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Originally Posted by iambecomelife
I should have added something else: there is a way to have an almost infinite variety of merchant shipping in SH3 without the load times. I could keep the nomenclature system I currently use (M01B, T01B, etc) but instead of keeping the ID's static, I could use SH3 Commander to load one of several different models per identity slot.
There could be 4-5 different M01B's stored in a "bank" of merchant ships with one of the group selected either based on date or on a randomized selection process. Hence there would be different merchants available every time you ran SH3.
As long as vessel type and top speed were kept the same within a group, there would probably be no adverse effects on the saved games. Of course, you'd never see every model with each patrol but the potential for different vessel encounters over time would be staggering, at no extra cost in wait times or stress on the CPU.
Furthermore, with SH3 as it is now, late war vessels like the Empire Freighter take up space and consume resources even when you load up a career in 1939, before this type of vessel was built. With this system, your computer would use the Empire Freighter's slot (M35B) for a model you actually would have had a chance to encounter in 1939 - for instance, another variety of tramp steamer. In other words your computer would generate exactly what it needed WHEN it needed it.
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A good idea, but assuming that this will also require a modified EnglishNames.cfg file to go with each "alternate" model, then you'll need to consider SH3Cmdr's real ship names feature.
For example:
- By default, SH3's EnglishNames.cfg has a line like "M35B=Empire Freighter" with corresponding model
- SH3Cmdr replaces that with a different model and a new line in EnglishNames.cfg like "M35B=Something else"
- Player sinks said ship, which appears in log as "Ship sunk!|Something else|etc"
- Player finishes patrol, exits SH3. SH3Cmdr rolls back returning "M35B=Empire Freighter" to EnglishNames.cfg
- Player updates their patrol log with real ship names option selected, however, a name will not be chosen for this sunken ship because the label ("Something else") does not exist in EnglishNames.cfg
This is not a critical problem, it just means that SH3Cmdr will not generate unique ship names for any of the "alternate" models.
The only way to ensure that ship names were generated would be if the ship model grouping was done in a way that meant that the class label did not require modification, but your example already suggests that this may not be possible.
As an aside, I have modified SH3Cmdr (for my own benefit) to allow unique ship names to be used
based on the nationality of the sunken ship. It requires the user to record the nationality of each sunken ship on a piece of paper or whatever and then, once the patrol is completed, add corresponding country codes to each "Ship sunk!" line through SH3Cmdr's Patrol Log Editor.
SH3Cmdr then looks for the presence of a country code and if one is found, it pulls a name from a corresponding list of ships for that country. If there's no code, then it just does what it does now and pulls a name from a central bank of names. Too easy.
Whilst I haven't played SH3 since August, I had been following this approach earlier this year and it was working sweetly for me...my only drawback was that I didn't know for certain which ship names belonged to which country, but that's a minor data thing.
If, and only if, there is sufficient interest I
might polish this up and release it as an SH3Cmdr and Patrol Log Editor update...but I would need the assistance of someone like Sailor Steve to split the ship names to each country first.