An Insight In Mission Building: Martlet Convoy Defense

[FoolTrottel]

Was working on a new mission, and thought it might be nice to show some stages of the build.

 

As this is a convoy defense mission, we need a big area of water, and a convoy.

 

Map: Atlantic Summer.

 

Did some research on convoys, on their size, speed and build up.

 

 

So, this scared me, as I had to put 42 ships - of different types - in six columns, doing some zig-zags as well!

For now, I focused only on the convoy ships, not the escorts.

 

Decided to put all 42 ships on the map, as per image above. Gave each ship 2 waypoints, so they would be traveling behind each other.

Mind you, this picture has them traveling North, I choose to let them move east.

 

Now, as for the zig-zag... 

One would normally manually plot a lead ship (ie the one in the top column) to some zig-zagging waypoints, then copy/paste the waypoints values into Ms-Excel, and apply some calculating to 'generate' the waypoints for the other ships.

On a normal map, the bottom left (SW) position is X=0, Y=0, and the top right (NE) has the highest coordinate values.

The top right of the first square (A0) is X=10.000 Y=10.000, so a difference in value of 1 means 1 meter distance.

 

Now that would make plotting with excel quite easy, subtract 1.000 from the Y of the first ship, and you have a ship positioned 1km to the south!

 

Too bad, I found out it does not work this way on a really big map, as suddenly, all the X and Y's are in the negatives, and they do no longer correspond with the simpel 10.000 per 10km rule. Even worse, giving a ship two waypoints would normally result into two lines in the mission file. On this map, six lines.

Of unknown origin.

 

So, I nearly  caved there, I was sure I was not going to plot some 11 waypoints for each and every of the 42 ships!

Too much tedious work!

 

But, after some thinking, I found a solution: Plotted the lead ship of a columns position manually.

Then copied all of its waypoints and pasted them starting after the first waypoint for each and every other ship in that column.

So, the second WP of each following ship would be equal to the first of the lead ship. And so on. Result: they all follow eachother nicely in the zigs and zags.

By the time the second ship has reached the first one's initial WP, the first one had already moved towards its secondary WP.

(Sure, still had to plot 6x 11 WP's, and use paste for each ship, yet, it was at least doable.)

 

Results:

 

 

 

Okay, that's all for now.

More might follow, but I'm surely not gonna report on all details that were put into the mission, oh no...

 

[BadAim]

Very clever! I highly recommend that you save the mission once you're done with the convoy it's self, so that you can use the template for any other convoy based missions you might come up with in the future. Have you figured out how to make the destroyers circle?

[Painless]

Brilliant !

Would you have small escort carriers with Martlets and Condors to shoot up and U Boats to sink and stuff ?

P.

[FoolTrottel]

That'd be the idea, yeah!

But, don't tell anybody, it's a surprise!

[FoolTrottel]

Very clever! I highly recommend that you save the mission once you're done with the convoy it's self, so that you can use the template for any other convoy based missions you might come up with in the future. Have you figured out how to make the destroyers circle?

Circle? Yeah, via the JABOWP method.... *(Just a bunch of WayPoints)

 

There's not too many destroyers, so they will be manually plotted, not too difficult...

Though... one has to be careful with unforseen collisions

 

End of mission, this happened:

 

 

And, big thanks for reminding me to save the convoy for later use, I planned to do so, but I kinda already forgot 

[FoolTrottel]

For BA: Here's an image from the plotted waypoints, the lead (Napier) and rear (Tribal) DD's are in place (North/South movements), the circling commodant is in blue (just to make it stand out, it will be redded soon!)

 

 

You can tell the zig-zagging of the other ships here as well, as the 6 columns.

[Sweper]

 

Very clever! I highly recommend that you save the mission once you're done with the convoy it's self, so that you can use the template for any other convoy based missions you might come up with in the future. Have you figured out how to make the destroyers circle?

Circle? Yeah, via the JABOWP method.... *(Just a bunch of WayPoints)

 

There's not too many destroyers, so they will be manually plotted, not too difficult...

Though... one has to be careful with unforseen collisions

 

End of mission,

grab0015.jpg

 

 

And, big thanks for reminding me to save the convoy for later use, I planned to do so, but I kinda already forgot 

 

 

Nein nein, we did it!

[FoolTrottel]

Big bummer there... as you could see, at the end all ships collide, as they all take the exact same course.

Now, at the end, 2.5 hours in, no worries, the mission would have ended already...

 

But, imagine the lead ship getting damaged mid mission... stopping dead in the water... result... pile up... 

(Used to not be a problem before, but now that ships take so long to sink...)

 

Oh well, boils down to manually plotting each ship and each WP... fixed the top two columns... I hope I put sufficient space vertically between them now... 

 

In the end, I'm so busy doing this stuff, I may not find the time to properly prepare something for this Sunday .... Hold on, I could always switch priorities...

[BadAim]

Yeah, things like eating, having shelter and taking care of your family can all take a back seat to your mission building responsibilities.

 

As for the reminding about template saving thing NP I only have myself to judge from and I do it every stinking time!

 

The course plotting looks simply mind boggling to me!

 

We definitely need shipping AI with more I and less A.  

I'm actually looking forward to this mission just to witness it's grandeur! 

[Painless]

Admiral Arjen,

Not sure if this will help but what if the ships in the front row of the convoy were travelling at 22 knots, the next row at 21 knots , the next row at 20 knots, the next at 19 knots ETC.

This would mean that the convoy would in effect spread out over an hour but maybe not too much for our mission purposes ?

Would this help avoid collisions due to lead ships taking a long time to sink if they are hit ?

If this is a bad idea could difference in speed be used in any way to help ?

Painless .

[Jabo]

Do damaged ships stop dead or just slow down? Is there some sort of trigger that when could be used to turn a damaged ship off it's original course to reduce the risk of collision?

[fruitbat]

No trigger. damaged ship will slow or stop depending on the damage level, and anything that is following will hit and sink.

 

If i was a German U-boat captain, i'd torpedo the first ship, and sink about 10......

[FoolTrottel]

If I did it correctly, a sunken ship would no longer be in the way... the following ships would pass it iether just to the left, or right..

 

Hopefully, they will end up looking like in a line, but in fact, really are not...

[DD_Arthur]

This will be an Atlantic convoy, yes?  So plenty of sea room.   If there really is 500 yards between following ships in each column, why not "bend" the course of the convoy so its following a very broad arc.

Then if a ship is sinking, the following ship would just avoid it as it follows the convoy's broad arc. 

 

 

 

 

 

Hopefully.

 

 

 

 

Edit; Doh, forgot they follow straight courses between waypoints!   Oh well, it was almost a good idea.

[Painless]

Still is a good idea Arthur, just needs lots of waypoints lol

P.

[fruitbat]

If I did it correctly, a sunken ship would no longer be in the way... the following ships would pass it iether just to the left, or right..

 

Hopefully, they will end up looking like in a line, but in fact, really are not...

 

As long as they are offset by a modicum more than a ships width, it will be fine, and in reality they didn't sail in perfect straight lines anyway.....

[FoolTrottel]

Yeah, arcing would take plenty more waypoints....

 

Decided to space them in the vertical plane, well, seen from above then:

 

 

These show the first waypoints, ships will appear to be in a line, while in fact they are not...

Fingers crossed spacing is sufficient!

 

Then again, a mid sea collision could've happened, no?