Interceptor Sub

[Silverwolf]

Originally Posted by Travis Reed

Are you certain that SH4 can handle those obscenely long ranges?

I actually found a balance of sorts with the battery life. I set it to 1500NM at 40 and am able to recharge it on the surface, and still be able to cruise at 30+ submerged for quite a long distance before I even have to consider recharging.

Also, if this is supposed to be a nuclear powered boat, realize that most real world nuclear vessels are generally considered to be able to cruise at their maximum speed (I'm sure ETR3(SS) has more information here....how much of it he can tell us, however, is another matter entirely...). You might wish to take that into consideration.

It can handle those ranges. I just took the sub, no other mods installed, from San Fransisco to just off the coast of Japan. I was underwater for as long as I could be until the CO2 was too much. Made 4 trips there and back on the peroxide and nothing went wrong. I had the sub at flank the entire time.

How long does it take to recharge the batteries with that range? I may consider using it if something goes wrong with the batteries when I up the range.

I know nuclear subs are supposed to be able to travel at their maximum speed. That's one of the reasons I'm making the ranges so long. It's so you can travel at flank and not have to worry about the batteries going dead. That and the fact that the new battery max speed is 10 knots it pretty much forces you to use the peroxide engine when going over long distances.

[Travis Reed]

Originally Posted by Silverwolf

It can handle those ranges. I just took the sub, no other mods installed, from San Fransisco to just off the coast of Japan. I was underwater for as long as I could be until the CO2 was too much. Made 4 trips there and back on the peroxide and nothing went wrong. I had the sub at flank the entire time.

How long does it take to recharge the batteries with that range? I may consider using it if something goes wrong with the batteries when I up the range.

I know nuclear subs are supposed to be able to travel at their maximum speed. That's one of the reasons I'm making the ranges so long. It's so you can travel at flank and not have to worry about the batteries going dead. That and the fact that the new battery max speed is 10 knots it pretty much forces you to use the peroxide engine when going over long distances.

Good to know SH4 doesn't croak with such values.

As for recharge time, I'd have to test it further. I'm not even certain if the numbers I've quoted you are going to be my final numbers. I ran them as part of a quick test to see if I could get some decent range and still be able to recharge. I drained the batteries to somewhere around 80-90% and then recharged them at 2/3 surfaced speed. With some time accel (I don't remember how much right now) I did note the battery charge going up. Once I can get better data (and possibly a better tweak), I'll let you know.

EDIT: I've managed to complete a better test and have found that it's not nearly as balanced as I'd like it to be. Left port, followed a course to a wide open space, all submerged at 40 knots. I surfaced only to deal with CO2. I exceeded the 1500NM I'd set and still had plenty of battery left. CO2 level was greater than 90/100 when I surfaced (surfacing at 40 knots is fun, BTW...). My battery level was only 77/100 when the diesels finally kicked in. Ran at 2/3 (using the telegraph settings I posted in an earlier post, which gives about 10 knots) and hit the timeaccel. More than 24 hours later, the battery level was only 88/100. I ended the test.

It seems that something I read elsewhere on these forums is true, to an extent. SH4 does not seem to use the range value for submerged endurance. At least, not in the way we expect it to. My batteries should have been dead or near dead after 1500NM. I also note, that at least the RPM value for the E_Propulsion isn't used. Instead it uses the RPM value from the surfaced portion of the propulsion (which may mean it also uses the surfaced range as well, though perhaps not the speed). Either way, I had far greater range than I'd set, and while I did manage to get it recharging, it was doing so too slowly to be of any real use. Further tweaking is in order. Note also, that the surfaced range was still set at 150k NM. You may wish to check to see whether it does use the RPM value for the Peroxide engine.

[TabbyHunter]

Other then the issue with the battery's...Is the Interceptor ready to go? Or how much work would be left to do?

[ETR3(SS)]

Originally Posted by Travis Reed

EDIT: I've managed to complete a better test and have found that it's not nearly as balanced as I'd like it to be. Left port, followed a course to a wide open space, all submerged at 40 knots. I surfaced only to deal with CO2. I exceeded the 1500NM I'd set and still had plenty of battery left. CO2 level was greater than 90/100 when I surfaced (surfacing at 40 knots is fun, BTW...). My battery level was only 77/100 when the diesels finally kicked in. Ran at 2/3 (using the telegraph settings I posted in an earlier post, which gives about 10 knots) and hit the timeaccel. More than 24 hours later, the battery level was only 88/100. I ended the test.

It seems that something I read elsewhere on these forums is true, to an extent. SH4 does not seem to use the range value for submerged endurance. At least, not in the way we expect it to. My batteries should have been dead or near dead after 1500NM. I also note, that at least the RPM value for the E_Propulsion isn't used. Instead it uses the RPM value from the surfaced portion of the propulsion (which may mean it also uses the surfaced range as well, though perhaps not the speed). Either way, I had far greater range than I'd set, and while I did manage to get it recharging, it was doing so too slowly to be of any real use. Further tweaking is in order. Note also, that the surfaced range was still set at 150k NM. You may wish to check to see whether it does use the RPM value for the Peroxide engine.

Try the test again, without a Walther drive in the game files. I noticed that when I add the Walther to any of my boats my propulsion settings were off.

[Travis Reed]

Originally Posted by ETR3(SS)

Try the test again, without a Walther drive in the game files. I noticed that when I add the Walther to any of my boats my propulsion settings were off.

I've been tweaking the beta that was available awhile ago. It has no Walther drive on it.

If a newer beta has been released, I was not aware of it.

[Silverwolf]

Originally Posted by TabbyHunter

Other then the issue with the battery's...Is the Interceptor ready to go? Or how much work would be left to do?

I'm still testing a few things with the Walter Turbine and I need to get the command room in and working before I release the next beta.

I found something interesting yesterday while messing with the ranges. I set the batteries range to 1500nm at 7.0 knots and then picked a random value for the surface range, 300000nm at 4000 knots. Needless to say that extremely large value let the batteries recharge from 0 to 26 percent in 24 hours at ahead standard.

Also while messing around with the ranges I found that the batteries drain really fast for some reason, and then they won't recharge. I never tested the sub with the batteries after I enabled the Walter turbine. So I set the ranges back to what I had them at and tried to figure out the problem. After long hours of the game ignoring my 150k range and draining the batteries in about 31 miles I gave up. This morning I looked up the Turbine and found some interesting info.

Apparently the Germans used it as a means to achieve faster speed while submerged and it required a lot of fuel to use. So more fuel lead to bigger hulls. So I think the reason the batteries drain so fast and don't recharge in my tests is because there are no batteries. To make space for the amount of fuel needed to run the drive it would make sense to remove the batteries which would free up space. At least that's what I think the game is trying to simulate.

So you either get a choice between batteries or the turbine, you can't have all three, which kind of sucks. I'm still going to play around with the turbine to see what the other limitations are but so far one I found is that you cannot set an actual speed. If the speed you want to set is 15 knots and that speed is achieved at ahead standard, then the turbine will operate at standard propulsion. But if ahead standard maxes out at a speed of 20 knots, then the speed of 15 you selected will be ignored and the sub will continue accelerating until it reaches 20. I have found a work around for this it's just modifying the engine properties in the .cfg file. It's really only to keep the sub at a slow speed while you are targeting an enemy ship.

[TheBeast]

Do you have any plans to complete the Nautilus?

I would really like to play around with this boat. I've been tweaking around with the model trying to get it working.

Maybe, we can get someone to create a Mysterious Island Sub Pen base with submerged entrance. Place one base in Pacific and another in Atlantic.

[Silverwolf]

TheBeast: I do not have plans on completing the Nautilus that is why I put the unfinished one up for download so that anyone who wanted to could complete the project.

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So here is a large update on the interior. It is in game and working. I've gotten almost all of it in. Just need to do some more of the dials on and the periscopes and then I'll release the new beta for testing. Yes, there are still pieces of the original CR in there, don't worry about them they will be gone soon.

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...Interior_1.jpg
http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...Interior_2.jpg
http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...Interior_3.jpg
http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...Interior_4.jpg
http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...Interior_5.jpg

[Silverwolf]

Here is a little preview of how the scopes work in game. You can raise them and lower them with the click of the mouse. The observation scope is on the right and the attack scope is on the left.

I am a little upset that S3D only has a 32 character limit, because there is a command in the .sim file that will allow one object to raise and lower the observation periscope. But the command string is too long. As of now you can raise it with the red and white piece but you need to click the handle to lower it. The attack scope can be raised with the same object.

Also I want to know what you guys think about the rotation speed on the red and white objects. Should it be faster or slower? Maybe end it before the scope is fully raised.

You may need to view it full screen, I didn't do an HD video.

[ETR3(SS)]

Looks nice. If you're still going for that modern feel might I suggest that the ring to raise/lower the scope only do about a quarter turn. That's about how far ours turned since it's nothing more than a hydraulic valve.

[TheBeast]

I think the new interior is looking very good. Any idea if/when you are going to leak a updated download?

[Silverwolf]

Originally Posted by ETR3(SS)

Looks nice. If you're still going for that modern feel might I suggest that the ring to raise/lower the scope only do about a quarter turn. That's about how far ours turned since it's nothing more than a hydraulic valve.

Just implemented that, it definitely looks a lot better.

Originally Posted by TheBeast

I think the new interior is looking very good. Any idea if/when you are going to leak a updated download?

I do have plans to release a new beta. But I need to move a lot of the nodes around for certain effects and where the crew are positioned. Then I need to make sure the sub works with all the supermods. It will take some time and between school and work it's hard to find time at the moment.

[Silverwolf]

Did some fiddling around with nodes and such, now the command room is full of sailors and not an empty shell like before. The people standing, except for the guy next to the helm and the SO, only come out when battle stations are enabled.

[rein1705]

Wow!

[keltos01]

brings back memories of 688 Attack Sub !

keltos