S-Boat Incorrectly Modeled

[YellowFin]

Originally Posted by Webster

no im not around much but i try to pop in now and then when i can but it can be weeks or months sometimes before i do.

as for your question, well now thats the can of worms i ran into with them, i literally surrendered after fighting it modding and testing for weeks and had to settle for the changes i got which were at least better then nothing and had them no longer acting as super boats

the s-boat game files are so utterly fubar that my mod was the best i could do and its not even half way to where it should be

if the fuel range and battery charge ranges are changed any more then i did then i found it would default to super subs that never run out of fuel or batteries and damage was equally as much a struggle

i think it would be easier to start over and draw up brand new files for the s-boats because the ones in the game, in my opinion, are unfixable and impossible to even find what values they use since the ones in the s-boats files certainly get little or no results to changes you make.

its been so long i cant even remember but you should be able to add my mod without it having any affect on the sound at all, my mod only changes the s-boat file folders

worst case open my mod and see what values i used for the s-boat and then copy the s-boat files from FOTRS to your desktop to mod them and then change those s-boat files to match the ones in my mod and then you have made it FOTRS compatible

you can read more about it then i can even remember about it here https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/sho...d.php?t=157608

Thank you, you're being very helpful. I did indeed inspect your mod using S3ditor and I compared your file against stock, FOTRSU and what I researched.

Optimistically I went and plugged in historical data and of course was deeply disappointed. I then went and used your settings and tested and found the problems you mentioned, but I was also unable to obtain better results by tweaking your settings.

Here are things that I did find:

• S-Boats deplete their battery submerged at 2kts at 4% per hour
• Recharge is independent of the speed or telegraph setting at a decreasing rate, starting at 13% per hour at below 10% and coming down to 5% per hour at 95%

Your suggestion to start out from scratch has a lot of merit. Maybe you can help me understand a few things:

• Is NSS_18.sim the only file that governs the boat's properties pertaining to battery, speed, battery capacity drainage and recharge, fuel consumption and range?
• Do you agree that somewhere are linear and non-linear, presumably quadratic functions, coded that govern efficiencies for fuel, recharging and decharging at different speeds / telegraph settings?
• Do you have any idea what these functions might roughly look like?
• Your values for "Submerged" are very different from any other mod / stock / reality, but seem to be necessary, at least in combination with the other values, to obtain a somewhat realistic boat. How would you explain that?
• Which parameter governs recharge speed?
• Which parameter governs battery capacity?
• Is battery capacity = submerged range and knots then governs the drainage at a certain speed?
• Are the mechanics for surfaced travel the same?
• What does eng_power and eng_rpm do in your estimation?

[Sniper297]

About 5 years ago when I gave up on this;

https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/sho...d.php?t=211380

Answer to the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot questions is complicated and involves some speculation.

1. Silent Hunter 3 programmers quit.
2. Silent Hunter 4 programmers used SH3 as a base for SH4, with no clue which file did what, which is why half the program is unused and partially used files. One example is the speeds and depths in the .sim and .cfg files for the subs, actual max speeds and max depth in the .sim file is used, numbers for those in the .cfg file are ignored. Percentage of speed in the .cfg file, along with periscope depth and others are used. "crash depth" in the .sim file actually means CRUSH depth, crash depth in the .cfg is the depth the sub will level off when crash dive is ordered. "max" depth in the .cfg file sets the depth of the red needle on the deep depth gauge, has no effect on the actual max depth.
3. Silent3ditor was programmed by a guy (skwas) who didn't work for Ubisoft, and some of his notes were guesses. For the ranges, he's right about surfaced speed vs range, wrong about the submerged speed/range. He's right more often than he's wrong, but taking his notes on what does what as gospel will sometimes lead you astray. When all else fails, we experiment.

After reading this I spent a few hours fiddling with the S-18 (normally I'm a Sargo driver), latest is;

Submerged
Miles=22
Knots=5

With that I get about 60 miles at 2 knots down to 10% battery, with an 8 1/2 hour recharge time. That's with stock settings on the diesel engines power, I found that tinkering with the horsepower reduces recharge time, but also turns the sub into a dragster with ridiculous acceleration.

In short, the S class was an afterthought and uses different a physics model than the fleet boats, so we're still tinkering with how it works. Nobody knows for sure.

Originally Posted by YellowFin

I then went and used your settings and tested and found the problems you mentioned, but I was also unable to obtain better results by tweaking your settings.

i spent nearly a month devoting an hour or two a day testing and retesting but the stock s-boat files are near impossible to mod

i completely gave up and just decided to take the best possible results i could get and i think my mod is about as good as you can get with the s-boat files.

thats why i think the only possible solution to get files that respond to the settings you choose is to take an existing sub that is the "least broken" and convert it into a brand new s-boat file for the game, short of that i see no solution which is why i just gave up and settled for what i had.

as you mod the game you will find many other files in this game are just as frustrating and near impossible to mod

[Skipper44]

I'm happy to see some S Boat love.

I've enjoyed it more in FOTRSU more than TMO or RFB and infinitely more than stock.

If this thread sparks some attention to the S Class for the next update to FOTRSU I'm happy.

[YellowFin]

I haven't given up yet. I'm just involved in too many projects. I want to thank the previous two posters suggesting a complete rewrite of the s-boat .sim files from scratch.

That's something I want to try. I'm also trying to find out more about the executable and whether something can be done through binary patching that exe.

Originally Posted by YellowFin

I haven't given up yet. I'm just involved in too many projects. I want to thank the previous two posters suggesting a complete rewrite of the s-boat .sim files from scratch.

That's something I want to try. I'm also trying to find out more about the executable and whether something can be done through binary patching that exe.

i think its more then that, i could be wrong but i think the actual file itself might be broken at its core so it may need something like taking a normal fleetboat sub file that isnt broken and then completely rewrite it to become a replacement for the s-boat file.

its definitely a huge undertaking to fix because the fix requires creating something completely new and discard the garbage file thats there

i think they threw the s-boats in the game and just did enough to make them function without fully integrating them into the games core elements control functions for how they act.

as is stock s-boats are nearly indestructible hulls and the battery life and fuel ranges are no where near reality in the least. you can even ram DD with them to sink the DD and only take minor damage

[YellowFin]

Originally Posted by Webster

i think its more then that, i could be wrong but i think the actual file itself might be broken at its core

Is there a simple check I can do to verify or disprove that suspicion?

[propbeanie]

No "simple" anything in the game. There is minimal error-checking of one part against another anywhere in the game. The game's engine is actually rather robust in all of the abuse that gets thrown at it, with data out-of-bounds, bad save folders, etc... Currently, the only way to check something is to put it in the game and see what it does. No CTD? step one is completed...

[Hitman]

Interesting read

I think it's anyway fair to say that even if 96 miles submerged range at 2 knots was the accepted figure, by 1942 most of those boats were quite tired and dire need of updating, above all the manila based ones. So seeing the range drop to nearly 50% would not seem so crazy.

Of course if you can fix that it would be great, but hey, at least there is some consolation in thinking that it could have a "realism" explanation