Higher Ranks, Tested and Party Approved
 

After doing some testing and fiddling around finally found out how to successfully add extra ranks and get SHC and SHIII to accept them. With the stock (even GWX) promotion of ranks there's very little incentive to amass renknown other than to use it to buy upgrades or new ships. With the currently (screwed up) system of awarding commendations, hopefully this will spark some interest to actually try and create your career and retire as "The Man" i.e. Admiral (though sadly you don't get command of the flottille, but you would have the satisfaction of knowing you would have and give Bernard a proper court-martial :|\\ ). Rather than include copies of the entire basic.cfg and en_menu files here are the parts that need to be changed:

In the basic.cfg, replace this text over what is currently there:

[PLAYER_RENOWN]
AcademyBonus=1000
RankLevel0=0; SCORE
RankLevel1=1499; SCORE
RankLevel2=7999; SCORE
RankLevel3=14999; SCORE
RankLevel4=21999; SCORE
RankLevel6=34999; SCORE
RankLevel7=54999; SCORE
RankLevel8=89999; SCORE
RankLevel9=143999; SCORE

The stock version only goes up to RankLevel3, so all the rest have been ammended. Because 175 was already in use there's no way of making Grossadmiral.

In the en_menu file replace the existing lines with the following:

170=Oberleutnant z. S.; Kapitänleutnant
171=Kapitänleutnant; Korvettenkapitän
172=Korvettenkapitän; Fregattenkapitän
173=Fregattenkapitän; Kapitän z. S.
174=Kapitän z. S.; Kommodore

175=Exit To Menu

176=Kommodore; Konteradmiral
177=Konteradmiral; Vizeadmiral
178=Vizeadmiral; Admiral
179=Admiral; Grossadmiral

Even with the barebone stock vanilla/GWX the program can be screwy in terms of awarding you higher ranks as you earn them. There's a few different ways of dealing with them if they come up; hopefully they won't. While I was testing these out everything went smooth; hopefully it'll be the same for everyone else once the changes are in their proper places.

Happy hunting :arrgh!:

Interesting

I kept the stock GWX rank values for levels 0-3; after that I used a simple fibonacci sequence to set the higher ranks. Unless the academy bonus is removed (which I believe is the plan for 2.1) and start with 0 reknown raising the first two ranks will be necessary. Otherwise you automatically skip rank 0 without even going out on patrol, and you'll gain almost enough reknown from the 1st patrol even if you don't sink anything from completing the patrol assignment to get promoted. Something to think about possibly changing to make the first few steps a bit more worthwhile in leiu of the nealry complete officer ranks availability.

Tessa,
Have you found a way to give your player commander medals? I'm on patrol 24 and I still have yet to be offered the Uboat War Badge.
Thanks for your great work on ranks, I am hoping to find a way to award a medal that I believe should have been awarded after the first patrol.
Again thanks for the work!
cheers!

Thanks :D Reworking the whole medal box, awarding criteria and what not is a project I've been working on alongside 2 others. As I've finished 1 and nearly finished with the 2nd I'll be able to disect this one and hopefully fix it for good. The medals are a particularly hard one given the way that the game implements them (just the medals themselves). Even with what is already in there; there should be a bronze and silver combat clasp instead of the gold one (which never existed) and wasn't available till 44 anyway. The German cross also came in two versions, silver and gold and the sub badge also came in two versions, one plain and the other with diamonds. There's a lot to do with fixing this particular aspect, getting all the medals is one project in itself, and getting the game to correct award them is equally as tough; especially since it seems to break its own parameters - as a test I started a patrol, then docked and finished the patrol without even moving an inch. For my valiant efforts of having a cup of coffee with my crew while still in the dock I was given the German Cross in gold for my exceptional valor for resolving the regular/decaff brawl in the aft torpedo room.

Bless you, Tessa! This is a mod that should have been done from day one. :rock:

I've never quite understood why, but past discussions of this usually ended with some long-time modder or member stating that ranks were hard-coded and messing with the configs would cause CTDs or corrupted career saves. Hence, no way to "climb the ladder" as a measure of your skills rather than merely "hot-rodding" your boat and/or surviving the war.

I belive I am not alone in greatly anticipating your reworking of the awards. :yep:

It would be wonderful if you and Jaesen could get together and have him help you to intergrate the new ranks and awards into his SH3 Commander.

This would also add realism by using his "random crew transfers" feature to reflect that your WO or CE got promoted to command their own u-boat, if possible.

Too bad there's currently no known way to promote ordinary crew and petty officers to officer ranks for replacing any officers that get transferred or promoted out. Then again, higher ranks for your u-boat commander wasn't supposed to work, either, according to common wisdom.

Keep up the great work, Tessa! :up:

P.S. Wouldn't this technically be more suitable for posting in the SH3Mods Workshop section?

