Destroyers Discussion (getting rid of pin point drops)

[Ducimus]

I think i may be on the cusp of something and i wish i could try it out right now, but can't.

Unless someone has evidence to the contrary, i think max hydrophone ranges are *almost* irrelevant.

Let me give you a little metahphore here if thats the word for it.
I dont care how good your hearing is, when you put in a set of ear plugs and ear muffs over that, your not going to hear much.

The earplugs and earmuffs to which i refer are wave factor and noise factor.

We know this much, zeroing out the noise factor and wave factor, a 1940 DD can hear a dolphin fart in the indian ocean from the bay of biscay.

I ran into this once and i need to reproduce it:
Noise factor at 1, wave factor at 0, at silent speed, DD can heard me at a close range radius (with2K i think) regardless of what i do. (almost as if the noise factor was 0 when close )

I ran into this once, and thought "well thats no good" and immediatly put the wave factor back in. IN hindsight i think that WAS good.

My thought now is this:
Use noisefactor 1, wave factor 0.
Find the edge of the detection radius. If its consitant, lower the noise factor to see if you can enlarge this radius. If you can get this radius to a favorable size, THEN add the wave factor in, and start adjusting it to taste.

Now IF this works, heres the thing.
Need a standard DD to adjust too. You can dial in your test DD perfectly but you'll still have dumb and uber DDs. Can we mod all DD's to use the same equipment?

Doing that, i think you can mod the sim.cfg to adjust the hydrophones under ideal conditions. Infact under ideal conditions i think you should uberize the DD, to account for the constant crappy weather conditions in campign. Near perfect hydrone conditions are rare.

[gouldjg]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I think i may be on the cusp of something and i wish i could try it out right now, but can't.

Unless someone has evidence to the contrary, i think max hydrophone ranges are *almost* irrelevant.

Let me give you a little metahphore here if thats the word for it.
I dont care how good your hearing is, when you put in a set of ear plugs and ear muffs over that, your not going to hear much.

The earplugs and earmuffs to which i refer are wave factor and noise factor.

We know this much, zeroing out the noise factor and wave factor, a 1940 DD can hear a dolphin fart in the indian ocean from the bay of biscay.

I ran into this once and i need to reproduce it:
Noise factor at 1, wave factor at 0, at silent speed, DD can heard me at a close range radius (with2K i think) regardless of what i do. (almost as if the noise factor was 0 when close )

I ran into this once, and thought "well thats no good" and immediatly put the wave factor back in. IN hindsight i think that WAS good.

My thought now is this:
Use noisefactor 1, wave factor 0.
Find the edge of the detection radius. If its consitant, lower the noise factor to see if you can enlarge this radius. If you can get this radius to a favorable size, THEN add the wave factor in, and start adjusting it to taste.

Now IF this works, heres the thing.
Need a standard DD to adjust too. You can dial in your test DD perfectly but you'll still have dumb and uber DDs. Can we mod all DD's to use the same equipment?

Doing that, i think you can mod the sim.cfg to adjust the hydrophones under ideal conditions. Infact under ideal conditions i think you should uberize the DD, to account for the constant crappy weather conditions in campign. Near perfect hydrone conditions are rare.

Yes your right but here are my thoughts (you will see the similarity)

You mod waves and noisefactor which in effect makes the existing settings better or worse at hearing however when I was trying this, it become very difficult as you say with equipment etc and thus may have needed much much work.

I am lazy so I looked at other ways to get similar results.

Now I look at ranges of equipment and then get them to match roughly what they should be detecting me at according roughly to real life but not if it kills gameplay. this is where i am lazy.

I test this in happy times mission as seas are calm and I am 8000 mtre away from any DD. I zip into middle ground of convoy and approaching DD.

The convoy DD uses type123 as it is a Huntclass1 if I remember rightly.

Once I got an average good pickup rate (not precise but good enough for my gameplay) I then added the same range nerfs as I did with that of type123 to all other passives.

