[REL] Longer sinking times for TMO 2.5
 

version 2 is up:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ti7b7a...LST_TMO_v2.zip

version 1: This mod will substantially increase the sinking time of ships in TMO 2.5. The basic idea and parameters come from the "Better and Realistic Flotation" mod made by Arclight for SH5 which have been tweaked for SH4. The mod increases the flooding time of various underwater compartments so sinking is more progressive.

version 2 takes a more novel approach: The HP damage generated by each torpedo has been reduced by roughly 50%, but the various ship's compartments have been tweaked so the flooding damage generated by each torpedo remains about the same. This roughly doubles the amount of Hit Points each ship has and makes it less likely it will sink from HP depletion and more likely it will sink from progressive flooding, since it now takes roughly twice as many torpedoes to deplete all the hit points. This also has the added benefit of delaying the "ship sunk" message in many cases.

The flotability factor of various ship's compartments has also been adjusted to accelerate sinking when much of the ship is flooded. This makes it less likely that a ship will hang around when its deck is already under water.

What does this mean in practice?

For small merchants and warships (DE, DD), one torpedo still more or less garantees a kill. For larger ships, 3-4 torpedoes also basically garantees a kill.

Where it gets interesting is if you only get 1-2 torpedo hits on a larger ship. Without the "ship sunk" message and with the progressive flooding, you now have to judge whether to use 1-2 extra torpedoes to finish the job or wait to see if it sinks by itself.

This mod works well with TheDarkWraith's "Ship Damage from Fire" mod.

All feedback will be appreciated.

Very cool, I will give it a try when I go back to the PTO side of things, playing U boats in Atlantic currently.

Sounds interesting. Saw your post about this over at the NSM thread, I think I'll give it a try. I feel the ships in TMO do sink a bit too fast, at least for someone who has been used to NSM (I only just ported over to 1.5).

yes, hoping to get some feedback when players have had a chance to try it out. Having tried out stock, NSM, RFB/NYGM and now TMO it feels as though, because of the way the SH damage model is designed, you can have realistic sinking times or realistic looking sinkings, but you can't have both at the same time. I am trying to find the sweet spot between the two.

If memory serves, just playing with the flooding time in Zones.cfg is not enough. NSM and RFB/NYGM had to rework the .zon files of all ships extensively, and Ducimus never went there with TMO because it's just too much work for one man to do alone.

I am not interested in replicating NSM or NYGM, those mods already exist and involved a massive amount of work. I am trying to see if I can develop an alternative approach. Zones.cfg is a key file since it is central to the damage model of all ships.

I found an old post by Elanaiba, one of the game designers, which explained what the variables in the Zones.cfg file mean:

http://www.subsim.com/phpBB_archive1...hlight=#303470

The stock damage model of SH3-4-5 is actually quite sophisticated. The designers tweaked it towards instant gratification, no doubt for commercial purposes, but I see a lot of untapped potential there. I am already testing a new approach which looks promising.

Thanks for digging up that old gem! :up:

Ran my patrol yesterday with your mod slapped on. Looks good overall, but it seems to have an issue with ships that go down vertically:

http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/4...1042925832.jpg

She was stuck like this for several minutes.

v2 should fix that, just increasing flooding times was not enough.

A problem your going to run into is that most of the damage zones characteristics specified in the zones.cfg are used across many ships where the location, size and shape of the damage zone using it in each ship, often calls for a unique solution.

What really kills the immersion for me is when you hit a ship in the engine room and forward cargo hold, and it sinks by the stern.:damn:

version 2 is up. see post 1 for details.

How do you edit the "Zones" file so that when a ship is out of hitpoints and is considered destroyed and sinking it will go down slower...

As it is now, once a ship is destroyed, it completely sinks in 2.5 seconds...

I'm using TMO 2.5 and RSRDC...

Also to accomplish the above, do I have to manually edit every ship file? :down:

is that with my mod?:hmmm: if not, give it a try, it should do what you are asking for.

After several patrols with this mod running along with TMO, I can say I like it, so far. The annoying "bow hit, stern sinking" effect seems to have been reduced, and docked ships are more easily registered as sunk. It's not perfect, but it's definitely an improvement :up: