I just downloaded it. In the readme it talks about neutrals carrying contraband, not having flags, etc., and that "It is up to you as a commander to use your discretion when making attacks".

Now, I'm a newbie skipper, so my discretion isn't worth much. It says ships around British ports are more likely to be enemy. Does that mean I can sink a neutral sailing to/from a Brit port and not take a renown hit? Can someone give me an idea what to look for when deciding who to sink in this mod?

Also, I DLd the two skin packs. I presume I apply the US+UK skin folder that's closest to the date I'm at, but what about neutrals? There's only one neutral folder and it's just dated 1940. Does that mean I should wait till January of '40 (I'm at the end of September '39 atm) to apply it, then leave it for the rest of the war?

The way the "neutrals" are set up in the MFM is that sometimes they will be true neutrals, meaning they spawned from a neutral country's roster, and sometimes they will be enemy ships, meaning they spawned from an Allied nation's roster. I'm referring here to the way the game determines whether a target counts as enemy or neutral and the renown credit or debit you get if you sink it. You will have no way of knowing for sure what roster it spawned from unless it's flying that nation's flag, and some of the MFM ships won't fly a flag - all you'll have to go on is hull markings. And as noted, an MFM ship may sometimes look like it's neutral, even as far as having a neutral flag painted on the side, but still "count" in game terms as an enemy ship because in that particular instance it spawned from an Allied roster instead of a neutral one.

If they spawned from an enemy roster, MFM ships should behave just like any other enemy ship - if they see you, they may start zigzagging or take other evasive action, and I assume that if they're armed they may fire on you. (Haven't played enough with the MFM in place yet to have experienced a lot of this, I'm just going on general principles and what others have said.) More than likely they will appear in the game where any other ship from an enemy roster is likely to appear, so yes it may be obvious that they are heading into or out of an enemy port. BUT - true neutrals may also be found in some of those places, so location is not always a 100% guaranteed way of making that determination.

Whether or not you take the renown hit for sinking what appears to be a neutral ship will be determined by what roster it spawned from, and only by that. If it spawned from a neutral country's roster it's not going to matter that it was sailing directly into a British port when you sank it. However if it spawned as a true neutral, presumably it won't behave like an enemy ship if it spots you. The downside to this, obviously, is that you have to be spotted in order to provoke a response (or lack thereof).

Or maybe you can see some of the cargo on deck, and it's clearly war materiel. They are arming your enemy, they are fair game in my book.

It does make things a lot trickier if you still have a renown hit for sinking neutrals. So, you can either leave it that way and take the risk or edit the basic.cfg to remove the renown hit.

One thing is, early in the war, it's much easier and safer to approach a ship - at least a lone ship - and be spotted to see what response you get before initiating an attack. As for ships in convoy, any ship sailing in a convoy with an armed escort is fair game - they've forfeited any presumed right to sail unmolested. For that reason, I've actually edited the basic.cfg to give me renown for sinking neutrals, and then I have to exercise the discipline required to attack presumed neutrals only when the circumstances justify doing so.

Thank you. Hmm, seems tricky. Just so I'm clear, did you mean that any ships with war material on their decks (tanks and such), or that are in allied convoys, will be spawned from the allied roster? I don't want to turn off the renown hit, because I want consequences for my mistakes, so I want to know under what circumstances a ship is definitely an enemy. I rather like the idea of uncertainty, but knowing when to be uncertain (if that makes sense) is ideal.

Any thoughts on my question regarding the Neutral folder?

Edit: Oh sweet, my picture changed to Popeye!

In terms of how the game reckons it in doling out renown credits and debits? The only circumstances in which a ship is definitely an enemy is when it spawns from an enemy roster. In order for you to figure that out while playing, you have various choices: ID the ship by the flag its flying, or use the Contact Color mod and let the game give you a red icon for it on the map.

