Things to consider when developing SH4

[Lionman]

Originally Posted by TreverSlyFox

I'm gona jump in here on Crew Management. . . . .etc

There are many things a Captain WOULD DO that affected his crew that could easily be moldeled into the game. But moving each man back and forth isn't one of them.

I totally agree! Add immersive bells and whistles to the captain (players role) but not tedious and unrealistic micro-management.

[Lionman]

I agree with the whole feel of MENTAT's first post in this thread. I want to believe I am really there. There HAS been a combat simulation game that managed to achieve this wonderfully. B 17 The Mighty 8th. Animated crew members, the ability to help and heal injured crewmen who cried out when injured and prayed and mumbled, take over their gun or role. Limping home in a badly damaged B-17, two engines gone, smoking from the others, three crewmen dead, two badly injured, one wheel down, resisting the impulse to parachute out before landing - super immersive stuff. So immersive in fact that when I made the mistake of naming all the crew with my friend's names and lost the bomber and all hands over Hannover it upset me for days. That game was many years ago and already had higher levels of realism inside a multi-crewed B-17 than anything we have yet seen in submarine simulation. But it is still so excellent that I have it on my HD and play it sometimes. It's one failing was that it had no multiplayer but if they republished it, unchanged but for the addition of multi-crewed multiplayer co-op online it would once again be a best-seller overnight. Why? Because it had immersion, atmosphere, unbelivably realistic sound, a strategic and detailed crew-management level, enormous emotional immersion and SOUL. You even had to send letters to families about casualties if you elected to play the command level. You really believed in-game that "you were there" and identified with your plane and crew.

THAT is and always will be the sign of a truly great simulation, an utterly convincing and immersive virtuality. Another fine current example is the WW2 FPS Red Orchestra.

I'm with you MENTAT. I want to see dynamic flooding inside the sub, cracked guages, spurting broken pipes, steam, smoke, fire, to have to seal watertight doors (sometimes on screaming crew) to save the vessel and to hear the real sounds of war, not a silent empty world. I want dripping overhead pipes, dribbling condensation and to have to wade through flooded compartments maybe carrying a hand held torch, looking for crew men and damage. I want to have to deal with the psychological dimension of this most atmospheric and stressfull of realm of sub-sea ocean combat, I want to have to calm a shattered and upset crew as real submarine commanders had to. That means some form of interaction with the virtual crew, a challenging thing to model but feasible and surely worth trying if they could manage it in B-17 almost a decade ago! Expect more of the developers guys, they CAN do it if they really try. Others already have. Submarine warfare is NOT a matter of sitting calmly at a table calculating torpedo solutions while smoking your pipe and watching a couple of guages. It is a dirty, sweaty, uncomfortable, smelly, atmospheric, noisy, crowded, claustrophobic, wet, intimate, messy, dark and confusing realm. The deck moves and sways under you, the lights flicker, condensation runs off everything, your maps get dirty and stained, ink messages get blurred, radio messages tune in and out, records stick and repeat. It is absolutely nothing remotely like the calm and ordered world of the "anti-eye-candy" brigade who see it mainly as a matter of calculations and slide rules. Much more like the inside of a bomber under fire and flack.

The one major failure of all Oleg Maddox otherwise brilliant WW2 air combat sims to date, is empty cockpits and no legs when you look down at your own joystick and pedals and that small detail ruins the immersion for me. It makes me feel as if I am flying a model aircraft by remote control through an in-cockpit camera rather than sitting in a real aircraft. Considering the staggering amount of work on accuracy that Oleg's team put into these programs, including testing all flight models with real (very aged) WW2 pilots, leaving out something so fundamental as the pilots own body, is almost criminal. I suspect the "anti-eye-candy" thing was the excuse. Whatever the reason it was a dumb thing to leave out. Compare it with Lock-On where you can almost read the map in the transparent coverall pocket on your thigh as you fly!

One day we WILL have the smells too in simulations and that will jerk things forward a whole dimension. There is nothing quite like the smell of cordite, the metallic smell of fresh blood, the sickly stench of days old death, the exhaust fug from a tank's engines, the smell of corn as you crawl through long grass and the odd smell of electricity from sparking and broken live cables to put you THERE right IN the virtuality and that day will come online I promise you.

(I kid you not, somebody invented a prototype device for doing this online at least 10 years ago. A dispenser/mixer with 12 "primary spectrum smells" that could be mixed in proportions determined by a digital signal to approximately simulate any odour, just like colour mixing. An add-on hardware item like Track-IR. Of course the anti-immersion crowd will still whine about it using "unnecessary CPU cycles." LOL)

[MENTAT]

Gee thanks Lionman, it was an absolute morale boost for me

[Safe-Keeper]

My take on crew management. In short, leave the Silent Hunter III system (improve it by for example allowing the player to drag boxes around several crew-members), but also implement shifts so that crew-members are automatically going to their bunks and being replaced, just like in reality. Also, allow configurable stations ("Battle Stations", "Stealth", etc.) with so and so many crew members (or specific crew members) in each compartment. Something like: "Any 8 sailors and Tim Johnson in Forward Torpedo Room".

