ImprovedConvoys Beta and UnRealUBoat - Udated: 03-25

[CCIP]

I think Walker's group is set at veteran, actually, as are most of the formerly-elite late-war escorts. I'll leave that for Jason to confirm though :hmm:

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by CCIP

I think Walker's group is set at veteran, actually, as are most of the formerly-elite late-war escorts. I'll leave that for Jason to confirm though :hmm:

Those are all set to veteran.

I do have some elites in '44-45 in some convoys, but as only 25% of the total number of escorts.

I created the inventory file -- included in each release of IC and updated for the latest build -- for precisely this reason. I will quote from it now. (CVEs/CLs always Elite, skewing the %)

CU33/44/45Convoy has 7 escorts (two CL), 33% elite.
ONLate(12-44 to 45) has 8 escorts, 25% elite.
UC(43-45) has 7 escorts (including CVE), 33% elite.
HX44(44-45) has 8 escorts, 25% elite.
JW44Convoy has 11 escorts (include 1 CVE/2CL), 25% elite.
SC43ConvoyH (43-44) has 8 escorts, 25% elite.
SC44ConvoyH (44-45) has 8 escorts, 25% elite.
SL44Convoy (44) has 6 escorts, 33% elite. (Maybe too many elite)

I just realized in SH3 the default SL route ends in December, '44. Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn't. It's odd though.

Where 8 escorts are included and none are CLs or CVEs, there are 2 elite escorts. I randomly roll for which warships get to be elite, so it may end up being ones that have less than 100% chance to spawn, but I'd have to inspect the RND to know. I didn't want to control for that variable manually.

If I reduced the value from 25% to 13%, I believe I'd end up with 1 elite escort in the convoys with 8 escorts.

You'll note they're all late convoys, with the exception of valuable tanker convoys that start in '43. I thought starting in '44 you might see an elite. It was my understanding with the sonar fix, you ought to be able to slip at least a single elite.

In either case, I haven't played in '43-'45 yet and encountered any known elites, so I can't say I have playtested elite escorts. If they're still quite unescapable, I'd be willing to further reduce the number of elites.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by Beery

I was under the mistaken impression that the mod featured a reduction of about 40% across the board. That's why I didn't comment on it. So if that's not the case I'll be glad to include it.

I added the reduction as my last all out effort to complete IC and be able to play the game again seriously -- You can see how well that turned out. I haven't played seriously in about two months, but I suppose IC is pretty good.

In my haste to prep it for a release so I can really play again I may not have been clear about the reductions in single merchant traffic, but they are indeed very deep and clean.

I actually target traffic based on the RndGroup's name, so I can specifically target traffic for particular areas of the global for reduction or increase. (Assuming the developers used sane names, and so far that's turned out to be true. i.e. US Coastal Traffic is actually called USCoastalTraffic_44 or whatever.) So, I am open to suggestions.

Originally Posted by Beery

The only other worries from my perspective are the Walker group, which has now been added, and the numbers of elite escorts, which were reduced drastically in Pentallion's final 20/40 mod after the devs made elite escorts inescapable in SH3 1.3. Elites are still worrisome, since they are still generally unbeatable unless you cheat. If they're very rare, they're not a problem, because some situations were inescapable, but if they are fairly common they are a game-breaker. What is the situation with elite escorts in IC at the moment?

I didn't address elite escorts in HKs or single patrol groups. I could, though, if there were a significant number of them. I can check.

    358 CrewRating=1
    566 CrewRating=0
    734 CrewRating=3
    802 CrewRating=4
    924 CrewRating=2

Rating 4 is, of course, Elite. I know, even including the stock convoys I haven't modified yet, like AS, which is all elite escorts, that only accounts for maybe 40 of those CrewRating=4.

So there's another 750 or so units out there with an Elite level of readiness. I think this probably needs further investigation, then. I can do an across-the-board reduction where CrewRating=4 to CrewRating=3 for all HKs and single unit patrols. Shouldn't take more than 30 minutes to kick out some code to do that as party of my hacked module for performing the 20/20 style edits.

One of these days I'm going to need to cleanup the code base.

[Beery]

Sounds good. It really looks as if I got a totally wrong impression of what IC was all about.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by Beery

Sounds good. It really looks as if I got a totally wrong impression of what IC was all about.

Oops.



IC Elites before changing all Elite single patrols to Veteran:

    661 CrewRating=2
    791 CrewRating=4
   2017 CrewRating=3

IC Elites after changing all Elites to Veteran:

    635 CrewRating=4
    661 CrewRating=2
   2173 CrewRating=3

Looks like there are around 635 I can't account for. Must be a combination of Elite HKs and, I'd guess, Elite single merchants?

