Thanks everyone for the personal messages and the link to Frantic Matty's video featuring both this addon and the Bungeling Raiders. It's always good to see other content creators enjoying the work we've created.

To answer the main concern I've seen, No - this addon doesn't change the amount of hospital ships in your game, from the looks of things I strongly suspect what's happened is that Frantic has forgotten to disable the default AI addon in the official addons menu, this has most likely resulted in twice as many civilian vehicles being spawned into the world, including the hospital ships. Suffice to say that this will indeed cause things to slow down considerably. ;)

Also don't forget that if you already have the Search & Destroy DLC installed then you can leave it enabled when starting a new game and simply disable the "Weapons DLC AI" via the official addons tab, this will switch off the conquest game mode and keep it as a search and rescue game but with weapons (and the DLC explosions) enabled.

I've been making torpedo's that don't use the weapons DLC so that would be dope

Nice! That’d be super handy.

I have noticed that a handful of players that don't have the Search & Destroy DLC installed are still finding imaginative ways of destroying/sinking the civilian traffic, so it looks as though I might end up having to add the option to toggle explosions off/on at some point so that people without the DLC and still use this addon too, but that will have to be a project for a future date once I've got a bit more free time.

@speedUagon - Unfortunately not, if it's throwing an error like that at you then that seems to suggest that not having the DLC also prevents the explosions from spawning.

In that case you may have to do what I suggested to QbertTheKiller in the comment just below yours.

What if the script checks if the Weapons DLC is enabled?

Line 836 of Lua script throws an exception when calling:
"server.spawnExplosion(vehicle_pos, explosion_size)"
with the error: "DLC is not enabled"
Is there a workaround to trigger an explosion effect without relying on this DLC-dependent function?

@QbertTheKiller - No, the explosions are based on vehicle size and were added to give the player a slightly more realistic representation that the vehicle has been destroyed - rather than it magically vanishing into thin air - but if it bothers you THAT much then you can simply remove that feature yourself by making a local copy of the addon and deleting the part on line 836 that reads:
server.spawnExplosion(vehicle_pos, explosion_size)

is there a way to make it so instead of exploding they just dissapear to go into the respawn queue immediately? this mod is perfect except for the fact the ships go off like a bomb.

wil this make the boat no despawn

@Infinitoast - Just tested it again and it works fine, no surprise there as the triggers and zones associated with the hospital boat haven't been touched in this addon so they should work pretty much as intended.

What you will have to remember is that the zone inside the hospital boat has always been a little temperamental and I quite often find I have to move the casualties around inside it for a bit before it registers them, but that's been the case in the base game for quite a while now and is one of the reasons why I quite often prefer to take them to a land-based hospital instead.... That and the fact that the sea monsters seem to love attacking the hospital ships whenever they're around.

I haven't been able to submit casualties to the hospital ship, any suggestions?

Type in ?ai_debug in the console. If you don't see their icons with the destination lines appearing on the map then something has gone wrong with your copy of the addon, in which case you may have to unsub and resub to get it to work.

Also make sure that as well as changing the sliders you're not forgetting to click on the button to activate the addon in the actual addon menu, I know that sounds painfully obvious but I've actually spent hours in the past helping one of my subscribers trying to get this addon to work for them only to find out (after they sent me their world save) that they'd forgotten to switch it on. ;)

I haven't seen a single one yet in my classic playthough, I made sure to turn off default ai and aircrafts, are they just uncommon to see? I maxed out the sliders even

Many thanks for the kind words, much appreciated!

just stopping here to say thank you for the hard work <3

The AI Helicopters already take off and land at certain airports and places of interest. We did look into the possibility of having fixed wing aircraft take off and land too, but unfortunately we discovered that whilst the helicopter AI has a precision mode when navigating using nodes, the plane AI doesn't, which meant that fixed wing aircraft kept missing the runway node by miles.

I did experiment with using a microcontroller on them for landing instead but the results were pretty poor and required tweaking for each aircraft type, so the sheer amount of work required to implement it just wasn't worth it, plus even with sensors fitted there was the issue with the damn things accidentally colliding with player owned vehicles or objects on the runway or near the hangars.

