Weather = Seriously Bugged?

[Red Heat]

My aproach to the game i consider heavy heather a true ally...except the the heavy fog in some aproaches like in the earlier of the war...because with out radar its very dificult to follow a contact at the surface!

[RConch]

Weather in the North Atlantic really did suck most of the time.
All commanders should take the time to enjoy "Bloody Winter" by John M. Waters to get a real taste of what the boats, escorts and merchants had to deal with.

[Hitman]

So far the best solution I have found is to have different scene.dat files that I enable/disable depending on where I'm going to patrol. If I'm going to patrol in the North Atlantic, I use one that allows random weather (which will tend to go to 15 m/s) but with the waves size smaller than standard and fog disabled. That gives me consistent rough weather, but not unplayable at all. For tropical patrol areas I use one with fixed wind speed. Clouds change, rain comes and goes, but you never get a storm.

NYGM also comes with modifications incorporated to the campaign files that increase the chances and periods of good weather.

[Sailor Steve]

And where do we get these other scene.dat files? I jus' gots to know!

Honestly, this sounds like a cool thing.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

And where do we get these other scene.dat files? I jus' gots to know!

Honestly, this sounds like a cool thing.

I'd be interested too because all I do is change the values to suit from the campaign files to determine the weather conditions I prefer eg: basic GWX3.0

Fog=1
FogRand=0
Clouds=1
CloudsRand=0
Precip=0
PrecipRand=0
WindHeading=0
WindSpeed=4.000000
WindRand=0
WeatherRndInterval=5
SeaType=0

[Hitman]

And where do we get these other scene.dat files? I jus' gots to know!

Honestly, this sounds like a cool thing.

I just did it for private use. It's actually a very easy setting in the scene.dat, takes only 5 minutes to do with Silent Editor, and doing it for every environment mod out there would be a nightmare.

Simply open scene.dat in Silent Editor and go to:

6:Node Sky-->13 EnvSim-->14EnvSim--->Wind--->WindspeedChangeSpeed.

Setting the wind change speed to zero will ensure you have a constant wind during all the time, which will be the one in your campaign layers (GWX by default 4m/s). You can also set the fogchange speed to zero and thus see no fog at all during your patrol.

If you want to have smaller waves in 15m/s wind, then simply go in the same path:

6:Node Sky-->13 EnvSim-->14EnvSim--->Wind-

To wave properties and copy the values for scale from node 2 (8 to 14 m/s waves) to node 3 (15 m/s waves) and you will have at most waves of that size.

You can actually customize a lot the weather playing with those combinations, deciding if you want fog & rain to appear or not, the maximum size of the waves etc. Add to this the ability to change the clouds for any others you want (By changing the TGA file in the Misc folder), and you can have custom weather that goes from mild to rough, or from rough to hurricane-like.

Or simply fully fixed weather, by selecting

6:Node Sky-->13 EnvSim-->14EnvSim--->UseCotrollersWeatherData to TRUE

you override any setting in the campaign files and can put a fixed weather pattern directly in the scene.dat. This works very well if you want to have a fixed good weather with, say, 4-7 m/s wind, no rain, no fog. Ideal for patrolling in the Caribbean.

I also discovered that you can swap scene.dat files during saved games. So you can have one scene.dat with variable weather when you depart base and cross the atlantic, save when you arrive at your patrol area in the Caribbean and load the fixed good weather file, then save before returning home and reloading the original random weather file.

Combinations are endless ... that's why offering it as a mod is not probably wirth it.

BTW Manos EnvPro3 already has the smaller waves for 15m/s wind, so you can still patrol and hunt even if the weather is stuck at rough.

[Hitman]

Oh I forgot: Theoretically (Jaesen Jones will know better) you could place those customized scene.dat files in SH3 Commander and have it put automatically the correct weather for you depending on your flotilla (F.e. Mediterranean). I'm not sure if it can be coarsed to do it according to the assigned patrol area and time of year

[tomfon]

Originally Posted by Hitman

You can also set the fogchange speed to zero and thus see no fog at all during your patrol.

Does this mean that weather status will be stuck at ''visibility 15km'' thus no change of visibility throughout the patrol?