[REL] The Little Ships of SH5 - Coaster Pack

[kapuhy]

Download links:

For non-TWoS users, you can download full pack here: STOCK FULL VERSION

For TWoS users - as of 2.2.21 update to TWoS, all ships I relased in this pack so far are already included in TWoS, so there's no need to download them separately.

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This mod adds 5 new coastal ships and one ASW patrol boat (it also includes coaster I've relased separately earlier). All ships are done in .gr2 format, with visible 3d damage and except for Small Motor Coaster and Small Coastal Tanker - with breakable hulls. It will work on both stock game (with latest patch) and TwoS 2.2.19, but due to the way ships are integrated into campaign files, I recommend to use it with TwoS as it allows the ships to utilize vdr1981's coastal trade routes – without TwoS these ships will just join generic sea traffic, including Atlantic convoys where such small units will seem out of place.

Ships list:

1. Small Motor Coaster:



I relased this ship earlier and it already was added to TwoS, but I include it in this download for completeness – compared to TwoS version, only minor changes to damage model have been made.

Small Motor Coaster is based on unnamed set of plans, probably of Dutch coastal merchant "Baltic" built in 1940. Motor powered, with maximum speed of 8.5 knots and 250 GRT tonnage, this small vessel represents very common type of coastal ship mainly built in Netherlands in interwar period and still very popular after the war. Crews of these ships often included owner's family to cut costs, and small size allowed for going up rivers while still being seaworthy enough for open sea trade.

Four different textures are included, giving it some more variety.

2. Small Coastal Tanker:



Based on British National Benzole Company ships – "Ben Harold Smith" built in 1952 and "Ben Sadler" built in 1931, its a little motor powered tanker. Its main uses were delivering fuel to small ports that couldn't be entered by larger ships, as well as supplying ocean-going ships anchored in harbours. During the war, some were requisitioned by the navy to support naval operations and landings. Max speed of this vessel is 9 knots and its tonnage 325 GRT.

3. Old Coaster



This might be oldest ship in SH5 – it's based on unusually shaped (designed to fit locks on Eider canal) 264 GRT German steamer "Kanal" which was built in 1886 and served as livestock carrier until 1909 when its cargo stampeded towards one of the sides, capsizing her. Its appearance in SH5 is still plausible though, as some late XIX-century coasters had very long service life and were still travelling along many coasts in 1939.

4. Large Fishing Trawler



It's a bit weird that while stock SH5 has beautiful Armed Trawler model, it lacks any actual trawler. To fix this, I "demilitarized" Armed Trawler removing all military superstructure and repainting it into common civilian "red bottom, black hull, white superstructure" paint scheme. At 1100 GRT, this is remarkably large ship for a fishing vessel, hence the name. It can still be armed – in late war, it will have some 20-40 mm guns for self defense as most Allied merchants did carry some kind of armament at this point.

5. Fairmile "B" Motor Launch:



Although relatively unknown, this 85-ton patrol boat was actually the most numerous ASW ship in WW2. Simple wooden hull that was built in parts by dispersed small companies allowed for mass production - before the war ended, Fairmile served in 10 different navies and was produced in several countries. Many variants of this ship were made, from ASW through rescue to torpedo boat – I only modeled most common ASW variant for now but hopefully I can add some other versions in future updates.

Despite small size, Fairmile is a dangerous enemy – it's as hard to detect and hit as Elco, but carries Y-Gun, ASDIC and later radar, so unlike Elco it's a capable ASW vessel. On surface, it can turn your boat into scrap with mix of Oerlikons. Its weak points are its fragility and limited amount of DC's.

6. Coastal Tanker



613 GRT Coastal Tanker is based on historic American tanker Mary A. Whalen, built in 1938. She survives to this day in Red Hook, Brooklyn, crewed and maintained by members of PortSide NewYork. Mary has became famous after her 1968 grounding, which led to court case shaping modern US maritime law.

In game, she'll be seen carrying fuel on coastal trading lanes (only British, American and
Norwegian in this version). From 1943 onwards, she can be armed with some machine guns.

7. Raised Quarterdecker



Most common coaster design in late 19th and early 20th century, Raised Quarterdecker design was
the result of moving ship's engine aft to simplify machinery (shorter propeller shaft) and free cargo
space. This made stern heavier, so to compensate ship's aft deck (quarterdeck) was raised.

My example is modeled after 1921 Dublin-built steamer Moygannon of 545 tons. The ship survived
till 1940, when – due to navigational error – it crossed the path of outbound Atlantic convoy in
dense fog and sunk in collision with Danish steamer (making her sort-of U-Boat victim, as collision
would probably not happen if both ships weren't sailing darkened because of war).

