[REL] FOTRS Ultimate Project

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

That's great to hear your report....thank you!

Little by little we're finding/changing issues that we hope will make for better game play. The sub nets just don't work as expected (the stock game left them out for a reason), we're trying to expand the games playability by either fixing (if we can) problem features, or following the stock game approach by preventing their use. Sub nets are a nice feature, but if they weren't fully implemented, it serves no purpose to use them.

Propbeanie has become our "in house" expert on all things Campaign Mission related. Without having a "Developers Play Book" available to know what each parameter does and why, he's had to figure out things the old fashion way....trial and error! Most folks don't realize how many hours and hours are wasted on just making a change in the game files, and waiting on the game to load, just to see what it does?! I've been at this for 10 years, I bet 5 years of my time spent has been just sitting/staring at the computer, waiting on it to load the game.

Great work propbeanie!!

I humbly thank you, CapnScurvy... It's almost embarrassing... The "blush" icon in the smilies is too "sad" looking for this...

The hard part of all the "testing" aspect, is waiting for the ME to load, then unload, then load the game, only to CTD ("what did I do ~now~??"), doing the ME again, reloading the game, only to find after all that loading and unloading, that all you've done is expose a different problem... Do it all over again... - my main question to the dev team and Ubisoft would be: If you guys wanted the user to be able to mod the game to entice more folks to purchase it, why oh why did you not include a "test mode" in the game?... or at least a "power-user's manual" for the ME?...

[Lt commander lare]

Personally and this is just my opinion I would remove all the Submarine Nets from the game and add minefields there more deadly then the subnets but that's just my thoughts on it. Whatever you all decide I'm cool with it I love the game more than ever with all the hard work u all have been doing its just been a blast to go on patrol again.

Also i think
The engine compartment area needs to be stronger in armor so we dont lose engines as easily so they can be repaired and we have a fighting chance is that something that can be added or fixed ?.

[propbeanie]

You must have been listening in on our lastest series of pow-wow meetings... The subnets will be removed. We might string a series of minefields in their place, but are looking for other possible solutions, though I don't think there is one. We'll see which way we go. The minfields are relatively easy to distribute though, almost as easy as the subnets to place... Only problem with them is that "explosion" thingie that has a tendency to immediately end your submarine career, instead of gently warning you, as a subnet can do, so long as you're not using TC when you come in contact...

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by Lt commander lare

The engine compartment area needs to be stronger in armor so we dont lose engines as easily so they can be repaired and we have a fighting chance is that something that can be added or fixed ?.

Yes, that's something I've started to look at. I think it can be done with the files available to us. I say with the "files available", since not all parameters/functions are accessible to us. Some things are hard coded that we can't touch....like the Sub Net's not working properly. No matter what we do, if the hard coded files aren't correct, the feature isn't going to work. As it does, the Sub Net produces the sound of a sub hitting it, even if your miles away from them. Just having them "implemented" in the mission produces the effect. Not a good thing.

As we're finding out, we are spending time to re mod the FOTRS mod, to get it to preform as expected.

[Lt commander lare]

what ever you accomplish it will be amazing keep up the good work look how amazing it is now and what u have done already 5 stars.

[DicheBach]

Originally Posted by Lt commander lare

Personally and this is just my opinion I would remove all the Submarine Nets from the game and add minefields there more deadly then the subnets but that's just my thoughts on it. Whatever you all decide I'm cool with it I love the game more than ever with all the hard work u all have been doing its just been a blast to go on patrol again.

Also i think
The engine compartment area needs to be stronger in armor so we dont lose engines as easily so they can be repaired and we have a fighting chance is that something that can be added or fixed ?.

My opinion is this:

Leave out the mine fields UNLESS their detection and mitigation can be realistically modeled.

Obviously subs of this era were not "minesweepers," though I'm not sure if they may have had some capacity to "detect" mines in the preferable manner, i.e., WITHOUT bumping in to them and causing the dratted things to detonate . . . I will assume that submarines of this era (in general) did NOT have such a capacity to detect mine fields.

