LuftWolf and Amizaur's Weapons and Sensors Realism Mod

[OlegM]

First of all hats off to LW and Amizaur - you're doing great job to improve the game, and I will be using your mod.

Having said that, here goes my criticims - it's not going to be nice, so watch out

Well call me shallow, stupid, boring or what have you but I am documentation freak, especially when it comes to modding...

I must say I've never seen more confusing documentation than the one that accompanies this mod. Authors really tried to explain everything, I give them that, but it's so confusing, perhaps they went too far.

Good part of the documentation is actually directly copy-pasted - warts, typos, smileys and all - from author's e-mail correspondence, ie. they, sorta, argue whether something should be done this way or that way. Instead of making authoritative decision privately among themselves (hey it's your mod after all) they copy-pasted their dilemmas and diverging opinions directly in the readme?! Hello?

On couple occasions red-letter guy (Amizaur I think) says something directly opposite to the black-letter guy (LW). Hey? Can't you guys, like, agree among yourselves privately and then implement the decision, and document it in a simple manner? I I'm not really interested in reading your e-mails

First of all, are you two sure you understand each other, and that every change intended by guy A is received and implemented by buy B? Just checking guys... after reading the mod docs, and reading about your e-mail problems here on the board I really can't be sure everything you two intended is really "in".

Come on, you have e-mail for that. Once you settle on how some problem should be dealt with, put it in the mod, document it and let us know. It's incredibly confusing to have to sift thru your correspondence badly disguised as "readme" in this way.

Note or paragraph that describes Mk46/Mk54 change or swap has to be among the most confusing paragraphs I ever read in my life Seriously I think it takes phD to understand half of what you wrote there.

Also, I agree with whoever said MS Word format should not have been used. Use RTF.

And I agree with whoever hinted at the idea of making mod changes be listed in USNI database, accessible during the game. It would be handy and should be easy to do, and there are LOTS of changes in this mod, which will seriously affect the gameply (which in itself is a good thing, as long as players understand what goes on around them).

With documentation this confusing, I feel unable to comment on the quality of the mod itself. I am not always quite sure what you intended to do, or how you two think certain problems should be solved. Once I get thorough understanding of your ideas and intentions, I will be capable of judging the mod for what it is.

I should add I'd be using your mod even in this IMO confusing state simply because I like what you do (at least the parts I *do* understand LOL) - and doctrine changes seem to be quite good (again, those that I managed to test in play).

Keep up the good work but please improve your decision making process, and mod documentation

Oleg

[OlegM]

Originally Posted by OlegM

Note or paragraph that describes Mk46/Mk54 change or swap has to be among the most confusing paragraphs I ever read in my life Seriously I think it takes phD to understand half of what you wrote there.

Let me post this small example (from the mod documentation, related to Mk46, or Mk50, or Mk54 or whatever):

"I have given the Mk46 ASW torpedo Mk 46 specs, and swapped out the modded Mk 46 in all non-American platforms and the Mk46 ASROC for the Mk 46 ASW (with Mk46 specs)."

ROFL!

:rotfl:

[LuftWolf]

Thank you for your feedback, Oleg and I am glad you are using the mod.

Yes, I am aware that the documentation is a "rough draft." Consider Amizaur's word to be authoritative. In fact, I read the mk46/54 paragraph several times and concluded it was very poorly constructed. On the plus side, all the time that would have gone into polishing the readme went into the mod itself, so I can assure you it's MUCH more polished. That is to say, both Amizaur and I were/are under real time constraints and I wanted to stick close to our announced distribution date, this meant that there are some typos and rough spots in the documentation (sound familiar... now I know why games often come the way they do...). We have already planned v2.01 to clean this up!

Also, Amizaur's comments are directly made to the readme itself not posted from email. I thought it was interesting to have the development be "open source", since we are actively looking for community members to be involved in the process of working to improve DW. Ultimately, the mod reflects the opinions of Amizaur, myself, everyone listed in the readme, and everyone who has posted about DW to Subsim or BFC.

