Destroyers Discussion (getting rid of pin point drops)

[CB..]

Originally Posted by Der Teddy Bar

The missions in the pattern folder are those that the games uses when you use the navigational officers search patterns.

it's a dang shame they didn't do the same thing for the DD search patterns--would have been interesting trying to make new ones

[Der Teddy Bar]

Originally Posted by CB..

on the sensitivity issue-- we need to know how to set the sensitivity to zero in the AI_sensors.dat in order to force the use of the sim.cfg entrys

The sim.cfg is for the U-BOAT's AI, not the escorts.

Originally Posted by CB..

it's a dang shame they didn't do the same thing for the DD search patterns--would have been interesting trying to make new ones

Now your catching up :rotfl: I had been on that very mission at the time, no pun intended.

[CB..]

The sim.cfg is for the U-BOAT's AI, not the escorts

don't be daft :rotfl:

on the issue in hand---even tho i am now purely talking to myself lol

the crewrating was the problem-- comment out your crew ratings entrys and the AI starts to behave in a consistent fashion mission by mission---

[caspofungin]

the crewrating was the problem-- comment out your crew ratings entrys and the AI starts to behave in a consistent fashion mission by mission---

so what do they do now that they didn't before? react appropriately to convoy attacks etc? 'cause that would be a start...

have you tried changing sensitivity in ai_sensors yet? i'd do it myself, but my hexediting skills are weak.

[CB..]

Originally Posted by caspofungin

so what do they do now that they didn't before? react appropriately to convoy attacks etc? 'cause that would be a start...

have you tried changing sensitivity in ai_sensors yet? i'd do it myself, but my hexediting skills are weak.

the best way to describe them would that in each mission/patrol they have behaved in a moderately effective fashion- yes they have found me and attacked when i've torped ships and generally put up something approaching a palpable threat --

but in a way that's not the important thing here-- thinking back thru the thread--

folks including me couldn't guage the effectiveness of their sensor edits because the DD's wouldn't behave in a consistent fashion mission after mission after mission --making the whole thing impossibly frustrating and not really worth the effort-

now they do seem to behave consitently in every campaign patrol and single mission i've played--nothing fancy just consitent--

so now i can start to customise their sensors to suit my own personal gameplay needs with some hope that these changes will be visible every time i play--

on the sensitivity thing unless the AI_sensors.dat sensitivity entry is set to zero the sim.cfg sensitivity entry is ignored---i'm the same as you i don't know how to corretcly set teh AI_sensors.dat sensitivity entry to zero to try this out (it's shown as a long hex number in TT's analsyer)

anyhuw i'm sure there's a debat awaiting surrounding wether or not the sim.cfg actually effects the DD's and not the players AI u-boat crew but that's just a distraction really---

you can edit the other sensor factors in the DAT file same as before and perhaps try again?

personally i'm still going to increase the hydrophone range a little just to make the DD's a bit more dangerous ( as i say they best described as "moderately dangerous" after the crewrating "tweak")

i'm banking on my old theory of uber hydrophones crap sonar and short lose contact time for the most fun

[HEMISENT]

CB. I've been following closely all the work being done here and I admit I don't know enough to contribute anything but I'm a bit confused about your crew rating edit. sorry if this is a stupid question but:
I went to the Campaigns/Campaign folder, opened up the Campaign_RND file looking for "CrewRating". For every random group there is a "CrewRating=" entry. from 1 to 1700. I know you didn't edit 1700+ entrys so which one am I looking for. Similiar question in U 505 mission. Do I edit every CrewRating= entry for every unit or is there a main CrewRating entry that I'm not finding. What am I missing here.

Thanks again for all the hard work digging this out.

[CB..]

cheers you need to edit them all really ( or it's easier for the purposes of testing it out)

ideally you just need to edit the escorts but that would take for-ever by hand-- do just use the edit/replace function in wordpad to replace ALL instances of

CrewRating

with

;CrewRating


note the ;

if after all your not at all happy with it or have any problems just reverse the process and your back to normal again

let me know how you get on with it one way or another--

[CB..]

