S-Boat

2 x New London Ship and Engine Company (NELSECO) diesels, 1,200 hp each > 2400 HP

2 x Electro Dynamic (S-1, S-30-S-35), Ridgway (S-18, S-20 through S-29), or General Electric (S-36 through S-41) motors, 750 hp each > 1500 HP

I think the battery "problem" is being blown out of porportion. Now its not going to last to a rivet counters exact specfications, but its infinately better then stock, and is VERY playble as modded.

Indeed. I think the point is, if it can be made in the game to perform to RL spec, so much the better. If it's just a simple adjustment to an ini file, why not make it?

JD

Indeed - it's not a game killer by any means, but it's still disappointing and it does affect some missions where you really need to be able to cover a fair distance submerged and can't really do it with the current state of affairs. So it would be good if we could make it work more like the RL specs. I wish it were just a small adjustment to an ini or a .sim file or something, but so far no one seems to have been able to find it, or if they have they're being strangely quiet about it. The oddest thing about it to me is I think it was working pretty much correctly in one of the earlier versions, but got broken in one of the patches (IIRC - I may be remembering that wrong and haven't had time to go back through all the old posts about this issue to check on that).

I beleive ive just found one possible cause for less battery.

The submarine cfg file. I just noiced that i got more battery life out of my old throttle settings, then the new one i adopted from ROW. I think its pretty much related to how surface endurance works. But the bottom line is, where i was getting 50% battery remaning after a certain point, i know have 41% remaining. The only thing ive changed is the throttle settings for 1/3rd (its acutally less rotations now then it was before.)

I suspect that the battery discharge rate for both settings is the same, the only diffrence is the speed of the boat being slighly less, making it cover less distance over the same period of time, or something like that.

EDIT:

NEVERMIND! i just experimented with this, and my previous setting and new setting make no difference. I think it was simply a case of my having misjudged distance traveled and time underwater.

I wasn't trying to start a fight by pointing out the shortcomings of the S-Boat's propulsion system - only the shortcomings themselves. Some players seem to be taking it for granted that the S-Boat would have the same capabilities of a 'modern' fleet boat. That just wouldn't be historically correct at all. They were underpowered, and their battery (notice - only one!) wouldn't sustain it underwater for as long as desired. Also, it would take it much longer for a full re-charge on only two engines (and only two generators?). Even with all the tweaks, the S-Boat still remains pretty much historically accurate.

Frankly, for me, that's the 'charm' of using these antiques. You have to learn to accept they weren't as good or capable as a fleet boat, but learn to use the capabilities they had to best advantage. It will make you a better captain when you get promoted to a newer boat.

The tweaks given to the regular (non-S Boat) fleet boats have really improved their range and endurance, and I feel, make them about right as far as being historically accurate (and better 'playability'-wise) than the stock game. Thanks and praises to Ducimus and all the others for the great improvements to the game.

Well, apparently there are some interactions between multiple variables that dictate how far the boat will go underwater on one charge. Messing around with the sim file for the Gato, I was able to get it to go 48 hours @ 2 knots, no problem. Unfortunately, it would then only go 70NM or so @5 knots when it should be going closer to 100 I think.

Maybe that's better than what we have now?... I don't know.

Anyway, the numbers in the sim file apparently meant something at one time, but now, for whatever reason - either the devs hacked things up to get something else straightened out, or the modder's did - they are pretty much meaningless.

For instance, you might think if the current values for underwater range are 96 NM and 5 knots, that changing, say, the 96 to 48 would halve the performance. It doubles it!

And trying various combinations of between 2 and 8 knots and 12 and and 192 NM, I was only able to get either either max duration or max range right... but not both. I even tried fiddling with horspower, but that didn't have the desired effect.

I suspect part of the problem is in the drag parameters, but messing with those variables without knowing all the dependencies could get sticky.

Anyway, I gave it a shot....

JD

Wow! "70NM or so @5 knots" is actually better than the published material: 64 nm @ 5 kts. Amazing. I tore my hair out after patch 1.3 trying to get realistic War time battery life/range and gave up. The changes I made, also made the recharge time way too long as well. Finally out of frustration I unchecked realistic battery but patrol as if I have limited battery life - (if that makes any sense) - lol

What values did you plug in? I'd be very happy with performance like you achieved if the recharge time was also reasonable.

I don't consider myself a 'rivit counter', just want to be close.

Happy Hunting!

Art

The core of battery life is the multiplier of the battery itself. In SH3 it was accessible in the basic.cfg file. off the top of my head it varried around 1.35 or so. Raise or lower this value, and you increased, or decreased the size of the battery.

If anyone finds this variable, id love to hear about it. If its not hardcoded, its very well hidden.

yeah I've been looking all threw out the folders trying to find something that controls this. no luck yet but i did find where the default setting is for the subs where it sets the speed while submerged, it was set to 4 knots on 1/3 so i set it to 3. that helps so you don't always have to set it manually every time you dive...

Ok, here are the values I used:

NSS_Gato.sim

Unit_Submarine
-Properties
--Unit_Submarine

---E_propulsion
----eng_power = 4000

---Ranges
----Submerged
-----miles = 130
-----knots = 2

The results:
48 hours @ 2 knots
71nm @ 5 knots
40nm @ 8 knots

10 hours to full recharge @ 0 knots

Try this out and see if you get the same performance.

BTW, using TM, ROW, RSRD, etc.


JD

Intriguing indeed - I had wondered if the engine power (and a couple of other settings) might have something to do with this, but hadn't had any luck with the little poking around I had done last time before I shelved it for a bit.

I just tried out your numbers on my test-bed Salmon class boat, with very promising results very close to what you saw with the Gato:

At 2 knots, it took 24 hours to drop to 50%, 36 hours to drop to 25%, and 43 hours to drop to 10%;

From there (10%), it took 3 hours to recharge to 50%, 8 hours to 75%, and 9 hours to 100% (running at ahead 2/3rds, my typical cruising speed, since it seems unlikely that a skipper would keep his boat in one place idling and recharging for that long).

I didn't test distance at higher speeds or other things (yet) like what effect (if any) this might have on telegraph speed settings, acceleration, etc, but I did notice something distressing that I remember seeing in some earlier battery testing but can't find/remember what caused it or what fixed it - the battery level indicator showed no movement whatever during discharge or recharge :o It stayed full the whole time, which kinda screws things up. Anybody know what that level display triggers off of?

Anyway, this is the most promising avenue I've seen for a while (IIRC, all the other things I tried before that achieved a closer-to-real endurance really screwed up the recharge times, and this at least seems to have that part pretty close to right as well, at least for the Salmon I tried it on).

Hmmm... the only time I noticed that was when I forgot to click the icon to change it from fuel level to battery level :huh:

But then... no.... no way :)

JD

LOL- I guess that's what I get for trying to do too many things at once - I was trying to pretend I was paying attention to the spousal unit while I was trying to conduct that test, and I guess I wound up paying more attention to her than I thought I was :doh:

Thanks for setting that straight :rotfl:

Please post a source for those numbers. The problem is that one source says one thing
http://www.valoratsea.com/Sclass1.htm

And another source says something slightly different
http://www.uboat.net/allies/warships...D=206&navy=USS
http://www.uboat.net/allies/warships...D=265&navy=USS
http://www.uboat.net/allies/warships...D=265&navy=USS

And then of course there's the one Roger Dodger used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...marine#Group_I

Yours seems to come from group III of that list, but just showing a number labelled 'S-Boat' without some frame of reference confuses the issue.