Destroyers Discussion (getting rid of pin point drops)

[CB..]

i think this is the problem on one level with this whole concept--every-one has different expectations of what sort of behaviuor they want the DD's to exhibit---they all want to DD's to do what they want them to do, when they want them to do it--for the length of time they want them to do it-and they want them to do it with-out getting them selves killed--now i ask you just how often in real life did Destroyers do exactly what the sub commander when he wanted them to do it and for the exact length of tine he desired them to do it for--this is the basic contradiction in realism inherent in any game of this nature--

even if this celubriuos objective is actually achieved i can promise you that it will be as boring as all hell--

far better to have some decent gameplay and be damned to the details--

let the DD's do their job --if they are doing their job and your tonnage results go down as a consequence then the problem has been solved


there-fore i have to say without any doubt that for me this problem is solved ---

[Marhkimov]

I agree with CB's thought... Therefore I vowe to use his settings, whether I like them or not.

After all, did those real u-boat kaleuns have a choice?

[CCIP]

A-ha, I knew I missed some important post.

Thanks CB - I'll definitely give these a look

Installed the settings and we'll see what the result is!

[CB..]

ok thanks guys--no-body has to use my files/mod (stating the obvious of course!)
i came to this thread in the same boat as everybody else--SH3 was an over elaborate screen saver for me--very nice to look at but the DD's were just eye candy completely useless--it would be impossible to exceragerate just quite how useless they were--and there was literally no gameplay what so ever--

all i wanted was for them to do their job---protecting the convoys

so i could get on with doing mine (virtually of course) ie sinking merchants--i try to sink em-- DD's try to stop me--that's the gameplay at the end of the day--

with some luck and a lot of help i came up with summat that persuaded the DD's that doing their job was worth the effort--hence gameplay--hence my problem solved-- woohoo etc

no other mod seemed forth coming even tho i waited --the thread had died---so i made it into a downloadable mod--
no intention to compete with any one else just one thing along with Red's files for folks to at least have a go with--

as i say i can't find anything wrong with it---gameplay for me is great and over time other tweaks will suggest them selves so i'll alter it as and when some small refinement seems to be a good idea--but the jist of it is-- job done--

my current career is at feb 1943 and my last patrol resulted in two ships sunk after a long convoy attack and every torpedo expended from a type 9 c- (four seperate attacks --one in the evening--one at dusk -- one in the middle of the night- - and the final attempt in the morning--each time breaking off surfacing reloading recharging and repositioning again)

total was 24,000 tons

the DD's put up a good show --and I was only able to sink the ships after as BDU calls it "getting aggressive"-- now i know what they meant at last lol--
and this sort of behaviour from the DD's has proven consistent right thru many many previous patrols--
whew reliable game-play at last--

[caspofungin]

i'm totally w/ you, cb -- it's all about gameplay. for me, gameplay = challenge and variability. i want the escorts to punish me for the smallest mistake -- but i also want to be able to use the limitations of their sensors against them.

like you, i think i may have reached a playable set of parameters myself -- but if other people want to take a look at my settings, they're more than welcome to. if they figure something's wrong, then they've done me a favour and saved me some time. one of the mantras of my job -- AIR assess, intervene, reassess.

trust me, i'm not stealing anyone's thunder or anything like that. i feel we're all on the same team, getting to grips w/ the same problem.

i think we're taking slightly different approaches to the same problem. different approaches will highlight different problems, which is why i think the more people involved in testing/tweaking, the better. eventually everyones different approaches -- yours, mine, redwines, everyone else's on this thread -- will complement each other and we'll have a basis for change that will make everyone's game that much better.

i don't have access to my pc right now, but will put my files up on rapidshare w/in 24 hrs.

[HEMISENT]

CB I totally agree with you. Your settings work like a champ. The gameplay and DD behaviour using what you've come up with are pretty much the ticket as far as i'm concerned. My whole point in continued testing is to try to get the same similiar behaviour when RUB is enabled.

Right now I think I'm getting a bit closer.

[Gammel]

i just had an interesting and challanging battle against a lonel DD with CB´s mod installed.

With luck and skillfull seamanship ;-)
i managed to escape the hunter after 2 hours.
(he suddenly left the scene, guess he ran out of dc´s.)
Date was oct. 1940.
He gave me a good fight and i was impressed how he did the attack runs.
He was mostly using only 2 DC`s for every run, stayed passive but used asdic for one single time.
Never saw such a behavior in the game until now.
The mod feels good, i´ll stay with it and do more testing...