I haven't written the code for the section to deal with HKs and TFs. I wanted to do something similar with TFs that I did with convoys. I have about 10-12 TFs to work with, and I can mess with them in strange and magical ways. I wanted to reapportion the ships to seemingly more realistic compositions. Not sure what that might be yet.

But that same code could deal with making HKs not be Elite.

Although I can do a quick hack to handle that and not bother with TF rewrites at all.

I'll have to look into it. Until then, there are some elite HKs and, until I make a new release, some Elite single patrols too.

[Beery]

CCIP might have some interesting input on this. He's been struggling to get the Elite AI to work reasonably with the good sonar equipment, but he's been having trouble getting elites to be at all escapable without making non-elites completely useless. If elites are marginalized, it might make his job that much easier. On the other hand, he may have reasons for keeping elites as they are.

[CCIP]

Mind you, I've been testing Veterans, not elite. I've never actually ran anything on elite, and Veterans are pretty darn good too - but I guess Elites might be pretty survivable with some of my new tweaks - I'm just not 100% sure.

[jasonb885]

Okay, and here are the HK / TF Elites.

    263 CrewRating=3
    466 CrewRating=4

So there are 466 of my unaccounted for Elites.

The rest must be merchants or something weird.

And these are for single ships, merchant or warship, after I've dealt with elite warships.

     78 CrewRating=4
    246 CrewRating=3

So I'm down to around 500 elites now, and the 78 are merchants, which is weird but okay. And the rest are HKs.

I should be able to work out a way to weed those out.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by CCIP

Mind you, I've been testing Veterans, not elite. I've never actually ran anything on elite, and Veterans are pretty darn good too - but I guess Elites might be pretty survivable with some of my new tweaks - I'm just not 100% sure.

So maybe we should discard elites entirely, or?

[CCIP]

Good question. Like I said, not enough testing.

[sdcruz]

I think some of the icebergs have crew rating as well so be careful.

Regards
Shelton.

[Oesten]

Originally Posted by jasonb885

So maybe we should discard elites entirely, or?

Elites should be really rare. They are like the Captain Walkers of this world, the top aces of escorts. No way should the majority of escorts, even in 1945, be elites.

The ratio of elite escorts to non-elite escorts should be something like this IMO:

In 1939, 0% of escorts are elites. (No experience in '39)
In 1940, 1% of escorts are elites.
In 1941, 2% of escorts are elites.
In 1942, 4% of escorts are elites.
In 1943, 6% of escorts are elites.
In 1944, 8% of escorts are elites.
In 1945, 10% of escorts are elites.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by Oesten

Elites should be really rare. They are like the Captain Walkers of this world, the top aces of escorts. No way should the majority of escorts, even in 1945, be elites.

The ratio of elite escorts to non-elite escorts should be something like this IMO:

In 1939, 0% of escorts are elites. (No experience in '39)
In 1940, 1% of escorts are elites.
In 1941, 2% of escorts are elites.
In 1942, 4% of escorts are elites.
In 1943, 6% of escorts are elites.
In 1944, 8% of escorts are elites.
In 1945, 10% of escorts are elites.

Perhaps, but I can't control them in their entirety on a year by year basis. The RND definitions themselves often run for several years, making this kind of distinction impossible.

Best I can do is look at a particular convoy, see how long it runs in the game, and decide the best balance based on the beginning and ending periods for that convoy. For some convoys, like HX and SL, that's a year at a time, so it's easier. For some like OS, it's 3.5 years.

Since my elite units are chosen at random when I say, 25% elite, 75% veteran, it could be 25% of 8 or 25% of 6 escorts or however many escorts I explicitly define. I think due to rounding I have numbers rounded up, so for 6 escorts 25% might be 2 elites and 4 veterans, which is oversubscribed by 12%.

That's just how I did it.

If elites are a serious issue, I can certainly do the quick math in my head to ensure there's no more than one elite at most in late war convoys, or simply discard elites altogether. If they are a death sentence, I'd rather simply do the latter. It's easiest.

[Oesten]

jason:

How about reserving the elites for the hunter-killer groups, while the basic convoy escorts have none (early war) or only one (late war?) Would that be possible?

Oesten

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by Oesten

jason:

How about reserving the elites for the hunter-killer groups, while the basic convoy escorts have none (early war) or only one (late war?) Would that be possible?

Oesten

It's possible. Many or most of the HKs appear to be elites already by default. I was actually thinking of trying to reduce or eliminate the elites entirely.

Certainly more testing with elites and late war convoys is needed.

I may reduce the number of elites further still.