felixh@tornado.Berkeley.EDU (Felix Hack) (11/07/90)
With reference to my previous post on modifying the Harpoon data files, I just had a bad experience with the Swiftsure SSN in scenario 7. While the platform display listed the sonars I wanted her to have (type 2020 and 2024) the individual report (where the sub is pictured from above, not a digitized image) didn't list any sonar ability at all! The 2020 was gone and the towed array had no detection ability. I quickly checked some other ships for which I had added or subtracted sonars and found no problems, but in the meantime I don't know why it's not working, and must recommend against adding or subtracting sensors from a platform. I suspect the problem may be related to the large number of sonars I deleted from Swiftsure, but that's just a guess. I'm puzzled that the platform display nevertheless shows the right sonars. Weird. Perhaps the game modifies the pure platform data before placing it in the scenario, and it didn't expect the changes. Modifying an existing platform entry for a sensor to refer to a different one, but I haven't checked this thoroughly. It is fairly definite that changing the stats for the sensors or weapons themselves will work without problems. Also, while searching for the codes that indicate what weapons are on a platform I found stats for weapon launchers located after those for sensors and weapons. Right now I think the platform files 'point' at the launcher data, which in turn looks for weapons data. I've been trying to decode the listings for 650mm torpedo tubes (so I can figure out the code for 65 cm torps and strip them from the Echo II) but haven't succeeded yet; now it's getting tougher. Trial-and-error techniques are very slow but may be the only way to go.