5 thousand metres as they approached face on.

The bloody things just kept ignoring me untill I went standard and peri depth and they was 1500 mtres away. Maybe due to sensitivety being set at 0.03 the hydro is only one third effective. Maybe it is just screwed up totally. It is just too easy to approach at the moment and it is all doing my head right in.

Before I triple all hydro settings, is there anything i should know or any suggestions you think may help on this. Have you guys already tried this?. Is it me or is the Hydro actually useless, kaput, broke knackered, screwed up etc etc :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: .

I just have a nagging hunch we need to triple the max ranges in all the sensor.dat entries for each piece of passive equipment to compensate for the nerfs added to sim.cfg or the sensor.dat.



p.s. I set it so mission did not have crew rating as CB advised.

Are we sure this still has any effect as I still get random behaviour like before I changed?.

p.p.s. has anyone contacted timetraveler to seek help with the hex problem we are facing. I know he has tackled similar because I looked at the rudder settings and these too are long hex numbers.

Well I continued the mission, I eventually got a convoy, this was what I was waiting for.
I was at 15mts running silent and was heading for the convoy, I went to external camera and saw the smoke, as it got nearer I went red, I was detected, it was too far for me to have been detected.
A DD came after me, luckily I got him first then I closed on the convoy, I was still red (detected). then another DD came then another, they both hounded me to DEATH.

So I think renaming the Sim.cfg is too much, I'm thinking it is there now to calm things down a bit, but it was exciting.

on the hydrophone ranges i allready tried setting all the sensors to a mxmum range of 40,000 metres a little time ago and it didn't make a jot of difference---perhaps marknimov said about not keeping a back up the files in the same folder is right (sounds wierd but it may a some sort of anti-cheat thing intended to stop tweaking for multi-player games?)


im experimenting with adding some entrys to the sim.cfg in attempt to calm down the extreme uber effect of removing the hydrophone section from the sim.cfg

i just tried this

[Hydrophone]
Sensitivity=0.03 ;(0..1)
Height factor=0 ;[m]


same as col said really got detect an insane distance away and was attacked non stop for over a hour--- the DD's were interesting to watch tho--- i stayed in the control room most of the time to absorb the gameplay a bit and try to enjoy myself for a while--

after a while of non stop but not deadly DC attacks
i had a check via the external camera and blow me if the original two DD's were gone and a lone corvette had taken over the job without me noticing lol!!! that kept going untill it ran out of DC's (it just stopped dropping them but carried on making runs over me anyway---)

so i must have lost the first two DD's (?) and got detected by the corvette unless the DD's really do take shifts?

was in a bad situation any way because the first dc attack nearly blew the sern of the boat and destroyed both rudders -so all i could do was go deep and slow - (i couldn't steer the boat)
i abandoned the mission eventually because the corvette was showing no signs of getting bored or of finding any more DC's to drop LOL!! there's only so much of that you can take without going mad :arrgh!:

strangest thing was immediately after each and every DC drop i got the we have been detected message suggesting that just fro a second the DC's actually did block out the sensors but only for one or two seconds--


i'm hoping adding other entrys to hydrophone section one by one might slowly bring the DD's back into a reasonable level of competence--

so i'm going to try this next

[Hydrophone]
Detection time=60 ;[s]
Sensitivity=0.03 ;(0..1)
Height factor=0 ;[m]

Right guys here is my report and it is good news.

My settings are as follows,

kept sim.cfg in place but made the following changes

[Hydrophone]
Detection time=0.1 ;[s]
Sensitivity=0.03 ;(0..1)
Height factor=0 ;[m]
Waves factor=0.5 ;[>=0]
Speed factor=27 ;[kt]
Noise factor=1.00 ;[>=0]

[Sonar]
Detection time=15 ;[s]
Sensitivity=0.028 ;(0..1)
Waves factor=0.5 ;[>=0]
Speed factor=20 ;[kt]
Enemy surface factor=200 ;[m2]
Lose time=40 ;[s]

Nothing too scientific but it was a good start. Ignore the active at the moment as it is still in very very early stages.


Anyway

My senor.dat changes are as follows

I changed min range values on both passive and active to 200

I added xtra 2-3 hundred on max range for all actives.

I tripled all passives and set hydrophone max range to 30000.

I set all crew in Happy times mission to level 4 elite.

I started mission and went to peridepth ready to turn to on-comming DD for test so I am approx 7000 mtres away.

I hit flank and after couple of seconds, I am detected by DD on far side. Ok ok this is a bit too long a distance to be detected but at least it indicates that hydrophones are infact way too nullified by either the crew rating or ranges.

This is great i thought. (my hunch seems to be right).

Anyway I continued at flank as DD was way off but closing to investigate.

