ship lengths?
 

¿Does anybody know where or how to get the ship's length in TMO??:hmmm:

I have used my ruler tool to mark ships in the harbor/docked many times, so that if I lose the contact on them I can still plot to them for a long range shot. That gives me rough sizes on everything, in 50m increments I think.

Are you talking about in-game or outside the game looking at data files?

well, both. Of course in-game would be the best, if such information is not available, outside is also appreciated.:up:

In-game, our unrealistic TDC bites us. The real TDC did have a ship length input and output. This was mitigated by the fact that during the war well over half the targets were misidentified and often that ship length output was bad by a factor of two.

The Japanese did not let us rent and measure their entire merchant and military fleets before the war, although it would have been more fair had they done so. Our information was very, very fragmentary. Often, the Japanese modified cabin profiles and masthead heights. And they actually built scale models of some ships to foil our database. Our recognition manuals covered a small fraction of the actual Japanese ships on the ocean. Contrast that with the game, where you can't encounter an unknown ship.

There is a game file where you can get the ship lengths. Keep in mind that in TMO, stock, and all other megamods these numbers are wrong some of the time. CapnScurvy has corrected that within OTC, Optical Targeting Correction. In his mod every measurement in the recognition manual is perfect. Looking at OTC is the perfect way to find out exactly which file is involved. I'll look at it tonight and post.

If using OTC, there is no need for reposting, as OTC does include ship length on the RM which is really cool.

The problem with OTC is that it is not compatible with traveler's mod which is a shame. I really like that mod, so right now, I have not decided yet if starting a new carrier either by using traveler's which would involve using incorrect optics and ship dimensions or using OTC which apparently has more respawning units all over the place :hmmm:

mmm

Traveller's mod is poorly executed and has tons of bugs. OTC is based on a ridiculous premise: that it was possible to know every ship on the ocean, regardless of nation, and to know precise data for each ship.

The fact was our databases were even less accurate than the game database. The errors are different when comparing the two but at least we get the "benefit" of laboring under the same problem the sub skippers did: bad info in the identification manual. OTC eliminates the truth entirely there on the premise that it's not fair if we miss a target and it's not our fault. The premise is faulty so the conclusion, OTC, is faulty also.

The optical correction part of OTC is excellent, reasonable, historical and shoud be available for people to use. But it is not. You have to destroy the faulty ID data in order to use it. You then have SuperSub and the real submarines didn't even come close to that.

Because modders didn't confine their mods to single effects, we are denied the good things they did unless we also adopt the bad things they did.

I guess now i understand better what you are trying to say and i agree even more. Would not be more realistic to have some sort of not perfect database and use manual range estimation (mast/millirandians) and insert it manually using the OTC dial?

You could use S3d to open up the ships' *.dat files and measure the lengths of the game models, then compare them to the length of a known standard, say the Yamato, or Iowa.

Is there an easier way? Not that I know of.

If you download the archive at post 3 of this thread:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show....php?p=2339904

My run times and ship lengths sheet has the information you're after in a nicely formatted package.

There is a 3rd party utility out there that pulls all the ship lengths straight from the data files and dumps them to a text file. That's where my data came from. I don't remember it's name but can dig it up if you like.


@RR
First here is an actual recognition manual:
http://archive.hnsa.org/doc/id/oni20...hips/index.htm

I did some spot checking of the numbers in there a year or two ago now and I found the prewar ships to be pretty accurate. You don't need to measure the ship, you just need a good photograph with a good scale reference. It's also entirely possible that we actually had these numbers directly from the shipping companies that operated the ships from when they where still pulling into our ports.

Past that, when I went looking for ships in the manual that either don't have a photograph or just have a combat photograph, the numbers where pretty inaccurate. Obviously, these are designs that came about after the war started.

That being said, I *do* actually agree with the bulk of your sentiment. In the game, we have to deal with a very percentage of the ships that an actual submarine captain had to deal with and misidentification was a real problem. The historical record certainly bears this out 100%

Edit: RR, check your PMs.

Wow, those are awesome screenshots! Are you using just TMO and no OTC??

And thanks for the info package. It is really good and useful stuff! :yeah:

:salute:

Yeah, TMO is the only major mod there. No OTC. A few minor mods as well. The full list can be found on post #32 of that thread.