GWX request: Revamp the contact report system

[difool2]

I think that the contact report system, while improved significantly over stock, can still be tweaked a bit for both realism and immersion. Typically the vast majority of contacts that I get are either those two British twits who spend all their time racing around the British Isles, a bunch of DDs who patrol endlessly around Newfoundland, and two German destroyers who like to hang out around the west coast of Norway. I do get occasional reports of a convoy but the vast majority of the time the Atlantic seems empty.

[I think I have a pretty good grasp of how the variables "Important Radio Contacts", "Opportunity Radio Contacts", "ReportPosMin", & "ReportPosProbability" all interact to decide whether you see a ship/convoy icon show up on the map. If I am ignorant about something I apologize in advance. And I'll point out that I like the No Tails feature, as an intercept is no longer a sure thing]

The Realism Tack: the Kriegsmarine would get information on enemy ship movements from 4 main sources: U-boats, aircraft, spies/coastwatchers in ports and along coastlines, and code breaking. The rate of contacts should go up or down according to the following variables:

1. Number of u-boats on patrol, going up through middle '43, then going down after that.

1a. Positions of u-boats that are on patrol. Ex. Dec '41-May '42 should see a huge rise in contacts reported along the American coastline.

2. Presence of nearby Axis airbases. Ex. after June '40 the Biscay approaches and waters around Ireland should experience a rise in reported contacts.

3. Spies around ports reporting the departure of convoys. IIRC they were more sucessful on the Canadian end than the British end.

4. The ebb and flow of information from German codebreaking and radio intercepts, as first the Germans break a British code, then the British devise a new one. This stuff is more or less a matter of historical record.

I realize that some of this cannot be modeled accurately. A convoy has nonchanging constants for ReportPosMin & ReportPosProbability from the time of spawning to when it despawns, so that can't be varied to model spies reporting convoy departures. But much of the other things can be modeled, based on spawn date and area of operation. What I would like to see is both the Important Radio Contacts & Opportunity Radio Contacts variables significantly increased with a concomitant decrease in ReportPosMin & ReportPosProbability for both convoys and single ships. It is the height of egotism and unreality to pretend that my boat is the center of the universe and only reports which are near me count.

Right now if I increase both to say 5000 km while I don't exactly get the Spy Sat mod I get far more information than I should, with a couple of dozen contacts all over the place. But nor should I have an information desert most of the time covering the majority of the Northern Atlantic. What I'd like to see is a smattering of contacts here and there, maybe about 1-3 a day in the places I would expect to see them, both giving me a chance to intercept if I am in position and at least giving me a feeling that I am not alone out there. Having a few friendly sub contact reports probably couldn't hurt either, so as to let me know that I have some friends out there.

Right now I am doing a very "quick & dirty" mod of the Campaign RND and SCR files, dropping contact probabilities anywhere from 1/2 (task forces and HK groups, but a big drop for those bozos patrolling shallow coastal waters) to 1/4 (convoys) to 1/6 to 1/8 for single merchants, along with doubling the report time, and will combine that with a 5000 km radius for both Important and Opportunity contacts. Once I get those finished (yeah will take awhile!) I'll run a patrol and see what happens.

[difool2]

*Bump* Nobody is interested if I were to release this? No opinions at all?

[dcb]

Yes, of course it would be interesting. At least, worth a try, to see how it works. BTW, are you modding the GWX 2.0 campaign files, 'cause that's what I'm running.

[von hally]

Originally Posted by difool2

*Bump* Nobody is interested if I were to release this? No opinions at all?

of course mate

all interesting additions that add to immersion are welcome!!!

im still running gwx 2.0 as is to get the most out of it...but would be willing to try a few things on my next career!!
your work and others like you IS appreciated mate
sh3 runs through all our veins

[onelifecrisis]

Sounds really good! Any chance you could get together with another modder or two on this? Two heads are always better than one when it comes to getting facts and figures right (and two sets of hands on keyboards will get it to us quicker!)

I'd be interested to hear from the GWX crew - what do you guys think???

[KeptinCranky]

There have been some tweaks done already for 2.1 specifically those guys near newfoundland becuase they made me go just after GWX 2.0 was released <shrug> even us testers can't be everywhere...

some of the other obvious contact report mishaps have also been fixed but if you find something... post it

as for further tweaks or specifics, that would not be for me to answer :hmm:

[GlobalExplorer]

My advice: do yourself a favor and do this programmatically. I have myself written several randomizers (all in some very basic states) for the campaign layers and it hurts me to see that people are still hand editing. Writing a simple correction for the report_pos_probability is surprisingly easy, because you can manipulate the camp files with any solid ini writer. Hope you know what I am talking about.

@GlobalExplorer

I agree writing programs for some of us is easy.
I see from posts that most users are just able to add mods
by JSGME.
(No slight intended to anyone here.)

It falls to all the modders to create a way for
"Joe average" to be able to use them.
JSGME is the best way I've seen.

So, We, The Modders, create and inpower Joe,
by the very fact that we create it.
JSGME enables it.

There are VERY good tools out there that can be used
to mod nearly every part of SH3.
All free on the Net.

What stops nearly everyone is one simple fact.
Most are not as computer savy as some of us.

How many could write a simple batch file in MSDOS?

[difool2]

Thanks for the responses. Like I said this is just an experiment at this point. I am taking a close look at the convoys-many of the percentages for them are extremely high.

Originally Posted by GlobalExplorer

My advice: do yourself a favor and do this programmatically. I have myself written several randomizers (all in some very basic states) for the campaign layers and it hurts me to see that people are still hand editing. Writing a simple correction for the report_pos_probability is surprisingly easy, because you can manipulate the camp files with any solid ini writer. Hope you know what I am talking about.

I'd appreciate any help in this regard (PM if necessary)-a kind of a replace function correct?

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Just a thought difool2,

You will prolly want to hold off until the release of the GWX 2.1 update. All campaign files in GWX 2.0 will be adjusted by 2.1.

Waiting a bit will save you a great deal of work.

As to whether or not there is too much in the way of shipping out at sea in GWX... best I can tell, GWX only represents a fraction of it. It is certainly a debatable matter.

The problem is that it is too easy to find since a few real life factors are not modelled into SH3.... For instance Enigma being broken and the Allies rerouting shipping well away from known U-boat locations.

Cheers.

[difool2]

Yeah, I pretty much have decided on that, but I am still examining them with a fine tooth comb. For the uninitiated, the format of the RANDOM file is pretty straightforward, with the major convoys listed 1st, and then comes the single merchant/small convoy entries, which actually take up the vast majority of the space, repeated in 4-24 month chunks (along with some random patrols, which are currently set at zero % but I may up a bit, to warn you of possible danger along your ingress and egress routes). I'm glad that the SCRIPTED file is 2,000 k smaller because that will likely be a bear.

[bigboywooly]

Originally Posted by difool2

Yeah, I pretty much have decided on that, but I am still examining them with a fine tooth comb. For the uninitiated, the format of the RANDOM file is pretty straightforward, with the major convoys listed 1st, and then comes the single merchant/small convoy entries, which actually take up the vast majority of the space, repeated in 4-24 month chunks (along with some random patrols, which are currently set at zero % but I may up a bit, to warn you of possible danger along your ingress and egress routes). I'm glad that the SCRIPTED file is 2,000 k smaller because that will likely be a bear.

Just a heads up
Both files WILL change in 2.1

Finishing up on them now

The reason the RND patrols are 0 is otherwise you get a continuous stream of ships circling the UK :rotfl: