[REL] Increased Crush Depths

[Beery]

Could someone who's using the CCIP crush depth mod confirm or refute a weird thing I just noticed?

I took out a Gar to see what would happen when I took her to crush depth. I took her down to 450ft and nothing - she took it fine. Then I tried to set my dive planes to dive to get her deeper but instead she started to surface. Basically I can't get this thing to sink.

I'm not sure if this is due to the mod anyway, as it doesn't seem to address the Gar (although the Tambor/Gar thing has me confused).

[Beery]

I just took out an s18 boat and the same thing happened - 450ft, no crush, although there were lights going out and glass smashing. I kept her at 450 for a minute or two then did a emergency blow.

Then I checked that the s18 zon file was the same as that of the crush depth mod and it's definitely the same as the one available now. Is there another file that I might be missing? The zon file is the only one that determines crush depth, right? Could it be that the game is still set to metres and we're assuming the crush depths are in feet? That's the only thing I can think of that would make an s18 boat get to 450ft (if 200 is 200m then I could probably take her another 150ft).

Now I'll test with the game's original zon files just in case something else is causing this.

[Jams79]

Dive button (D) only seems to take you to 330ft if you are lower than that you rise, either that or my crew are playing with me.

[Ducimus]

The zon file defines:

Hitponts
crash depth (crush depth)
Crash speed (rate at which your boat will crush or lose hull integrity when below crush depth)
rebound = unknown to me.


The acutal measurement type that defines the crash depth ive never fully understood. It seems to be neither in meters or feet. For example you could specify something like 385 or 410 crash depth, and in meters it came out to be around 285 meters.

[Beery]

Well, with the stock game I took an s18 out, took her down to 450ft. She got down there but after a few seconds water was splashing into the control room and after about a minute everything started going south. An emergency blow didn't do any good either.

Strangely enough, there was no sound of glass breaking or water gushing. Is that a known bug?

Next I took an s18 (unmodded) to 250ft - she held that depth with no problems for half an hour. Then I took her to 300ft, but she only reached that when things started going bad. I reckon I'd spent about six minutes under 250ft when she went out of control.

[Ducimus]

Well.

I think so.

Heres the deal. It goes back to crash speed. Default is 2. This slows down the rate at which a sub is crushed. It makes for some great gameplay mechanics because you can slow that crush rate WAAAAAYY down. from 2, to 0.1. Give the player a shallower crush depth and what you have is a semi realistic way a hull could take deep dive stresses. IE, a boat could dive REALLY DEEP once or twice, but after that it's hull was too fatigued. You coould stay below crush depth (and below a sonar cone) for 30 mins or so before forced to shallower depths.


it doesnt seem to work that way in SH4, and ill illustrate how i know.


Mod the MK 14 torpedo to have a 100% chance to loop. Then go to the torpedo practice scenario in the sub school. Allow yourself to get hit. If you surface right away, or get hit on the surface, you can probably keep the boat afloat. Now back it up into shallow water.. say.. 40-50 feet and let the boat dive.
You'll notice a few things:

a.) even though the hit compartment has been pumped dry it still takes on water. (presumably becaus theres a hull in the pressurehull) Fair enough.

But the problem comes with

B.) What you also notice is a domino effect. Even totally unrelated/undamged compartment's will basically fold in and start taking damage and flood. In deep water its understandable, but youll see this behavior even when theres barely enough water to cover the top of the conning tower.

[CyberOps]

is there anyway to set the max depth to lets say 1500 feet ?

Already tried that in the cfg files but for some reason when im at like 890 feet then there is damage. Or do i have to edit other files to ?

[Ducimus]

>>is there anyway to set the max depth to lets say 1500 feet ?

If past experience with SH3 is any indictor.

Probably not. I think at about 500 meters, the player sub stops being rendered. You wont crush, but you wont rise. YOu wont go forward, or backward. Your simply stuck.


ON a side note, in SH3, deep charges will not go down any deeper then 300 meters. At the 300 meter line they just POOF. Since SH4 is based on SH3, it isnt a far stretch to assume this limitation is still there. So basically. going that deep is just one big honking fat cheat.

[Beery]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

ON a side note, in SH3, deep charges will not go down any deeper then 300 meters. At the 300 meter line they just POOF. Since SH4 is based on SH3, it isnt a far stretch to assume this limitation is still there. So basically. going that deep is just one big honking fat cheat.

Usually the maximum depth settings that the Allies would set a DC to were a lot shallower than German boats could dive. From what I've read the Allies didn't find out how deep German U-boats could go until around 1943-44 (and then they could hardly believe it because their standard maximum settings had been around 100m because they didn't believe it was possible for subs to go much lower). In fact, in order for depth charges to be realistic they ought to go poof at even shallower depths than 300m. Basically if a submarine got below 100m it was safe unless its pursuers could hear it and wait it out until it had to surface. Far from being a cheat, going under the enemy's maximum depth charge settings was something that German commanders relied upon.

In fact I tried to find a way to mod a 100m limit because escorts in SH3 could hit a U-boat with pinpoint accuracy at 250m. Personally I doubt that any real U-boat was ever destroyed by depth charges below 100m. I reckon the chance of hitting a manoeuvring target with a free-falling object through 100m of a dense medium that may have strong currents is for all intents and purposes nil. These charges had to get within a few feet of a U-boat's pressure hull in order to be effective. I just don't see it happening, especially when the Allies were setting their DCs to 100m or less.

[CyberOps]

yeah that would be cool a depth charge mod and max it at 100 m would be great to have that.

Still i tried different max depth settings but for some reason at a certain point the boat just keeps on diving and it wont hold or surface.

[Ducimus]

Usually the maximum depth settings that the Allies would set a DC to were a lot shallower than German boats could dive.

I'm WELL aware of that. The fact remains, that at below 300 meters, you are essentually invulnerable.

By default, all sensors are cut off at 300 meters. Sonar and hydrophones. So are all means of being able to damamge the player's sub. Now you could mod those to go deeper if you wanted to, but depth charges were hardcoded. Now ive tried to get depth charges to explode randomly by a certain depth. Unfortunatly it just wont work that way. Fiddle with the variables all you want, but if the AI thinks your at a certain depth, thats what it will set them at, an they have a chance to damage you - until you hit the 300 meter barrier.


You can change hedgehogs to explode randomly in a given depth range, but thats not quite the same thing. It does give a rather cool effect though. For kicks you can set all those hedge hog charges to act as mini depth charges and explode randomly within 50 meters after a 100 meter plunge if you wanted to. Kind of a shame depth charges aren't quite so cooperative.

In fact I tried to find a way to mod a 100m limit because escorts in SH3 could hit a U-boat with pinpoint accuracy at 250m.

Yea i was there for the pin point drop thread. Alot about the AI has been learned since then. Getting rid of pinpoint drops is so easy its childsplay. Ive spent countless hours over the last two years working with it off and on. Once you understand the variables, its easy to make the AI as aggressive or as passive, or as accurate or as not so accurate as you want.

[Beery]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I'm WELL aware of that. The fact remains, that at below 300 meters, you are essentually invulnerable.

That's my point - you should be. I think there's no way that any sub at 300m could be heard or attacked using 1940s equipment, unless the sub was doing something incredibly stupid, like running at full speed..

[CyberOps]

yeah but can you make it so all the subs in the game can goto 300 meters ?

[Beery]

Originally Posted by CyberOps

yeah but can you make it so all the subs in the game can goto 300 meters ?

I could. The question is, in SH4 why would I want to? No US sub could go that deep.

[CyberOps]

Well i would love to use it maybe others to ?