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Tabris · 04-26-25, 03:32 PM

So, I preformed some tests. It does seem the "depth charges ALL" library file, and the "ammunition" value for each weapon therein, is what dictates how many bombs a ship carries. I lowered the value for every single weapon to 3, deliberately attracted an escort's attention (if my wife is reading don't take that out of context) and watched has he dropped precisely three bombs from each rack and fired three from each K-gun before running out.

Of note is that escorts do not alter their behavior when out of bombs: They will keep making attack runs on ASDIC contacts, just without dropping anything. To anyone familiar with SH3, this won't be surprising - the enemy will never "give up" and sail away from a contact which they can still detect. In light of the AI's behavior, one could make a convincing argument that restricting their ammo is academic, but since I'd still like the *option* to outlast their attacks in the rare case of it being necessary, I will continue tweaking the balance.

Now, I'm far from confident that I understand this system perfectly. For one or two of the escorts, I think Evarts is one of them, they only have two nodes in the .eqp file for K-guns, but I know for sure they have eight K-guns in the game. I'm not totally sure how the game handles ammunition if the node is duplicated and used more than once.

As others have pointed out, the AI always goes whole-hog whenever it launches an attack. Each K-gun fires once, and the racks will drop four bombs per run, maybe sometimes more, every single time, even if the enemy is just "guessing." 12 is definitely too few bombs in light of this behavior for the racks, BUT, we may be able to take advantage of this behavior to represent the enemy beginning to conserve his ammunition: If the racks run out first, after, say, 6-10 attacks, but the enemy still has ammunition left for the K-guns, he'll keep using those but each attack will include fewer bombs. For all I know, this is precisely the intended behavior behind giving them 40 bombs per slot: 40 means 10-12 attack runs with the racks, but 40 attack runs with the projectors (or I guess 20 attacks in the case of the Y-gun). The problem is, 10 attack runs means 80 bombs with the racks alone! So there has to be a comfortable middle ground somewhere here.

04-26-25, 03:32 PM	#4
Tabris Electrician's Mate Join Date: Jan 2020 Location: Oregon, USA Posts: 131 Downloads: 180 Uploads: 0	So, I preformed some tests. It does seem the "depth charges ALL" library file, and the "ammunition" value for each weapon therein, is what dictates how many bombs a ship carries. I lowered the value for every single weapon to 3, deliberately attracted an escort's attention (if my wife is reading don't take that out of context) and watched has he dropped precisely three bombs from each rack and fired three from each K-gun before running out. Of note is that escorts do not alter their behavior when out of bombs: They will keep making attack runs on ASDIC contacts, just without dropping anything. To anyone familiar with SH3, this won't be surprising - the enemy will never "give up" and sail away from a contact which they can still detect. In light of the AI's behavior, one could make a convincing argument that restricting their ammo is academic, but since I'd still like the option to outlast their attacks in the rare case of it being necessary, I will continue tweaking the balance. Now, I'm far from confident that I understand this system perfectly. For one or two of the escorts, I think Evarts is one of them, they only have two nodes in the .eqp file for K-guns, but I know for sure they have eight K-guns in the game. I'm not totally sure how the game handles ammunition if the node is duplicated and used more than once. As others have pointed out, the AI always goes whole-hog whenever it launches an attack. Each K-gun fires once, and the racks will drop four bombs per run, maybe sometimes more, every single time, even if the enemy is just "guessing." 12 is definitely too few bombs in light of this behavior for the racks, BUT, we may be able to take advantage of this behavior to represent the enemy beginning to conserve his ammunition: If the racks run out first, after, say, 6-10 attacks, but the enemy still has ammunition left for the K-guns, he'll keep using those but each attack will include fewer bombs. For all I know, this is precisely the intended behavior behind giving them 40 bombs per slot: 40 means 10-12 attack runs with the racks, but 40 attack runs with the projectors (or I guess 20 attacks in the case of the Y-gun). The problem is, 10 attack runs means 80 bombs with the racks alone! So there has to be a comfortable middle ground somewhere here.