I guess ill offer more input. While im not "The" authoritive guru on the AI, i do have alot of experience with it.

First, read (or reread) this thread. Its basicaly how the AI works in SH3, and with the exception of thermal layers being intrinsic to the game, SH4 seems no different.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=104377

The AI_Sensor.dat primarly defines geometry. The sim.cfg does the rest.
If your not getting pinged often, try lowering the max elevation of the sonar cone. I havent looked at it yet, but chances are its entirely too easy to get below the active sonar cone. Once you do, no pining will happen.

With visual detection theres four variables you can play with that really make a difference. (id opt to leave the light, fog, and wave variables alone)

Sensitivity - self explanitory

Surface factor - how much surface area of of an object that must be shown to the AI before it get's a clue.

Speed factor- how fast something has to go before the AI will take notice

detection time - how quick they notice it.


Default surface factor is 400, default speed factor is 15. Thats ALOT. You'd have to be going 16 kts and/or be broadsided to the AI before they'd notice you.

edit: Also of note, the visual section in the sim.cfg also effects your bridge watch. In my own game im running a surface factor of 200 with a speed factor of 9. It just occured to me that increasing the surface to say, 100, i'd probably spot planes sooner ; however it would also make me easier to detect as well.

Thanks for a great information, Ducimus! :up:

Is this mod 1.2 compatible ?

Rgds

If anybody is having poor AI performance & no pings and has done an
uninstall and reinstall with the same lackluster AI. Did you check the Registry
after the uninstall. I found that the uninstall does NOT get rid of all the files
in the registry. I deleted 5 manually before I reinstalled. Made a BIG DIF !!

JIM

Thank you very much for the tip Fadmiral, you made my day :D :up:
I also did a reg clean and found about 15 SH4 related registry entries.
I think I didn't clean it completely, cause when I installed the game again, it didn't ask for the serial, did your game ask for it upon new install ?
Anyway, so far, seems to have solved my game, played career for some minutes, now I've got planes, which I didn't and AI's seem to be much more responsive, escorts are pinging and doing search patterns, merchants and DD's are changing direction trying to escape, much more realistic now .
I've also noticed that clouds are moving much faster now, read somewhere that there's a fix for that.

Rgds

Actually, I have NEVER needed the serial becasue it has never asked for it.
If I remember correctly, you should only need the serial if you are going to
play multiplayer. Another thing I remember on the reinstall is that I had
to delete the old PREFETCH files in Windows or I got an error on the game
install wizard. I just wonder if the first install went bad because of the
install game wizard not doing its job correctly. I hope others will have the
same results that you and I have had...

JIM

I cannot believe that anyone would build an updater so reliant on crap like manually deleting registry entries.

Here is a post from "Jester" on another forum regarding the reinstall:

"WOW...something probably didn't go right upon first install (you are right FAdmiral). Upon the reload, the escorts did detect me and pings (what a novelty!) too. DC'd and actually caused damage to me. All patched to v1.2"

It looks to me like more than 1 person had the bad install problem.
As for the registry entries, just remember, we are dealing with Windows...

JIM

Yes, you're right, I was in doubt if I had actually needed the serial when I installed the game, so now I'm sure I didn't
Game seems completely different so far, going to start a new career now, been modding it a bit with sound pack and FTT to get radar working and the other goodies :D
I'm so glad its fixed, up till now all I did was just trying to get it to work at least reasonably well, now I'm really looking forward for my first patrol.
Will keep informed about AI's behavior
Once again, thank you :up:

Zones.cfg was affected by game patch v1.2
But is is easy to fix it by WinMerge ;)

For those who want fix this file in mod:
Upper changes are few new zones (add this to zones.cfg in mod), after half of file u have modified by mod aircrafts hit points and armor for fuel bunkers so keep this unchanched.

[Sonar]
Detection time=10 ;[s]
Sensitivity=0.04 ;(0..1)
Waves factor=0.6 ;[>=0]
Speed factor=25 ;[kt]
Enemy surface factor=130 ;[m2]
Lose time=30 ;[s]
Thermal Layer Signal Attenuation=4.816645 ;[>0], 1 means no signal reduction, 5 equals signal reduction to 20

How does the sensitivity factor work? larger number= more sensitive sonar? or Lower number = more sensitive?

In my experience a higher sensitivity made the sonar more sensitive. For instance, using 0.09 in my test, the escorts were all over me while submerged.

It's one of the multipliers in the equation so the higher the better.

Sometimes for a clean install i , gulp , reformatted the hard drive . I was told by a technician you should do this every twelve months .

It depends on how much junk you have slowing your system down. I've had my computer since 2003, and never had to reformat.

Using O&O defrag, set to autofrag...nothing like a clean C drive ;) Also latest BIOS, Chipset drivers...actually always try to use the latest drivers in general.