Playable Carriers for SH4 ?
 

Hi Gentlemen, what do you think about the idea of implementing detailed and well texturized Fleet Carriers to play Careers into SH4?
A couple of them would be very welcome,here goes a list:

USS Lexington
USS Hornet
IJN Zuikaku
IJN Soryu

Post War ones:

USS Saratoga refit CV60
USS Kitty Hawk
USS Nimitz CVN68
USS Gerald Ford CVN21

Any team brave and skilled enough?

What would be the point?

Carriers are terribly modeled in SH4. Not the 3d model, but the way they work. You might as well just make one playable then give it magical powers.

Air ops are absurd in Sh4. CVs spawn airplanes in flight. That's the extent of air ops. To be playable, and worth even looking at, you'd need to be able to pick the loadout, set planes to CAP or strike groups. You'd need to have it take time to refuel, rearm, warm up, and strike them on deck. You'd need to have to steam into the wind, etc, ad nauseum. None of that is possible.

You'd also need to be able to direct attacks past the 20nm horizon which is not possible.

So no, sadly it's not possible.

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Huh?

No, but air ops are abstracted in SH, and CV air ops are flat out absurd, with no good way to mod them other than to shut them off (which is what I did).

Have a friend who just made a playable carrier. working out some plane launching ideas.:rock:

Didn't KELTOS post a video with planes lunching off carriers few threads back? For the love of God I can't find it now...

While Fleet Command left a lot to be desired in terms of realism, they at least got the carrier ops right.

You could define loadouts. Set up CAPs, AWACS and the like.

I think what Tater is trying to say is that without that functionality, a Carrier in SH4 (well the SH series in general) is neutered past the point of being viable.

What makes a carrier a carrier and the deadliest ships afloat, is something that SH4 doesn't model.

I wish there was a new Fleet Command or something similar. That was one interesting game.

Found it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcneBeK0Rws

What is the point?

The game only deals with ships as abstractions past the render range.

RL carriers do not "launch" planes at targets 20km away, more like 200km. This is impossible in SH4.

So right off the bat, they are absurd.

Never mind that the flight model—if you even want to justify it by calling what it does "flight"—is utter crap.

What about the time to prepare, load, warm up, etc? What about scouting hundreds of miles away so you know where to send your coordinated strike (LOL, the planes will attack the nearest target they see, there's your coordinated strike).?

Given your interest in modern warfare, the ranges should move even farther out. The render range doesn't even give room for typical missile systems used by planes to engage surface combatants, LOL. The only thing you might be able to use that capability for is for ASW helos. THAT would work—under the presumption that they could run out of fuel, etc—otherwise why not keep them aloft at all times?

There must be a way to make them player useful. Even if it takes using a "trainer" or "hack" to spawn aircraft.

Yeah the flight model sucks. But 12 dive bombers attacking 1 ship is still very deadly.

It's absurd.

Ships spawn at 35km, despawn at 40km, and are drawn at 20km.

35km is practically BB gun range. Deadly? Sure it'd be deadly, so would adding antimatter cannons in place of the deck gun—and it would be about as realistic.

Having planes magically spawn to attack targets that close is just silly. You might as well ask for powerups or other nonsense. CVs should have to steam into the wind, that is not required, either. It's SILLY.

The SH engine simply does not handle this.

"35km is practically BB gun range. Deadly? Sure it'd be deadly, so would adding antimatter cannons in place of the deck gun—and it would be about as realistic."

It doesn't matter if it doesn't look right.

Here's how it should be done.
1. Press button. Timer starts.
2. Timer counts down and planes spawn over the aircraft carrier.
3. Give them a waypoint as you would with the scout planes on the uboat campaign.

Since when does it need to be realistic to be fun and challenging?

The harder part would be to give the aircraft carrier escort ships and maybe a CA,BC, or BB to follow it around for protection.

To help the issue with a max of 35km you scale everything down if you can't increase the environment. Drop all gun ranges by 50%. Considering that battleships in WWII hardly ever fired at max angle unless it was for shore bombardment.

I've seen mods for other games such as Pirates of the Caribbean 'build mod' that do things seemingly impossible due to the aging game engine. I know there's a way. I just wish I was better with programming language so I could figure it out.

Since I only care about realism, I'll punch out of this thread. :)

But it's hard to balance magical units against other, more realistic units without changing, well, everything. As for the u-boat scout planes, don't know anything about them, never seen a u-boat in sh4, myself, never bothered to try one. Since that functionality is actually useful for theIJN subs, you might ask keltos.

Since you never tried the u-boat campaign I'll clue you in. The scouts get launched from airbases not from the u-boat itself. But theres a possibility of getting the players unit to drag an airbase with it.