Edit
I´ve used a 1.4 based Setup for that test, no RUB here.

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by HEMISENT

CB I totally agree with you. Your settings work like a champ. The gameplay and DD behaviour using what you've come up with are pretty much the ticket as far as i'm concerned. My whole point in continued testing is to try to get the same similiar behaviour when RUB is enabled.

Right now I think I'm getting a bit closer.

I'm technically using the RUb settings, so we'll see what I come up with.

Have you compared other config files with RUb's? There may be something in those that messes things up.

[drEaPer]

Originally Posted by Marhkimov

Myself, I haven't tried the settings yet, but if I were you, I wouldn't jump to conclusions just yet. Depending on the year, DD type, and other variables, you may not have gotten an accurate depiction of the settings.

My suggestion is to try it in '44 or '45 and see if the DD's are anymore challenging. My guess is that you will DIE plenty of horrible deaths...

But then again, that's what you wanted, right? :rotfl:

This post made me wonder: I am in June 1940, playing unmodded SH3, and the destroyers ping alot. Just 15 min ago, I was entering the strait of gibraltar from the east and a destroyer was heading right for me. I crash dived, changed course, went to silent running and 2 min later:ping.....ping.....ping.....ping......ping, ping, ping, ping
some more minutes later: DC directly on my head.

So I have nasty DDs with active in 1940 already.

[Jungman]

Indeed, everyone has a different take. What is very interesting is with that change in the Sim.cfg, the Hydrophones act as super hydrophones, as if they can see you underwater. That is definitley one way (the only so far I have seen) to get their attention to come over and attack you agressively.

After several hours of playing, I have found the sensitivity settings to change quite easily for the 7 Active Sonars for the DD if you care to play with them, and if TT wants to place them into his tool.

The passive sonar (hydrophones) I have studied the format and am getting closer to solving it. For what it is worth.

Here is the basic data on the Active sonar. It is not all inclusive, just the highlights.

The sensitivity setting number follows just the same format as the other values in the file.

Sensitivity_XXXX a blank space then the hex value in IEEE format.

This is for the Active Sonars only. Bow angle +- 90 degrees left right in the horizontal plane.

The Elevation is the verticle angle to mimick the narrow search light or the late war Sword type sonars. 90 is 'horizontal' . Thus 90-100 would be sea level down 10 degree dip into water (if it even works in game).

Active...range...Elevation...Sensitivity...hex value

123A ...1200m....90-100...0.039999....0A D7 23 30

128A ...1500m....90-100...0.050000....CD CC 4C 3D

144A....2000m....90-130...0.050000....CD CC 4C 3D

147A....2200m....90-155...0.070000....29 5C 8F 3D

QCeA...1300m....90-100...0.050000....CD CC 4C 3D

QClA....1700m....90-100....0.050000...CD CC 4C 3D

QGAA...2000m....90-100...0.059999....8F C2 75 3D


This info is for people who wish to try to tweak stuff some more.

It is a oddity the later war passive sonar used in mission U-505 is the QClP. The numbers maybe mixed up and causes the later war active or passive sonar not to reference anything (making it Uber).

The "1" and the "l" look the exact same in the font in the code, but it gets referenced different in the DD SNS file and the hex code. Maybe that was a small buglet. I am not sure. the "1" instead of being a '11' in hex is a "l" which is 6A in hex.. This would give the late war Everats and Buckley (maybe more) super sonar effect. Maybe.


The hydrophone format indeed is strange, but I can diagram it, and make one behave like the others. I still have not been able to make it super high sensitivity as I want, but getting closer to it..

I only wish to be able to let people change the values to their own playing style. Without that discovery of the Sim.cfg and Hydrophone trick none of this would be possible.

Thanks Hemisent, it is good to be back. I am more enthusiastic to keep trying to mod things since CB and all have made that discovery to waken up those boring DD. In the end, that maybe is all that can be done, plus tweak the Active sonars to get a good balance. You can also change the ranges too.

Alot of possibilities. Alot of playing styles. I also prefer agressive DD even though it may not be realistic.

[timetraveller]

Thanks Jungman. I'll have a look and see if I can come up with something for a new tweak file.

TT

[Jungman]

Hey, I found out how to set the Hydrophones Sensitivity from deaf to infinite. It is really easy. It was discovered based upon changing one line at a time inspired by all you guys, CB and all's work. (plus 12 hours of testing).

