Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980
I made the max fire range 35000 meters or 18. 9 nautical miles, to "encourage" the warships , mainly BB, CA, to open fire at longer ranges in surface battles, instead of always waiting until at what is point blank range... especially in daylight. The default is just 10000 meters. Result thus far has been that in daylight, depending on factors such as fog, type of vessel (BB will engage further out than say a CA) they(capital ships, mainly BB with their main batteries) are engaging at around 13000-18000 yards, sometimes more, depending on conditions.
At night obviously not firing at those ranges as can not see one another that far out so result being get historically accurate (mostly) battles such as Savo Island where they fight at what is point blank range for warships. Then, in 1944 such as at Leyte Gulf (Surigao Strait) US battleships (last battleship v battleship action in history) will open fire at longer ranges now, last testing they opened fire on japanese at 9,000 yards, sometimes little more or little less at night, depending on conditions. Previously, would wait until 5000 yards or so. This is due to improved radars assisting the visual sensors.
Of course this has no effect on their spotting player submarine as too low profile to be spotted or detected on radar at that distance. Again, am in the PTO and IJN radar was not up to par with allied, so that is reflected in the sim with my radar mod. I can pull off night surface attacks on convoys with radar equipped escorts. Now, it certainly makes it riskier and tougher to pull off, esp after torpedoes hit, they are alerted, it helps them locate quicker and maintain contact beyond visual range, also helps with gunnery accuracy but still possible.
At some point I want to worked on some of the ATO mods for SH 4 and maybe even SH 3, to make it where U boats can perform realistic night surface attacks, esp in the early war. Main thing is the nights being dark enough to interact with proper settings for sensors and sim.cfg
Far as the fog factor goes, like I said it's not that is really doubles their visual range, as there are a host of other factors but lowering it to 0.5 does remove some of a handicap caused by fog on visual sensors. I did this because at 1.0 the handicap is pretty strong and when checking weather, there seems to be a light fog present majority of time and noticed it hinders the escorts, allowing player to get away with a bit too much in daylight and esp at night, at times even rendering escorts too ineffective on surface at night, when combined with a dark moonless night, and a fog.
Now, I have two CFG's, one for early to mid war (1941-late 1943) and another for late 1943-end of war. They are mostly the same except for in visual, the enemy speed factor is increased from 14 to 17. and fog factor is at 0.8 instead of 0.5 .
This was done as war changed in pacific and player has to use different tactics, night surface attack became common place while japanese started in late 1943 running more convoys, with multiple escorts vs before most convoys had one, sometimes two escorts and many ships sailed without escort until mid 1943. In late 1943 and especially in mid to late 1944, they adopted some Alliedesque tactics, running large (by their standards) convoys of 12-20 ships with 4-6 escorts, sometimes more. These are convoys, that like actual us submarines did, player can get inside, attack from within on surface and in many cases get outwithout having to dive, emulating what actual US submarines did often. Now, problem is the the early-mid war settings for speed at 14 knots became a problem in late war as at times player at times in order to get inside convoy needs to use high surface speed and even when at reasonable distance during testing, I was getting spotted for going on 14 knots or slightly over due to inherent nature of having to operate closer to enemy escorts and merchants, at times preventing from pulling off historically accurate attacks such as from within, so I raised the speed factor in visual section of .cfg a bit since player in mid to late war will likely be operating on surface Now can still be detected below 17 knots, just provides a little more flexibility. if player needs to speed up momentarily to .
Early war, since not operating inside convoys on surface and escorts are typically ahead of astern, need handicap slightly lower so they can respond esp after attack.
I spent , many many hours during development of mod tweaking this, to balance things properly and found it with the settings I have. Main goal was so player could operate in a historically accurate realistic manner , but maintain the toughness TMO is known for. I am overall happy with results as achieved this, but as has said, there is no one solution because so many factors come into play. May find in one attack the fog hindered the enemy and in next one may find it really did not or it may have helped in a subtle manner during escape.
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