Conning Towers
 

Ugh! I give up.

I've been driving this same Salmon class boat since 12/8/41 - it's now 6/43 - and it still has the early war tower. What exactly do you have to do to get an upgrade?

And if the game is broken here - as I now suspect - does anyone know how to mod the save game files to force an upgrade that way?

I've tried playing with the dates in the ActiveUserPlayerUnits.upc and CareerTrack.upc in the save games folder but so far no luck.

I've also tried to manually edit the tga entries in those files to match the appropriate dds file for the mid-war tower (or at least I think that's what I was doing).

And what's with these tga files anyway? The files referenced in ActiveUserPlayerUnits.upc don't seem to actually exist anywhere.

Confused...

JD

I too have experienced this very annoying bug. It would seem it is yet another feature not implimented due to the rush out the door.

If you listen to some birdmen here, the game does this just fine, and it is us being too critical that is at fault.

Ok, that aside, I have tried the methods you have, and also have achieved the same luck. For the S-boats as an experiment I copied the data files for conning two over conning one. This resulted in my boat getting the new towers. I just did not like the fact I essentially removed the old tower from the game.

I have asked several times how to get the feature to work, and have mostly been ignored, or berated in some manner.

Very annoying.

Just a thought, but why not make a JSGME mod out of your experiment. Put the conning two files in place of the conning one files, but in a JSGME compatible folder layout. Then, when it's time to have the 2nd tower, enable your mod. When you want to go back to the 1st tower, disable it and JSGME will put the 1st tower files back for you.

Great Idea Digital Trucker!

T01/T02.dds

Thanks. It must be a blue moon, that's usually when I have them:rotfl:

In the first patch (1.1) in my 1942 career my tower was upgraded, as it should have been in 1943. Since 1.2 I have not had a single tower upgrade even though the dates are well beyond what they are set to in the submarine files.

Ditto. :up:

Despite appearances, it acutally IS NOT broken. I used to think so too, until Dan explained how it worked, and then i saw what he explained in acutal play. Basically, to get a tower upgrade, you have to get a Refit. How do you get a refit? A refit is done randomly as you return from patrol. Or in other words, every time you return from patrol, there is a *CHANCE* to get a refit. (when you get one, the game will tell you) If you wanted to sit there and reload the game a bunch of times, you could always save just before you dock, and then keep reloading until your award a refit.

Now, a refit however, has to be avialable in order for the *chance* to get one, to occur.

For an example, In TMaru, refits are scheculed like this for a Gato: (straight out of the UPC file)

So if you "make the dice roll" ( so to speak), between, june 1942, and march 43, you'll get the midwar tower. If you never make the dice roll, then you won't. If you start at the beginning of the war, but your chance to refit doesnt occr tell janary of 1944, well, then i guess youll go straight to the elite tower. (this is conjecture on my part, i dont know if the game is saying, "you'll have a refit in each of these indvidual time periods, or just, that you'll have a refit.. whenever)

What effects the chances to get a refit, i have no idea. But i know it works, because ive seen it happen. I started at the beginning of the war, and got a refit which cut out the bathtub around the AA gun.

If you never get a refit, your just unlucky i guess.

As an aside, these are the refit schedules in Tmaru, they are slighly modified from stock:

http://www.ducimus.net/sh4/release/porpoise_refits.jpg
http://www.ducimus.net/sh4/release/s...rgo_refits.jpg
http://www.ducimus.net/sh4/release/T...gar_refits.jpg
http://www.ducimus.net/sh4/release/gato_refits.jpg

Real patrols were actually pretty short, certainly compared to people who "refit" (refuel/rearm) and go back for more. The more you go, patrol, then RTB to get a new patrol, the more "die rolls" you get, correct, ducimus?

tater

I've found this aspect of the game fairly annoying. :damn:

I've never rolled a refit in all the months I've played SH4 since it was released, at least not that I can remember! Hence I've never had a tower refit! I believe there is a way to manually edit the tower that your sub is fitted with.

But its still a bit of an immersion killer when you're still cruising around in 1943 with that ruddy great 'bathtub' following you about when your on the bridge.

I hope this is something they will fix in the new patch and expansion.

IMHO they should dump the random element and just make it simple. A new tower uprade becomes avialable; the next time you dock back at base you automatically get it.

I'm not really sure why they deviated from the "upgrade model" they used in SH3? If you had the renown, you could get the new tower, if not, sorry charlie.

Just like in real life, the good skippers would get the perks. They're not gonna give the good stuff to some schlaub just because, they're going to give the decent boats and upgrades to those that perform, at least that's how I see the renown working. It's like a manual manipulation of the stars.

I'm not sure how I was given the Gato from my Tambor. It really couldn't have been more generic "A new boat is available, do you want it?" Wow, thanks for the specs. Hell, a frickin name would've even been nice. Something like "Because of your continued high service reports, we have seen fit to offer you a change of boat. The Gato-class submarine "SS-29 Drum" has just become available and we'd like to know if you'd skipper it?"

Jesus, how hard is that?

>>Just like in real life, the good skippers would get the perks.

