[Deamon]

Originally Posted by keltos01

I've made quite a few playable subs so far

Are there any screenshots of your work somewhere ?

I have loads of intel on WWI subs and since I live in Belgium, for once I am at the heart of the conflict !

Subs of what nations ?

so you saw Morgenrot ? do you know if there are any subtitles outthere ? I speak some german, but not enough...

Yes I purchased it once on VHS. Dunno about subtitles though.

I can surely can come up with the other one.

Originally Posted by keltos01

what was the option you'd have preferred then ?

Starting my own project! It's the only real option, imo. You surely have noticed that I run my own project, don't you ?:

http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/heinrich/

and they had to stop the engines to use them..

Yeah and heaved down on a rope. Btw do you have any info on this stuff ?

maybe make the guns visible at very short range only ?

How can you achieve that ?

they closed off the north sea between Norway and Scotland with mines...

They closed pretty much all relevant waters. With time, sea storms riped of more and more mines from their anchor chains and they were drifting all around making it hazardous to pass even the "cleared" passages.

what are those ?

The mine fields ?

Late into the war britain installed a new mine field that was organized in clusters and hydrophone chains all along the straight of dover barrage, with hydrophones the position of a passing u-boat would be approximated via some sort of triangulation and when it is within one of the mine cluster, this cluster would be blown up.

The mines would be ignited electrically via cables that connected the mine field chunks with the control station on land.

After this system was installed almost the entire flandern flotilla was eradicated this way within a month.

Similar heavy losses occured in the med I think after new hydrophone systems were introduce by the allies( overall getting out of and back into the home waters became an art ). The problem became so urgent that the germans saw themself forced to seriously apply quieting to their boats. By the end of the war numerous measures were taken to reduce the noise signature and before each patrol the boats would undergo listening tests to make sure the standards are met.

Quieting became a native design specification for any new design while older boats had to be modified and upgraded with various quieting measures.

Overall the later designs were significant quiter than the old noismakers where you couldn't even use the hydrophones in any meaningfull way without shutting down all engines.

late war then.

I think the drifters were not that late into the war. There would be innocently looking sail boats or something that are in reality equiped with hydrophones listening for u-boat propellers at night or something.

Also listening was practiced by simple press the ear on the hull wall below the water line.

you sure did your research!

Hell yes! I made a dedicated study for several years, initially. I got a lot of rare insights and by now I am specialized in this subject. But there is still so much I need to learn more about. Finding out so much became an obligation to create a game from it. The result of my researches only fostered my decission to develop my own game.

I perhaps spent more time with research and design than with development, lol. Now I have to study even more. I thought coding would be enough, but now I am ending up to study math, physics, fluid dynamics, ship dynamics, maneuvering, nautics, all sorts of propulsion systems and pretty much the entire technology paletty going into a ship and coastile navigational installations and then some

Holly crap, but the result is a sim with the quality of a study sim and that with WWI u-boats. ( and now even ships ) Care for a little taste?

Researching german u-boats is incredebly tedious, since most documentation was destroyed by the end of the war and a lot of what remained was stolen by the allies. It's much like collating fragments that have survived here and there. I feel like a paleontologist trying to reconstruct long gone dinos from skeletal fragments.

There are too many gaps especially when it comes down to interiour documentation. Hence I have to study the underlaying engineering to close as many of them as possible. But I am reaching the point where I can make a decent recreation.

that's gonna be hard to implement in SH4... how do you search ships ???

Does SH even have any goods classification ? I remember there was some basic distinction like ammo, fuel and something else in SHIII ? But what effect did this actually have on the game ?

yeah but still, Die Schalen der Zorns isn't that bad, just looks awful...

Oh yeah, SOF certainly has its merrits that I enjoyed to play. The fact alone that it is WWI makes a difference for me already. SOF was good to wetten the appetite so to speak but I guess it is time to move on now and pull out something real.

who will write the campaign layers ?

Dunno, I am not involved in this mod.

Originally Posted by Sledgehammer427

I remember reading that the only defense they (the brits) had for scapa flow was a bunch of enlisted in rowboats with hammers, when spotting a german periscope, they would row over and smash the periscope until it disappeared

Lol, never heared about that but I think the brits cam up with a special ammo to shoot at submerged subs. Didn't worked out of course

The germans would actually play pranks on them by dropping buoys in british coastile waters that look like a periscope, just for the thrill

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

And Deamon, my mod's intended to be an approximation of WWI warfare within the limitations of SH4.

Sure thing, mate, go ahead. I am always curious what you can pull out

However, some crucial features definitely will be included. Q-ships are in, as are mine barrages.

I am wondering how you want to make the Q-Ships hide their weapons untill the last moment and then drop the camouflage ? Is there any native support for this kind of features in SHIV ?

I have thought of a way to implement contraband searching for merchants, thanks to the excellent S3ditor v 9.9 - this is being tested at the moment.

I am wondering how this is supposed to work out.

For a detailed WWI sub sim we'll have to wait for your mod (which I want now - badly - but that's another story!) Thanks for your comments.

Errm, mod ?