[REQ] Random / Reduced Tonnages for Merchants

[Galanti]

Given the scarcity of merchant/tanker classes in the game, and their generally high tonnages, I thought it might be an good idea to vary their weights, so that sinking three freights doesn't get you 30,000 tons every time. Until we get more ship types anyway.

SH3 and SH4 had parameters to vary these weights in each ship type's .CFG file, so it should be a simple notepad fix.

If no one's currently working n this I may give it a go this weekend. To get around the immersion-killer of seeing Libery ships in 1939 and Cimarron tankers in general (AFAIK they were USN only) I may also rename all merchants to something more generic. I doubt I could describe a Libery ship to a police sketch artist so I'll be none the wiser anyway.

[Galanti]

Well, I went ahead and did it, and I'll be testing this weekend. I'll upload soon to get some more testers, but I'm not sure the interest is there....

What I've done is added about a 1000 to 3000 ton variation to the GRT of all merchants. Nothin magical, the capability is right there in the .CFG files but in stock it's rarely used, and most merchants are set to very high tonnages, so it's no wonder people are racking up enormous scores.

I've also given the Brit Liberty and Victory ships generic names like 'Large Modern Freighter' and left them in 1939. I've done this to give us a larger variety of merchant targets and because many peope wouldn't recognize a Victory ship anyway.

Note: this would render the 'weight' part of the Enhanced Recognition Manual mod inaccurate, nothing I can do about that.

[sergei]

There's at least one interested person here.
Variable tonnage sounds good to me.

[coronas]

The second person interested.

[Galanti]

A bit of setback boys, my three year old son has been barfing for the past 24 hours. I literally haven't been able to test a thing.

[coronas]

Your son is the most important. Take your time.
I wish your boy get well soon.

[bigboywooly]

In SH3 variable tonnage was provided bt SH3commander
SH4 introduced the variables on the cfg

Agreed tonnage is far to high on each patrol but then has to be if playing out of the box missions
Desperately in need of some low tonnage units
I mean FFS there isnt even a fishing vessel ingame

Galanti i have just gone through the Freighters and compared them to the available sources for tonnage. Ill post a list here in a short time.

OK Galanti - im home at my PC now.

http://www.filefactory.com/file/b0c5...n_der_Welt.pdf

Check that manual i have copyed and snipped together. It contains a lot of info on the merchants.

Btw. any ideas what kinda tonnage SH-5 is. Gross tonnage, BRT or deadweight.

Example from the above manual:

Empire Shearwater ~ "Hog Island Type A Freighter" has 4970 BRT and 5745 ts (Tragfähigkeit), its a freighter build in 1920, so the table is like this:

The table is a sort of comparison of the relations between different measurements for normal ships of the era. (page 3 in the manual)

a) BruttoRaum (BRT) 10
b) Netto-Raum (NRT) 6
c) Laderaum (RT) 7-10
d) Ladefähigkeit (ts) 14
e) Tragfähigkeit (ts) 15,5
f) Wasserverdräng. (ts) 20

one ts is 1016 kg

In SH-4 the tonnage was an addition of Displacement and DisplacementVariation, and its properly the same in SH-5
from a SH-5 thread:

Yeah, the tonnage is changed for each ship. In each ship's config file, there is an option for displacement and displacementVariation. DisplacementVariation is a number that is added to the displacemnt when you sink a ship, in adddition displacementVariation is random between 0 and the number you provide.

So if you have a ship's displacement as 500, and a displacementVariation of 100, when you sink that ship type you'll get credit for a ship of anywhere from 500 to 600 tons.

The default game has a DVariation that is usually 5 or 10. Every ship of that type you sink will be roughly the same tonnage, this mod would increase the variation by 5 or 10% of the default original tonnage. So you could see a wider variety of tonnages sunk within a single ship type.

So in the Empire Shearwaters example we have to use the real Displacement tonnage and then the variation on top of that to get the real tonnage possible. It so happens that Tragfähigkeit IS Deadweight tonnage so we can flat out use THAT as the displacement value, now we only have to figure the ships own weight aka. Lightweight.

Since Wasserverdränungung is the ships weight with a full load then by using the table we can circa the ships Lightweight as the factor of Wasserverdänungung / Tragfähigkeit = 1.290

Deadweight * 1.290 = Lightweight

So Empire Shearwater's Lightweight should be 7411 ts.

BUT from all the sources I have found on-line regarding Hog Islanders of Type A the tonnage in SH-5 is correct. So the Germans might have gotten some tonnage wrong in their reference books - which could help explain some of the claims they had during the war.