Ship Names April 2011

[Mouftic]

Great job!

Really adds to the realism of the game.

One quick question, if I sink a British flower escort, is the game going to pick any flower excorts for names or just the British ones.

thanks

[frau kaleun]

It's actually Commander that will add the name to your logs... and it will pick a name at random from all the names listed for a particular class. Unfortunately there's no way to make it distinguish between ships of different nations in the same class. The game doesn't keep a record of which nation spawned a ship, so even if there were a way to filter the choices by nation within a particular class, Commander wouldn't have the info necessary to do that. The class designation [COFlower] is all it has to work with.

One "solution" would be to create a duplicate ship class of a different name in data\Sea for US Flower class ships only, then have that class spawn from the American roster and let the original one spawn from the British roster only. But that adds another ship that the game has to load and if you did it for every ship class that includes more than one nation... BIG extra drain on your system.

The other workaround is to keep two different ShipNames.cfg files, one for the early part of the war and one for after the US enters the fray. "USS" ships can be removed from the mixed-nation classes in the first list and left in the second list. That way they would never show up in your logs until you switched the files after Dec 1941.

Edit: I should add that doing this can end up being a LOT of work. Depending on how Steve has the ships sorted in the original list, it can involve a lot of renumbering, because they have to be listed as 0001, 0002, 0003 and so on without skipping a number otherwise it fouls things up.

[Mouftic]

Ok, i'll pass on the renaming and all...

Thanks for that indepth answer.

[Sailor Steve]

Life would be so much easier if there was a Commander for SH4. There only needs to be one folder for each ship, and it can be applied to any nation without creating new folders.

[fitzcarraldo]

Many thanks!

Can you add the names for the ships in the MIS files of WB?

Best regards.

Fitzcarraldo

[frau kaleun]

Can you add the names for the ships in the MIS files of WB?

You can add them yourself if they're not already there.

Just use the ship's class as shown in the EnglishNames.cfg file and create an entry for it and add the name(s) for it in a numbered list below, following the example of the lists already in the file.

[Sailor Steve]

Here's another change that could be made at the personal level: With the exception of the ships Empire Merchant, Empire Song, Empire Star and Empire Trader there should be no ships with 'Empire' in the name prior to June 30, 1941, when the MoWT was formed.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Here's another change that could be made at the personal level: With the exception of the ships Empire Merchant, Empire Song, Empire Star and Empire Trader there should be no ships with 'Empire' in the name prior to June 30, 1941, when the MoWT was formed.

NOW you mention this?

If that's one of those lists with, like, 3 bazillion ships in it that I'm gonna have to renumber AGAIN because I can not un-know this information...

And I was *this* close to being done!

C'est la vie. Or la guerre. Whatever.

[fitzcarraldo]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

You can add them yourself if they're not already there.

Just use the ship's class as shown in the EnglishNames.cfg file and create an entry for it and add the name(s) for it in a numbered list below, following the example of the lists already in the file.

Thanks Frau Kaleun

For instance: I have the Titanic and the MIS file for this ship. I want to add the "Titanic" and the "Olympic". Sihp class is "Olympic". How to add the "Titanic" name?

Best regards.

Fitzcarraldo

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

C'est la vie. Or la guerre. Whatever.

C'est Lautrec!

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by fitzcarraldo

Thanks Frau Kaleun

For instance: I have the Titanic and the MIS file for this ship. I want to add the "Titanic" and the "Olympic". Sihp class is "Olympic". How to add the "Titanic" name?

Best regards.

Fitzcarraldo

First of all, the "ship class" you need to use is the one that designates that ship in the game - the ClassName - not the class to which it belonged in real life.

The ClassName for a ship can be found in the .cfg file inside its data\Sea folder. For VonDos' RMS Titanic as provided in WB's mod, the .cfg file looks like this:

[Unit]
ClassName=TIT
UnitType=103
MaxSpeed=23
Length=269
Width=28
Mast=52
Draft=15
Displacement=46328
RenownAwarded=890

[2DCompartments]
UnitPos=50,0,416,28
NbOfComp=4
Name1=Propulsion
Area1=52,0,23,26
Name2=Keel
Area2=150,0,237,7
Name3=Engines Room
Area3=193,9,45,17
Name4=Fuel Bunkers
Area4=163,9,28,17

That first line after [Unit] is what you need to look at with regard to adding the ship to your Ship Names .cfg file. So the ClassName for this ship is TIT. (You would pick that one. )

What you want to add to Ship Names is:

[TIT]
0001=RMS Titanic
0002=RMS Olympic

If you like you could also add the lines needed to generate cargo and crew info:

[TIT]
CargoTyp=29
CrewRange=850|870
0001=RMS Titanic
0002=RMS Olympic

The '29' indicates a 'cargo' of passengers; Wikipedia shows a crew of 860 for both the Titanic and a third Olympic-class ship, the Britannic, so that's where I got the crew range. Someone who knows better may have a different suggestion for that, I don't know.

