[REL] Real Fleet Boat

[Bill Nichols]

Beery -

Bravo with your latest release. One request, though

Any chance of adding Ducimus's "Bungo Pete"? That mod installed with no problems under 1.22, but now with 1.23 I'm getting warnings about conflicting files

(I know Bungo Pete isn't exactly realistic, but he does make an interesting and challenging 'Easter Egg')

[Beery]

Hehe, I looked at the Bungo Pete mod yesterday because I wanted to brush up on what's needed to put new ship classes into the game, but I reckon people would kill me if I installed a mod like that in RFB. It's not that it's a bad mod - in fact it's great - it's just that it's focused on excitement rather than realism and my big fear is that it's liable to make that area of the map literally a death trap. One of my big challenges in RFB is to get the game so that people can regularly survive a career, and with the game as it stands I'm finding that it's difficult - in my own experience with the game I've yet to get a commander to retire. Maybe I've just had a run of bad luck.

[akdavis]

Originally Posted by Beery

Hehe, I looked at the Bungo Pete mod yesterday because I wanted to brush up on what's needed to put new ship classes into the game, but I reckon people would kill me if I installed a mod like that in RFB. It's not that it's a bad mod - in fact it's great - it's just that it's focused on excitement rather than realism and my big fear is that it's liable to make that area of the map literally a death trap. One of my big challenges in RFB is to get the game so that people can regularly survive a career, and with the game as it stands I'm finding that it's difficult - in my own experience with the game I've yet to get a commander to retire. Maybe I've just had a run of bad luck.

Kinda cool mod, but I can think of a much more useful, and valuable, use for the destroyer escort entry to help make the campaigns more realistic. Wish I knew more about making new ship types.

On a side note, although they are included and featured in the documentation for this game, the Buckley and Evarts destroyer escorts apparently have absolutely no place in the campaign. The lack of DE entries for the Japanese is somewhat understandable seeing as no true Japanese DE is included, but it is very odd that the US DEs are missing altogether as well. Oh it is painful to look in those campaign files.

[tedhealy]

My only comment on the deck gun after my first patrol is that with it nerfed, I think reload times should come down a small amount. Maybe to 30 seconds or so rather than 35. Or is reload time influenced by your deck gun crew?

Can the deck gun still take out sampans in a relatively short amount of time?

[Beery]

Originally Posted by tedhealy

My only comment on the deck gun after my first patrol is that with it nerfed, I think reload times should come down a small amount. Maybe to 30 seconds or so rather than 35. Or is reload time influenced by your deck gun crew?

Reload times are affected by crew quality. The standard reload time for 3" and 4" guns is 30 seconds.

[tedhealy]

Originally Posted by Beery

Reload times are affected by crew quality. The standard reload time for 3" and 4" guns is 30 seconds.

Ok, cool I was getting reload times of 35+ seconds.

[Beery]

Originally Posted by tedhealy

Can the deck gun still take out sampans in a relatively short amount of time?

I just did a test with a small sampan - it took ten rounds to sink it.

I did two more tests - 19 rounds and 13 rounds. I guess sinking it quickly depends on where you hit it.

[Egan]

Originally Posted by Beery

Deck gun changes also seem to be well-received, although the standard Silent Hunter uber-deck-gun is often a pet feature for many players so it's hard to wean them off it. In terms of balancing the game's weapons I think RFB is 90% there. I've been testing the new deck gun against real WW2 engagement reports and I'm glad to see that the new deck gun compares well in terms of ammo needed to sink ships.

:rotfl:Well well, Just the man to take issue with! What happened to my Uber Killer Lazer deck gun...grrrr....

Seriously though: It is going in the right direction. The time to reload seems pretty good but I wonder whether the power of the guns is a little too nerfed. I tried it out on a sanpan last night and used up virtually all my deck gun ammo over a four hour period. I've certainly heard of it taking upwards of twenty shells to put a sanpan under before but this was a lot of ammo being used with not very many misses (I was firing it manually,) in calm seas (wind at 0 m/s,). Eventually I had to brake off the attack for lack of ammo.

This seems a little excessive for attacking small targets, although fairly realistic against bigger merchents. It may be a one off, though: In the previous version of RFB I used a lot of ammo from the DG but never to this extent. If your ammo values have remained the same between this and the last version then it is all fine and this example was just a freak occurence. And as you say, you have managed it with the amounts I would expect SO I guess it was just a one off.

The included version of the Assisted plotting mod is pretty much on the money, though. I much perfer it over the stand alone one doing the rounds as there is enough info to make it practical to use. Even being one of those Hardkor Realizm fellers I like to feel like my fire control team are doing something useful so this is just about perfect to me.

[t0maz]

Any one have issue that in zoom mode the granade going right?

[Iceberg]

Originally Posted by Egan

This seems a little excessive for attacking small targets, although fairly realistic against bigger merchents.

Then maybe what's left to do is to make the Sampan easier to sink and leave the gun and the other ships as they are in the latest RFB?
I guess with the stock guns, the sampans had to be "armored" not to be sunk with just one hit! How many shells should it take to sink a sampan anyway?

[Beery]

Originally Posted by Egan

I tried it out on a sanpan last night and used up virtually all my deck gun ammo over a four hour period.

I think there's something wrong with the sampan DM. When I did my sampan tests I was noticing a lot of shots seeming to go right through it without causing any explosion graphic on the sampan and with a splash behind.

But the thing is, I knocked out three sampans with 42 rounds last night. The sampan is really small and the masts and sails don't seem to take damage - could you be missing the hull?

[Beery]

Originally Posted by Iceberg

How many shells should it take to sink a sampan anyway?

I did a Google search online for "sunk sampan deck gun rounds" and after two pages of vague "sunk a sampan with the deck gun" I found this:

http://www.usssealion.com/sealion/Crew.htm

"June 30. Battle surfaced on a sampan, fired 67 rounds 4”x50. 900 rounds of 20 MM. Heavy seas made accurate shooting hard, sank her finally."

The problem is, sampans come in all shapes and sizes - this could have been anything from a couple of tons to a hundred tons. I doubt we'll get a definitive answer. I'd guess that in real life it would take a couple of hits at most.

Actually, if players are worried about deck guns vs. sampans I'd advise them to use AA guns on them - probably sink them faster and there's plenty of historical basis for doing so.

[Prof]

I've had problems sinking sampans with RFB 1.23...took me over 50 shells each to sink a pair of them the other day. This was using a 3"/50 deck gun.

Edit: These were both 2 ton boats.

[Beery]

I think there's definitely a problem with the small sampan. I made a test mission up with a small sampan and a junk (bigger than a small sampan) - the junk took 15 rounds to sink while the sampan took 35 - that's way too much. From what I've read little sampans should sink after about one round. I'll do some tweaking on the smaller boats and see what I can do. I'm not going to adjust the deck gun itself because it's giving good results for medium sized ships.

I also found that lifeboats are indestructible, but I guess there are gameplay reasons for that.

[Beery]

I just tested with sampan flotability hit points set to 1 and that reduced the rounds needed to sink it to 5 (with the junk needing about 12). I also made the masts more destructible because they needed quite a few hits before. I'm gonna play around with the DM a bit more to see if I can get the sampans to be more realistic.