Survivors in the water: Implement an option to turn them off and a lot of people will be happy. Fine, you want them (as do I), but not everyone does. And don't let players shoot them or run them down. It's a waste of CPU power as it's childish, morbid, and silly andUS subs didn't do it (or at least weren't supposed to -it probably might have happened, I don't know). It's akin to asking for the ability to gun down your own crew or the crowd cheering for you back at base.

Of course the anti-immersion crowd will still whine about it using "unnecessary CPU cycles." LOL)

It'd be nice if you could stop attacking people who disagreed with you. Just that we don't agree with your views on what immersion is doesn't make us "anti-immersion people". Grow up.

[stinger503]

The change the war idea isn't as hard as most of you guys seem to think. But there has to be good friendly A.I. that moves around in the ocean and respond to you and other A.I.s For example (say I'm Japan)-

I decide to stray off my path on the way to area K-39, the I-63 seeing this heads north (which historically wouldn't have happened), he sinks 2 ships and I sink 5 ships (which wouldn't have happened again) and they only had 9 ships heading to New Gueinea that patrol... so in the news broadcast we hear that the Japanese have had victories in New Guinea. But in our next patrol the I-63 gets sunk and I only kill 2 of the 15 ships going to N.G., so we hear that the Japanese have lost New Guinea.

Basically what you're saying is if I were to kill half the American fleet, nothing would happen? I've heard people complain in these forums that after getting huge tonnage, all they get is a badge. Oh and to those who say that one man can't change a war. Look at Hitler...he started one!

[Drebbel]

Basically what you're saying is if I were to kill half the American fleet, nothing would happen?

You kill half the US fleet ?

Remember , this is a sumulation, no man can kill half the US fleet !

[NEON DEON]

Hi Stinger,

Well I am with you there. If you kill half the American fleet traveling to New Guiena, I think you should get a cut scene showing your victory at least. In TF 1942 when you won a major battle, You would get an old time war newsreel showing the victory. It was all scratched and grainy and gave you a feeling of accomplishment.

In Microprose's "Red Storm Rising" when you won a victory, You got a cut scene turning the war in your favor. So you actually turned the course of the war. I would not mind seeing a watered down version of that but IMHO I think One I boat changing who wins the war would be stretching it a bit.

On the other hand. If the fleets were modeled, and you managed to sink the Enterprise and Yorktown before or during the battle of Midway. Then you might stop the war right there if you believe the Americans would have accepted peace at that point.

Any later than Midway you pretty much have to concede it to the Americans.

[Safe-Keeper]

Well I am with you there. If you kill half the American fleet traveling to New Guiena, I think you should get a cut scene showing your victory at least.

Or, seeing you're playing as the Americans, a cutscene showing your court-martial and execution:p.

I really don't know about changing the war, to be honest. Except for one thing: I don't want to encounter a ship I've already sunk. If I sink the Kaga, she's sunk. I won't want to meet her again in that career.

[MENTAT]

I think a submarine can do much better than an infantry to change the course of the war. One of the best examples is the HMS Royal Ark sunk by a U-boat in the north sea.

We are not playing rambo here, or a doom, shooting everyone we encounter with a shotgun in the hand.. But sinking a carrier is something and surely can change the course of the war.

I agree with Neon here, they could have sunk enterprice and/or yorktown around pearl harbor As they were a little north to hawai (making drills or something) when the attack was made and remember there were tons of Japan subs around hawai at that time.

Maybe It was also a turning point in the course of history and war.

No Single Ship Contacts on the Navigation Map!!! We should be surprised by those single ships as the real Captains were. (Read a WWII Biography and you will see, I'm not going to debate it)

The Navigation Map should only show Task Forces, and Convoys. (Although Japan did not have large Convoys). The real captains received reports on Task Forces and Convoys, not single little ships.

[Subnuts]

Originally Posted by Magua

No Single Ship Contacts on the Navigation Map!!! We should be surprised by those single ships as the real Captains were. (Read a WWII Biography and you will see, I'm not going to debate it)

The Navigation Map should only show Task Forces, and Convoys. (Although Japan did not have large Convoys). The real captains received reports on Task Forces and Convoys, not single little ships.

During the second half of the war American submarines would often receive Ultra reports on important single ships, usually damaged warships, large oil tankers, and ships carrying important persons or material. So no, there's nothing wrong with seeing the occasional single ship contact on the Nav map.