[WIP] Wolves of the Kaiser:1914-1918 Mod

[Deamon]

Originally Posted by Admiral Von Gerlach

I love the myriad small freighters of that era

I second that! This era is just so beautfull and in my own project i invest considerable efforts to get the environment and the diversity of the merchant shipping right.

[USS Drum]

Here's a picture of a WWI 88:

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by Deamon

Whereas the shorter range of the paraffin boats was not due to the fuel type but due to an inefficient fuel tank arrangement. The first boats didn't had the arrangement where the oil drifts on water in the tank but had closed tube shaped tanks, that means there were extra tanks that were kept empty and then filled with water as the fuel is being expended to account for the weight loss. Overall this reduced the room left for the fuel to only 50% or less, which then obviously accounts for the shorter range.

Hey iam how's it going ? Nice to see your project still going.

Hi Deamon! I was afraid you were no longer on the forums.

Thank you for that point about paraffin. Making this mod has gotten me much more interested in U-Boat engines, propulsion, and fuel. It will be interesting in this mod to deal with smaller subs (U-9, UB-I) that have small diesel/paraffin tanks. Instead of charging everywhere at maximum speed, conserving resources will be necessary. This, of course, will help determine how many ships you sink per patrol.

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by Deamon

I second that! This era is just so beautfull and in my own project i invest considerable efforts to get the environment and the variability of the merchant shipping right.

I really like the way ships look in your work, Deamon. In SH3 and SH4 the ships seem too small somehow. I think the field of view in the camera file is incorrect. In your renders the field of view seems to be more accurate - IUF ships seem massive, the way they should be. I've been up close to the wrecked ship below and she was huge - despite being a "small" buoy tender of maybe 180 feet long.



Thank you to the others for your photos of 88mm's - I had seen the picture of U-20's gun but couldn't remember where it was.

[Admiral Von Gerlach]

Yes I am glad you caught that duplicate of that one photo, i am very new to this era of U boats and learning as I go along.

One of the most remarkable finds so far is a full deck plan and side elevation of U 63-65 in very large scale, over 6000, so you get a very large total plan of it. I put it into that pack of pictures but here is it alone as a zip of anyone is interested.



Zip of Ship Plan in High Resolution:

http://www.gamefront.com/files/21169...63-65+Plan.zip

U-63 was one of the most successful German WWI U-boats * 74 cargo ships sunk for a total of 210,865 tons, plus British cruiser Falmouth. Laid down : 30.04.1915 (Germaniawerft, Kiel), launched : 8.02.1916, commissioned : 11.03.1916. displacement * 810 / 927 tons
overall length * 68,36 m
beam * 6,30 m
draft * 4,04 m
armament (late war fit) * 4 torpedo tubes 500 mm (2 bow, 2 stern), 1 x 105 mm, 1 x 88 mm


More Pictures found:

Remarkable pictures of U 118 went aground off UK





UB 111 with excellent view of conning tower at time of surrender, and paint scheme



U 14



U 1



Victim of the Flanders Flotilla...



U 155 1917, looking from Bow to Stern






The Austro- Hungarian SM U-21 loads a torpedo during World War I.


Leviathan in Camoflage

[Admiral Von Gerlach]

U 21



Boat of an unusually successful captain: summary i found as follows:

Introduction.
In WW1, the submarine as a lethal weapon of war was in its infancy, however, two German Naval Officers, Kappitanleutnants, Otto Hersing, and Lothar von Arnauld de la Periera in command of SM U-21 and SM U-35 respectively, soon seized the initiative to make their presence felt, so much so, that the British placed a 100,000 Pound bounty upon Otto's head.

Otto Hersing and his Command, SM U-21.
Early in WW1, Kptlt. Otto Hersing in his SM U-21, ordered the firing of the very first torpedo to be sent on its way in a time of war. Off the Firth of Forth, on Scotland's east coast, ( which he had recently penetrated ) he found the 3,000 ton, British Light Cruiser HMS Pathfinder. His torpedo ran true, and the cruiser sank in minutes, taking 259 out of 296 of the crew with her.

Pathfinder was only the second warship to be sunk by a submarine, the first, USS Housantonic, despatched by H L Hunley on the 17th. of February 1864.


1915 and beyond.
In 1915, we find U-21, arriving in the Dardenelles area, sent to assist in the defense of Turkey, in her struggle against the Allies. On the 25th. of May, Hersing sank the British battleship HMS Triumph, and but two days later had further spectacular success, when he despatched her sister battleship HMS Majestic, the third British warship to carry that name, to the bottom.

He now sailed his boat into Constantinople on the 5t. of June, to be rewarded with the top award of the Pour le Merite, unlike some of his contempories, Otto lived to enjoy his Medal. The crew of U-21 were all decorated with the Iron Cross First Class. In 1915 in Germany, a Medal was manufactured by R Ball, to mark Otto Hersing's success in U-21.

Further success.
In July 1915, the French Transport, the 5,600 ton, Cartage was sunk. Otto now seemed to rest on his laurels, and it took him until the 8th. of February 1916 before he was able to find and sink the French armoured cruiser Amiral Charner, only one member of her crew was to survive out of 335 on board.

