[WIP] Leadtail Ships for WoTK

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by leadtail

Wow that is helpful information. In the limited testing I have done so far on my battleships, and cargo ships for that matter, they seam to sink straight down instead of rolling over. What do I need to change to get them to turn turtle for the big ships or break apart for the smaller ones?

Iambecomelife, to make these as plug and play as possible for your mod what are some of the setting numbers you plan to use on your ships? Also from the smoke I see in your screen shoots of the Lusitania did you create a new particle effect with a different ID # than the stock game one, or did you just modify it? If it is new can you send it to me so I can call it out in the ships .sim files so you don't have to change all of them once you get them?

Again anyone that knows .zone files and whats to spend the time in tweaking them for my ships per iambecomelife directions let me know and I'll send you the ships for testing. I have a lot of ships to still make and time doing this is less time getting new ones in game.

When editing the.zon file you need to place zones far apart from one another so that flooding on one side will not affect the other side of the ship. Then you need to give it a high floatability value (means that more buoyancy is lost when the compartment is damaged). You may also want to armor the compartment slightly in S3ditor, so that the adjacent compartment doesn't flood when a torpedo hits the other side. You can also raise the center of gravity of the ship in the .sim file - don't overdo this or it will roll over with no damage. A value of about 5-6 makes a ship top heavy; 8 or 9 is usually excessive.

To make a ship break up, you need to open the ship's Dat file in S3ditor, then open the Zon file. Locate the keel in the. zon file compartment editor (which runs in the Dat file window) and simply drag it into a larger area of the hull with S3ditor's .zon editing feature (make a bigger hitbox for the keel - the bigger the hitbox for the keel, the greater chance John Q. Skipper hits the keel when he launches his tin fish! S3ditor has got a graphic interface and is easy to use.

Then, you should open zones.cfg and increase the critical chance of a torpedo striking the keel. The higher the critical chance, the more likely she breaks up. It's text based and easy once you get the hang of it.

For instance, look at this zones.cfg entry:


[NSKeel]
Category=Keel
Multiplier=5.0
Flotability=25.0
HitPoints=120
Destructible=No
Armor Level=20
Critic Flotation=0.75
Critical=Yes
Critical Chance=1.0
FloodingTime=500
CargoType=None
Crash Depth=15

Note the area in red. Very low chance of a critical hit here (1%). Values are, I believe 1% to 100 %. If you up it to 100 then you should be guaranteed a breakup if a torpedo hits the keel (as long as adjacent compartments don't absorb too much of the torpedo energy).

DO NOT MAKE THE KEEL DESTRUCTIBLE...that's not how the damage model should work. Leave it "Destructible=No".

And don't worry about the smoke; I will fiddle with it myself.