Pacific Theater Mod

[NewTimer]

Hey folks! Long post following, I apologize.

I’ve been sneaking around in the depths here for months but haven’t taken any opportunity to post or share my experiences.

First I’d like to say that this is a fantastic community. With almost no exception, this is one of the most welcoming and considerate forum communities I’ve seen. Thank you for that.

I’ve been playing SH3 for about a year now. I’ve never used any mods, however I like to mod myself. This is not to knock the amazing modding teams associated with the Subsim realm, I just find more satisfaction in developing my own mods almost more than playing the game. I have a long history of creating and being a part of mods for a slew of my favorite games through the years. SH3 quickly become one of my all time favorite games hands down.

After tweaking my own SH3 game making my own custom mod, I realized I wanted to pursue something in the pacific theater realm. I understand SH3’s stock model was specifically the U-boat sim with a focus on the Battle of the Atlantic. So I started on building a pacific theater mod. Up to this point I hadn’t used the mission editor or the SHeditor, only notepad messing with cfg files.


———To start, things that helped:

The IJN or at least Japan were already in the game in a limited fashion.

Australia was too.

Even though barely used, a surprising amount of terrain accuracy was modeled in the pacific in the stock game, including jungle foliage and small islands. Wake island was hard to spot, but it is there. It now has a dock and airfield.


———Things that hurt:

International date line. This limits the realistic scope of a pacific campaign terminating at wake island. I haven’t played with it yet, but have a specific “date line crossing dock” in the middle of the pacific that kicks you out toward the other side of the date line once you dock and start a new patrol from it. It would require a dock like this on each side of the world map. It would not have an actual dock .dat with models, perhaps just a point visible on the navigation map that you can dock at. I do not know yet if I can have different entry and exit points for a dock. I will play around with it.

From what I understand you can only be a German as the player hardcode wise. Short of a full makeover in the game making it appear from the player’s menu-interacting viewpoint that they’re a Japanese National, I’m short of ideas here. This would require completely removing or rendering inaccessible the German campaigns and flotillas. This could be slightly circumvented by role playing as a German flotilla on loan to the IJN.

Lack of pacific theater ships. I will need to fudge or create at least a few Japanese war ships and submarines. This will be the hardest part. I can easily enough change uniform textures.


———So far:

I have established a German base in the Philippines for testing, and Japanese naval bases in Tokyo and Wake island.

Airfields for the Americans and Japanese in historically accurate locations as of 1942.

I have added to the Japanese roster most of the German ships and planes, for testing purposes.

I have created about a hundred different random convoys, hunter Killer groups, task forces, Carrier groups, small fishing and merchant axis traffic around and between islands, and beefed up Australian shore defense. The IJN have their own coastal and ocean patrol routes.

———Next (baby) steps:

Create naval bases throughout the pacific with historically accurate national ownership changes. There was a lot of islands and ports changing hands in the pacific. Luckily SH3 makes switching ownership around by date easy. Scripting naval warfare at those places when handoffs occur with the editor is also simple, although time consuming.

Try to compile a reasonably small set of IJN ships, planes and at least one sub to give some realistic variety to the theater. Slowly inch progress toward creating these.

Create at least one American sub.

Start to develop the eastern half of the pacific theater assuming I can solve the dateline crossover with a “port” at sea.


As it stands, I have a reasonably fun and dangerous half of the pacific to loiter in as a German sub sailing out of the Philippines, with the ability to dock on the Japanese mainland or wake island, depending on the area I feel like patrolling.

I can hunt for Australian convoys sailing toward the Indian Ocean, or try to attack US carriers, task forces, or landing ships, depending on how dangerous I want things to be. It’s a challenging theater to play in with the tight island chains, but already very fun with such limited additions. This will never be a full conversion type mod, but I’d like to eke out enough changes to make it feel comfortably pacificy

If anyone has thoughts on how to add to my own ideas, I’m all ears. Tidbits about the theater you might find interesting or that would add to the sense of realism are welcome. I have a lot to learn. But I’ve learned plenty by toying around, breaking things, then fixing them. Getting my flotilla to start me in the Philippines with a type IX if I select any time past 1941 was hard enough.

Thanks for allowing my brain dump. Best wishes!