SS Normandie Post War Service

For this version I’ve overhauled her bow shape and made improvements to her railings along with many other small fixes/improvements. Her fittings, interiors and paintwork have been redone end to end to bring her back into service for the second half of the 20th century.

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! YOU MUST ENABLE INFINITE FUEL, INFINITE ELECTRICITY AND DISABLE OVERHEATING ENGINES FOR THIS TO WORK!!!

READ THE DESCRIPTION IF YOU ARE HAVING TROUBLE GETTING THINGS WORKING, THE ANSWER IS PROBABLY THERE

YOU ALSO NEED A DECENT COMPUTER TO RUN THIS. THIS SHIP IS HUGE AND CONTAINS 100’S IF NOT 1000’S OF LIGHTS AND LOGIC CONNECTIONS.

I built and run this ship on the rig below. I average 30-35 FPS running this version of the ship on my machine away from shore with all lights on.

Intel Core i5-4590 CPU @ 3.30 GHz
32 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 ti

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HOW TO LOAD THE SHIP—————————————————————————

First you have to start a game in "Custom Game Mode" at the "CUSTOM BASE OIL RIG (LARGE)".
Next press escape and click on the "Custom Menu" tab.
Enable "Infinite Electric", "Infinite Fuel" and disable "Engine Overheating". If you don’t do this the ship will not work! Next, press escape and click on the "Addon Editor" tab.
Click on "Load" then select the workshop tab.
Select "SS Normandie Post War Service" from the list.
Next press the "Test Location" button.

The game will do an autosave and after a while the ship will appear. It will take a little bit to load so be patient.

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HOW TO RUN THE SHIP—————————————————————————–

Propulsion and steering:
To start the engines you need to go to the engine room. WATCH THE TUTORIAL VIDEO ON HOW TO OPERATE THE ENGINES. You can steer and control propulsion from both the bridge and the engine room. Steer the ship with the ‘A’ and ‘D’ keys. She handles pretty good for a big ship, but to steer tighter cut the power to the props on the side you are turning to.

Lights and Sinking:
Behind the bridge there is a room with a control panel that has controls for navigation lights, deck lights as well as a scuttle panel. The scuttle panel allows you to simulate a fire, capsize the ship or sink the ship with a standard bow first sinking. Lights for various rooms and halls are controlled by fuse panels scattered around the ship.

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KNOWN BUGS AND QUIRKS

Turning on all the lights will cause a noticeable FPS drop, not much can be done about this.

The ship accelerates to top speed too fast and travels in reverse too fast.

She handles good in winds up to 45% or so, higher than that and the props can lift out of the water causing the ship to lose forward momentum. I’ve worked very hard to fix this but haven’t been able to come up with a solution. I’ve come to the conclusion that this is due to the way that Stormworks simulates the physics of water and how it interacts with extra large ships such as this. I have similar problems with my other ship, the S.S. William A. Irvin.

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SPECS

Stormworks Normandie:
Length: 721 feet
Width: 75 feet
Height: 112 feet
Weight: 13,742 tons
Speed: 30 knots

Real World Normandie:
Length: 1,029 feet
Width: 117 feet
Height: 184 feet
Weight: 79, 820 tons
Speed 32.2 knots

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HISTORY OF THE SHIP

This is based on a real ship by the same name. It is not an exact recreation, it’s hard to believe but the real ship is much bigger and I had to take some liberties in a few areas to make it work. I did try to make it as accurate as I could working within the limitations of the technology.

The S.S. Normandie is considered by many to be the grandest and most elegant ocean liner of all time. From her extravagant Art Deco interiors to the unique design of her bow, everything about the Normandie was state of the art at the time and set a precedent that many after her would try to follow.

The Normandie unfortunately had a very short career. Her maiden voyage was in 1935 and she was scrapped in 1946. She did enjoy a few good years making the transatlantic crossing. She and the RMS Queen Mary battled it out for the coveted Blue Riband that was awarded to the ship that could make the crossing in the shortest time, the award being passed between the two a couple of times.

With the outbreak of war in Europe the Normandie sailed into New York harbor in 1939 where she was interned by the US government. A French crew stayed on board to maintain the ship until 1941. After the attack on Pearl Harbor she was seized by the US Navy and her French crew was sent home on December 20th 1941. The Navy planned to transform the Normandie into a troop ship and work quickly got underway.

Just two months later on February 9th 1942 sparks from a welding torch ignited a pile of life vests and fire quickly spread throughout the vessel. She capsized in her pier due to massive amounts of water being applied in an attempt to stop the fire. The sad part is the fire could have been put out quickly or prevented entirely as the Normadie had a state of the art fire protection system but it, along with the pumps, had been deactivated during the conversion process. In the end, carelessness ended the Normandie’s career prematurely.

Attempts were later made to salvage the ship, she was righted and the plan at the time was to turn her into an aircraft carrier. In preparation for this role her upper superstructure was removed entirely but the work was cut short as saving the ship proved to be too costly and priorities shifted elsewhere. After the war ended she was finally sold for scrap in 1946.