Kriegstanz Help

Kriegstanz 1.0

Introduction

Kriegstanz is an add-on for the submarine simulation Silent Hunter II. It creates single-player scenarios, with random elements, which may then be selected using the "Start a mission" option.

Installation

Simply create a folder for Kriegstanz , and copy the supplied files (including this one) into it, then create a shortcut to the .exe file. The first time you run Kriegstanz, you'll need to specify the game's location, ie the "Silent Hunter II" folder (or whatever you've called it) on your hard drive.

Parameters

The following parameters may be adjusted to your preferences by clicking on the little arrows:

Area	The area of operation. Currently, only the North Atlantic is supported, but it is anticipated that future releases will allow scenarios to be generated wherever in the world there's enough water.
Period	This may be set to Random, Early, Middle or Late. These refer to the Second World War as opposed to, say, the Jurassic Era or the time of the Roman empire. More specifically, 1939-1945.
Time of day	Unsurprisingly, this gives you control of the time of day when your mission starts.
Weather	Again, pretty self-explanatory. This will be enhanced further in future releases.
Scope	The "scope" of a game is the size of the area in which groups will be generated. Selecting a large scope will make for realism, but it may take you a long time to find anything to attack. A small scope runs the risk of having an overcrowded sea. The choice is yours.
U-boat	Select your favourite vessel here, or get a random one. Most supported U-boats are included, from the Type IIA up to the XXI, although your chances are higher of getting a VII, mainly because they were the most common.
Enemy vessels	If you only want to see merchant convoys, pick Merchant. Otherwise, pick Random, or, if you're feeling adventurous, one of the warship options. When using Random, you'll end up with more merchants than warships, just like in real life.
Escorts	Here, you can select how well-guarded the convoys and warships are, or, for the faint-hearted, select None and never see a destroyer or hear a depth-charge.
Number of groups Size of groups	These options give you control over the amount of shipping out there. Be aware that the more ships in the sea, the less time compression you'll be able to use, depending on the power of your PC. Use these, together with the Scope parameter, to find a level that's best for you. Incidentally, one of the options for the number of groups is One. If you select that, you'll be placed close to that group, so you can start sinking ships that much more quickly.

Help

Click on this button to view this help file.

Options

This loads the Options screen, which is also loaded automatically the first time you run Kriegstanz. Filename is the name used for the SDF scenario file and radio message files (the extension is added automatically). Title is the mission title, for both English and German. Both of these default to "Kriegstanz".

As missions displayed in Silent Hunter II are sorted alphabetically, you may want to change the mission title to something near the beginning of the alphabet if you use this a lot. Also, you can create several missions if you like, give them different names, and run them all without having to reload Kriegstanz. Note that scenario definitions and radio messages are overwritten without warning.

The Location section allows you to specify your Silent Hunter II drive and folder. This may be something like "C:\Program Files\Silent Hunter II". Until you've set this to a valid game location, you can't run the rest of Kriegstanz.

Defaults

This resets all your generation parameters to their default values, but doesn't affect values set in the Options screen.

Generate

When you're happy with your parameters, click this button to create the mission's SDF file and any radio messages.

Close

Exits Kriegstanz .

Topp viewer replacement

To save you having to exit Silent Hunter II every time you want to generate a new mission, and to avoid the need for a separate shortcut, you can integrate Kriegstanz into the game by replacing the Erich Topp video viewer.

To do this, install into the "Topp" folder within your Silent Hunter II directory (back it up first, of course), rename or delete the existing "Topp.exe" file, and copy or rename "Kriegstanz" to "Topp.exe". Then you can load Kriegstanz from the Museum menu.

Bugs and feature requests

Look, there are bound to be problems with this. I can only sort out those problems if people tell me about them. Feel free to suggest enhancements, too. Either email me or post a message in the appropriate SubSim.com or VWarrior.net forums.

As always with bug reports, please report exactly any error messages you receive. There's nothing worse than hearing "it won't let me do XYZ", and having to sigh, take a deep breath and ask the age-old question: "what happens when you try?" Actually, there is something worse: it's when people reply "oh, there's some sort of error - 'Can't do it' or something - I can't remember exactly what it said".

If you're reporting a problem with a scenario (as opposed to a problem with the interface or installation), please enclose the appropriate .mis file you'll find in the installation folder. This is created when you generate a scenario, and contains the same information as the SDF file, but in a format suitable for the home-grown mission editor on which Kriegstanz is based.

Known issues

Several features have been omitted from the initial release, mainly to allow people to try Kriegstanz out as soon as possible and contribute suggestions. The development of the project will always be driven by the needs and wants of players of Silent Hunter II.

Here are the some of the main issues that will certainly be addressed:

Scenarios are not historically accurate. Units (including your boat) may appear at any time of the war, without regard to their actual periods of activity.
Not all units are supported. Although a lot of effort has gone into generating a reasonable number of enemy units, this isn't as comprehensive as it could be. Likewise, the makeup of naval groups needs improvement.
There are no aircraft. Even carriers are empty and relatively defenceless. For this reason, CVE escorts are never seen - all escorts are DD/DEs.
Weather remains the same. A lot of work has gone into researching the possibilities of having moving weather fronts and changing sea states, and this will be incorporated as another random element.
All scenarios occur in the North Atlantic. Okay, that's where most U-boat operations were conducted, but there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to work in other areas too. Coastal regions also need looking at - let's have encounters deep inside harbours.
You're always a German commander. Why not allow an American sub operating against German ships, or even an encounter with Japanese, Italian, French, Dutch (and so on) vessels? One reason: not enough time so far. It'll happen.
World War I? Why not ...

About the author

Floater (not his real name) was born in 1960 and lives in Yorkshire, England, with his wife and two children. He had a successful career as a UNIX programmer before ill-health forced him to quit in 1999. Frustrated by the lack of random missions in the otherwise-excellent Silent Hunter II, he decided to use his limited experience with Microsoft Visual Basic to fill the gap, and Kriegstanz is the result. Floater has an unfashionable moustache, plays jazz piano, and likes his beer.

Credits

None of this would have been possible without excellent help from the many fine people at Subsim.com and Vwarrior.net. Heartfelt thanks to them, and especially to the guys working on Projekt Messerwetzer. They deserve financial support - please go to Subsim.com for more details about contributing donations. Also, thanks are due to Leslie Small for suggesting the name.