Currents and depth charts a possibility?

WH4K · 01-09-11, 05:48 PM

It's quite possible both of these things have been addressed, but I just missed it, since I'm 5+ years late to the party. But since I started playing SHIII and using various mods (GWX 3.0, OLC GUI Mk II, etc.), a couple of things have occurred to me:

1) Is it possible for currents to be modeled in any way in SHIII? While these were likely of little consequence out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, currents could have been a very big deal in coastal waters. Likewise tides, although I don't think SHIII has any way to model tides.

2) I've read that the ocean bottom in SHIII does not necessarily follow real-world contours, so real-world charts are of little use in the game. Would it be possible to create a set of charts that follow the game's "terrain?" This would be really useful information when infiltrating a harbor, for example. Using the active sonar device to check depth under keel risks giving oneself away. Also it would be nice to know when I'm about to go into the shallows, rather than only find out after the fact.

Tessa · 01-10-11, 07:44 AM

Even if someone went through all the troubles of getting an accurate mapping of the ocean floor modeled in SH3 it would be of little value to the player. Since escorts have sniper precision accuracy with their depth charges hiding in an underwater canyon or the bottom actually works against you; where even today it is still a sounds tactic.

If you bottomed your boat at say 240m the escort above may toss a few more salvos down but would only have your last known position as a good fix. Once on the bottom the sonar of that day couldn't distinguish between a submarine on the bottom or a giant rock. Granted if you made noise to give yourself away you are now a stationary target with a big bullseye. Regardless, the moment you stop moving and become stationary with active sonar you're as good as dead. The dc attacks will become deadly accurate and may only take 1 or 2 more salvo's before you're hull collapses.

Gryffon300 · 01-10-11, 12:14 PM

Sorry to have to disagree, but I also would really like more acurate depth charts, and not for the reason you seem to assume above.
You are absolutely correct that trying to go possum on the bottom when active sonar is pinging away is not a reasonable tactic. No argument there.
However, and here is my beef. I've just successfully put two into an Ammo Ship, 2 into a large tanker, and 2 (rear) into a medium merchant. I am running silent, in the middle of the convoy, parrallelling their path, heading for 100m, where I intend to go all stop and wait for the convoy to pass overhead to the horizon (its early in the war, I'm in my 2nd flotilla IXb, and the escorts still haven't got onto active pinging yet (why not?)). All of a sudden, at 85 m there's a sound louder than 2 whales humping as I bottom out, do some moderate damage, and alert every escort within 10k as to my location! Not happy, Jan!

So, yes. A man's got to know his limitations.

WH4K · 01-10-11, 01:52 PM

The only underwater evasion I'm interested in is avoiding the ocean floor. I'm aware that SH3 is not sophisticated enough to model use of underwater features to hide from ASW threats. I merely want to avoid running my U-boat aground. As I'm doing patrols with a Type II, I am pretty much limited to littoral operations. So running aground is a pretty big concern.

It's irritating to constantly have to use the active depth finder. Not only would it tell me too late if I were about to smash into a watery mountainside, it could give me away during a harbor infiltration.

At least I assume it could. Does SH3 actually let AI ships hear your use of the Atlas Echolot, or is that another thing that wasn't modeled realistically?

There is probably some way to extract the values for the underwater "terrain" used in SH3. Given SH3's age & the hardware it was intended for, I would guess that the data is not very dense. I would be surprised if the contour interval (e.g. smallest distance between two data points, or the "granularity" of the underwater terrain) were smaller than 100m. Real navigation charts are probably a bit better than that, particularly in high-traffic areas.

But that would be plenty useful, certainly enough to help avoid running aground while snooping around the British coast.

Then it would be a matter of replacing the in-game charts, perhaps putting depth numbers on them like real-world charts.

I'm not saying it would be easy to produce, but a slightly realistic navigation chart would make life easier for us coastal action types.

Delareon · 01-10-11, 02:00 PM

OLC Gui has an fantastic tool for that reasons.
A little dragable item where u can at least figure out if the water is 100 meters or just 85 meters. Not as accurate as a real depth chart could be, but the maps of that time wherent that accurately anyways.
MaGui has also a tool but that damned thing is useless at night because of the lights at the Nav screen.

frau kaleun · 01-10-11, 03:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WH4K

At least I assume it could. Does SH3 actually let AI ships hear your use of the Atlas Echolot

Nope, the AI doesn't hear it and doesn't react to it.

Gryffon300 · 01-12-11, 09:40 AM

WH4K, above. Yeh, wot he said!

But Valk, you saucy Piratical wench!, what to do with your information? I'm between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. On the one hand, I'm NOT running at full realism - although I never have an officer in the WO slot, I do use the AI to calculate firing solutions, so I currently run at 90% realism. So, you might think that being able to shout at the top of your lungs by active pinging the bottom while running silent trying to evade Tin Cans would be a good thing.

Nah. This is disappointing. On the one hand my nav officer SHOULD be able to give me OK depth info 90% of the time (appart from the occasional uncharted seamount), so being able to ping without penalty could be seen as a fair compensation. But it sure will present a moral dillema. To rationalise that pinging is OK, or to take the moral high ground and run into it (the high ground, that is).

By the way, Valk, maybe I'm dense and don't get the reference, but, as much as I like wombats (piratical or otherwise), the joke seems to work better with a Beaver (something about peg legs and wood?). Or is that too nauti(cal)?