Not always. Truth be told, the current implentation is arguably the most realistic. Yes you'll get your back scratched if you have a good rep, but thats not always how logistics works. And if your sub gets a refit, is all about logistics.

For the most part, pearl boats had to go back to mare island, san francisco to get a refit. Boats based in austrila, i have no idea. Its a matter of having the materials and facilties available in order to do the refit to begin with. That and real world needs. Say for example a sub was really badly busted up and needed to dry dock. They might decide to do the refit right then and there since she boats laid up already. Doesn't matter if the skipper is successful or not, the boat needs to be repaired, and it only makes sense to refit it while its out of service.

This link is intresting:
http://www.shipcamouflage.com/submarines.htm

Note that " MS 9" is the black paintjob, and "MS 32" is the grey paintjob. If you click on the sub types, notice the year in which these were done.

Possible "Mod" Solution
 

OK, I think I figured out how to manually edit some files to get the conning tower you want.

The file that needs to be modded is ActiveUserPlayerUnits.upc in the %userprofile%\sh4\data\cfg\savegames folder.

In my case I wanted to change the Salmon conning tower from early war to mid-war configuration. The relevant sections of the original file looked like this:

[UserPlayerUnit 1.UnitPartSlot 1]
ID=SalmonConningSlot
NameDisplayable=Conning Tower Mount
Type=NULL
AcceptedTypes=SalmonConningTower
ExternalNodeName3D=Z01
IDLinkUnitPartIntervalDefault1=19000101,19420131,S almonConningEarlyWar
IDLinkUnitPartIntervalDefault2=19420201,19430515,S almonConningMedWar
IDLinkUnitPartIntervalDefault3=19430516,19991231,S almonConningLateWar
IDLinkUnitPartLoaded=SalmonConningEarlyWar

[UserPlayerUnit 1.UnitPartSlot 1.UnitPart]
ID=SalmonConningEarlyWar
NameDisplayable=Start of war Conning Tower
UnitPartInterval=1900-01-01, 1999-12-31
Type=SalmonConningTower
ExternalLinkName3D=data/objects/Conning_SalmonSargo_01
HullTextureNameOverride=data/Submarine/NSS_Salmon/NSS_SalmonClass_T01.tga
HullLightmapTextureNameOverride=data/Submarine/NSS_Salmon/NSS_SalmonClass_O01.tga
HullNormalmapTextureNameOverride=NULL
MenuSilhouetteTextureNameOverride=Salmon_Class_01. tga


I changed the entries to this (deltas highlighted):

[UserPlayerUnit 1.UnitPartSlot 1]
ID=SalmonConningSlot
NameDisplayable=Conning Tower Mount
Type=NULL
AcceptedTypes=SalmonConningTower
ExternalNodeName3D=Z01
IDLinkUnitPartIntervalDefault1=19000101,19420131,S almonConningEarlyWar
IDLinkUnitPartIntervalDefault2=19420201,19430515,S almonConningMedWar
IDLinkUnitPartIntervalDefault3=19430516,19991231,S almonConningLateWar
IDLinkUnitPartLoaded=SalmonConningMedWar

[UserPlayerUnit 1.UnitPartSlot 1.UnitPart]
ID=SalmonConningMedWar
NameDisplayable=Half-cut Conning Tower
UnitPartInterval=1942-07-01, 1945-12-01
Type=SalmonConningTower
ExternalLinkName3D=data/objects/Conning_SalmonSargo_02
HullTextureNameOverride=data/Submarine/NSS_Salmon/NSS_SalmonClass_T01.tga
HullLightmapTextureNameOverride=data/Submarine/NSS_Salmon/NSS_SalmonClass_O01.tga
HullNormalmapTextureNameOverride=NULL
MenuSilhouetteTextureNameOverride=Salmon_Class_02.tga


The information to do this came from the UnitParts5Salmon.upc file in the <game installation folder>\data\upcdata\upcunitsdata folder. I could just as easily have substituted the data for the late war conning tower.

Fairly easy once I found where the data was hiding.

JD

Well, I probably jumped a bit too far ahead by saying realistic, and as I wrote, I knew I should put a caveat in there. I think my main point was more pointing out the spirit of the renown/purchase system. If you're a good captain, you get rewarded by a sort of nepotism, although that might not be 100% realistic.

It would be nice if what you said was quantified in the game a better way. If I come back with a battered ship, I get less renown, ok....I can get more crew? or spend 100 on an upgraded 20mm deckgun? That's really what I meant by the "manual intervention", the deus ex machina if you will. We can artificially fill in for what the devs haven't/couldn't accomodate us for.

It would be great if the system worked as you described, but in the SH3 model, it behooved you to be a good player, there were rewards. So you almost acted as both the captain and BDU, captain to gain the reward, BDU to distribute it amongst the sub in terms of perks/new subs/conning towers/etc. Does that make sense? I'm not disagreeing with you, just positing a different approach.

Just an oddball, off the wall FYI, once you do get a refit, you have to "buy" your radars all over again. I made that mistake once. Got a refit, went on patrol, "hey, my radar isnt working". Loaded the game saved back in the office and discovered my conning tower was radarless. :lol: