Any way to fix the incredible agility of surface ships?
 

I'm sure you know what I mean...you hit a ship or two in a convoy and hell breaks loose. You have escorts cutting across lanes with merchants swinging port or starboard around sinking hulks. Or you enjoy the view of 5 DD's circling your position and see one about to knife right through another.

Only to find that these ships, unlike your U-Boat, can go from flank speed to a dead stop within 50m. To top it off, if you try to get an easy shot off on a stopped ship, they can also jump from 0 to 25 kts in a few seconds.

Is there any way to fix this...force the surface folks to start conforming to the laws of physics? I used to really enjoy sneaking into convoys and using the ensuing chaos that would erupt to escape. Doesn't work so well when these guys can just fly right through traffic with no consequence.

Good remark,

DDs can accelerate and fall to full stop too fast.. dunno is there any work around to smooth this happening :hmm:

I can fix that in 30 seconds, if you guys are interested.

Make a list of who's interested, and I can send the link via PM.

I won't release as a mod cos I'm sure gwx crew will say that the mod break things, and I'm tired of discussing.

:up:

I would vote for go green if there would be surely no doubt that it wount bring any side effects..

The side effects are these:

Ships would take longer to turn and longer to stop, or to increase speed. That MIGHT result in:

a) Ships colliding with eachother in convoys when they are taking evasive maneuvers, cos the AI is stupid.
b) Ships running aground, cos they are scripted to stop/turn at certain points, and those points were calculated on base of their current speed to turn/stop. The whole campaign would have to be re-checked.
c) Ships colliding with eachother during turns in the waypoints. Believe me, when they are turning from one waypoint to another, they do a pretty good mess already, cos they are very dumb, imagine with slower movements.

The good sides of doing it:

a) Ships will finally collide with eachother, it does never happen ingame, and sure happened a lot in RL.
b) Ships running aground, FINALLY, due to malcalculations in route and speed.
c) Ships won't be able to dodge torpedos as easly as they do in game, cos they would take longer to accelerate and turn.
d) The whole thing would look more realistic, as in real life ships take eternity to stop and turn. I was testing the titanic, it goes from 30kts to full stop and reverse in less then 100 meters, less then 10 seconds. In my head that's a joke! It would be more realistic if it took 1 km to stop, at least.

The mod itself is very easy to do, and the things it would break is what I've pointed above.

I will do it, test it, and release it for the weekend. Screw the side-effects, who want it, can download it. Who don't want it, can complain about it and tell me to go to hell. I couldn't care less.

:up:

:lol: ok lets wait and see the results.

One more question to ask. will this affect all the ships in the game ? ok let's say bigger ships should accelerate and slow down very slowly due to it's huge mass. But this should not be suitable for torpedo boats, who's acceleration time is very fast indeed and should be left untouched.
Can't say how fast DD's were able to reach their top speed accuratly, but it surely depended on class and engines they had as well..
So if there is possibility to stick to gold middle as close as possible it would really be worth having it :rock:

This was first brought up when the game was new, more than three years ago. It's obvious right when you play the Torpedo Training scenario in Sub School, and the merchant that is sitting still avoids the torpedo by accelerating out of the way.

A World War Two destroyer could accelerate from a standing start to full speed in about five minutes. In one minute it could reach 15 knots. A full reverse stop could be done in about 500 yards, or three times the ship's own length. This is pretty amazing, but nothing close to what they do in the game.

A typical merchant should take at least 10 minutes just to reach 5 knots. Initial acceleration would probably be about 1 knot in the first minute, maybe two in the faster ones. Deceleration would be pretty quick, because the hull shape required for carrying cargo created a lot of resistance. These same factors that make for slow acceleration also make for quick deceleration. Still, it should be taking at least a minute to come to a full stop.

An Iowa class battleship took about 40 minutes to reach its full speed of 33 knots, and in one minute could get to about 4 knots. It would take about half a mile to do a full-reverse stop from flank speed.

Of course the ships in the game accelerate and decelerate much more quickly than they should, but a true fix would require changeable values for each individual ship class, and Philipp Thomsen obviously knows much more about that than I do. As for PT's comments about the GWX crew, they probably would say that, and rightly so. A lot of their changes are tied together, and it took them months of testing each change just to get to where they themselves weren't breaking things and it all worked together. I'm not trying to start a fight either - I'm just sayin'.:sunny:

"but a true fix would require changeable values for each individual ship class"

This is it. If the game allows to add more values to ships depending on their class we could reach the desireble goal..

