[REQ]Q-Ships Mod
 

Is there a mod that simulates Q-ships in SH5? If not, does anyone think they would like to make one. I did love the one that was made for SH3. It really makes approaching lone merchants in the early war years much more interesting.

You mean those heavily armed warships in merchants clothing?
I know Q-ships were armed with Depth Charge racks and large guns, but hiding them in SH5 would be difficult, I myself, do not know how to hide ships weapons.

But maybe other modders might have more input.

It is a good idea though.
I could add DC racks to a Merchant ship, but he will have difficulty find anyone without a sonar, but I could add a sonar.

Yes, exactly. They basically were old merchants loaded up with camouflaged weapons and a had a Royal Navy crew on board. They would wander around solo waiting for a u-boat kaleun to approach it on the surface trying to save his precious torpedoes. I wonder if you could have it fire weapons but not have the ship models render the deck guns visually. Basically, you would see cannon fire but no cannon, unless they could be camouflaged some other way. Once they were firing, it wouldn't really matter once you're desperately pressing the crash dive button. In other words the incoming fire would be enough to convince you the cannons were there. The next thing would be randomizing the chance of coming up on one and limiting them to their historical years of use.

The Allied WWII merchat cruiser / Q Ship program was a big flop. The idea is cool though, and it would be nice having more of these ships in game.

SH5 got two armed merchants already, HMS Rawalpindi and HMS Patroclus (as a proxy of Rawalpindi), not to mention the German auxiliary cruisers Carl Peters, Comet and Pinguin. I have never met them in game though, and I am curious to know if their guns are disguised somehow before they start using them.
In the negative, creating dummy but fully working weapons wouldn't be a big problem :yep:

This isn't really a problem. SH5 dynamic campaign takes dates and unit types and classe into account. We can make ships to appear when/where historically espected. We can even set individual ships, making them not to be respawned in game if they get destroyed at some point during the campaign. :sunny:

On a side note, there were so few of these ships, that the chance to come along one of them should be very low anyway.

I totally agree the program wasn't very successful in RL. The mod in SH3 however, made me approach lone merchants in the early years with caution. Although I only met 3 in game, 2 of them ended my career. Knowing the small chance that they were out there was enough to make me think twice about just cruising up to single ships with my deckgun to save torpedoes. What an unpleasant surprise it was when that old rust bucket opened up on me with the power of a light cruiser. So I think the mod would be totally worth it if someone did one for SH5. I do also agree that the chance of running into one should be small, as it was in the SH3 mod.

Three encounters in how many careers? This is probably still too much, but I agree with you on the deterrent effect anyway :up:

P.S. I had a look into stock SH5 armed merchants, and I didn't see any special setting/controller attached to their main gun bones. But the bones themselves are placed in some underdecks not immediately visible to the observer, or they are well within the hull :yep:

Has anyone seen these ships firing in game? :hmmm:

Moreover, someone in Jimbuna's Q Ship thread suggested using SHIII's trap container, though this method wasn't flawless.

In any case, after solving the puzzle of how to conceal armaments, creating proxy copies of any merchant featured in game, and converting them into Q-ships is really easy :know:

Guys.. just my experience.. Open Horizons II.. Autumn, 1939.. armed merchants..
I think these ships are armed enough to not try to attack them from the surface position using the deck gun.. I have seen what may happen after..

Yes, but are their guns visible before they actually start firing? If no, how do they show up when they are fired? Some of the German auxiliary cruisers have guns which are so deep in the hull, that they should fire through it :hmm2:

I don't know.. I just saw you were talking about super armed merchants all day long and decided to drop my two cents.. I think we don't need any/other new armed merchants.. existing ships are good enough.. at least in my point of view..

This argument is a clear symptom of your unstable mentality :D

I am just having an interesting discussion with you and Stoli151, which will probably lead to nothing or, who knows, to some nice new idea. Is this in your mentality a waste of time? :03: :hmm2:

a wast of time? probably.. but you know, my unstable mentality is so unstable :D

:har:

The only constant of your personality is that you are consistently unstable :haha: :O:

P.S: our crazy discussion induced Stoli to run away. One more potential SH5 modder lost forever due to your usual "friendliness" :dead:

Potential modder? do you really think so? did you know this from some latent featured?

