Playable Carriers for SH4 ?
 

Hi Gentlemen, what do you think about the idea of implementing detailed and well texturized Fleet Carriers to play Careers into SH4?
A couple of them would be very welcome,here goes a list:

USS Lexington
USS Hornet
IJN Zuikaku
IJN Soryu

Post War ones:

USS Saratoga refit CV60
USS Kitty Hawk
USS Nimitz CVN68
USS Gerald Ford CVN21

Any team brave and skilled enough?

What would be the point?

Carriers are terribly modeled in SH4. Not the 3d model, but the way they work. You might as well just make one playable then give it magical powers.

Air ops are absurd in Sh4. CVs spawn airplanes in flight. That's the extent of air ops. To be playable, and worth even looking at, you'd need to be able to pick the loadout, set planes to CAP or strike groups. You'd need to have it take time to refuel, rearm, warm up, and strike them on deck. You'd need to have to steam into the wind, etc, ad nauseum. None of that is possible.

You'd also need to be able to direct attacks past the 20nm horizon which is not possible.

So no, sadly it's not possible.

Do you hate SHIV?
If so join the club!!!

Huh?

No, but air ops are abstracted in SH, and CV air ops are flat out absurd, with no good way to mod them other than to shut them off (which is what I did).

Have a friend who just made a playable carrier. working out some plane launching ideas.:rock:

Didn't KELTOS post a video with planes lunching off carriers few threads back? For the love of God I can't find it now...

While Fleet Command left a lot to be desired in terms of realism, they at least got the carrier ops right.

You could define loadouts. Set up CAPs, AWACS and the like.

I think what Tater is trying to say is that without that functionality, a Carrier in SH4 (well the SH series in general) is neutered past the point of being viable.

What makes a carrier a carrier and the deadliest ships afloat, is something that SH4 doesn't model.

I wish there was a new Fleet Command or something similar. That was one interesting game.

Found it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcneBeK0Rws

What is the point?

The game only deals with ships as abstractions past the render range.

RL carriers do not "launch" planes at targets 20km away, more like 200km. This is impossible in SH4.

So right off the bat, they are absurd.

Never mind that the flight model—if you even want to justify it by calling what it does "flight"—is utter crap.

What about the time to prepare, load, warm up, etc? What about scouting hundreds of miles away so you know where to send your coordinated strike (LOL, the planes will attack the nearest target they see, there's your coordinated strike).?

Given your interest in modern warfare, the ranges should move even farther out. The render range doesn't even give room for typical missile systems used by planes to engage surface combatants, LOL. The only thing you might be able to use that capability for is for ASW helos. THAT would work—under the presumption that they could run out of fuel, etc—otherwise why not keep them aloft at all times?

There must be a way to make them player useful. Even if it takes using a "trainer" or "hack" to spawn aircraft.

Yeah the flight model sucks. But 12 dive bombers attacking 1 ship is still very deadly.

It's absurd.

Ships spawn at 35km, despawn at 40km, and are drawn at 20km.

35km is practically BB gun range. Deadly? Sure it'd be deadly, so would adding antimatter cannons in place of the deck gun—and it would be about as realistic.

Having planes magically spawn to attack targets that close is just silly. You might as well ask for powerups or other nonsense. CVs should have to steam into the wind, that is not required, either. It's SILLY.

The SH engine simply does not handle this.

"35km is practically BB gun range. Deadly? Sure it'd be deadly, so would adding antimatter cannons in place of the deck gun—and it would be about as realistic."

It doesn't matter if it doesn't look right.

Here's how it should be done.
1. Press button. Timer starts.
2. Timer counts down and planes spawn over the aircraft carrier.
3. Give them a waypoint as you would with the scout planes on the uboat campaign.

Since when does it need to be realistic to be fun and challenging?

The harder part would be to give the aircraft carrier escort ships and maybe a CA,BC, or BB to follow it around for protection.

To help the issue with a max of 35km you scale everything down if you can't increase the environment. Drop all gun ranges by 50%. Considering that battleships in WWII hardly ever fired at max angle unless it was for shore bombardment.

I've seen mods for other games such as Pirates of the Caribbean 'build mod' that do things seemingly impossible due to the aging game engine. I know there's a way. I just wish I was better with programming language so I could figure it out.

Since I only care about realism, I'll punch out of this thread. :)

But it's hard to balance magical units against other, more realistic units without changing, well, everything. As for the u-boat scout planes, don't know anything about them, never seen a u-boat in sh4, myself, never bothered to try one. Since that functionality is actually useful for theIJN subs, you might ask keltos.

Since you never tried the u-boat campaign I'll clue you in. The scouts get launched from airbases not from the u-boat itself. But theres a possibility of getting the players unit to drag an airbase with it.

i beg to differ, i have a uss hornet model, my idea is to implement the use of torpedoes for the main weapon so to speak. of course the use of long range weapons and anti aircraft weapons to even the odds a little. the aircraft carrier downt have to launch aircraft to be playable in game. as long as it can hold it's own in a fight against multipule ships then who cares.

my idea of the weapons would be to have large enough weapons that can easily engage a target at close range and long range. torpedoes that have three times the distance of a normal torpedo but still the same impact force.

say about 2 tubes at the front, with a back up off 50 torpedoes to reload with. and the same for the back. also depth charges if possible to use againt subs
have the long range weapons set to the range of a deck gun and the anti- air set to the range of 5-10 thou and bob's your uncle.