You could in theory also add the Britannic to the list but apparently she never sailed as a passenger liner and went straight into service as a hospital ship in WWI, then was sunk by a mine in 1916. As a hospital ship she wouldn't fit the model for this ship in the game, but in a make-believe world where the Titanic is still available to be sunk by a u-boat in WWII - well, it's up to you. If it were me I'd just list her in a third line as

0003=HMS Britannic

rather than using the more historically accurate 'HMHS' as you wouldn't want to sink an ocean liner and then have it turn up in your logs with a hospital ship designation.

I don't know what display name you've added for the ship in your EnglishNames.cfg, but if you're going to let Commander choose from names other than 'RMS Titanic' for her I would suggest just using

TIT=Olympic class liner

in EnglishNames.cfg, that way you won't have a ship positively IDed by name in the game and then (maybe) given a different name in your patrol log.

[fitzcarraldo]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

First of all, the "ship class" you need to use is the one that designates that ship in the game - the ClassName - not the class to which it belonged in real life.

The ClassName for a ship can be found in the .cfg file inside its data\Sea folder. For VonDos' RMS Titanic as provided in WB's mod, the .cfg file looks like this:

[Unit]
ClassName=TIT
UnitType=103
MaxSpeed=23
Length=269
Width=28
Mast=52
Draft=15
Displacement=46328
RenownAwarded=890

[2DCompartments]
UnitPos=50,0,416,28
NbOfComp=4
Name1=Propulsion
Area1=52,0,23,26
Name2=Keel
Area2=150,0,237,7
Name3=Engines Room
Area3=193,9,45,17
Name4=Fuel Bunkers
Area4=163,9,28,17

That first line after [Unit] is what you need to look at with regard to adding the ship to your Ship Names .cfg file. So the ClassName for this ship is TIT. (You would pick that one. )

What you want to add to Ship Names is:

[TIT]
0001=RMS Titanic
0002=RMS Olympic

If you like you could also add the lines needed to generate cargo and crew info:

[TIT]
CargoTyp=29
CrewRange=850|870
0001=RMS Titanic
0002=RMS Olympic

The '29' indicates a 'cargo' of passengers; Wikipedia shows a crew of 860 for both the Titanic and a third Olympic-class ship, the Britannic, so that's where I got the crew range. Someone who knows better may have a different suggestion for that, I don't know.

You could in theory also add the Britannic to the list but apparently she never sailed as a passenger liner and went straight into service as a hospital ship in WWI, then was sunk by a mine in 1916. As a hospital ship she wouldn't fit the model for this ship in the game, but in a make-believe world where the Titanic is still available to be sunk by a u-boat in WWII - well, it's up to you. If it were me I'd just list her in a third line as

0003=HMS Britannic

rather than using the more historically accurate 'HMHS' as you wouldn't want to sink an ocean liner and then have it turn up in your logs with a hospital ship designation.

I don't know what display name you've added for the ship in your EnglishNames.cfg, but if you're going to let Commander choose from names other than 'RMS Titanic' for her I would suggest just using

TIT=Olympic class liner

in EnglishNames.cfg, that way you won't have a ship positively IDed by name in the game and then (maybe) given a different name in your patrol log.

Very clear, Frau Kaleun. I think Doenitz would win the war with conosseurs as you.

Really, I don´t know why WB select that "TIT" name for the class.

After the Cameron´s movie, I like to sink the Titanic...

Many thanks and best regards.

Fitzcarraldo

[Sailor Steve]

Great explanation, Frau K! Clear and concise. I would recommend a Cargo of 30, though, as if such ships were in service in WW2 they'd probably be carrying troops. You can also use both (29,30), or juggle the chance of which type by using more of one than the other (29,29,30,30,30).

In the other liners I use a multiple of those plus on chance of 'Mail/Packages' being listed: 23,29,29,29,30,30,30,30,30.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Great explanation, Frau K! Clear and concise. I would recommend a Cargo of 30, though, as if such ships were in service in WW2 they'd probably be carrying troops. You can also use both (29,30), or juggle the chance of which type by using more of one than the other (29,29,30,30,30).

In the other liners I use a multiple of those plus on chance of 'Mail/Packages' being listed: 23,29,29,29,30,30,30,30,30.

Excellent point about the troops, I kind of debated whether or not to stick a '30' on there. For some reason it just seemed odd to me to think of the Titanic that way, but if you're going to have her sailing around during WWII anyway it's all up for grabs and no doubt she would've been put into service as something other than a passenger liner. And I suppose Mail is always an acceptable option for any 'RMS' ship.

Except rereading that, it should probably be RMS Britannic if he's gonna add that name. Unfortunate typo on my part.

[Wreford-Brown]

Originally Posted by fitzcarraldo

Really, I don´t know why WB select that "TIT" name for the class.

Blame VonDos!