Ship Nationality. Any way to determine?
 

Before I get a comment saying. "Just look at their flag dummy." Let me assure you this is the method I use right now.

It is relatively easy to assume that ships in an enemy convoy are.....enemies, makes sense right? So bang bang sink. My problem comes when attacking lone ships, by the time I'm close enough to get a good look at their flag, I'm usually within 500m, and that's in peak weather conditions.

Now before I played Silent Hunter 3 and I was Call of duty: Black Ops on Wii-addict (Yes I said on the wii, I even got a zapper for it. :D) Friendly-fire was something that I generally said "oops" about and went on with my business.

However I don't treat this simulation as if it were a game, I treat it as if it were a simulation.....well, that and BDU will yell at me and take away my $Renown$ If I shoot stuff I'm not supposed to shoot. :oops:

So, I'm not looking for a super cheat that has a big red arrow over enemy ships that says "SHOOT ME!" but any advice on being able to more easily determine a lone ship's nationality will be nice.

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Also, I don't want to create a thread over something that can be answered in one post, so I'm just going to attach this question onto this one like some sort of tumor.

What does the Synchronize option under the Video options/settings in Silent Hunter 3 do?

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom//sho...d.php?t=152479

If you follow that link you can download a mod called flags_enlighten. It brightens up the flags somewhat so you can see them more easily at night and by day. Depending on weather conditions you may be able to make a good guess at a flag's nationality from a few thousand meters with this mod rather than 500 meters.

I tend to look for colours first rather than try to make out the design, although this is not always helpful, as much like the British merchant navy, many nations tend to use large amounts of red in their flags.

Also be mindful of your location when you encounter lone ships. If you are near the coast of a nation that is neutral to the AXIS, then there is a high chance that that lone ship you encounter will be a possible neutral.

They'll still be times when you've made the effort to get into a good position, and your fingers are on the trigger ready to fire, and only then you realise the ship isn't a valid target and you have to call the attack off. If it is a part of the game that annoys you/reduces your enjoyment than consider searching for a mod which restores coloured contacts, I think there are a few around.

Jimbuna has the key to the mod that restores the color-codes to the maps. It won't tell you the exact nationality, but it's the in-game equivalent to you're big red arrow.

Hey, whatever works. Oh, I think Frau Kaleun could point you to it as well.

GWX Contact Color Mod:

http://www.gamefront.com/files/13913...ntact_Color_7z

Don't leave home without it! ;)

Or Fish In The Water might be able to help. :D

:haha: Well, credit to Jim... It's his link.

Thanks for the links and advice, Tried King_Zog's suggestion, and that enlightened flag mod works great. Just what I needed!

Off to go kill some more of those bloody Brits......and maybe a light-boat or two. :salute:

Good hunting! :up:

Be More Agressive....shoot first and ask questions later. :arrgh!:

Nothing that a little log doctoring at the end of patrol can't fix and the crew sworn to secrecy. Let the diplomats sort it out.

Just make sure it is not a German ore carrier sailing off the coast of Norway in March of 1940 in the middle of the night, or so I've heard. :oops:

:)

+1


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I was going to use the colored ships mod, but someone - I think Jimbuna - talked me out of it. I've been just sitting there patiently waiting until I can recognize the flag. It adds a lot of tension, and seems like the right thing for me to enjoy the game.

I also found the Enemies of Germany list on the F1 key, and I like to feel the pressure of furiously leafing through the recognition manual to find the country of those flags I don't know by heart.

I've got the exercise of getting lined up for a shot down pat, so pretty soon I'm going to switch to manual targeting. Automatic targeting is getting to be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Honestly I find this is very seldom a problem. I'm running GWX. I've been playing for years, and I've probably accidentally sunk less than 5 neutrals, and never a friendly.

Very early in the war you have to watch out as you can run into neutrals anywhere. But by 1940, you can pretty much guarantee the friend-or-foe status simply by where you are when you encounter them.

Anything around Britain is likely an enemy. Any sizable convoy is probably an enemy.

When you run south from Spain downwards you need to pay more attention, but neutrals that you encounter will likely be single ships or very small convoys. Single ships are easy to stalk and figure out who they are.

Anything running with lights on is neutral.

Steve

Anything running with lights on is neutral.

I have found this to be reliable evidence.

Last night I was returning from a patrol at CF59, and got intelligence on a convoy just north of me heading SSW. I altered course to intercept, and sure enough my Sonarman starts chirping about one ship after another.

I had to end the session due to time constraints, but tonight I will pick up where I left off. First convoy of my career. I'm on my 13th patrol. Everything up until now have been single ships.

I have all five torpedoes aboard.

The reason is simple. In stock SH3 there are no lighted ships. GWX added some lighted neutrals. There can be neutrals that are not lit up, but any lit ship will always be neutral.

ESPECIALLY hospital ships. I honestly think they are more lit up than regular neutrals.

Has anyone mentioned the Contact_Colour mod yet? :DL

Precisely....BE MORE AGGRESSIVE!! http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...ies/pirate.gif

Lazy sods gotta earn their pay somehow, may as well be for this... :O:

Another aid in determining nationality can be looking at the GWX order of battle in the manual. Not all countries have all ships: for example, an Empire Freighter is never going to be neutral.

While I never like the renown hit when I (very rarely) sink a neutral, I like the hoops I have to go through: Ok, it's a small merchant... BE29, hmm... but heading north... 1940... no lights. Close to 1000, periscope depth, set the torp and I will make the final call then.

Don't know if this has been discussed already but is there any way to have countries label their ships as neutral but their really not in game? (Like by lighting them up or something of the sort) I thought about editing my renown files so I don't get a hit for neutrals that way when I see a neutral (Like USA merchant early war) and its heading for say Britain, I could make the logical call to go ahead and sink it.

The Merchant Fleet Mod is set up to do something like this... it has a great number of ships that are modeled to be "neutral" in appearance, but which have their .cfg files added to the rosters of Allied nations (as well as neutral ones). So a ship may have, for instance, no flag flying from any masthead, but wear a skin that identifies it as a ship from a neutral country. But if it spawned in that instance from an Allied roster, it will behave like an Allied ship and the game will count it as an enemy kill if you sink it.

That's different than what happens if you sink a "suspicious" ship that spawned from a neutral roster, though - it might seem to be heading for an Allied port but if the game spawned it as a neutral and you sink it you'll take whatever renown hit comes with it, unless you've edited the basic.cfg to remove the hit for neutrals. You can even change it so you get credit for sinking a neutral.

Then it's all up to you to exercise the necessary self-control so that you're not just sinking everything you find in order to get more renown for spurious kills.

I don't know how to go about making an enemy ship run with its lights on, and I don't think doing it would be very realistic anyway... all that would do in RL is make them more visible to the enemy, easier to spot and track and easier to ID once they came to investigate.