Generic Ships are not so desirable

[Stiebler]

Anyone who studies the campaign_RND.mis file in Mission Editor will find a lot of ships listed as 'generic'. In the file itself, they are distinguished from other ships by the fact that they have a type (eg type=4) but not a class (eg class=DDHuntI).

The original idea was that any ships of the same type present in the roster could be randomly substituted so that each game would be slightly different. I don't know whether the programmers intended that modders should create new ships that would also be randomly substituted.

There are two problems with this approach:

1. The trivial problem occurs when a randomly substituted ship is inappropriate. For example, on patrol recently, I encountered two of AG124's neat little new coastal tankers. Unfortunately, both were in mid Atlantic. What was particularly ridiculous was the occasion when a coastal tanker tagged along behind an enormous giant tanker, thundering along at 12 kts. The coastal tanker was striving to keep up, looking like a little poodle on a lead. Or even like a towed lifeboat.
Unfortunately, even writing special routes for the coastal tanker will not prevent it being used generically. [Solution - reclassify the coastal tanker NCOT to type 104 (coastal), not 101 (tanker)].

2. Much more serious is the use of generic escorts. In Mission Editor, the type is not assigned, and you cannot state whether they are escorting the convoy or merely attached to it. As I discovered recently, adding some new escorts to several convoy groups in Mission Editor, then saving the file, resulted in the new file having a selection of generic warship types (originally all escorts) changed randomly, so that some became battleships! One convoy I stumbled on during testing the new file had three King George V battleships in it (they could have been any generic battleship; the type had been changed to 11). The 'escort=true' of the original file had been changed for the battleships to 'escort=false'.
It took me about two hours to hand-change the altered warships in a word processor back to the way they had been in the original (backed-up).

There are three warnings here:
a) Never allow generic warship types if you add new convoys. At some point it's going to be necessary to reassign the existing generic types.
b) Be very careful about changing/adding to generic warships in Mission Editor for existing convoys.
c) If you're a modder making new ship types, think carefully about how they will fit in as generic substitutes for other ships of the same type.

Stiebler.

[gouldjg]

They are a pain in the neck thats for sure. Thanks for the heads up

[Der Teddy Bar]

I think this may be your issue with regards to the type of esort, or should I say battleship turning up.


To stop the notepad informing you that you went over a ship, the English.cfg (and German etc) was edited to remove the ship class names, so for example, Type0=Patrol Craft was changed to Type0=-

This causes the Mission Editor to not have the 'generic Ship Class' option for use in the random group selection.

So instead of having a Generic Battleship, Generic Fleet Carrier, Generic Destroyer, Generic Cruiser and so on, you will only get a single entry Generic.

Images....
With Generic Ship Class - http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/7729/image18qc.jpg
Without Generic Ship Class - http://img233.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image28iz.jpg

So for editing, just have a copy of the file, drop it in when you are editing and drop the other one back when playing.

In this file, this...
;Warships
Type0=Patrol Craft
Type1=Corvette
Type2=Frigate
Type3=Destroyer Escort
Type4=Destroyer
Type5=Minesweeper
Type6=Light Cruiser
Type7=Heavy Cruiser
Type8=Escort Carrier
Type9=Fleet Carrier
Type10=Battlecruiser
Type11=Battleship
Type12=Minelayer
Type13=Auxiliary Cruiser

Has been changed to this
;Warships
Type0=-
Type1=-
Type2=-
Type3=-
Type4=-
Type5=-
Type6=-
Type7=-
Type8=-
Type9=-
Type10=-
Type11=-
Type12=-
Type13=-

[Wulfmann]

Your argument only has validity because of inaccurate use of this much superior method.
Here is why.
Don't get your shorts in a knot, follow me.

One, the coastal tanker is a great example of poor choice of designation, you prove this. I added that to mine but changed it to a 104 from the tanker 101. Now it only shows up in coastal areas. problem solved.

You also have a good point on escorts but there is much more to it than that.
Destroyers were rarely used as convoy escorts so adding a type4 means a Tribal or J-Class might be where it never would be (in a convoy)
Or, a Hunt (These were DEs in real life and should never have been a DD in SH3) or V&W might be escorting a KGV class BB. All wrong.
Also wrong are a bunch of single DD type 4 with a BB anyway. They should all be the same as DD squads were assigned in groups of the same class. This was not iron clad but was typical although more than one such group could be together. But, that would then be say 4 J-class and 2 Tribal not 6 each a different class.

How to remedy this?

Make the coastal tanker a 104 and the talented builder should only offer this as a 104, IMO.
Convoys should (early) have type 0. 2 and named DDs in them. The V&W were used for convoys because they were too worn for fleet use. Later the C-Class were converted to be DEs (Wrongly labeled River class in SH3, these are the modified A-G class)
Later convoys would add type 1 (Mid 1940 on) and be mostly type 3 with some 1 and 2 types from 1942 on with no type 4 (unless a Hunt, V&W, Clemson or C-Class named, no generic 4) These type 4 from 1942 on should mostly be Hunt class I, II or III.

Wherever possible generic allows more variation so you can not recognize a convoy, very unrealistic to know its make up just from the lead DD!!!!

I have edited the RND convoys so many cargo (102) are generic to vary the make up. It allows the KGN (and any new 102) to appear and mixes up the ships each time.
I do not use generic 101, tankers or 103 troopships (because of the hospital ship, should not appear in a convoy).
In one way it is easier for me to make this argument because I have the unreleased ships from the next SW Mediterranean add on which includes 1 new 0, 3 new type 2 a Hunt DE type 3, many more DDs and cargos which changing things to generic allows any new ships to readily be used without future editing.

You make some valid points but what needs to be done is edit things to accept proper generic use and eliminate the things that mess that up..
One thing someone could do to help this would be to edit all 3 Hunt classes to be type 3, DE. By adding 3 more DEs to the one River (and the GW adding a Yank in His Majesty's service, good move) would mean 5 possible. Then changing most 1942 convoy escorts to a generic 3 would make things more real. If real is important

Wulfmann

[bigboywooly]

Hi thanx for the above
Am ploughing my way thru RND now - can you tell me what a type 100 is ?Replenishment

[CCIP]

I believe that's the milkcow that never made it to the game. Ignore it.