[WIP] Historical Guns Specs

[gap]

Originally Posted by volodya61

Could you give me an example to what extent/limit change these values ​​(start_index/end_index) please?

I really don't know how these settings work and what their range should be, but it seems they are strictly related to gun's min/max elevation and train. A few examples:

-Reducing the minimum elevation from -10 to -20 (with no other changes), resulted in the gun aiming on top of its target.

-Reducing the maximum elevation from 75 to 10 (again, no other changes made), had an opposite result than expected: the gun was always extended all the way, very high on the horizon) and thus unable to aim to anything.

The visual range of gun's camera (when it is manned by the player), is also affected by the start_index/end_index factors: when I tried changing the min/max elevation angles respectively to -11/+85 (as per historical specs), not only the crew's aiming was affected negatively, but when I tried to use the gun manually and I zoomed in, at extreme angles the aim of the gun was out of the screen. When I increased the elevation end_index factor to about 6.55, gun's camera started again following the aim, and crew's aim got better, though the gunner was still quite bad at shooting down planes.

Stock settings for the two parameters are as follows:

- both of them set to 0 (both for traverse and elevation) for AI guns.

- start_index of sub flak guns normally 0, except for elevation start_index of 37 mm and 88 mm guns, where it is equal to the traverse end index.

- elevation start/end index settings identical to Training settings for all the other flak guns

As I wrote in my previous post, at stock elevation settings the best end_index factor for the standard C/30 gun is, no doubt, 5.8 (no other changes required). Optimal settings for other guns can be deduced from Wamphyri's plane mod.

Originally Posted by volodya61

What exactly do you mean?

number of shots required to down the plane, or number plane's dives, before it gets shot down

In order to reduce randomness, you could also reduce hurricane's hit points to 1 (1 shot=1 kill) in its zon file

[TheDarkWraith]

remember crew experience and how many points you have put into the gunner determine his accuracy also. It would be best to set your crew to elite and max out the gunner's points then you have something to test from (you have a solid reference point to gauge changes against).

[gap]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

remember crew experience and how many points you have put into the gunner determine his accuracy also. It would be best to set your crew to elite and max out the gunner's points then you have something to test from (you have a solid reference point to gauge changes against).

For ease of testing, we are currently carrying out our gunnery trials in single mission, with sub crew's veterancy level maxed out.

Nonetheless, I doubt we can increase gunner's points during a single mission. Once finished with these preliminary tests, we will finetune the settings in campaign

P.S: when you get time for it, can you please have a look to the following conversation between me and Rongel, about some possible flaws of your torpedo dud patch, and the possibility to clone the existing torpedoes:

Originally Posted by Rongel

A small update on torpedo duds. I did some tests and found out that the controls are quite broken. First issue is that lowering the torpedo speeds to reduce duds isn't working. The other is that date doesn't affect anything. I put the dud rate to 100% and between 1938-1943 and got the same effect in 1944 when the value was 0 %... Well at least that reduces the work amount for the mod!

Has anyone else got different results???

Originally Posted by gap

Is this with TDW's patch enabled? Is it possible that when fixing the general feature, he disabled speed and date controllers?

Originally Posted by Rongel

Yep, I have the latest patch running. It is possible that it has something to do with it, it could be that without the patch, imported ships would still react correctly to dud-rates, torpedo speeds and rates. But I can live without the low-speed reduction (even if that was historically accurate).
...

Other option is to try to make a new torpedo. We could make another TypeI torpedo that comes available in '43 that is much more reliable than the early war version. In this case we need to edit the torpedos GR2-file and add some stuff there, is that now possible with TDW's tool?

Originally Posted by gap

THIS is actually a good idea!
we can clone existing torpedoes and, by setting wisely availability dates, slowly replace the dud ones with their improved versions... I could I have been so blind not to see it before?