By April of 1916, Otto Hersing had taken his submarine out of the Dardenelles arena into the Mediterranean, and about 60 miles east of Malta he sank the British Merchantman City of Benares.

U-21 now negotiated the Straits of Gibraltar safely to go home to Germany, and later undertook patrols around Britain, Hersing came close to being sunk in August 1917, whilst attacking a convoy, but Otto was a true survivor and saw out the war.

His U-Boat on its way to surrender, was being towed by a British ship, but her Commanding Officer, defiant to the end, opened up her seacocks to scuttle her on the 22nd. of February 1919, her resting place: 54 degrees 19 minutes North, 3 degrees 42 minutes West.

National Underwater and Marine Agency.
An expedition organised by NUMA over May/June 1984 located both the wreck of HMS Pathfinder and U-21.

Kptlt Lothar von Arnauld dela Periera takes command of SM U-35.
At the end of 1915, Kptlt Lothar von Arnauld de la Periera assumed command of SM U-35. Over his career in this submarine he only ever fired four torpedoes, one of which missed its target. He favoured using his 88mm deck gun as the mode for sinking his victims, at which he was very successful, in all he accounted for 194 ships whose tonnage added up to 454,000 tons, a record which still stands in 2005.

Over a five week stint in April/May in 1916, 23 ships went to the bottom, and they equalled 68,000 tons, but this master U-Boat Captain bettered that feat in four weeks in July/August of that year, when he sank 54 ships to come to 91,150 tons. He remained in this one U-Boat until 1918, over 15 patrols.

He was quite a modest seaman, and describing one of these patrols stated: "My record cruise was quite tame and dull. We stopped the vessels, the crews boarded the lifeboats. We inspected the ship's documents, told the crew how they could reach the next port and then sank the stopped prize."

This Naval Officer served in theTurkish Navy in the thirties, rejoined the German Navy when WW2 came in 1939. He died in an aircraft accident close to Paris in 1941.

both of these captains might make good missions for the sim...not sure if you have done the older Majestic RN pre dreadnoughts but that one captain sank two of them.

[Deamon]

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

Hi Deamon! I was afraid you were no longer on the forums.

I am still around it's just that i do not post much these days. I am too immersed into development.

Thank you for that point about paraffin. Making this mod has gotten me much more interested in U-Boat engines, propulsion, and fuel.

It absolutely is interesting! And wait till you have seen the next release. You know i work this stuff out in great detail and in the newer prototype i worked out the propulsion system of U 1 in great detail already, it's not complete yet but fiddling around with it is just awesome, you have full control about everything and i even have included the authentic starting procedure for the engines and they can be run only in high rpm range just like in real. The simulation is fully dynamic so that you have countless fluctuations depending on the situation and load. And i have a real simulation of the engines, it's not just a parameter giving off power depending on the telegraph setting, i actually simulate combustion, engine cooling, lubrication, fuel/air mixture and stuff. It's just awesome, you got to see to believe it. It's hilarious what can all happen when you fiddle around with the propulsion system controls. I still remember when i couldn't get the engine to start and couldn't figure out what was wrong, frustrated i started to look into the code to see if there was a newly introduced bug somewhere, just to realize that i had forgotten to open the fuel valve or forgot to crank up the governor or something trivial like that

The electric motors are also simulated in all details, that means speed control is achieved by anchor and battery wiring and shunt field control. You can even take individual battery banks offline if you want. You also have full control of the clutches and propeller pitch.

The engines need to be pre-heated with hot air before you can start them and have to be rotated with the electric motors for that time and up untill ignition. That means you actually need to have enough current left in the batteries and need to have working electric motors in order to start the engines. That all means that casting off and docking you do with the electric motors just like in real. Overal the electric plant is of central importance in IUF since you can't even start the engnines without it ( although diesel engines can also be started with pressurized air as well, if my memory serves me right ).

The simulation isn't complete yet but it is awesome already and is a simulation in itself. Together with a, once again, vastly improved ship dynamics system the experience reached a whole new level from what you have seen in the last release. Actually i am quite dumbfounded by its potential. I will probably never be able again to go back to SH and that alike.

But it will still take time till the next release since the development took an unexpected turn. I got a new idea for an SDK that made most of the other that i was developing till then obsolete. The new SDK concept was so superior to the old ones and so promesing that i dedicated all of 2011 to it, it's almost finished now. I was wondering if you would like to participate in testing it ?

This new SDK provides unprecedented possebilities. You can not only mod everything with it but also define the low level logic of the game. That means you can define the functionality of the ships, the environment, physics, AI and all that. There is almost no limit to what yo can do with it. In other words you can develop a great deal of the the game with it instead of merely moding it. You can use it to add all thouse little things you always wished to have but no studio ever cared for. The most intriguing thing about this new SDK is the development speed that you can achieve with it. The SDK is straight forward and features a capeable programming language that is easy to learn. You can achieve results very fast, much like in Blitz3D. This is why i had focused all efforts into it in 2011, to complete this thing as fast as possible. When it's done i will use it extensively to catch up with the progress i had to freeze once again for a whole year. I really grew tired of that but this time it was worth it, also because this new SDK nails them all. It makes most other SDK's superfluouse because it can do it all. It's the most brilliant thing that i came up with so far.

