Die Hard Realism Question

[BarnesBL0278]

Gentlemen,
In keeping with the threat title here, I warn you that my post might seem petty to some, but it's driving me nuts.

The stopwatch in RFB 2.0 has been reshaped to what looks like a Hamilton 23, which is great, but damned if it isn't quartz. As I'm sure some of you old farts know, that tick, tick, tick sound with one second jumps didn't happen until the 60's. Hamilton 23's were pure mechanical, which meant a continuous second hand. Currently, the sweep hand (big center second hand) does this, but the sub second hand (little one at the bottom) does not. It clicks once per second as opposed to 18,000 an hour or whatever it's supposed to be.

Now, to my knowledge and limited experimentation, this seems to be the case with all the chronos. So my question is two fold:
1) Is there a mod currently available to correct this issue.
2) If the above is not true, is there a config file that I can tinker with and possible correct it myself?

On a less nitpicky note, I have a third question, and being a lifelong lurker and allergic to multiple threads, I'll post it here:
Can anyone tell me what the most die-hard balls-to-the-wall over the top grognard realism mod list is, and what are the best graphic mods to go with that?

Thank you gentlemen for your time,
Barnes

[propbeanie]

I'm not sure how far you'd get making the sweep hand "smooth", but maybe it's possible, and maybe someone has already done it. I've just never paid it much attention. You could go to the downloads section and try your hand with CSL Pure Stopwatch Mod by ColonelSandersLite.
While it doesn't do what you want probably, it has instructions in the ReadMe that might help you with a hand-edit in a text editor. There is also RAHGoldWatchMod by thegrindre, and his release thread is http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=218848 (also linked to in the download thread). Larger_TMO_Stopwatches by razark is another mod. It warns of a probable necessity to hand-edit the menu*.ini file, since his is custom, but it might be further useful to see what someone does with the stopwatch.

As for mods, a lot of folks use Onkel Neal's "SH4 Master Thread: Popular Mods..." thread in the "Stickie" section above in this section of the forum. About a third of the way down the page, you'll find the section header v1.5 Large Super Mods, and under that is the listing of several major mods, with me assuming (since you've got RFB loaded) that you have the "Gold Edition" of the game, or the Uboats Add-on, to bring your Silent Hunter 4 game up to v1.5. Trigger Maru Overhauled (TMO) is probably the most popular one, with v2.5 of that mod being the latest. There is a "Patch" to install on top of the base mod. Note that the GameFront and SilentHunterMods sites are gone, and the links for them are "dead". You might be better off just going to the SH4 Downloads section here and browsing around. TMO is definitely much more difficult than stock. Some folks put RSRDC on top of that, and then there's Bleiente's ModSoup mod (that I didn't find the link to right away). If that's too much, there's TMO with Training wheels (TMOwTw). If you have a little patience, coming soon to the download section will be Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate Edition, which is a re-working of an AODT_MadMax mod, that will be very user configurable, to any difficulty level you desire, with other additional plug-ins. It looks really nice, and we're currently working mostly on the "playability" right now, with just a few more changes forthcoming, a bit more "in-house" testing. Until then, the Work In Progress thread is http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=226270 which stands at 110 pages at this moment. You could go to YouTube and "search" there on Fall of the Rising Sun, and see Maddy's original videos of his mod, and a few from Rockin Robbins of what's been going on lately.

[Rockin Robbins]

Let's thoroughly muddy the waters here. What is realism? Your answer to that question, and there are several possible valid ones, will give you a crazy wild variation in the mods that will send the game in your direction.

Take the severity and effectiveness of depth charge attacks. If you do a strict number of depth charges dropped/number of submarines sank numerical analysis, you might come to the conclusion that submarines were pretty darned safe from depth charges. That might lead you to lessen the effects of depth charges until your testing yielded about the same percentage of sub sinkings that actually happened in the war.

The original author of RFB did exactly that. And turned out the most wildly unrealistic mod in the history of Silent Hunter 4. What went wrong? The most effective attack strategy was to stay at periscope depth and ignore the escorts. They would rain depth charges all over you, but you were almost perfectly safe because the simulation was "realistic" based on a valid analysis of results in the war. Players became Rambo. SH4 became a farce. And the numbers agreed with reality.

