Please give suggestions for Realism

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Originally Posted by Murr44

Something else you can try to increase your level of realism is to only load external torpedoes when the sea state is 6m or less. The stock game (& GWX too I think) allows you to load torpedoes in practically any kind of weather.

Good point. I have also wondered what would happen if the sub had to emergency dive while removing the external torpedoes. I have had to do this and of course when I resurface the process of loading the externals just starts where it got left off. Its entirely possible that they could be lost altogether.

@ Oneshot/Onekill, those are all good points. Daytime attacks were avoided if possible. I am considering not using them after 1940. In my typeIIA fuel does often become the reason I have to return to base and with malfunctions on there have been times in bad weather where my top speed was only 8 knots.

There are also cases where a sub returns to base because of a crew member illness or injury. I have wondered how you maintain silent running if half your crew has colds or the flu.

[RoaldLarsen]

Originally Posted by Otto Heinzmeir

For visual sightings by your watch officer. Open data/cfg/Sensors.cfg in notebook.

Change this first setting called Visual range factor. What it is currently depends on if you are playing a mod or a stock game. Mine was at 0.5 and I changed it to 1.0
It appears that the higher the number the shorter the distance that your WO can see.

[SensorParameters]
; Sensors Detection Parameters

;Visual.
Visual range factor=1.0
...

Thanks, Otto!

Does anybody know what factor constrains the longest range at which a target can be seen?

I don't use a 16k environment mod because of my ancient graphics card. If I reduce the Visual range factor to 0.4, will the maximum range at which I can detect aircraft be increased, or will I just have a higher chance of seeing an aircraft which is far away but still within some maximum range that is established elsewhere?

[Oneshot/Onekill]

@Otto Heinzmeir. You can also try this sometime, its what i do. If i recieve a contact on my map and its more than 100km away as a rule of thumb i do not attempt to track it down, UNLESS its on a general course heading to allow me an easy intercept. ie using very little fuel.

[RoaldLarsen]

Originally Posted by Otto Heinzmeir

Good point. I have also wondered what would happen if the sub had to emergency dive while removing the external torpedoes. I have had to do this and of course when I resurface the process of loading the externals just starts where it got left off. Its entirely possible that they could be lost altogether.

What I do is to arbitrarily divide the loading time into phases and then give myself options within each phase.

Phase 1. First 10% of loading rime. Crew setting up, torpedo still in storage. Options: A) Abandon gear. Stay on surface 30 seconds before crash dive, lose ability to load any externally stored torpedos for rest of mission. B) Stow gear. Stay on surface 3 minutes before crash dive. Wait three minutes on surface before next attempting to load this torpedo. C) Stay on surface until next phase.

Phase 2. 10% to 50% of loading time. Crew removing torpedo from stowage and positioning over hatch. Options: A) Ditch torpedo and gear. Stay on surface 2 minutes before crash dive; lose ability to load any externally stored torpedos for rest of mission. B) Ditch torpedo, stow gear. Stay on surface 5 minutes before crash dive; do not attempt to load this torpedo again this mission. C) Stay on surface until next phase.

Phase 3. 50% to 100% of loading time. Crew passing torpedo through loading hatch. No options. Stay on surface until torpedo loaded.

[RoaldLarsen]

Originally Posted by Oneshot/Onekill

Personally i dont think there is an abnormal amount of ships in the game. You have to understand that most of the time that contact was made whether by hydrophone or visual, there were many factors that had to be accounted for before a U-boat commander could even think about making an attack or attempting an intercept. Here is just a small sample of what went into the equation.

(sea conditions)would affect a U-boats surface speed and thus their ability to overtake or intercept a target. Not accuratley moddeled into the game IMO.

(time of day) If during daylight hours had a much higher probability of being spotted on the surface.

(Fuel remaining)depending on how far away you are patrolling from your base had a dramatic influence and impact on how far away a Kaptain was willing to track distant contacts, especiallly if you were already mid patrol!

these are just a few, there are literally dozens of other factors that came into play.

You have to understand that in reality, during a typical patrol U-boat Kaptaind did recieve quite a bit of information about ship movements or convoy traffic its just that more than 50% of the time they were not in a favourable positon to prosicute these reports!

I'll have to respectfully disagree, though admit I do so on the basis of limited research.

All the factors you list are modelled by the game, though perhaps they don't have quite as much effect as they did in real life. In the game, sea state affects a U-boat's speed, light conditions affect chance of being visually spotted and fuel affects range.

