[WIP] Japanese Campaign

[Alfamemnon]

I still watched some of the earlier messages after replying to your long ago message.

You have done really good work Keltos and others! Diversity in choice of submarines and equipment is what I think everyone wants and what would be realistic. How about one of the missions for Junsen or other very long range sub would be to pay a visit to a German base in Europe and come back? That would give you some renown for bringing back some precious blueprints and models from German engineers and also give the player a realistic chance to refit his submarine with Kriegsmarine issue equipment.

Hmm...13.2 mm machine gun and 7.7 mm machine gun? Thank you for the realism but if that is all IJN has got, then I also have to thank you for not giving me that same deadly temptation to stay on the surface to fight it out with the Catalinas that I often have when playing SH3. They are a tough cookie even with two 20mm Flakzwilings and one 37mm. What comes to Liberators...they are a complete waste of ammunition even for a heavily flakked Uboat. In SH3 I have set many Liberators on fire but I never was able to bring even one down. When seeing them in SH4's Japanese Campaign, I will probably tell my 7.7mm gunner to just get inside and have a round of cards with off duty crewmen. Hopefully, there will be more powerful guns than 13.2 mm. They would be extremely welcome but forget it if it is not realistic.

[peabody]

Originally Posted by Alfamemnon

I still watched some of the earlier messages after replying to your long ago message.

Hmm...13.2 mm machine gun and 7.7 mm machine gun? Thank you for the realism but if that is all IJN has got, then I also have to thank you for not giving me that same deadly temptation to stay on the surface to fight it out with the Catalinas that I often have when playing SH3. They are a tough cookie even with two 20mm Flakzwilings and one 37mm. What comes to Liberators...they are a complete waste of ammunition even for a heavily flakked Uboat. In SH3 I have set many Liberators on fire but I never was able to bring even one down. When seeing them in SH4's Japanese Campaign, I will probably tell my 7.7mm gunner to just get inside and have a round of cards with off duty crewmen. Hopefully, there will be more powerful guns than 13.2 mm. They would be extremely welcome but forget it if it is not realistic.

The 7.7mm and the 13.2mm were recent additions to the game at the beginning. Most of the war the Japanese subs used 25mm. We have 25mm single barrel, double barrel, and triple barrel flak guns.
For the deckgun we start with the 105mm and go to a 5.5 inch single barrel and then a 5.5 inch double barrel as shown in some research we have done.

Peabody

[tater]

peabody, are you using all random groups, or are you also messing with "scripted" mission files?

As lurker and I discovered doing our own campaign mods, the "scripted" groups (dragging a ship class to the map, instead of placing a random group with that ship class within it, 100%) have some serious "issues." As a result, it is always better to have groups be of the random variety. If precise timing is required, hand edit

DelayMin=
DelayMinInterv=

to both equal 1, and things will spawn on time.

One issue is the airgroup bug, for example. If you had a "scripted" US CV, the point of waypoint 0 will have an airgroup on it, even if the CV has not yet spawned. There are other issues as well. Avoid those.

[peabody]

Originally Posted by tater

peabody, are you using all random groups, or are you also messing with "scripted" mission files?

As lurker and I discovered doing our own campaign mods, the "scripted" groups (dragging a ship class to the map, instead of placing a random group with that ship class within it, 100%) have some serious "issues." As a result, it is always better to have groups be of the random variety. If precise timing is required, hand edit

DelayMin=
DelayMinInterv=

to both equal 1, and things will spawn on time.

One issue is the airgroup bug, for example. If you had a "scripted" US CV, the point of waypoint 0 will have an airgroup on it, even if the CV has not yet spawned. There are other issues as well. Avoid those.

Yes, everything I was doing has been random. I think I had a couple of scripted to do a couple tests, but they were going to be changed. But I was not aware of the 'Airgroup bug" Thanks for the info.

Peabody

[Alfamemnon]

Great work guys! Also, those 25mm multi barrels should give even the American massive four engine bombers a little bit something to worry about. Yesterday I shot my very first Liberator down. It made one of the same mistakes that makes Sunderlands and Catalinas woefully vulnerable to flak fire: it approached my sub in a straight line (though in relatively high altitude).

I still came up with one more idea: The players of this mod could be happy if some of their missions include that they have to just finish off badly damaged enemy capital ships (battleships, carriers etc) as it would give lots of renown with a small number of torpedoes used so there should be missions where you are told to finish off for example a damaged carrier Yorktown after Battle of Midway or anywhere in the game some enemy warships that have been seriously crippled by kamikaze attacks. If you can just script some Japanese aircraft to have a crazy AI that seeks to collide with an enemy warship of their choice at full speed (instead of strafing or bombing them), you could even make it possible for the player to witness a kamikaze attack taking place. With just a wee little bit hunters instincts or intelligence a player should, after any successful kamikaze attack that did not quite sink the target, realize there is comfortably easy prey awaiting just for him/her. I am not at all a psychologist but I guess that on the other hand, some players could be displeased about the fact they received help with some of their kills and thus have to kinda "share" them.

