1939 - around 6000 afloat or under construction world-wide.
1945 - not sure, but the total number I have at present is over 11,000, and I have another 3000 or so to go on my "look-up" list, and that's just ships that sailed in the British convoy system.

So my definitive answer is: Quite a few! :D

That's exactly the answer I thought! We really appreciate your efforts :yeah:

Historical Names Question
 

Hey, Sailor Steve. I have hit upon a question about "conflict" between historic and in-game name designations - just like to hear your take on it and what 'policy' you adopt.

In an early war cruise (Oct 39), I had the pleasure of downing a 13850 ton Auxiliary Cruiser, designated in Commander as 'HMS Rawalpindi'. Now, it may be that there were 2 Rawalpindis in the British Roster, but I know that SH3 mentions the engagement between the 'Pindi and the Scharnhorst & Gneisenau in the Nov 39 monthly war summary.

Another example that springs to mind is that I know that both FK and I have encountered the Hood well before the historic Bismark encounter. Now, if either of us had been positioned close enough to actually take her out, it would have upset the balance of the Universe and we would have had to call in Dr. Who to make it right.... Or not.

As a general question, do you, as a matter of course, leave British ships that are sunk in historic engagements (or scripted engagements, like in the Single Missions) in the list so they are available in the game for sinking? (I know you are only really concerned with the Merchant Fleet, but it applies across the board.)

If a major warship is scripted to be somewhere in SH3, it will be there. There are players who have sunk HMS Hood several times, and it still shows up to fight Bismarck.

Unfortunately there is nothing anyone can do to change it. Supposedly SH5 is made to replace sunk ships with another of similar type.

It is possible to have ships no longer appear after they were sunk in real life, and with the major players that has been done. If the Ship Names function in SH3 itself worked properly I could do that for every merchant afloat, at least the ones I do have precise dates for. On the other hand, even if that were so I probably wouldn't bother, as most merchants are too obscure for the amount of work it would take.

I am actually looking at changing the EnglishNames.cfg so that when one of the famous "named" ships appears, only the class (RL class, not the game's class signifier) appears in the display. The game's ship class signifier for all ships of that class would then be mapped in ShipNames.cfg to one list containing all the names... so at least I would not be seeing (and potentially sinking) the same one over and over until the names ran out. Since it's unlikely I'd sink all warships of the same class in one career, that seems feasible, even if there are only two of that class present, what are the odds? Lol.

But I'm not sure how realistic that would be in the case of ships where only one of their kind was actually sailing around. That seems to be the case with the Hood, when I look up the relevant info it says the Hood was the only ship of its class completed, so I assume if it was spotted a RL commander would know exactly which ship it was. :hmmm:

Yeah - I was thinking that the only 'realistic' way to handle historic warships, like the Hood, would be to eliminate it from the British Sea Roster, or alternatively, to very narrowly specify the date of existence (Appearance-Disappearance) to just the few days of the historic encounter, so that the ONLY place it showed up was in Single Mission Historic encounters, and thus be unavailable for sinking at other times.

In regard to 'famous' merchants, like the Rawalpindi, a similar thought was to eliminate the name from the EnglishNames cfg, so that, again, it becomes unavailable for sinking outside of the reported historic engagement. But, as you say, SS, probably not worth bothering about in either case.

Can I use the skin packs with the light version of this mod?

Good question...I use full version, but I think works with the light:hmmm:

Regards.

Fitzcarraldo :salute:

I think IABL said upthread somewhere that it was okay to use them, the only thing that would happen is that you'd have some extra .tga files in there for ships that would not appear in the game since the lite version doesn't include them, but this should not cause any problems.

I use it with no problem

Do you need to install all of these skins pack files or just the ones year relevant to your game?

If you are using JSGME to enable them directly into the game, just put in the one for your current in-game time period.

Or you can use the "Date" folders feature in Commander and let it enable/disable each one automatically according to the in-game date every time you launch the game.

Ah was wondering if you could possibly use the date folders in SH3 Commander.

That's what I do, I try to use as many of Commander's functions as possible. It takes the hassle out of having to enable/disable stuff that is dependent on what date range you're playing, what type boat you're in, whether or not you've transferred to an Arctic or Mediterranean flotilla, etc. Commander is capable of doing a lot of the grunt work for you.

How do you do that?

Do you put simply, say, MFM-v3-US+UK_Skins19390901 file in the SH3 Date folder?

or

do you rename it as 19390901 before putting it?