Originally Posted by treblesum81 (Post 1959365)

Ever thought about asking Lurker for permission to release your version? I've personally never touched the campaign layers so I wouldn't begin to know what goes into altering them for playability. That being said, one of my favorite mods from SH3 was the radio contacts mod because it allowed you a little extra information without giving you god-mode knowledge of when and where each convoy would be. I've been told in the past that implementing this in SH4 + TMO + RSRDC would require a massive reworking of the campaign layers, so maybe your modifications of RSRDC might be a good intermediary?

Originally Posted by Armistead (Post 1959461)

No one has seen Lurker for years to get permission and it's been debated many times about reworking RSRD, but many frown and say it would be wrong to mess with his work. It's more than just making a mod to overwrite RSRD, because so many files are changed, you basically have to work and change many files within RSRD itself. SImply, if you made a mod for it, you would be
reloading all the same RSRD files again, which is silly..For instance, RSRD uses easier crew ratings than TMO, so to fix this you basically have to hand edit all the campaign files.

You can implement radio contacts, just two settings within group properties. RSRD does this, but more so during 43 and 44, but probably not as much as was done historically. You can hand edit these the same as crew ratings, easy, just takes time.

I honestly think for more random game play it would be better to mod TMO's campaign. I like history. but I prefer difficulty. Plus TMO is based more off generics, so it's easier to add ships made by others.

Originally Posted by treblesum81 (Post 1959484)

That's the reason I've never touched the RSRD campaign files: From what little I know, lurker hand edited all of them, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, so implementing a little edit like increasing radio contacts would be hugely time consuming. That was the beauty of that radio contact mod, it was an external mod that would go in and set all of the necessary parameters without messing up the rest of GXW's files so if you made a change and found it suddenly too easy, dialing it back only took a few seconds.

As for the random factor, I think that the main issue is the fact that the pacific campaign is hung on the framework of so many large sea battles. In the atlantic, chasing convoys for the whole war doesn't mean you end up missing out on much since 1) they are all compressed into a much smaller area, leading to much more action and 2) there weren't all that many naval engagements, so there wasn't much to miss out on if you weren't at a certain place at a certain time. I like the idea of a more random war, but because of the size of the pacific and the existence of major battles, I feel like if you push too far in the non-scripted direction, you'll just end up roving around an empty ocean with an itchy trigger finger and nothing to shoot at. I actually think this is why the original game was such a shooting gallery, spending days without something to shoot at is just boring whether you consider this a sim or not, so they upped the targets to the point where you spend your time planning and executing attacks rather than looking for something to attack.

I personally would like to see a "best of both worlds" type of campaign mod that will preserve as much as possible of the historical traffic and naval actions, but also include a way to increase the amount of random convoy traffic to suit individual tastes. I can't possibly be the only person who doesn't want a shooting gallery, but also doesn't want to play a game where a 3 hour stretch of game play is spent doing nothing but hourly sonar dips...

Originally Posted by Armistead (Post 1959534)

:hmm2:

I did spend a lot of time hand editing the crew ratings, cargo, etc in RSRD, but I did it in stages. For one thing 90%, if not all of merchants and capital ships have competent ratings, so I even adjusted a lot of those to vet and elite, simply because they react better, repair faster, ect. I also adjusted ratings of escorts to more vet and tried to have an elite escort in most groups.

Main thing is to leave lurkers files alone and create your own to add traffic with the ME. If you want to change up his work, best to use the batch editor. For instance, if you want to add extra ships like the Nagato, etc., to his existing groups.

I did add many convoys with random factors to try and confuse myself. Main thing that improved game play for me was to add many more sub hunter groups in straits, shipping lanes and around ports. Bad enough to fight a convoy escorts, so when a subhunter elite group joins in, you have a fight on your hands. I also made ports damn near impossible to attack. I have several convoys that may have only one troop transport escorted by 6 elite escorts. Very fun to try to attack.

I agree, historical battles should remain, just need more randomness to convoys, more loops, ect. One thing I like about TMO was Duci took the time to add zig patterns, for the most part convoys zig every 10nms.

I also added what I call China traffic late war. Many convoys late war basically hugged the coast. I have them running in and out of harbors, in between islands and reefs, must attack at night and your forced to attack from one side, on the surface and you have to be back to deeper water by morning. Not to mention I have minefields floating on the surface....

Obvious, I prefer difficultly over perfect history. I've tried to adjust my sensors, env., and traffic to really punish me if I make mistakes. Also, reworked contact ranges, increased escorts hunting times, etc..

My goal was to get my tonnage in line with reality, let's face it, going out and scoring 100K tons per patrol is easy even with TMO/RSRD once you learn the AI and figure where traffic is.

What we need is a group of modders to make another supermod combining and tweaking many of the newer mods out there.

Originally Posted by treblesum81 (Post 1959798)

Are there enough modders left to do something like that? It seems that most attempts at something like that (Cold War and Modern Subs being the two most noticeable by me) have just fizzled out over time.