Relatively new to DC and have a few questions

[LeroyJ]

Hello every one. As the subject says I am pretty new to the DC game. I had been hoping to come across a newer surface battle sim for a while. My previous game was Taskforce 1942 from 1992 which I thought was really cool at the time but DC blows it away. I guess 10 years does make a difference. Also all the work that others have done to improve it just make it so much better. Those Italian warships.are amazing. Anyway, after reading throgh past posts I still have a few questions .

1. There are still some ships that I can't comtrol like the Nagato class . Another is the merchant cruiser Laurentic. What is the reason for this and can it be fixed?

2. While looking through the game files I found files for a missle and missle lauching system. How are these files to be used? Are they for a specific ship or just for fun?

3 . What is the deal with the hit or miss availablity of the secondary battery in the attack selection menu? Sometime it is there sometime it is not. It always seems to vanish right when I need iit.

Thanks for a great forum. I would be happy with any help ypu all can provide.

LeroyJ

[Hitman]

Wellcome aboard Leroy

Glad you found Dc and liked it, you can also get nowadays for a few bucks in the bargain bin another classic with big guns: Fighting Steel (I buyed it for 5$). You can check an article about that game here at subsim.com, in the reviews area, including some screenshots.

Answering your questions:

1. There are still some ships that I can't comtrol like the Nagato class . Another is the merchant cruiser Laurentic. What is the reason for this and can it be fixed?

It seems that you have already found the way to control the other ships by scripting missions with them. I don't know exactly the problem with Nagato and Laurentic, but I believe it had something to do with the guns and nodes in the 3D model, something that can be corrected in the unit's UDF file (Those files are located at Destroyer Command/Sim/Units folder, and you can open them with Windows Notepad). I can't tell you howevere how to do it, but sergbuto and FAdmiral did know very well how to do that.

2. While looking through the game files I found files for a missle and missle lauching system. How are these files to be used? Are they for a specific ship or just for fun?

Are you already thinking about cheating?

Just joking...

DC/SH2 was a combo whose engine was meant also to be used for the never delivered Harpoon 4, so there are hints about hidden features in the game's engine, probably not activated. Never tried that, but in these games everything is possible.

3 . What is the deal with the hit or miss availablity of the secondary battery in the attack selection menu? Sometime it is there sometime it is not. It always seems to vanish right when I need iit.

I happen to remember that it had something to do with how you define the human controlled ship in the mission, but not sure... :hmm:

[LeroyJ]

Hey Hitman,

Thanks for the prompt reply and the info on Fighting Steel. Yeah, I figured out pretty early that I could mess with the game. I already had Panzer Commander which uses the same engine and I had learned how to edit the files to allow the player to drive vehicles that were not normally player usable. Once I discovered that I would be able to pilot battleships and cruisers I was in heaven.

I'll look again at the nagato.udf and see if I can find anything. Not that I would know what to look for exactly. Whenever I try to transfer to the Nagato I get kicked out the game to a janus error message refering to the max number of turrets.

Yeah, I guess that would cheating a bit. I was just wondering why the missle system was there. Likewise why is there a Loveboat included with the ships. I don't know what the creator's intended use was but it does make a pretty good practice target. I do have rather strong dislike for those hideous things called cruise ships and I would think it would quite fun to blast one to bits with 16 inch guns.

The secondary battery problem can be annoying. I'll be in the middle of a battle and suddely the option to use the secondary battery goes away. It was there on the same ship five minutes before. Then it appears on a destroyer's menu. Since when does a destroyer have a secondary battery. In the future i'll be more observant and see if I can find a pattern to this problem.

One last thing I was wondering about DC is this. Why didn't they include a sound delay proportional to the distance from the gunfire. Taskforce1942 had this But DC doen't. I guess that is one problem I have with DC. Otherwise I am very happy with it.

Thanks again,

Leroy

Brilliant stuff whats it called? ^

[Chapeau]

Originally Posted by LeroyJ

The secondary battery problem can be annoying. I'll be in the middle of a battle and suddely the option to use the secondary battery goes away. It was there on the same ship five minutes before. Then it appears on a destroyer's menu. Since when does a destroyer have a secondary battery. In the future i'll be more observant and see if I can find a pattern to this problem.

I've found that keeping ships grouped with the same type (DDs with DDs, CAs with CAs, etc.) prevents this. If you form a group either in the .SDF or in the game with two types, the game engine gets confused and will treat a BB like a DD and vice-versa. Keep them separated and you should be okay.

[Charleston]

Ok, you all talked me into it. I'm off to the Subsim store to pick up Destroyer Command.

Jury rigged playable BB's and CA's--where have I been for the last 4 years....?! I wonder if anyone could get that working with the NWS folks' Thunder at Sea....hmm.

[Hitman]

I wonder if anyone could get that working with the NWS folks' Thunder at Sea....hmm.

Theoretically a tool like "Thunder at Sea" would work very well for Destroyer Command, and you even have Kriegstanz, which operates based on the same principles (Script a mission "on the fly" and load DC), but someone would need to program it.

The main problem in DC for the use of big units is that screen rendering does not go further than 14000 yards, so if you want to go manual targeting (Hugely fun, believe) you are stuck with cruisers and destroyers. But if you want to go for a sort of map-controlled strategical game, then it works with no problems with large units.

Then of course, the AI and the damgae & gunnery moedl in Fighting Steel is waaaay more advanced than in DC, but that's another matter....