another community project member in :up:

Now we are:

V13dweller
volodya61
Targor Avelany
keysersoze
gap

Not to dimish your respectable student status, but I got to agree with you about the google job :haha:

Despite the fact that I have never used google documents, I am sure that its spreadsheet functionalities will be more than enough for our purposes: this is a job that could be done with notepad :yep:

I will try to put my hands on this book. Thank you for your suggestion :up:

Once more, interesting information on standing orders and boat/BdU/FdU messages can be found also on uboatarchive. Indices at the following pages:

http://www.uboatarchive.net/BDUKTB.htm
http://www.uboatarchive.net/KTBList.htm

I would be willing to contribute, but I work best when I am delegated duties. Don't rely on me to dig up some obscure sites or documents. If the leader of the project can provide me with a link and a clear-cut mission I will do my best to fulfill the task. :up:

Thank you Sartoris, :up:

List update:

Sartoris
V13dweller
volodya61
Targor Avelany
keysersoze
gap

as we speak I am preparing some documentation explaining all you need to know before you start working on this projetc :03:

Thanks Sartoris :salute:

Sounds good :up: I converted your spreadsheet into Google docs format. Let me know what you think. I have not yet added the last two sheets (the ones with standard deviation and averages on them) because I honestly have no idea what they mean :doh::O: I remember you mentioned something about deducing torpedo loadouts by using some kind of formula--is this what those sheets are for?

Excellent, looking forward to it! I've actually been thinking about a project like this one for a while now, so I'm extremely happy to see so many others interested in it.:up:

Love doing any research WWII realted. If you need any further help, just point me in a direction. I love archiving and History.
Just drop me a line.
D40:salute:

Thanks Dogfish :salute:

Our current list:

Dogfish40
Sartoris
V13dweller
volodya61
Targor Avelany
keysersoze
gap

Thank you guys, your help is highly appreciated! :yep: :salute:

Exactly, but we can ignore those two sheets for now. I am still working on a spreadsheet that will help us filling in the chart you have just prepared. I hope to post it here tomorrow, but let's give some some more explaination on how we are going arrange our data.

For a start, most of the information we are to collect is kindly provided by uboat.net. Most of you are probably familiar with this popular website, but a reminder won't hurt. :03: At this link you can see an index of all the boats whose logs were recorded, from U-1 to U-4712. From there, we can access the pages relative to any singular U-boat, with information on its career, successes, fate an notable events that the given boat was involved in. Take note of them, because they can come in handy for our purposes. Clicking on the number of patrols in the 'Career' section, we will be displayed with a second page, showing a list of the patrols carried out by the boat. For each patrol are listed: Commander (name and ranking), Departure and Arrival (ports and dates), Days spent at sea, ad Tons sunk. Further details on each patrol can be obtained by clicking on its respective 'view' link. Patrol-specific pages feature a map, showing the general route followed by the boat and some marks denoting attacks on Allied ships and/or by enemy forces (click on them for seeing their details), a list of dates (click on them for getting the daily position logs), ships hit during the patrol (again click on them for details), General events and again attacks suffered during the patrol. Asyou can see, there's some redundancy in the information provided, but I suggest you to read thoroughly each section, because sometimes what was overlooked in a section, is discussed in the next one, though at a glance you might tink that they are presenting the same information. :yep:

The above are our inputs. Let's discuss our expected outputs now. The collected data is going to be arranged in many pages, one for each month of the war. Each page will be divided on turn in several sections, one for each U-boat type. This is going to make things easier, if we want the correct unit type to be spawned in game. For the time being we will stick to types VIIA, B, C and C/41, but as soon as new sub will be released (in Targor we Trust! :D), types II, IX, XIV and XXI will follow. Each section is composed by n rows (depending on the number of U-boats of that type on patrol on the given month), and 29 to 32 columns (one for each day of the month + 1 for U-boat names). The information relative to each U-boat will be divided into 3 consecutive rows: one row for the daily position, another row for commander's name (I just got this idea from keysersoze :D), and one last row containing information on the current status of the boat. Something like this:

