If all that is needed is to add this part (Cargo: Steel; Crew: 125) to the ship name.
I would'nt mind helping out.

I already have approximately 9000 names categorized as to type, and have whittled the 'Generic' list from 3500 names down to about 900. And I've also added about 2000 new ships that weren't listed before. I've divided the Liberties up by nationality, and have even separated out the US Navy Liberty freighters, tankers and colliers.

My biggest hangup right now is IABL's new models, as I have to go back and look at each picture I have to see how it compares to the new model over the old one.

What I'm thinking is this: I can start with a handful of each category, say 10 ships in each slot, so there will be enough names that no one using it will have repeats unless they sink more than that number of one type in a session, or play 24 hours a day. My original plan for my 'Ship Names' mod was to put out a new update every month, and it will be easy to still do that, adding 10 or so new ships to each category every month. This will make it easy to add the extra information you are talking about as I go, and still stick with my original dream, which was originally to have a ship be assigned a tonnage similar to its own, but has grown to the possibility of having a sunken ship be assigned to the proper size, shape, class, country and possibly even tonnage for that model. (They weren't randomized in real life, but a number decided upon by the owner and the insurance company. Every ship had a specific GRT, and it stuck with the ship throughout its life unless it was modified in some way. And I have the GRT for all 9000 ships for which I have the names!)

I talked to Dan in Houston about doing this for SH5, but if we can make it happen with SH3 and SH4, so much the better!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

@Jscones - thanks for the tip. As soon as I have the time I will start culling information from Uboat.net about ships' cargoes, crew complements, and survivors. Although it's a monumental task it's the type of thing that fascinates me. :D

Minor Update: Again, not much interesting to report. Just your usual grunt work - going over the ship cfg files to make sure that all the data is consistent. Again, this is not much fun but it is essential if the mod is to function correctly.

One feature I am trying to include is variable drafts. Using SH3 commander I would like to have each ship have a slightly different draft depending on the date. The draft feature is a good way to reduce unrealistically high scores - if you guess the draft wrong, torpedoes will miss entirely or glance off the hull. IRL the Board of Trade or the MOWT altered the maximum load lines for ships to increase their cargo capacity. This made it impossible for Uboat skippers to base their torpedo depth settings on the stats listed in merchant ship ID manuals & shipping magazines. Hence, it was important to observe a ship through the periscope and compare its current state with the prewar draft statistic.

Various shots of the last few revisions before release.

A light tanker of about 4300 GRT. It has prominent neutrality markings for safe passage in hostile waters.

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d5...itled-14-1.jpg

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d5...ntitled-25.jpg

A freighter that's probably seen better days...

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d5...itled-21-3.jpg

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d5...itled-19-1.jpg

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d5...itled-18-2.jpg

Getting her ready for the Murmansk run...:cool:


http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d5...itled-17-2.jpg

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d5...itled-16-3.jpg
One of the light steamers in a civilian paint scheme.

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d5...itled-23-2.jpg

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d5...itled-22-4.jpg

Same here. In fact I've switched from running down my 'Convoys' list to getting infro from Uboat.net myself. Unfortunately there are a lot of ships I've already encountered in which the crew listing is: Total: ? Lost: ? Survivors: ?

Also the cargoes could change from trip to trip. Of course tankers are easier, though I've found one company whose ships all carried bulk molasses! And again, Uboat.net's listings comprise less that ten percent of all the ships that sailed.

Not being negative, just relating what I've already found. Of course if crews and cargoes were randomized within certain parameters and based on size and type...

Well, that would make it a lot easier, and still be realistic as crewmembers shuffled around a lot, and cargoes ranged from rice to rifles to 'General', which of course meant they carried a little of everything.:sunny:

Which molasses company are you referring to - Athel? I wanted to do their ships but I keep putting it off. :damn:

I also would like to see a randomization feature for crews and cargo - that's exactly what I did for my "Aces of the Deep" RP game. Crews went something like this:

IF Ship = Light Merchant THEN crew <= 30
IF Ship = Troopship THEN crew <= 2000

etc.

I didn't mind exact crew size being historically accurate as long as it was within a reasonable number for the ship class - for instance, no destroyers with a crew of 15.

Cargoes were calculated like this:

IF Ship = Tanker THEN Cargo Chances = 20% Ballast, 50% Crude, 30% Avgas

and so on.

In my opinion, information about shipping losses is a must-have feature for SHV. It would be fascinating to find out exactly what ship was lost, & how you damaged the enemy's war effort. This info could be picked up from several sources - survivors in boats, distress messages, espionage, or cryptography. If intelligence showed that a cargo was particularly valuable, perhaps that could be factored into your score. To use a historical example, one U-Boat managed to delay construction of a crucial airbase for months by sinking one small, 2000 ton freighter. Under the current system, the game is not able to take such things into account.

