German Commerce Raider Mod, feasible?

[Friedmann]

I spent saturday toying around with the idea of a commerce raider modification for SH4.

Why German Commerce Raiders?

While the U-Boat add-on itself is not historically accurate a modification allowing the player to command a commerce raider would be.

German commerce raiders were highly active in the Indian and Pacific oceans at least for the early part of the war.

• Orion (HSK-1)
• Atlantis (HSK-2)
• Widder (HSK-3)
• Thor (HSK-4)
• Pinguin (HSK-5)
• Stier (HSK-6)
• Komet (HSK-7)
• Kormoran (HSK-8)
• Michel (HSK-9)
• Coronel (HSK-10)
• Hansa (HSK-11)

The distances travelled by these vessels are astronomical, amount of tonnage sunk is impressive. True modern day pirates.

Why not sexier more powerful surface vessels?

I think for a variety of reasons. Firstly SH4 gives us a platform for simulating commerce raiding not fleet engagements I don't think the campaign or the AI would cope to well with pocket battleships blasting convoys to powder. You wouldn't find yourself being hunted task forces, it would be very lop sided.

As a converted merchant vessel the player controlled ship things would remain somewhat more balanced.

Firstly, these vessels are extremely vulnerable, they are not armoured like a warship.

Secondly I don't think there would be anyway to accurately portray main armaments controlled by a gunnery director. With the command of a modified merchant vessel you overcome this shortcoming as all weapons were independently targeted.

Why SH4 and not SH3?

Because firstly SH4 is sooooo pretty. But secondly all of the German Commerce raiders were equiped with a float plane or two. The possibility of modding the vessel to perhaps be some type of mobile base and using the aircraft ability to scout for targets would be most interesting indeed.

Would a commerce raider be overpowered?

Hard to say I guess, they were quite heavily armed more so than a submarine but at the same time much like a submarine they were extremely vulnerable lacking a warships armour. They also don't have the ability to submerge (obviously) and have limited speed and would find it difficult to escape a bad situation. Would most likely make a for an interesting career as any mistake would most likely be your last.

Difficulties

One of the biggest difficulties would be that these vessels survived by disguising themselves. If you made one loosely playable you would have the problem that enemy units would attack you on sight which is not realistic. Would it be possible to tweak enemy sensors so that you were only detected at very close ranges? Would a realistic result possible?

So far I have managed to get the XVIII U-Boat to appear with the commerce raider 3d model and textures (in the museum anyway) just by editing the XVIII .CFG and I have created a simple mission to test it with but I get a a CTD everytime I try to launch the mission. I have scoured the forums looking for more information but than a few hints at hex editing I haven't found anything concrete on how to resolve this issue. What other possible steps might I have to take to correct this problem?

Any other thoughts from other modders on here would be welcome.

Apologies for my post being a bit of a ramble, I'm at work and getting constantly distracted hehe.

[Captain von Keldunk]

Hello
"One of the biggest difficulties would be that these vessels survived by disguising themselves. If you made one loosely playable you would have the problem that enemy units would attack you on sight which is not realistic" :hmm:
If you fire at non enemy ship then for some time you are enemy to this country
at least this way it was supposed to work with SH3. Maybe you need to test it with SH4 1.5 if it works. :hmm:
Good luck

[MMarques]

This is exactly what I would like to have but with the Pocket Battleship, I'd love to be able to use one and I'm offering my help on whatever I can do.

[chrysanthos]

just make one for american side please

[gimpy117]

is there a way to make it visible only at very close range?