Obviously I am missing something:

C2, C1, N3, Hog Hislander, etc, have all a cfg#FLG_ node like the Rawalpindi, but unlike the Rawalpindi they sail under the civil ensign :hmmm:

that tells me that SH5 is different in this aspect than SH3/4 then. That means unit type (i.e. 102, 12, etc.) determines the type of flag flown. Rawalpindi is a type of warship, all the others are types of merchants :hmmm:

Unless...

cfg#FLG_ and cfg#FLS_ let unit type to determine the flag used, whereas cfg#FLGC_ and cfg#FLSC_ are forcing the merchant flag. How does that sound to you? :hmm2:

Small addition. I have just checked Jimbuna's Q-ship:

UnitType: 102 (Cargo)
Flag node: cfg#FLG_

:yep:

The S is supposed to designate small version of the flag.

yes, that's clear, but atm I am more concerned about the naval/civil type of flag than about its size :)

Yeah I would agree with your thinking. The only way to know for sure is to test it :yep:

Will do tomorrow :up:

Changing of topic, what do you think of this?

The more I think of it, the more doubts I get about the validity of my workaround. There could be a minimum distance shells mast travel before they get "armed" or, conversely, once an impact with container doors is detected, damage could spread to the nearby zones thus damaging the ship herself :hmmm:

I was going to sleep, but I was hit by a probably better idea, and I just had to share it: :D

So let's say that we make a fake gun out of each side of the trap container, the fixed part of it being the base of the gun, and the top spinning door being the barrel. We set our fake guns as follows:

- no training;
- min-max elevation of 0-180 deg;
- a relatively high elevation speed;
- a big number of dummy shells;
- a low rate of fire;
- a range comparable to the one of a medium caliber gun, with a tight trajectory;
- no muzzle firing effect.

Now we should create 4 additional gun bones around each "regular" gun, and assign our dummy guns to each of them, so that they enclose the gun as if they were the sides of a container. We must also take care that the fake barrels (the doors of the container) are oriented with their z axes (their muzzles) pointing inside the container. Not being able to train, our fake guns would be forced to rotate by 180deg in order to follow at their best any target on their side, thus "opening" the container on the side where the real gun is probably going to fire. What do you think? Can it work? I hope I made myself clear. :)

Sorry to highjack the thread, but it's about guns isn't it? :D
Is there a way to decrease AI guns accuracy?
Just rising scope in the detection radius area of a Cimmaron, and you're good for half your sub damage...isn't it a bit overdone?
And by what kind of miracle they can damage both my diesel engines 12 meters underwater? :doh:
Is there a way so they can damage only perisopes, or some outside structures like deck gun/flakgun?
Diesels, electrics and other stuff like pumps should be pretty hard to damage in my sub, from a 1000m cargo deck machine gun!
Is it a sub hit box problem?

Actually the real Q ship action took place in WWI with double crews- that would appear to abandon ship while a hidden crew waited for the hun to surface only to face hidden cannon and a ship loaded with barrels to make it unsinkable. A sub commander would eyeball the situation carefully for hours before surfacing. the only double recipient of the Victoria Cross was a Q ship skipper. No mercy was given in these encounters. The book Dreadnought and its subsequent: Castles of Steel sheds enlightenment. In SHV I've noticed that merchantman gunnery, especially from the liberty ship 6 inchers, is all I can handle. Hence an attack to the stern to half sink him and take out the stern emplacement. Cracking fire from 5000 meters in the dark generally finishes the job.:arrgh!:

yes, there are two 'Max error angle' global factors (one for cannons and one for AA guns) in Sim.cfg, and there's probably an individual gun stabilization factor found in gun's sim file, though my and Volodya's experiments with it on U-boat guns didn't produce any evidence that it is working as espected. Let's hope that on AI guns it is working :03:

This is harder to fix.

In the past, there has been a lot of discussion here on subsim wether a 20mm AP shell could have penetrated the plating of an U-boat or not. There is not an unequivocal answer to this question. My personal answer is that yes, theoretically it could have well pierced an U-boat hull, but it would have depended on a number of factors, such as ballistic range, angle of impact and wether the U-boat was surfaced or submerged.
Unfortunately, the simplified SH's damage model doesn't take the above factors into account. Current SH5 settings are that 20 mm shells may penetrate our hull or may not (which imo is realistic), but as far as I can understand this is totally random (which obviously is not very realistic). :-?

:hmmm: My thinking is yes, a 20mm could penetrate sub hull...on surface depending distance and angle, but not 12m subgerged! (if not 50m close, of course!)
IMO, that's a very annoying SH5 issue, pretty immersion killer.
Only deck stuff and periscopes should be damaged further than few hundred meters away from ennemy.
Really wish someday a modder could fix that.
Even UZO couldn't be destroyed...as AFAIK, they always take it off at each dive...

Unfortunately I don't see an easy way to fix it other than making U-boat's hull resistant to 20 mm AP shells. Not with my skills at least. :hmmm:

Guys, are you sure Cimmaron has only 20mm cannons?

Well, from google yes they had...and even bigger!

So the dammage they could give might be not that far off...finally

and why do you complain? :arrgh!:

PS: though I didn't mean google search :), I meant game settings..

i googled after your question :haha: Never thought tanker could be armed like a battleship! :o
More seriously, they still are able to shoot you right in the head from 1/2/3 km away, depending their skill.
Elite, you'd better calculate solution blinded only using hydro, and fire torpedos from your nav map without looking through periscope :yep:
In the Merchant AI single mission, i think you have up to 4/5 seconds for looking at periscope before beeing badly damaged.

:o Was it first Cimmaron you met? I don't think so.. as to me, I always (almost always :03:) knew that Cimmaron = death.. well, almost death :)

EDIT: Thank God so far in the game is only one such terrible tanker/merchant :)

I think some have gotten a wrong idea of what I meant by Q ships. I agree that there are already many heavily armed merchants in the game. They are however, very obviously armed by looking at them. A Q-ship would not be obviously armed and in many cases look like any piece o crud travelling alone. Something you would be very tempted by to save your torpedoes and attack on the surface with your deckgun. I also agree that the program was not successful in RL. However the effect it would have on the gamer in encountering a lone, seemingly harmless merchant would be undeniable(and the main purpose of the mod). Just having a small chance(and if the mod is done right you might not ever run into one in a single career) that the lone rust bucket you've been chasing might turn out to be a career-ender is enough to get you to act like a real captain. Instead of the player acting recklessly blazing away with their deckgun, thinking they're safe. Obviously this would only work in the earlier years(mirroring the RL Q-ships years of use). By the later years the allies did not need such tactics. Hunter-killer groups, the obviously heavily armed merchants and their escorts along with airpower were more than enough later.