Look at rough example. the figures are not accurate but this is just to show the method.

e.g. Type123= original = 6000 mtrs my conclusion = 14500 which now shows good pickup ranges and I could still go slow or silent untill very very close.

So the difference between the original and the nerfed = 8500 This will later need sorting to be more precise

I have now added 8500 to each passive and changed the main hydrophone max to the highest passive.

SO now I have DDs with a crewrating of 4. Under calm seas they are now picking me up at good ranges when I run flank etc, depending on range. ( I now need to start getting historic)

I can slip by them if i am silent and my aspect is good.

I have yet to test the same results in rough water but suspect/HOPE it will be a standard compinsation effect of the waves and noise factors.

I am no way finnished but almost convinced as I always have been, that this is the best way to go. If waves factor is too severe later on in testing then I will adjust each piec of equipment individually to compensate. I do however want some situations where noise and bad weather work in favour for me. This is my randomness rather than enemy crew.

Now here is the problem,

I have to spend many hours tommorow to actually get this all done at a reasonable level.

I am pretty convinced that Redwine and CB or even Yourself will end up with more historic factual ranges here. We are so close, I know it. ( a spanner drops) this is turning out to be a search for the baseline I was talking about earlier.

p.s. I also think that each sensor has a individual sensitivity which will automatically make early war DD's less effective. I suspect each sensitivity was also effected by crew ratings in a massive maths formula. You just have to look at fatigue formulas to get an idea of the depth they went too.

Like I have always said, putting Crewratings in this game IMHO really screwed this up. It was meant to be a very diverse and complex system which suited many many playstyles, plus the multiplayer aspect. Time and testing could not be done properly.

This is why CB was really onto something when he said things were better without them.

I am very interested in what range differences you are noticeing per tweak. If you do this in small steps, it may give us clues for later on should we need to do final tweaks.

All in all great work and keep at it.

[Ducimus]

What passive sonar do most DD's use in 1942 or 1943?

What is its name, and its range?

Heres an ad hoc temporary solution:

either
A.) change all passive to the value of one sonar, the one used in 42 or 43.

or
b.) mod ALL DD's in all years to use the exact same sonar? (is this possible?) If theres a equipment sensitivity rating this is the better soluation.

Either way it gives me something resembeling a benchmark.


With that modified version of the sonar test mission that was posted im going to set wave to 0 and play with the noise factor. If i find a good radius ll start adjusthing the wave factor.

I wiill try and overcompensate for bad weather. But im not sure as to what statistics i should use.

Off the top of my head ifeel that:
at 1/3rd i should be detected at 5K to 6K range
at slow i should be detected starting around 4K, FOrcing me to run silent.
the hecker is silent. Im going to try and adjust it to he can hear silent running within 1K distance or so The hope is that the normal variable weather will make silent running barely undetectable under 1K - the problem here though is in calm weather, your going to have a ROUGH time losing him

Hopefully this works, and establishes a benchmark. Can adjust other pasive sonar from there maybe.

[Redwine]

Hi guys.... i have good news !!

I contact Timetraveller two days ago requesting his help to be able to manage sensivity and noise with his tools.

He made a new tweak txt file to be used with Mini Tweaker Tool, wich allow us to manage sensivity.

The TT caballary at rescue !!

Our nightmare is finished.


download it from here :

http://rapidshare.de/files/8460303/A...s_dat.zip.html


Put it into the TweakFiles folder into your Mini Tweaker installation.


He will update the tweak file package into Mini Tweaker and File Analyzer soon at his site.


Now you will be able to see, sensivity for Ubber DDs sensors are not set at zero, due to this fact the program do not take the value we adjust into Sim.cfg for 4 of those sensors wich remains ubber.

4 or 5 of them, those used by Buckley and Evarts are set at 0,05 and 0,06 and 0,07 ubber ubber sensors.


Now we can adjust sensivity for all sensors individually, each one with its own sensivity.....

Thanks to the genius TimeTraveller.

