After all the talk about me doing it monthly, it seems six months have gone by without a new update. Partly my fault for being lazy, and partly because I've also been quite busy.

I should be starting again soon.

Anything I can do to help?? :shucks:

Not really. I have a system, and it requires that I look into each and every ship I put into the file. It wouldn't be hard to teach it to someone else, but it would be near impossible to coordinate. thanks for the offer though.

Only if the "RepeatWhenAllUsed" setting in Ship names.cfg is set to 1.

It would be good if someone (suspiciously like Steve) could create "pre Dec 1941" and "post Dec 1941" versions of the file. Users (with the requisite skills) could then apply the pre file until the Yanks enter the war then replace it with the post file after. The pre file places emphasis on Cwlth names, the post includes Yank names. It doesn't matter how many ships are actually in the game, it just assumes that players (at least those who take the game relatively seriously) would not sink too many Yank ships prior to Dec 1941.

You are 100% correct. And this is partly my fault. I built the tools but never really explained to the layman how they could exploit them. A few people have taken up the challenge with very effective results (sabotage and malfunctions are courtesy of Hemisent and WB has done some amazing things with some of his mods). There's still lots that SH3Cmdr can do that no-one has tapped. Unfortunately, I really no longer have the time or temperament to mention what could be done, and then go through it with everyone. So I just explain things when people approach me privately.

This is exactly what I'm working on for myself. Altho TBH I haven't been too persnickety about whether a ship name actually IS American, or just sounds American - in most cases I don't know the difference. So it's a question of whether I just want my logs to "look right" to my own eyes, or want the pinpoint accuracy of knowing exactly where each ship was from and thus removing it from the pre-12/41 list if needed.

Fortunately the more I look at it the more I see that for a lot of the classes in there now it doesn't matter, as the classes themselves are more or less "nation specific" (or at least specific to the Americas vs. Europe, close enough for gubmint work :O:).

Steve was kind enough to send me his "working file" as well so there's a lot of info in there re: nationalities of ships I would never have figured out on my own.

What I may end up doing is getting as far as I can on my own, and then if Steve doesn't mind, asking him about any specific ships that are "left over" and I'm unsure about.

Not only could I do that, but I would be glad to. The problem is I have no idea how the files should be named. If the Random or Date functions can be made to apply them properly it would be a great thing. Of course I don't know how to do that either.

@ NoGoodLandLubber: You asked if you could help. Are you any good at learning that kind of thing? :sunny:

What I'm thinking about the Random and Date folders in Commander (and Jaesen will correct me if I'm wrong :D) is that they can only be used to insert/overwrite files in the game folder when Commander is used to launch SH3. I don't think they can be used to make Commander itself operate differently, or switch back and forth between two or more versions of one of its own .cfg files depending on the in-game date for whatever career you're updating/playing at the moment. :hmmm:

My idea was to create two mods, one for before Dec 10 1941 and another for that date and after. The first one would have the edited down version of whatever the current Shipnames.cfg file is, the other would have the full lists of ship names for use after the US enters the war. Then I would enable/disable them as needed depending on what date I was playing in-game.

But that wouldn't work as smoothly for someone who is playing more than one career using the same installation of Commander, they'd have to remember to switch back and forth more often depending on which career they were going to choose and what the current in-game date was for that particular kaleun.

If there were a way to make that "automatic" within Commander itself that would be very handy but if there is it's still a mystery to me. :O:

Hmm...not sure...I can at least take a look at it if someone can point me in the right direction....

On reflection I realized that what Jaesen suggested is easier than I though, at least where the files themselves are concerned. IABL's Merchants are already divided, of course, and if they are done right the Americans should already not appear until 12/07/41, so there's nothing that needs to be done there.

As for the rest, I realize now that all it would involve is going through all the others, removing all the US ships and saving the new file with a different name. Some work there, but nothing to really worry about.

So if someone can figure out how to make it work automatically in Commander, I'm on it. :sunny:

:yep: That's what I noticed once I started digging into the different classes - the only ones that would have to be edited are the ones where the class includes ships from a mix of nations where some were still neutral for several years and the rest were in it early on. Like the Q-ships, where you wouldn't want to sink one in 1940 and have it turn up in your logs as one of the US ships that shouldn't have been out there at that time.

So far the closest I've come to "automatic" is to install JSGME in Commander and use that to enable one version of 'Ship Names.cfg' from the start of the war until Dec 9 1941 (I'm thinking I remember that Germany didn't declare war on the US until Dec 10) and another version of the file once you've completed a patrol on or around the switch-over date.

Make two folders - call them Ship Names 1 and Ship Names 2 (or whatever). The first one is for use through Dec 9 1941, the second one for use after that.

Inside each is another folder, Cfg, and in each Cfg folder goes the version of Ship Names.cfg to be used in the selected time period. So the structure would look like:

Ship Names 1\Cfg\Ship Names.cfg
(where Ship Names.cfg = the version edited to reflect early American neutrality)

and

Ship Names 2\Cfg\Ship Names.cfg
(where Ship Names.cfg = the unedited version including all American ships)

Copy both mods into the MODS folder of the SH3 Commander directory, open JSGME for Commander, enable/disable them when necessary dependng on your in-game date.

If there's a way to make Commander switch back and forth between two versions of the same file without modding it like that, I can't figure it out. Which doesn't mean much, lol, but that's where I'm at with it at the moment. :D

I'm thinking there should be a way to use Commander's 'Date' function to switch them out, but I'm not sure how.

SH4 is so much easier. *sigh*

But we're talking about switching files in and out of Commander itself, not using Commander to switch them in and out of the game. You can use the Date folders to mod SH3 for a given date range, but the Real Ships Names feature is not part of SH3. As far as I can tell any dates in those folders refer to an SH3 world where Ship Names.cfg doesn't exist and has no function. I don't think you can use them to make Commander mod itself. :cry:

And to that I have no clue. But you're right - with both files available it wouldn't be that hard to swap them out manually when December 1941 comes.