I'm slowly moving my first setps into learning the tricks of TDW's GR2 editor. As far as I know, doing what you are suggesting should be possible.
Applying your idea would require just to edit the Id's of torpedo GR2 files to be cloned. If we manage to do it, what remains to be done is remapping the new Id's in sim/zon files, and updating them with the wanted settings. Boring task yes, but immune from complications

Originally Posted by Rongel

About the torpedo malfunctions... yesterday I tested different values like crazy and got good results. It seems all the other malfunction types work like they should, so there is a point making this mod.

Torpedo can prematurely explode when using magnetic detonation, it can be a dud (hit and not detonate), it can deviate from it's course or it can be a circle runner. I haven't tested the depth keeping, but I hope it works too.

It seems also that the different date-settings work on all other malfunctions except TDW's duds. Only problem is now that duds don't work on imported ships, and that the dud values don't change when war progresses. Otherwise it looks alright, except that testing these is sooo slowwww....

Back to reading!

What do you think?

[volodya61]

Originally Posted by gap

..number of shots required to down the plane..

Like here? - http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...&postcount=216

Originally Posted by gap

In order to reduce randomness, you could also reduce hurricane's hit points to 1 (1 shot=1 kill) in its zon file

Which one?
data\Air\AF_HurricaneMkI or data\Air\AFB_HurricaneMkIIc

[gap]

Originally Posted by volodya61

Like here? - http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...&postcount=216

Like this:

Originally Posted by gap

how may times the plane dived to attack us before it got shot down, or (even better) number of bullets left after downing it.

Originally Posted by volodya61

Which one?
data\Air\AF_HurricaneMkI or data\Air\AFB_HurricaneMkIIc

The Mk I

[volodya61]

Originally Posted by gap

The Mk I

There is no .zon file in this folder (data\Air\AF_HurricaneMkI).. only .cfg, .eqp, .sns..

[gap]

Originally Posted by volodya61

There is no .zon file in this folder (data\Air\AF_HurricaneMkI).. only .cfg, .eqp, .sns..

ops... I forgot it: the Hurricane Mk. I is a clone of the Mk II. Just edit Hawker_Hurricane_MKII.zon. You can do it in Goblin or in s3d editor

[volodya61]

Gap, do you have accurate data of the number of shells/bullets on board subs for the deck and AA guns?.. want to make a complete revision of the weapon files for my mod-pack..

[gap]

Originally Posted by volodya61

Gap, do you have accurate data of the number of shells/bullets on board subs for the deck and AA guns?.. want to make a complete revision of the weapon files for my mod-pack..

Yes, more or less...

According to "Warship Pictorial 27 - Kriegsmarine Type VII U-Boats", some typical U-boat's AA armaments would have been as follows:

- types VIIA, VIIB and VIIC: 1 x 20 mm C/30 gun with 1,100 rounds;
- type VIIC/41: 1 x 37 mm SK C/30U gun with 1,200 rounds and 2 x C/38 twin mount guns with 4,400 rounds

I don't know how corrected is this information. For sure it is not complete. Anyway, I would assign 1,100 rounds to each 20 mm gun (2,200 for twin mountings and 4,400 for quad) and 1,200 rounds to each 37 mm gun (2,400 for twin mountings), though I admit that these loadouts could result a bit excessive if the player equipped his boat with multiple twin and quad flak guns.

Unfortunately, afaik there's no way to limit the maximum number of rounds of a given type which can be carried aboard the sub (in game the total loadout is determined by the sum of the rounds assigned to each gun), whereas the small space aboard a real U-boat would have posed serious limitations.

Regarding outfits, Navweps reports about 25% of AP incendiary and 75% of HE incendiary rounds, for the 20 mm flaks. Nonetheless, according to "Naval Weapons of World War Two" by John Campbell, early outfits might have included HE rounds alone. As for 37 mm guns, according to the above sources, outfits were only HE with tracer for the SK C/30U gun, and 2/3 HE incendiary, 1/3 AP with tracer for Flak M42.

In respect to the 88 mm deckgun, the loadout reported by Warship Pictorial is 160 shells for the type VIIA, and 220 for the remaining models. According to Campbell, outfits for U-boats included exclusively HE and HE incendiary, with AP and starshells carried onboard minesweepers and subchasers alone.