joea - yes, but more due to things like FIDO homing torpedoes, constant bombing raids, enemy submarines, h/k groups that hunted down uboats for days based on ULTRA intercepts, etc... none of which are modelled in SH3.

Beery - since there's a large number of escorts in the scr layer, I suggest toning them down in the next release of RuB except for h/k groups.

The DD/DE in the SCR are a vital part of the campaign, so they should also be changed.

You would have to speak to the Ops mod guys. I have nothing to do with modding the campaign layers. I just plug in what the Ops and IC teams send me. The only significant input I've had into IC or Ops was to ask them reduce the number of elites in the game. :-j

Never mind; I'll do it for the next version of IuB - it's a simple find/replace operation. Gizzmoe posted the instructions earlier in this thread but I think they've been deleted?

Yes, it was an accident! :oops:

As I wrote, open the layer file with Notepad and replace

CrewRating=4

with

CrewRating=3

to set every elite ship to Veteran.

Yes, it's the scripted layer that has an overly amount of elite DDs. When the attack happened on me I was in the Med near a port and I noticed in the mission editor that there are several DD elites there patrolling that port. I was only about 5-10+ nautical miles away from the port when all of a sudden 8 Hunt class DD elites came in from nowhere on me. I was already submerged and at periscope depth when the sonar man started to hear and report to me that 'warship, moving fast, closing' speech. Then anotther, and another, and another, and another - It was like I had just past an underwater patrol cop who clocked me speeding at a remarkable "3 knots" and called in the whole damn department for back up! :roll:

Anyways, my immediate reaction was to be even quiter and try to hide (similar in par to the Thief III game) and looked for my only resource at the time and that was to dive deeper down to Rig for Silent Running (2 knots), go deeper 50meters, change course 90 degrees from the contacts. I used external cam and the DDs seemed to know exactly what I was doing as if they had underwater cameras that zoomed out underwater 2+ nautical miles. :roll:

In this situation, :ping: = :dead:

Using the windows notepad I found a way to save myself a lot of time and pain of editing ALL the CrewRating=4 entries, by going up to 'edit' and clicking on 'replace' and entering into the query of what I want replaced and with what.


Replace = 'CrewRating=4' <---Elite ships

ReplaceWith = 'CrewRating=3' <---Veteran ships

Good one SubSerpent. :up:

Is it a good idea to make ALL elites into veterans? I'm considering it, but I'm just not sure. I know elites are very good indeed (almost certain death), but are veterans good enough?

Certainly not. A healthy elite/veteran/novice mix would be the right thing. For the time I´ve mentioned (September 1943 onwards) a mix of 40% elite, 40% veteran and 20% novice would be ok, IMO.

Personally I don´t find elites too hard... It´s tricky, but I usually survive it. But not when there are three of four of them! :)

What difficulty level do you play at? I've read that if you have the threat indicator, then elites are possible to evade. As for 40% elites, I don't think the game currently has this many. For the word 'elite' to be meaningful I think they should be rarer than any other type. If the SAS accepted 40% of British Army troops into their ranks I don't think they could be called 'elite' anymore.

I would still think that 50% should be novice and the reamaing 50% should be split in half 25%/25% Veteran/Elite. Remember, most allied DDs/escorts did not encounter many U-boats or even see much action during the war. Therefore most of them should be Novice (unexperienced crews). Just like the GREEN guys fresh out of bootcamp that went to Vietnam who had NO idea how to fight in the jungle until they had been there for a few months to a year learning from the ones who had been in country for awhile. They had to see action to no how to survive so how could there be more Elite ships than Novice ships? For realism sake, that's my penny!
What would be even better still would be if the enemy ships could LEARN and become more proficient depending on whether or not they had seen action.

I agree Beery, I think the 'ELITES' should be a LOT more rare to encounter. Too bad there isn't a way to give the player more renown for sinking an ELITE DD than what they get for sinking a NOVICE DD!

I no longer use the threat indicator. I have good headphones and listen to them from the command room. I also have a lot of practice... ;)

In SCR the number of elite units is at least 95% from September 1943 onward, maybe even 100%. As I said, RND is ok.

Well you have to count both files. Splitting them up doesn't really give us an idea of the real percentages. If elites are 95% of the SCR after 1943 but the SCR file only accounts for 5% of the entire DD and DE population, then the 95% elites in the SCR file would only be a very small minority of the entire DD/DE population. I've no idea what the proportions are, but I think we need to get an overview before we start meddling with the campaign files. We are, after all, talking about taking the game yet another big step towards survivability, and some folks were complaining that it was too easy BEFORE we nerfed the DCs and cut out a lot of the RND elites.