DARN IT!! How do you tell what nation they are??

[Gargamel]

If I change the renown modifier to '0', will i not receive any credit, nor get penalized for sinking a neutral? I mean cause like the thread has pointed out, sometimes neutrals gotta be neutralized. (booooo )

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

If I change the renown modifier to '0', will i not receive any credit, nor get penalized for sinking a neutral? I mean cause like the thread has pointed out, sometimes neutrals gotta be neutralized. (booooo )

Yep, in the game's basic.cfg file:

[RENOWN]
RenownReachGridObjCompleted=500
RenownPatrolGridObjCompleted=200
CompletedPatrol=0
NEUTRAL=-1
ALLIED=1
AXIS=-10
WrongShipSunk=-5000
FirstRankRenown=100
SecondRankRenown=350
EndCampaign=-5000

Change it to NEUTRAL=0 and there should be no reward or penalty for sinking a neutral ship.

[Sailor Steve]

Unlike the others, that is the pattern I follow. Neutrals are '0'. If I sink one in a convoy or out of it I get no credit, but neither do I get penalized. In a like fashion I changed the 'Friendly' credit from -10 to -1. Several friendly ships were sunk by u-boats, and invariably the ensuing court-martial decreed that the sunken ship was outside the prescribed areas, or disguised as an Allied ship.

I have to admit, though, that the reason for labeling a neutral as +1 is just as good as my reasons for making them '0'.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

Yep, in the game's basic.cfg file:

[RENOWN]
RenownReachGridObjCompleted=500
RenownPatrolGridObjCompleted=200
CompletedPatrol=0
NEUTRAL=-1
ALLIED=1
AXIS=-10
WrongShipSunk=-5000
FirstRankRenown=100
SecondRankRenown=350
EndCampaign=-5000

Change it to NEUTRAL=0 and there should be no reward or penalty for sinking a neutral ship.

Cheat!

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

Cheat!

I studied at the feet of masters.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

I studied at the feet of masters.

I sincerely hope whoever they were washed them first

[Tigershark624]

OK, this question kind of fits here. Do you get spanked by BdU for sinking British ships before the official start of the war? I left port on 1 August 1939, sailed through the Channel to my patrol grid and patrolled for 24 hours. I'm now making my way to the Western Approaches to await the start of the war, but I've got a lone merchant poking it's way westward and the temptation to try out Hitman's realistic targeting system is getting a might hard to resist. Also, is there a &%$^& calendar on this boat? I can't seem to find out what the date is.

Thanks,
Tigershark624

[frau kaleun]

@ Tigershark: if you a sink a ship at any time when her country is not at war with Germany it will register as a neutral ship, unless it's actually an Axis ship, in which case you sank a friendly. Bad kaleun! BdU spank!

How badly you get spanked depends on whether or not you've edited the RENOWN reward/penalty for sinkings. In GWX (without any editing), when you sink a neutral ship you lose the same amount of renown you would've been awarded if she'd actually been an Alllied vessel. If you sink an Axis vessel, you lose that amount x10.

Some people edit the reward/penalty modifiers for various reasons. As discussed above, some people change the modifier for neutrals to 0, and so they don't gain or lose renown if they sink one. That seems like a good way to go, as it means that there is nothing to be gained by making a point of sinking a known neutral just for the heck of it, but no loss of renown if one is sunk by accident (while traveling in convoy with enemy shipping, for instance).

As Sailor Steve has noted, he changes the modifer for Axis vessels from a minus 10 to a minus 1, which means there is some loss of renown but not enough (in most cases) to set you back enough to finish a patrol with negative renown and thus find your career ended. His reasoning for this seems sound enough, as there were a few cases of u-boats sinking Axis ships during the war but no commander was ever severely penalized for it as it was usually determined that the misidentification was the fault of the vessel that was sunk and not the guy who sank it.

Whether or not you choose to edit the modifiers is up to you, but in answer to the original question: absolutely, if you sink a British vessel prior to receiving notification that you are officially at war with Britain, it will count as a neutral ship.

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

Yep, in the game's basic.cfg file:

[RENOWN]
RenownReachGridObjCompleted=500
RenownPatrolGridObjCompleted=200
CompletedPatrol=0
NEUTRAL=-1
ALLIED=1
AXIS=-10
WrongShipSunk=-5000
FirstRankRenown=100
SecondRankRenown=350
EndCampaign=-5000

Change it to NEUTRAL=0 and there should be no reward or penalty for sinking a neutral ship.

SH3C keeps rolling this back to original settings?

Where can I find the basic.cfg that SH3C uses?

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

SH3C keeps rolling this back to original settings?

Where can I find the basic.cfg that SH3C uses?

AFAIK SH3 Commander makes no changes to this part of the basic.cfg unless you've set it up to do so.

GWX alters some things in that section of the basic.cfg, for instance the renown for reaching your patrol grid and then completing 24 hours there is changed to 0 by GWX, but I've manually edited the stock values for those back in.

What I posted above was copy/pasted from my edited version, an unedited GWX version would be different. Commander has never overwritten that part of my basic.cfg, only the parts I've told it to overwrite. So if you've made edits and something else is undoing them I'm not sure how that's happening.

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

AFAIK SH3 Commander makes no changes to this part of the basic.cfg unless you've set it up to do so.

GWX alters some things in that section of the basic.cfg, for instance the renown for reaching your patrol grid and then completing 24 hours there is changed to 0 by GWX, but I've manually edited the stock values for those back in.

What I posted above was copy/pasted from my edited version, an unedited GWX version would be different. Commander has never overwritten that part of my basic.cfg, only the parts I've told it to overwrite. So if you've made edits and something else is undoing them I'm not sure how that's happening.

Think I fixed it, wasn't hitting rollback before exiting SH3C. But I wont know till I end this patrol, but the file i edited still exists, which is an improvement! TY again

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

Think I fixed it, wasn't hitting rollback before exiting SH3C. But I wont know till I end this patrol, but the file i edited still exists, which is an improvement! TY again

If you want to make selected "manual" edits to certain files but not overwrite them completely, you might take a look at the "static settings.cfg" file included in your SH3 Commander install.

IIRC there are instructions for how to use it at the top of the file - it's not that complicated, I know because I figured it out.

Basically it will let you tell Commander to overwrite selected sections of various files each time you load the game through Commander, without overwriting the entire files in question. You can also specify date ranges for the overwrites to take effect (or not).

It's a very cool tool, I'm starting to use it to make all my "manual" edits since they all get rolled back when I exit the game (and reloaded when I restart the game) and it keeps them all in one easy to find place when I want to look at them or change something.

[Gargamel]

O.O

Awesome. TYVM. Again.