Wow Tessa, great job !
I note preciously your recommandations.
:up:
Can you tell me what about in SH3 Commander ?
I want to see someday a personal file updated whit "Gross Admiral" inside !
(It's for the after war when I seek a good job).

:lol:

Seriously, a great question: you say we must change in the en_menu file. But I play in french. Must I change in fr_menu or in en_menu ??


PS: it is possible to create a other rank over Gross Admiral ? I think that "Reich Admiral" will be a good affair to makes Goering jalous.

I'm sure that you can appreciate that as one of SH3Cmdr's main aims is to provide an historical wrapper around SH3, including something that sees Admirals cruising around in U-boats just doesn't fit well. ;)

Plus, SH3Cmdr is, and will always remain, mod neutral. Assuming, therefore, that all players want to be Admirals cruising around in U-boats isn't appropriate either.

What I will do, however, is remove any modifications that SH3Cmdr makes to the rank labels in *_menu.txt. This means that the options to force ranks and medals to display in a specific language will go. SH3Cmdr will revert to reading and using whatever rank labels exist in the game, between numbers 170 and 179 (it will ignore 175).

But players need to understand that as this mod is merely text label changes, there is no way for SH3Cmdr to know whether you start as an ObLt, KptLt, or burger flipper, so if you adjust your rank in any way, it will create a hole in your Personnel File between your pre-SH3 career and your SH3 career. You can plug this by adjusting the ranks stored in SH3Cmdr_*.txt (removing Seekadett in the process), but as the pre-SH3 promotion dates are based on an SH3 start rank of Lt (after all, that is what the stock game starts with), they will no longer be reflective of RL conditions. But again, players can edit the dates in their SH3Cmdr.ini file if they really want to.

Personally, having lived through the "rank bumping" debacle two years ago and knowing the potential frustrations, I would see better value in combining the "classic" approach of starting as an Lt but changing the renown required to ensure that you get promoted to ObLt after your first patrol (as is current practice; chosen for a reason ;)), with the extra ranks that Tessa has added. Sure, this reduces the maximum rank to a mere Vizeadmiral, but...

Not with you here, as Tessa's mod only adjusts player ranks. Crewmen will retain the same rank as they do now.

You can. It's common knowledge that from within SH3 you can promote from PO to officer and from crewman to PO, assuming of course, that the crewman has the necessary experience. SH3Cmdr doesn't support this though, because it didn't happen quite like that in RL.

Will this work in the English version?

I see you've listed the terms in German.

My en_menu has these in English, will that affect anything?

I'm not 100% sure but I think it should work in the English Menu as well without any problems

Thanks for your insights, Jaesen.

I'm nowhere near being an expert on SH3 or history but it seemed like a good idea at the time, minus having an ocean of admirals cruising around.

I know there were at least a handful of Korvettenkapitans that remained in frontboot service but, in the game, the renown earned to achieve that rank ought to be fairly high. Any rank above this ought to be assigned "post-career" to reflect your transfer out of combat service to a command or training post onshore.

I'd rather stick with matters as they are now than mess about with SH3 Cmdr. That little gem is just too valuable to recut!

Sometimes the way features are implemented in SH3 seems downright puzzling!

While I worked this out the rank system that was being used the starting slot (0) was Oberleutnant z. S. so it ended up that my mods final rank was Admiral; the original intent wasn't to make that rank acheivable; just was how it worked out.

Because of the high fatality rate for those in the U-Boat service of the Kriegsmarine, having many officers higher than a CrvtCptn still sailing was very rare. Though in other parts of the armed forces, it wasn't so. In the Luftwaffe there were several Colonel's and even General's that still flew combat sorte's; in our own Navy there was frequently 2 and 3 star admirals out on patrol (albeit in command of a fleet or task force than just 1 ship acting alone).

Even with the high ranks up there, amassing that much reknown is tough unless you never upgrade your ship. Because its hardcoded into SHIII when your reknown goes below the specified level you loose your rank, it doesn't hit you such that your a sub-leutnant and all you're officers are actually your superiors. Thus the high reknown rates for the flag ranks.

Starting out as a Lt. is reasonable, having 8 ranks available instead of 4 gives much more room to grow and make upgrading not so harsh. Imo if the same amount of reknown that is set to get up to Korvettenkapitän is retained that's a fair start. Then start using the fibbonacci sequence for the higher ranks makes it tough to get much higher than Kapitän z. S.

Thanks :D though the answer ended up being something rather simple, it was lots of nights banging my head against the wall :damn:

I'll be sure and speak with Jaesun about SHC changes to be sure that we're able to use all the slots now available.

With regards to the en_menu file, it doesn't matter which one you use as long as its the one that the game pulls its info from. When I post it in the SHIII Mod forum I'll make that clear.

It is possible to adjust it such that you could become a Gross Admiral; just would start at a higher rank. The only rank that I think would possibly make Goering jealous is Reichmarshall of the SS (more like scare the crap outta him), he was so self infatuated that he would create new decorations (like the Grand Cross of the Knights Cross) just for him that would never be awarded to anyone else.

I just put the German rank names in the en_menu file as I have everything else in English but prefer the ranks to be in German. Translatting them to the corresponding English ranks will work fine. I'll post those too along with all the other info relating to this mod in the SHIII Mod section (probably tomorrow) so that you can use english or german ranks and all the other main permutations (to indulge those that want Gross Admiral to be available as well as the more traditional as Jaesun points out as having the starting be a Lt.).

I truly do hope you get this ironed out, Tessa. This seems like an excellent mod for those who want to attempt making rank above Kapitanleutnant.

