Generic Ships are not so desirable

Stiebler · 05-29-06, 04:10 AM

Anyone who studies the campaign_RND.mis file in Mission Editor will find a lot of ships listed as 'generic'. In the file itself, they are distinguished from other ships by the fact that they have a type (eg type=4) but not a class (eg class=DDHuntI).

The original idea was that any ships of the same type present in the roster could be randomly substituted so that each game would be slightly different. I don't know whether the programmers intended that modders should create new ships that would also be randomly substituted.

There are two problems with this approach:

1. The trivial problem occurs when a randomly substituted ship is inappropriate. For example, on patrol recently, I encountered two of AG124's neat little new coastal tankers. Unfortunately, both were in mid Atlantic. What was particularly ridiculous was the occasion when a coastal tanker tagged along behind an enormous giant tanker, thundering along at 12 kts. The coastal tanker was striving to keep up, looking like a little poodle on a lead. Or even like a towed lifeboat.
Unfortunately, even writing special routes for the coastal tanker will not prevent it being used generically. [Solution - reclassify the coastal tanker NCOT to type 104 (coastal), not 101 (tanker)].

2. Much more serious is the use of generic escorts. In Mission Editor, the type is not assigned, and you cannot state whether they are escorting the convoy or merely attached to it. As I discovered recently, adding some new escorts to several convoy groups in Mission Editor, then saving the file, resulted in the new file having a selection of generic warship types (originally all escorts) changed randomly, so that some became battleships! One convoy I stumbled on during testing the new file had three King George V battleships in it (they could have been any generic battleship; the type had been changed to 11). The 'escort=true' of the original file had been changed for the battleships to 'escort=false'.
It took me about two hours to hand-change the altered warships in a word processor back to the way they had been in the original (backed-up).

There are three warnings here:
a) Never allow generic warship types if you add new convoys. At some point it's going to be necessary to reassign the existing generic types.
b) Be very careful about changing/adding to generic warships in Mission Editor for existing convoys.
c) If you're a modder making new ship types, think carefully about how they will fit in as generic substitutes for other ships of the same type.

Stiebler.

05-29-06, 04:10 AM	#1
Stiebler Fuel Supplier Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: London, UK Posts: 1,237 Downloads: 29 Uploads: 4	Generic Ships are not so desirable Anyone who studies the campaign_RND.mis file in Mission Editor will find a lot of ships listed as 'generic'. In the file itself, they are distinguished from other ships by the fact that they have a type (eg type=4) but not a class (eg class=DDHuntI). The original idea was that any ships of the same type present in the roster could be randomly substituted so that each game would be slightly different. I don't know whether the programmers intended that modders should create new ships that would also be randomly substituted. There are two problems with this approach: 1. The trivial problem occurs when a randomly substituted ship is inappropriate. For example, on patrol recently, I encountered two of AG124's neat little new coastal tankers. Unfortunately, both were in mid Atlantic. What was particularly ridiculous was the occasion when a coastal tanker tagged along behind an enormous giant tanker, thundering along at 12 kts. The coastal tanker was striving to keep up, looking like a little poodle on a lead. Or even like a towed lifeboat. Unfortunately, even writing special routes for the coastal tanker will not prevent it being used generically. [Solution - reclassify the coastal tanker NCOT to type 104 (coastal), not 101 (tanker)]. 2. Much more serious is the use of generic escorts. In Mission Editor, the type is not assigned, and you cannot state whether they are escorting the convoy or merely attached to it. As I discovered recently, adding some new escorts to several convoy groups in Mission Editor, then saving the file, resulted in the new file having a selection of generic warship types (originally all escorts) changed randomly, so that some became battleships! One convoy I stumbled on during testing the new file had three King George V battleships in it (they could have been any generic battleship; the type had been changed to 11). The 'escort=true' of the original file had been changed for the battleships to 'escort=false'. It took me about two hours to hand-change the altered warships in a word processor back to the way they had been in the original (backed-up). There are three warnings here: a) Never allow generic warship types if you add new convoys. At some point it's going to be necessary to reassign the existing generic types. b) Be very careful about changing/adding to generic warships in Mission Editor for existing convoys. c) If you're a modder making new ship types, think carefully about how they will fit in as generic substitutes for other ships of the same type. Stiebler.