[TEC] External cargo in SH5

[Rongel]

Have you ever seen a ship with external cargo on her deck in SH 5? I haven't!

I remember that SH 4 had a pretty good system with this, there were tanks, cars, crates and stuff like that. So I started to investigate this a bit.




As you can see, SH 5 has all that stuff too. Old Silent Hunter veterans know that ships must have a node called cfg#K01_"shipname" to get external cargo to appear. I know only one SH 5 ship that has that, Liberty Cargo. It's easy to test this in custom mission (with that Liberty Cargo ship), just select an item from the external cargo list. I managed to add the same node to other SH 5 merchant ship which had the free space for external cargo, but was missing the cargo-node (the positioning is still bit off!):



I did this by injecting the node to the ships .sim file, not probably the most elegant way but it seems to work. Also it seems that many cargo objects are missing their zones in the .zon file, so they are currently indestructible, but that should be quite easy to fix.

But I just couldn't get the new cargo to appear in game without manually selecting from the mission builder. I'm not so experienced in mission builder, but it seems that if we want to see the external cargo, it needs to be selected when making the campaigns. Like this, :



If we would like to see more nice stuff in the game, first we need to add the missing nodes to cargo ships, fix the .zon file and then make changes to campaign layers. If this works, no more empty cargo ships!

So if somebody knows more about cargo stuff, or if there is already somekind of mod dealing with this, please tell! I think this might be too much for me to handle alone. Maybe Trevally is interested in this, maybe in the future there will be somekind of patch to OH 2... Here is the last proof of concept, it's taken from Memel harbour, in the campaign game, and I have added the external cargo node to the ship:



Phew!

[TheDarkWraith]

this might shed some light on it: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...postcount=2145

[Rongel]

Thanks, I also found some old information on the K-nodes by rowi58:

as i see, the NGRA has one node for external cargo - the K01 node. That means, SH3 will randomly put some kind of external cargo on this place. A kind of external cargo, that is defined by the CargoDef.cfg. (K-nodes will not work within the EQP file!)

and Tater:

Most SH4 ships lack K nodes, but that is easy enough to fix.

I think SH 5 doesn't put a random cargo on a ship, you need to apply it yourself to random convoys and spawn points in mission editor.

I just wonder why the devs didn't use the external cargo, all the models seem to be ready and the game seems to have a system how to get them in the campaign. I hope it was because time restraints, and not because some nasty bug...

[gap]

Originally Posted by Rongel

If we would like to see more nice stuff in the game, first we need to add the missing nodes to cargo ships, fix the .zon file and then make changes to campaign layers. If this works, no more empty cargo ships!

Nice finding Rongel

Adding new external cargo bones and placing them correctly around ship models shouldn't be a big problem using the current version of TDW's GR2 editor; editing cargo damage shouldn't be a big deal either: I guess that giving them damage boxes would be enough as equipments normally can use main unit's collision spheres. As for assigning the appropriate cargo to each ship, I think it can be done through eqp files, as we do with crew and other equipments (LinkName entries), but since ME provides a better and more flexible way to do it, I think we should do it through campaign files

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

this might shed some light on it: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...postcount=2145

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

Just decoding the reading of the .eqp file's for units and ran across a neat little tidbit of info. Under each [Equipment x] header there can be an entry called CargoType= and LoadOut=. I can't recall seeing these being used in any of the .eqp files

Loadout= entries are used in aircraft eqp files, where different bomb loadouts are defined in unit's main cfg file, and are selected in ME through the "external cargo" property. Note that each loadout set in the cfg file has a Type= entry, which might affect unit's behaviour through AI scripts and/or hardcoded routines. This is to say that using loadout definitions on ships might not be a viable option, unless these "CargoType=" entries that you are mentioning can be used with ships as "Type=" entries do with aircraft

[THE_MASK]

If you look at the big Mis file in the SH5 save game folder .

Name=_BR Large Merchant / War supplies (ProxY)#71
Class=KLWarSupplies
Type=102
Origin=British
LayerOperation=0
Side=1
Commander=0
CargoExt=-1 ?
CargoInt=-1 ?

[Rongel]

Originally Posted by sober

Name=_BR Large Merchant / War supplies (ProxY)#71
Class=KLWarSupplies
Type=102
Origin=British
LayerOperation=0
Side=1
Commander=0
CargoExt=-1 ?
CargoInt=-1 ?

-1 value means "None". It's easy to see in custom missions, where you put several ships with different loadout. Then check the missions .misge-file, and there they are again:

...
Side=2
Commander=0
CargoExt=1
CargoInt=0
Doctrine=0
CfgDate=19391101
...

You can even change the loadouts with text editor, with CargoExt -1 is none, 0 is cargo truck, 1 is fuel truck, 2 is tank etc.

The reason why we don't see cargo in campaign is that the campaign files have also -1 in "CargoExt", and also many ships miss the required K-node. For example, this is the details of one polish convoy unit in Coastal Waters campaign:

[TRAF_POLISH_MERCHANT.ConvoyUnit 1]
Type=102
CountryName=Poland
ExternalCargo=-1
InternalCargo=-1
CrewRating=2
Weapons=0
Sensors=0
Tactics=0
Camouflage=0
Required=false
No=1
SpawnProbability=10
GroupLinkId=0

So just changing that negative number to another value should make a change (if the 102-type cargo ship has the cargo-nodes).

[Rongel]

Did some more studying... I found four big cargo ships (type 102) that had the K-nodes: Liberty Cargo, C1-B Type Medium Merchant, C2-S-B1 Hull Large Merchant and Victory Cargo. The reason why other ships don't have them might be that they are too small for the large external cargo. If you put the biggest pile of crates or train carts on a small or medium size cargo ship, it just won't fit, and there will be some ugly clipping (I witnessed this during testing).

And I also looked into campaign files, in OH 2 there are some convoys that have external cargo specified. But it seems that all random traffic is specified to be without cargo. So if I'm right, we should see some cargo just by editing the campaign! Will test this soon-ish!