BTW - to find information about merchant ship crew size, Miramar Ship Index is a very good source. Unfortunately it just lists fatalities, so there is no way to find out how many people were on a vessel unless you happen to know it was lost with all hands.

http://www.miramarshipindex.org.nz/

A little more news: Now I'm more than halfway through the date-based changes for ship skins. Unlike the Merchant Variety Pack and the old Merchant Fleet Mod beta, this version will use SH3 commander to implement paint scheme changes over time. The basic progression is from peacetime skins to clean grey skins to a mix of weathered grey and disruptive camo schemes. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the camoflage schemes require very little modification to be adapted between different ship models; this speeds up the process greatly.

I could prolly work with what you propose, but it would require a total rewrite of the "Ship names.cfg" data file. For example, I could do something like:

(Notice I split merchants and tankers, for example)

You can combine random elements with static elements. For example, if S.S. Acme only ever carted Wood, you could just enter Wood as the cargo type and the randomisation would be ignored.

^NbLost^ would be a percentage of the ^NbCrew^, somewhere between 0 and 100, unless again, a static value is entered.

One thing though, I wouldn't start it until I had specs/formats/etc from you and SS (ie what elements to record) and a commitment of someone providing data and working on the "Ship names.cfg" file. I mean, there's no point making the changes if the fields will forever be blank.

And apart from you guys, would anyone else be interested in such a feature?

EDIT: I don't mind doing this change if there is sufficient interest because it's all "behind the scenes", ie requiring no user involvement or interaction, unlike the nationality feature which I'm still pondering.

That sounds wonderful - precisely what I had in mind. I would certainly be willing to do the basic research & data entry for this product after I release my mod.

And several other people in the community have expressed interest - i made this proposal once to the developers of subwolves, and CCIP and mcf1 both said they'd be interested in seeing it done.

The elements that IMO should be included are mostly what you have already indicated - Cargo, Crew, Survivors, and perhaps the source the information came from (Survivors, News Reports, Cryptography, Luftwaffe, Distress Messages).

Also maybe a random chance of a little message with some extra information (if it's not too difficult to code), similar to what you already did for U-Boat crewmen's postwar careers. For instance, if there are survivors, then:

The crew of [insert shipname] made landfall after [x] days.
The crew of [insert shipname] were rescued after [x] days by [insert shipname].
The [radio operator/master/1st mate] of [insert shipname] was awarded the OBE for heroism.
The [insert troopship name] was carrying [insert regiment name] when it was lost.

I could research data for numerous such incidents and enter it into the cfg files or whatever you use.

Thank you very much for considering this, and I hope you're not pulling your hair out from all my crazy requests.:oops:

Thanks! The more people involved, the merrier. Out of curiosity - do you already have information about typical cargoes & crew sizes for WWII merchants? If not, maybe we can look at uboat.net & warsailors.com to build up a database of information. Of course, we could also just decide on a set of plausible cargoes & crew sizes and just plug them in...

I'm waiting for your mod, it looks very good :up:
I hope it will not be any problems using your mod over GWX 3.0?

No - it will not cause problems with GWX or any other supermod. If you already have Tanker T09A or Tanker T13A installed you may be prompted to overwrite files - just select "yes".

Have not done any research on the matter.
Was waiting to here back to see if this idea would get off the ground.
What ever method you go with i will help as much as i can.

No problem - from what I've read so far, merchant crew sizes were fairly predictable. Usually between 35-50 men for medium sized ships early in the war, with slightly more men between 1942-1945 as armed guards were added. Cargoes are also quite easy to predict if you look at those two websites.

I don't remember - I just saw a couple of ships in passing, and made a mental note. I'll try to find them again.

I agree, especially since those numbers are almost impossible to find for most ships.

I don't know about "must-have", but it's certainly a neat idea. I'm not sure score should have a basis in war-effort effects, simply because the real kaleuns weren't awarded anything but tonnage sunk. But that's a long discussion for another time.

A great source I had not heard of. Now it's something else I'm going to have to buy on disc, just to get the complete data. You're right about the lack of complete crew sizes, but between them and Uboat.net we can get a pretty good general idea.

@ Mr Chris: What I'm thinking is this (depending on how much work you really want to let yourself in for): What I've been doing is organizing the names into the proper categories, so ships are the same size and tonnage (and hopefully appearance) in-game as their real-life counterparts. I plan on submitting my new lists to IABL for his approval on name matches, and to JScones to make sure they're properly labelled so they work with SH3 Commander. Bigboywooly has also been helping me with this. Once the names are set to go and JScones has made the proper format for fitting the cargo/crew/and-anything-else into the system, I can send you the finished names list ready for that part to be inserted.