sunken ships - taken into account ?

[keltos01]

what I find sad.. is that sunken ships aren't taken into account by the game engine..

sink a few carriers or any other capital ships, they still spawn when there weren't that many..

is there a way to fix this ??


keltos

[Kruger]

I have just sunk two carriers in 12 hours of game time. If this was for real, Japan would have surrenderred by now ))

[Ivan Putski]

I Don`t know if it`s possible to fix. The same happens in SHIII. Puts

[keltos01]

after a while sinking ships it makes you wonder.. what's the point??
if you guys know operation flashpoint, there what you do influences the outcome...

[Nisgeis]

Kruger, If it was real, they'd have surrendered over 60 years ago and you'd be tried for piracy! .

Keltos, someone who knows the scripting better will be able to tell you better, but my initial response is that the only way to do it would be to set up the initial units, e.g. however many carriers you wanted to start with and then script their journies for the entire war. That's the only way I can think of having that unit being removed permanently - if it worked, it would take far too much time to do.

EDIT: That won't work, forgot that the campaign is loaded each time a new mission starts... Anything you do in the game won't have any effect at all on the campaign ships, even if they are singles.

The way it works at the moment is random units are scripted, along historical routes. Once they reach their end waypoint they are removed.

[Sailor Steve]

True, this has also been discussed on the SH3 boards. People sink three Nelsons when there were only two, and the Hood sometimes gets sunk several times in a career.

The problem is that both developers and modders want the historic ships to show up where they did historically, and so they have to respawn or else the whole game goes bonkers.

[tater]

This is a major failing in the engine. The ability to log sinkings, and compare vs the Roster files should at least have been an option. The game already looks at the appearance and end dates for ship classes. It could also count named ships, and subtract one named ship for each sinking. They could then have added a dummy ship name that would allow endless respawnings.

Say you sink a Yamato. The next time you get near a TF with that class (or generic BB (Type=11)), it disallows Yamato from being spawned. If there are 2 in that TF, then Musashi appears, but not Yamato. Perhaps if a specific class is unavailable, it then pulls a random ship from the Type= from those remaining.

Such a system would be far superior. In the Atlantic it wasn't as critical since with a few exceptions (mentioned above) there were effectively infinite targets of a given class. In the PTO where so very many large warships were sunk, and even smaller ships were quite finite in number (compared to the USN), counting ships sunk it frankly critical.

This problem, and the lack of proper, organic zig-zagging for groups of ships are my principal problems with the engine (the lack of ZZs is stunning, really, it's critical to making firing solutions more difficult and realistic).

[peabody]

Originally Posted by keltos01

what I find sad.. is that sunken ships aren't taken into account by the game engine..

sink a few carriers or any other capital ships, they still spawn when there weren't that many..

is there a way to fix this ??


keltos

If you did that the game would be over in 1942, a lot of players sink more ships (in stock game) in one mission then they sank in the whole war. The game engine would not only have to take into account the fact the ship sank, but also what effect would that have on everything else in the game? Sink a bunch of DDs, now they can't protect the convoys, so you sink them, so they don't deliver fuel, so the BBs can't sail..........on and on. And even if the warships could sail, without DD protection, who is going to stop you from sinking the entire Task Force, no one else has DCs. So there is a lot more to it, than just keeping track of ships sunk. That's why with sims being a relatively small portion of the market (read $$$$) they made it a stealth and realism campaign instead of a Dynamic one which is much harder to do. (read $$$$)

Peabody

[LukeFF]

Originally Posted by tater

This is a major failing in the engine. The ability to log sinkings, and compare vs the Roster files should at least have been an option. The game already looks at the appearance and end dates for ship classes. It could also count named ships, and subtract one named ship for each sinking. They could then have added a dummy ship name that would allow endless respawnings.

Say you sink a Yamato. The next time you get near a TF with that class (or generic BB (Type=11)), it disallows Yamato from being spawned. If there are 2 in that TF, then Musashi appears, but not Yamato. Perhaps if a specific class is unavailable, it then pulls a random ship from the Type= from those remaining.

Such a system would be far superior. In the Atlantic it wasn't as critical since with a few exceptions (mentioned above) there were effectively infinite targets of a given class. In the PTO where so very many large warships were sunk, and even smaller ships were quite finite in number (compared to the USN), counting ships sunk it frankly critical.

How I think it could be done is something like this: add a flag to each ship's file and call it something like Common. Set it to a value of 1, and the ship will spawn as many times as the game calls for it (for example, merchants and small craft). Set it to a value of 0, and the game will subtract a given ship from that class's roster file for the current campaign once it is destroyed. Like tater wrote above, if the ship is tagged to show up in a later task force, either the game will generate an alternate ship from a related class or simply not spawn any ship in that slot and thus reorganize the convoy to "fill in the gaps." That's about the closest way, IMO, we can still maintain some semblance of historical authentiticy while not allowing an infinite number of, say, Yamato class BBs to be sunk.

[aanker]

All the Silent Hunter versions are like that and if someone wants to sink four Yamato class Super BB's - let them have their fun.

