As boring as the old stock ships have become, it remains a fact that the stockers produce much higher frame rates than addon ships. It's just a sad fact of life in the CFS2 universe. Using stock ships instead of addons doubles my frame rates. Even the more frame friendly addons put a hit on the frame rates compared to the corresponding stocker. If I create a formation of all addon ships in a mission, my frame rates sometimes drop into the high teens when the ships are in view, even if there is nothing else in the mission.
You guys with the super fast PC's and graphics cards don't need to worry about it, but I've decided that I need to worry about it.
The stock ships aren't bad. They look a little blocky up close. They could use some snazzy camo paint and a little tweaking of the DP's. For example, "priority" and "hardness" calls are a must for any sea battle involving attacking aircraft - whether it's a DCG mission or not. Otherwise, attacking AI aircraft will attack in an extremely foolish manner, going after the smaller ships first, only going after the capital ships after they've depleted the capital ships' support group. Pen32win has worked up a good set of priority and hardness calls for different classes of ships.
Many of the smaller, less detailed addon ships work fine as far as frame rates. The only ships actually absent from the stock stable are CVL's, CVE's, DE's, and light anti-aircraft cruisers, and there are good addons available in these categories.
It's also a sad fact of life that DCG only reads the first 8 characters of a ship's folder name, which means DCG is unable to distinguish between ships in some cases. For example, "SHA_INDIANA" and "SHA_INDIANAPOLIS" are indistinguishable to DCG. Using these ship names in a DCG campaign results in all of them showing up as battleships. So I've created renamed versions of those stock ships, named BB_US and CA_US, for use in DCG campaigns. I've also found it necessary to rename several of the better addon ships, particularly the ones that start with something like "VN_USS_***". That prefix takes up 7 characters of the readable 8 characters. In most cases the first character of the actual ship name allows DCG to distinguish it, but not necessarily always.
In light of all the above, I've decided to create a special stable of ships, specifically for use with DCG - mostly stockers with slightly modified DP's and maybe better paint jobs. There's nothing really difficult about this, but I've already caused myself some unnecessary toil and trouble in the process of converting the stock ESSEX and HIRYU carriers. Take my advice. If you rename a ship, be very careful. Proofread everything you do. If you get a "Failed to initialize the database" error after renaming a ship, you'll know the cause, even if you don't immediately find the problem.
But what really blew me away was when my security software suddenly decided "cfs2.exe" was "riskware", charged it with a crime and delivered a "verdict"...:isadizzy: What the....and they were getting along so well...
It was a frame, I tell you. "cfs2.exe" was not guilty.
You guys with the super fast PC's and graphics cards don't need to worry about it, but I've decided that I need to worry about it.
The stock ships aren't bad. They look a little blocky up close. They could use some snazzy camo paint and a little tweaking of the DP's. For example, "priority" and "hardness" calls are a must for any sea battle involving attacking aircraft - whether it's a DCG mission or not. Otherwise, attacking AI aircraft will attack in an extremely foolish manner, going after the smaller ships first, only going after the capital ships after they've depleted the capital ships' support group. Pen32win has worked up a good set of priority and hardness calls for different classes of ships.
Many of the smaller, less detailed addon ships work fine as far as frame rates. The only ships actually absent from the stock stable are CVL's, CVE's, DE's, and light anti-aircraft cruisers, and there are good addons available in these categories.
It's also a sad fact of life that DCG only reads the first 8 characters of a ship's folder name, which means DCG is unable to distinguish between ships in some cases. For example, "SHA_INDIANA" and "SHA_INDIANAPOLIS" are indistinguishable to DCG. Using these ship names in a DCG campaign results in all of them showing up as battleships. So I've created renamed versions of those stock ships, named BB_US and CA_US, for use in DCG campaigns. I've also found it necessary to rename several of the better addon ships, particularly the ones that start with something like "VN_USS_***". That prefix takes up 7 characters of the readable 8 characters. In most cases the first character of the actual ship name allows DCG to distinguish it, but not necessarily always.
In light of all the above, I've decided to create a special stable of ships, specifically for use with DCG - mostly stockers with slightly modified DP's and maybe better paint jobs. There's nothing really difficult about this, but I've already caused myself some unnecessary toil and trouble in the process of converting the stock ESSEX and HIRYU carriers. Take my advice. If you rename a ship, be very careful. Proofread everything you do. If you get a "Failed to initialize the database" error after renaming a ship, you'll know the cause, even if you don't immediately find the problem.
But what really blew me away was when my security software suddenly decided "cfs2.exe" was "riskware", charged it with a crime and delivered a "verdict"...:isadizzy: What the....and they were getting along so well...
It was a frame, I tell you. "cfs2.exe" was not guilty.
