SH3 GWX 3 DIY Ship Recognition Guide

[nataraj]

Download Section: latest versions
Merchants 1940 (Dec. 17, 2013, 4.5 MB)
Warships 1939 (Dec. 18, 2013, 3.1 MB)
Warships 1940 (Dec. 18, 2013, 4.3 MB)

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Being new to Silent Hunter one of the more difficult parts of "life" seems to be how to identify ships. Once the ships are close enough, there is little time to flip through the book - and without any chance to compare similar ships side by side, I was completely lost. Unfortunately, all the printable recognition manuals that exist seem to be either on dead links or they are written for previous versions. Some ship types (like C2 Cargo) don't exist in my game, sometimes renown values are given that I don't think are correct any more (500+ for Large Merchant is 300 in my version)

I am using SH3, GWX 3.0 "Gold", TMT (GWX3 version)

So I started a small project to collect
- pages from the in-game recognition manual (the ...sil.tga files)
- screenshots from the Museum
- tonnage, speed and renown info from the .cfg files
- "Sea" subdirectory names for the various ship types (EnglishNames.cfg plus guesswork)

So far, I've reached December 1939 in my fledgling career, therefore the manual contains ships from 1939 (and earlier) only. Also, I've only looked at the British section in the Museum, so Polish and Indian or South African ships are missing.

This "Do It Yourself" manual comes in two .pdf files (3 and 4.5 MB, reps.):

Warships (V2 now with height,length and Greek battleship )
Merchants (also with length etc.)

As soon as I go on my next patrol, I'll add the 1940 ships. "Be prepared ..."

I hope this will be useful for the other Leutnants/Oberleutnants here


Regards,
Helmut

If you find errors, please report them here so I can correct them.

[mrbannon]

Stupid question: does SH3 update the identification book as the war progresses? (Or maybe GWX does?)

[Gustav Schiebert]

This is really great to see, I appreciate it when people make the effort to do something and the first thing they do is share it with everyone else.

At the risk of being critical, it doesn't seem to have some of the data like length and mast height which is essential for people doing manual targeting. I did a recognition manual a few months back (only for merchants) which was a straight screengrab of both pages.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=202636

How long did it take you to do? I remember mine took about six hours total labour.

[Karl Heinrich]

I agree with Gustav here, always good to see people not only putting the time into projects like this but taking the time to share them too.

I can also vouch that Gustav's ship recognition manual is very helpful too.

I've recently bought a copy of the 1940 Weyers Taschenbuch der Kriegsflotten, one of the real ship rec books. Along with this I have a few of the similar Talbot-Booth books used by the RN - but I've not had the chance to use any of them in anger yet so I don't know if they work.

But I definitely think the best approach is this, making your own books of the game world rather than trying to crowbar real world items into gameplay - as fun as that can be sometimes.

[GoldenRivet]

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=146019

I'll toss mine into the hat, the link is to the thread reviewing the recognition manual i made with a "target speed booklet" to quick reference the speed of each vessel for a specified time observation through the periscope.

I had a lot of fun making it. I only made two, a copy i kept for myself, and a copy i sent to Silverleaf for his review.

You will really enjoy putting the effort into the project

[nataraj]

Thank you all for your encouragement and the constructive feedback!

Yes, I had a lot of fun doing it - so far 2 afternoons and one evening, most of it spent on:
- figuring out what I want to achieve
- getting image sizes and resolution about right
- finding the directories and files in SH3 for ship data and images
- editing the images (both museum screenshots and in-game .tga files)
- learning a bit more about InDesign to create the document

Actually, once the document structure and base images were all prepared, the creation of the documents proper did not take long at all.

@mrbannon: Not a stupid question at all There are no updates. The in-game recognition manual is the opposite of realism in that respect: instead of not having the latest enemy ship types, the manual has ship types that aren't even in service yet.

@Gustav: ah yes, I see your point. Initially, my only goal was to better be able to identify the ship and then find it in the in-game manual. As I still rely on the weapons officer to identify the target for me, it is quite easy to click on the type and get the correct page for height, length and draft.

When that weapons officer assistance will be gone, I guess I'd be back to frantically flipping pages ... Ugh. Thanks for telling me now before I add more ships! I'll make an update that includes height, LoA, beam and draft in the document and - while I'm at it - copy the required data directly (well, almost directly) from the cfg files into the document. That should reduce the probability for human error (that's me: the human error element) considerably.

@Gustav, Karl Heinrich and GoldenRivet: I've seen some of your work and that of quite a few others, too. I guess it's as much the fun in doing it as it is the result that makes me do it. Can't remember them all but I really liked one recognition manual, done by Canovaro - it showed the in-game manual pages but with target areas highlighted. Very nice, unfortunately my ship types are different and the renown is different, too.

BTW, does anybody know how to translate the numbers in the [2D compartments] section of the cfg file into coordinates?

Then there was one that was completely different: drawings instead of photo or the in-game manual pages (can't remember by whom, IIRC it had German ship types), also very nice.

I know that I need something like a photo for a quick shortlist, but then the fine details in the recognition manual are good, too. And the 'angle' views.

On a patrol, before I spend a torpedo I really like to know what it'll earn me in terms of renown. So, that had to go into my "do it yourself" as well.

Armaments would have been nice, too. But too complex, too much text and changing too fast. I don't want to include from-to dates ...

Good Hunting,
Helmut