Problem with GFO mod radar stations

[Bubblehead1980]

Originally Posted by Nisgeis

You could probably do it, if you had a 'class' of sub like 'Early war fit out Gato' / 'Mid war fit out Gato' and then you could assign a different 'interior' to those classes and have the early interiors delete the PPI unit. The player would then have to switch sub classes to get a refit. It's a lot of work, given that most people will just use map contacts on and not care either way.

Ah, that would be amazing, but yes , a lot of work, a lot of work lol.

One of the follies of SH 4 is were not given a truly functional radar from the start so people just got used to running the map contacts. I was one of them for a long time, but your radar mod with the 3D TDC changed the game so for sure. I am willing to many more would learn and run without the contacts. Seemed more intimidating than it was to learn and it enables me to play with map contacts and still properly track and sink ships. If its early war and don't have the SJ-1 yet I ignore the PPI as much as possible but inevitably one catches a glance of it sometimes.

I would be happy with a "cover" or something to black the PPI screen out until appropriate time.


One downside of playing with map contacts, is since UBI cheated us out of an SD radar display, when do not have map contacts enabled, you have no real visual representation of the aircraft contact. Then it is screwed anyways because SD was not directional, so could not give a bearing to the aircraft, only a range, but in SH 4 it gives a bearing. I played around with SD a bit to see if could fix that, where would give a SD contact but not the bearing but it does not work, unfortunately.

[Nisgeis]

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

I would be happy with a "cover" or something to black the PPI screen out until appropriate time.

There are radar covers modelled in the base game, but not implemented, I think they are in the in the equipment files (with all the sensor models maybe?). The same problem occurs though, to have a different interior (with covers) you'd need a different 'class' of sub, linked to a different interior. I think originally the developers may have had the idea to have the interior change according to what sensors you had, as hinted at by the radar covers being in the equipment file (if that's where they truly are). However, there is no mechanism to do this.

I was going to use the radar covers in the radar range mod as an additional bit of realism, so they were covered when submerged, but I didn't for some reason. Perhaps because the only way to 'place' them that made sense was to tie the covers being in place with the set being off, but maybe that looked horrible with waves going over the antennae and the set flicking on and off, which would have made the covers flick in and out of existence too. Also, with the covers on you can't manipulate any of the controls, but I don't think that would have been a problem. I can't remember.

[propbeanie]

The interior of the sub is called from the cfg file, so that would mean needing a new submarine class to change the interior. That is a major problem with the game, in that going from one class of sub to the next, without fail, would entail the player being in-port at the time of the change, and that there would be no other boat available, else you have a failure of either no "upgrade", or an upgrade to the wrong boat.

The covers are in the sensors.dat file


and most of the boats' CT interiors are like this:


The problem is that they seemingly do not operate independently. I do seem to remember a post or two from someone (you Nisgeis??) where they were experimenting with these, and had several issues that I do not recall the details of. It is so tantalizing to try some experiments though, because there is this:

[UserPlayerUnit 1.Compartment 4.EquipmentSlot 4]
ID= EqSlot42
NameDisplayable= A-Scope Radar Cabinet
Type=NULL
AcceptedTypes=NULL
UserCustomizable=No
IDLinkEquipmentIntervalDefault1= NULL, NULL, NULL
ExternalNodeName3D= NULL
ExternalDamageZoneTypeID3D= -1

[UserPlayerUnit 1.Compartment 4.EquipmentSlot 5]
ID= EqSlot43
NameDisplayable= PPI Radar Cabinet
Type=NULL
AcceptedTypes=NULL
UserCustomizable=No
IDLinkEquipmentIntervalDefault1= NULL, NULL, NULL
ExternalNodeName3D= NULL
ExternalDamageZoneTypeID3D= -1

in the SubName.upc file, which would insinuate you could have them "active" at different times, but like the Observation Periscope versus the Radar Periscope, experiments have proven otherwise, like they are joined at the hip, and seemingly are not allowed to "update" to a new state of activity... The consoles are listed in the sub hull, along with the air search radar, while the surface search is in the conning tower UnitParts file. All are updated in the SubName.upc UpgradePackSlots section... just slightly confusing.

So... there are several conns in the Objects folder for each sub... Is it possible maybe, to have several "hulls" in the SubName folder, and then use "UnitPart 1" and "UnitPart 2" to call gear???