[TEC] Adding Lights on Ships SH5

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Originally Posted by sober

http://www.transportsafety.vic.gov.a...Chapter-11.pdf

I have already started creating some sketchy meshes for use as navigation lanterns on boats and small ships. For bigger ships we can use the lights from OH's hospital ship

[THE_MASK]

Originally Posted by gap

I have already started creating some sketchy meshes for use as navigation lanterns on boats and small ships. For bigger ships we can use the lights from OH's hospital ship

Can we just start off with the trawlers . I wouldn't want nav lights on cargo etc . What would be handy is the nav lights on trawlers for real navigation purposes . NF_boat found in OH2 .

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Originally Posted by sober

Can we just start off with the trawlers .

Yes, this is the plan

Originally Posted by sober

I wouldn't want nav lights on cargo etc .

Why not?

I would create lit-up proxy copies of all the units in game (stock and OH), and put them in the roster of neutral nations. Lit and unlit copies of the same unit, would still be recognized as one class in SOAN and ERM.

For neutral nations which at some point entered into war, we can limit the availablity of lit-up and unlit units through start/end date settings.

Moreover, there were some officially neutral nations whose merchant ships were sailing within allied convoys at times, or occasionally smuggled goods to England. For most of those nations I had set (back in the days I worked on OH's defsides file) two separate entries with different diplomatic positions (e.g. Panama and FreePanama), so it will be easy creating separate rosters for them, "lit" for non-valid targets, i.e. neutral ships and "unlit" for valid ones, i.e. allied ships.

Last: I would expect nations who have just entered war not to have issued a naval war policy yet (this was surely true for the USA). This is to say that some mixing of lit and unlit units during the first days from their war declaration, would have been normal and we can do the same in game.

What do you think?

Originally Posted by sober

What would be handy is the nav lights on trawlers for real navigation purposes . NF_boat found in OH2 .

Would allied fishing boats have switched their navigation lights on during war?

[THE_MASK]

Nav lights for neutral ships . Good idea , I never thought about that . They would have to have nav lights around ports I guess . I don't have aproblem with trawlers having nav lights on all the time . Who is going to shoot trawlers with there AA gun

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Originally Posted by sober

Nav lights for neutral ships . Good idea , I never thought about that .

According to some of New UI/OH's radio messages, which I think are based for the most part on actual KTBs and BdU orders, at least during the first month of the conflict lit/unlit navigation lights were one of the discriminants for deciding if a ship was a valid target. We can follow the same method in SH5

Originally Posted by sober

They would have to have nav lights around ports I guess .

That's likely, and ships at anchor would have had a different illumnation scheme than ships underway. Unfortunately this level of realism is much harder to achieve in game, if possible at all. We can only decide which nations get illuminated ships, and when, but to the best of my knowledge we cannot determine where they will spawn, unless we give up random traffic...

Originally Posted by sober

I don't have aproblem with trawlers having nav lights on all the time . Who is going to shoot trawlers with there AA gun

yes, but I wonder what the Admiralty would think about those brave fishermen giving up Her Majesty's coastline. They would probably send the RAF for wiping them out before too late

[THE_MASK]

I would just like to be able to enable a mod with the trawlers with lights that replaces the current trawlers . Also where would I find the file for the lighthouse light that TDW made . The light should be able to be seen from 10 kilometres away in game . Exactly the way it is now but seen further out . I am sure that we could have lit ships just in the first Total Germany campaign . Isnt there some sort of Traffic editor in the Traffic layer ( Lit_Ships layer) , maybe Trevally knows .

[Trevally.]

Originally Posted by sober

I would just like to be able to enable a mod with the trawlers with lights that replaces the current trawlers . Also where would I find the file for the lighthouse light that TDW made . The light should be able to be seen from 10 kilometres away in game . Exactly the way it is now but seen further out . I am sure that we could have lit ships just in the first Total Germany campaign . Isnt there some sort of Traffic editor in the Traffic layer ( Lit_Ships layer) , maybe Trevally knows .

It is possible to have ships (clones with lights) for some campaigns and not others.
This can be done by editing the id for the roster and campaign layers (fishing, traffic and convoy)