[REL] Kakemann's improved escorts 1.41

[kakemann]

Originally Posted by Mav87th

1: Have shipping routes moved to reflect historical routings close to shallow waters

I actually like the campaign layer

Originally Posted by Mav87th

2: Have thermal layers be deep - very deep like 450 ft. - This would greatly effect the early part of the war, where the fleet boats could not go that deep.

Another way of getting the same effect is to remove the thermal layer effect completely or reduce it's protective effect. A reduction has been applied to the mod.

Originally Posted by Mav87th

3: Still enable the fleet boats to hide under a layer, although it now is deep.

If the thermal layers should be placed at 450 feet it would likely be suicide to dive under that layer if using the subs in this game

Originally Posted by Mav87th

4: Perhaps increase the time the AI's will loiter and search for you from the 15 min's it is now up to perhaps 3 hours.

Yes! I'm considering this. It's easy to fix.

Originally Posted by Mav87th

The above would imo give some tactical decissions about where and when to attack the shipping. And would add a deadlyness to operating in shallow waters as well.

I already have to undertake tactical descisions with my mod.
There is no doubt it is quite dangerous to be in shallow waters with this mods settings.

Originally Posted by Mav87th

I just can't see why historical setups should be dull or less challenging. If one is a good skipper you kill the shipping anyway.....like O'Kane...

I haven't really deepdived in to all the historical aspects of the shipping routes etc. of the pacific ocean.
But I'm quite happy to use these setting provided in this thread.

Remember that I released this mod so that other users of this forum could have the oppurtunity to enjoy the settings i've worked with.

If someone would like to read through histroy books and make a more historically accurate mod than this one - that would be great. However, I'll just continue developing the mod I've started at here.

PS! There are probably many people here who would be quite grateful if your history knowledge could be applied to a mod - so why don't you start by creating a new one!

Heh Kakemann - my modding skills are sadly not as developed as yours. I hold your work in great respect. What i can do is deliver what small knowledge i have from reading a few books. To make that happen in a mod would take "other people"


Regarding going to 460 ft. - the thickskinned fleetboats (starting with Tang in 1944) could go to about 600 ft. The depth guage showed up to 600 ft. and the pin was at 612 ft. At one point around the Marianas Tang took seawater in through a torpedotube in the forward torpedoroom. the imballance made the boat go down through 612 ft. for a while. They had no idea if they were then decending or rising. After a while it started moving back towords 600 ft.

Tang went to 500 ft. many times to duck under layers.


From reading the forums i come to belive that the Layer depth are hardcoded in some way, so we can not make them be deeper.

[kakemann]

Originally Posted by Mav87th

Heh Kakemann - my modding skills are sadly not as developed as yours. I hold your work in great respect. What i can do is deliver what small knowledge i have from reading a few books. To make that happen in a mod would take "other people"

Hmmm, maybe those guys are out there? Yust looking for a guy like you with all the knowledge

Originally Posted by Mav87th

Regarding going to 460 ft. - the thickskinned fleetboats (starting with Tang in 1944) could go to about 600 ft. The depth guage showed up to 600 ft. and the pin was at 612 ft. At one point around the Marianas Tang took seawater in through a torpedotube in the forward torpedoroom. the imballance made the boat go down through 612 ft. for a while. They had no idea if they were then decending or rising. After a while it started moving back towords 600 ft.

Tang went to 500 ft. many times to duck under layers.


From reading the forums i come to belive that the Layer depth are hardcoded in some way, so we can not make them be deeper.

Interesting history this.
I'm not sure about the layer depth.

I made a test mission in the norwegian oslo fjord and I found that there the thermal layer was placed very shallow. Maybe at 15metres or so. I've read someting about a thermal layer randomizer which i guess in some way randomizes the thermal layers placements in campaing, but I havent tried it, though.

Might be that the placement is hardcoded.

But the thermal layer effect is definately moddable!

Happy hunting

[NefariousKoel]

From what I recall, the layer in the Pacific is at a more shallow depth than it normally is in the Atlantic and being at over 400ft. sounds like an Atlantic layer.

I'm fine with where the layer is now. Ideally it would be around 250-350ft though.

[Onkel Neal]

Good work, and as always, THANKS! for including a good readme.

[Popov57]

Thanks a lot for your work, kakemann! As well as all the other modders with their skillfull work and splendid ideas SHIV becomes what it deserves to be - submarine action first class!
I´m cruising around with your ELITE version. After locating a convoy my favourite attack sequence is:
steam ahead, dive directly on course of the merchants, waiting silently underneath the thermal layer. As soon as the lead escort has passed, up to periscope depth, there we have a nice little massacre
The bad thing: the escort destroyers never search for me within the convoy! Maneuvering silently rigged, 6 merchants sunk, all tubes empty, nobody cares!
Your mod is correctly installed and activated. What can I do/ change to make life more dangerous?

[kakemann]

Hi Popov!

This behavior has been discussed a lot at this forum.