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I still have several models of larger ships I plan to add to this mod in future updates (in this case "larger" means between 500-1600 GRT, these are still coastal vessels):



At the same time, I'll be also improving already relased ships - especially the Fairmile which still doesn't have its historically correct armament added (low-ammo DC racks and WW1-vintage 3-pounder deck gun). Another improvement I'm working on is lights for neutral versions and additional textures for more variety. So, this pack is far from final version

Should you find any bugs, please post them here and I'll try to fix them. I could not properly test ships in campaign (as this would require actually playing the career and hunting them down...), hopefully they will appear as planned.

And last but not least: Big, big thanks to:

Gap, Jeff Groves and Rosomaha: for invaluable advice, and lots of patience – without you I'd get hopelessly stuck along the way and never relase anything.
vdr1981: for the Wolves of Steel mod, only reason SH5 stayed on my PC long enough for me to even start modding it.
Sailor Steve: for inspiration - the idea to create coaster pack was born after reading your post in "what ships would you like to see in upcoming Wolfpack game" thread. This was the first time I've seen the word "coaster". I looked it up and before I knew it I was fascinated by these small ships.

[Texas Red]

Holy cow man these look amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will give it a try!

Thanks for the hard work!

[vdr1981]

Really great work Kapuhy! Thank you very much!

[skin-nl]

Great work Kapuhy
Downloaded and testing this weekend.

[Demon777]

beautiful ships! good job

[Jeff-Groves]

Very nice work Mate!
And Thank You for the mention.

[vdr1981]

I just want to let you know Kapuhy that your new ship pack has revealed for me few hidden problems in some previously imported TWoS v2.2.19 units.

I have already solved the problem and updated existing v2.2.19 installer and the update but I will officially announce the changes in the next update...


Namely, several dat imported units (recently added type XIV sub, Japanese subchaser and probably Modern Cargo Ship) had few remaining old SH3 controllers which could (from some reason) clash with your files and cause CTD when rendered in the same playing session.


As I said , the problem is now solved and it can be avoided for current TWoS v2.2.19 users simply by re downloading and applying v2.2.xx to v2.2.19 update again.


Once again, great work and thank you!

[Rosomaha]

Looks very great!

[Pascal]

Which more than justifies 5 stars!

[skin-nl]

Originally Posted by vdr1981

I have already solved the problem and updated existing v2.2.19 installer.

Do i still need to install the Little_ships_v_1_0_TWOS_2_2_19_fix?

Michael

[kapuhy]

Originally Posted by skin-nl

Do i still need to install the Little_ships_v_1_0_TWOS_2_2_19_fix?

Michael

If you use TWoS, yes - this file is not for fixing conflict vdr1981 mentioned, but to add to my ships features that only work with TWoS (custom TWoS damage zones and roster/group entries for countries and groups that do not exist in stock game).

[skin-nl]

Thanks Kapuhy

[iambecomelife]

All of the ships look excellent. the details are very well made.

Also, I've noticed that even many professional game designers tend to get the proportions of ship's parts wrong - here everything looks properly sized.

And that's an unfortunate story about the "Kanal", I guess it shows all the weird things that can go wrong when you are on the water....!

[vdr1981]

I need a small advice Kapuhy.
Do you know will any of of ship/effects functionality will be lost if I change "unknown" class settings to "none" in fx files?

I'm asking this because I've noticed that the only way to add new version of Rosomaha's C3 ship to TWoS is to do previously mentioned tweak in your new small ships files...

[kapuhy]

Originally Posted by vdr1981

I need a small advice Kapuhy.
Do you know will any of of ship/effects functionality will be lost if I change "unknown" class settings to "none" in fx files?

I'm asking this because I've noticed that the only way to add new version of Rosomaha's C3 ship to TWoS is to do previously mentioned tweak in your new small ships files...

I didn't try to do that, but only thing I imagine might be affected is SH5-style fireworks.

As far as I understand them (someone correct me on this if I got it wrong) fx files are responsible for SH5 fires/explosions. Each hull part has one huge SH5 style damage zone, nodes in FX gr2 file govern where an effect will play and I guess what kind of effect will play is decided by whatever follows "ObjectCtrlsRef@" in text fx file.

Since I relased the pack before I learned how to move the fx bones (the trick, it appears, was to change one line in Shipname.1st file...), I disabled most of the SH5 effects anyway, except for those that coincidentally were in right places despite hull shape change. Only exception is Large Fishing Trawler - since in this case ship shape didn't change much I kept most effects from original.

From my tests before, ships will function just fine even if you outright delete all fx related stuff - including breaking up, that is not dependant on fx file as well. They will just have less fires and explosions while sinking.