[REL] Damage assessment

[Arclight]

(Technical bit: Added a new "state" for a ship: Damage assessment, placed between "alert" state and "damage control" state. Reworked trigger thresholds for a quicker effect and proper functioning as a whole with the new state. Changes made to "Ship-crewstate.aix" in "..\Ubisoft\Silent Hunter 5\data\Scripts\AI\".)


Changes AI behaviour with regards to keeping speed and sensor effectiveness; enemies will slow down after taking some damage and be less aware of their surroundings.

The threshold depends on % of HP, so ships with higher total HP will need more hits before they slow down. The speed reduction is a percentage as well, so the higher their top speed, the faster they will continue.

In practice this works out to needing 1 hit on a freighter and 2 or more on a big warship to trigger the effect. Merchants, with their low top speed, should slow to a crawl, estimate 3-5 knots.

There's a further reduction in speed as the damage climbs, and eventually the crew will abandon ship, bringing her to a stop. Those are stock behaviours though, just a little tweaked.

!Enabling during patrol is not advised, it has not been tested outside single mission. Preferably enable in port, or at least make absolututely sure there are no ships in a 30KM radius!

Extract into JSGME "MODS" folder and enable.

Intended to work together with "Better and Realistic Flotation", but works perfectly fine as a standalone.

BARF thread: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=164953


DOWNLOAD (5KB)


SPOILER
Here are the numbers:
Slow to 50% speed at 25% damage
Slow to 20% speed at 65% damage
Abandon ship at 85% damage

All sensor effectiveness reduced to 70% while in "damage assessment" state to simulate sending some crewmembers to investigate, captain focusing on getting the damage under control, shock from being hit, etc.

-.-. .... .- -. --. . .-.. --- --.

v1.1
- minor bugfix to avoid possible CTD under apparently very rare circumstances

[gutted]

hmmm. sounds promising. Maybe now those damaged merchants will fall out of the convoys more often.

will enable it and test it out next time im in port.

[Arclight]

Unless you hit the convoy leader, then the whole group slows to a crawl.

[thruster]

brilliant! thank you. this game is clearly getting better and better.

[sergei]

Outstanding

[Dowly]

Excellent mod, mate! Loved how the ships lost their visual sensors in stock when damaged enough, now add slower speed to that and vóila!

[coronas]

Abandon ship at 85% damage

...And a trigger for survivors, lifeboats, distress and rescue flares?

BTW, you are doing an excellent work!!

[reimius]

es muy interesante lo de la modificacion me parece que esta muy bien la verdad

[PL_Andrev]

Originally Posted by Arclight

Changes AI behaviour with regards to keeping speed and sensor effectiveness; enemies will slow down after taking some damage and be less aware of their surroundings.

This description is true only for AI ships or for our uboat too?

[Arclight]

AI captains only. Supposed to simulate a captain slowing his vessel to avoid further damage caused by water being forced through the hole(s) in the hull.

You are in control of the boat, no amount of AI scripting can take that away... as far as I know.

[utops]

Why not randomize damage aspect? In sh3 with GWX i have filling,that damaged ships go down by random damage gain and place where eel struck the ship and if this was possible in sh3,why not to put similiar sinking/damage mechanics in to sh5?
Im a sinking/damage mechanics fetishist so i probably never be happy with this aspect of the sh5

[Arclight]

You wouldn't happen to know about Better and Realistic Flotation, you know, the mod this was made for?

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=164953
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=1607

[Mraah]

ArcLight,

I like what you did ... ... but I have a suggestion or two.

I've been reading the book "Black May" and it has very detailed descriptions of merchants getting torpedoed from the captain's perspective as well from the U-boat. From most (if not all) the merchants that were torpedoed, they ordered the engines stopped ... even with one torpedo hit. This was done not really for damage asessment but mostly to allow the ship to stop so they can lower the lifeboats and toss the confidential doc's overboard. Apparently, human lives were more important than sitting on a torpedoed ship in the middle of the atlantic.

With this in mind I have a few suggestion's ... This is theory and not tested.

The first thing to do is create three more states (using 2,3 and 4 ie strategy StateDmgAssessment2(Ship) ) that have a precond of
Ship:IsType( MERCHANT ) == true. This will ensure that warships continue to chug along and not think about stopping the ship to lower life boats.


1 ... Under your new state "strategy StateDmgAssessment2(Ship)" you can set this to read the changes ...
Ship:GetDamage() >= 0.25 and Ship:GetDamage() < 0.45
Ship:SetThrottleRatio(0)
Ship:SetWeaponFactor(1)

2 ... Under your new state "strategy StateDmgControl2(Ship)" you can set this to read the changes ...
Ship:GetDamage() >= 0.45 and Ship:GetDamage() < 0.65
Ship:SetWeaponFactor(0.2)

3 ... Under your new state "strategy StateDmgAssessment3(Ship)" you can set this to read the changes ...
Ship:GetDamage() >= 0.65 and Ship:GetDamage() < 0.85
Ship:SetThrottleRatio(0)
Ship:SetWeaponFactor(0.2)

You could add a "WaitAction" time to the first damage state(25-45%) if you think it can still get under way after some time ... but for the most part, they were all scrambling topside to get off the ship.

Now, as far as the player knows (assuming HP bars are OFF), when he hits the merchant it will stop (like is should) but he doesn't know if it's abandoned or merely performing damage control. He can come back later and finish it off (like they did) risking a surfaced gun attack. But, the player can basically get an idea based on the fire/smoke volume anyway.

Just some ideas ... it might spark up a new idea later on.
Keep up the good work!

Rob

EDIT NOTE .... Note that #2 above "StateDmgControl2" doesn't change the throttle to (0) but keeps it at 0.2 ... perhaps it should read 0.1 or 0.05 or maybe 0 with a WaitAction.

[Arclight]

Confirmed compatible with SH5 1.2.

[Phantom453]

I was just wondering, it it possible to break the back of any ship in SH5 - either with with the vanilla game or with a particular mod?

I was also wondering if it is possible for ships to roll over/ on their side as part of the sinking mechanics?

Personally, I haven't seen either occur. I was just wondering if anyone else has seen these things occur in the game at all? I know with BRF they sink better by the bow or stern, but I haven't seen any ships break up or roll over to any degree.

Just wondering....