It has been reported as a bug with patch 1.2 of the game (see bug number 23 in this thread:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...112193&page=23)

You can also read this thread: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=112904

This seems to be a hard coded bug, which I hope they will fix in patch 1.3 in the game.

I've experienced it myself a couple of times, sometimes the destroyers will head to the direction where they presume the torpedo was shot from and start searching. Sometimes they will stop an just wait, and sometimes they will continue with their warninglights blinking but won't do anything.

However I've been a little more successfull using the ELITE version of this mod,instead of using the SH4 original settings.

When one of the ships in the convoy is hit by a torpedo the destroyers will change their "state" to alert. This alert status happens if they believe there is a enemy sub in the area, and they will likely assume that if a ship is hit by a torpedo or if you run on the surface or you're too noisy. You can see it on the surface because the merchants will start zigzagging and if dark you'll easily see the DD's blinking with their warning lights.

The problem here is their reaction when their status is set to alert. Anyway if you are using this ELITE mod and is detected by the escorts even if they don't start searcing around for you, you will definately have to use the right strategy to get away using this mod. After all their sensors are a lot more sensitive as well as their crew rating.
I hope you understand what i mean (english is not my 1. language).

If this issue is fixed in the next SH4 patch (1.3), I would actually start to get quite satisfied with the game and this ELITE mod would be even more challenging.

[Popov57]

Again thanks kakemann, understood perfectly!
I did not realize/know, that this problem was hard coded. I will be more noisy during future attacks to challenge the destroyers to give me a hard time.
And then let`s wait for the next patch

Happy hunting

[kakemann]

Thanks! You too Popov!

[leovampire]

Using your Standard one and yes the game play is better except for one thing other than seeing a warship there is almost no reason to dive anymore how do you increase the planes in the airports a little bit more not like originaly that was rediculous but enough so that they show up after you sink a ship? I would change it if I knew how just can't figure out how to use the tools programs always getting error messages.

Dave

[NefariousKoel]

Originally Posted by leovampire

Using your Standard one and yes the game play is better except for one thing other than seeing a warship there is almost no reason to dive anymore how do you increase the planes in the airports a little bit more not like originaly that was rediculous but enough so that they show up after you sink a ship? I would change it if I knew how just can't figure out how to use the tools programs always getting error messages.

Dave

The aircraft settings are in the SH4\Data\Cfg\AirStrike.cfg file. Many of the entries are fairly self-explanatory. There are some entries that you can change how much the increased chance is after certain things happen.

[leovampire]

What program should i use to change these values? SH3 mini tweeker or something else?

[kakemann]

You don't need to use mini tweaker. Just open the airstrike.cfg in notepad.

If you see close to the end of this file you see the following lines:

Default Air Strike Probability
Enemy Air Strike Probability Increase on Radio Messages Sent
Friendly Air Strike Probability Increase on Contact Report Sent

These are the settings after installing STANDARD VERSION of my mod:

Default Air Strike Probability=5
Enemy Air Strike Probability Increase on Radio Messages Sent=30
Friendly Air Strike Probability Increase on Contact Report Sent=90

These are the original settings in the unmodded Silent hunter 4 - 1.2 game:

Default Air Strike Probability=10
Enemy Air Strike Probability Increase on Radio Messages Sent=30
Friendly Air Strike Probability Increase on Contact Report Sent=70

Try to change the Default Air Strike Probability to somewhere between 5 and 10.

__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________

If you would like to change the general airtraffic around japanese airbases (aircoverage areas), you have to change some other files.
You can use notepad to edit these as well.
The files that needs to be changed to add more traffic to areas with aircoverage go to the following directory:

DATA/LAND

There are three files that you have to look into here.
These files are:

DATA/LAND/LAB_SmallAirBaseJP/LAB_SmallAirBaseJP.cfg
DATA/LAND/LAB_MediumAirBaseJP/LAB_MediumAirBaseJP.cfg
DATA/LAND/LAB_LargeAirBaseJP/LAB_LargeAirBaseJP.cfg

Opening one of these you will see something similar to this:

[AirGroup 1]
StartDate=19380101
EndDate=19401225
Squadron1Class=A6M2Zero
Squadron1No=2

There will be several Airgroups in these files, change the squadron numbers to increase airtraffic.

The text I highlighted in bold represents the number of squadrons on that type of airbase. The higher number - the more airplanes will cover that airspace.

See the readme to see what I changed these numbers to.
If you have problems finding balanced settings you can try to reduce the numbers slightly from the original SH4 settings instead.
If you have a backup, of course

Did this make sense, leovampire?

[leovampire]

Now I just have to play with it to make them show up a little bit more

But one more quick question when I open the files with notepad does it change anything on how the game reads things? I am asking because I did this with a couple of files once trying to see if I could change values and since then I have tryed to use Mini Tweeker and keep getting error messages in trying to do anything to these files! Or are the 2 unrelated?

[kakemann]

They are not related. Mini tweaker will let you change files that are not possible to change in any other way.

As long as you just change the values there are no dangers related to this