SimHQ SHIII Tonnage War Mod - Updated 19-12-05

[Der Teddy Bar]

Quote… "One of the stupidest things in game design is the lack of uncertainty given to the player"

The SimHQ Tonnage War mod will encompass several key aspects that complement each other and we expect to make a more in-depth gaming experience.


Tonnage War – As it says, Tonnage is in, renown is out. Upgrades are FREE but take time.
Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage – Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you a ship that sinks by flooding!
Not Your Grand Mothers Crew Management – Your successes, failures or bad luck will impact upon your men’s performance.


Tonnage War - Due out February/February 2006
The Tonnage War mod will put the emphasis back into sinking ships. Essentially moving away from the renown based upgrade system.

Everything is free. However, upgrades will now take time. Upgrade from a Type II to a VII will take 75 days. It will take 35 days to get your diesel engines upgrades and 45 days to get a new AA platform (i.e. conning tower) installed. The times will be as historically correct as we can be within the confines of the game.

Your medals will be given according to your tonnage and as per the historical average.


Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage - Due out January/February 2006
The overall aim of the Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod was to make ships ‘sink’… and not just run out of Hit Points.

The Not Your Grand Mother's Ship Sinking Mod does not aim nor intend to make it harder to sink ships than it was historically. It cannot be denied that the Not Your Grand Mother's Ship Sinking Mod does make it more challenging to sink ships than it was in the stock game, but I am sure that even the most ardent Silent Hunter III fan will acknowledge that the sinking of ships in the standard game is at the gamey end of the realism scale.

In attaining our goal, the Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod has achieved a level of uncertainty never before seen in a u-boat/submarine simulation.

Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod Preview #1
Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod Preview #2
Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod Preview #3


Not Your Grand Mothers Crew Management - Due out January/February 2006
We have moved away from punishing the player through overly zealous ‘fatigue’ and made it so that your successes will now have a direct impact on how well your men perform!

As weeks go by Morale will slowly be removed impacting upon the performance of your men. By sinking ships you will raise or keep your men's morale high resulting in keeping your men’s performance at it peak.

Reckless actions and/or bad luck, where your men are injured or die will cause the crew's morale to plummet which in turn effects their performance.

Go a long time (about 6 weeks) between sinking’s and again, this will impact upon your men’s performance through Morale attrition.

[Marhkimov]

Each one of these mods will be great!

I appreciate all of your hard work in trying to improve the gameplay aspects of SH3. Keep it up!


Marhkimov.

[Hudsonhawk]

I'm stepping into a "Time Machine" as we speak!!!!!! .....I've been checking your forum over at Sim.....CAN'T WAIT!!!!! :|\

[Drebbel]

Sounds like this will be one of the first SHIII mods I will install. Keep up the good work mate !

[Krupp]

This will raise the sim to a whole new level Feels like being a kid again and waiting for santa...

[Dowly]

Ohh I like that new ship sinking tweak!

[Camaero]

Add me to the list of people who can't wait!

And me! Absolutely!

[coronas]

Go ahead! All we need this mod!





I'm a old school sailor....always I'm drunker

[CCIP]

I'm glad you're putting the time into this. I always knew it was possible to improve the situation with the damage model, and I'm glad you at least found a way to fix a part of it

[Observer]

Here is a bit of info on morale and efficiency in the crew mangement mod:

Efficiency: A measure of how capable the crew member is of conducting certain tasks. Many factors have an impact on crew efficiency such as fatigue and proficiency.

In this model, awards and promotions will tend to improve crew member performance. This behavior can be correlated to the promotion and award systems in modern navies where those sailors better able to perform tasks in a given rating are given awards and/or promotions to higher ranks. While SH3 does not model individual crew members well, this system can be applied such that those crew members receiving awards or promotions are those deserving the recognition and as a consequence receive a “bonus� to performance. This performance bonus allows higher ranking crew members to recover efficiency 10% faster than the next lower rank.

The decay rate for crew efficiency has undergone many tweaks. The version of the “Not you grandmothers crew management mod� will cause all crew efficiencies to be at a minimum after about 18 hours, however many other factors will influence how well compartments function. The rate at which efficiency is lost varies based upon the location of the crew member. For example, crew members in the torpedo rooms, engine spaces, damage control and the bridge will reach minimum efficiency first. During harsh weather, crew members on the bridge will reach minimum efficiency even faster.

In order to offset the lack of additional crew berthing, “neutral� spaces have been established in the engine room not currently in use. Crew members will not regain efficiency, but they will not lose efficiency either.