PS: if so.. 'he will be back' (almost verbatim quote :)).. soon..
PPS: my usual 'friendliness' :oops: http://s19.postimg.org/qbw15hmgv/facepalm.gif

I am talking about Q ships the RL wolves in sheeps clothing. Like what was said earlier a flop in RL but an enjoyable mod when done right, at least in SH3. You think you are coming up to something unarmed and then BLAMO! My three encounters were over dozens of careers spanning the early war years, so I think that was about right. I will never forget them. I always proceed with caution approaching lone merchants on the surface now in SH3 with the mod enabled. Even though the chances are small I will encounter one.I hoped that maybe somebody could do this again for SH5. As for if you like or dislike the mod if ever done, I guess that is what the enable-disable buttons are for in JSGME. Well it was just an idea anyway. If nobody else does it, maybe I can make an attempt at it although I lack skills.I may have lots of time to try, if I don't drum up any interest. In any case if done right it gets the gamer to act like a real captain and not act recklessly because they think they are safe. I would think any modder would want to make something that can do that.

The Rawalpindi ships guns are visible from large distances, also they have the Naval jack on their flag pole, and that tells me to keep clear unless I have a good torpedo course plotted.

The Auxiliary cruiser for the Germans always spawn in convoy defense in the OHII campaign and their guns as gap said, are hidden within the hull, but in the Goblin editor, the doors they hide behind, look like they could be coded open up, but as we know, the SH5 devs left lot's of content out, so the guns just clip through the side of the ship.

The naval ensign... what a noob error! :doh:

I had a look at the FLG bone of several units, but unfortunately I couldn't spot any special format which may tell the game wether to use the naval or the civil ensign. The usage of miltary/merchant flags must be hardcoded, and connected with the unit type. Armed merchants use a special type: Type13=Auxiliary Cruiser, and they were grouped by devs together with warships in Names.cfg. This is a indirect evidence of them using the naval ensign. We could change their type to Type102=Cargo (or any other merchant type), but then they woudn't attack enemy ships, and they would use their guns just for self defence :hmmm:

This is another mistake. As far as I know, only the Japanese during WWII used variously armed merchants (some had even DC racks) as convoy escorts. Have you informed Trevally about it?

:nope:

better moving their guns on deck then: the stupid AI ships wouldn't notice their armaments anyway (I think they only react to the type of foe units they meet, and to possible attacks).

As for Allied armed merchants / Q ships, it is another matter, because their guns would betray them to the (wise) eye of the human captain.
Yesterday I had a look into SHIII's trap containers, which can be used for concealing armaments on deck. They got special doors which open/close intermittently. In SHIII there was no controller to trigger their animation, so they weren't a big help either. I wonder if, since SHIII, new animation triggers have been added to the pool of available controllers. If not, there's at least one workaround that I could think of: giving each of the trap container doors a damage box, and giving them a zone with extremely low HP and AP. Should the gun concealed behind them start firing, they would blow ip in the air, thus making space for gun's barrel. What do you think? :hmm2:

Should be the cfg# entry for the flag :hmmm:

Yep, definitely should be cfg# node related (from my notes):

cfg#E01_ ... = Sub Emblema 1
cfg#E02_ ... = Sub Emblema 2
cfg#A01_ ... = A-A Armament
cfg#A02_ ... = A-A Armament
cfg#ALB_ ... = Submarine Ballast Launch
cfg#B01_ ... = Bomb Armament
cfg#BLD_ ... = Submarine Bold Decoy Launch
cfg#C01_ ... = Radar RWR
cfg#D01_ ... = RadioDF
cfg#FLG_ ... = Flag
cfg#FLGC ... = Flag civil.
cfg#FLS_ ... = Flag (small)
cfg#FLSC_ ... = Flag (small) civil.
cfg#TXR_ ... = External texture
cfg#H01_ ... = Hydrophone 1
cfg#H02_ ... = Hydrophone 2
cfg#SNK_ ... = Snorkel
cfg#K01_ ... = Cargo
cfg#L01_ ... = Search Light
cfg#M01_ ... = Main Armament
cfg#N01_ ... = Sonar
cfg#O01_ ... = AI_Visual (Lookout on conning tower)
cfg#O02_ ... = Periscope/Attack
cfg#O03_ ... = Periscope/Observ
cfg#R01_ ... = Radar
cfg#S01_ ... = Secondary Armament
cfg#S02_ ... = Secondary Armament
cfg#S03_ ... = Secondary Armament
cfg#T01_ ... = Torpedo Armament
cfg#TAR_ ... = Submarine Torpedo Armament
cfg#W01_ ... = ASW Armament (KGun, YGun, Hhog, DCRack)
cfg#Z01_ ... = Submarine Turm

I also think the ships should be something inconspicuous. In other words something that would not look odd travelling alone and are very commonly encountered. I remember the small coastal freighter was used in the mod for SH3, so something similar to that should suffice. The way the cfg was written for that ship seemed to make it either a standard ship or a Qship(very small random chance). I could be wrong. Of course it would be much cooler if they were their own ships that looked exactly like a common ship, that way if sunk you wouldn't encounter that particular one again.