No Submarines in stock campaign..??

[starbage1]

I saw no subs, e-boats what gives?? If you managed to see one how or what area did you spot them?

many sub pens in western France but I saw nothing in the water near them

[Led Zeppelin]

In the XDP file, they are setup as Category="Submarine". As no spawn file call for this type of ship in stock campaign, you can't see any of them.

e-boats are setup as Category="Patrol", it must be the same.

[starbage1]

stupid they left them out even after the patch..

[Daiwilletti]

stupid they left them out even after the patch..

Its easy to get subs to appear. You can add extra ship spawns files to the spawn table file ground.spawns, also add new destroy_ships spawns for campaign mission goals, or also create slightly renamed copies of subs and patrol boats and make them "auxiliary" category. Many ways to skin a cat in CFS3.

The main trouble is that it is a bit of an immersion killer to get subs appearing in formation with a convoy. Another way would be to associate a specific new spawn file to port and sub base facilities. My brain is a bit fuzzy on meds at the moment, but it may be possible to trigger the spawns associated with facilities at quite a distance, thereby creating a coastal shipping flavour. Hence getting patrol boats within 20km of ports, for example.

NBB: there is a typo in the name of the 88mm gun on the stock German sub - don't forget to fix this.

[Daiwilletti]

Hi Starbage1,

I've spent a bit of time fiddling around with a proof of concept. What I've got is submarines, patrol boats and destroyers spawning close to port and sub pen facilities. What I did was add an entry to the facilities xmls: Spawns="submarine.spawns".

I set up three spawn files for the spawn table file submarine.spawns. One spawns 2 subs, another spawns 2 subs and a patrol boat, the other spawns three subs, a patrol boat and a destroyer. The attached screenie show part of the latter formation.

I also modified the global layer so that in column O of the csv file, which lists spawns associated with facilities, I added "submarine" opposite all ports and sub pens. Then I used the terrain sdk to make a new gsl.lib file, and deleted the zx files (prob totally unnecessary step).

Then I flew a p47 in a stock campaign mission. Luckily my squadron was posted to a southern airfield and so I flew a mission to attack factories at V15. By zooming in on the campaign map I could see that the Cherbourg port was at sector V15 so I knew this could trigger the spawns.

When I got there, the submarines/patrol/destroyer obligingly spawned.

If you want me to send through the spawn files and facility entries, just PM me your email address.

The technique of attaching smaller coastal vessels to spawns around coastal facilities seems to be the best way to get a flavour of smaller vessels being found closer to the coast. It is better than the blunt instrument of adding extra ship spawns to the ground.spawns selection, or destroy_ships spawns to the campaign spawns selection.

I've populated a lot of the coast in the stock testbed with shore batteries (military_inv_defences) so these could also be modified to trigger coastal spawns.

HTH,

[HouseHobbit]

WOW!!
David you have my attention here on this one.

[Daiwilletti]

WOW!!
David you have my attention here on this one.

Thanks, Owen. You may be able to help out on one question, given all the missions you have created. The outerdistance parameter in facility files - is this the distance that spawns will be triggered at? Looking at small medium and large ports for example. The outerdistance parameter does not relate to the size of the ground plane, the outerdistance is much bigger. Hence my guess it could be the distance at which spawns called for in the facility file are triggered?

D

[Daiwilletti]

Just one other thing - the spawns are set up so that the vessels occur on shipping lanes. I imagine that there are plenty of shipping lanes in the English Channel for example. However in other areas and for other theatres in particular, I do not know how to tell if there are sufficient shipping lanes to make it worthwhile to develop coastal shipping spawns there.

I have seen shipping spawns which use groundtype=direct, rather than shippinglane, but I've never been able to get such ship spawns to work.

[Daiwilletti]

Another campaign mission to sector V15, this time two subs and a patrol boat (GC_38) appear. NB: Thus far the coastal ships are not set up as campaign mission goals. That would require them to be set up as destroy_ship# spawns, which would appear anywhere and would not be coastal.

Another thing - the stock g_u_boat has THREE guns modelled in the m3d. Only one (the 88mml45 with the typo) is listed in the xdp. I've trialled a modified xdp where both the flak guns are working too for the stock u boat. Just after the screenies were taken I was shot down.

[HouseHobbit]

Thanks, Owen. You may be able to help out on one question, given all the missions you have created. The outerdistance parameter in facility files - is this the distance that spawns will be triggered at? Looking at small medium and large ports for example. The outerdistance parameter does not relate to the size of the ground plane, the outerdistance is much bigger. Hence my guess it could be the distance at which spawns called for in the facility file are triggered?