Originally Posted by caspofungin

so what do they do now that they didn't before? react appropriately to convoy attacks etc? 'cause that would be a start...

have you tried changing sensitivity in ai_sensors yet? i'd do it myself, but my hexediting skills are weak.

here's a thought on that---the radar and visual sensor have a sensitivity entry in the sensors.dat--and judging from the corresponding entry in the sim.cfg it's higher than the sonar and hydrophones (makes sense)

perhaps as an experiment you could copy the hex number for the radar as shown in the analyzer into the same box for the hydrophones---think i'll give it a ago for the sake of interest

up date i've just done this!! i'll let you know how i go on---


on a side not i was poking around some of the files with a hex editor and came across a level_bomber entry for the bombers--- anything that stops the sunderlands etc from impersonating Stukas has to be worth trying so i added the entry to the aircraft cfgs like this

[Unit]
ClassName=LBSSunderlandMKIII
UnitType=304
MaxSpeed=217.0
MinSpeed=60.0
MaxRadius=2300
Length=26
Width=34.4
RenownAwarded=70
Level_bomber=1

and they behave a little more like bombers -- not pulling that vertical and quite impossible climb they usually do after a run

now they climb more sensibly away after an attack--new to me this might be old hat to others tho

[HEMISENT]

CB
Thanks for the editing tip. When I saw those 1700 entrys I kind of thought there has to be a better way. The replace/edit function worked like a champ.
I learn something new every day here.

I'm trying the U 505 mission. I used it to do a lot of back and forth testing when Gouldjg was first putting together his Hollywood mod and the DDs never acted the same way twice.

[gouldjg]

Hi all

Sorry for not being very active over this last week.

I had a serious problem at work (fatality) you guess the rest knowing that I am the safety manager and the HSE is all over the company (quite rightly so IMHO).

Anyway I am still very busy dealing with officials and writing reports up at the moment but hope to be back in relax mode sometime this week.


@Redwine

What is anum_bold or bold_launcher?. This is what I found in the sensors.sim near the bottom and I presumed it may be decoys but think I am very wrong.

In fact what is a ubold?

Sorry I can not confirm if this is decoy or not.


CB

I quickly read your progress and think your on the right track. I also saw the part in the SH3sim.act file where it says if 0 refer to sim.cfg.

I agree that before any real progess can be made, we should set all ships on as much a level config as possible. Only then can the real tweaking begin.

It is just a matter of knowing what they defaulted to.

I have just done the 505 mission in the way you said about crew rating nerfed out and then applied a 200 min nerf on all the passive and active sensors.

As well as this, I added an xtra 300 mtrs on all maximun ranges for both passive and active sensors.

I tried the lose time = (shorter) but they became too dumb for my liking when observing.

I did notice that they no longer pin point unless I make it absolutely obvious where I am or stay on the same track whilst being hunted at 180 degrees.

I set sensitivity in the sim.cfg to 0.028 for each.

This is my setting to date and I can still be killed yet still too early to claim any success

[AI detection]
Lost contact time=60

[Hydrophone]
Detection time=1
Sensitivity=0.028
Height factor=0
Waves factor=0.5
Speed factor=20
Noise factor=1.0

[Sonar]
Detection time=10
Sensitivity=0.028
Waves factor=0.5
Speed factor=20
Enemy surface factor=200
Lose time=60



With these settings and the changes to the sensors.dat, I am finding that the DD does infact no longer get very pin-point drops,

oops
forgot to mention that I also changed the deph presision of the DC to 30 in hope that DD has to compensate and drop at different angles/times. Maybe this is why I am getting some good results ?????????

Obviously no way near completed as I need to start checking to ensure the DD have not become dumb in early years.

Am I correct that you are presuming that there is a random effect with crew levels. I ask this cos when snooping in main game files, I notice a lot of references to random .

Now the key is to get the clever DD that attacks for hours but still a chance to escape without decoy use. p.s. I also noticed decoy did throw off DD a little better than normal.

I am considering totally re-writing all damage values for the following reasons.

A ramming should kill the sub but to get this, I have to lower the hp of sub.

