heavy seas always sink enemy ships......
 

Whenever I come across enemy ships in heavy seas (13+ wind), it never fails, they WILL sink even if they haven't been hit yet. I came across an enemy convoy once of about 12-14 ships in these types of heavy seas and I think about 7 of them sunk by themselves. No hits on those ships at all. Anyone else experiencing this?


Running mods:
RFB
RSRD
Improved ship physics

Happened to me too last night after I added ISP. Seas were so bad I could almost always never get my boat fully surfaced and it went on for 2 weeks straight. I seriously hope this is not a bug with ISP. ToprX would be the guy to ask.:up:

Use ISP 2.15

I am using that. Do the "divine wind" seas mostly sink the enemy ships in your game too?

I consider this to be a feature, not a bug.

That is not a flippant answer. A prime objective of ISP was to have realistic sea-keeping. This means having heavy seas that really do cause operational problems for the player. With stock or RFB alone, they do not. To accomplish this, I had to crank up waves pretty high. I wanted them as high as I could have them without them being entirely ridiculous, or making the game unplayable. If the waves are not high, you won't get any significant speed reduction.

I made a final proof test of the weather by having a couple convoys plow through the weather with 13 m/s force waves, for 24 hrs. and evaluating them at that level. Note that these were ocean-going ships, not small coasters, fishing boats, or luggers. Of the ones I checked, only the minesweeper (I forget if it was the No. 13 class or another one, but they are not much different) had difficulty. All the more sea-worthy vessels tested did very well.

So, that leaves the question of small ships, and ships in weather, with winds above 13 m/s. Certainly, some ships will sink as winds climb above 13 m/s. I structured the Scene.dat so that wave effects should increase steeply above 13 m/s. I did not do extensive testing of ships at higher levels, but can say that at 15 m/s levels, the Hog Island, Clemson, and Flower corvette, will sink fairly quick. This is not caused by changes to the ships, nor will all ships suffer the same difficulties. Any ship with low freeboard will be more vulnerable.

As long as most ships can survive in weather at 13 m/s levels, I consider this to be an acceptable model. In very severe weather, you would not be able to make a successful torpedo attack, and you certainly couldn't use your deck gun, so it isn't unrealistic to have operational limitations in this way. You can consider these sunk ships to be victims of the weather, other subs, or just consider that the weather has forced shipping to stay in port. The way I see it, if ISP doesn't cut down tonnages bagged, it isn't doing it's job.

As far as weather getting stuck, there is nothing I changed that is related to intervals between changes. AFAIK, the only thing we can mod related to change intervals, is in the mission/campaign files, and I didn't touch those. I agree, having never-changing weather is a drag, especially when it is bad weather, but that isn't related to ISP.

I had a short career, where I was stuck for a week or so with 14 m/s winds, and yes, it was a drag. I couldn't make a torpedo attack. And yes, I had ships sink before I could get to them, but such is life. I believe this was due to the mission file having "no changes" for the wind, in the file. I'm not sure how the bulk of the mission/campaign files are written in this regard. Beyond changing the mission files, I'm not sure what could be done. In spite of being inconvenienced at times, I still like ISP and the waves. I would rather have it this way, than go back to vanilla weather, where it is basically a non-factor.

Perhaps, I should have warned people of this, but thought it would be better for people to discover some of these things themselves.

That works for me. :yeah: Thank's for the explanation of how it works too. Was easy for me to understand. I thought it may have been a glitch but it's definitely going back on because it makes total sense. Thanks.:D

All very valid points torpX. :yeah: I guess I'll just bypass any ships I encounter in 14-15m/s weather. I guess I have also noticed when the wind is that strong is that an enemy plane can fly right over me in clear broad daylight and not see me? At least that is what I have experienced so far.

I guess my gripe is with the weather engine itself. These crazy heavy seas seem a little too common in the game. I thought the South Pacific was supposed to be pretty calm notwithstanding the occasional seasonal tropical storm/typhoon. The game makes it seem more like the North Atlantic. I know the North Pacific can be rougher more frequently than the South Pacific. Am I correct on these observations? :06: Input anyone ?

You are probably correct. I consider the weather engine to be one of the major areas where Ubisoft dropped the ball.

It is significant that in this game, there are many factors related to visual/graphical elements, but many fewer related to mechanical elements. In SH1, the graphics were primitive (by current standards), but they got the basics right. If you were in heavy seas, you struggled to go a few knots. If you wanted to go faster, you had to submerge to 100 ft. Even at p/d, water turbulence slowed you down. It seems Ubi didn't really think much about the weather.

Actually I have had less weather related sinking's since using the newer version of ISP.

How long would it take your boat to go from New York to Dallas, Texas if it was sailing a straight path in water? That is 1,380 miles.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/me...orm-ever_3.jpg

The largest storm was just that size in the Pacific Ocean. If you had been caught in it the weather would have lasted a good week being that you would be doing about 10 knots until the weather slowed you down to 5.


On Oct. 12, 1979, Super Typhoon Tip's central pressure dropped to 870 mb (25.69 inches Hg), the lowest sea-level pressure ever observed on Earth, according to NOAA. Peak wind gusts reached 190 mph (306 kph) while the storm churned over the western Pacific.

Besides having unsurpassed intensity, Super Typhoon Tip is also remembered for its massive size. Tip's diameter of circulation spanned approximately 1,380 miles (2,220 km), setting a record for the largest storm on Earth. The storm's huge diameter was exactly the same as the distance from New York City to Dallas

I forgot to add that I did tweak the scene.dat file for v2.15 to moderate the waves at lower levels. The stock game defines waves at 0, 5, 10, and 15 m/s points. I tried adding a couple more points, but the game ignored them. I finally changed them to 1, 5, 13, and 15. The idea here is to keep severe waves near 15 m/s, make them a little less so at < 13, and have things pretty calm at < 5 m/s. The bottom line is that most ships can survive waves at 13 m/s, without problems, but they become rapidly more severe above this level.