There's a bit of food for thought here http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/9...humbsuprw5.gif

dumb question:
what is a higher rank good for other than personal satisfaction?

methinks that Fregattenkapitän should put you on land to train new recrutes/command your own flotilla
but this is interesting

It allso gives + e-peen

Even though we all play the same game, everyone has their own experience and perceptions. Some get satisfaction from hauling in large tonnage, destroying convoy's, harbor raiding and what not. Since there's no way to program anything objective into the game (thanks UBI for all the hardcoding) realistically when you return back to port with a 100,000+ ton patrol and get nothing for it (not even a pat on the back) seems like a slap in the face. It can be argued that you are just doing your job, but extraordinary acts are the reasons that generals began instituting medals and criteria for advancing in personal rank.

We all know what the final outcome of the game is, at the end of the day there's just your tonnage score and the memories of your patrols. Adding another dimension will bring personal satisfaction to some as it reduces the redundancy of going out on patrol with no hopes of getting any kind of acknowledgement of their efforts. In short, yes it is for personal satisfaction for those that want more.

Even Korvettekapitan's were somtimes delegated to being flottille commanders. Erich Hartmann is probably the best example of a high ranking officer defying the command and using his combat record (and fame) to remain in active duty.

so was Mohr who died 2 April 1943 with his entire crew ;)
http://www.uboat.net/men/mohr.htm

I normally don't try to mess with these but here I go...wish me luck...

Good Luck http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...ies/pirate.gif

http://imgcash3.imageshack.us/img412...uplargeon1.gif

It worked. :p

Followed the instructions and it worked. :lol:

Played the game and it worked. :smug:

:up:

Wow Tessa, great job !
I note preciously your recommandations.
:up:
Can you tell me what about in SH3 Commander ?
I want to see someday a personal file updated whit "Gross Admiral" inside !
(It's for the after war when I seek a good job).

:lol:

Seriously, a great question: you say we must change in the en_menu file. But I play in french. Must I change in fr_menu or in en_menu ??


PS: it is possible to create a other rank over Gross Admiral ? I think that "Reich Admiral" will be a good affair to makes Goering jalous.

I'm sure that you can appreciate that as one of SH3Cmdr's main aims is to provide an historical wrapper around SH3, including something that sees Admirals cruising around in U-boats just doesn't fit well. ;)

Plus, SH3Cmdr is, and will always remain, mod neutral. Assuming, therefore, that all players want to be Admirals cruising around in U-boats isn't appropriate either.

What I will do, however, is remove any modifications that SH3Cmdr makes to the rank labels in *_menu.txt. This means that the options to force ranks and medals to display in a specific language will go. SH3Cmdr will revert to reading and using whatever rank labels exist in the game, between numbers 170 and 179 (it will ignore 175).

But players need to understand that as this mod is merely text label changes, there is no way for SH3Cmdr to know whether you start as an ObLt, KptLt, or burger flipper, so if you adjust your rank in any way, it will create a hole in your Personnel File between your pre-SH3 career and your SH3 career. You can plug this by adjusting the ranks stored in SH3Cmdr_*.txt (removing Seekadett in the process), but as the pre-SH3 promotion dates are based on an SH3 start rank of Lt (after all, that is what the stock game starts with), they will no longer be reflective of RL conditions. But again, players can edit the dates in their SH3Cmdr.ini file if they really want to.

Personally, having lived through the "rank bumping" debacle two years ago and knowing the potential frustrations, I would see better value in combining the "classic" approach of starting as an Lt but changing the renown required to ensure that you get promoted to ObLt after your first patrol (as is current practice; chosen for a reason ;)), with the extra ranks that Tessa has added. Sure, this reduces the maximum rank to a mere Vizeadmiral, but...

Not with you here, as Tessa's mod only adjusts player ranks. Crewmen will retain the same rank as they do now.

You can. It's common knowledge that from within SH3 you can promote from PO to officer and from crewman to PO, assuming of course, that the crewman has the necessary experience. SH3Cmdr doesn't support this though, because it didn't happen quite like that in RL.

Will this work in the English version?

I see you've listed the terms in German.

My en_menu has these in English, will that affect anything?

I'm not 100% sure but I think it should work in the English Menu as well without any problems

Thanks for your insights, Jaesen.

I'm nowhere near being an expert on SH3 or history but it seemed like a good idea at the time, minus having an ocean of admirals cruising around.

I know there were at least a handful of Korvettenkapitans that remained in frontboot service but, in the game, the renown earned to achieve that rank ought to be fairly high. Any rank above this ought to be assigned "post-career" to reflect your transfer out of combat service to a command or training post onshore.

I'd rather stick with matters as they are now than mess about with SH3 Cmdr. That little gem is just too valuable to recut!

Sometimes the way features are implemented in SH3 seems downright puzzling!