[TEC] Random merchies not so random?
 

Has anyone else noticed that vast majority of random merchies happen to be the 7000 ton Large Modern Split or something like that?( I believe the internal name is KCLSNagara). I suspect it is chosen by the engine more frequently as alphabetically it is first in the roster.

I would think it more likely that a more commonly encountered vessel would be in the 4000-2000 ton range. I find this 7000 tonner leads to artifically high tonnages and is getting more boring to run into. There are plenty of other beautifully rendered marus that I'm missing, and IDing is getting to be too easy!

Any thoughts?

I did some tests with the random spawning groups, using battleships in particular, to see how the proportions were chosen. What I found was that the game has a tendency to spawn several ships of the same class for a random unit. For example, I made a group consisting of 12 japanese battleships (that's how many there were in the IJN, BTW), in a single column.

Almost without exception, they would come in pairs. For example, if a Yamato was first, the second would 99% of the time be another Yamato. Then, two Fusos, then two Ises, etc. I think the RNG used by the game is somewhat biased.

The global ratios over several repetitions were evenly distributed. I was hoping the number of ships defined for each class would have an effect, but there was none I could see.

I think you're right, I've always seen the Yamatos in pairs or 3-4 Fusos at a time.

There is some work being done (RFB mod, among others) to explicity define the heavy combatant make up of task forces. Will I have to do the same for random merchants?

Maybe there is a way around it. For my tests, I defined one entry of 12 battleships in the group contents. Maybe 12 entries of one BB each would behave differently? Someone should check.

I may do it later today, but at the moment I'm debugging someone else's code, and pretty tired of it already :D

BBs actually tended to be in batdivs with their sisters since it was easier logistically.

Warships clumping this way would be a feature, IMO. merchants OTOH...

Bump - I ran into three of the damn things 'randomly' last night (7000 ton Large Modern Composite - Nagara class).

Actually, is there a listing or chart anywhere of what all the Type entries in the .MIS files are? I see variations in the campaign files (Type 101, 102, 103) and I assume they either refer to specific classes or broad categories of ship. If so, I can fix this myself.

Search for names.cfg, somewhere under data\roster, IIRC. The category of each ship is set in its entry under each country in roster. They are limited, though, and I don't think you can add new ones. The category a ship is in affects AI behaviour, so inventing new ones is likely to confuse the game.