I find it's a rather dubious choice that the devs decided you only got promoted according to the renown you've saved up ( instead of spending it on new u-boats and upgrades ) rather than the career total renown you've earned. I believe medals awarded are tied to this rule as well.

If rank earned was truly reflective of renown accrued, then sinking massive amounts if tonnage would surely lead to promotion. I've got over 280,000 tons to my credit, yet I'm still just an Obltn. z.S. while real-life "u-boat aces" made ranks of Korvettenkapitan and Fregattenkapitan with far less, albeit their task was far more difficult than our virtual careers.

I also hope Jaesen can be of help to you in making this work with SH3 Cmdr as smoothly as possible. I know I'd like a shot at Korvkpt. but not if it means throwing SH3 Cmdr out of kilter.

Keep at it, Tessa! :up:

Guys, please understand that to fully support this mod I will be breaking compatibility with practically every other mod out there. I will not allow that to occur.

I have already posted that I will remove any modifications that SH3Cmdr makes to the rank labels in *_menu.txt. As it is, this will require the removal of existing functionality from SH3Cmdr that non-users of this mod may not appreciate.

From R3.1, SH3Cmdr will blindly read whatever text if finds at labels 170 through 179 (sans 175). Call yourself "The Grand Poobah", SH3Cmdr won't care. It will also use this text in all generated Personnel Files.

HOWEVER, SH3Cmdr WILL continue to use the rank of Leutnant as its seed for calculating Commander histories. It is just not possible for it to interpret free-form text and even if so, it is just not practical for me to build logic to cover every possible starting rank variation. Anyone who understands relational databases will understand my reasoning here.

So, if Tessa wants to release a mod that starts at ObLt or higher, then she needs to ensure that her readme advises users that it is not compatible with SH3Cmdr, at least without SH3Cmdr file editing (as per my post #17).

However, if Tessa wants to meet half way and release a mod that maintains a start of Lt (with renown for ObLt of 1500 or less to force a post first patrol promotion, as is the common approach), then SH3Cmdr users will have the benefit of both a possible rank of VAdm AND Personnel Files that don't have gaps.

It's about compromise, and considering my user base, I've gone as far as I can go.

Sorry everyone, but frankly, if you want to be an Admiral, you prolly won't be using SH3Cmdr anyway.

I have no quarrels about using Lt as the starting rank, the only reason mine was different than the stock one in SHC was that when I started testing this out I used a modified version that was proposed in an older thread and kept it as my starting point during the testing. It is definitely more appropriate and reasonable to keep the starting rank as Lt as it always has been in SHC than something higher. I must apologize for that oversite on my part, my goal wasn't to force upon everyone higher ranks with my original posting.

Sorry Jaesun for any heartaches/headaches my oversite has caused you :cry:. My intent was summed up by Graf with finally opening the path to progress past Kapitänleutnant. Once I'd finally figured it out and all my QA tests checked out I reverted to the giddy little schoolgirl and forgot that my configuration files were already altered to begin with and posted the mod.

So this whole brouhaha has been over a simple misunderstanding? :roll:

I thought this mod started with the usual ranks and simply opened the door to higher ranks as your career progressed! That's the view I've been taking in all my statements, Jaesen and Tessa.

It turns out that is what Tessa had intended as well...a slight error in posting not withstanding. :rotfl:

So can we all shake hands and be friends now? :p

Tessa, to validate my assumption, please confirm that the game maintains the following data relationship:

Basic.cfg -> Careers.cfg -> *_menu.txt
RankLevel0 -> PlayerRank=10 -> 170=whatever (current behaviour)
RankLevel1 -> PlayerRank=11 -> 171=whatever (current behaviour)
RankLevel2 -> PlayerRank=12 -> 172=whatever (current behaviour)
RankLevel3 -> PlayerRank=13 -> 173=whatever (current behaviour)
RankLevel4 -> PlayerRank=14 -> 174=whatever
RankLevel6 -> PlayerRank=16 -> 176=whatever
RankLevel7 -> PlayerRank=17 -> 177=whatever
RankLevel8 -> PlayerRank=18 -> 178=whatever
RankLevel9 -> PlayerRank=19 -> 179=whatever

Of critical importance is the PlayerRank assumption. I need to know with 100% certainty that the game will write PlayerRank values > 13, and especially whether 15 is used or not.

Your assumptions are correct (I'm assuming your using the current behaviour baseline as the defaults in SHC? ) with regards to the variables you've laid out.

RankLevel15/line 175 will not be modified, it is already in use by the game as another command. So it will skip from 14->16.

My last career everything went fine from 10->16 (my most frequent career). At this moment though I can't say that it is 100% fullproof. I was testing it out today and kept running into a roadbloack that shouldn't be there, it wouldn't even recognize rank12 without manually changing it despite having more than enough renown. After hours of fiddling with it I've writen it off as another probable casualty of a recenty nasty virus I got. Though I've gotten rid of all traces its left its mark in other programs resulting in some odd behaviours.

To be sure am gonna format and reload everything which shouldn't take too long. Afterwards will be able to accurately test it for you and give a definitive answer.

Not quite sure what you mean here. All I'll be doing in SH3Cmdr is mapping the PlayerRank value in the career file back to the *_menu.txt value and displaying whatever text label is returned. That is, if the PlayerRank is 17, then SH3Cmdr will display the text from *_menu.txt entry 177.

The history calculations will still be based on a starting rank of Lt, regardless of what text SH3Cmdr finds.

I wouldn't put it down to the virus, that is just how SH3 goes sometimes. I was waaay over the renown required to get KptLt once...never got it.

As long as your tests prove the relationship above, I'll be happy. Whether a promotion always occurs exactly at renown whatever, I'll let you enjoy investigating.