Alright. I'm back from testing and this is what I have found:

I started out with 1000 renown. I rendezvoused with a repair ship for a -1500 renown penalty. Then I entered another test trigger zone that gave me 1000, so I should have ended up with 500 total. But I was court-marshalled upon returning. I am thinking that having 500 or less renown triggered that outcome. But the good news is that the game does seem to keep track of negative and positive renown during a mission. So I don't really see this as being a problem.

*edit*

I retested again. This time with starting out with 1000 renown. I rendezvoused with a repair ship for a -1500 renown penalty. Then I entered another test trigger zone that gave me 1500. I ended up with 1000 total. No court-marshal. 500 or less remaining renown seems to be the court-martial threshold.

sounds good !

I don't know about the US, but IJN subs on their way to occupied France did get refueled by german tankers off Madagascar, so refueling at sea was done.

Germans had Milk Cows which gave fuel, ammo, food anf torpedoes to Uboots far from home.

did the US have similar tactics ? I don't think so.

keltos

Did the US have similar tactics? Not that I know of. :hmmm: But I'm no expert on the pacific sub war...

I'm thinking of placing one rescue ship SoS rendezvous point perhaps at a maximum of 300-500 miles from each sub base. I think that would be a fair distance. I might also add a couple of rescue sub SoS rendezvous points deep inside enemy territory- BUT with a higher renown penalty if used (due to the danger and farther distances involved). :|\\

That is very interesting. :hmmm: I am wondering why the court martial? I wonder if the minus makes the game think you either destroyed your sub or sank some friendlies.
Still a lot of little secrets in this strange game. That's great that it works anyway.
It looks like it may be a little more difficult to decide on a penalty though. I would think you may take a penalty hit for a damaged sub, and if you then have to call an SOS it may be enough to cause a court martial and that would defeat the purpose of the SOS.
I think the idea is great, maybe when you release it you could ask people to keep track of their situation when they use the SOS and whether they get a court martial or not, it may give enough information to decide what works and what doesn't.
Maybe even make a note of renown before you start a patrol and if you take any damage, make a note of how much and then use the SOS on purpose just to test what happens and how much renown you gained or lost.
Sinking ships should not be a problem keeping track of, each ship gives the renown points in the .cfg file for that ship. IF the game uses those numbers, I never tested it.

But as long as the negative amounts don't cause a problem the rest can be tested. For example, you started with 1000, but what if you bought some new radar, new gun etc and left with almost nothing. Then the SOS cost -500 but you earn back 400 by sinking a Nippon Tanker. You would only have 400+. Would it be the 500 that is the threshold or is it the difference between what you lost and what you gained?

I just did a test where I bought guns and spend all the renown, left port and just docked without even leaving port, so I entered with 0 renown and no court martial. So somehow it has to be taking into account the amount of minus versus the amount of Plus. Since in both of your tests the Minus was the same but the Plus amount was different.

To start putting it together:
1. In your first test you lost -1500 but gained back 1000 and had a loss of -500 (court martial)

2. In your second test you lost -1500 but you gained 1500, so had a loss of 0 (no court martial)

3. My test I lost nothing, I gained nothing (no court martial)

So if you only take into account the actual success or failure of the patrol then maybe any Loss may be a court martial, and anything in the 0 or better is no court martial.
So that could be like a double penalty. If you have to use an SOS, then you may have to sink more ships to even it out before you return to base or you will get court martialed. And add a bit of realism in having to know which ships are the "important' ships to sink to gain back the renown you need.

Sorry I was so long winded, I find things like this very interesting in trying to figure out how they operate.

Peabody

Great post, Peabody. Lots of info there. I'm still not sure how the negative renown works. Maybe a large negative renown hit triggers the court martial upon return to port, kind of the same as sinking a friendly ship. I'm really not sure. But it does seem that 0 renown is the threshold for court martial. Much to think about.

I think how much renown penalty in this mod will depend much on how much renown the player gets at the start of the campaign. I know these numbers vary widely depending on the the super mod.

Here are a few more screenshots showing some campaign messages from sub headquarters regarding SoS messages (in chronological order):

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/3027/nonameqy.jpg

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/7566/noname2a.jpg

http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/849/noname3a.jpg

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/641/noname4m.jpg

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/5312/noname3y.jpg

Drifter, are there girls onboard ? :D

Oh hell yeah! Love Boat. Party, party, party while waiting for refueling and repairs to finish. :woot: I hope the hard-core players don't mind. ;)

How's this? http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/images/icons/icon10.gif

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/4192/noname2nk.jpg

Here are some more details so far:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SoS v1.0 for Silent Hunter 4 v1.5


- to reveal SoS transmission areas on map, player must first send one status report.

- player sub must be at periscope depth or surfaced to send SoS message once inside SoS transmission area.

- entering an SoS transmission area triggers an event, simulating the player sub sending an SoS message to headquarters. Sub headquarters will radio you back telling you they received your distress message, and give you further details regarding rescue task force rendezvous times and locations. The initial SoS message sent by player sub will transmit instantaneously upon entering the transmission areas. Avoid entering these marked transmission areas unless you intend to send an SoS message. Only one SoS message per transmission area per mission can be sent.

The renown thing is tricky that's for sure. I suppose one way to look at it in the context of a supermod/campaign might be to award all skippers a base renown on the start of the campaign, and have the rescue remove all but 501 (or whatever the cut off is). Then tell the players not to use so much renown that they ever have less than 1500 or whatever the rescue cost is.

In terms of stores, is there NO control over stores per "base?"

In other words do you have ANY control over the number or type of torpedoes available? Or the cost?

I'd still think that the ship that rescues you should not be a sub tender, or anything close. Another is be best, IMO. If I were playing I'd never use any new fish that I got upon being rearmed, I'd always RTB immediately if I did this, and seeing another sub would be far less jarring in enemy waters. We'd simply never have sent a big ship out like that. Then rewrite the messages to reflect that.

Near PH, in clearly American waters, you might see some other vessel I suppose, but whatever it was I'd make her ASW capable, nothing like a merchie, since enemy submarines would have been a serious issue in RL.

Looks VERY nice, however.

Hmmm...just wondering. Instead of losing renown is there a way of having a 50/50 chance of getting retired if the player choses to have a ship deployed? I noted the last messages instructs to return to base for debriefing. Perhaps it might be you last debrief for having a ship deployed because no one was watching the fuel gauge. :hmmm:

Thanks for the feedback guys. I want this mod to be realistic. I don't want it to be a cheat or to make game play too easy.

tater, I will follow your advice regarding using rescue subs mostly instead of surface craft. But I might use a surface craft with destroyer escorts for rescue operations near Pearl or something like that. One thing I am concerned about is having subs start their waypoints from the actual base. I think this might be a bad idea because I don't know how the AI subs would deal with enemy planes while running on the surface trying to get there. I might just make them spawn near the destination area after the correct amount of travel time has passed. As far as having control over each base's stores, I don't think that is possible. I suppose I could disassemble the game .exe and try to change the settings, but the problem is that I think it would make the changes globally- for all bases. That wouldn't be good. But who knows. There might be a way. I'll look into it. Regarding the renown thing- that's a good idea. I might try to implement that. :hmmm:

AVGWarhawk, I think making a 50/50 chance of retiring might be beyond my capabilities. But perhaps I could do a 50/50 chance zone spawn near the entrances of all major harbors, adding a trigger that would give a massive renown hit. But then again, this would cause a court martial instead of retirement upon returning to base. I'll see if there is a way to trigger retirement instead. Still trying to figure out this whole renown system...

This sounds like a great idea, which will make the game much more realistic.
I'm currently sitting 200nm off my home port with missing rudder and no way to get home... This is so frustrating and unrealistic I would have been towed home no problem.
This has happen'd to me twice before (various distances from base) and each time I've had to abandon my carrier. For a great game this is a poor oversight.
hope you can continue with this much missed mode. Thanks.

any future work on this? sorry for bumping a dead thread up...