Overall we decided that the best solution was to allow players to add something like that themselves, either as an MC into their own specific vehicles or scripted into their own missions 'etc'.

It would be cool if AI passenger aircraft would land at airports, taxi next to the hangar and then take off again.

Some already have, like the Swedish flag that was recently added to the MS Piteå, the original of which was made by the very talented Kahrstrom.

I try not to touch some of the legacy vehicles too much though (other than bug fixing), as they still technically belong to other content creators and some of them - especially the more artistic minded ones out there - can get a little...ahem... 'passionate' whenever anyone edits something they've made, even when it's already part of a pack or official addon that's been out for several years, which is why I much prefer that they get in touch with me directly and submit newer versions of existing creations instead or forward me a link to them, along with their blessing of course. ;)

will you be adding flags to the vehicles with block flags?

There we are - I've gone through all 40+ vehicles, including all the legacy ones from the official "Stormworks Default AI" and "Default AI Aircraft addons" and gave them all air ventilation as well as heaters to those that had them missing; as a result the AI crew should no longer start to suffocate or freeze to death in the arctic when they are within render distance of a player.

There's currently two types of AI characters you can add in Stormworks - the default "NPC" and the "Survivor", originally only the survivor could take damage whilst the default NPC type was invincible, couldn't be picked up or carried and was only really used for ambience or to drive the roaming AI ships and planes 'etc'.

It seems that the issue came about after the AI Infantry update when unfortunately the Devs removed the invulnerability tag from the default NPC's and assigned the AI soldiers to it instead of giving them their own separate NPC class.

I LOVE YOU DUDE YOU MAKED THIS COOL!!!!!!

@no - This is a bug with the base game and not the addon. In a recent update the developers did something that removed the invulnerability tag from all the NPC pilots and drivers, sadly this affects their original addon too.

If I've got the time I may try and go through all the 40+ vehicles in the pack and add heaters to them next to the NPC's but until then this should only be a problem in cold climates and when you're within 2km of the NPC vessel.

Captains of a vessel do not seem to spawn with thermal clothing or any active room heating in colder climates, leading to them eventually freezing to death and ceasing any control over the vessel

@***** - None of the vehicles spawn in the ground, ships will spawn on the surface of an ocean tile and aircraft will spawn around 200m in the air.

Unfortunately the issue you're describing with regards to vehicles getting stuck (either into the ground or into other vehicles/structures and slowing everything down) is a bug with the actual game and nothing to do with this addon and sometimes even happens to my own vehicles during a gaming session.

Thankfully because the vehicles in this addon all have HP values (with aircraft having the lowest) it means that they quite often explode and thus are deleted from the game world when hitting the ground.

This looks really promising, but i didnt want to start a new career save until i know:
was the issue of AI vehicles spawning/getting stuck in the ground fixed? it cause a lot of performance issues and i wanted to know whether or not i should still expect those when using this addon

@makkara - It should do, as it's more or less the same as the original official addon just with a couple of improvements and new vehicles.
We've used it a couple of times in our own test sessions in the past, although those have been with the host playing rather than a purely dedicated server.

Really good addon! Is it possible to use this addon with dedicated server? Can't make it initialize.

Works great nice job.

Great addon! Must have!

@brufo 🦃 - Thanks! I'll try to keep this updated as much as possible.

There's 3 sailing vessels in this that still use fake sails at the moment, but in the future I might swap those around for real ones if we can ever figure out a way to get the AI to make use of them, even if it means the creative use of a microcontroller.

Thank you for continuing to update this addon. Love it

Nevermind, everything works absolutely flawlessly. Had to restart game a few times for workshop to finally play nice with Stormworks.

Excuse my ignorance, but what do I do if the mod is not appearing in the workshop tab?

I've just released a tiny update to this by adding the actual Swedish flag from the most recent version of Stormworks to the variant of the MS Piteå that's featured in this addon, both as a tribute and a way of saying a special thanks to the very talented Kahrstrom.

If there's any more content creators out there that have vehicles featured in this addon that would like to add more detail, or even upgrade one of their original creations then please don't hesitate to let me know and I'll see what we can do.

