Nice one. :D

LoL, nice and definative! ;)

Speaking of rain, was conducting a decks awash approach to a task force last night and the weather conditions seemed to indicate rain (dark, stormy weather... lightning and thunder, heavy waves and winds) but there was no rain and the NO said as much.

Is this correct, or am I missing out on something?

Ubermod v2.0.0 is now uploading to FF!
 

It should finish uploading in about 20 minutes.

I'd try to pretend that the major version number increase is justified, but you'd all know I just ran out of numbers. :p

So anyway... what's new? Well, I finally cracked map contact updates. :rock:

I'm unhappy with them off, and very unhappy with them on, so I did something about it. The updated readme and players guide have all the info you need, but here is the text from the players guide for your perusal:


OLC GUI Special – Realistic Map Contact Updates

As almost everyone agrees, the map contact updates in SH3 are not very realistic, but turning them off completely leaves the player a bit too blind and deaf. In my opinion it would be ideal to see hydrophone contact lines (which are now slightly inaccurate thanks to GWX) and a general position marker for sighted convoys, and yet not have individual visual contacts marked on the map with 21st century precision. This is the goal of the map changes in OLC GUI Special.


The navigation map can be broadly thought of as having two zoom levels, which I'll imaginatively name “zoomed-in” and “zoomed-out”. The crossover point between these zoom levels is the point at which grid lines start to show on your map.

Fig. 5: A “zoomed-out” view of the navigation map. No grid lines are visible.

In the zoomed-out view all visual and hydrophone contacts are shown, but those that are part of a convoy will be shown “grouped” meaning that the entire convoy will be shown as a single icon (or, when submerged, as a single hydrophone contact line).

Fig. 6: A “zoomed-in” view of the navigation map. Grid lines are now drawn on the map.

In the zoomed-in view, visual contacts on the surface (ships and submarines) will not be shown at all, but hydrophone contacts and visual contacts on land and in the air will all be shown individually.


These changes mean that simply raising your scope and looking at your map will still be a valid method of checking for enemy aircraft (which somewhat reduces the need for a lower zoom level on the observation scope) but the same tactic will no longer provide you with instant, highly accurate torpedo targeting data for enemy ships (especially those sailing in convoys). Meanwhile, tracking the overall movements of enemy shipping remains a straightforward matter, and the situational awareness provided by your sonar man is not lost.

You can have heavy clouds, thunder, low visibility and high winds without there being any rain.
Edit: Just to be perfectly clear, you can also have them with rain. You'll get both kinds of weather.

I agree with that just based on real world knowledge, but there was copius amounts of thunder and lightning, yet still not a drop of rain, and while it is actually possible to have a massive lightning storm with little to no rain, I've never seen any game bother with modelling this.

Edit: Ok, I guess I just wasn't sure if they were both modelled (kudos to you for bothering IHMO). I've just played a total patrol time of about 4 months now and never seen so much as a drop of rain, so I wasn't sure if I was missing out.

No kudos to me: it was like that since stock.
I'm getting plenty of both kinds of weather playing the Ubermod. Maybe you were just (un)lucky? :hmm:

LOL I can't keepup with you dude. :rotfl: Every other day I open this page up and something new in the cookie jar. Thanks OLCs :up:

Could be, as for all I know the rain existed but a few miles away so I could experience the storm, but not the rain...

So does this mean I won't have enough map contact accuracy to plot the course lines of individual lines in a convoy? I ask because my favorite convoy attack tactic at this point in time is to arrive ahead of the convoy and infiltrate between the lines (usually the center for the best targets) to make my attack and then use the convoy ships as both sound masking (not sure how well this is modelled, but in theory it should work... if its not modelled, I think it should be... your quiet electric engines and small props should be almost completely drowned out by the big blades of the merchants...) and as obsticals to impede the escorts from easily tracking in on me.

Greg

Yes and no. Basically you'll have to work a bit harder to determine the indivdual lines, but all the info you need to do that can be obtained from a combination of your map contact updates and the use of your periscope and/or hydrophones.

BTW, sensors in SH3 are obscured when a ship is directly between you and another ship, but AFAIK there is no generalised degradation of hydrophone sensors in the area around/inside a convoy.

Greg,
A further thought on this: once near/inside the convoy, you can use your attack map. The attack map still shows individual contacts, even in a convoy, even "zoomed-in", my reasoning being that the absence of map tools (like a ruler a compass) on the attack map means that all you can gain from these contact markers is situational awareness and a general idea of what ships are where. This is fine with me so I left it as it was.

Ok, I just want to make sure I have the whole picture here...

1) This is always in effect, or only in effect if you have the "no map contact updates" option selected (or the opposite)?

2) With this in effect, will the map still be updated with the proper location and icon if I raise the scope and lock onto a surface contact as has been the case previously (I did think it to be way unrealistic that you would get a 360* update of all visible contacts just by raising the scope, but to be able to lock individual contacts and mark their location and distance is not all that unrealistic if you think about it).

3) When you are surfaced, will contacts be updated when tracked either by you or your crew?

Sorry for all of the questions, I just want to be sure I know what I'm getting into before I update to this.

Thanks,
Greg

Edit: Also, is there any possibility that you might release a lighter version of the GUI? I used to use the light version of GUI 1.2.3, but have switched to the dark since its what you've offered with the Ubermod, but I've been having some trouble lately using it because the dark GUI is not all that visible when I'm playing in daytime lighting (IRL).

Edit2: That is understandable, though it would only be useful when close enough to the convoy that you couldn't really maneuver into position fast enough with available speed (slow or 1/3). So it goes back to my last question about map contacts being updated if you are able to visually lock on them with the scope.

Greg,
Answers above in yellow.

No problem.

I play high-realism, and I mod for high-realism. It won't please everyone; it's not meant to.

You have the option of using OLCE2 with OLC GUI v1.2.3 and then you'll basically get everything you want out of those mods, with the possible exception of the waves being rendered nicely through the scope.