But I believe SH3 engine was made so roughly that it can't understand the values which are greater than : "this is destroyers value| this is merchant value| this is aircraft value." or can it ? :hmm:

Steve, thank you so much for all the info! :up:

I didn't thought it was so slow and took so long for ships to get speed. Amazing.

Well, here's what I will do.

1) Increase the ship's accel and stopping time by 5 times. That should be somewhere between the current state and the historical values. This way it's better to not breaking too much stuff, it's a lot better then the current state, and besides I think that historic accurate values would cause more harm then good.

2) Do it proportional to the ship's size and weight. Ships like sloops and boats will be left untouched. Ships like battleships and heavy liners will have their maneuverabillity greatly reduced.

I was thinking about cutting the turning hability down to half the original value... What you say, Steve? Ships turned in real-life as fast as they turn in game? And what about the speed, how much speed would a large merchant or a destroyer loose if set the full right rudder, at 30kts and ahead flank on the engines? Would drop to something like 12 kts and hold this speed?

This sounds like a cool mod and I for one will definately give it a try.:up:

Just 1 question: Will it be JSGMEable?:hmm:

As all the rest of my mods! :up:

You are outstanding!!!!:|\\

That's a tough question. In my own quest to make a tabletop ship game I liked I did a lot of looking into real tests and trials.

Did you mean increase or decrease? Increase is making it faster, not slower.:-?

That's one of the weirdnesses, and one of the problems. Acceleration is also governed by propellor pitch, and that's governed by the job the ship was designed for. Long ago when I mentioned some of this, I was told by someone who had been on them that tugboats were slow, but could get up to their full 9 knots in less than a minute, and all on very little horsepower. After much wrangling we decided that they probably needed that extra torque for pushing much bigger ships, and sideways at that.

This is much like World War One aircraft. With fixed-pitch propellors it had to be either one or the other, so British aircraft were ususally faster, but German planes could climb better, which also meant that the accelerated more quickly.

That's one area I was able to study, and you might be surprised. The old 1906 battleship HMS Dreadnought, at full speed of 21 knots, could throw her rudder hard over and turn the first 45 degrees in 40 seconds and the first full 90 degrees in one minute. This means that once she got turning she was covering 135 degrees per minute and making a full circle in a little over two-and-a-half minutes. On the other hand the drag was tremendous compared to her power, and she would lose about three knots per minute while doing this, so if she entered the turn at 21 knots she would finish it doing about 14.

When tested at 12 knots Dreadnought lost no speed at all, but they were planning for it and could increase power as they turned the rudder. Technically if you are only making one knot and don't increase power you should lose some speed in return.

Surprisingly, as a continuation of the above, an Iowa class battleship could actually turn tighter than a Fletcher class destroyer. At 30 knots the Iowa had a tactical diameter of 750 yards, while the Fletcher's was 950 yards. This means that the Iowa, making 30 knots, could make a full circle in about 2.5 minutes, while the Fletcher would take 2.95 minutes to make the same circle at the same speed. This was because the Fletchers were not meant to be running in circles, and were built with single instead of twin rudders.

On the other hand, one report of an Iowa going into a tight turn at 33 knots had her coming out of it after a full circle at 26 knots, so she probably actually took three minutes to make the circle rather than two-and-a-half, and she lost seven knots doing it. Also, at 26 knots she's using most of her power to maintain speed, so there's probably not a lot left over for acceleration.

The Fletcher, on the other hand, going into a circle at her flank speed of 36 knots, probably won't lose more than two or three at most, since once she does start to slow down she has a lot more horsepower relative to her weight to keep her going. And, with that higher power-to-weight ration, she'll gain it back faster as well.

The Fletcher is an interesting example because she is an exception. She's fairly big and heavy for a destroyer, and most smaller destroyers are also lighter, and some have twin rudders, so they turn tighter. A destroyer escort has an approximate tactical diameter of 350 yards at 20 knots, which is very tight, and if I remember correctly a Flower class corvette had a TD of only 200 yards at 12 knots, which will outturn a submerged u-boat.

Until I can get my books back out of storage, take these last numbers with a grain of salt, as I'm going from memory.

Thank you again for the info!

Read it again! :up:

I'll do my best based on your info!