I must be in an extremely uncreative mood these days because I came up with this kamikaze idea only yesterday when the wreck of an Avenger I had just shot down hit my sub destroying one of my frontmost compartments and thus sinking me even though my hull integrity was 100 and systems had only minimal damage before the Avenger hitting me. I was angry like "friggin Allied kamikaze fanatic".

[peabody]

Originally Posted by Alfamemnon

Great work guys! Also, those 25mm multi barrels should give even the American massive four engine bombers a little bit something to worry about. Yesterday I shot my very first Liberator down. It made one of the same mistakes that makes Sunderlands and Catalinas woefully vulnerable to flak fire: it approached my sub in a straight line (though in relatively high altitude).

I still came up with one more idea: The players of this mod could be happy if some of their missions include that they have to just finish off badly damaged enemy capital ships (battleships, carriers etc) as it would give lots of renown with a small number of torpedoes used so there should be missions where you are told to finish off for example a damaged carrier Yorktown after Battle of Midway or anywhere in the game some enemy warships that have been seriously crippled by kamikaze attacks. If you can just script some Japanese aircraft to have a crazy AI that seeks to collide with an enemy warship of their choice at full speed (instead of strafing or bombing them), you could even make it possible for the player to witness a kamikaze attack taking place. With just a wee little bit hunters instincts or intelligence a player should, after any successful kamikaze attack that did not quite sink the target, realize there is comfortably easy prey awaiting just for him/her. I am not at all a psychologist but I guess that on the other hand, some players could be displeased about the fact they received help with some of their kills and thus have to kinda "share" them.

I must be in an extremely uncreative mood these days because I came up with this kamikaze idea only yesterday when the wreck of an Avenger I had just shot down hit my sub destroying one of my frontmost compartments and thus sinking me even though my hull integrity was 100 and systems had only minimal damage before the Avenger hitting me. I was angry like "friggin Allied kamikaze fanatic".

There will be two types of Kamikaze. The regular planes and the Ohka which was a glide bomb with a rocket engine that they fired so they went so fast it was almost impossible to shoot them down.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...141869&page=51

The idea for damaged enemy ships would not work. You can sink them if you are there but a specific mission to sink them would mean I would have to know where they are and if you damage a ship and leave the area, the game will eventually delete it. So when you arrived it would be gone. There may be ways to get around that but the game is very limited.

Also if a ship is damaged by bombs or Kamikazes then there will be planes in the area, so you may fire a couple of torpedoes at it, they hit but don't destroy it. So you fire another torpedo but a plane bombs it and destroys it before your torpedo hits then you do not get any renown for sinking it since technically you were not the one that sank it.

Peabody

[tater]

Peabody, you could in fact have a scuttle a ship mission.

You'd need to clone the ship in question, then damage the clone. Not "in game" but damage the MODEL. Mess with the dat and zon files so she lists, whatever. Then have that ship appear in the player mission (only) at whatever time.

You can also avoid the rec manual entry for it. If you made a new warship type not in the list at the top of names.cfg, it will work, but won't get a rec manual entry. Since this ship would only appear explicitly, and ONCE, it can be such a type.

This can be used for other stuff as well.

[peabody]

Originally Posted by tater

Peabody, you could in fact have a scuttle a ship mission.

You'd need to clone the ship in question, then damage the clone. Not "in game" but damage the MODEL. Mess with the dat and zon files so she lists, whatever. Then have that ship appear in the player mission (only) at whatever time.

You can also avoid the rec manual entry for it. If you made a new warship type not in the list at the top of names.cfg, it will work, but won't get a rec manual entry. Since this ship would only appear explicitly, and ONCE, it can be such a type.

This can be used for other stuff as well.

I understand what you are saying, but the comment he made:

The players of this mod could be happy if some of their missions include that they have to just finish off badly damaged enemy capital ships (battleships, carriers etc) as it would give lots of renown with a small number of torpedoes

I understood him to mean a ship that really is damaged during battle or by a plane so you may only need one torpedo to finish it off. I don't know of anyway to give the ship "real" damage. Possibly combine the two ideas with making the 'hitpoints' so low you could finish it off with one torpedo, that would be a possibility using your idea of pre-damaging (is that a word?) a ship.

Peabody