However, practically speaking minefields could only be placed in shallower waters, and even with that constraint considered, various other constraints had to be followed too. The enemy could not place a minefield so as to completely encircle a harbor, then their own ships couldn't safely get in and out! Areas with high currents were out as well I would imagine.

Obviously the point of a defensive mine field is, as with the land based ones, area denial, along with a certain prospect of causing a surprise "attack" on an enemy. But for the most part, it is my understanding that the point was simply to prevent the enemy from being able to freely use a particular area, and in many cases the general location of their opponents minefields might well have been known.

The whole pacific was crawling with recon and patrol planes and various other forms of intelligence gathering and, while I am not familiar with the specifics of how minefield detection and mitigation were handled by any of the combatant forces in that war, each side MUST have had systems in place to do so. These systems would necessarily involve the intergration of many different operational elements, generally spanning multiple branches of service I reckon . . . if a Australian army air corp recon plane sees a Jap minelayer doing what pretty obviously seems to be laying mines in Rabaul harbor then it stands to reason that little bit of information is behooved to find its way to the right hands/minds so that things like silly interloping submarine captains are less likely to go interloping into the minefield.

All this to say: the presence/absence, detection, mitgation, avoidance of minefields to me, seems like something that is out of scope for the game.

[propbeanie]

Some of the stories I've been reading for research, they usually found the mines when someone hit one, then they'd go "sweep" the area again, and the other side would "seed" the field again... Depending upon the water and the depth of the mine, and airplane might be able to see them, but they'd have to really be looking. Since a lot of mines were magnetic, you could detect them, though I'm not sure how they accomplished that. And really, we don't want to have the same "casualty rate" in the game as what the real guys had to deal with. Yikes! A lot of folks probably wouldn't bother to play!

Patrol from Midway late Oct '43, arrived East of Palaus, 134-30', 7-0'N, Nov 5, 06:58 base time the big noise occurs. Travel to west side around 13:59 same day noise occurs again, within 20nm of land, repeatedly after starting up from a save. This happens with .56 Beta. Both times I was surfaced.
Also, noticed three merchants spawned on top of themselves in Koror harbor area at the 13:59 time. I have a screen shot but no longer remember how to paste it into this message. I used to use The Berbesters method but no longer see the paste icon. Could use some help with that and I'll edit with the jpg.

Oh, looks like I remembered how to paste the screenshot!!

[DicheBach]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

Some of the stories I've been reading for research, they usually found the mines when someone hit one, then they'd go "sweep" the area again, and the other side would "seed" the field again... Depending upon the water and the depth of the mine, and airplane might be able to see them, but they'd have to really be looking. Since a lot of mines were magnetic, you could detect them, though I'm not sure how they accomplished that. And really, we don't want to have the same "casualty rate" in the game as what the real guys had to deal with. Yikes! A lot of folks probably wouldn't bother to play!

Sounds right!

Based on War in the Pacific play, the the research that has prompted me to do . . . it was possible for any boat, ship or plane to spot a mine. It just wasn't that easy or common, and I suppose that the crews of Minesweeper class vessels (and/or those which specialized in laying mines) would tend to be more facile at it.

Its not like they are invisible, even if they are cryptic and depending on things like lighting, turbulence, waves, etc., a mine would potentially be spottable from quite a distance off I would think.

So what I'm saying is: unless the mod intends to model at least this: the capacity for the sub crew to detect mines either when surfaced and on deck watch and possible even when submerged in shallows with at least one periscope up, then there is not much point in having the mines in there at all. Moreover, to make it even more realistic, reports from HQ about detected mine fields and the capacity for the captain to check if any of the risky points along a prospective course were known or suspected minefield hazards would need to be there. On top of this, minefields degraded over time (or at least that is my understanding based on playing War in the Pacific).

It just seems like a helluva lot of factors would need to be covered by the mod, and I suspect this is precisely why Ubisoft did not include them in the vanilla game. Mine warfare is something that is more "logistical" or operational in nature than tactical. They are great for a strategic or operational scale game, but less immersive for a tactical/engagement level game like Silent Hunter.