I do not disagree very much about the number of radio contact reports. The number might be a bit high, but German naval SigInt (XB-Dienst?) and reconnaisance from other boats and aircraft resulted in a lot of radio contact reports. In fact I don't like mods that remove the colour of contact reports from the map, because in reality, those contacts would often be reported as enemy or friendly.

You seem to be arguing that in real life, u-boats saw as many ships as we do in-game, but they sank a much lower proportion. I take the position that they made fewer sightings than we do. Perhaps they also sank fewer per sighting. I have no opinion on that.

As for the number of sightings, I have read a couple KTB's and a few books. The number of sightings per day on my in-game patrols is higher than what I have read was actual experience. Also, while the number of convoys spawned in the campaign may be similar to historical, in real life the allies were using Ultra to route convoys around u-boats, so fewer were seen than is the case in-game.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Originally Posted by RoaldLarsen

Does anybody know what factor constrains the longest range at which a target can be seen?

I don't use a 16k environment mod because of my ancient graphics card. If I reduce the Visual range factor to 0.4, will the maximum range at which I can detect aircraft be increased, or will I just have a higher chance of seeing an aircraft which is far away but still within some maximum range that is established elsewhere?

I would think this would be the Visual range factor setting. I havn't tried modding this in a 8k environment. I suspect that in an 8K environment the max sighting range is 8k. I haven't playing in an 8k setting in awhile. IIRC correctly the furthest away I would see a ship is about 7600m. Lowering the Visual range factor may give you 300 or 400 extra meters. Probably would not have any effect plane sightings. I am curious about the visual enemy speed setting. Since planes are fast changing this may be of some help. Though not sure which way to go with it. I suspect in the stats I list if I increased it from 0.2 to 0.3 I might have a better chance to sight planes sooner.

You might try testing it out in a game that you aren't playing as a career.


;Visual.
Visual range factor=1.0 ;[>=0]
Visual fog factor=1.1 ;[>=0]
Visual light factor=5.0 ;[>=0]
Visual waves factor=0.8 ;[>=0]
Visual speed factor=0 ;[>=0]
Visual aspect=0.9 ;[>=0]
Visual enemy speed=0.2 ;[>=0]
Visual noise factor=0 ;[>=0]
Visual sensor height factor=0.4 ;[>=0]
Visual already tracking modifier=600 ;[detection probability modifier], most accurate, once a contact is detected it will lose it very hard
Visual decay time=200 ;[>0] already tracking bonus decay, in seconds
Visual uses crew efficiency=true ;[true or false]

I like the idea about having to abandon your external torpedoes.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Originally Posted by Oneshot/Onekill

@Otto Heinzmeir. You can also try this sometime, its what i do. If i recieve a contact on my map and its more than 100km away as a rule of thumb i do not attempt to track it down, UNLESS its on a general course heading to allow me an easy intercept. ie using very little fuel.

I just had something similar to this in my current mission. Was tracking a merchant on Hydro but he was going away and the contact was faint. Probably 12k to 15k. My top speed in rough seas at the time was 10kts so I would have used tons of fuel and maybe not even have caught him if he as doing 10kts. Then I get a radio contact from only 17k away, moving almost directly towards me. So I broke off my pursuit of the one going away and took the one coming towards me. Which ended up being 12 tons.

[Murr44]

Sure the number of ship contacts & sightings is greater than would happen in RL but if we only saw as many ships as RL U-boat commanders did I think that a lot of us (myself included) would quickly lose interest in the game.

[Sailor Steve]

But others of us would like it even more. I think it needs to be one of the realism options.

[RoaldLarsen]

Originally Posted by Otto Heinzmeir

I would think this would be the Visual range factor setting. I havn't tried modding this in a 8k environment. I suspect that in an 8K environment the max sighting range is 8k. I haven't playing in an 8k setting in awhile. IIRC correctly the furthest away I would see a ship is about 7600m. Lowering the Visual range factor may give you 300 or 400 extra meters. Probably would not have any effect plane sightings. I am curious about the visual enemy speed setting. Since planes are fast changing this may be of some help. Though not sure which way to go with it. I suspect in the stats I list if I increased it from 0.2 to 0.3 I might have a better chance to sight planes sooner.

You might try testing it out in a game that you aren't playing as a career.
...

