Higher Ranks, Tested and Party Approved

[bigboywooly]

Interesting

[Tessa]

I kept the stock GWX rank values for levels 0-3; after that I used a simple fibonacci sequence to set the higher ranks. Unless the academy bonus is removed (which I believe is the plan for 2.1) and start with 0 reknown raising the first two ranks will be necessary. Otherwise you automatically skip rank 0 without even going out on patrol, and you'll gain almost enough reknown from the 1st patrol even if you don't sink anything from completing the patrol assignment to get promoted. Something to think about possibly changing to make the first few steps a bit more worthwhile in leiu of the nealry complete officer ranks availability.

[Avatar]

Tessa,
Have you found a way to give your player commander medals? I'm on patrol 24 and I still have yet to be offered the Uboat War Badge.
Thanks for your great work on ranks, I am hoping to find a way to award a medal that I believe should have been awarded after the first patrol.
Again thanks for the work!
cheers!

[Tessa]

Originally Posted by Avatar

Tessa,
Have you found a way to give your player commander medals? I'm on patrol 24 and I still have yet to be offered the Uboat War Badge.
Thanks for your great work on ranks, I am hoping to find a way to award a medal that I believe should have been awarded after the first patrol.
Again thanks for the work!
cheers!

Thanks Reworking the whole medal box, awarding criteria and what not is a project I've been working on alongside 2 others. As I've finished 1 and nearly finished with the 2nd I'll be able to disect this one and hopefully fix it for good. The medals are a particularly hard one given the way that the game implements them (just the medals themselves). Even with what is already in there; there should be a bronze and silver combat clasp instead of the gold one (which never existed) and wasn't available till 44 anyway. The German cross also came in two versions, silver and gold and the sub badge also came in two versions, one plain and the other with diamonds. There's a lot to do with fixing this particular aspect, getting all the medals is one project in itself, and getting the game to correct award them is equally as tough; especially since it seems to break its own parameters - as a test I started a patrol, then docked and finished the patrol without even moving an inch. For my valiant efforts of having a cup of coffee with my crew while still in the dock I was given the German Cross in gold for my exceptional valor for resolving the regular/decaff brawl in the aft torpedo room.

[Graf Paper]

Bless you, Tessa! This is a mod that should have been done from day one.

I've never quite understood why, but past discussions of this usually ended with some long-time modder or member stating that ranks were hard-coded and messing with the configs would cause CTDs or corrupted career saves. Hence, no way to "climb the ladder" as a measure of your skills rather than merely "hot-rodding" your boat and/or surviving the war.

I belive I am not alone in greatly anticipating your reworking of the awards.

It would be wonderful if you and Jaesen could get together and have him help you to intergrate the new ranks and awards into his SH3 Commander.

This would also add realism by using his "random crew transfers" feature to reflect that your WO or CE got promoted to command their own u-boat, if possible.

Too bad there's currently no known way to promote ordinary crew and petty officers to officer ranks for replacing any officers that get transferred or promoted out. Then again, higher ranks for your u-boat commander wasn't supposed to work, either, according to common wisdom.

Keep up the great work, Tessa!

P.S. Wouldn't this technically be more suitable for posting in the SH3Mods Workshop section?

[Jimbuna]

There's a bit of food for thought here

[Grayson02sept1980]

dumb question:
what is a higher rank good for other than personal satisfaction?

[JScones]

Originally Posted by Graf Paper

It would be wonderful if you and Jaesen could get together and have him help you to intergrate the new ranks and awards into his SH3 Commander.

I'm sure that you can appreciate that as one of SH3Cmdr's main aims is to provide an historical wrapper around SH3, including something that sees Admirals cruising around in U-boats just doesn't fit well.

Plus, SH3Cmdr is, and will always remain, mod neutral. Assuming, therefore, that all players want to be Admirals cruising around in U-boats isn't appropriate either.

What I will do, however, is remove any modifications that SH3Cmdr makes to the rank labels in *_menu.txt. This means that the options to force ranks and medals to display in a specific language will go. SH3Cmdr will revert to reading and using whatever rank labels exist in the game, between numbers 170 and 179 (it will ignore 175).

