FiXED: Ships sinking on their own in rough seas

[Philipp Thomsen]

Alright, have tested for 20h straight more or less.

Started campaign in 39, 40 and 41.
Sailed for hours on end around the whole map, 8128x
Saw many convoys, sank many ships, pressed all the buttons.
Not a single CTD. Memory usage didn't exceed 2.9gb.

Now, there's a big problem with ships. They are sinking on their own in rough seas.
Also I think destroyers have the wrong balance bow/stern, as they spawn already sinking by the stern.



This guy spawned like this but didn't sink. I followed him for hours in the rough seas and he
just kept going like this and didn't sink at all.

EDiT: Fixed the picture that you included - it did not display using postimg?!

[Philipp Thomsen]

The problem with the ships is not a big one... just the waves which I increased a lot... for me it is ok that some ships sink in storms.
Don´t know what others think.... this could easily be changed with an addon!

greetings
Han

Well some ships did sink during the war while in horrible weather.
However the required horrible weather was rare, while the 15 m/s weather
in sh3 is not rare enough, sometimes going on for days, in which case
all ships and all convoys you found during such times would be sinking left/right and center.

Also, the ships are bobbing like crazy, we need to apply my ship parameters to fix that.
But that can be done after we finalize deciding which ships will be part of WAC 5.0.
www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=204399

Make the ships look rock steady like they are supposed to, while waves wash over the decks
without causing flooding/sinking. This could be fine-tuned to cause SOME sinking in heavy weather.

I'll be happy to start testing Alpha 8, lemme know when you upload it :)


EDiT: Shortened quoting (moved it where it belongs)

[Philipp Thomsen]

Up with this... want to know more of your thoughts!

Post your feedback... the good ones (which help to motivate me) and the bad ones also (some things definitely need a change)!

We definitely need to look in the waves for 15m/s winds.
Every single convoy I've found had 15-25% of it's ships sinking on their own.
The waves were tossing the sub completely out of the water from periscope depth.

Even tho I LIKE the idea of storms so bad that you need to stay submerged and
completely forget about any possibility of attack, 15m/s winds are far too common for that.
Sometimes they can last days and weeks, you can't stay submerged that long and it's ultimately boring.

On S3D there's an option of adding a new node for waves under wind, so instead of 4 (0/4/8/15)
we could add more, maybe 8 configs (0/4/8/12/16/20/25/30) and increase waves accordingly.
I've never tested who if the game would even accept such change and I'm afraid the impact
of huge waves like we see in WAC 5.0 15m/s winds have much deeper implications and causes more harm than good.

On a side-note, game cannot differ ocean water from sea water, so those huge waves would affect harbors as well
and all those ships parked there would sink, smashing on the sea bottom thanks to the waves.

There's nothing I'd love more than seeing those huge waves, trust me.
But on SH3? From every angle I look I just can't find a way around it. =/

[Philipp Thomsen]

First I want to know how many ships sink in storms... and during convoy attacks, etc.

For me it is a feature!

In my experience, at least 25% of the convoy appears to be sinking a few minutes after you spot them.
If you follow some of them for a few hours, a few more sink, others ride pretty low with decks awash.

I can run a few more tests to give you exact numbers if needed.

I do understand what you mean by it being a "feature", and I partially agree.

The problem I see is, even tho it's realistic to have them sinking on their own in rough seas,
visually its plain ugly as fuck to see them smaller ships, destroyers and the U-Boot itself
"flying" in the air and then sinking 10m below the waves cos they don't follow the upward/downward motion fast enough.

In other words, the wave frequency is faster than the vessels frequencies. And that's a SH3 thing that cannot be fixed.

So in the end of the day, we need to choose between large waves sinking ships as a feature, or smaller waves that
don't sink ships but are visually acceptable. It's just a big turnoff for me to see the U-Boot fly 5m in the air, followed
by sinking 10m below the waves, and have this cycle repeat itself ever 10 seconds. It's the biggest immersion-breaker for me.

And we cannot obligate players to stay underwater during heavy weather.

Also, we cannot make the 15m/s wind a "rare" occurance. SH3 engine loves setting the 15m/s winds contantly and lasting days if not weeks.

With SH3, we never have enough shoelace to tie the shoe. Gotta choose one or the other.

Ideally, if we could possibly change the motion of vessels to follow the waves, it would be perfect. But that is something nobody ever managed to find.

I myself tried for WEEKS to find a fix for that back in the day, but seems like physics are deeply inbedded inside the executable.

[REV_BL!TZKR!EG]

Also, we cannot make the 15m/s wind a "rare" occurance. SH3 engine loves setting the 15m/s winds contantly and lasting days if not weeks.

There is some patch Stiebler did. Blitz once created a thread about this in Subsim. Blitz? You reading?

Yes, yes. I have just returned home.
Back in the days when I was still trying to compare the different approaches taken, Stiebler commented in my thread
and this is the link: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=2242283&postcount=18

All in all you cannot call it a Feature when you lose even 10% of a convoy only to "rough waves". That is clearly a bug!

True. That really sounds unlogic.