Tools under development

[enrico69]

Hi everybody!

Two years ago, I found (again) my copy of Fighting Steel.
Now I can play it from times to times, I want to increase the experience added by the awesome Thunder At Sea campaign simulator.

So I started, slowly but surely, to develop tiny tools to help us to more enjoy this big guns game:

TAS_FS Name Switcher

This small app will, in on one click, switch names between the Thunder At Sea scenario and the Fighting Steel one.
The purpose? Some ships are not in the FSP, so we have to use other in place: for example I use the RM Zara to play the FS Algerie. However, the sad point
is that you have to have a "Zara" named ship in both your TAS and FS game. There is where my tool will work:

• you will be able to have a ship named Algerie in TAS, increasing the game experience
• you will be able to have a Zara class cruiser named Algerie in FS (thanks to the short name), increasing the game experience
• the tool will make the switch from TAS to FS and backward, on one click. It will use a dictionnary of correspondance, easily editable (.txt file).

TAS Ship Maintenance

Big work here: this software will add an extra value to the TAS scenarios and campaigns: it will handle ship maintenance. Until then, you have to keep damaged ships until the end of the game.
With this tool, you will be able to dock ships to repair them, according to the docking and maintenance capacity of each harbour. The time needed to do the repairs will also depend on the damage sustained.
Each port could have its own docking and repairing capacities, to make it realistic, using a configuration file.

[vonfriedman]

Very interesting.
I too succeeded in making my old FS game running again, but I am unable to use its Scenario Editor.
Do you know whether there are some secure sites were this Scenario Editor may be downloaded?

[battlewagon]

I am really interested in this. I have been playing FS and TAS for many years now, and in TAS I have built two massive campaigns which are essentially:
1. War Plan Orange - starting in mid 1935 and continuing to 1945
2. World War 2 (fictional) where Germany's WW1 fleet was never interned, scuttled or scrapped, etc
Both use extensive build outs of all fleets and several ship classes have been modified with editing of the FS data file to match e.g. Nelson's are modified to N3's with 18.1 inch IJN main armament to simulate the UK 18 inch which is not in the guns file, etc.
One of the biggest issues is having to manually edit the TAS to FS to TAS files for every battle around the non standard FS names used for all the additional ships, etc.

[battlewagon]

Hi Von Friedman, I still have all the original FS and TAS additional files e.g. TAS editor and FS editor, etc. Surely Warren Miller or somebody else like Mike Fox, etc. must still have these?

[vonfriedman]

Thank you, battlewagon. TAS was really a good product which deserved to be further developed.

[enrico69]

Hi everybody

I am pleased to see that there are also other enthouisasts for this game.

So I think I will going on with my developments!

Regards
Eric

[enrico69]

Hi everybody.

I came back to my original ideas and started the development of a console named "Fighting Steel Realism Console" (FSRC). It has the purpose to be used with the combo Fighting Steel (FS) and Thunder At Sea (TAS).

It will include 4 different applications. The first one is already done, I am practicing some tests on it.

NameSwitcher

Nameswitcher allows you to easily use ships name that dot not represent real ship present in Fighting Steel. Here is an example:
imagine a completely fictive scenario in TAS where you want:

• A ship to represent the never-were USS Kentucky
• A ship to represent the never-were RM Impero
• A ship to represent the cruiser MN Algerie
• A ship to represent the never-were MN Clemenceau
  
• The battlecruiser MN Strasbourg
• The cruiser FS Montcalm

Previoulsy in TAS you have to use similar ships to represent these ships in FS.

• The USS Kentucky would be represented by the USS Missouri.
• The RM Impero would be represented by the RM Littorio.
• The MN Algerie would be represented by a similar ship, e.g the RM Zara.
• The MN Clemenceau would be represented by the FS Richelieu.
  
• The battlecruiser MN Strasbourg would be represented by herself as she exists in FS.
• The cruiser FS Montcalm would be represented by a similar ship, e.g the DKM Leipzig.

This kind of situation exists for example in the TAS scenario RM Nightmare. This has two issue:

• You are forced to use the real name of the ship, it means you can have a Zara in your side while playing the french. Pretty disturbing for realism and immersion.
• If you have many ships of the same class, it could lead to curious and buggy situation, for example two Richelieu (Richelieu and Clemenceau).

Here come the NameSwitcher. 

Using a dictionary file (a simple CSV file, usable with any Excel or notepad editor), one per scenario, it will make the link between TAS and FS and vice versa. It means you will be able to really have the name you want for you ship. Good for immersion.

This is not the only feature. When switching the name, you have three options:

- Switching with obfuscating: It means that while running the TAS scenario in FS, you won't know exactly who is your opponent. For instance, if you are fighting two Queen Elizabeth class battleships, you will see two ships respectively named QueenElizabeth1 and QueenElizabeth2. Pretty good for realism as in the war you were rarely sure which ship you were facing.

- Switching with obfuscating and confusion:  to the previous feature, it add the random possibility to get wrong when selecting the class name of the ship. For instance: as an italian, the TAS scenario makes you fight a Richelieu class battleship. But in the game, while really fighting the Richelieu, you could probably see that you are fighting a ship named Nelson1 (it is up to you to not use the camera and check the really type of ship your are fighting against. Think realism!)

- The last feature is the automatic switching mode selection. If you are really fund of realism, it means you let the application select the switching mod. The application will parse the scenario, look at the crew quality of each of your ships, and decide the switching mode.

[enrico69]

Development of the NameSwitcher is completed. The first release is available here : github.com/enrico69/fighting-steel-realism-console.
For those interested on this tool, I also created a scenario for TAS that need the switcher.

After a break, I will start the development of the feature that allows to dock and repair ships in Thunder At Sea.