Long campaign/career
 

I understand that career gameplay in SH3 spawns ships on the map based on certain factors. What I would like to know, is just how smart the system is. I'm playing with GWX3 and some smaller mods.

In my career it is now December 1939 and I'm on my 3rd wartime patrol and I'm attacking my first real convoy. Literally tons of fun btw. My second attack on the convoy was like straight from Das Boot: Surface torpedo attack at night, then... Alaaaarrrm! :ping: Also I would like to ask if sinkings are only logged if you're in detection range of the ships? I had three separate torpedo impacts, but got only one sinking in the captains log.

Well, back to the subject. On first wartime patrol I only got single ships of variable size. On second patrol biggest formation I ran to was 2 ships on now on my third a real convoy escorted by couple of destroyers. So, difficulty is progressing as it should be. How well is real history factored in? Invasions of Denmark and Norway are not far away and I'd like to know if the campaing is more likely to spawn British military vessels on the coastal waters of Norway (especially near Narvik) during the invasion.

By itself, not very. That said, it is adaptable.

Supermods always help, and GWX is very good.

Yes. If the ship sinks after you have left you won't get credit for it. So far no one has been able to fix this problem, at least that I know of.

Yes. GWX and WAC especially have scripted campaigns throughout the war.

Outstanding. How does the scripting work? Is there a fixed fleet on point X on time Y or is it just more likely to generate appropriate ships in the area?

It´s a mix from scripted ships and random ships. You could open the two files in the folder:
GWX\data\Campaigns\Campaign the files you could open are campaign_RND.mis (random events) and campaign_SCR.mis (scripted events).
Ships and groups in the first file have a value behind the line "SpawnProbability" giving you the probability in percent. Ships and groups from SCR.mis will be spawn always by starting a patrol.
You can open those files with the missin editor from SH3 or with any text editor.

Well even the randomly generated ships have a known scripted waypoint track for them if they spawn. Part of the waypoints may be forks where the Random Number God chooses to make it go bypass or backtrack to a different waypoint. And the waypoints may have an uncertainty region around them where the turnpoint is randomly chosen aswel. So you can never be really sure when or where they go exactly. But it isn't influenced by your actions, aside from sinking it. Neither your performance throughout the war makes a difference to where they appear or go. Or with how many. Like it should be, imho.

Thank you for the indepth information. I'm heading to Norwegian waters for a hunt when the time comes. :salute:

I've never opened any of the editor files, and I never intend to, as I don't want to see the magic behind the curtain. :)

But I can tell you with GWX, yes, the war progresses as you would expect.

Air cover gets more dense, including night attacks. Merchants start off unarmed, and by 1941 they are armed, and later on they all seem to be. Starting off you will find plenty of single merchants, later not so much. Starting off escorts may be light, later on they have plenty. And the escorts' detection ability only gets better as the war goes on, too.

My advice is this: Stay out of shallow water, and never attack a convoy with less than 100% hull integrity. When you are forced to dive, go all the way into the red by 40 meters.

Steve

I have noticed this. The two escorts in my first convoy managed to inflict serious damage to my conning tower, in fact I had to return to Wilhemshaven to have radio antenna and periscopes fixed. Loved the guessing game that was evading them underwater, half of the game happened in my head, which is good. The only defence I got was to go deeper and try to stay silent.