Yes, I followed that thread with interest.

The RND layer itself doesn't really have any control over these aspects. I can only control the number, type, and rated crew difficulty. I tended to include more escorts in IC than in the stock RND, although I did an overall reduction in difficult so never see Elite escorts at all, as that's nearly 100% fatal. I was hoping having more escorts would at least increase the chance that you will get detected, even if not effective prosecuted.

I don't know much about game mechanics or hex editing, so there isn't much I can do, other than change the number, type, and difficulty level of escorts in each convoy.

But I'm happy to introduce changes to those items if there's sufficient evidence that there is a serious issue with convoy escort, like there being too many easy to sink CLs. (Oops.)

:up:

[quote="jasonb885"]Jason! You're the man. Thanks! :rock:

BTW, since you were away for some time, and you're into realism, check this out:

http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=49412

VonHelsching (my real name is Jason too :sunny:)

Sweet.

:up:

Made the changes.

Also I reviewed the changes between the stock and your rnd files.
Just two questions:

1. The TF 1717 (last one) you added is the group of Cpt \Walker?
2. JSGME popped a message sayintg that flag.dat and defcide.cfg will overwrite the same 2 files of Harbour Traffic 1.47. Is it OK to overwrite?

Thanks.

1) Yes.
2) Worry.

I don't know anything about HT, but I imagine it's using some version of the Nationality Mod. I removed some nations and replaced them with new named nations to fix the neutral convoy 'feature', so if HT uses any of those nations such that ships spawn under those flags, my guess is at the very least those ships will no longer have any flags.

If you end up with no flags, it probably isn't the end of the world. In fact, I think that will be the result, as you can add a new nation under the Roster and visit the museum and it will appear, but the ships will be flagless. So, you'll probably be safe insofar as you won't have a CTD. But, some ships will be missing traffic in some harbors out there in the world, somewhere.

I have a list of the nations I pruned, I think.

So those nations are now gone. If you find the SCR has any of those nations, they now have no flags. (The middle entries on each line.)

Same deal with DefSide.cfg. Some of the nations HT defines don't exist in my mod -- probably all of them as missing -- this may be more serious, or the game might simply decide unlisted countries are neutral, friendly, or enemy based on some game default.

The worst case scenario with DefSides.cfg is you need to copy my additions into their DefSides.cfg and renumber so each has a unique number. May be necessary, may not. Depends on how often you come across odd, non-stock-game nations in harbors you visit frequently.

:up:

I guess the HT issues are something anyone wanting to include the latest IC in a larger mod would have to address. I always found excess harbor traffic to slow down my system, so I've never used anything that increases it. Whatever makes the game fun, though.

:yep:

Okay, I reduced the CLs and AUXs by about 20% to around 30%, except for tanker convoys. I reduced the CVE spawns to about 20% for all the Arctic convoys. I left HG41's CVE at 90% since it was quite historic that a CVE sailed and performed so effectively in that convoy before being sunk. Seems reasonable.

I'm going to add some Panama tankers to the tanker convoys. Not sure where else it should go as no one's provided any infos and I lost all of Observer's stuff, except for 1943+.

:up:

Do you know if the task forces in the Arctic about '42-'43 are in the RND layer? Those are also... a bit too frequent. That's where they catch the fleet carriers in WaW.

And oh, I've seen many of your new task forces. More than I needed to, I think. I've no problem with them and, in fact, think they're very cool. Hard to catch, but always worth a try.

Actually, I was nearly killed by escorts from one on my most recent patrol :dead:

Not sure -- I'd have to load the crappy SH3 Mission Editor.

Is it the usual 1 or 2 BB and CLs with many DDs? That's mine.

One of these days I'm going to find one. Maybe I'll set them to 100% spawn and just camp for one. They're kind of a throwback from when I used to purposefully hunt TFs near Gibraltar every patrol. It was cheap, but you did have to wait for maybe an hour or two, realtime, to score big...

I don't think they spawn more often, I just increased the report probability from the default which was -1 or 0 to like 20%.

:up:

I have adjusted the spawn rates for CLs, AUXs, and CVEs. I fixed HX42 no-spawn for 9 months in '42. I added Panama to some convoys at around 10%. I fixed the neutrals in convoys issue.

I'd suggest this be tested for inclusion in TWM, GW, et al. It does trample on some of the Nationality Mod v3.0 nations to allow for the convoy neutral fix, so that might cause some issues or a rejection. I can rework it if it's a significant conflict, but people might be happy enough with IC from RuB 1.43 that no one even cares about this release.

Be that as it may, I'm playing with the latest IC on top of WTM and will continue to do so.

:up:

As to single ship contacts I may be alone but I do not think there are enough. Most of my kills now are from convoys, I might pick up one or two lone merchants on the way to my petrol area but that is it.

In reality if you look at the stats more than half of Uboat kills during the course of the war were from single ships, so statistically speaking, perhaps we should be adding to single ships and reducing the convoys?

Obviously the single ship kill does not have the same frisson as avoiding escorts and sinking merchantmen so that may well make this a "realism" mod that does not attract much interest....

Regards
Malcolm

Thank you, downloading.. :up: Hope you can find the info you need. :)

I'll hear out any logical argument, but I need links and figures.

If someone had a good argument for increasing single merchants, it's quite easily done in perhaps thirty minutes or less.

IC eventually got the pass and included in RuB1.43 and before that the straight 20/20 was applied to the original campaign, so the values seemed reasonable at the time to some.

Thanks for the detailed answer. I finally gave up. I just installed the 200510080418 version, used the stock RDN file and updated sections 60 to 118 with the juicy convoys.

It doesn't matter about the neutrals, anyway. It will be better for my kid to understand that we cannot shoot anything we see moving; that there are some general rules. He was used not shooting the ships with the flag with the stars and stripes, while using Type IID. Some conceptsare difficult to explain :yep:

Great work :up: