The SM for viewing the FOTRSU Japanese merchants should be completed and uploaded to Area 51 by sometime tomorrow afternoon. :D :up:

It's been a long hot day here in Chicago, I'm done for the night. :yep:

see ya all tomorrow. :salute:

OK, I've been noodling with lifeboats & rafts today, and I've combined Privateer's New Life Boat with Webster's Lifeboat Fix, and put my settings between what they each changed between their respective mods, as compared to stock settings. First, here's a "stock" FotRS Ultimate liferaft sequence:

http://i1381.photobucket.com/albums/...pssuykenci.jpg

This is the only boat to get away from a Furutaka sinking, and it only lasted maybe five minutes. Probably less. Unlike the Spec Ops rafts, when these go upside-down, the personnel apparently drown...


Similar happens every time to a Shiratsuyu DD as it goes down, only 10 sailors make it away:

http://i1381.photobucket.com/albums/...psgjvvb9fi.jpg

Even after applying Webster's fix, only one boat usually survives. The other rolls over.


With my settings, results are mixed, the lifeboats seem to sit lower, move slower, and don't seem to rock all over the place as much, though they still rock about too much:

http://i1381.photobucket.com/albums/...pscahwdum5.jpg


at least there's much more liferaft & boat activity with a carrier sinking...

http://i1381.photobucket.com/albums/...psd6ioamno.jpg
Those are all liferafts & lifeboats out there. I've got a better picture of the survivors on the photobucket site, but it's not as cool as the hull in the air here...


... and now for a contest (link to photobucket is still active here):
http://i1381.photobucket.com/albums/...pspr6rnu9f.jpg
Who recognizes the sinking ship? I'm about 90% certain it's a German vessel, Germania?? I like the two guys at the oars. Same with a lifeboat in another shot from the same sinking. Not much info to go on for ship ID, I know, and I can't find the old Single Mission file for it, since it probably got dumped with my last deleting of FotRS Ultimate for a clean install. I'd really like to know...

Remember kids: always make certain that everything is properly backed-up BEFORE you hit the delete key...

I've just finished uploading the "Cloned Ship Viewing Mission" to the Plugin folder in Area 51. I had a little trouble with mission freezing at startup, I don't know if you guys will have the same problems or not. I think it has to do with 36 merchants all together in one mission.

On another note, this is the first time I've gotten to see all the merchants in max's camouflage. This one really looks good. :yep:

http://i64.tinypic.com/nwkej6.jpg

One of the problems with small craft like life boats is that the water is ALWAYS rendered as a moving plane.
So you'll see water inside EVERY ships hull just as if there was no hull.

2nd problem is the center of gravity and other settings in the sim and how the Game engine handles it all.
It was designed for the big Units and the life boats were just thrown into the game as best the Devs were allowed.

There may be another way to calm the movement of the really small craft but you'll always have the flooding look.

Maybe an animation of guys bailing water would help? LOL

Thanks Jeff-Groves. I'm not worried too much about the "flooding look". The liferafts that I've seen didn't even have closed bottoms anyway, but rather had a canvas mesh. The "sides" of the boat were the part that floats. Lifeboats are a slightly different beast, but as often as I've been fishing, especially in the ocean or on Lake Michigan even, I've never seen a dry boat bottom...

Having a "designated bailer" would be a funny, cool touch... However, what controls the amount of people in the boats? What determines whether they get a boat 1, boat 2 or a liferaft? I've seen the 3d figures' parts for the occupants, and it seems that there's many more people that could be on a boat...

I might noodle a bit more with the settings of the boats themselves and see what will settle them down the most. Who cares if they go under the waves a bit. I'm sure they did that anyway. It just doesn't seem fitting and proper that only one raft with five survivors comes off of a Furutaka heavy cruiser, no matter how long it takes to sink, and that the five end up drowning when their "life-taker" raft turns over and they drown...

On my way to the download. max's skins def are nice...

On another note, we've got to clean up the listings for the ships in the Recognition Manual. Just in the DD section, there's ships listed as "DD xxx" and others that are "DDxxx", the difference being the space. That makes the alphabet sorting somewhat different... Similar happens in other classes, and the Merchants.

In the cfg file for each Unit play with these settings.

CrewComplement=Whatever that ship should have. Say 200
SurvivalRate=90; is that 90 out of say 200?
SurvivalPercentage=20; so is this maybe 20% of 90 have a chance?

Now.
A Unit may spawn many life boats of one kind or another but if the rate of survivors is to low on the roll?
They will be empty.

Yes Please.

I would love to them in full razzle dazzle..

Excellent. I'll add the name to the mod ASAP

Naaa The boss called me away for emergency spider removal from daughters bedroom, which in turned led to a few other chores.

Propbeanie,

I have a shift off tomorrow, and would have plenty of time to make a big impact in renaming the warships, what name convention could we use?

Regards,
s7rikeback

I'm not sure of that s7trikeback... I'll go grab me some screenies in "stock" Silent Hunter v4, and post back. Hopefully, I won't get too distracted with trying to sink something... :lol: :03:

Please include the tonnage listing from the ONI Book of 6,961 tons to the Sea NACA4 cfg.file, s7trikback.


Do you think it would be a good idea to stick with the same naming convention that we've used with the merchants? Using the word Class after the ships name. And for the Mogami using Early War and Late War to designate the chancse after the conversion to part seaplane carrier.

We'll need the others to chime in, but in my cursory cruise through just the Japanese Capital ships, I found this:

http://i1381.photobucket.com/albums/...psopej2mer.jpg

This is a "normally" named ship ID, with the class spelled out, the ships name, and then the Class again... redundant

On my way down to the Destroyer I also had in the mission, I encountered this in the manual, and there are several ships like this:

http://i1381.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7t9njq8a.jpg

I do like the leading "DD" designation, but there needs to be a space, then the "Shimakaze" name. If you feel real adventurous, and do all the ships that way, just about every ship will need to be touched. The easy way to go is to just add appropriate spacing in the names.

There are three ships that are improperly "named", and all three are in the Class: Destroyer Escort. They have a leading "DD" as above, but should have "DE" instead. Here's the notes I took while going through the book:

As of right now, my Recognition Manual has ships out of order in the listings (not that it bothers me), sorted alphabetically by class. I'm fine with it the way it is, however, there will probably be folks that want that listing sorted correctly. If you go to do that, I vote for the two or three letter designation for the ships' classes, followed by the ships' names, followed by their Class spelled out, since that's already there anyway. But, to lighten the work load, just adding spaces between designation and name would help. Definitely change the three vessels that currently have "DD" to show the proper "DE" designation (their Class is correct).

So for example:
CAMogami=Mogami Class Heavy Cruiser ?

So for example ?

CAMogami=CA Mogami Heavy Cruiser

I have got to be completely honest here - I just paint stuff:D

This looks way above my pay grade - but go for it :up: