Hello,
just started anew with SH3 and the grey wolves mod. I like it very much, especially that you need only one mod to have it almost all - great!

If i would post what i like here, i would need ten pages at least, so ... i have some issues with the deck and AA guns:


Deck gun:

Succeeding at school is much harder now (maybe like it should be), but it is impossible to sink the requested four ships with the deck gun.
This was already discussed during Beery's "Real U-boat mod", the firing rate was changed to 1 or two shots per minute, but at least RUB's deck gun did any damage. Now you're mostly not even able to destroy any cargo, let alone a C2.

In the beginning of the war, when ships were still stopped to let the crew escape, and then sunk, U-boats often used the deck gun. There is some ammunition in a locker at the foot of the deck gun, so at least the first twenty shots could be fired very quickly - in the meantime, after those 20 shots, there would be enough ammunition on deck provided by the crew to keep up the firing rate.

If there was no immediate danger the shots were even aimed carefully and precisely to see and estimate if there was still another shot needed. Usually the captain would advise the weapon's officer to fire five shots, and the gun crew was allowed to fire those shots by the weapon's officer, repeating the captain's orders aloud again. After this all waited to see what happened.

And the hit rate was much higher than 50 percent, again i don't know where you get the numbers from. U-boat crews fired at distances of 200-700 meters rather than remote targets. Hitting ships at a distance of 2-3000 metres so well in SH is a bit unrealistic. Maybe you could make it harder to hit remote targets, but increase the effect on close shots ?

I guess you over-estimate a freight ship's "armour" - there was none. Even a light cruiser had virtually no real armour, let's not talk about destroyers - those were tin cans (Read Forester's "The ship" about a light cruiser in the mediterranean sea). A usual tactic for U-boats that had time, and if there was no other danger present, was to shoot 5-10 times at the waterline of a freighter, and finally hole the hatch covers with the 2cm gun to let the air escape to speed up sinking.
U-boats where known of surfacing in convoys and sinking freighters with the deck gun alone, if only during the early years. And imagine explosive shells and a tanker ...

The 8.8 as well as the 10.5 cm was a rapid firing gun, even the marine versions were able to fire 13-15 shots per minute with manual (!) loading.

It seems you want to model an average deck gun kill rate through the whole war, rather than allowing more deck gun kills in the beginning, and making that impossible in the later years to level this out (?). The effect of the 8.8 and 10.5 was disastrous, and it was only because of the danger in the later war (armed mechants, more escorts, air superiority) and risk for a U-boat to be surfaced that the deck gun was not used often any more.


AA guns:

The FlaK (or AA in english) is somehow strange: In the AA training mission i'm supposed to down four planes, ok. I have to hit a Swordfish at least 30 times with a 2cm (=20mm) gun to down it. I see and can count it because there's some debris flying away from the plane's area being hit.

ME Bf 109s and FW 190 planes had 20mm cannons, and it made toast of other planes if they hit properly. If you toned this down to represent the poor hit rate of U-boats downing planes that's ok, but real enemy planes would not fly over the boat again and again at a range i would hit it with a flyswatter. Thinking of Kaminsky defending his boat in the Caribbean sea this sure looks strange.

Remember allied planes did not approach U-boats when they had dropped their bombs, they mostly circled just outside of the AA gun range and asked for support. Allied planes where downed seldomly because no one saw them coming, and it was too late to man the guns. A boat that was well aware of ac attacks would sure hit and down incoming planes, even if that would be the last action. So either the planes need too many hits to be downed, and this needs changing, or the (unseen) ac attacks are not deadly enough, as they were in reality.


Torpedoes:

Regarding torpedoes all i can say is that it is not only the hole and water rushing in that sinks a ship, but the shock of the explosion that destroys bulkheads and tears off steam pipes. Needing more than two torpedoes to sink a 2000 ton freighter ? Come on ...


Thanks for your patience :oops:
Don't get me wrong, i love this mod, it is just that a few thing should be changed imho. It is unbelievable what you guys did with the original SH3 !

Thanks and greetings,
Catfish

Sorry for the delay on the optional deck gun file... working on it now. I was exhausted.

The "optional deck gun" mod that I will post here will revert the reload time and high explosive shell damage back to stock.

It will not replace the armor piercing rounds that I have removed... that requires a basic.cfg edit and I have no time for that today. I have to finish double checking a larger issue that is time sensitive and will take much of the week.

Kpt. Lehmann, I know your working really hard to fix these and other problems and the deck gun issue has been discussed a lot here despite the fact that I think the damage potential is spot on and only the reload times need to be addressed. It's great that GW has so many optional mods that you can enable to suit your preferences but there's one thing that is really on my mind as far as GW. The night-times are too dark! I think someone else brought this up but if your too busy to look at this problem can you tell me what file/files/values you changed from stock? Maybe I can revert the values back to stock myself until you guys release an official fix? Thanks again.

"But how do you make holes on waterline steel hull
with only HE ammo?

I thought there's no AP ammo in gw deckgun, yet
Kpt. Lehmann is suggesting that we should aim HE
shots at ship's waterline. It'll be like trying to bust middle
age fortress wall with greek fires. :88)

Am I missing something here?" (My earlier post)

NO AP ROUNDS? Come on, dude!!!

I don't know what's more pressing than putting back
working DG and AA gun. I'm sure you didn't do it on
purpose but you virtually disabled important parts of
armament in the game.

I don't feel like playing the game anymore because of
damn DG thing.

xhxt, I want to go back to stock, but hate to lose all the
goodies in GW. What should I do now? :doh:

I'm sorry you feel that way, but opinions are not bugs.

I'm sick of the age old deck gun debates.

I have done BUCKETS of research on the DG and understand things regarding artillery from personal experience that you may not.

Balancing it in-game so that it remains a SECONDARY weapon that will yield at least some success is a difficult thing.

If you can't be patient enough to wait for tested changes... and want to ditch the whole shebang... You certainly have alternatives.

We've modded 2800 files and counting... I have to make sure ALL are working well... not just one or two.

Dude, they carried AP rounds. I don't know what books
you read but, no more 'I researched and I'm right' stuff,
OK?

http://www.u47.org/english/u47_boa.asp?part=3

or this site:

http://www.uboataces.com/weapon-deck-gun.shtml

(From Tonnage Ace's post)

Like I said, how do you make holes on ship's hull
with HE rounds, eh? Don't just say you have real
experience that I don't. If you know your stuff, you
should be able to answer better.


I can't believe you're trying to make this important
thing a non issue. :nope:

Hello,
Midshipsnake, i'm sure Mr. Lehmann knows his stuff, no need to push this. You have to understand he does it for free, and if the same argument keeps coming again and again he might as well give up and throw the stuff towards your (or my) direction. However i hope he's so fascinated by SH3 that he will still go on strong with the Grey wolves.

http://www.u47.org/english/u47_boa.asp?part=3

Especially this site is not very professional, to say at least. Quoting the internet doesn't get us far because the same information is copied over all websites again and again, without ever proving anything or having real evidence. Even books are sometimes misleading ...

Believe me, we had the same discussion over and over again when lots of other modders and Beery developed the "RUB" or Real U-boat mod. All those tweaks aimed at a realistic experience, not to make it unnecessarily hard. It is just more balanced towards overall gameplay and historic experiences than to make instant action fun.

" ... Like I said, how do you make holes on ship's hull
with HE rounds, eh? ... "

Well, use the Ex ammunition instead of HE until there's a new mod -

Greetings,
Catfish

@Lehmann: I bet you are exhausted after changing some thousand files and testing that every time. Just take your time, we'll be here for sure :yep:

The AP is not the issue.

The whole purpose of nerfing the deck gun was to make it useless as it was at the time. You cannot use the DG unless it finish of a cripled ship.

I have yet to read successful stories about the deck guns. Sure some will point me to some link showing some u-Boat victory over a small merchant ship with the DG, but the point is it was actually very rare and the last thing to do.

opening discusion about DG and the missing AP in GW...

So whats the point of all this?

is GW meant to be a bit more realist than standard SH3 or not?

For example to pin-down a ship (like a large merchant/tanker) in GW would take beside 1 torp, from 50 to more than 100 shots (HE only).

This seem to be far from real (actually SH3 standard Deck Gun seem more realistic in this respect)

Other matter is Uboats didn't carry more than 220 units of HE (again other deviation to suite other purposes beyond reality).

Edited

I give you a simple example:

A simple PT boat took 57 shots of HE and remained afloat.

And to sink it I had to recurr to ram it because I was wasting too many ammo in a tiny little boat... eventually it sank after ramming.


<-- Back to my bridge

http://files.filefront.com/Stock_Gun.../fileinfo.html

This mod replaces the 4 second stock reload rate for the deck guns.

This mod also reverts the shell damage potential back to stock.

For GW users, this does not add AP rounds back in.

Kpt. Lehmann

Feel free to use this mod in your personal game or for inclusion in mod packs.

No permission will be given for this mod to be used to obtain commercial gain.

This mod is JGSME compatible.

Use this mod at your own risk.

Hello,
Kpt. Lehmann, this was fast - thank you.

@Jonz: you wrote " ...The whole purpose of nerfing the deck gun was to make it useless as it was at the time. You cannot use the DG unless it finish of a cripled ship. ... I have yet to read successful stories about the deck guns".

I cannot show a website, but i can quote some books. I still have to find the passages again though, so i'll need time. The deck guns became somehow obsolete in 1943, but even after some were still used in the caribbean and along the coast of Africa.

Thanks and greetings,
Catfish

:D :D Thank you, Kpt.! :D :D

http://files.filefront.com/NYGM_Comp.../fileinfo.html

I am re-posting this to make sure that all are on the same sheet of music regarding the currently available NYGM beta 1.39 ship damage model compliant small merchant from Teddy Barr's Tonnage war mod.

Includes .sim, .zon, and Equip files. No changes to these files were made by the GW team.

Kpt. Lehmann

Feel free to use this mod in your personal game or for inclusion in mod packs.

No permission will be given for this mod to be used to obtain commercial gain.

This mod is JGSME compatible.

Use this mod at your own risk.

This is a perfect example of why devs should solicit response for their projects online. He asked what we don't like and what we are having problems with, then he provided fixes for the most nagging problems in a timely manner. (and he did all of this with a job too!)

I wrote this little spot because there are other issues involved which only furthered my respect for K.L.

He obviously doesn't agree with a large portion of the players out there in regards to the power of the deck gun. Yet he listened and provided a fix to those users who found it too tough to help them out with their enjoyment of SH3 and the GW mod.

This partial reversion to the former unrealistic uberDG may never be integrated back into the full blown GW package. But he at least provided a very easy to apply package for those of us who requested something be done. He could have just told us to shut it, and that nothing would be done because it is how he wants it to be. Instead, he took the problem and worked a solution that fit our requests. He still managed to fit his vision for where he wants GW to go in the future and help his users.

I hope this fix goes into the docs and optional folder of the next official release. Until then will it be hosted up on realsim so I can link to it from the FAQ/Errata page?

Thanks K.L., I'm tipping my hat to you again!

A bit of confusion on my part....

Are the NYGM_Compliant_SM files the same as what came in the GW 1.0 package? GW used 1.39 NYGM damage mod, so we already have these ones right? This is just to make sure people have unaltered files from the original GW?

NYGM_Compliant_SM is different than GW_Armed_Trawler_Fix.zip. Correct?