ImprovedConvoys Beta and UnRealUBoat - Udated: 03-25

[CCIP]

I think you're over-reacting, he's not insulting you. The "sigh" is probably a sign that you can't please everyone with your text format, of all things, ironically

I actually had as much trouble as you reading them, so I didn't really look into them in detail, aside from the stuff Jason posted on the forums.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by Oesten

...
I can't see how it's realistically possible for any escort to be 'veteran' in 1939. How can they be combat veterans when the war has only just started? Training alone, no matter how good or how long, can't turn a crew into veterans. For a convoy that covers ONLY 1939, and no other year, the best escort available should be competent.

I guess I should have used the game's internal ranked numbers instead, 0 - 4. You're reading too much into the words.

Game balancing in a delicate act. Even moreso when you don't have access to the original development team.

The designations have little to do with reality, but rather how effectively the game can use any given units equipment and resources to attack you. While I agree in the actual war it's unlikely there were many veteran crews at the start of the war, if any, the word has a different meaning when used in SH3 convoy escort.

For example, if we found all escorts in '39 to engage each other and not the player unless at least ranked elite, I'd rank them all elite and shrug off the skill designation as being unreasonable for the era.

If there are any veterans in convoys that start in '39, it's because they run through the end of 1940 or 1941 and I didn't want half the war to be a cakewalk for these convoys. I am working within the existing convoy definitions the game shipped with, since redefining them all by hand would take forever.

Originally Posted by Oesten

I'd agree with cutting down the number of veterans in 1940 as well. There would be one at least in each convoy, the lead escort would be a veteran ship. But the others would be merely competent.

That's too specific, even if accurate. I can designate a some percentage of ships to be veteran in convoys that start and stop in 1940. It's not possible to tell SH3 you want some particular ship to be a 'lead', though. It's up to SH3 to decide which warship is where in the convoy escort.

I can only pick the number, spawn probability, class, and skill level.

Because it's tedious to do that much work by hand, I further simplified the available options at the expensive of flexibility. For escort skill, I merely specify the percentage I wish to be of each level of skill. Those percentages are then multiplied against the total number of escorts and the resultant distributed randomly.

So, at present, I can change the distribution such that only one ship will be veteran, but I cannot pick which class that will be or make it the leader. (The former is possible with some rewriting of my code, the latter is not possible due to SH3 limitations.)

Originally Posted by Oesten

Then in 1941 you have the rapid expansion of the Allied escort force. Many more escorts available than in 1940, but because the force has expanded so greatly, there's a very high proportion of new ships in there. And the new ships can't be more than competent. So again, the vast majority, say around 75%, of escorts in 1941 should be competent. Veterans generally only the lead escort.

That was close to my original configuration before I altered it as it seemed too easy. Again, there is the issue of some SH3 convoys running for more than one year. So a balance has to be struck between being too easy or too hard for a multi-year convoy definition. (OA and OB for example.)

Originally Posted by Oesten

From 1942, you can start to have a higher proportion of veterans, maybe about 33%. From 1943, maybe up to 50% veterans, then in 1944-45, 66-75% veterans.

Just my opinions, hope they are useful.

That seems reasonable.

I'll have to look at all the definitions and their start and end dates and rework them accordingly.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by CCIP

I think you're over-reacting, he's not insulting you. The "sigh" is probably a sign that you can't please everyone with your text format, of all things, ironically

I actually had as much trouble as you reading them, so I didn't really look into them in detail, aside from the stuff Jason posted on the forums.

It appears my own tools have defeated me, then.

I can view the text fine under Windows, but only with Wordpad. It hadn't occurred to me that others would have encountered few enough, if any, documents that only viewed properly in Wordpad to instinctively use Wordpad or Word to view the document instead of Notepad.

That's entirely my own fault.

In the future I can run the text through a UNIX <-> DOS end of line conversion so the documents will look normal in editors under Windows that aren't UNIX competent.

But, seriously, if you open it using Wordpad, presently, it will render completely readable.



I guess that means no one's read the README either...



Good thing I've been posting the README, for each release, in the OP of this thread.

[jasonb885]

Okay, I give.

In the interests of speedy development I was picking escort competence based on a percentage multiplier. It's easier, since I don't need to make sure my number of escorts matches the quantity of each type of competence I want. For example, presently I can define 4 escorts and I don't need to ensure that I have competent set to, say, 4. It's less error prone to say 100%, which is similar to just expressing "however many, make them all skilled as competent".

Obviously that's somewhat imprecise though. When you're dealing with so few escorts, it's hard to get the percentage just right if you're trying to balance. So I have a speedy mess.

