[Der Teddy Bar]

The NYGM U-Boat Mod has come about because I have a dislike for the unrealistic 'Humming Bird' effect in the stock game. Since then, we have decided that in for a penny in for a pound and NYGM will have it own U-boat Damage System.

Firstly the anti 'Humming Bird'. I would have preferred to make the effect a positive buoyancy as is historically correct, but sadly this is hard coded and is impossible to achieve. This left us with the only option being a negative buoyancy.

At all stop the u-boat will slowly sink at these approximate rates...
II = 12 minutes per 10 metres
VII = 16 minutes per 10 metres
IX = 21 minutes per 10 metres

This means that a 1 knot you can maintain your current depth, note the word 'maintain'. Should you wish to either raise your depth you will need to increase speed to about 2 knots.

The argument that “in real life they may have used the pumps to lighten the u-boat” probably is not so as the excess noise would outweigh that generated by increasing speed by a knot. So all in all I feel that this is good.

Testing has shown that at times the difference between 1 knot and 1+ knot can be the difference between maintaining depth and slowly sinking.

When a depth charge explodes within a certain distance of your u-boat it may push the bow or stern up or down and/or rock the u-boat and thus cause the u-boat to slightly loose precise control and thus you’re ordered depth. As a result your u-boat might go below the ‘ordered’ depth. When it tries to regain the original depth at 1 knot the angle of the u-boat will cause greater resistance than you have thrust and will cause the u-boat to slowly sink. In this instance, I press the ‘a’ and the u-boat then settles down and correctly maintains depth or increase the knots to 2 to 3 to regain the original depth.

It may sound scary but it is not. Yes you will have to pay attention to your depth, but so did a real u-boat Captain. There will also be times that you will have to risk increasing speed to attain an ordered depth.


NYGM has also reconfigured the u-boats zones to more accurately represent the actual location and size of each compartment. As a result, the Forward crew compartment has been reduced in length by 75% and this area has now been allocated to the forward torpedo room. All of these changes have been done in as precisely as possible in accordance to the u-boat plans that I have. As a result of this, the crew quarters damage will certainly occur less often.

The engine zones have been reduced in size and moved further into the u-boat so as to not get continuous engine damaged or to have all engines taken out in one explosion.

As an example, in a IXD2 test I had a depth charge explode against the side of the hull leaving a black mark, the permenant damage was 1 destroyed diesel engine & 2 flak guns. Naturally there was massive flooding in several compartments etc.

NYGM have also fixed the Type II battery bug by a clever design of adding the ‘ghost battery’ zone inside of the correct battery zone and thus when this is destroyed so is the ‘ghost battery’.

NYGM have also increased the random chance that a depth charge close to the u-boat will not do damage. This does not by any imagination make the u-boat invincible or able to go through a depth charge barrage as if wearing a bullet proof vest, far from it. But there is a small chance that a depth charge at 10 metres will not have enough to damage your u-boat where the depth charge at 15 metres will.



During our testing of the Anti-Humming Bird zone we have seen a behavior that was initially hard to understand due to not being able to get the behaviour to occur consistantly and because of not being able to control how and where the u-boat was damaged.

The behavior was that the u-boat was not able to maintain depth at 1-2 knots after being damaged but with no apparent flooding.

The answer is that there was some flooding but it was below the % required to be displayed. The answer come via the 'damage_#.cfg files and an entry there that specified "icon damage till 30 %"... This has been confirmed.

So even when an item is damaged if it is not over a certain value it will not show up as damaged.

What was happening was that the u-boat was partially flooded and it would slowly sink.

So the response to this is that you move men into the various compartments that have been damaged, and for the electric engine room add some additional men to 'repair' the hidden flooding.

One way to look at it is that you have a small leak that you must find and will force you to decide between staying on silent running or having to break silent running to find the leak!

More to follow...

[Keelbuster]

sounds Wicked.

Kb

[Seminole]

Hmmm...anti-humming bird....good term.

I always wondered what the key command for "Maintain Depth" was intended for since the boat always does that automatically anyway, even submerged with engines stopped.

This mod ought to make things much more interesting for the player between the attacks.

[Montbrun]

Awesome work. There are a couple of observations that somebody might consider:

1) KIA vs WIA: It seems that crew members are outright killed too often. This "feeling" is not based on hard data, it's just a feeling. In 100+ patrols, I've only ever had 1 crewmember wounded. Is there some way to adjust this percentage?

2) Damage: Damage doesn't take long enough to repair. I'd like to see damaged systems take hours, if not longer, to repair. Historically, damaged U-Boats would have to break off an engagement to repair, or even abort if damage was too extensive.

3) Blowing Ballast: I think that this option is way too underpowered in SH3. I have never successfully "Blown Ballast," and surfaced. Maybe it's just me, but I surely would like to be able to "emergency suface," when needed, as was the case historically.

BTW, I've been using the GW + NYGM + UC MODs for some time now, and these observations are based on this MOD.

Thanks,

Montbrun

[don1reed]

Good work, dTB. It's been a long time coming.

[Myxale]

Agreed Sounds mega Wicked Teddy! YOur Mod is gettin' richer and richer!


And i also think that blow ballast is somewhat weak Montburn. But i'm not sure about that. When a amount of flooding is reached the blow ballast will have no effect; ok thats pretty simple; But when? :hmm:

[U-Schultz]

Sounds fantastic...

[Uber Gruber]

Brilliant, I was just thinking it would be cool to have this the other night. I've started re-reading Das Boot again (haven't read it since before buying SHII) and its revealing loads of things i'd liek to see in the game.

By the way, is there any chance of getting the boat to tilt more by moving men into fore and aft sections of the boat, i.e. bow and stern torpedo rooms. Could be interesting.....

Anyway, seems like NGYM is the way to go.

[Der Teddy Bar]

[Der Teddy Bar]

[baxter]

Excellent, Der Teddy Bar, this will further enrich the game.

[Salvadoreno]

ah yes i cannot wait! I usually always go 1 knot when attacking a ship anyway becuz i felt the 0 knot submeged was so unrealisitc. Oh and 1 question

When i get damaged during a DC attack i usually always DO have to go ahead full or flank to mantain my depth, if i dont i sink uncontrollably. What is the difference between your mod??

Oh i am basing all this on the NYGM mod but i recently switched to GW to try it out for a career.

I am also definately looking foward too the new Uboat damaged models, that sounds awesome.

[JScones]

[HEMISENT]

Teddy, gradually sinking boat-sounds great. This is a feature that's been badly needed.
As for the damage model also sounds interesting-I'm wondering how or if it will conflict with Gouldjg"s chaos work.

BTW-Wasn't NYGM working on something involving axis/allied air patrols or coverage? Any word on this?

[Der Teddy Bar]

I wish to emphasis the occurrence of damage and/or flooding to a compartment that has not been marked as damaged and/or flooded.

This is an underlying ‘feature’ of the SHIII game engine. This is not a NYGM feature.

What the NYGM Anti-Humming Bird zone does is bring this behaviour to the fore. For all I know the ability for the u-boat to hover like a humming bird may have been a ‘solution’ to a compartment being damage and/or flooding while not being marked as damaged and/or flooded.

Of special importance to remember is that to stop the flooding etc you will in some cases need to put more than just a man or two into the compartment. That is, you need to have enough men to make the compartment efficiency over minimum. As the efficiency bars are not as accurate as we would like, I suggest that you put as many men as possible into the relevant compartments for as long as required. How long is as long as required? This is something that I cannot accurately quantify in time but can say that when you can maintain depth at 1+ knots then that’s long enough.