Why the offended tone Jason? :shifty: I happend to really enjoy what you've done with the convoys, if you don't like other player's wants for mods no need to insult them? Or am i missing something? What does a SCR file do?

I'm just stating the situation as I see it. If I were to modify the SCR layer (the scripted layer which is separate from the RND layer) so things like Hunt Class destroyers could have valid entry dates, of which isn't even on my list of things to do, well...

Here's the deal. The SCR layer is the basis for all the harbor traffic mods. People love their traffic mods. If I modify SH3's _default_ SCR layer and fix the Hunter Class entry dates, now people will be dumping that SCR layer in favorite of a harbor mod SCR layer or dumping ImprovedConvoys for harbor traffic.

So I either have to pick a 'side', and use someone's harbor mod as the basis for my SCR with fixed Hunter Classes, or use the stock game's SCR file.

No matter which way you play it, someone's going to be annoyed.

It's easier to just not bother.

If Wulfmann wants to release his fixed SCR with the corrections for the Hunter Class destroyers and other ships, then everyone can benefit and maybe someone maintaining a harbor mod will believe it fit for inclusion so an even greater number of people benefit.

But it's outside my domain. I don't want to have to 'pick sides' on harbor mods by including one or another with accurancy corrections for scripted patrols that include Hunter Class destroyers and others.

My goal is to solely modify the RND layer with the minimum amount of overlap with other projects as possible. Besides 20/20 the RND layer has gotten little attention from anyone else doing mods, so overlap doesn't appear like it will be an issue.

for the SCR layer, Rubini is working hard on it,
why don't see with him (when he will come back int 3-4 days ) for this hunter class fix????

:-?

Is it still a work in progress? The med. convoys need doing still?

Are you going to give them same overhaul, formation spacing etc?

You could add a few greek escorts, raise convoy detection probilities (as air searchs from Sicily picked up many). I like the atlantic work. Still worried about large wide convoys and large spacing during course alterations. Does it cause problems with slow ships or have you tested it and found it to be fine?

e.g
HX41 in jasons layer has a max of 37 merchants and a mininum of 17.

Formation spacing is 900m between 9 columns. 8x900 = 7.2 km wide convoy formation. Distance from the centre is at the most 3.6km. Convoy speed is 9 knots.

Ill have to test, but if a course change of say 60 degrees when the player is attacking may cause one wing of the convoy to turn round and the other unable to speed up enough to get into the new station position.

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/7808/untitled11vb.jpg


Probably nothing to worry about though, if there is chaos in the formation, it may take only a short while to sort out, except tramps, which would trail convoy at 9 knots as that is thier maximum speed. I feel giving no leeway may cause people to sight "chaotic" convoys on patrols. Not a major worry I suppose, messed up convoys were historically common maybe?

There are couple of ways around this. I have increased tramps speed a little, and my RND does not have such large spacing or so many columns. But also not so many ships. Of course maybe it is not a big problem. You will have to see what people report back seeing. I think it may occur, but very rarely, as players encounter convoys mostly between waypoints and you haven't done much to convoy courses. I have a couple of other issues, but on the whole I think it is a valiant attempt to sort out many issues with the RND, just worried that while it all seems fine in the editor, there are certain practical limitations that may only become apparent in practise, i.e when the game is played.

As for mistakes, the editor seems to be fine for me. Never caused a crash for me.

Also from the books I have read, certain destroyer types were encountered more often in certain theatres. Bu changing all to generics, you have gained variety, but lost some historical accuracy. The devs seemed to get it mostly right in terms of type. J's and Tribals in the med and arctic, BSwans, corvettes, clemsons, VWs and A-Ds in atlantic.. Some crossover, but looking at service records of J and Tribals, they did some escorts but nearly exclusively to russia and med.

Interesting find, Jace. I'll have to see if I can reproduce it - but I think I've seen something like that before.
The natural idea, and one which I've been pushing for in convoys all along, is increasing the ship speeds via their respective .sim files... failing that - shouldn't the tramps technically be able to do 11kt? (their .sim files say so - maybe it's the config speed of 9kt that's stopping them. In which case that's an even easier fix.)

I guess it also depends on how much effect this really has. If there's notable mess-ups, and half the convoy straggles permanently, then it's an issue. If it's just a bit disorganized while in your detection range - I don't suppose it's a major issue.

It occurs to me the elegant solution would be to find some way to offer an altered SCR, LND, RND file with the additions highlighted in some fashion...if a player wanted to add, say, the harbor traffic to the improved convoys, they could quickly scan the mod to determine what the changes are and where they come into play, and then cut and paste. I did this with World Mod 2.1 and 3.0 to get a blend, but it was very time consuming without a visual cue to go by. A color-coded section might be a nice workaround, affording the following:

1) Players could determine quickly the changes to a file
2) Greater flexibility in using mods is afforded, thus no one has to pick and choose
3) It would allow a fairly easy roll back in the event something isn't working
4) One could easily spot the types of issues you guys have been discussing with the DDs.

I like the harbor traffic, and have worked with Rubini on testing it. But I also like the Improved Convoys, and have put no small amount of time into researching and providing (hopefully) useful information on it. I'd prefer not to pick and choose, nor would I like to see either Jason or Rubini get discouraged and cease/desist efforts on our behalf.

The drawback I see (there may be others) is that this isn't something you can do with the mod enabler, and I've noticed some reluctance of people to use mods without that feature...this isn't major league coding, just minor cutting and pasting, but that may put some people off.

As I stated, my first edit was adding the harbor traffic from World Mod 3.0 to World Mod 2.1, as well as the raiders and some of the groups. It was a pain in the butt, but it worked and at the time I thought it well worth the effort. I don't mind some work on my end to create a great mod from all of your hard work. Seems only fair, IMO.

Well, as I see the situation right now, since ImprovedConvoys is intended as part of the Operations mod - we'll have ourselves a new major modded set of LND, SCR and RND when Operations comes out. As far as options and selections - I think it will be easy to add/remove certain features from Operations, if people so desire, but as is the case with Jason's individual work here - I think that should be the concern of those who feel the campaign set to be 'deficient' enough to want to put in the effort for that sort of selection, rather than the concern of the Operations team themselves.

I don't think Jason or anyone else is discouraging those who want to be so detailed about the darn one-stackers that they're go in and mess with a good chunk of the campaign to get them right. But, in the same spirit that the Operations team doesn't feel that port traffic isn't worth the effort, if Jason doesn't think the one-stackers are worth the effort - perhaps it's best that someone else do something about them. Which we'd all most welcome, much as we would a realistic, un-abusable set of port traffic...

Regarding Escorts and the Generic - more variety, less historical accuracy - issue...

One problem is the classes depicted in the game. The destroyers are either dedicated fleet types or highly modded ASW varients. The V&W is a mess. It starts off as a fleet class, only 2 racks and later gets a hedgehog but no K-Guns... Is it a WAIR, an LRE an SRE or what???

Historically incorrect, the V&Ws underwent conversions, I wish I could do what serg is doing to ship models as I would try and make an LRE version. Strip off the foreward funnel and add K-guns and land a turret or two.

Anyway, my point is that the most used escorts in atlantic convoys were those most suited to the task at the time. Old modded clemsons, corvettes and LRE's. The J's and Tribals were used elsewhere, where their limited ASW loadouts, AA loadouts, torpedos etc were more appropriate.

Perhaps, assuming we can get Serg-level modding done here, we could simply separate the classes into two different entries and models for Fleet and ASW types?

Sounds like one of those things one wouldn't want to spend THAT much time one, but if all it takes is even changing the ASW loadouts, I'd be all for that...

I had some new convoys running at 6 kts originally and found one all messed up and backwards in the middle of a huge storm. The tramps should've been able to keep up. But all the ships were a complete mess.

When you come to fixing up the Gibraltar convoys etc, the 900m 9 columns may cause problems as the Gibraltar bay area where they spawn is not much over 7 km wide. Suggest you move some spawn points for these or dont apply the same formation settings.

Interesting observation I would not have even considered.

The most disturbing thing I have seen so far is 9kts HX convoys will slow 6kts after I hit a ship. I don't know if this normally happens or not. It's unlikely anything in the RND layer is responsible for this, although confirmation would be nice anyway. Is it happening to anyone else?

yup, I think you are ok on all other convoys, I don't see any other narrow "choke points" that may cause problems for wide formations, I may have missed something though.

Did you damage the leader? That may have that effect. It's safe to say the convoy maintains formation on the leader. But what if the leader is sunk? The next ship in the list may become the leader. I am not sure, but if that happens it shouldn't cause a problem. However if the leader is damaged , slows and is not sunk, its position as leader may not be handed to the next ship. Just a theory.

