In absence of nautical charts showing buoy types and position for WWII ports, it would be nice if you modified OH's buoyage systems according to current-day charts. The website that I and sober are using, has anything we need to know: from fixed beacons, to buoys, to light vessels. The more you zoom in, the more information you get about them (i.e. their shape/color pattern, the color/phase of their light, the presence of bells, etc.). A legend of the symbols used more commonly, with a short explanation on the usage of the main buoy types, is found here.

Sure enough, the six buoys we have currently in game are not enough to represent such a variety of navigation aids, not to mention the fact that we completely miss lighthouses (as separate models), and light vessels. This shouldn't be a major probem though: all you need to do, is asking me (or Targor) and I (we :D) will be glad to help with the missing stuff. Should I delay sending you the new models, you can create proxy units pointing to buoy/ship models currently available and, at the right time, we will replace them with better suited items (with no further editing required on your part) :up:

Re. blacked out ports/cities: I think that, for the most part, Europe was obscured even before the beginning of WWII. For sure England was, though SH5 doesn't take this fact into account. The recent "black out lights" mod by sober correctly addresses the stock inaccuracy, and imo it should be merged into OH. Sober's mod forgoes some neutral countries though (Spain, Portugal and Turkey most notably), as well as USA and (probably) Latin America, where the black out practice wasn't enforced, or was poorly applied. As I said yesterday, we can clone the "urban" models used by those countries, and give them new textures with night lights visible again. I just need to know which city/harbor models need to be edited, and how hard would be for you (Trevally), replacing the stock models in campaign layer with "lit" copies of them (limited to the aforementioned countries indeed).

Last: spy pics. I have found some Luftwaffe aerial recognition photographs which can be used as template for our New-UI's compatible charts. Please find a few samples attached below: :03:

http://ww2today.com/wp-content/uploa...an-595x720.jpghttp://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib...9/standard.jpg
http://www.pillbox-study-group.org.u...d-1024x824.png
http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib...at=photographs
http://data5.blog.de/media/325/28013...221c484_l.jpeg

Attn Mr gap .
I think you are over complicating things , but that's just my opinion . I think because the land in SH5 is quite featureless the light bouys should stay around friendly ports . I don't mind the current bouy sytem as we have now . Adding new bouys might make it even harder for new players . All I ever read about real nav these days is that people disable it because they think it is too hard LOL . Wouldn't it be better to use spy pictures from the actual game ? . Thos e new maps you make are awesome btw .

did I suggest to remove them? :doh:

So no new buoys bringing different topmarks, colors, shapes and lights? No new lighthouses? No ligth vessels? :wah:

This is a bad argument: you know that most newbies (and some old member) refuse to use real navigation on principle, no matter the difficulty involved...

Wait, wait, are you suggesting to use normal screeshots instead of aerial photographs of enemy ports? Now I realize why you requested the spy mission in Scapa yesterday: I had totally missed your point :D

Beautiful work sober. :up:

Go gap go. The man with the wealth of knowledge across lots of SH forums!!!

A small suggestion to make the charts simpler. You could use external elevated screenshots from SH5 as aerial photo reconnaissance for the harbors you want. It will give you the simulation's landmarks as they are. Then add what you want and that's it. Just make sure the photos are line up with actual North at the top.

Back when I was playing B-17 Flying Fortress "The Mighty 8th", that's how guys got the recon photos for all the in game targets. Worked great.

Another thought. How hard would it be to mod Scappa Flo so the WWI German fleet boats on the bottom would be obstacles. It would make it tougher to get the tonnage required, and a bit nasty to navigate the harbor.... for both sides.

Thank you Mike, you're too kind :)

Yep, good idea. If someone playing the game at a decent resolution could provide some screenies, I could work on them. Talking about aerial reconnaissance photos of Allied harbors, lining them up to the North is not strictly needed though. By overlaying the charts by sober, I could add a compass reference as seen in the German intelligence photographs I have posted the day before yesterday :up:

The Navy planned underwater harbor defenses against submarines, including magnetic loops to detect the passage of submarines over them and sono-bouys to track the movement of the sub by the sound from their propulsion systems.
Any idea if this is possible ?

As far as I can see, the main problem is that whatever is able to detect and report enemy units, can on turn be detected. Sono buoys and magnetic loops would be reported by our watch crew as "enemy ships", unless we find a way to make them invisible (TDW might have some ides on this subject).
The second problem is: what mix of sensors should we use to simulate magnetic detection? :hmmm:

Coastal defense looks like a perfect candidate. Give it a hydrophone. I've noticed that the game does NOT render any detection circles with the coastal defenses thus you won't be able to tell when you're spotted (by any of it's sensors)

Good! For those among us who are playing on high realism settings, detection circles are not a problem anyway. Coastal defenses would be reported by the watchcrew, but this is not a big issue if we set their sensor's range long enough for them to detect us before we spot them. Moreover, we could create several coastal defense models, some of them equipped with long range sensor and some not, so we would never be sure what kind of defenses we are facing (sonobuoys, magnetic loops or simple artillery).

The one little problem with hydrophone sensors, is that we wouldn't be detected if we sneaked in ports on silent running, which is obvioulsy not the best, if we want to simulate magnetic loops. Active sonar could be another good candidate, especially for sono buoys, but also for magnetic loops, if only we could avoid the ping sound in the latter case. By the way: have you checked that hydrophone and sonar sensors can do their job even when fitted on land units (MaxSensorHeight > 0)?

Sober, have you noticed that bouys charts overwrites whole bunch of Sjizzle charts? Are we dealing with some kind of limited number of ingame charts that can be shown?:hmmm:

I just checked ingame . What charts ? Use the mouse wheel to scroll down and view the other categories/charts .

charts limit's is 50 and yup when u enable this one some charts of my mods doesn't show ...

I see .