Reminds me of a discussion about "natural disasters" in one of the old Civ games. If I recall this was on a forum where I believe a few of the developers were listening in. They had introduced natural disasters of various sorts into the game (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamais). In one sense this is more realistic as these sorts of things have definitely impacted human societies throughout the eons. But despite that, it didn't really add much to gameplay and many players complained bitterly that it was nothing but a periodic kick in the nuts for no reason

Either in the next patch, a following update, or the next game in the series: natural disasters were gone. It was not missed.

[Jeff-Groves]

Here's a question.
In the Terrain\Locations folder you'll find AntiSubNet files.
Now those are the same as in SH3 and probably cover only the Atlantic areas.

Have you tried making a single mission near one of those areas to see if you get the same sounds?

[zeus]

thanks

I was referring to the total campaign ???

[J0313]

Wasn't the FM sonar added specifically for detecting mines?

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by Jeff-Groves

Here's a question.
In the Terrain\Locations folder you'll find AntiSubNet files.
Now those are the same as in SH3 and probably cover only the Atlantic areas.

Have you tried making a single mission near one of those areas to see if you get the same sounds?

Have not done one in the Atlantic... But, if you put your boat in a SingleMission, outside the 20km range, and then drive toward a subnet that has been added to the game by use of "Ordnance", when you hit that 20km spawn range "SCREEEEEEEEECHEEEEEEE>>>..." and your speaker cones hit their full extension and do nothing but vibrate, you cringe, curl into a ball, and cry "Mom-MEEEEE...!!! If you start the same mission within the 20km range, "The NEW Sound" starts as soon as the boat interior scene starts to spawn... If you find one already in the game, I dunno. Haven't done one yet - but that's where I'm going next. For the time being, we've removed all the added AntiSubNets in the Jap_MineFields.mis file, and that is the only relief we've found. You add one net and approach it, you get "The NEW Sound"! The AntiSubmarineNetWav Banshee Sound.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by jldjs

Patrol from Midway late Oct '43, arrived East of Palaus, 134-30', 7-0'N, Nov 5, 06:58 base time the big noise occurs. Travel to west side around 13:59 same day noise occurs again, within 20nm of land, repeatedly after starting up from a save. This happens with .56 Beta. Both times I was surfaced.
Also, noticed three merchants spawned on top of themselves in Koror harbor area at the 13:59 time. I have a screen shot but no longer remember how to paste it into this message. I used to use The Berbesters method but no longer see the paste icon. Could use some help with that and I'll edit with the jpg.

Oh, looks like I remembered how to paste the screenshot!!

Koror you say eh? I've got the file split now, and we'll have to see how that does in the next iteration. That pic is the classic "too many RGG called to spawn too soon in too small of a spot" trick. Would you believe we missed it by " " this much?...

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by J0313

Wasn't the FM sonar added specifically for detecting mines?

and @ DicheBach: you just have to go slower than slow, like 1 knot, scope up a hair to let the light in just enough to see shapes that you're coming up on. You can see them, and in most places, they are not placed one right next to the other, but in some others, they are... I don't know how the FM works, nor how well it's incorporated into FotRSU, but from what I understand, you get little lines on the chart, like a ship's sonar blip... ??

@zeus, if you're referring to the page before, there are fewer CTDs overall now. I'm not sure when we got rid of the most of them, but like v26, with v54 close behind... ?? There are still several places, that given the wrong set of circumstances, which Truk still abounds with, that can contribute to a CTD. Your computer resources do play a role in that. One of the biggest things though is to be sure and empty the Save folder in your My Documents folder (SH4 by default) before starting a new version's play. Most of the times, the changes between versions are enough to cause a CTD, if say you have v56 and are playing a save from v55. You will CTD quite a bit, since some of the RGG groups have moved quite a bit... There have been minor changes to vessels also at practically every version, and that can cause CTDs between versions...