[LuftWolf]

However, I think this line

The purpose of this mod is, straightforwardly, to address the aspects of DW game-play that most bother its authors, while improving the simulation experience and fixing bugs, without introducing any new ones.

is an *amazing* piece of composition and sentence structure. :P

And frankly I used Word because it was easier.

I probably should have changed the format, but its here on the forum too.

Once the editing has been done, I will probably take your suggestion and change it to RTF.

[OlegM]

I am OK with this mod being as you say "Open Source" - though thing to keep in mind is that even OS projects have bosses and project leaders

But then some place - say this board, or private messages - should be used for decision making process, and once the decision is made (by whoever is in charge) - it should be documented in simple, clear and straightforward manner.

Another example of using "readme" instead of board. WH doctrine, first the black letter guy says:

"Amizaur has reduced somewhat the effectiveness of wake-homing torpedoes by..." etc.

Then the red letter guy (obviously Amizaur) replies to that:

"Well I think it not exactly this way. I didn’t mean to reduce effectiveness, this is only side effect. " etc.

[LuftWolf]

Without getting into it, Amizaur and I have exchanged dozens, perhaps well over 200 emails in the past three weeks, its not entirely possible for each of us to totally understand each other all of the time.

Putting the total scope of the changes in the readme was a very difficult task and I'm actually glad I did as reasonable a job as I did and that Amizaur did not feel inclined to change whole sections about his additions.

Thank you for your patience, as I know that good documentation is crucial for any project like this, in fact, one of my main goals in creating this mod was to provide the best documentation possible. Please continue to post if you have any questions about specific changes until we can nail everything down in the very soon to come followup 2.01.

[Tgio]

Boys, keep up the good work!
I've downloaded your mod (2.0) this morning and had a very hard knife fight OHP/Helos Vs Kilo and Han this evening Great!

To be honest, I have reinstalled DW (removed while waiting for patch 1.02, please don't blame me) just for trying your mod (from version 1.0).

And now I feel it will remain on my HD for a very very long time now.
Thank you for letting me re-discover this GREAT game.

[Deathblow]

Great mod. Can tell a lot of work went into it. Much props and I'm throughly enjoying it.

You asked for feedback. You might want to reconsider the new AI minimum depths for ASW torps (helo drops, ASROCs, etc). I was able to exploit it in my sub, by emergency blowing to the surface everytime I got a helo-dropped torp that I couldn't evade. Shot to the surface, while the torps circled below unable to reach me. When they finally went into search mode, dropped back down to speed away, until they reaquired, then rinse and repeat. Worked every time against he Mk46s, havn't tried it against the the Russian dropped torps, but if they are using the same doctrines, then it will be the same result.

Its good to prevent friendly fire, but couldn't possibly be exploited against Stallion or SS-n-27-ASW weps.

db

[Molon Labe]

The FFG cannot assign the MH-60 to drop a Mk54 via ASTAC, even if both Mk50s are expended. Right now, the MH-60's effectively only carry two torpedoes.

[LuftWolf]

Molon, you can still fire the MK54 from the Nav Map, I'm not sure why can't use them with waypoints. I am going to play around with a few things, but for now, fire the torpedos from the Nav Map, that way, you can also select the individual torpedo dropped by the helo.

I think this has something to do with the hardcoding of user platform weapons, and the FFG AI helo is something of a gray area, so part of the game is hardcoded to ignore weapon changes (the interface modules) and the rest of the game allows the change. As I almost never fire torpedos off of waypoints in the air platforms, this doesn't effect me too much, but I don't think we have a workaround in the DB, the game is coded that way.

I have to say thank you very much for putting the mod through such a very thorough review.