All the very best,

Sadly that's a bug with Stormworks and nothing to do with this addon, sometimes when vehicles crash into the terrain they get stuck into it, glitch out and slow everything down until they're removed. In this instance it sounds as though the helicopter has crashed into the ground but hasn't been damaged enough to make it explode - which is quite rare.

Unless you're able to use something to destroy it, you'll have to use the command ?ai_clear or reload a previous save to fix it.

an AI helicopter crashed near me (south sawyer) prettymuch freezing my game, how do I get rid of it?

The Improved Civilian Traffic addon has just surpassed 20,000 subscribers which is absolutely amazing, so as a special way of saying thanks to everyone I've now added the much requested DC-3 by the very talented Kernle Frizzle to the list of vehicles that you can now encounter in the game.

Many thanks once again for all your incredible support!

(PS, i got like 4 hours into my play through before the lag slowly brought my TPS down to like 20)

@Captain Robertson Thank you so much for the help!! and for adding that feature as well!

You really didn't have to but i appreciate it and all of the other info you gave as well!
Restarting a world is always an option but im like 20 hours into this world and i suck at XML stuff lol.

I also understand that ships outside of 2km shouldn't be affecting me, but i tried despawning all of my world vehicles and that didn't seem to help despite only having 1 AI vehicle within 2km of me. My computer is fairly powerful too so the only thing it could've been was the AI traffic?

Either way its at least partially my fault because i set the "Max Ai Ships" as well as "Max Ai Aircraft" to 160+ each when i started this world lol
It probably doesn't help that i have Bungeling Raiders installed, configured to 50 Max Ai ships too...

I thought my computer could handle it but i guess not lol

Thanks for this, it helped alot!

@Alfred67 - I've just updated the addon with the new admin command "?ai_clear", which will delete all the existing AI traffic from the game world forcing them to slowly respawn again from scratch.

You might be able to use this with your existing world after typing in "?reload_scripts", if not then it should work once you start a new game and you ever need to delete everything again in an emergency. Be advised that this will also delete all the hospital ships too, so it should definitely only be used as a last resort.

@Alfred67 - Unfortunately the only two commands that my colleague was able to include in this addon before he went away to focus on uni was just the ability to show/hide the AI vehicles on the map and to summon a hospital ship, which means you might have to start a new game with less vehicles spawned in.

Starting a new game isn't too bad though, the most annoying part if having to copy and paste your old character's currency, bases owned and research points 'etc' from your old worlds scene.xml file onto the new one.

It might be worth checking to see what else could be causing the lag though, since everything that's not within 2km shouldn't be loaded in and just be ticking away in the background as reference data, so unless you've selected to go over the default 64 aircraft and 128 ships you shouldn't be having too many issues?

How can i despawn the overwhelming amount of AI when my game gets too laggy?
i may have set the max persistent AI number too high and i dont want to restart my world lol

im not sure what commands are available for this mod and the lag gets insane when everything is maxed out lol

@anaritamiami1 - Hahaha! Not the intended use for them but I'm glad you're enjoying it nonetheless. ;)

@harrisonpearse3 - Behave yourself! Constructive criticism, more so when it's between two content creators is perfectly acceptable and is not considered a "horrible" opinion or "yapping", especially when it comes to the potential of creations to cause eyestrain or headaches for those of us with normal vision - which in many cases can hold it back from being more popular on the steam workshop, more so when the original content creator may not be aware of it themselves.

Regardless, your comment does not relate to this particular creation, or even the game Stormworks, so please try to keep things on topic in future.

its fun to ram into them 10/10 awsome

@j - No, but you will need to start a new game to see any major changes, but that's just the nature of the beast when it comes to Stormworks.

@kingarthur - Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying it.

is it required to resubscribe to see the new updates?

i dont know what to say. this is incredible

Many thanks for the kind words!

I've just released an update for this too that fixes the issue with the KC-112M aerial refuelling tanker, now several will spawn into the world instead of just one, they'll appear and fly over both the arctic and the arid island, they make use of chaff to decoy any missiles launched against them and more will very slowly spawn in over time as the aircraft take losses.