With convoy proportions it made more sense to do things that way, since you have like 10-50 ships, so saying 20% are medium makes sense. With 4 escorts saying 50% are veteran is messier, since rounding errors will influence it more greatly.

I'll change it so I can express crew ratings as a simple integer instead and just make sure the numbers always add up. Then I can specify 1 elite, for example, instead of 12% elite, without hoping 12% doesn't round up to 2 escorts when I wanted only 1. In otherwords, I'll make it a value I can explicitly specify instead of implicitly through a proportion.

Maybe I'll set it up so I can specify crew rating for each class of ship.

[jasonb885]

Sorry if I gave anyone an attitude.

This whole Seawolves thing seems to have at least some of us annoyed a bit.

[CCIP]

Heh, don't worry, I know how you feel... but I'm actually a bit excited about the Seawolves thing now


I think you're giving yourself a bit too much headache over the escort skill settings, since these are really very abstract values that you can't find any real historical data on - just rough approximations. Unless someone does a huge study on SHIII escort effectiveness and compares them to the real historical stats, we'll never know exactly how the skills should be distributed.

The bottom line is that you're pretty much on the right track with the elites, and the rest is not as huge as you might thing. Two competent-newbie escorts are more dangerous than a single veteran, anyway - so the numbers theoretically matter more.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by CCIP

...

The bottom line is that you're pretty much on the right track with the elites, and the rest is not as huge as you might thing. Two competent-newbie escorts are more dangerous than a single veteran, anyway - so the numbers theoretically matter more.

I have large numbers of escorts, up to 8, by the end of the war, and definitely 5 - 6 by mid war. I've been reducing the number of veterans somewhat as I go.

I'm about 33% (heh) done. Perhaps in an hour I'll have all the convoys redone in my configuration file using the new configuration syntax.

Next time I'm picking a Perl configuration language that's less verbose or more flexible!

[jasonb885]

Okay, done. Now it's time to test it out.

I also nerfed all the elite HKs. Any elites are now veterans, with others left at whatever their original values where. (I think most HKs were nearly all elite and veteran anyway.)

I fixed the reporting engine to discard trawlers when generating skill statistics, since it skews it and the crew rating of a trawler is mostly irrelevant anyway. I'll start converting the inventory and README into DOS format before publishing, so it's effortlessly readable on a Windows system.



If it plays okay I'll kick out a new release tonight.

[Beery]

Originally Posted by CCIP

...The bottom line is that you're pretty much on the right track with the elites, and the rest is not as huge as you might thing..

I agree. What we have now is better than the original game, and the original game is playable. It's easy to lose perspective (as I did last week when the sensors issue popped up). The important thing is that what we now have is better than what we had, and we're just going to keep plugging away at it until it gets as good as we can make it.

[joea]

I love this thread, very educational.

[Syxx_Killer]

It is very easy to get around the formatting issues in Notepad. Simply open up the documents in WordPad, click the little save icon, and open in Notepad. You now have a properly formatted version for Windows to use in Notepad. It's like magic! :rotfl:

[Oesten]

Originally Posted by jasonb885

Okay, done. Now it's time to test it out.

I also nerfed all the elite HKs. Any elites are now veterans, with others left at whatever their original values where. (I think most HKs were nearly all elite and veteran anyway.)

I fixed the reporting engine to discard trawlers when generating skill statistics, since it skews it and the crew rating of a trawler is mostly irrelevant anyway. I'll start converting the inventory and README into DOS format before publishing, so it's effortlessly readable on a Windows system.



If it plays okay I'll kick out a new release tonight.

Looking forward to the release. Hope it's ready for inclusion into RUB 1.43, it certainly deserves to be included.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by Oesten

...
Looking forward to the release. Hope it's ready for inclusion into RUB 1.43, it certainly deserves to be included.

I playtested three missions in '39 with a IIA. The single merchant contacts seemed reasonable for '39. I felt like playing with the IIA a bit, so I never made it past the east coast of Britain.

In either case, nothing blew up, so it seemed release ready.

The latest link is in the OP, along with what should be a Windows readable inventory and README.

[Observer]

FYI, working with the latest release. Sept.-Oct. '40. 30 days at sea no convoy reports yet. I thought you had upped the probability for the later half of '40?

On my current patrol, I just picked up a big convoy, I think it's OB. I'm closing in, but no reports yet.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by Observer

FYI, working with the latest release. Sept.-Oct. '40. 30 days at sea no convoy reports yet. I thought you had upped the probability for the later half of '40?

On my current patrol, I just picked up a big convoy, I think it's OB. I'm closing in, but no reports yet.

Where at?

I think it's at ~ 2% in 1940, which would be something like 10 report and 20 spawn. At that rate they'll be pretty rare. Later it's at 0.8% and you'll essentially never find them.

Nice sig.