[LuftWolf]

Originally Posted by Neutrino 123

I just shot some Adcaps at a few targets, and I noticed one annoying thing about the torpedo active/passive information. The feature itself works very well and is an excellent addition, but the auto TMA keeps merging the torpedo data with the target data, essentially making the torpedo data disappear, and not moving the target into the correct place. Turning auto TMA off would fix this, of course, but for people who want to track other targets and simultaneously have the torpedo data, it doesn't work as well.

Is there any way to prevent the torpedo data from merging with the ship sensors data? Perhaps the torpedo data could somehow be classified as link data?

Sorry about the delay in responding to you.

Thanks for your feedback on this feature. Since the ADCAP is considered a sensor extension of the sub, it cannot be treated as a link contact.

The range of the feedback sensor on the torpedos however is very small, so you know that when it detects a contact along a certain bearing, you also have a fairly good indication of its range and thus its total position. I have to play around with this a lot more during actual gameplay, but you could turn the auto-TMA off during the final acquisition phase of the torpedo if you'd like and that would solve the problem. This would also allow you do to your own target-evasive maneover plots, which can sometimes be better than the auto TMA solution during maneovers, since you can make an educated guess as to where the other sub would try to go to avoid a torpedo. Moving back and forth from the firecontrol wireguidence area, the TMA, and the Nav map to try to give the torpedo final guidence on a ASW target, now that's excitement!

[LuftWolf]

Tgio, thank you very much for writing that! We hope you enjoy.

Deathblow, yes that is one of the unintended consequences of the anti-casualty torpedo fix, unfortunately. As with a number of things in the mod, the performance of that feature during actual gameplay needs to be looked at closely, especially in circumstances where there is a regular player exploitation (especially during MP). Right now, it is one of those things like the AI-non detection of sails and mast so player can shoot down planes and helos with their SAMs, it only has an effect on gameplay if the player actively decides to exploit it, and since this is a realism mod, we assume players interested in the mod could overlook such a defect for now.

We are looking at tightening this up for v2.01, but the solution may be to make it an optional feature of the mod, along with the non-CM exploding torpedo doctrine, since some people prefer it the otherway. That is why Amizaur included the only random snake-only version of the torpedo doctrine. The torpedo doctrine mods are completely stand alone, although the ADCAP and USGT would have enormous seeker cones for the standard 45 degree snake pattern, not corrected in any torpedo doctrine but the anti-casualty version for now.

[LuftWolf]

Molon and everyone,

Just so you know, I am working on the MH-60 torpedo way-point issue, although I'm not necessarily hopeful I can change it, just learn more about the parameters, but I don't feel its a huge issue either.

Depending on the results, I may also change the ASW warfare loadout of the FFG AI Helo to two MK54's and one MK50 (I still haven't verified if I can do this, I got this as a quick idea before I have to go do something else, not nearly as fun... ).

Cheers,
David

[gregcom]

I check active sonar frequencies and ADCAP freq are same like other torpedos (22000 Hz). Please make individual frequence also for ADCAP.

Unique sensor name Max- Hz
688I MF Active 2500
Akula MF Active 4000
FFG Active 7500
Kilo MF Active 5000
MH60 Dip Active 14000
SSN21 MF Active 2800
Active Sonobuoy 15000
Active Buoy Deep 10000
Dipping Sonar 13500
HF Act Son 13000
MF Act Son 2500
Surf HF Act Son 15000
Surf MF Act Son 3500
Wep Sonar 20000
DiCASS Act Shallow 10000
DiCASS Act Deep 10000
TorpedoActive 22000
TorpActiveADCAP 22000
TorpActiveUGST 21500
TorpActiveMk50 24000
TorpActiveMk46 21000
TorpActiveMPT-1UE 23500
TorpActiveUGMT-1 22500
TorpActiveUSET-80 19000

[Fish]

Moving back and forth from the firecontrol wireguidence area, the TMA, and the Nav map to try to give the torpedo final guidence on a ASW target, now that's excitement!

In the mean time steering your UUV, launching decoy's and making evasive manoeuvres.
Ohh, and try not to ran aground.