Placing Ships statically in Terrains (Pearl Harbor)

[ghostdancer]

Unfortunately we do not have the objects for the CA and DD anymore (dumbca and dumbdd) and I don't have any AC3D skills to create my own objects. So I have been experimenting with other things to see if I can place ships statically at harbors.

I have upload a test terrain I call gdtest which is a 0.9:1 scale version of my Pearl terrain. This is what I have come up with:

• In the TE you can manually place CAs and DDs, I placed 9 CAs and 6 DDs around Ford Island to simulate Battleship row and the north side of the island
• Make them field own, I attached them to P4, which is the base across from Ford Island
• Make them object type ship

You can not place the BB or CV objects since both of those will have a tower object associated with it and will cause an error of having the field that owns them having two towers. Outside

Now what happens with a build is this.

• The terrain does pass "check errors"
• When build the Icon for P4 goes away and instead shows as B4 and with the BB fleet icon.
• If you move to B4 you end up in the Port's tower and their are no guns to man; if you click on man guns it will show you a blank map of the port.
• All of the auto guns on the ships work. So the sky really lights up over battleship row with all the auto guns of 7 CAs and 2 DDs tracking and firing on you.

I created this as a test terrain since I need to check out several things on it.

Questions

• Frame rate? When I fly over it I get in the high 40s / low 50s on my rig. This is with all the AA firing. Not sure what it will be like with a swarm of planes about or if the ships are are on fire from damage. I can't remember off the top of my head do only CVs and BBs smoke or do CAs also smoke?
• Need to do testing on what it takes to damage and kill the ships.
  
• I haven't experimented with setting these ships to different object types (like bombable). This need to be done to see if it affects their auto AA or not or if it has other desired or undesired effects.
• HTC in another thread said the more manual objects you place in a small area the more likely of chance it will cause server issues. So my question is what is a safe amount? I would like to add more ships but have not done so yet because of this. Which is why I stuck to just the ships around Ford for the most part.
  

I.E. if you try to use more the a few in one area, you will very quickly overload the system.

HiTech

So as said this is an experiment to see how stable this method is and really it is a SEA and AvA type of things since only time you would place ships at Port would be for events ... attack on Pearl Harbor, ships at the port of Rabaul, attack on Taranto, etc.

[Easyscor]

I thought I'd see if I could find an answer for this.

I set an out of the way vBase as owned by the same country as the Port and I set the ships as owned by that vBase.

Now I have a separate port icon and a bb icon which is actually kind of neat in this application. If you click the bb icon you go to the invisible vBase but since it's invisible, it can be set anywhere you like including nearby so you don't end up out in the boondocks off map.

The vBase country can't be changed in-game with .sfield, so care must be taken to check that the ownerships are correct after it's uploaded. I suspect you'll still be able to rotate countries but I haven't check that.

 

Oh, I set a dd as a vhanger and it made no difference to the ack. I figure bb's should be harder to sink then one of the bunkers but the ship object may override this. IDK

[ghostdancer]

Okay so I will go and try that ... place a base off on the corner of the map so that we have the BB icon and Port icon over at Pearl / Ford Island. That should also allow players to man the guns of the Port to (right now they can't).

Gotcha, so I should be able to set the ships to bombable so that the CM can increase or decrease the hardness for them without affecting the ships in the carrier fleets on the map if they want.

[Easyscor]

Here are some suggestions you might consider.

You can add a fighter spawn (entpnt) on Ford Island by rotating A1, the Large Airfield, 90 degrees. This is so the entpnt can face east or west with the runway, and assign it as fighter spawn just like an airspawn.

Also, next to the Port tower, place one of the "dumb ships" so the ambient sound of the ship engines will make sense in this configuration.

I tried using the TE to assemble a nearby base for the ships instead of a prebuilt vBase but so far, it has crashed the game every time. imo It would be good to have such an invisible base (no icon) without guns overlooking the north side of the bay. It could act like the Fleet HQ if someone clicks the ship icon. Perhaps adding a second fighter spawn on Ford Island as well. If you like the idea let me know and I'll try to make some time later in the week and see if there's another way to do this.

ps
Oh, I also set one ship as a struct, pretty fragile, and another as a fuel bunker for fire and smoke. Setting as a vh would require much more damage but maybe for the BBs. Don't go crazy with the fire and smoke, it's a frame rate killer.

[ghostdancer]

Per captain1ma request and Easy's feedback following items have changed:

• I have placed 5 DDs to the NE of Ford Island and 1 cruiser off by itself (U.S.S. Phoenix).
• All ships are attached to P36 which is over on the SE corner of the map and invisible.
• You will  now see B36 at Ford Island.
• You will now see P4 at Pearl and its AA is mannable
• A CA and DD have been placed near the docks of P4 to simulate ships docked there.
• U.S.S. Oglala and Helena have been placed near P4.
• Ford Island has 2 BMH at the SW tip with 3 A20s placed to simulate the PBYs.
• On the NW side 2 BMH and 3 FH have been placed along with 6 F4Fs on the ground.

I did several flybys even running down the middle of battleship row and my FR held consistent at 59.

I am a little worried about smoke from damage things so if gets to be to much will start to yank out the placed hangars.

At this time I did not add a Fighter Spawn entry at Ford island since I having an issue leveling the ground by hand.

[Easyscor]

... Spawn entry at Ford island since I having an issue leveling the ground by hand.

For that one, Disable Ocean and show Wireframe, then hit your verts.

[ghostdancer]

The issue I had was I could flatten things BUT since the island is so small I kept wrecking its coast when I did so.

[Easyscor]

btw, I did notice one static plane is partly underground. A list of elevation and angle settings for Static Objects (planes) is indexed in the current TE thanks to Hitech.

You have my sympathies over the shorelines and beach elevations moving, it can be a pain.

[ghostdancer]

Yeah I think I addressed the planes being underground with the build I did last night (roughly), will fine tune those later.