[PlaneEater]

UPDATE: Check at the bottom for edits and a very *interesting* screenshot

As part of some planning before I start chugging away on ship models, I wanted to pull together sort of a roundtable discussion to gather up info. I would like to build straight through most of these models and not have to revisit them frequently to make updates over and over as mods evolve. So, I'm posting here to gather some information from folks who have been coding and tinkering with the sim more recently than I have, on what features are currently available in the modded game, what can be feasibly added, and any that are known to be impossible because of hardcoding in the game. I'm also cross-posting this at SAS1946.

I did some planning with pencil and paper last night about how to best tackle what I see as the gaps in the sim's depiction of naval warfare. I'm focusing chiefly on the naval forces involved in the PTO, as my assumption is that any naval-related game features or functions needed in other theaters will also be covered in the PTO. The sim's depiction of the PTO (and as a consequence, other theaters) is missing parts. In the PTO specifically, the air war and naval war were woven together. Since this is a flight sim, my goal is to fill in gaps where the air war interacts with the naval war.

Here (in no particular order) are things I'm examining or hope to have provisions for in-game before I start building ships en masse. I'm approaching this as a 3D artist, so I'm thinking of things in terms of stuff I probably would need to tailor the model for, or include in the model itself:

A. Selectable skins / paint schemes like aircraft?
- many ships went through several paint schemes over the course of the war, and some ships (such as the dozens of destroyers) can be depicted just with texture changes. Also, making individual ship slots for each time a major capital ship got a new paint scheme isn't going to be feasible, I'm already going to have a different model for every refit and major changes. CV Enterprise alone would have more than 15 models if we did a different slot for each paint scheme. Is it possible to make different paint schemes selectable for ships, the way aircraft are?

B. Damage modeling
- From some quick tests in-game and examining some extracted model files, it looks like damage modeling for ships is pretty limited with just one level of moderate damage on some parts. Photo reference I have shows vessels on all sides with really ghastly damage and still floating, fighting - superstructures ruined, decks torn up, turrets gone, badly listing, engulfed in huge fires. Others took hits or armor-piercing aircraft bombs in powder magazines or torpedo storage and exploded. Multiple ships lost their bows to torpedoes. I can depict this sort of massive damage visually as long as I can use all three damage levels the way aircraft do (d1, d2, caps+d4). Is this possible currently? Can more damage modeling (via engine hook objects) be added to depict areas of different armor, torpedo bulges, powder / torpedo magazines, fuel storage, engines, rudder, and other vulnerable parts?

EDIT: B.1: On further testing, multi-barrel gun turrets don't fire from multiple guns. The KGV, Tirpitz, and any other multi-gun turret appears to just fire a single projectile. That IS a crucial fix.

Pretty much everything past this point is "would be awesome but isn't absolutely vital."

C. Non-carrier naval aircraft
- Practically every battleship and many cruisers carried catapult-launched scout planes that also assisted with directing gunfire. I'm assuming it's possible to launch them from a catapult currently (basically a very small CV deck with the Catapult mod). What about underway crane recovery? It's basically an arrestor cable in reverse that doesn't stretch. This could be very cool for a Kingfisher or Seagull scout plane once they're built.

D. CV Deck operations
- It would be very neat to depict the hangars and elevators of the CVs, and have the option of spawning in the hangar. I'm thinking the Zveno attachment system might come in handy for that functionality, maybe? If it's possible, it would need to be added before I made the CVs, so I could build the CV models with the hangars and elevators included.
- Can we add important deck personnel to the CV decks? Just LSO, Catapult officer, other major deck crew involved in launching, recovering, or moving planes on the deck. We have the running character models and animations already, I'll provide textures for different personnel.

E. Visual details
- Many multi-barrel turrets allowed the different barrels to be aimed at different elevations. Would be neat, not huge.
- Ship gun barrels don't recoil. Minor but annoying.


Selectable skins on ships and improved damage modeling that requires provisions in the game's model file are the big ones. Can those of you who know the game under the hood better than me lend me your insight? Once I have more info on this, it will help me make firmer plans for my process through these ship models.

EDIT 2: I've gotten a hands-on look at the original Lexington model for the game. I have found some interesting things.

1. I can confirm that currently multi-gun turrets are only firing from one barrel. There is only one ShellStart object per turret.
2. Apparently, at some point, Oleg added 8-bit transparency and never bothered to tell most of the artists. The Lexington (and I'm assuming the other carriers) make use of 8-bit alpha to blend the main skin texture with a tiled wood texture to create the finished deck shader. It's done with two layers of polys, which is major old-fashioned, but it does work, and more importantly, THE SIM CAN USE 8 BIT TRANSPARENCY. THAT'S FRIGGIN' AWESOME! You can make some VERY gorgeous models, even without SM3.0 effects, as long as you have 8 bit transparency.

3. I bet most of you have never seen this view from the Lexington before:




Now isn't THAT interesting.