As he gets closer and other DD's begin to close, I hit silent running and lose them quite easily.

Even though they are elite, it seems that they are restricted by their equipment as the DC attacks were a good 10-20 metres off line. This may be because of the 200 mtre min value.

All in all I think this is a great result but obviously needs to be further tested and it is my bed time.

If you look at the air cfg. You will notice the penalties for airbase ratings. I seriously think that this is similar to DD ratings in the fact that it just lets them use their sensors better i.e. no penalties. I do not think it makes DD do different attacks etc.

So I think this is a good start point for early war DD, then we have to get a late war DD figures set.

Guys

I am excited by this as it is the first time that i felt like I may need to approach as in sh2. I say this meaning that I will have to plan my approach rather than my shot.

So tommorow I am going to spend some considerable time testing this for hydrophone detection.

Could you please remind me of reasonable ranges for Hydrophnes in the happy times. Also could you state what speeds should be detected.

I think we may be getting somewhere here. I am not fussed about only having elite and veterern ships if this is going to work and I am sure many other players will feel the same. The equipment should be our advantage, not the ratings of the crew.

:rock: :rock: :rock: :rock: :rock: :rock: :rock: :rock: :rock: :rock:

Please try to duplicate this and report back your results.

watch out for your speed factors Gouldjg the maximum speed of the corvetets and other smaller escorts is around 18 knots -- any higher than that and you have no dead sensor time with the fast turning covettes and that makes then a nightmare to lose if their awake--

can i suggest decreasing the speed factor and
beefing the hydrophones up by reducing the noise and waves factor-- this is one of the main hampering effects on the sensors--

as an experiment try setting the hydrophone waves and noise factors to 0.00 and see if the results are more sensitive hydrophones--

if we haven't as red is finding gotten past the randomisation of all these changes by something then i just dunno what we can do with it all

here's a thought for Col's sim cfg trick---having thought about this speed factor thing-- and my recent patrol encounter---i MUST have lost the first two DD's they don't just go away if they still have a contact on you-

the corvette must then have detected me--and as i had no speedfactor limit in the sim cfg it was impossible for it to lose contact with me--

what ever the default speedfactor is for the hyrdrophones when it doesn't find an entry in cfg file- it must be lower than the top speed of the first two DD's (a clemson and a another fully fledged DD)

so as the hydrophones are extremely uber with this set up ( and it is at least very consitent no randomisisation noticed as yet by any-one)

why not exploit the normal DD tactics and give them somthing to think about---

im going to try this

as the full hydrophone section in the sim.cfg

[Hydrophone]
Sensitivity=0.03 ;(0..1)
Height factor=0 ;[m]
Speed factor=5 ;[kt]


this will completely cripple the fast moving DD's (no matter how uber the phones are)

and force them to rely on those DD's that nearly allways sit stationary nearby whilst one DD makes attack runs--

it allso makes sense of the normal convoy escort tactic--- the front and rear DD's in a convoy frequently turn side on to the convoy and stop dead for a minute or two before straightening up and heading along in the normal position---they do this often enough for it to be very effective with the uber hydrophones---all the other fast moving DD's will be as blind as a bat-- and here's the point--including those DD's that the AI sends out to investigate the contact--blind as a bat

but if the slow dd's detect you --and they WILL--at very high distances-- there should be plenty there for the AI and the DD's to work with---it will test just how well if at all the DD's co-operate---

if this pans out it will at least be interesting because you will know that the DD's are working as a team--because ONLY the stationary and very slow moving DD's will be able to detect you-- (but they will be as uber as all heck)

sounds fun if nothing else to try :-j if it works :sunny:

Yep I think I can safely decrease speed factors now to a more suitable level.

I want the DD to be a B.I.T.C.H. to lose but not immpossible.

At the moment CB, I am feeling more inclined to set all DD to elite and veterern only due to the very reason that they are not as affected by waves or noise factors from the start unlike the rookie etc settings.

If the air.cfg penalties are anything to go bye then I suspect vast differences between DD crew ratings though I think the devs never had time to tweak and test evrything in the settings hense the extreme dumb ai at times.

I cannot understand why you had previously changed this but never got the same result.

I am also geting inclined to decrease the arc for the hydrophone but leave that till later on in testing. I have just got to make sure there are gaps in the convoys to approach.

I seem to have gotten rid of the pin point imho but I also think this can be improved by rudder tweaking on DD's should my intial tweaks prove to be out. That way they can still be deadly but not uber deadly on turning with sub.

Like I said,

Duplicate my settings and run a test if you have time tonight.

I do feel we have gained much ground on this now and should not expect the immpossible but get the gameplay done to a reasonable level.