Crew members at minimum efficiency will be denoted with an “E� next to the character portrait.



Morale: This is a measure of the emotional condition, or confidence, of the crew. Morale has a dramatic impact of crew effectiveness. Crew member injury or death has a tremendous negative impact on crew morale, and can devastate the entire crew morale. Sinking ships, on the other hand provides a boost to crew morale. In the “Not you grandmothers crew management mod� four to five crew deaths or eight to ten crew injuries will result in the crew reaching minimum morale. Like the efficiency statistic above, crew members at minimum morale will be denoted with an “E� next to their portrait. Due to the limitations in SH3 it is not possible to differentiate between minimum efficiency and minimum morale without looking at the individual crew members. The easiest way is to avoid situations resulting in crew injury or death. When crews are at minimum efficiency, most compartments will stop working after about 12 hours, though it does vary by compartment.

The current system starts every crew member at maximum moral. This morale is slowing reduced during the course of the patrol. This can be thought of as a long term sort of "combat fatigue". Morale has been timed to go down very slowly over about a six to seven week period. If you sink ships during this period of time, you will increase crew morale and extend the amount of time before crew morale reaches a minimum.



Health: As the name implies, this is the physical well being of an individual crew member. Rank no longer provides improvements in health with every crew member on an equal basis.

[Nedlam]

Originally Posted by Observer

In the “Not you grandmothers crew management mod� four to five crew deaths or eight to ten crew injuries will result in the crew reaching minimum morale... When crews are at minimum efficiency, most compartments will stop working after about 12 hours, though it does vary by compartment.

I love this idea and have been waiting for this thing to come out for awhile now but I have a question.

Worst case scenerio: You attack a convoy and get hammered in the process by a DC attack which has killed four men and wounded a few more. If I'm reading this right two very unrealistic things can happen:

1) Due to the low moral of the deaths the efficiency will be "E." Now the ship is probably really, really banged up your crew will just sit around feeling sorry for themselves as the uboat sinks deeper and deeper...

2) They manage to save the boat. But after 12 hours no matter how nice you ask them (their psyche is shattered you don't what to yell ) they wont work the diesel engines to get you home so you have to call for a tow.

Am I close or am I way off? Again, I'm talking worst case but it could happen.

[Paajtor]

You have a point there, imo.

It says "When crews are at minimum efficiency"...and not "When crews are at efficiency=zero".

So I think there must be some sort of progress possible...but at a very slow pace at start, and getting faster as time passes by (and enemies get out of sight).

[rulle34]

Awsome work. I read the posts at SubHQ and I must say that this work seems to be very well underbuilt.
Really looking forward to this

[Observer]

Originally Posted by Nedlam

I love this idea and have been waiting for this thing to come out for awhile now but I have a question.

Worst case scenerio: You attack a convoy and get hammered in the process by a DC attack which has killed four men and wounded a few more. If I'm reading this right two very unrealistic things can happen:

1) Due to the low moral of the deaths the efficiency will be "E." Now the ship is probably really, really banged up your crew will just sit around feeling sorry for themselves as the uboat sinks deeper and deeper...

2) They manage to save the boat. But after 12 hours no matter how nice you ask them (their psyche is shattered you don't what to yell ) they wont work the diesel engines to get you home so you have to call for a tow.

Am I close or am I way off? Again, I'm talking worst case but it could happen.

Close but not quite on both. The crew will work, but they will not work well (long). The default crew configurations are big enough that you should be able to rest enough men to continue operating the engines, and you should almost always have the off watch section in rest quarters unless required to save the boat. You may not be able to reload weapons until you've rested the crew further though. In most cases you will not be depth charged for 12 hours, and if you were, you would rest enough men to ensure the boat would continue to operate. In those situations, you most likely won't be doing heavy activity (aside from damage control, and you can do this with just a few men) anyways. In summary, morale created a challenging, but not impossible situation. Remember to rest crew members when they are just sitting around, and remember the engine room not in use is a neutral zone -- use this to your advantage!

On the "E" issue (a replacement for the RUb "-" or the default "!"). It serves two purposes. First it's a reminder to you that the crew is at a minimum efficiency OR minimum morale state. I wish there were a symbol for each, but it's not possible in SH3. Second, when the crew member has the "E" next to their portrait, you cannot click on compartments and have SH3 auto place the crew members. This means you will have to drag and drop every crew member to the desired compartment. This is a bit annoying, but it's a default SH3 behavior I don't know how to change. One way to look at it is you shouldn't have gotten yourself in that situation.