Finally! Realistic night surface attacks with darker nights. -June 1944

[Bubblehead1980]

Originally Posted by Armistead

Bubble, I doubt it's the one I made, tho I gave it to a few people to test by email. I did have it about where I wanted and life issues hit, sick father that finally passed, ended up moving and just never played again. It was a year later when I settled and just got me a laptop. I have that old PC in the basement and I need to pull the drive and see if I can still get my mods off. I actually bought a decent DT to play again, even loaded the game and did a round, but about it. I mostly played with the Env files for night to darken colors, then adjusted moonlight factors to fine tune vision range with the goal of getting a realistic look. I didn't want to mess with TMO's visual sensors that would impact the 24 hr cycle. It worked pretty good cuz you could actually get in close and turned around about 1200 yards on a moonless night with competent settings, about 1700 yards if vet.. if you could get around escorts. It always bothered me at night in TMO I could see ships long before my crew would see them, but I got it to where crew would see them at night about 3500 yards as I recall and call them out before I could see them about 500 yards difference. I thought this was fine since they were on watch higher on the shears. I also cut all the searchlights off for merchants and large warships. It was just always easy for me to locate and get a stad reading using the searchlight as an aiming point. I also adjusted the searchlights on escorts angled down a tad more. With RSRD I recall crew ratings became more vet mid war, so it was always interesting, cuz competent to vet was about a 500 yard visual increase.

I assumed may be yours because do not recall anyone else making a darker nights mod and was told while author was unknown it was uploaded in 2014, who knows. Works very well, actually something I like is it also affects the players ability to identify most ships from 7000 yards at night lol With my "real scopes" mod which increased the zoom level for scopes TBT and binoculars (felt the default zoom was not enough) because it is dark. For those who can't handle this aspect but like the darker nights allowing better surface attacks, can turn gamma up a little in visual options and it helps without taking away. Of course there is always the trusty ID target button, which I used to hate but I think is okay now because during actual attack, skipper would describe target to the targeting party, they would skim through the id manual and show the skipper, then decide what the target was. Personally, I use it sparingly.

Typical night surface attack I now safely fire from 2000-2500 yards(preferred range in real life) on surface, this typically permits at least a tentative identification possible, depends on how dark the night is. I can also make the turn away if needed without getting slaughtered typically. This is the preferred range. As mentioned I am able to slip inside the screen if necessary, which is a gamble but it is possible to do so safely. I want to test with a full screen of escorts set to veteran to compare to last but imagine its what you said.


I considered eliminating searchlights on merchants but thing is they do need them sometimes. Example. In last test after sinking two merchants inside screen, I was hauling to get away from escorts rushing in and a merchant ahead was 700 yards away. Well, alerted to the attack but with his light off, spotted me, put the light on me and opened fire. I had the 40 MM manned in case of this situation and opened fire. Caught topside on fire and silenced the guns (assume killed the gun crews) but did not sink her nor would spotlight cut out. I am sure the spotlight could be made easier to destroy, lets face it they were delicate pieces of equipment against gunfire lol. I have not seen the behavior used to where they all turn on spotlights at night and tool around, giving away position, not sure if has to do with my modifications. It may be that in TMO convoys, by default most merchant skill levels are set to veteran the entire war. I left it mostly like this in early war but in late 43-44 , when night surface and large convoys become a real factor in attacks, lowered most to competent for a balance. This balance reflects the losses the merchant fleet certainly suffered of experienced crews and also permits the type of play without making things too easy. For singles though, most remain at the vet level. I also removed hydrophones from most merchants, some had them but not all.

I'm almost ready to release, just putting things together into a package for its easy to enable. I have other things want to do but this will do for now. A major issue seems to have been resolved. Sure you will enjoy the TMO update.