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Stiebler · 06-26-06, 02:23 PM

I believe that I did not explain the practical difficulty with deployment of Anvart's remarkable new lighted ships clearly enough.

If you look through file campaign_RND.mis, which is where the neutral single ships are sent out across the oceans, you will see that many of the ships are 'generic' - that is, they have only associated types, not classnames. In particular, many of the generic merchants are of type=102, a general cargo ship.

This means that when the ship is randomly sent off on its route, it may be any kind of cargo ship of type 102; for example a C2 Cargo or a C3 Cargo. BigBoyWooly has explained clearly how to prevent Anvart's lighted C2 Cargo from conflicting with the old, unlighted C2 Cargo. But the neutral ship could have the lighted C2 Cargo replaced by another unlighted ship of type 102, for example an unlighted C3 Cargo.

Does this matter? It depends on whether players in general think it is more important to see just one kind of lighted neutral merchant, or a selection of merchants, one of which is lighted and the others are not. I myself would prefer to see the same, single lighted ship every time, rather than a confusing mixture of lighted and unlighted neutrals.

I wrote a short program to extract this information from NYGM TW's v2.0 campaign_RND.mis file. Other mods will probably give somewhat different results.
There are 88 qualifying neutral ships of generic type 102 ('qualifying' means neutral throughout the war, or neutral at the latest dates they sail).
There are 46 qualifying neutral tankers of generic type 101, and there are 43 qualifying neutral coastal ships of generic type 104. Strangely, there are *no* qualifying liners of type 103.

Having had several hours to ponder, I have decided that all my neutral ships of generic type 102 should be made into Anvart's lighted C2 Cargo, class LLS. Therefore I have adjusted the campaign_RND.mis file accordingly, by assigning classname=LLS for these generic types. If Anvart makes another lighted type 102 merchant, it will be a simple matter to alter randomly the assigned class names with a computer program, to incorporate the new ships. [Incidentally, if anyone else decides to do the same, don't forget also to change the external cargo loading to -1 (no external cargo) - neutral ships don't need to take dangerous emergency loading measures.]

The campaign_SCR.mis file is less important, at any rate for NYGM TW, since all the neutral merchants are static, in harbour. The same applies to Rubini's harbour traffic mod, which also predominantly affects the _SCR.mis file. It doesn't matter much if these ships are lighted.

Could I suggest to Anvart that we (the modding community) need one lighted medium tanker (type 101), one *additional* lighted cargo ship (type 102; I suggest the C3 Cargo) and one lighted coastal ship (type 104) to give us a full hand of neutral ships. This is on the basis of the above results, and it is much easier to ask than to implement, I know.

Stiebler.

06-26-06, 02:23 PM	#8
Stiebler Fuel Supplier Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: London, UK Posts: 1,237 Downloads: 29 Uploads: 4	I believe that I did not explain the practical difficulty with deployment of Anvart's remarkable new lighted ships clearly enough. If you look through file campaign_RND.mis, which is where the neutral single ships are sent out across the oceans, you will see that many of the ships are 'generic' - that is, they have only associated types, not classnames. In particular, many of the generic merchants are of type=102, a general cargo ship. This means that when the ship is randomly sent off on its route, it may be any kind of cargo ship of type 102; for example a C2 Cargo or a C3 Cargo. BigBoyWooly has explained clearly how to prevent Anvart's lighted C2 Cargo from conflicting with the old, unlighted C2 Cargo. But the neutral ship could have the lighted C2 Cargo replaced by another unlighted ship of type 102, for example an unlighted C3 Cargo. Does this matter? It depends on whether players in general think it is more important to see just one kind of lighted neutral merchant, or a selection of merchants, one of which is lighted and the others are not. I myself would prefer to see the same, single lighted ship every time, rather than a confusing mixture of lighted and unlighted neutrals. I wrote a short program to extract this information from NYGM TW's v2.0 campaign_RND.mis file. Other mods will probably give somewhat different results. There are 88 qualifying neutral ships of generic type 102 ('qualifying' means neutral throughout the war, or neutral at the latest dates they sail). There are 46 qualifying neutral tankers of generic type 101, and there are 43 qualifying neutral coastal ships of generic type 104. Strangely, there are no qualifying liners of type 103. Having had several hours to ponder, I have decided that all my neutral ships of generic type 102 should be made into Anvart's lighted C2 Cargo, class LLS. Therefore I have adjusted the campaign_RND.mis file accordingly, by assigning classname=LLS for these generic types. If Anvart makes another lighted type 102 merchant, it will be a simple matter to alter randomly the assigned class names with a computer program, to incorporate the new ships. [Incidentally, if anyone else decides to do the same, don't forget also to change the external cargo loading to -1 (no external cargo) - neutral ships don't need to take dangerous emergency loading measures.] The campaign_SCR.mis file is less important, at any rate for NYGM TW, since all the neutral merchants are static, in harbour. The same applies to Rubini's harbour traffic mod, which also predominantly affects the _SCR.mis file. It doesn't matter much if these ships are lighted. Could I suggest to Anvart that we (the modding community) need one lighted medium tanker (type 101), one additional lighted cargo ship (type 102; I suggest the C3 Cargo) and one lighted coastal ship (type 104) to give us a full hand of neutral ships. This is on the basis of the above results, and it is much easier to ask than to implement, I know. Stiebler.