Escort crew rating

[John Pancoast]

Does the level of this affect both visual and submerged attack prowess, one or the other, or neither ?

[Fifi]

What do you mean?

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Originally Posted by John Pancoast

Does the level of this affect both visual and submerged attack prowess, one or the other, or neither ?

Yes on both counts. Crew ratings with any given individual escort naval vessels hold hands with sensor effectiveness. Couple that with advancing technology as the war progresses, and you experience an effective in-game curve that approximates events in WWII ASW warfare.

I can only speak with authority for GWX files and end-result game-play though. Otherwise, NYGM appears to do a very good, and arguably superior job of approximating that curve too. NYGM employs additional visual sensors on various vessels as well and IIRC, Stiebler introduced Magnetic Anomaly Detectors
via the Hsie fix mods??? I'm fuzzy on the Stiebler add-on MAD bit as I only ran across it as I was running out of steam just a couple of days ago.

During the final days of GWX 3.0 construction, Jeff-Groves (formerly Privateer here at SS) and I talked about employing MAD as designed by him, especially since GWX contains the first K-ship blimps in SH3, also built by Jeff. (The first use of MADs was via the U.S. Navy K-ships.) We just didn't have enough time or steam left to test them properly.

You can read a bit more about magnetic anomaly detectors at U-boat.net.

https://uboat.net/allies/technical/mad.htm

Controlled sensor testing in SH3 can drive a wooden man insane with its monotony... which may explain the odd facial twitching I have from time to time. Collectively, Cdre Gibbs, Ref, and myself deciphered sensor function and went at it with a similar methodology that was employed by NYGM devs. They engaged in a similar process albeit with different people involved. In one such stretch of testing, I stayed at it for a little over six months.... making one micro-adjustment at a time with each and every sensor, their progressive variants both ASW and U-boat, and logging responses in each environment/game state, and their combinations. This is not to mention further weeks of testing and exploration. I did most of the dog-work during the development of GWX 2.0 as Jimbuna can attest. I certainly bent his ear often enough, that I thought he might apply a shovel to my head in Houston. He didn't have to though, as Neal's glass door to the back yard proved to do the job nicely.

In SH3, it isn't good enough to just apply approximate historically accurate entries to SH3 files. You must on occasion balance matters against limitations of the SH3 program, all other sensor behavior, and elements such as depth charge behavior etc.

Anyway, I had no intention to ramble so much, I could write about sensors in SH3 for days without stopping, but the twitching gets pretty bad.

In all seriousness and regardless of whatever the latest SH3 sensor controversy of the week might be, I think I am in many ways most proud of the dog-work I did on the sensors as delivered in GWX. It wasn't something shiny or pretty, but it, works very nicely in reproducing the expected technological and crew experience curve found in the Battle of the Atlantic.

I certainly can't describe the awesome feeling I had towards the end of sensor testing/development, when in the mid to late war settings, I consistently observed escorts and/or hunter killer groups in SH3-GWX first detecting, then holding contact, and appearing to direct other destroyers/ASW vessels to carry out depth charge runs while employing ASDIC. Before, this behavior was rare and just looked all wrong visually. Before modification by GWX, crew ratings were all over the place and sometimes even backwards. Before GWX and NYGM, you could basically drive your U-boat up to a destroyer, start banging on the hull with a ball peen hammer, and he MIGHT react to you.... maybe.

The GWX Dev Team added over one million lines of campaign code alone, bearing the above findings in mind and employing other elements consistent with that. However, that's another story and the true experts on GWX campaign files don't really hang out here anymore.


I hope you found this useful, John.


(Holy crap, why did you write so much, KL. A simple 'yes' or 'no' would have spared you all that twitching!)

[John Pancoast]

Hahaha Kpt., what a great read and helpful post, thanks ! I was hoping you'd chime in; I know you worked a LOT on the issue.