AI CVs have airgroups.

What they seem to be doing is calling an airstrike as-if an enemy was sighted in the airstrike cfg.

Bottom line is that CV ops in SH4 are a joke.

You'd have to try it to understand what I mean.

In the u-boat campaign you click on a airbase and it shows the max radius of the plane. You then right click to give it a waypoint. Then it searches the area. You can update it's waypoint. They do get shot down or return for more fuel. You can ALSO command a small group of ships.

Here's my proof. Go to upcdataGE/upccrewdata and open specialabilities.upc. Scroll to the bottom and you'll see this:

; player abilities

[SpecialAbility 22]
ID=Ability-Player-CallReconnaissanceAircraftsFromAirbaseLand
NameDisplayable=Ability-Player-CallReconnaissanceAircraftsFromAirbaseLand-Name
Description=Ability-Player-CallReconnaissanceAircraftsFromAirbaseLand-Description
AbilityType=CallReconnaissanceAircraftsFromAirbase Land
AbilityValue=100
AbylityActsIn= ALL
SkillRequiredLeadership=0
SkillRequiredMechanical=0
SkillRequiredElectrics=0
SkillRequiredGuns=0
SkillRequiredWatchman=0

[SpecialAbility 23]
ID=Ability-Player-CommandGermanAuxiliaryCruiser
NameDisplayable=Ability-Player-CommandGermanAuxiliaryCruiser-Name
Description=Ability-Player-CommandGermanAuxiliaryCruiser-Description
AbilityType=CommandGermanAuxiliaryCruiser
AbilityValue=100
AbylityActsIn= ALL
SkillRequiredLeadership=0
SkillRequiredMechanical=0
SkillRequiredElectrics=0
SkillRequiredGuns=0
SkillRequiredWatchman=0

[SpecialAbility 24]
ID=Ability-Player-CallReconnaissanceAircrafts
NameDisplayable=Ability-Player-CallReconnaissanceAircrafts-Name
Description=Ability-Player-CallReconnaissanceAircrafts-Description
AbilityType=CallReconnaissanceAircraftsFromAirbase Land, CallReconnaissanceAircraftsFromCarrierSea
AbilityValue=100, 100
AbylityActsIn= ALL
SkillRequiredLeadership=0
SkillRequiredMechanical=0
SkillRequiredElectrics=0
SkillRequiredGuns=0
SkillRequiredWatchman=0

[SpecialAbility 25]
ID=Ability-Player-CommandGermanCruiser
NameDisplayable=Ability-Player-CommandGermanCruiser-Name
Description=Ability-Player-CommandGermanCruiser-Description
AbilityType=CommandGermanAuxiliaryCruiser, CommandGermanHeavyCruiser
AbilityValue=100, 100
AbylityActsIn= ALL
SkillRequiredLeadership=0
SkillRequiredMechanical=0
SkillRequiredElectrics=0
SkillRequiredGuns=0
SkillRequiredWatchman=0

[SpecialAbility 26]
ID=Ability-Player-CommandGermanCruiserAndJapaneseCruiserGroup
NameDisplayable=Ability-Player-CommandGermanCruiserAndJapaneseCruiserGroup-Name
Description=Ability-Player-CommandGermanCruiserAndJapaneseCruiserGroup-Description
AbilityType=CommandGermanAuxiliaryCruiser, CommandGermanHeavyCruiser, CommandJapaneseCruiserGroup
AbilityValue=100, 100, 100
AbylityActsIn= ALL
SkillRequiredLeadership=0
SkillRequiredMechanical=0
SkillRequiredElectrics=0
SkillRequiredGuns=0
SkillRequiredWatchman=0

[SpecialAbility 27]
ID=Ability-Player-CommandGermanCruiserAndJapanese
NameDisplayable=Ability-Player-CommandGermanCruiserAndJapanese-Name
Description=Ability-Player-CommandGermanCruiserAndJapanese-Description
AbilityType=CommandGermanAuxiliaryCruiser, CommandGermanHeavyCruiser, CommandJapaneseCruiserGroup, CommandJapaneseTaskforce
AbilityValue=100, 100, 100, 100
AbylityActsIn= ALL
SkillRequiredLeadership=0
SkillRequiredMechanical=0
SkillRequiredElectrics=0
SkillRequiredGuns=0
SkillRequiredWatchman=0

; end of file


So the idea isn't so far fetched after all is it?

well i have a model of the uss hornet, done in sketchup, only problem is the person who said he'd help is never online.
if someone with experience in making playable ships can convert it over to SH4 then add this small list to their work load (i dont know how, not that good yet)
.propellers.
.weapon locaters.
.torpedo tubes (6 fore, 4 aft).
.deck planes.
.interior planes.
.crewmen.
.this texture if possible.
http://www.kmaw.com/af/cv8e.jpg

all this will make this model something to enjoyed. i will not however send the file to someone who will not work on getting it into game. i want this done with a few weeks if possible as this mod will be in memory of the crew that died during the battle the solomen islands and during the sinking.

also the same model is to be used but with a different texture for the uss enterprise. this is to be in the memory of all that fought onboard that great ship. and all who sadly died protecting the united states of america.