D

Yes, David. The outerdistance parameter triggers the spawn, at that distance in a mission. I have modified these parameters with some success, to have the spawn happen either further or closer. In one of my Missions in ETO 1.50 I held the spawn to happen at a very close range, so to help ensure the spawn happened when I needed it to for the Historical content I was looking for, By modifying the spawn, and the trigger I used.

[HouseHobbit]

Just one other thing - the spawns are set up so that the vessels occur on shipping lanes. I imagine that there are plenty of shipping lanes in the English Channel for example. However in other areas and for other theatres in particular, I do not know how to tell if there are sufficient shipping lanes to make it worthwhile to develop coastal shipping spawns there.

I have seen shipping spawns which use groundtype=direct, rather than shippinglane, but I've never been able to get such ship spawns to work.

David, with some experimenting the Ground direct usually works only for Ground Vehicles.. There isn't a parameter I can find to allow this to work for shipping??

[Daiwilletti]

David, with some experimenting the Ground direct usually works only for Ground Vehicles.. There isn't a parameter I can find to allow this to work for shipping??

Hi Owen, IIRC I've seen some ship spawns in ETO written as Groundtype=direct however I've no idea if they work or not. I will have a look later on and report back.

[Daiwilletti]

I'd forgotten about this package by Ndicki. Not sure if the QC_Shipping zip is uploaded here at SOH. It took a slightly different approach to generating ship.spawns near the coast, using a dummy facility rather than pre-existing facilities.

It might be worth a look especially for the guide txt which shows how to modify an entry in the csv file if you don't have MS Excel. However I recommend getting some sort of CSV reader because it makes editing a lot easier, easy to make mistakes otherwise.

[Daiwilletti]

David, with some experimenting the Ground direct usually works only for Ground Vehicles.. There isn't a parameter I can find to allow this to work for shipping??

Hi Owen, I've just looked at the ETO spawns. There are a series of No MG ship spawns using groundtype=direct but I couldn't vouch that they work - see "CMP_ships_no_mg_USA" for example"

<Waypoint PositionType="ground" Position="ocean,enemy" Type="turn" GroundType="direct"/>
<Waypoint PositionType="ground" Position="ocean,distant" Type="turn" GroundType="direct"/>

Also the equivalent campaign ship spawns (ie. with MG) use the same waypoints eg "CMP_USA_dest_ships":

<Waypoint PositionType="ground" Position="ocean" Type="turn" GroundType="direct"/>
<Waypoint PositionType="ground" Position="ocean,distant" Type="turn" GroundType="direct"/>


Never checked to see if these work. I did try the technique to generate ship.spawns for a campaign I wrote for PTO, but was not successful despite sinking a bit of time into it. Otherwise the campaign was great but I missed those ships.

[Led Zeppelin]

I built these spawns and they work. Using shiplane is a pain becuase sometimes, ships are spawned out of TAC range, the MG can not be achieved. This can not happen using a direct route.

[Daiwilletti]

I built these spawns and they work. Using shiplane is a pain becuase sometimes, ships are spawned out of TAC range, the MG can not be achieved. This can not happen using a direct route.

Hi Led Zeppelin, I'm pleased to hear that, because if I could get the spawns with the MG to work it would greatly improve my PTO campaign, and allow campaigns in Rising Sun too, despite the absence of shipping lanes. Do the ships move, or are the formations "dead in the water"? I'm having a problem with one of my installs, where the ship spawns with Mission Goal are not shooting back at the aircraft.

Anyway, one of these days I will revisit the PTO campaign to sink even more time into those pesky ship formations.

[Led Zeppelin]

They move, they way the scripts have been built is to avoid this CFS3 issue. I haven't used them for a while but if I remember well, the only minor problem you may have is if you are too close to the coast, the ships can be spawned on the land... well, at least they will move but it's an immersion killer, it's better to be not too close to the coast to avoid this!

[Daiwilletti]

They move, they way the scripts have been built is to avoid this CFS3 issue. I haven't used them for a while but if I remember well, the only minor problem you may have is if you are too close to the coast, the ships can be spawned on the land... well, at least they will move but it's an immersion killer, it's better to be not too close to the coast to avoid this!

Lol well maybe there is a need for some amphibious spawns.. Hmmm, that's the germ of an idea - weren't there a few amphibious vessels used in places like Dieppe and whatsisname - Normandy?

Ground, direct, coastal could be useful parameters and do away with the need for tweaking the GL.

[Led Zeppelin]

The DUKW is available (a_amphib in ship folder), I haven't checked if there are any others amphibians.

[Daiwilletti]

The DUKW is available (a_amphib in ship folder), I haven't checked if there are any others amphibians.

IIRC there may be an ambhibious driveable vehicle "floating around". Also some floatation devices were attached to tanks so its not too much imagination to have tanks on the coast.