01-09-11, 05:48 PM	#1
WH4K Frogman Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 291 Downloads: 56 Uploads: 0	Currents and depth charts a possibility? It's quite possible both of these things have been addressed, but I just missed it, since I'm 5+ years late to the party. But since I started playing SHIII and using various mods (GWX 3.0, OLC GUI Mk II, etc.), a couple of things have occurred to me: 1) Is it possible for currents to be modeled in any way in SHIII? While these were likely of little consequence out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, currents could have been a very big deal in coastal waters. Likewise tides, although I don't think SHIII has any way to model tides. 2) I've read that the ocean bottom in SHIII does not necessarily follow real-world contours, so real-world charts are of little use in the game. Would it be possible to create a set of charts that follow the game's "terrain?" This would be really useful information when infiltrating a harbor, for example. Using the active sonar device to check depth under keel risks giving oneself away. Also it would be nice to know when I'm about to go into the shallows, rather than only find out after the fact. __________________ Windows 10 Pro (x64)

01-10-11, 12:14 PM	#3
Gryffon300 Engineer Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Perth, Australia Posts: 213 Downloads: 58 Uploads: 0	How Deep is my love? Sorry to have to disagree, but I also would really like more acurate depth charts, and not for the reason you seem to assume above. You are absolutely correct that trying to go possum on the bottom when active sonar is pinging away is not a reasonable tactic. No argument there. However, and here is my beef. I've just successfully put two into an Ammo Ship, 2 into a large tanker, and 2 (rear) into a medium merchant. I am running silent, in the middle of the convoy, parrallelling their path, heading for 100m, where I intend to go all stop and wait for the convoy to pass overhead to the horizon (its early in the war, I'm in my 2nd flotilla IXb, and the escorts still haven't got onto active pinging yet (why not?)). All of a sudden, at 85 m there's a sound louder than 2 whales humping as I bottom out, do some moderate damage, and alert every escort within 10k as to my location! Not happy, Jan! So, yes. A man's got to know his limitations.

01-10-11, 01:52 PM	#4
WH4K Frogman Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 291 Downloads: 56 Uploads: 0	The only underwater evasion I'm interested in is avoiding the ocean floor. I'm aware that SH3 is not sophisticated enough to model use of underwater features to hide from ASW threats. I merely want to avoid running my U-boat aground. As I'm doing patrols with a Type II, I am pretty much limited to littoral operations. So running aground is a pretty big concern. It's irritating to constantly have to use the active depth finder. Not only would it tell me too late if I were about to smash into a watery mountainside, it could give me away during a harbor infiltration. At least I assume it could. Does SH3 actually let AI ships hear your use of the Atlas Echolot, or is that another thing that wasn't modeled realistically? There is probably some way to extract the values for the underwater "terrain" used in SH3. Given SH3's age & the hardware it was intended for, I would guess that the data is not very dense. I would be surprised if the contour interval (e.g. smallest distance between two data points, or the "granularity" of the underwater terrain) were smaller than 100m. Real navigation charts are probably a bit better than that, particularly in high-traffic areas. But that would be plenty useful, certainly enough to help avoid running aground while snooping around the British coast. Then it would be a matter of replacing the in-game charts, perhaps putting depth numbers on them like real-world charts. I'm not saying it would be easy to produce, but a slightly realistic navigation chart would make life easier for us coastal action types. __________________ Windows 10 Pro (x64)

01-10-11, 07:44 AM	#2
Tessa Grey Wolf Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: CG 96 Posts: 861 Downloads: 22 Uploads: 0	Even if someone went through all the troubles of getting an accurate mapping of the ocean floor modeled in SH3 it would be of little value to the player. Since escorts have sniper precision accuracy with their depth charges hiding in an underwater canyon or the bottom actually works against you; where even today it is still a sounds tactic. If you bottomed your boat at say 240m the escort above may toss a few more salvos down but would only have your last known position as a good fix. Once on the bottom the sonar of that day couldn't distinguish between a submarine on the bottom or a giant rock. Granted if you made noise to give yourself away you are now a stationary target with a big bullseye. Regardless, the moment you stop moving and become stationary with active sonar you're as good as dead. The dc attacks will become deadly accurate and may only take 1 or 2 more salvo's before you're hull collapses.

01-10-11, 02:00 PM	#5
Delareon Planesman Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 192 Downloads: 77 Uploads: 0	OLC Gui has an fantastic tool for that reasons. A little dragable item where u can at least figure out if the water is 100 meters or just 85 meters. Not as accurate as a real depth chart could be, but the maps of that time wherent that accurately anyways. MaGui has also a tool but that damned thing is useless at night because of the lights at the Nav screen.

01-12-11, 09:40 AM	#7
Gryffon300 Engineer Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Perth, Australia Posts: 213 Downloads: 58 Uploads: 0	WH4K, above. Yeh, wot he said! But Valk, you saucy Piratical wench!, what to do with your information? I'm between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. On the one hand, I'm NOT running at full realism - although I never have an officer in the WO slot, I do use the AI to calculate firing solutions, so I currently run at 90% realism. So, you might think that being able to shout at the top of your lungs by active pinging the bottom while running silent trying to evade Tin Cans would be a good thing. Nah. This is disappointing. On the one hand my nav officer SHOULD be able to give me OK depth info 90% of the time (appart from the occasional uncharted seamount), so being able to ping without penalty could be seen as a fair compensation. But it sure will present a moral dillema. To rationalise that pinging is OK, or to take the moral high ground and run into it (the high ground, that is). By the way, Valk, maybe I'm dense and don't get the reference, but, as much as I like wombats (piratical or otherwise), the joke seems to work better with a Beaver (something about peg legs and wood?). Or is that too nauti(cal)?