Problem with GFO mod radar stations
 

Hi
I am currently on patrol and have picked up, on radar, a large Japanese convoy. I press F9 to jump to the radar station and I'm at the A Scope display. However I can't switch to the PPI display, the button on the menu bar doesn't work. Is there a key press I should be using?
Mod is GFOv1.1

Click the radar on the orders bar at bottom of screen, there should be a go to PPI display button, or something along those lines.

We will have to wait for Webster to stop by (life is hitting him rather hard right now), but is seems to me that he has the A-Scope and PPI active at different times. So if you are in 1942, you might only have the A-Scope. Look in Webster's documentation and see if he mentions it, or look in the UpgradePacks.upc or the sub's upc files (NSS_SubName.upc and UnitParts#SubName.upc) for "clues" as to the active dates. :salute:

Wait? That is possible? ??? I did not think was possible lol Definitely want to make it so PPI is only active at historic times. Any ideas? Cant be as simple as changing the availability dates lol

I started a war patrol (not campaign) in a Balao class sub in 1944, same problem. I think the PPI should be standard by then?

No, you are correct - not possible. I just tried it, and no-go... I must confusing SH4 with the 'primitive' SH1 again... I was thinking you could separate the consoles for the two, but you cannot. You can't even put the cover on them to "blank" them when they are inactive. Ah well. Wrong dream.


The PPI is "standard from mid-July 1942 in SH4 Stock / GFO. If you are using an add-in war patrol, or single mission, the submarines' configuration dates have to be set to after the start of radar. If someone built the scenario, and dated it for 1944, but did not set the submarine configuration to that time period, then the "default" value will come in, and that is sometimes 19380101.

The Balao in stock though, is active from February of 1943, which is after radar availability. Look on that PPI screen again, and click on the console, and you should be able to move your view of that screen around. Notice the "Focused" and "Continuous" switch? Flip that thang, and see if you don't see a sweep now. When you first look at the screen, it defaults to "Focused", and the indicator is just sitting there. You can also use the menu buttons to do that, but you have to click on the radar button twice to get the lower set of menu buttons to show the commands available, or press the F9 to get there in stock. I don't think Stock has the short-cut keys most mods use to enable the radar, and to turn on the "Continuous" sweep... but I was wrong earlier - by a lot.. lol

If your PPI still won't function, the A-Scope shouldn't be functioning then either, so that would make it sound like something is "off" with your mod set-up. A rather common problem there is a person not emptying the Save folder after activating the GFO mod set. If you have not done that yet, then it would be advisable to do so, especially if you are not that far along in GFO. That will eliminate any saves and progress of the previous set-up you had though. The usual place to find the Save folder is in "C:\Users \UserName \Documents \sh4". You can either delete the whole folder, or the cfg folder below it. Either way, the game will re-create the folder, but with the new, modded data. Do not delete the game folder, just the Save folder.

The war patrol was a stock mission - I believe it's called Hellcat.
My issue isn't that the PPI isn't working, it's that when I jump to the radar station I'm at the A scope and pressing the PPI button doesn't put me there. Radar is working and I can switch it off, sweep change range etc. If I mouse look to the left the PPI is there and working - I just can't get to it.

Ahhh!!! Like other aspects of the game, some things are labeled "backwards". Press the other button for the A-Scope, and you should go to the PPI, which is probably set to "Focused".

You could probably do it, if you had a 'class' of sub like 'Early war fit out Gato' / 'Mid war fit out Gato' and then you could assign a different 'interior' to those classes and have the early interiors delete the PPI unit. The player would then have to switch sub classes to get a refit. It's a lot of work, given that most people will just use map contacts on and not care either way.

Ah, that would be amazing, but yes , a lot of work, a lot of work lol.

One of the follies of SH 4 is were not given a truly functional radar from the start so people just got used to running the map contacts. I was one of them for a long time, but your radar mod with the 3D TDC changed the game so for sure. I am willing to many more would learn and run without the contacts. Seemed more intimidating than it was to learn and it enables me to play with map contacts and still properly track and sink ships. If its early war and don't have the SJ-1 yet I ignore the PPI as much as possible but inevitably one catches a glance of it sometimes.

I would be happy with a "cover" or something to black the PPI screen out until appropriate time.


One downside of playing with map contacts, is since UBI cheated us out of an SD radar display, when do not have map contacts enabled, you have no real visual representation of the aircraft contact. Then it is screwed anyways because SD was not directional, so could not give a bearing to the aircraft, only a range, but in SH 4 it gives a bearing. I played around with SD a bit to see if could fix that, where would give a SD contact but not the bearing but it does not work, unfortunately.

There are radar covers modelled in the base game, but not implemented, I think they are in the in the equipment files (with all the sensor models maybe?). The same problem occurs though, to have a different interior (with covers) you'd need a different 'class' of sub, linked to a different interior. I think originally the developers may have had the idea to have the interior change according to what sensors you had, as hinted at by the radar covers being in the equipment file (if that's where they truly are). However, there is no mechanism to do this.

I was going to use the radar covers in the radar range mod as an additional bit of realism, so they were covered when submerged, but I didn't for some reason. Perhaps because the only way to 'place' them that made sense was to tie the covers being in place with the set being off, but maybe that looked horrible with waves going over the antennae and the set flicking on and off, which would have made the covers flick in and out of existence too. Also, with the covers on you can't manipulate any of the controls, but I don't think that would have been a problem. I can't remember.

The interior of the sub is called from the cfg file, so that would mean needing a new submarine class to change the interior. That is a major problem with the game, in that going from one class of sub to the next, without fail, would entail the player being in-port at the time of the change, and that there would be no other boat available, else you have a failure of either no "upgrade", or an upgrade to the wrong boat.

The covers are in the sensors.dat file
https://i.imgur.com/rGXU5eh.jpg

and most of the boats' CT interiors are like this:
https://i.imgur.com/dlUG2MV.jpg

The problem is that they seemingly do not operate independently. I do seem to remember a post or two from someone (you Nisgeis??) where they were experimenting with these, and had several issues that I do not recall the details of. It is so tantalizing to try some experiments though, because there is this:

[UserPlayerUnit 1.Compartment 4.EquipmentSlot 4]
ID= EqSlot42
NameDisplayable= A-Scope Radar Cabinet
Type=NULL
AcceptedTypes=NULL
UserCustomizable=No
IDLinkEquipmentIntervalDefault1= NULL, NULL, NULL
ExternalNodeName3D= NULL
ExternalDamageZoneTypeID3D= -1

[UserPlayerUnit 1.Compartment 4.EquipmentSlot 5]
ID= EqSlot43
NameDisplayable= PPI Radar Cabinet
Type=NULL
AcceptedTypes=NULL
UserCustomizable=No
IDLinkEquipmentIntervalDefault1= NULL, NULL, NULL
ExternalNodeName3D= NULL
ExternalDamageZoneTypeID3D= -1

in the SubName.upc file, which would insinuate you could have them "active" at different times, but like the Observation Periscope versus the Radar Periscope, experiments have proven otherwise, like they are joined at the hip, and seemingly are not allowed to "update" to a new state of activity... The consoles are listed in the sub hull, along with the air search radar, while the surface search is in the conning tower UnitParts file. All are updated in the SubName.upc UpgradePackSlots section... just slightly confusing.

So... there are several conns in the Objects folder for each sub... Is it possible maybe, to have several "hulls" in the SubName folder, and then use "UnitPart 1" and "UnitPart 2" to call gear???