Sim.cfg

[Hydrophone]
;Detection time=1 ;[s] Stock one second is pretty fast.
;Sensitivity=0.03 ;(0..1) Who knows. Nothing gained here.
;Height factor=0 ;[m] Depth? harder to detect? Needs testing.
;Waves factor=0.5 ;[>=0] Rough weather makes for harder detection.
;Speed factor=15 ;[kt] Destroyer speed, higher the worst detection. Above this no detection.
Noise factor=0.1 ;[>=0] 1.0 Sensitivity for speed sub noise. Lower is higher.


Setting the Noise Factor from default 1.0 to a lower number towards zero will make the Sensitivity to your Uboats speed noise and silent running go to infinite as you aproach zero. Also going higher than 1 makes it become deaf. no other change. I made comments on what the other values seem to do.

So Noise Factor set at 0.1 you must move at below 3 knots at silent running at 4 km. Within 500m you must be SR and zero speed.

I disabled the DD active sonar for these test! Only passive at work here.

Set it at 0.5 you can move at 4 knots without silent running out to 2 km of DD.

Set for 1.0 for normal.

I commented out the other factors for now.

Yeh! There you go.

[caspofungin]

prev post edited for coming across wrong. apologies.

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Just To reiterate on my two favorite sim.cfg setings:

Here is my understanding of them. Lets imagine thse are knobs you can turn on a peice of equipment like a stereo.

Thanks for confirming our previous findings, and getting some more numerical values.

sensitivity, though -- i think that does play a minor role. just trying to define exactly what, though.

[Jungman]

I see you alreay tried this. Yes. Same result. I must say I did not read through all 25 pages here and there.

I seem to have a good setting, if I hit a convoy, the DD come running me down.

I guess everyone will have their favorite combo. But I must do something to wake the DD up to alert level.

Setting it the Noise Factor= zero, I have them detecting me immediate in range of the hydrophone. Or if I torp a ship all hell breaks loose. They do ping me, and it is very hard to get away.

But the DD tactics are not smart. I wish they would give us the SDK to change stuff.

[CB..]

Originally Posted by Jungman

Hey, I found out how to set the Hydrophones Sensitivity from deaf to infinite. It is really easy. It was discovered based upon changing one line at a time inspired by all you guys, CB and all's work. (plus 12 hours of testing).

Sim.cfg

[Hydrophone]
;Detection time=1 ;[s] Stock one second is pretty fast.
;Sensitivity=0.03 ;(0..1) Who knows. Nothing gained here.
;Height factor=0 ;[m] Depth? harder to detect? Needs testing.
;Waves factor=0.5 ;[>=0] Rough weather makes for harder detection.
;Speed factor=15 ;[kt] Destroyer speed, higher the worst detection. Above this no detection.
Noise factor=0.1 ;[>=0] 1.0 Sensitivity for speed sub noise. Lower is higher.


Setting the Noise Factor from default 1.0 to a lower number towards zero will make the Sensitivity to your Uboats speed noise and silent running go to infinite as you aproach zero. Also going higher than 1 makes it become deaf. no other change. I made comments on what the other values seem to do.

So Noise Factor set at 0.1 you must move at below 3 knots at silent running at 4 km. Within 500m you must be SR and zero speed.

I disabled the DD active sonar for these test! Only passive at work here.

Set it at 0.5 you can move at 4 knots without silent running out to 2 km of DD.

Set for 1.0 for normal.

I commented out the other factors for now.

Yeh! There you go.

this is the trick COL7777 discovered---and in fact the basis for my mod!!
you've got it the wrong way round tho--
it's NOT the fact that you have set the noisefactor so low that has ubered the hydrophones it's the fact that you have commented out the other factors--especially the sensitivity--once you realise this it saves you an awfull lot of confusion--

any setting in the sim.cfg that is either removed entirely or commented out (same thing really) reverts to some default setting stored somewhere else---(not in the AI_sensors.dat i believe some where else tho i could be wrong there obviuosly)

but that's the trick-- don't get confused about the noise factor

the sensor is ubered because you commented out the other factors---do you follow the jist of it?

~~COL found that the game WILL run if you actually delete the sim.cfg from the game folder completely which gives you the clue you need to the way the game reverts to default settings if no sim.cfg entrys are found--and these default settings are ubered--

tho normally the noise and waves factors are very powerfull ways to control the effectiveness of the sensor--it doesn't have the sort of effect necessary to uber the sensor entirely--
hope this helps a little--