Editing ship class

[michaelm75au]

These are observations which I have found playing with the database:

1.Ship class record:
When adding or changing devices in a Class, like devices should be kept grouped together.
I added a couple of AA guns to the next available slots after the radar on the Maryland class. When I called up the in-game database view, it displayed these AAs under Electronics. [:-] This does not appear to impact their use in the game.
To correct this, just moved the radar device after the additional AAs and it displayed fine.
The groupings seem to be Guns, ASW,Electronics.

2. Ship record:
a) If a device on the ship starts out disabled (Dis != 0), give the ship some system damage as well. If there is no damage (system or float), the device does not seem to get repaired.

b) To permanently disable a device without showing it as disabled (which stops the upgrade), set the Num, Dis and Turrets of the device on the ship to zero. This still allows it show in the ship info display but it won't be RED. Since the active number of weapons for the device is 0, my best estimate is that it won't use that device. When the ship upgrades, the slot gets overridden by the new Class' device.

c) Remember that on the ship record, the (Num + (Dis * Turrets)) of a weapon slot should equal the "Num" from the Class record for the same weapon slot. [see editor manual 3.2.2] The repair routine will atempt to repair to the total number of devices.


Michael

[mikemike]

There is another trap I encountered: if you define new devices and try to use them in a ship class, the device number that gets stored is the device number you put in modulo 512, i.e device 530 is stored as device 18.

[Mr.Frag]

Not quite Mike ...

The routine simply only expects a maximum of 255 devices ... once you hit 256, you have overflowed into another byte.

[michaelm75au]

Actually the limitation of a device number to be between 1 and 255 applies to ALL database record types (which use devices of course) except for the Location one.

The morale is to keep devices under 255 for ships/aircraft types and use the larger numbers for LC/Base/TO&E units in the Location record.

The developers probably started out expecting to use only 256 devices, [:D] realised they needed more but had already defined most of the database records. It was probably easier to just update one record (Location) which could have a much larger number of possible devices.

Michael

[steveh11Matrix]

You sure? Devices database 528: 6pdr CD gun.
(Scenario 15)

Steve.

[Mr.Frag]

You sure? Devices database 528: 6pdr CD gun.

That is *not* a ship based weapon.

[michaelm75au]

Guns with CD in their name are "Coastal Defense" weapons usually in batteries or emplacements, and usually on land.

What might be confusing is that they can be (and generally are) classed as the type "Naval Gun".
The type "Naval Gun" means that this device attracts more attention from naval units. In the case of CD guns, naval bombarments are more likely to target them than other devices in the same hex which is good. [see section 3.1 of manual]

It does not mean that it is installed on a ship.

Michael