Making a perfect convoy of any combination of ship types

[IckyATLAS]

Here you will find the method to make a convoy of any combination of ship types (Kuban Map) work flawlessly,  and very easily.

 

As many of you know making a convoy with different type of ships is very difficult if you want to keep the ships in a column with regular spacing and if you want them to make turns at the same point etc. Even if you give the same speed command to each ship they will not go at that speed. So it will not work. Sure you can play and adjust finely the speeds of each ship to have the column work more or less at least for some time. But if you decide to change the convoy combination and ship types you need to fine tune again.  So it is not very satisfactory.

I did also play with the vehicle  convoy type with Formation commands Off Road Column etc. which work if all ships are identical in certain conditions, example small ships like torpedo-boats or submarines, or barges. But it does not work well in mixed combinations of larger ships. The problem is that you need to define the spacing as Dense, Loose, or Safe which are estimated on the size of vehicles which are less than ten meter long. But if you have ships of a 100 meter long then it will not work and ships will pile up. 

So finally I decided to develop a system that can accept any combination of ships in whatever order and which will perform flawlessly.

 

The concept behind the logic is to have each ship behave like having a real captain onboard of the ship. This is to look to the ship in front and adjust the speed so as to keep the separation distance approximately the same. The rules are very simple:

A) if distance is shortening with the ship in front slow down

B) if distance is increasing with the ship in front speed up

This works also if you do by looking behind you to the ship following you, but you have to choose.

 

What are the parameters we need:

1) Start the convoy at a given nominal speed the same for each ship whatever its type. This nominal speed must be selected so that it is under the maximum speed of all the ship types in the convoy. This means that each ship can go faster or slower. Basically the slower ship capability will set the pace.

2) Define a slow speed and a fast speed for each ship type. In general for cargo and tankers you can go +/- 5 kph. With faster ships like destroyers you can go +/- 10 kph or more. If you have only Torpedo-boats or only destroyers then you adapt to their capability and the convoy can be very fast. If you mix with tankers and cargoes then there is no use is having larger speed differentials. 

3) Define what spacing between the ships you want to have. Your choice.

Plug this data and go. Seems simple right.

 

Let's see what is the logic behind:

The idea is that we will use the Trigger Proximity (Closer or Further) as the captain to monitor the distance between two ships. 

Here under is an example: 

Let's say we have two ships with a spacing of 1000 meters between the ships. This is the starting distance. We can set the Trigger Proximity (Closer) to 900 meters and the Trigger Proximity (Further) to 1100 meters. This will allow for a +/- 100 meters tolerance, or  maximum gap of 200 meters. Up to you to define your choice. Simply if the tolerances are too strict the sips will continuously change speed to adapt and you will use more CPU resources. If you have multiple convoys of say 10 ships that continuously adapt their speed I can imagine that the impact may not be negligible.

You will decide who will adapt its speed. In general it is better to have the faster ship to adapt to the slower ship. If you have a cargo following a destroyer or a torpedo-boat, then you will ask the captain of the destroyer or of the torpedo-boat to adapt its speed. If you have a cargo and a submarine or a tanker then your choice here.

 

Each ship has three waypoints object linked to it. One is the Normal Speed waypoint, one is the Slower Speed waypoint and the last the Faster Speed waypoint. The Normal Speed waypoint is the one that is activated at the start of the convoy. 

The Trigger proximity MCUs are target connected to a Deactivate and an Activate MCU that will choose the waypoints according to the speed needs. 

 

Once the first waypoint is passed the ships will go to the next waypoint. You need some logic here so that your captain or Trigger Proximity knows that now he needs to use the newly activated waypoints for speed control. Unfortunately over 6000 meters between waypoints ships may have erratic motions, like stopping or going backwards. I have not tested yet if all the new versions and updates have improved on this. Airplane can have viewpoints hundreds of  km apart but not ships. So if your convoy is for a very long run then the logic is pretty heavy unfortunately even if it is just going on  a straight line course.

 

The later updates have solved the ship waypoint distance problem. You can now large distances between waypoints, and reduce the number of waypoints needed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 11, 2021 by IckyATLAS

[jollyjack]

By now you've been promoted as Admiral of Fleet, of the Swiss Navy ... thanks. 

 

Edited January 31, 2021 by jollyjack