Developing all this takes very long but the results can be described only as epic. IUF turns out epic in just every respect and just like i have envisioned it. Once the new SDK is complete i expect rapid progress again, much faster than before.

It will be interesting in this mod to deal with smaller subs (U-9, UB-I) that have small diesel/paraffin tanks. Instead of charging everywhere at maximum speed, conserving resources will be necessary. This, of course, will help determine how many ships you sink per patrol.

This aspect bothered me for a long time now in this u-boat games. You almost never have to bother about fuel. I can't remember ever having expended my fuel prior to my torpedos. In reality fuel was of course of great concern. In WWI it was even a common practice to tow the shorter ranged boats to the open sea just to save some fuel, at least this was a practice in the east sea theatre.

I agree on the different boat types. It will be awesome to simulate them in IUF in great detail one day. The simulational depth of the IUF will be particularly suitable to highligh the differences in this boats and explore their potential.

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

I really like the way ships look in your work, Deamon. In SH3 and SH4 the ships seem too small somehow. I think the field of view in the camera file is incorrect. In your renders the field of view seems to be more accurate - IUF ships seem massive, the way they should be. I've been up close to the wrecked ship below and she was huge - despite being a "small" buoy tender of maybe 180 feet long.

I can't agree more. This aspect adds so much to the experience at least for us both. Ironically you are the only tester who have ever pointed that out. I guess not everyone is able to appreciate that. But anyway i use a camera azimuth that reflects that of the human eye and i am more than pleased with the results.

[USS Drum]

You've made a mistake the Lusitania never was in camouflage and was a four stacker the one seen here says it is the USS Leviathan:

[Admiral Von Gerlach]

Thank you, i was hurrying and my old eyes misread the caption..thanks for that help. corrected it. That is quite a snazzy dazzle pattern they used. It would give U boat captains eye strain if nothing else.

@ iambecomelife,

I have a few good images of the Krupp 8.8cm used on u-boats during WWI if you'd like them.

There were 2 different versions that I have images of from what I see.

I also think that there were versions mounted on collapsible mounts and a version that stowed away under the deck when diving?

[iambecomelife]

I can't thank you guys enough! @ Privateer: That's great; you can post pictures of the 88mm's here or PM me for my new email address.

I tested the barrel for the 88mm gun ingame last night, using the USN 3.5" mounting - thankfully it worked fine. No additional animations are needed; the recoil effect from stock SH4 will do nicely. The only issue was the gun barrel had no texture & showed up as black. I suspect it's an AO problem.

Here is an updated roster of subs that I am thinking about:


U-9 Class Small Coastal Sub (2 bow, 2 stern TT, 6 torps, 14.2 kts)
UB-I Class Small Coastal Sub(2 bow, 0 stern TT, 2 torps, 6.5 kts)
UB-III Class Small Submarine (4 bow, 1 stern TT, 10 torps, 13.6 kts)
U-19 Class Diesel Submarine (2 bow, 2 stern TT, 6 torps, 15.4 kts)
U-31 Class Diesel Submarine (2 bow, 2 stern TT, 6 torps, 16.4 kts)
U-51 Class Diesel Submarine (2 bow, 2 stern TT, 6-8 torps, 17.1 kts)
U-63 Class Diesel Submarine (2 bow, 2 stern TT, 6-8 torps, 16.5 kts)
U-87 Class Diesel Submarine (4 bow, 2 stern TT, 16 torps, 15.6 kts)
U-139 Class Large U-Cruiser (4 bow, 2 stern TT, 24 torps, 15.8 kts)

I'm open to suggestions. I'd especially like to know what people think about the UB-I class. They will be nice for people who like a challenge, but on the other hand some players might be bothered by the low speed and only having 2 torpedoes.

The U-139 class will be rare & require lots of renown to obtain - to my knowledge, they were mostly entrusted to aces like Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière.

I'll PM you with my e-mail and connect that way.
Some of the images are copy righted so I'd not like to post them here.
There are very few that I have found but they are all very good for doing models from as there are good reference points to judge sizes.
Once I get several good reference images and the specs on the weapons?
It get's to be a pretty quick process to create the weapon to a pretty good scaled model.
I also work 100% or more scaled up then scale down when done modeling.
SH3/4 scale is a bit weird to work with in some programs.
I have a free scaler I use that is perfect for doing this!

[andypandy1996]

This thing looks great! Has it come out yet???

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

II'm open to suggestions. I'd especially like to know what people think about the UB-I class. They will be nice for people who like a challenge, but on the other hand some players might be bothered by the low speed and only having 2 torpedoes.

I'd certainly be bothered by it, but I'd take my assignment and make the best of it, just as I take totally empty patrols in WW2.

If it ain't real, it ain't worth playin'.

[CCIP]

Yeah, why not? And they'd certainly make for some very interesting short but risky patrols.

By the same token, I haven't heard anyone complaining about Type XXIII being included in SH3/4 WWII mods - although I don't know a lot of people who play it, it's a nice inclusion.