Do AI ships turn into the wind during big storms like this? It would make a big difference to survivability IRL, but I haven't seen the AI respond much to weather

No. The AI is clueless about the weather, and the waves orientation doesn't follow the direction of the wind. There are a lot of limitations in the game, in this regard.

In 25 years there will be a game that accurately depicts the historical weather & tides, with a dynamic campaign and near-human AI (they'll have to dumb it down). But everyone will be too busy playing Dopaminecraft to notice

I'd bet it will be for U-boats.

Are the seas supposed to be this crazy?
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I had this problem and maybe we discussed it before. When I made my env. for myself and a few others, I played with waves and obvious had the problem that bigger waves sank ships. I don't mind this effect, but I only wanted to see heavy seas during storms, not clear skies. IMO, waves that sink ships should happen during storms only. I also didn't like the heavy fog in every storm, but that can be somewhat adjusted. I think I finally adjusted my waves to more rolling swells, the ships seemed to rollover them better and all but the smallest ships stayed afloat....Course the goal to get natural as possible looking waves and movement in a old game...I found swells to look more realistic to choppiness due to no wind direction connected, choppy waves in high wind , I couldn't get realistic looking enuf....

Sadly, we don't have switches we can put our hands on that that limit winds in weather types...

One thing I was gonna try was to see if I could add more weather types. I deplore the same 3 basic looks....

These two were what I was using. Think the first one was wave look 10ms, the second 15ms

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/u...230158_218.jpg
http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/u...231306_390.jpg

After almost a year with no SH4, due to my PC getting fried and gave up gaming and just used my laptop to surf the net, just got a new PC, so will be loading the game back up soon...

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is that there are a lot of limitations to the game. All of Armistead's points are good ones.

• There should be wind speeds higher than 15 m/s, but there aren't.
• There should be a connection between storms and wind, but there isn't.
• There should be better modeling of wave/ship interaction, but there isn't.
• We should be able to change weather types, but we can't.

The reason I have waves high like I do for ISP, is not that I love huge waves that much, but that I want realistic effects. The subs speed loss is mostly a function of how much they are pushed up and down. If the waves aren't big enough to do this, they won't have much effect. I don't know of any other way to put significant operational effects into the game.

In the book I'm reading, one of the patrols of the Pollack was a complete bust. Part of the reason was that they had to wallow around in heavy seas for days on end. The author states they could not make more than 3 knots, and naturally fuel was a concern. If you are constrained in the game to having only 'normal' waves, this would never happen. You could cruise around from start to finish with very little thought given to fuel, speed loss, or such matters.

I would have preferred that the ships be a little more durable, and not sink below, say 14.5 m/s or 15 m/s, but since very bad weather would more or less prevent gun and torpedo attacks anyway, I do not see this as a terrible problem.

I think adding more weather types may be possible, but still no way to connect it to weather. I loved my waves in storms, even redid the storm sounds to be more intense...just hated massive ways when the skies are perfectly clear for days.... Just a simply switch we could access would've been an env game saver.

Same with fog, why not no fog in heavy rain or just light rain...they put it in the game, but never connected the pieces in code...

In the end, as Duci told me once, big can of worms to open with the waves and ship connections and can't please everyone...I actually had run creating different wave patterns, heck, even got it to where I was getting rogue waves, but they hit about every 1000 yards, so not so rogue...Just not enough in this game to get everything right.....

Get the game loaded torp, since lurker said he didn't care about using rsrd, we should do a improved version of it...I've about got 80% done when my PC fried...bubble had some parts he was working on and heard from him the other day...

Yes, it is frustrating that the code could handle a lot more than it does, if only they had finished things better.

That's for sure.

I've never looked inside RSRDC; I like being surprised, and have yet to finish the war. Do you mean adding to RSRD or doing an extensive rework?

I was thinking that it would be great if someone could persuade tater to release his merchant ship mod, or as much as was finished. I know he had problems with some of them, that he was never able to fix. Then a new version of RSRDC could integrate them into it, maybe?

Well, the problem I had with RSRD is to change it, you have to update almost every file, so to make a mod for it, would be basically reloading RSRD on top of itself. Simply editing all the crew ratings...you've touched a large part of it. So basically you wouldn't need RSRD, just another version of it that includes it...

Main thing I did was add more ships and used them historically in the game, like the Nagato. Added a lot more traffic that was random to help screw up the always perfect scripted groups...Added more convoys... Put a lot of killer sub groups in the traffic lands with long contact times, so if you got spotted, they may show up a day later looking for you....and these groups are the bad boys with elite ratings... Made most the ports very hard to get into, more patrols, lots of fishing boats that will report you, shore guns everywhere, etc.
Main thing I was finishing up was the special missions. Trav help me figure how to do rescues, where you actually save people on rafts fleeing the enemy. The special missions really add to it as many in RSRD don't work and you hardly get any. I made one to photo recon Truk...even knowing it, it took me a dozen tries to complete it and I barely got out alive...

I also raped all the parts of Travs mod I liked and used my envs.

I was gonna play with scripting weather from the ME instead of scene.dat. Gives you the option and I think I finally figured how it works...but didn't get to test it enuf,...

Same old story been talked about a lot...taking all the parts of good mods people like and trying to get them in one mod....