With lowered HP, all weapons have to be set to compensate i.e. lowered. Also need to set the crushing rate to a much lower number so sub still crushes slower than normal. When using hex I came accross the meaning of crush speed and the formula is ammount of damage per second. I am confident this can be altered.

I have to go to bed now but one last thing,

I managed to find the line to get the oil slick added in game. The only problem is that it only looks good if the ship is next to motionless and that you attach it to something under the water level.

try it:- Just pop this line as an effect on your conning tower in the zones.cfg.

Effect1=#Oil_Floating_Spot, 5

Start 505 mission and surface,

You will notice the oil patch will appear above the crew and move with the sub (not very cool).

Now add it to the keel of some ships or anything that usually only goes when underwater.

I am trying to add it to something so it leaves a trail on surface but this is proving difficult.

Anyway great work CB,

Had to edit mistakes so read again lol

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by CB..

on a side not i was poking around some of the files with a hex editor and came across a level_bomber entry for the bombers--- anything that stops the sunderlands etc from impersonating Stukas has to be worth trying so i added the entry to the aircraft cfgs like this

Just so you know, this is NOT a good idea.

There is a reason AirPower mod replaced Liberators changed to a dive bomber instead of level_bomber -

to put it simply, the level bomber AI is broken and useless

[Der Teddy Bar]

CB..
I presume that for testing purposes that it would be easier to change the sensors.cfg entires below from true to false...
Hydrophone uses crew efficiency=true
Sonar uses crew efficiency=true
Radar Warning uses crew efficiency=true

Far easier than stripping out the campaign files CrewRating entries.

[CB..]

Sorry to hear about the accident Gouldig-- hope everything works out as well as it can--


thanks for the encouragement on the crewrating tweak---
i'll try your sim.cfg entrys as well--

hey would a smoke trail work as an oil slick on the sub it would look good in the external view even if no where else?

here's something strange i edited the AI_sensor,dat to use the same senisitivity for the hydrophones as the radar ( more sensitive? i'm assuming) and it really only had one noticible effect in game---i got the time excell changes when a ship was near by and when a convoy was coming into range much much earlier---the DD's were unn affected by the changes only the time excell stuff---now that's just plain perculiar---not sure what to make of the whole issue i must admit -- things work ok with the crewrating tweak/nerf and the stock AI_sensors.dat-- butediting the dat gives results that are counter-intuitive---it is allmost as if the whole thing is reversed--i'm puzzled--there's something elaborate going on

anyhuw cheers again guys for the feedback hope we can pull some sort of rabbit out of the hat

[CB..]

Originally Posted by Der Teddy Bar

CB..
I presume that for testing purposes that it would be easier to change the sensors.cfg entires below from true to false...
Hydrophone uses crew efficiency=true
Sonar uses crew efficiency=true
Radar Warning uses crew efficiency=true

Far easier than stripping out the campaign files CrewRating entries.

not really no---what's your point? have you read the thread? DD effectiveness is the subject not the u-boat-- have you even noticed that the DD' s ability to detect you is as it is entirely random- rendering the entire game nothing more than an elaborate screen saver?
or are you too busy checking the number of rivets on the torpedos

[caspofungin]

easy fellas, easy...

@cb
i've played around w/ extensive changes to the ai_sensors files using the mini-tweaker, and haven't managed to get the results i'd like -- specifically, long-range detection w/ hydrophones (check the 1st page, escorts could hear a sub at 6kts at about 3000m -- the numbers are for us subs, and don't specifiy the listening conditions, but in the abscence of hard data its all we have to go on at the moment.) and more distant pinging eg 1800-2000m.

i've tried all ranges of sensitivity, from 0 to 1, in increments, and didn't really notice that much difference. dropping noise factor allows the escorts to hear you from far away, but then they can hear you at silent running from pretty far away, too. i can live w/ that -- my point is that i didn't really see much effect w/ changing sensitivity in sim.cfg. just want to save you some effort.

could you re-explain the bit about an .act file refering to sensitivity etc? where do we need to change sensitivity to 0 to get the program to use the sim.cfg values? like i've said, i can't hexedit worth ****e, but if someone could supply me w/ a suitably editied file, i'll gladly test and tweak further.