I agree with the bolded parts. Each of the factors affects the chance of detecting the aircraft each cycle. The range factor doesn't change the maximum visual range, it just determines how much effect the range to target has on your chance of seeing the aircraft. That's why I think the absolute limit must be defined somewhere else, such as the environment limit.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to mod that, and I'm not going to move to an existing 16K mod w/o first buying a new graphics card, which I won't do without buying a whole new computer to go with it. That's at least a year away. In turn that really limits my ability to play type IX boats after 1942. I have started 9 patrols in type IX boats in 1943. Six resulted in the sub being lost. In the other three the sub made it back to port with severe damage. All due to aircraft. I think that's just about double the appropriate power of the air forces.

I will definitely experiment with tweaking the enemy speed factor, as you suggest, and possibly reducing the chance of air attack as suggested in an earlier post.

If I understand how the air part of the game works, there aren't actually any aircraft out there flying patrol routes, the way surface ships do. Rather, the game caculates the chance of you being attacked by aircraft and when that chance is hit, spawns aircraft some random distance and bearing from your sub already heading to attack you. The problem with this is that it means just about all enemy aircraft sightings end with an attack by the aircraft. That is not how it hapened in real life. U-boats would often detect the aircraft and dive without the aircraft ever seeing the u-boat. I wish there was a better way to simulate this in the game. The amount of aircraft sightings is about right, but the number of aircraft attacks is too high.

Perhaps one approach would be to reduce the maximum speed of aircraft, so it took them more time to get to the sub. A downside would be that this would make it easier to shoot them down.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Yea the setting to actually expand the 8k limit may be in perhaps a dat file, or some other type that can't be opened by a text editor. There is a program called 3sd that can open and edit the other files. In the 16x environment mod I use, the files seam to all pertain to scenery. I don't reallly know which file it could be or if you can have a 16k viewing radious without a 16k environment which is what you need at present. We need to get the modding experts in here.

The idea about reducing the planes speed would work I bet. Just don't shoot at them I guess. I notice they also have size parameters. You could half there speed and half there size to make to make them smaller targets to compensate. I'm pretty sure that they would still appear the same in game and just be harder to hit. Maybe halving there size would then make then 2 hard to hit.

This sounds like a lot of work. I'm going to take a nap

[Oneshot/Onekill]

Originally Posted by RoaldLarsen

I'll have to respectfully disagree, though admit I do so on the basis of limited research.

All the factors you list are modelled by the game, though perhaps they don't have quite as much effect as they did in real life. In the game, sea state affects a U-boat's speed, light conditions affect chance of being visually spotted and fuel affects range.

I do not disagree very much about the number of radio contact reports. The number might be a bit high, but German naval SigInt (XB-Dienst?) and reconnaisance from other boats and aircraft resulted in a lot of radio contact reports. In fact I don't like mods that remove the colour of contact reports from the map, because in reality, those contacts would often be reported as enemy or friendly.

You seem to be arguing that in real life, u-boats saw as many ships as we do in-game, but they sank a much lower proportion. I take the position that they made fewer sightings than we do. Perhaps they also sank fewer per sighting. I have no opinion on that.

As for the number of sightings, I have read a couple KTB's and a few books. The number of sightings per day on my in-game patrols is higher than what I have read was actual experience. Also, while the number of convoys spawned in the campaign may be similar to historical, in real life the allies were using Ultra to route convoys around u-boats, so fewer were seen than is the case in-game.

You missundertood me. I was only referring to U-boat surface speed in high waves as not being realistically modeled in the game, although GWX did a very good job trying to. For example i can go to flank speed in 10+ meter per second winds and still maintain 12-14 knots. In reality waves that high at that speed would beat you to death and your watch wouldnt stand a chance.

Again i think i didnt clarify or maybe i miss spoke, but when talking about # of contacts spotted during a patrol, i was more reffering to other U-boats, aircraft, surface vessels, and radio intercepts. Not personally spotting them yourself!

[RoaldLarsen]

Originally Posted by Otto Heinzmeir

Yea the setting to actually expand the 8k limit may be in perhaps a dat file, or some other type that can't be opened by a text editor. There is a program called 3sd that can open and edit the other files. In the 16x environment mod I use, the files seam to all pertain to scenery. I don't reallly know which file it could be or if you can have a 16k viewing radious without a 16k environment which is what you need at present. We need to get the modding experts in here.

Let's hope one of them notices this thread and offers some info.