Reality isn't related to results. In the war, about a quarter of submarine sailors died in the war. Most of the time they died together with 80 of their shipmates when a boat was lost. As a result, it didn't matter how few boats were lost, the men were afraid. They expected that there was a very good chance they wouldn't survive their submarine existence.

Men who are afraid for their lives do not imitate Rambo. They are cautious. They take calculated risk. In the game we have plenty of John Wayne wannabes who "sink the escorts and then you can just take out the merchies with the deck gun." In reality nobody would ever do that. Escorts are very shallow draft and fast. Therefore they are hard to hit and take up torpedoes you might have to schlepp 6000 miles to replace. If you shoot and miss an escort, they're on you forcing you down and the convoy gets away.

In the real war, when you stalked a ship, set up for the shot and it turned out to be an escort, you turned away and found a real target. Every time. The risk/benefit ratio sucked in the skulls full of mush occupying the real submarine.

So one definition of "reality" results in players gaming the system and playing in a way completely unlike a real submariner. Is that reality? Then there was Ducimus. He said reality was between the ears of the player. Real submariners were afraid for their lives. It isn't possible to make the player literally afraid for their lives, but we CAN make them assess their risks in somewhat the same way.

This is done by making enemy AI and the effectiveness of their weapons better than in the real war. Suddenly you would never consider taking out the escorts then in a leisurely way deck gunning the convoy while getting a suntan on the fantail. Suddenly you aren't ignoring the escorts while shooting all your torpedoes from periscope depth. Suddenly there is a great chance of getting sunk, even when doing everything right.

Suddenly, YOU are acting realistically! Why? Because by statistical analysis of the results of a group of encounters, the game is "unrealistic."

Don't even get me started on campaign mods. We've had grave errors made there too. And it's all based on what you think "realism" is. Realism is a bit like an electron in orbit around the nucleus of an atom. You can specify its velocity or you can specify its location. Choose one. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by BarnesBL0278

Can anyone tell me what the most die-hard balls-to-the-wall over the top grognard realism mod list is, and what are the best graphic mods to go with that?

Thank you gentlemen for your time,
Barnes

Best overall mod for this mix is TMO IMO.

[Barkerov]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Realism is a bit like an electron in orbit around the nucleus of an atom. You can specify its velocity or you can specify its location. Choose one. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Gentlemen, I give to you the "Realism uncertainty principle"

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Barkerov

Gentlemen, I give to you the "Realism uncertainty principle"

With apologies to Mr Heisenberg.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Barkerov

Gentlemen, I give to you the "Realism uncertainty principle"

Will we be tested on this later?

[propbeanie]

It begins now... What year was the idea of Quantum Mechanics first put forth? (Don't use google like I did... ) And, how does that apply to modding in Silent Hunter? Elucidate, without verbosity...

[AVGWarhawk]

I'm heading over to drop/add and get another class. Like basket weaving.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

...

Best explanation I've seen yet.

On the other hand I still play RFB, when I play at all. Why? Because I'm a simpleton. Or maybe I'm just the world's worst gamer. I don't calculate things particularly well, and I'm convinced I'll lose every time. This makes me play realistically no matter what the mod. I don't take chances and I don't attack escorts, even when the game makes it easy. When I play SH3 I go to my assigned grid and I stay there, though I have come up with a die-rolling system that may let me move once in awhile. Sometimes I even come home without a single sinking. And I love it that way.

But that's just me.

[Rockin Robbins]

Reality is like a wet bar if soap in the shower. The tighter you squeeze it the more powerfully it leaves your grasp.

No, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it? CUE ROBIN TROWER!!! There I go showin' me age again....

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

It begins now... What year was the idea of Quantum Mechanics first put forth? (Don't use google like I did... ) And, how does that apply to modding in Silent Hunter? Elucidate, without verbosity...

Okay, I think it was 1920s. I'm going to say 1924 but that's a guess. I'm taking the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle as the first hint of Quantum Mechanics.