If you are using the Contact Color mod, MFM ships that are *definitely* enemies will be colored red. If you don't use Contact Color, then you're kinda on your own, you'll have to judge by flags, markings, and behavior. With MFM ships, you might not have a flag, and you might have markings that are deceptive, so you have to go on observation of other things. That's really the whole point of having ships that look neutral spawn from enemy rosters - to make that part of the game more difficult and more risk-intensive if you are still taking a hit from sinking neutrals... just like in real life. :DL

I don't know about external cargo, I would assume if it's carrying war materiel then it's not really neutral, but then I don't take a hit for sinking neutrals, I just wouldn't sink one unless I thought it was justified. So I wouldn't worry about it, I'd just sink it if it was sailing into England with war cargo in plain view.

Best advice if you're still taking the hit is, if you're not sure, don't attack it.

With regard to the skins, personally I have the 1940 neutral pack set to enable on or after 01/01/1940 and stay there for the duration. I don't know if that's correct or not but since there's no other neutral pack that supercedes it at a later date, I just leave it in there.

Again, I thank you.

One last thing. I read through a bit of the thread for the mod, and people were talking about a file called englishnames.cfg (or something like that) that isn't in MFM. I guess it has something to do with what name shows up when you identify a ship or somesuch. (I opened the file in my install, and it has things like "M14B=Medium Merchant" in it.)

Does this mean the new ships added won't have names in the periscope view, or perhaps the recognition book? I haven't read the whole thread, since it's some 50 or so pages long, so idk if someone posted a new version of that file or anything.

And do the skinpacks go in the sh3 MODS folder, or into Commander?

Actually forget it. After reading deeper into that thread, I'm not even going to try to run this mod. Way too many people having way too many problems, and I'm on an older, vista 32bit pc. I'm happy enough with the game as it is to risk it for some extra ships.

If you don't want to run the full mod there is a lite version which eliminates the neutral ships:

http://www.filefront.com/16730755/MFM-Interim-Beta.7z


If that's still too heavy, you can always add a small number of ships individually:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=179398

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=136508


Or, if you'd really just prefer some better skins without adding a lot of extra load time you can try the GWX skin pack. The nice thing about this, IMO, is that it improves the look of all the ships without requiring additional resources.

If you can run GWX you can run the combined skin pack simply because it merely replaces (and upgrades) the existing GWX files without adding a boatload of new ones to suck your ram dry.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=106823

The MU mirrors are still working, so if you're interested grab 'em while they're hot! :sunny:

Cool, thanks.

I did try it after all, and sure enough it crashed the game. So much for that. I didn't want to use the lite one because it only adds British and American ships. Which would mean, as I understand it, that every time I saw a ship that seemed different from the stock ones, I'd know it was an enemy (once the US was in the war, ofc).

I'll give the GWX skin pack a go. I've not modded the game through Commander before. What do I do when there are folders of the same name? For instance, there's a folder in there already for September 1, 1939 containing a load screen and a sound file of a radio broadcast for the gramophone (how come I've never heard the gramophone play these sound files?), but the skin pack has a folder for the same date containing different things.

If you are using the Date folders in Commander to enable certain files by date, and you have a bunch of different stuff you all want enabled on or after the same date, you only need one folder for that date.

So if you've already got a folder for 19390901, just put everything you want enabled based on that date in there, adding to what's already there if necessary.

Gotcha. Now I just need to wait till I finish this patrol to give it a try.

It's too bad, that mod looks sweet. I guess I'll just have to save it for when I build a new pc (currently saving up for it, slowly).

:up:

Frankly, I'm suprised my Megaupload link is still working...been a long time left without any maintenance :o

I can't believe I missed this one, I'm getting it too. Be nice to have some cool variations over time in all my other ships. :yeah:

That is, if I ever stop downloading mods and start playing again. :wah:

IIRC it unpacks into a file exceeding 1GB.

Um yeah it'a a big 'un. :D

Already got them ready to load via Commander though.

One thing I noticed, though, in the skin pack the Sea folder for the River class is called NDE_River or something like that, but in my GWX installation it's called NFF_RiverClass.

I'm assuming it's the same class ship :06:, so I just changed the name of those folders in the skin packs and the names of .tga files so they'll overwrite my existing River class files accordingly. I hope that's okay.