Originally Posted by Otto Heinzmeir

The idea about reducing the planes speed would work I bet. Just don't shoot at them I guess. I notice they also have size parameters. You could half there speed and half there size to make to make them smaller targets to compensate. I'm pretty sure that they would still appear the same in game and just be harder to hit. Maybe halving there size would then make then 2 hard to hit.

This sounds like a lot of work. I'm going to take a nap

Is the chance to hit a target proportional to its radius or to its area? Is the chance to hit a target inversely proportional to speed or inversely proportional to the square of the speed? Intuitively, I'd say that target area not radius, matters, and that doubling the perpendicular speed of something reduces the chance to hit it by more than half, but doubling the speed of something coming straight at you doesn't affect your accuracy very much at all. However, that is for a single shot - for continuous firing the amount of time you can shoot at the target directly affects your chance of hitting, so multiply the effects by 1 over speed. So, what I might try is to reduce the speed of aircraft by about 30% (that's what I guess I need to give my subs a better chance of diving before an attack), assume this increases my chance to hit them by about 117% (about halfway between (1/0.7)cubed and (1/0.7) and then decrease the dimensions by about 1/3 to compensate (square root of 1/2.17 is about 0.67). The only question is: does changing the MaxSpeed, Length and Width parameters in data\Air\<aircraftname>.cfg actually change in-game performance, or does it just change data displayed in the museum? I suppose an easy way to find out would be to build a test that changes these values to extremes and increases the chance of an airstrike. If an aircraft has an effective length and width of 200 metres and min and max speeds of 30knots, I think we would notice.

You're right, it does sound like a lot of work. Before I do that I'm going to try the following:

Keep a log of all occaisions I surface a boat, to see how long I run before an aircraft shows up, and whether I am attacked. Then, try tweaking the Sensors.cfg file to decrease Visual range to 0.4 from 0.5, increasing the Enemy speed factor to 0.3 from 0.2 (but setting use of crew efficiency to true), and then, in AirStrke.cfg, reducing Default Air Strike Probability from 10 to 7 for 1943 and later, and log the results and compare.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Originally Posted by RoaldLarsen

Keep a log of all occaisions I surface a boat, to see how long I run before an aircraft shows up, and whether I am attacked. Then, try tweaking the Sensors.cfg file to decrease Visual range to 0.4 from 0.5, increasing the Enemy speed factor to 0.3 from 0.2 (but setting use of crew efficiency to true), and then, in AirStrke.cfg, reducing Default Air Strike Probability from 10 to 7 for 1943 and later, and log the results and compare.

The thing to watch out for is not to change too many parameters all at once or you won't know which one is having the greatest impact. But sounds like you have done these types of testing before. I might suggest making a save in an area of high concentration of allied planes. Setting the airstrike probabilty high. Is 100 max? Then change just one of the values, but go overboard. For example change enemy speed factor from .3 to 1.0 just to see if anything changes dramatically or maybe its not noticable. If it is dramatic but in the wrong direction then try 0.1

The same with the other factors. You can load the same save game in allied airspace and just change one parameter at a time. When you want to test stuff like this is usually when no planes ever appear Good luck. I'd be interested in how it turns out.

[RoaldLarsen]

Originally Posted by Otto Heinzmeir

The thing to watch out for is not to change too many parameters all at once or you won't know which one is having the greatest impact. But sounds like you have done these types of testing before. I might suggest making a save in an area of high concentration of allied planes. Setting the airstrike probabilty high. Is 100 max? Then change just one of the values, but go overboard. For example change enemy speed factor from .3 to 1.0 just to see if anything changes dramatically or maybe its not noticable. If it is dramatic but in the wrong direction then try 0.1

The same with the other factors. You can load the same save game in allied airspace and just change one parameter at a time. When you want to test stuff like this is usually when no planes ever appear Good luck. I'd be interested in how it turns out.

All good advice, thanks.

If I had no idea what the various paramaters did, that's exactly what I'd do. In this case, I have a pretty good working hypothesis of what's going on, and while I am changing four parameters simultaneously, only two will actually interact with each other. My test crews will have 100% efficiency, so that change will have no effect during the tests. The change to Airstrike will affect whether aircraft show up at all, while the other two changes will affect how well my crew spots them when they do show up. Since I am not too concerned about the relative impacts of the two sighting parameters, I'll only test them separately if something unusual is the result.

Also, the sensor changes will affect ability to see ships, too, and I don't want to affect that too much, so I will have to test against surface vessels as well.