Reduced Merchant Ship Crew Visuals

[John Pancoast]

Old news but if anyone doesn't know how to do this, here you go. NYGM has an aspect I like of various AI visual nodes for various objects in the game. I.e., aircraft, escorts, merchants each have their own visual capablities vs. the "one size fits all" of stock and some other mods.
The one size fits all approach means, i.e., that merchant "crews" have the same spotting capability as an escort crew. I agree with NYGM in that a merchant crew shouldn't have the same capabities as an escort crew and modded my installs as such per the NYGM example.
If you'd like to add it to your install(s) it is very easy and very tedious to do.
Very Easy part:
- Simply open the "AI_Sensors.dat" file and add a visual node for the merchants.
Copying NYGM's work, that means add a node called "X"_Visual" in the same format as the standard "AI_Visual" node already present in your AI_Sensors.dat file. You can call this new node anything you want, but it's name has to also be entered in each ship's .sns file per below, so the simpler the name the easier and less time consuming that is to do.
Make it's sensors MaxRange at least half of your environment size. I.e., 16k env. would have an 8k meter range, 20k would be 10k, etc. You can make it whatever range desired if felt that even half range is to much, etc.
Very Tedious part:
- each merchant ship in your install than has to have it's .sns (sensors) file visual node changed to reflect the above. The visual node is usually the first one listed in the .sns file.
With dozens of merchant ships in most installs you can see how this is tedious. I imagine Teddy Bar made a program to do this quickly for the NYGM work but most of us will have to do it by hand, one at a time.
Long ago in the dos days there were commands to do this all at once too but I can't remember what happened last week let alone that far back.

I've attached a link to show an example of what needs to be done., using a ship from IABL's MFM mod and the stock AI_Sensors.dat file
Now you can have merchant crews have their own visual ability (or lack thereof).
You can even reduce the range even more to try to simulate the "inside the convoy" night attacks various Commanders actually did, which can be hard to do in most installs due to the shared visual abilities.
But be careful doing this; you don't want them completely blind.


Last but not least, apply via JSGME.

[FUBAR295]

John,

Thanks for posting this. I felt some of the merchant had too good of an eye. That's some of the reason I play NYGM a lot more than some of the other supermods.

Now I have some more tweaking and mod making to do.

Good hunting,
FUBAR295

[John Pancoast]

Yes, that's why I did it for other installs. I don't use any one megamod but bits and pieces from them and stock both.

[Fifi]

Good tips John, and what you described for merchant visual, we can do exact same for planes in data/air

[John Pancoast]

Originally Posted by Fifi

Good tips John, and what you described for merchant visual, we can do exact same for planes in data/air

Exactly ! You can do it for anything desired.

[Mister_M]

Would be cool to post the NYGM values of each X_visual sensor (or your own version), along with the Sensors.cfg and Sim.cfg (in data/Cfg folder).

[John Pancoast]

If anyone is interested I have uploaded a mod containing edited IABL's MFM 3.3 and stock merchant ships .sns files.
Find it here.

[tonschk]

Originally Posted by John Pancoast

If anyone is interested I have uploaded a mod containing edited IABL's MFM 3.3 and stock merchant ships .sns files.
Find it here.

Thank you very much John Pancoast

[Jeff-Groves]

I have the Script for 010 to the point of stripping the .cfg extension and working on opening the sns files to replace the O01 setting then saving the file.
Now if there is no O01 or sns file? It just skips as in the case of Iceburgs.
Would adding the ability to check say like Aircraft/other stuff for a sensor change be a good way to go?

[John Pancoast]

Anything you want to put together would be great and much appreciated Jeff !

[Mister_M]

Originally Posted by Jeff-Groves

Would adding the ability to check say like Aircraft/other stuff for a sensor change be a good way to go?

Sure !

[rudewarrior]

Originally Posted by John Pancoast

Make it's sensors MaxRange at least half of your environment size. I.e., 16k env. would have an 8k meter range, 20k would be 10k, etc. You can make it whatever range desired if felt that even half range is to much, etc.

I play a messy soup, but the central megamod is GWX. So I went through the trouble of doing this and set the distance 7.5k. I have done a little experimenting with it, not a whole lot.

I wanted to follow up and see if anyone had any suggestions for the ranges based on experimentation they have done.

Wanted to see what people out there were doing who were using this.

[John Pancoast]

rudewarrior, I found that halving the range still gave them too good of spotting ability for my tastes.
So I changed it to .25 instead. I.e, 16k env. gives them a 4k setting, etc.
I think it works better now.

[FUBAR295]

I, like John, use 4km. Seems to be about right. Don't want them blind, but not eagle eyed also.

[rudewarrior]

Thanx for the input guys, I will modify mine similarly.

However, I wanted to expand this discussion to a bit of theory. It would seem that the primary spotting tool for the convoy would be the escorts.

In order to maximize the spotting, it would seem that the merchants would have trained spotters as well. It would also assume that these spotters would most likely be on the outer ships. Most likely they would be looking to the front and sides of the convoy.

Not necessarily the rear. I suspect that this cannot be simulated.

I have found two articles about the same subject that are very similar here and here.

I found both articles to be rather interesting, and they both come to the same conclusion: u-boats were attacking from within the convoy.

However, the Time article states that they also came to the conclusion that the u-boats were slipping into the convoys from the rear. This is the first I have seen or heard of this. I have gotten the impression that u-boats would slip through the screen up front and let the convoy overtake them.

Are you all able to move into the convoy from the rear? I have to admit that I am suspicious of this method. It would seem to me that an object moving forward in your formation is far more suspicious and easier to spot than one that is drifting to the rear. Has anyone seen this tactic mentioned before?

The book is fairly recent, published in 2019. I am thinking of reading it as it seems that it may have some insights into this very subject.

Edit: I just bought the book. It happens to be on a deal on Kindle at Amazon for only $3!