But players need to understand that as this mod is merely text label changes, there is no way for SH3Cmdr to know whether you start as an ObLt, KptLt, or burger flipper, so if you adjust your rank in any way, it will create a hole in your Personnel File between your pre-SH3 career and your SH3 career. You can plug this by adjusting the ranks stored in SH3Cmdr_*.txt (removing Seekadett in the process), but as the pre-SH3 promotion dates are based on an SH3 start rank of Lt (after all, that is what the stock game starts with), they will no longer be reflective of RL conditions. But again, players can edit the dates in their SH3Cmdr.ini file if they really want to.

Personally, having lived through the "rank bumping" debacle two years ago and knowing the potential frustrations, I would see better value in combining the "classic" approach of starting as an Lt but changing the renown required to ensure that you get promoted to ObLt after your first patrol (as is current practice; chosen for a reason ), with the extra ranks that Tessa has added. Sure, this reduces the maximum rank to a mere Vizeadmiral, but...

Originally Posted by Graf Paper

This would also add realism by using his "random crew transfers" feature to reflect that your WO or CE got promoted to command their own u-boat, if possible.

Not with you here, as Tessa's mod only adjusts player ranks. Crewmen will retain the same rank as they do now.

Originally Posted by Graf Paper

Too bad there's currently no known way to promote ordinary crew and petty officers to officer ranks for replacing any officers that get transferred or promoted out. Then again, higher ranks for your u-boat commander wasn't supposed to work, either, according to common wisdom.

You can. It's common knowledge that from within SH3 you can promote from PO to officer and from crewman to PO, assuming of course, that the crewman has the necessary experience. SH3Cmdr doesn't support this though, because it didn't happen quite like that in RL.

[Tessa]

Originally Posted by JScones

I'm sure that you can appreciate that as one of SH3Cmdr's main aims is to provide an historical wrapper around SH3, including something that sees Admirals cruising around in U-boats just doesn't fit well.

Plus, SH3Cmdr is, and will always remain, mod neutral. Assuming, therefore, that all players want to be Admirals cruising around in U-boats isn't appropriate either.

While I worked this out the rank system that was being used the starting slot (0) was Oberleutnant z. S. so it ended up that my mods final rank was Admiral; the original intent wasn't to make that rank acheivable; just was how it worked out.

Because of the high fatality rate for those in the U-Boat service of the Kriegsmarine, having many officers higher than a CrvtCptn still sailing was very rare. Though in other parts of the armed forces, it wasn't so. In the Luftwaffe there were several Colonel's and even General's that still flew combat sorte's; in our own Navy there was frequently 2 and 3 star admirals out on patrol (albeit in command of a fleet or task force than just 1 ship acting alone).

Even with the high ranks up there, amassing that much reknown is tough unless you never upgrade your ship. Because its hardcoded into SHIII when your reknown goes below the specified level you loose your rank, it doesn't hit you such that your a sub-leutnant and all you're officers are actually your superiors. Thus the high reknown rates for the flag ranks.

Originally Posted by JScones

What I will do, however, is remove any modifications that SH3Cmdr makes to the rank labels in *_menu.txt. This means that the options to force ranks and medals to display in a specific language will go. SH3Cmdr will revert to reading and using whatever rank labels exist in the game, between numbers 170 and 179 (it will ignore 175).

Personally, having lived through the "rank bumping" debacle two years ago and knowing the potential frustrations, I would see better value in combining the "classic" approach of starting as an Lt but changing the renown required to ensure that you get promoted to ObLt after your first patrol (as is current practice; chosen for a reason ), with the extra ranks that Tessa has added. Sure, this reduces the maximum rank to a mere Vizeadmiral, but...

Starting out as a Lt. is reasonable, having 8 ranks available instead of 4 gives much more room to grow and make upgrading not so harsh. Imo if the same amount of reknown that is set to get up to Korvettenkapitän is retained that's a fair start. Then start using the fibbonacci sequence for the higher ranks makes it tough to get much higher than Kapitän z. S.