ai traffic

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Armistead

I'm sure you know the evasive short zig ships take when they know you're around, really more helming than a zig, do you know how to increase that?

....

How about this:

Instead of--

small freighter.......8 kts cruising speed
...........................10 kts max speed

It sees your torpedos and rings up max speed, but due to constant helming actually slows down to 5 kts........silly and pointless........


Have it this way--

small freighter.......8 kts cruising speed
...........................16 kts max speed

It sees your torpedos and rings up max speed, it still uses constant helming but only slows down to 11 kts........not so bad........

Is this possible?

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by TorpX

How about this:

Instead of--

small freighter.......8 kts cruising speed
...........................10 kts max speed

It sees your torpedos and rings up max speed, but due to constant helming actually slows down to 5 kts........silly and pointless........


Have it this way--

small freighter.......8 kts cruising speed
...........................16 kts max speed

It sees your torpedos and rings up max speed, it still uses constant helming but only slows down to 11 kts........not so bad........

Is this possible?

To my knowledge the speed evasive ships take are coded. The behavior I'm talking about is not dodging torps, but the small legs they go into when they know you're there. I can get spotted on purpose from long distance and the group goes into the automatic evasive helming always slowing down. SUre you mean the same thing, but this zigging isn't to avoid actual torps as much they know you're around. Most ships if possible will take hard turns to avoid torps. Evading torps ships will speed up or slow down depending on how they can best avoid it.

What's silly is this slow down helming, the zig pattern has hardly any effect on course and doesn't throw your shot off much. Be nice if they would at least stay in a zig leg for a mile or so. In some groups when you attack the convoy will break up, head off in different directions which speeds being everywhere, this is good behavior, just not enough of it. Eventually the group comes back together.

To my knowledge only one speed can be set and the makeup of a group can only go as fast as it's slowest ship...BUT..somewhere code dictates, seems groups will only slow down so much and often will leave a damaged ship behind, then again sometimes the group slows down to the damaged ships speed and remains with it. I attacked Kurita's Center Force and had a Kongo and CA slowed, Kongo could only make 12 kts, the main group left him never slowing down from 22kts. Attacked another TF later and damaged a carrier, entire group slowed from 17 to 7kts, best speed of carrier.

[Armistead]

Ducimas,

Do you know where to find this "Automated campaign scripter " and are you sure it's not the SH4 batch editor, although I believe it's based on "python".

I plan to back out just to TMO and give it a try, but would like to add more ships and more traffic just for myself. Can you use the ME alone to add traffic or must you use the "ACS". Sure you know the ME doesn't work for adding traffic to RSRD, so wondered about the ME with yours not knowing what or how the ACS works....

I mainly want to add traffic to the China coast. I did this within RSRD and actually ran a lot of shipping along the coast, in and out of harbors, through inlets, etc.., where you really had only one side to attack from.

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Armistead

To my knowledge the speed evasive ships take are coded. The behavior I'm talking about is not dodging torps, but the small legs they go into when they know you're there. .......

Yes, I know what you are talking about. They are evading; just not evading any particular torp. My point is that while AI behavior is hard coded, speed is not. The idea is to compensate for the constant helming slowdown by artificially pumping up the speed. I was assuming that ships have a cruising and max. speed.

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by TorpX

Yes, I know what you are talking about. They are evading; just not evading any particular torp. My point is that while AI behavior is hard coded, speed is not. The idea is to compensate for the constant helming slowdown by artificially pumping up the speed. I was assuming that ships have a cruising and max. speed.

I realize it's sort of the same, except if ships somehow find you out before you shoot they will go into the zig pattern and slow down at a more constant speed. This is more of a fixed zig pattern they will do regardless if you shoot torps or not. If you shoot torps their speeds can increase or decrease to miss torps and often they'll make sharp turns to dodge your torps, then usually go back to the helming.

As far as I know you can only set one speed for ships and they will hold to that speed. When it comes to going into zigs or increasing/decreasing speed to evade torps that has to be coded behavior and speeds can be anywhere depending on what the AI feels is needed to dodge a torp. Like the BB I shot at last night, it was going 17kts, it got me on radar and went into the helming and slowed to 12kts, when I finally shot at it, it slowed almost down to nothing to dodge the bow torp, turning away, then cranked up to flank speed to try and dodge the torp coming aft. Course we all hate the turbo stops and starts a ship can do to evade torps, but I know of no speed factors that can be adjusted manually here.

[tater]

Ships accelerate too fast, frankly. They decelerate too fast as well.

The campaign system has many limitations.

The way ducimus deals with stuff is actually my preferred way, as much as I love RSRDC.

I did a HUGE amount of experimentation with zig zag patterns, and it's simply unworkable because of limitations in the game engine. It's something that should have been built in as a standard behavior from the start of game design. In wartime MOST ships zig zag. Period. ZZs are NOT /\/\/\/\/, they are in fact very complex patterns. Times between turns are set to be short enough to be meaningful in RL. That means short enough that a torpedo fired might miss, so that means straight lines on the order of (or shorter) than torpedo run times.

As duci said, with realistic ZZs, I could get no more than a couple convoys in a single editor layer without crashing the editor using realistic (exact japanese convoy patterns) ZZs.

The basic notion of generic—but appropriate—entries is a good one. My campaign was based up on that. Certain historical units might then be separated so they are appropriately rare.

A far better AI and mission system was what I wanted to see with newer versions of SH, not stuff that is to me idiotic (interior animations, yawn).

tater

[Armistead]

I agree, I once tried heavy ZZ paterns with RSRD to figure out the overload flaw quickly, that's why I wish there was a way to change the evasive helming into a longer ZZ pattern, so you don't have to overload with waypoints to do it.

I agree, generic shipping is great for building randomly spawned groups, lurker acutally uses a lot of generic ships himself, just a lot more groups are designed and all the battles are scripted with correct ships as much as allowed.

Hate the evasise ZZ's are hard coded that we can't extend the legs, instead of the silly helming that has lil effect on your setup.

[tater]

Frankly, within the limitations of the engine, I started to think about the possibility of changing the detection radius of the enemy such that convoys would ALWAYS be alerted to you. They should ALWAYS be ZZing, and on a time scale of minutes per leg. 100% of the time.

I'm very well aware of the RSRD campaign, and the inner workings, trust me

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by tater

Frankly, within the limitations of the engine, I started to think about the possibility of changing the detection radius of the enemy such that convoys would ALWAYS be alerted to you. They should ALWAYS be ZZing, and on a time scale of minutes per leg. 100% of the time.

I'm very well aware of the RSRD campaign, and the inner workings, trust me

Change detection radius, always tried to figure that one out, but to shorten it, because the PC lag always gives a group away because the zone appears to reach out to the distance of your best equipment regardless, you know, people get the lag then go check sonar themselves.

I thought that was hard coded, seems if you extended it, it would pick up all groups within that range both ways, slow the ships down, etc...the helming doesn't really effect much....However if you know a way to increase the minutes that would be great once they start ZZ..

[TorpX]

Do ships/convoys in SH III zig? And if so, how do SH III mod deal with the issue?