I seriously do not think I can to go back to old settings now that I know I could make it harder to approach convoys by tweaking this way.

it's one the main issues of the thread really that folks seem to be divided into two distinct groups---those who are getting the uber pin point drops and instant death scenarios--and those who find that the DD's are absolutely useless no matter what you do to them (in long term gameplay)

im one of the ones who has useless DD's--
i've tried everything and i mean everything to try to sort this out--- notice that even using Col's cfg idea which gives the DD's insanely uber hydrophones the three DD's in my previous mision did not actually suceed in killing me---even tho my damage system is hugely more fragile than stock AND my modded DC's have a higher damage rating and radius than stock- AND all i could do was travel in a straight line beacuse my rudders had been destroyed--so i was a sitting target-

elite novice veteran made little noticible difference for me- in fact nothing made any consistent difference

it's all a bit of a joke !! sadly-- :cry:

(this is not down to my "skills" as a virtual sub captain i hasten to add lol!)

i'm going to use what i can get to get some sort of gameplay going and i think with the idea (previus post) using Col's uber hydrophone hack--i might just at least be able to have some enjoyable encounters with the DD's--i gave up on any sort of realism related gameplay months ago :oops:

making a mod for general use is going to be a nightmare because of this inconsitency-- there's something going on with the DD sensors that we just don't understand as yet--

Been following this thread, hope you guys crack it soon, the DD's are so unbeleivably stupid it defies logic.

I might try some of this when i get home. Will jungmans DC_20 mod work for this? TT's file examiner(analyzer?) i couldn't quite figure out.

Will making the hydrophones uber by zeroing them out (and probably a few other tweaks) in the sim.CFG and downing down DC blast radius be sufficient? Obviously i havent understood everything said here.

All i know for sure is, i shoudlnt have to surface, and run at flank speed in broad daylight, 5000 meters from a convoy, and then.. only THEN be noticed. Its like you have to pop the hatch with a megaphone and yell out,:

"Ello' there tommy, mind if i take a few of these T3's out"

The reply would probably be:

"oh no what, its tea time.. jolly good!"

It is not one number, it is a group, that is why you must manual hex edit them. TT tool wil not work.

Right guys

Here is a setting you can try and may enjoy. :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Open up your hedgehog sim and set the following:-

Detonate_depth = 300
Depth_precision = 300

Result = random dud & premature exploding hedgehogs.

This is something I always wanted. Some detonate early and some make it to your depth. It looks and feels cool whether it is realistic or not.

The setting of DC depth precision at 50 may in fact be a little too extreme, I would set it to 35 for more stable results.

Now the question is, "should I make it 400 & 400 to ensure it can go beyond 300mtres depth?�

Although having sensitivity would give us more to work with, I think it may not be essential but stand to be corrected on this.

CB

You raise a very good theory concerning the hydro.

It would be cool to know the exact figure the DD does it attack runs on and then set the speed factor 1 or 2 digits below. I am guessing that 15 is in fact a better number though I am awaiting your test results on the extreme low number.

Guys, do we think the enemy spotting is too good or too bad? It may be ok but your thoughts are welcome.

I think I am getting a feel for all this now. (sits there and prays nothing goes wrong)

I still have not resorted to effecting the turns of all DD but this option is open should the uber pin point return in my game which by the way it seems to have gone and the 200mtre nerf seems to be working.

I am wondering if DD rudder changes will in fact make them behave slightly better.

What exactly is the historic facts concerning the DD turns?. Are they as sharp as they are shown in game or was they supposed to be less able to make such sharp turns. I thought I heard that sub should turn faster than DD but this may be wrong.



I may just have to slightly down size the late war sonar arc as I am now finding it a tad too difficult to evade late war DD's. I may not go as steep as 60 but rather a 75-80.

We still can also tweak the decoys to either last longer or make more noise if in fact the hydro works better.

All these options. :huh: :huh: :huh: :huh:

@Ducimus


I have a small feeling that you will soon not have to do this :up:.

Then I suspect we will all cry cos we cannot get near a convoy :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: .

I suppose it is now a matter of finding the best compromise distances here.

Finnally,

Does anyone know how to get rid of the "we have been detected message" I need it right now for testing but soon will want to get rid of it all together.

It would be cool to be approaching convoy only to spin scope and see DD, heading straight for me or suddenly hear pinging :rock: :rock: :rock: .

Thats what I want and by jolly joe, I will get it :hulk:

I totally understand that all of you guys are working very hard to find out how the AI does it's job, and I respect that...

But one thing that you should all keep in mind is how are you going to release a mod that everyone can enjoy? Yeah, you guys are still in the early stages of figuring everything out, but don't forget, ok?

The last thing we need is another never-ending thread such as the 8km visibility thread... Remember that all of your experimentation has to be able to yield some kind of feasable mod.

Ok guys? cool. :up: