WOW ! I have seen 1104 ft, of course it was after I broke some welds ;)

I also note that the max depth in some of the sub nss_*.cfg files are set to 100 meters which is being ignored.

Well so far looks good. Just took the Balao down to 550 feet and cruised along the bottom. Bloody dark there though, anyone got a Torch mod I can strap to the front of the sub. :D

Thanks. I'm not quite sure I'm following what you're saying, but I'll check the cfg settings out.

[edit] I just checked those out. I don't see why they'd put a hard stop on the sub at 450ft. That's about 150m - there doesn't seem to be anything in the cfg file relating to 150 or 450.

Well here's my modifed files if anyone wants to give them a go. They incorporate the battery fix too posted by CCIP.

http://hosted.filefront.com/Meridian1a/

For the S-18 for example in the [Properties] section it reads "MaxDepth=61;meters" That's 200 feet.

Yeah, but why would that stop my sub at 450ft? I set the dive planes to dive and went ahead flank and she just wouldn't go lower. Anyway, as I recall, in SH3 the cfg files were just there for reference purposes. They didn't have any in-game effect. Maybe that's changed with SH4, but maybe not.

Well i'm still fairly new to all this so i'll go and give the S-18 a test drive. But I did just take the Balao down to 550 with my modded files and that went OK.

I was just going by TT's Crush Depth Tool, which informed me after I changed the depth to say 300, that the sub still won't go below that depth as the value in the CFG file is say 100.

I'll go do some testing on the S-18 and see what happens.

Just tried on the S-18 and it levelled itself out at 290 feet. hmm.

Are you saying the sub won't go below 100, or 300?

I've changed the depth in the zon files to 600 and left the cfg files alone but it still stops at 450. Are you saying the cfg files need to have their max depth adjusted so that they're greater than the zon file settings?

I just changed the value in the CFG file for the S-18 to a silly value, ie 200, and it just flew past 300 feet and blew apart a few minutes later. The value in the CFG is all I changed from my original values.

OK, lets see if I can explain this right. If you set the depth in the ZON file to 300, but the value in the CFG is 100, it won't go below 100, that's what I just found out with the S-18.

Hmm. I guess that's proof that the cfg file does have an effect. :yep:

What value was that - the max depth value or the crash depth value?

It was the Max depth value I just changed. I've just gone through all the sub CFG files and added 10 to each value I had previously, as before they were the same as the value I put in the ZON files.

I think the Crash depth value in the CFG file is the depth the sub will try to level out at if you order a crash dive. That's another test for later on though, I need a coffee.

Just uploaded a newer version with the revised CFG files. Get them here.

http://hosted.filefront.com/Meridian1a/

I just did a test, setting 20 as Max Depth in the Balao's cfg file. Sure enough the sub refused to go any deeper than just over 60ft (20m). So this is one problem figured out - any mod that increases crush depth needs to also increase Max Depth in the cfg files, otherwise the game simply won't allow players to go lower.

Yep, exactly. I think the value in the CFG was put there as a failsafe to stop players going past the crush depth, which kinda takes the fun out of it a little. That's why i just added a value of 10 to all the CFG files on top of the actual Crush Depth value in the ZON file, maybe I should make it higher, I dunno though.

The thing we have to be careful of is that the Max Depth setting may have some effect on the zon file. For example if the cfg file's Max Depth is set to 1000 and the zon file's crush depth is set to 200 it might raise the speed at which damage happens when we're deeper than the crush depth. I doubt that this would be the case but I've seen stranger things in SH3's coding.

Anyway, now I have the answer to the problem I was seeing - some of the increased crush depth mod's crush depths were set so that the sub would have no ill effects when I dived to the Max Depth setting. I had been expecting to be able to dive beyond the crush depth.

The speed at which damage happens (past crush depth) is in the zon file Crash Speed... 2 is stock and fast, IIRC it was as low as .02 in some of the SH3 mods....

Okay, I just doubled all the mod's Max Depth figures. Now I'm able to get down to all the crush depths. Phew - that's a load off my mind. I'd been thinking that there either must be something wrong with my game or with the mod. I just tested the Balao and it gets down to about 800ft (250m) before bad things start to happen, which seems right to me.

800 feet, really :o. I took all my figures from here when I adjusted my depths http://www.fleetsubmarine.com/balao-class.html. Dont know how accurate they are but they are all I had to work with at the time.

If they're listing 600ft as 'emergency depth' then they're basically saying that the sub was thought to be safe to at least that depth. The thing about crush depths is that it was impossible to calculate or test them perfectly, so they had to pick an arbitrary figure based on what amounted to an engineer's best guess. Often the boats survived dives that went significantly deeper than the emergency depth.

On the issue of test depth again, I just read about the USS Haddock, a Gato class with a test depth of 300 feet.

In 1943, it was driven down to 415 feet by an escort. At that depth, the captain suddenly saw the chart table in the conning tower move inward. He ordered everyone below, but found that the hatch was warped and could not be closed. They had to use a sledgehammer to bang it back in shape.

When they got back to port, the Yard came to the conclusion that the way the Gatos were designed and built, that the conning tower was weaker than the remaining pressure hull.

I actually thought they were saying it should be safe to at least 400 but in an emergency it should be OK to 600. That's why I thought 800 was pushing it a bit.

So I took U-Bones advice and took all the basic figures and added a third of that value to it. Hence why the Balao in mine comes up at 597.