First off, great job on the new version.
Hadn't had the chance of finishing my first patrol in the new version, but I'd like to give my impressions and comments:
- Started on January 2nd, 1944, at Freemantle. Ordered to patrol W of the Philippines for 5 days.
- N of Austrailia. No less than 8 IJN aircraft attacked me over the course of several days. Discovered gunners had to be manually put on positions.
- Choose to pass through a narrow straight where I knew no japanese defenses would be. No attacks during passage. Near Balikpapan onwards, I received constant air attacks.
- Passed a convoy NNE of Balikpapan. 2 tankers, 3 cargos (1 small, 2 medium), ignored.
- Shot down a Judy in shallows, but battery nearly consumed. Decided to sink to the bottom and wait for the night.
That's where I've stopped at the moment.
- As other people have already said, aircraft are an extreme nuisance. They are like flies, always coming back, and you never seem to cull their population. I don't know what has been changed, but right now it makes 1945 U-Boat patrols feel like an argument between two canadians. It's impossible to travel on the surface by day.
- Has radar been improved for IJN ships? Could they be detecting me for the planes?
Any detection of your sub by any means will lead to the massing of the enemy masses about your location. The planes have been calmed down for what we are supposing will be v0.72, which should be forthcoming.
- I saw a Nelson in Freemantle, but it's missing it's Oerkilon guns, or at least the gun barrels. Maybe change them for SH4 guns? I'll get a photo.
Ah-ha! good eye! We'll look into that.
- Like the detail of the AI Fleetboat leaving the harbour. Nice to feel you're not alone in the war. Strange that other big super mods didn't do the same.
We do have more planned for that, but we might make it an add-in option, since the more you put in, the more it impacts the players' computers...
- During a custom mission I made, I believe that one of the new ships (the smallest one) could not move forward. But I'm not sure. Maybe it was just for this mission (a massive convoy with every japanese merchant in game). I'll check again.
Are you referring to one of the new "Maru" models? We'll double-check it, but one thing to remember about using the Mission Editor for custom missions, is that all of the ships have different "requirements" for spacing -AND- the differences in speed loom ~huge~ in how they interact with each other. In other words, the big ocean liners with a high top-speed will require much more spacing between units than the smaller ships. Ships with lower a lower top-speed will not respond as rapidly either. Similar happens with a Task Force. A DD might only need 400 meters of spacing, but a CV might want 1200m between it and anything else. Generally speaking, if doing a "parade" type convoy like that, keep the ships about 700-800m apart...
Some other opinions:
- I don't like the new classes in the recognition manual, specifically in the IJN section. It's become a mess. It starts alright, but then passes to a mess of heavy and light cruisers, subs, and auxiliary cruisers. I realize that's because the new classes have been coded for plane spawning, but I don't feel the result is worth this. Is there a reason the plane spawning couldn't be done within the existing classes? Or is it impossible ?
Not possible. That is just the way the RecMan works. The "Class=" determines the sorting as it stands now. We are looking into other options, but the scout planes on the various ships just are too cool to not have there...
- I don't agree with the new Shinshu Maru remaining a troop transport. It's a completely unique vessel, one that the US Navy wasn't even aware existed during the war (as far as I know). It feels better placed in the "Rare Troop Transport" class. Thus, it won't appear among the generic troop transports in harbours, and in convoys with "generic" ships, preventing duplicates.
Duly noted. We'll see if we can't do that. I do believe that was our original intent anyway, but we got too busy with other niggly details...