[REQ] Doubling the max wind speed
 

Is this possible? Looking at the Beaufort Scale, it seems logical to bump up the max wind speed to 30m/s from the current max of 15m/s. Is this possible to do, or is it hard-coded in the game engine?

hmmmm....

what are you looking to get from raising the wind speed?

1m=3feet so 15m/s is 45fps so if you increased it to 90fps wouldn't that cause issues with waves, clouds and smoke?

I guess this is exactly what he wants...

Um, first of all 15m/s isn't 45 mph, it's 45 feet/sec, which is about 35 mph.

Second, if you look at the link you'll see that that comes to Beaufort 7, which is pretty heavy seas but hardly a raging storm.

I don't know if SH4 is done the same way as SH3, but I would guess so from things I've heard. TimeTraveller played with wind speeds in SH3 and found that he could raise the wind speed in single missions, but when reloaded they defaulted back to 15 m/s. That let him to create his Big Waves mod, which coped by doubling the wave height at every wind speed. All the player had to do was pretend the wind was twice what the in-game weather report said it was. It's a great mod, and when JScones did SH3 Commander he added that function, so the player can set his own relative wave heights to suit his tastes. I don't know if anyone is going to do something like that for SH4, but I'm hoping it will be one of the features of the new SH4 Skipper tool.

Yep, you're right. Right now the maximum wind speed is about half of what real-world boats could be expected to experience on any given patrol, so because of that I would like to bring the weather conditions more in line with reality.

While on the subject, how do the stock wave heights match up with real-world storm conditions?

I find that no matter what the sea state is, it doesn't have any affect in the subs performance. I still find that at 2/3 speed setting my sub travels at 11kts no matter what sea state.

ok so i made mistake. i swapped mph for fps so it will be accurate lol.

Maybe it doesn't eaffect the speed, but it does affect battles... surface-attacks are (without automated view stabelizer) nearly impossible, DDs have much more trouble tracking you with hydrophones, using the periscope is difficult, ships might sink faster in stormy weather.

Also, you might be going at 11 kts, but you are having to travel up and down on the waves, which has the same effect as increasing distance(or decreasing speed).

That is technically true, but I'm not sure that it's modelled in the game. The sub physics in SH4 are not very realistic. You guys must've seen where your Sub seems to levitiate through rough seas, resulting in the bow and stern sticking out either end of a wave , propellors churning through fresh air and the bow planes acting like wings? It has even been known for the Sub to be completely clear of the water on occasion. I know that GWX really improved the physics of the Sub in SH3 and I wish someone would do the same for 4. I'd also like to see bigger waves. The photos on that Beaufort Scale of a 'Sea State 12' showed the waves dwarfing a modern day Oil Tanker. Huge! That's what I wanna see, the sea!

I PM'd elanaiba about this, and he says while it would be relatively easy to increase the wind speed and the associated graphics, the hardest (and impossible for the dev team ATM) task is to adjust the AI to account for these new weather conditions. :cry: So, it looks like we're stuck with the 15m/s cap for now.

With any luck someone will double the wave heights for the same wind speeds. This worked in SH3, though the ships themselves had to be altered so they wouldn't sink all the time.

I'm sure it will happen; it's just a question of when.

Very true but an exposed propeller due to wave riding significantly reduces the speed which isn't modelled in SH4. That's why in real situations, subs would be submerged most of the time to preserve fuel for that very reason.

Speed is also reduced for a third reason: drag. A ship travelling through the water creates its own waves, and the faster it goes the more wavelets form along its sides. Also the hull starts to try to climb up the bow wave, which creates even more drag. The independent motion of the water magnifies this and it gets even worse when the crest-to-trough height causes the bow to dip beneath the waves.

Curiously, SH1 modelled this, though the visuals weren't all that good. I kept wondering why my flank speed was only about 15 knots one session years ago. I finally happened to look at the calender and the sea condition was stormy. I was surprised but tickled to find this modelled in that sim.

Yes, agreed. It's got me beat that this wasn't modelled into SH4 considering in SH3 it was.