I'm a big believer that plugging historical performance numbers for whatever into a game doesn't automatically make it "realistic".
Some times it can actually make things less so. I.e, besides the fact that many times historical performance numbers are from "lab" results vs. field results, I believe sometimes developers may realize they're not putting in the historical info. for subject X but in terms of the overall game experience, what they do still produces the desired "realistic" affect.
Take the radar warning receivers i.e. The stock ranges were considered to short vs. the receivers actual (lab or field ?) performance numbers.
Was this an oversight of the developers or was it to fit into the stock 8k environment better, but still producing the desired affect ? "Yes, we know the Metox had a greater range in reality. But the actual crews could see farther than 8k usually too, so we shortened the Metox's range to fit the game's 8k environment better."
Same for, say, the stock depth charges blast radius and other functions. Oversight, or to fit into the game better ? Stock, the escorts only have a 15 minute search time limit along with low crew ratings, escort numbers, etc. i.e.
Were the stock depth charges knowingly made that way to work better with the above limitations ?
I don't know the answer to those questions; just using them as examples of my point which I'm sure you already know and have heard a million times anyway !

Anyway, I'd like to try to add some life to the escort AI and thought I'd kick up the crew ratings in the .rnd file.

I.e.., make all escorts that are Competents into Veteran, all Veteran into Elite.
For various reasons, I just don't find the AI much of a challenge, at any stage of the timeline.
That's not meant as chest thumping, just info.

Realizing the "bowl of spaghetti" that is the SH3 ai sensor controlling files and the limitation that to my understanding, the meat of it's behavior is hardcoded anyway, wonder if my doing the above would help if even a little.

In searching and reading about crew ratings, everything I read mentioned how a better rating made a difference in a submerged scenario but I never found a reference to it affecting the AI's above surface actions.
Hence this threads question. Maybe one of the .dat or cfg files control that more, don't know and I don't really want to mess with those anyway.

I'm only interested in escort behavior. I don't really focus on "Mod A has this piece of equipment but Mod B doesn't so Mod A is more realistic".
One can most times easily add such equipment into any install if desired.

Appreciate your reply and to be clear, none of the above is meant to denigrate yours or anyone else's work in any way and if it seems so, I apologize in advance.

[John Pancoast]

Oh, and another thing. It is GREAT that you're back.

But be careful not to go down that rabbit hole of answering GWX questions/helping, etc. that I would think would burn a person out quickly.

Don't want you leaving again, at least not for that reason.

But until then, you can answer my question.......

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Originally Posted by John Pancoast

Oh, and another thing. It is GREAT that you're back.

But be careful not to go down that rabbit hole of answering GWX questions/helping, etc. that I would think would burn a person out quickly.

Don't want you leaving again, at least not for that reason.

But until then, you can answer my question.......

No worries. If I start to feel the heat, I'll just point my new Super Duper GWX Microwave LRAD at you and cook your hair off.

In all seriousness, I'm not going to thrash my engines to death the way I did before. I think that we can certainly hang out in the same lounge so to speak, because we are both trying to get to 'realism' in the ways that we can. Different roads and aptitudes? Sure. Same essential destination? Absolutely. For my two cents, I place equal importance on the appearance of objects in-game, as I see it all as the same search for realism. If someone wants a purple Seahund with rainbow sparkles.... That's fine. I'm cool with that.... but I think that is the lounge a little ways down the street.

I didn't mean to sound as if I was thumping my chest either. Don't get me wrong. I am proud of what I did, and all those days where Jimbuna only let me have bread and water, because it seems to have benefited many.

Visual sensors on the other hand, simply don't leave any of us with enough string to tie our boots. You can set their height, angles, and arcs, but it is crazy hard to set their sensitivity into a graduated effect for daytime and nighttime both.

[John Pancoast]

Originally Posted by Kpt. Lehmann

No worries. If I start to feel the heat, I'll just point my new Super Duper GWX Microwave LRAD at you and cook your hair off.

In all seriousness, I'm not going to thrash my engines to death the way I did before. I think that we can certainly hang out in the same lounge so to speak, because we are both trying to get to 'realism' in the ways that we can. Different roads and aptitudes? Sure. Same essential destination? Absolutely. For my two cents, I place equal importance on the appearance of objects in-game, as I see it all as the same search for realism. If someone wants a purple Seahund with rainbow sparkles.... That's fine. I'm cool with that.... but I think that is the lounge a little ways down the street.

I didn't mean to sound as if I was thumping my chest either. Don't get me wrong. I am proud of what I did, and all those days where Jimbuna only let me have bread and water, because it seems to have benefited many.

Visual sensors on the other hand, simply don't leave any of us with enough string to tie our boots. You can set their height, angles, and arcs, but it is crazy hard to set their sensitivity into a graduated effect for daytime and nighttime both.

Sounds good !


Ah yes, the Purple Seahund Lounge. Dangerous waters, that..........