I can see he dont post it here because, may be he dont update his web site yet, but he send my that little file above.

Download and be happy.......... we can sleep tonight !!





@ CB : about the fact to erase the renamed back-up files, Marhkimov was who discover this fact..... believe me it is incredible but real, if you dont erase them from the original folder the game dont sense changes......

I dont comment this fact to TT yet....... may be he need to put some advetence into his download page.


@ Ducimus : be detected at 6km runing 1/3 , and at 4km running at slow....seems too much, do you dont think so ?

I think so a sub at silent running must to be near to undetected by pasive sonar, except if it has the bad luck to be pinged.

Even at slow it must to be near to undetected, far away from 500 or 1000m...... for that they start up those search patterns around the last positive detection, and launch hundred of DC as shots in the dark.

Running on diesels range must to be really big, but runing on electrics at very low prop turns they was so quiet.

I cant remember where i read this, web, book or anywhere, but i am wrong ?

[Hartmann]

Perhaps no is the correct topic ... sorry for One little and dumb question

with the 16 km visibility mods the world bubble is bigger than in the stock game (8km)
could this affect the behaviour of the scorts detecting subs underwater ??

thanks .

[Ducimus]

WOW.

What else is in there?



As for the distances i mentioned.. those were off the top of my head. Just guessing A bit much.. ya.. but my intention was to overcompensate for "normal" weather (which is usually bad. Besides that thoguh, i want a challenge !

[Redwine]

Originally Posted by Hartmann

Perhaps no is the correct topic ... sorry for One little and dumb question

with the 16 km visibility mods the world bubble is bigger than in the stock game (8km)
could this affect the behaviour of the scorts detecting subs underwater ??

thanks .

Hi Hartmann...... como estas !!

Really i dont know, there are lot of incredible surprises in this game.
But i dont think so. :hmm:

Originally Posted by Ducimus

WOW.

What else is in there?



As for the distances i mentioned.. those were off the top of my head. Just guessing A bit much.. ya.. but my intention was to overcompensate for "normal" weather (which is usually bad. Besides that thoguh, i want a challenge !

Ok i am not sure about them, for that i ask you your opinion.
Not sure what are real values, some historical vales was posted here in this topic at early pages, but they was for active sonar ..... now i will take a look.

With this good news thanks to TT, we can set now a speciphied sensivity for each sensor.

This fact opens new doors, we are now more free to adjust waves and nose factors.

Will be great if we can adjust good values so, when there a group of DDs hunting you their own noise plays against them, and they can be disturbed by them selves by their own noise.

Plus will be great to have a great reduction of sensor capabilities into a strom with waves factor.

Before, we can not play with these values, because we was hands linked due to the balance between dummys and ubber DDs.

Now we are able not only to asign a beam angle to a speciphied sensor, plus we can do it with sensivity.

Now if we increase the noise factor, dummy DDs do not become too dummy, because we can increase their sensibility without increase the ubber DDs sensibility, they not linked now.

[caspofungin]

bah! frustration.

i agree w/ ducimus, sensitivity doesn't seem to have too much effect (i'd already set sensitivity in ai_sensors to 0 for all hydrophones) -- hydrophones are dependent on noise factor and waves factor, like he said.

have you guys been able to change hydrophone max bearing and actually notice an effect in game? i set it to 10 in ai_sensors, but was still getting picked up off the escorts side.

this makes me wonder whether any changes in ai_sensors actually have an effect at all. is there some other file affecting sensors that we're missing?

[gouldjg]

@ TimeTraveller

You are a God in my book

@Redwine

You are an Angel with Gods message

I am going to bed and dreaming happy dreams for tommorow. Please pass my great appreciation over to TT.

I have a poem


Dumb DD always so lame

We are now going to give you, a working Brain

Uber DD soon to be Dead,

No More DC's dropping bang on my head

I know it is a little too early to be jumping for joy but I have to say guys, We all delivered the goods in our own special rights and deserve to pat ourselves on the back a little here.

