Quote:
|
Originally Posted by CBDR
Horsa, Gloworm,
If we had code access, I don't see why we couldn't take DC back as far as the age of sail. It's all basic physics, none of which is classified or too difficult to understand. I personally know some folks who would love to simulate US Civil War era ironclads and modify the DC terrain to simulate the Mississippi River.
As for me, I would like to refight The Battle of Hampton Roads (March, 1862) with USS Congress and USS Cumberland underway, instead of being target practice for CSS Virginia. The two 100 Lb cannon on Cumberland really did have the capability of defeating Virginia, and underway she might have avoided being rammed.
To really model this correctly requires a much more accurate simulation in the vast differences in fire control capability. DC models ALL ships as having the latest in WW II era fire control technology (radars, computers, stable verticals, continuous aim, etc.). To model USS Olympia at Manilia Bay means restricting the player to local control at the gun mounts (i.e., F9) - no director, no computer, just pure local control at the gun mount. HMS Agincourt had a director system (F8), but determination of the horizontal plane still relied on visual means (no good if the horizon is obscured), the fire control computer was very basic and the gunners had to follow gun orders by manual means, which experience showed could work for about the first 30 minutes of an engagement, but accuracy rapidly dropped off due to crew fatigue.
Let's keep pushing UbiSoft to release the source code!
|
A weird little mod I made a while back was transforming the Flower class corvette into the Peruvian Ironclad HUASCAR w/c fought against the British royal navy (four iron frigates) squadron and apparently won and was, in the process, subjected to a very early torpedo attack! The possibilities are bloody endless... I don't see why the famous Hampton Roads or a Franco-British hypothetical clash (I've tried other stuff like that - my War Plan Red scenario w/c pits the hypothetical G3 battlecruiser against the AMerican Battlecruiser Lexington. By the way, the Brooklyn, with some heavy modding can be a G3 - or a German cruiser!)
Even simple, bloody simple things are tantalizingly out of reach. I need a late war British DD w/c could easily be converted out of the Battle class (give it some rear turrets!) and, like I said, the Brooklyn is a good basis for a Koln/Konigsberg type cruiser. And then there are things that are just wrong or not well done (the Duguay Trouin looks more like the Hood than its historic counterpart and the De Ruyter is dog ugly - when the real thing wasn't that bad!
http://www.warship.get.net.pl/Holand..._Ruyter_10.jpg
Apparently the original de Ruyter looked very similar to the Graf Spee! Dutch naval architecture closely followed German styles.) that it frustrates you not to be able to do anything about it.
Ah now I know what happened to the De Ruyter - they followed the original builder's configuration:
http://www.warship.get.net.pl/Holand...er_draw_01.gif
But the impression I get from looking at the photos is the superstructure wasn't so fat and ugly, but leaner and meaner and gave her a 'German pocket battleship' sort of look.
One problem with Hampton Roads though, aside from the source code is the game does not model inland rivers - which really bloody sucks. Come on people, the Thames, the Yangtze, the James, the Hudson, the Seine, the Rhine - they're all navigable some even by cruisers or battleships! Whats up with that (whats up is the game world is actually some 5-10% smaller than the real world. I found that out when making a Vaagso raid scenario. The 'real world' channel was blocked off!)
Heck if they could sell modding tools (particularly one that lets us do new ships) they could make a pretty penny.
Again sorry for my rant... so many cool things just out of grasp - Monitor vs Merrimac, Warrior vs Gloire, Farragut at Mobile Bay, Yalu River 1894, Manila Bay, Tsushima, the Emden, Jutland...
Mountbatten