2/001/026/00/007/3/1

• First digit - boat's doctrine in four levels:
  
  • 0 - the boat is unavailable (tracking down/attacking its own target, evading an enemy attack and/or seriously damaged);
  • 1 - the boat has a low chance of responding our request of support, and only within a very short range from her current position (boat damaged, or currently carrying on special duties);
  • 2 - the boat is available for joint operations with a medium chance of joining our attack, and a relatively long range of action from her logged position;
  • 3 - the boat is currently involved in wolf pack operations: 100% chance of responding our call, but only within a limited range.
• Second three digits - days elapsed from the beginning of the patrol;
  
• Third three digits - total lenght (in days) of the patrol. This number and the previous one will help deciding if the boat can support us, when doctrine is not 0 (0% probability) or 3 (100% probability).
  
• Forth two digits - ships sunk/damaged since the beginning of the patrol. By confrontation of 2 consecutive dates, it could be used for generating historical sinking reports, for instance: "17.09.39 - U-29 (Kptlt. Otto Schuhart) - Ship sunk pos 50.10N 14.45W". The same can be done for other reports by further differentiating the doctrine digit (wolfpack operations, boats heading to base, attacks suffered, etc.)
  
• Fifth two digits - torpedoes carried at the beginning of the patrol. This number and the previous one will also determine wether a boat can cope our call for help or not.
  
• Sixth digit - crew ranking from 0 to 4, poor to elite (in case TDW got control on the ranking of spawned U-boats). It can be set following the ranking of the commander, or according to our judgement of the result obtained by any given U-boat crew.
  
• Seventh digit - fate: 0 (good bye: this is the last day of the boat) or 1 (die hard!), also useful for automatically generated reports.

The spreadsheet that I am currently working on, will in fact help us generating quickly the above numbers on the base of few inputs. What do you think guys? Any suggestion? :hmm2:

Yes I can read and set the unit's veterancy level using assembly :up:

That's perfect. :up:

Any other suggestion TDW? Do you see any redundant or lacking information in my draft?

Looks great :yeah:

One minor suggestion would be to only use the commander's last name, rather than his full name and rank. BdU alternated addressing U-boats by the boat name (e.g. U47), the commander's last name (e.g. Prien), or the, rarely, a code (usually a random assortment of numbers like 006453). From the messages I have read from the database linked below, the last name was the most common method, especially in the later war. The link below is an example of one such message (an ULTRA decrypt). Anything contained with the double parentheses is an addition by British intelligence so the Admiralty could track which boats had which captains.

http://www.wwiiarchives.net/servlet/...intercept/1775

Yes, I thought about it. As far as we mantain rank, name and surname as three different blocks, separated by two spaces, it shouldn't be difficult for TDW to isolate the desired element, or even to recombine the three of them at wish :hmm2:

Sounds good to me:yep:

As we go along, I can also cross-reference our data with the special operations information I have. Many of these missions are listed on uboat.net, but there are a lot of notable exceptions.

Yes, many. I have just mentioned uboat.net in my previous post because I didn't want to discourage people willing to help but not wanting to turn themselves in historians. Provided that our little team will grow up, maybe we can create two sub teams, one taking care of dates/coordinates, and another one dealing with the "magic numbers" :hmmm:

Yes, I think uboat.net is the best place to start. It is accessible and straightforward. We can tackle more complex tasks later if all goes well. Again, the possibilities with a collaborative approach are almost limitless, as long as there are volunteers.

I would suggest, though, that we deliberately aim for an easily-achievable goal for the first installment of this project. That way, the project won't seem too daunting, we will have a nice sense of accomplishment after having finished the first portion, and it will allow us to check our work to see if any modifications are needed.

EDIT: what did you mean by "magic numbers?"