Each and everyone of you have been a pleasure to work with during this stressfull time and I hope we all still see this through.

I just hope (though am confident) that we can now get a solid baseline.

With this new info, I am open to a group vote on what we should be doing.

Do we:-

See if we can keep varying Crews? (hmmmm seems very difficult to me or am I in tunnel vision)

Make a plan to each tackle a particular sensor in a logical order and then run a set of tests with onecrew rating?

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Redwine

Now you will be able to see, sensivity for Ubber DDs sensors are not set at zero, due to this fact the program do not take the value we adjust into Sim.cfg for 4 of those sensors wich remains ubber.

4 or 5 of them, those used by Buckley and Evarts are set at 0,05 and 0,06 and 0,07 ubber ubber sensors.

Now the pieces are falling into place.

1.) Post 2 pages back about replacing the hydrophone section in sim.cfg with indivdual entries. I underestimated how effecitve that could be if values in ai_sensor.dat were zero'ed.

2.) Sensitiviy rating in sim.cfg. I was playing with that, but under the false impressioin that the closer to 0 the more senstiive it becomes. (like noise factor).... But iUber's have a senstivyt of 5 through 7...... whooa... I went the wrong way with that scale.


So could it be all we have to do is ramp up the sensitiveity? assuming all other values left untouched, DD detection should increase upwards in scale should it not?

EDIT: there is this nagging voice thought that i should still play with wave and noise factors.

[Col7777]

Are we sure the CrewRatings are even being read?

I did a few tests with different ratings then I edited out the CrewRatings= lines out of the mission and they acted the same, in fact they were SLIGHTLY more aggressive with the line edited out, but that might have been my altering course and they did pick me up but I lost them again and finally escaped.

[gouldjg]

1.) Post 2 pages back about replacing the hydrophone section in sim.cfg with indivdual entries. I underestimated how effecitve that could be if values in ai_sensor.dat were zero'ed.

We should (fingers crossed) be able to now create a extended Sim CFG. If this does not work for whatever reason (I cannot see why not), we just do it the hard way or compensate.

Now if only we had the formular that the dev team intended to implement. It would save huge ammount of trial and error.

[caspofungin]

i've done that already -- named entries in sim.cfg for each hydrophone and active sonar. for me, the effect is the same as deleting sim.cfg -- uber sensors.

[gouldjg]

Originally Posted by Col7777

Are we sure the CrewRatings are even being read?

I did a few tests with different ratings then I edited out the CrewRatings= lines out of the mission and they acted the same, in fact they were SLIGHTLY more aggressive with the line edited out, but that might have been my altering course and they did pick me up but I lost them again and finally escaped.

Col7777

I know I have been tunnel visioned into believeing each crew rating affects sensitivity but I would not guarentee I am right. Thats why I asked the question a bit earlier about if we should try and leave crew as they are and just tackle sensors.

I am no longer suprised about what is round the corner here.

I am no longer persuing my plan as this new stuff and the possibilites are so significant. I am ready to fall in line and listen to you guys who have tackled this in SH2 etc etc.

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by caspofungin

i've done that already -- named entries in sim.cfg for each hydrophone and active sonar. for me, the effect is the same as deleting sim.cfg -- uber sensors.

Sensitivty set to 0 in ai_sensor.dat? Is that the key here? Someone beat it in my head please





How hard is it to change what DD's are equiped with?

Right about now, i just want to do a simple "find and replace" so i have a standard DD for all years, and then tweak with noise and wave. As long as all ships are the same sensitivity, i should get some good figures.

(im probably being impatient, i want to get back to playing )

EDIT:

Hmm i take that back, if the updated AI_sensor tweak file lets me edit the sensitivyty, ill make ll passive identical and then play with wave and noise.

Ppl get a baseline number for those factors , and i get to go back to playing . I personnnaly dont mind indentical performing escorts in my own modded game. Just as long as they make me work for my tonnage.