I've learned to just ignore previously sunk warships if I spot them. One way is to use a warship restriction list. Some folks have also complained about too much shipping traffic. Over the years we found creative ways to deal with that like; be more selective on what types of maru shipping you choose to target, only attack every third contact or so that the game spawns, patrol on station with the map zoomed in and take 'star sightings' once or twice a day - when the weather permits (zoom out the map) etc, etc.

The main thing is to have fun however people choose to patrol.

Happy Hunting!

Art

[difool2]

Originally Posted by keltos01

after a while sinking ships it makes you wonder.. what's the point??
if you guys know operation flashpoint, there what you do influences the outcome...

Originally Posted by peabody

If you did that the game would be over in 1942, a lot of players sink more ships (in stock game) in one mission then they sank in the whole war. The game engine would not only have to take into account the fact the ship sank, but also what effect would that have on everything else in the game? Sink a bunch of DDs, now they can't protect the convoys, so you sink them, so they don't deliver fuel, so the BBs can't sail..........on and on. And even if the warships could sail, without DD protection, who is going to stop you from sinking the entire Task Force, no one else has DCs. So there is a lot more to it, than just keeping track of ships sunk. That's why with sims being a relatively small portion of the market (read $$$$) they made it a stealth and realism campaign instead of a Dynamic one which is much harder to do. (read $$$$)

Peabody

That's why I'm hoping that SH5 will have a truly interactive campaign like this. Tacked onto SH3/4, yes it probably wouldn't work. Integrated organically into the campaign from the beginning, it likely would turn out fine.

[tater]

Lukeff, the problem with the campaign would be that the game really really does not like problems with ship formation (columns) vs numbers.

Say you have realistic layers where Yamato is steaming at high speed back to Japan or something like that. She is in the company of 1 other ship, and you decide to set them to sail in 2 columns 1000 yards apart. One doesn't appear, and it CTDs.

I know that is a goofy example, and most would be in line astern, but there is a trade off.

A better, similar example. I used widely spaced 2-3 column groups of ASW assets so they would sweep wider areas and be less easy to pick off. You could certainly see the above problem with that.

[peabody]

Originally Posted by difool2

That's why I'm hoping that SH5 will have a truly interactive campaign like this. Tacked onto SH3/4, yes it probably wouldn't work. Integrated organically into the campaign from the beginning, it likely would turn out fine.

Yes, put in from the beginning it would work, but what type of game do people want. SH4 is a re-enactment of WWII. In a Dynamic campaign you must have the possibility that you can lose. It would most likely make a great 'game' but would it make a great 'sim'. I know it's just 'words' but how many have made comments about things like ships being in the wrong place at certain times. You could simulate a sub captain, but you can't simulate WWII with a dynamic campaign, because the outcome is already known. I think a sort of hybrid campaign may work if they wanted to spend the time creating it.

Peabody

Peabody

[LukeFF]

Originally Posted by tater

Lukeff, the problem with the campaign would be that the game really really does not like problems with ship formation (columns) vs numbers.

Say you have realistic layers where Yamato is steaming at high speed back to Japan or something like that. She is in the company of 1 other ship, and you decide to set them to sail in 2 columns 1000 yards apart. One doesn't appear, and it CTDs.

I know that is a goofy example, and most would be in line astern, but there is a trade off.

Of course, the current iteration of Silent Hunter has this problem. I'm looking more towards the future, where a "smart spacing" feature could be built in - one that takes into account ships that are destroyed and shouldn't be generated for a specific convoy.

For instance, a given task force has 2 Shokaku Class CVs sailing in the center column of a formation towards the Philippine Sea. However, prior to the convoy being generated, one of the two is sunk. Since there are only two of those types of CVs in the roster, the game could automatically re-position the remaining CV so the formation doesn't look goofy. That's the type of thing I'm looking at and thinking of for the future. It would give the player a sense of knowing he's done something to slightly change the battle formation of the Japanese and turns the warships into a limited commodity instead of mere targets that can be generated over and over again.

[doulos05]

If you did that the game would be over in 1942, a lot of players sink more ships (in stock game) in one mission then they sank in the whole war.

I don't know how hard to reach the convoy/TF generation code is, but perhaps "fixing" that could be part of the mod. I know several mods reduce the number of contacts in the game, but I believe they only touch radio contacts, which I presume is not the same as the actual convoy/TF generation code. If that can be changed, then you can change both of them so that 1) less contacts and 2) no double sinkings becomes possible.

Unrealistic as it is, you probably would need to allow for an "unlimited" number of DDs and marus (those are the primary target in the game). But the capital ships could certainly be tracked and measured. And if you can reach the convoy/TF generation code, you may be able to tweak it so that if a ship is missing it uses a different formation. Programmatically speaking, having the computer assign a formation based on the number/type of ships actually there isn't too hard (they're actually already doing it, it's just that they're not checking that the ships actually exist before they put them in formation.)

Although, if you do this, increasing either the durability or the DC capabilities of the ships you're tracking probably isn't a bad idea just to prevent the war ending in 1942 when you catch the TF returning from attacking Pearl and send their carrier fleet to join our battleships. There are stories of larger ships lasting for quite a while and even limping back after being attacked so it wouldn't be too unrealistic.