Quote:
Originally Posted by propbeanie
Some of the stories I've been reading for research, they usually found the mines when someone hit one, then they'd go "sweep" the area again, and the other side would "seed" the field again... Depending upon the water and the depth of the mine, and airplane might be able to see them, but they'd have to really be looking. Since a lot of mines were magnetic, you could detect them, though I'm not sure how they accomplished that. And really, we don't want to have the same "casualty rate" in the game as what the real guys had to deal with. Yikes! A lot of folks probably wouldn't bother to play!
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Sounds right!
Based on War in the Pacific play, the the research that has prompted me to do . . . it was possible for any boat, ship or plane to spot a mine. It just wasn't that easy or common, and I suppose that the crews of Minesweeper class vessels (and/or those which specialized in laying mines) would tend to be more facile at it.
Its not like they are invisible, even if they are cryptic and depending on things like lighting, turbulence, waves, etc., a mine would potentially be spottable from quite a distance off I would think.
So what I'm saying is: unless the mod intends to model at least this: the capacity for the sub crew to detect mines either when surfaced and on deck watch and possible even when submerged in shallows with at least one periscope up, then there is not much point in having the mines in there at all. Moreover, to make it even more realistic, reports from HQ about detected mine fields and the capacity for the captain to check if any of the risky points along a prospective course were known or suspected minefield hazards would need to be there. On top of this, minefields degraded over time (or at least that is my understanding based on playing War in the Pacific).
It just seems like a helluva lot of factors would need to be covered by the mod, and I suspect this is precisely why Ubisoft did not include them in the vanilla game. Mine warfare is something that is more "logistical" or operational in nature than tactical. They are great for a strategic or operational scale game, but less immersive for a tactical/engagement level game like Silent Hunter.
Reminds me of a discussion about "natural disasters" in one of the old Civ games. If I recall this was on a forum where I believe a few of the developers were listening in. They had introduced natural disasters of various sorts into the game (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamais). In one sense this is more realistic as these sorts of things have definitely impacted human societies throughout the eons. But despite that, it didn't really add much to gameplay and many players complained bitterly that it was nothing but a periodic kick in the nuts for no reason
Either in the next patch, a following update, or the next game in the series: natural disasters were gone. It was not missed.