I will Hunt for a new topic on destroyer accuracy.

I had deleted that Hunt mod long ago Jason, so in doing, I agree it does not serve the greater good for a user mod but it should not hurt to keep it in the discussion regarding relevance to other similar inaccuracies that might be addressed.

In the end no matter what things are added that are corrected, by your or my opinion, the play must be competitive. That is, we don't have Wolf packs so our attacks can never be accurate. U-boats virtually never had lined up turkey shoots. If a convoy had no escorts it scattered and did not move at all like in SH3. By adding unhistorical trawlers with DCs to make up for that allows a variation for difficulty. It is not the best answer but being technically right with no escort when the merchants technically do not act right arrives at the incorrect scenario. Having a few more escorts on early convoys just restores some defensive capability missing by things beyond our control..

BTW, I found a bug in the Ureal RND file or the result of one or something it reacted too.
I started a new career in 1942, ran the first mission, which ran fine, I started the second mission and it CTD while loading. Replaced your stock RND with the RUB 20/20 and the mission loaded. That was May 1942.
Can someone else run a new career at 1942 and also a 43 and see what they get???? Any thoughts???? Don't have the Hunts mod so don't even think about that!!!!

Also I noticed your merchant ships are still referred to as US in the roster text files. It is not necessary to change the Norway version of US T3 Tanker to NO T3 Tanker? As it is now there will be duplicates of named tankers in the game which might (I actually do not know) cause a problem somewhere?????? Same for Netherlands; NE.

We will have to differ on the use of early DDs. By changing the called for to be any "4" and removing the Hunt dates to reality does not lesson the DDs at all. The CClass, V&W, JClass and Tribals will show and though the last two were not as likely in 1939 in NA convoys they at least actually existed, if that matters.

I asked Serg about renaming the River class and it does require a great deal of Hex editing to make the "real� A-D class. But, that would interfere with the present CClass and as you correctly assessed on the Hunt issue, create many SCR problems. In the end those A-d conversions are the River class just wrongly named as such. Changing that would be a much more complex fix than the Hunt class.

My actual suggestion to your mod was to add the ships for the four nations but never actually ask for them by name.
Having a Greek "4" would mean the Hunt I would show for anyone not adding the correct Hunt II and III. I do agree keeping it as simple as possible is the right way. I am not sure getting your shorts all in a knot is required when the Hunt fix is simple compared to others you are proposing or have done.
Wulfmann

It just seems odd that in three convoys I managed to hit the leader out of about 30+ ships. That's some serious luck three times in a row now although I did always engage some of the ships near the front.

Correct. My goal is realism with play balance, or it's no fun at all.

It's worth investigating. I haven't started a career out of 1941 yet.

Correct. I copied them without much thought to the effects, but that should be easy to fix. Thanks.

It's certainly possible to include a Greek escort or two, for example, in Med convoys. Based on the existing roster it would be one of the few escorts they're allowed to have in SH3. I haven't gotten around to doing Med convoys yet, since "Med convoy" is really a misnomer anyway. I notice the developers greatly reduced the frequency of Med 'convoys' I imagine because they were so irregular. Seems like the best possible fix under the circumstances for that reality.

In additional to the speed bug where 9 kts convoys slow down to 6 kts when hit, I am still performing general playtesting on Atlantic convoys for escorts and spawn probabilities. 85% chance to spawn SC seems to spawn a lot less often than my 90% chance to spawn HX in 1941. Very strange given the 5% difference.

My last three encountered with convoys have been turkey shoots. I am uncertain if it's worth modeling unescorted or weekly escorted convoys in the game if it's that easy to sink ships, although it's grossly unrealistic for convoys to be reasonably escorted before the beginning of 1941... Maybe all my escorts for weekly escorted convoys or when the spawn probability for most ships is less than 50% should be Veteran, even in early war, to compensate. Watching Flowers depth charge my position 2km away is only funny the first few times.

I have not seen this behavior. Did you hit the commodore's ship perhaps?

I think increasing the escort AI one notch while keeping the number of escorts low should fix part of this issue, and keeping the convoys fast should eliminate much of the turkey shoot because you'll only get one chance. From what I've read though, submerging or going deep during the "Happy Times" was often enough to shake an escort, so I don't find it ridiculous for the escort to DC the wrong position early in the way.