Working on a new submarine sim: Sub Commander - advice needed!

[ReallyDedPoet]

Welcome to SUBSIM Navo

[299314]

Someone showed me this game a few days ago and I've been having a blast with it - FTL was fun enough with just oxygen and power, and now I've got water and pressure and a nuclear reactor to play with.

I think the biggest thing missing right now is challenge - enemies get taken out with a press of the space bar, and even if you let yourself get damaged the sub is almost unsinkable when you're surfaced, or when you're submerged and open all the doors and turn on all the pumps. I'm definitely looking forward to convoys and enemy submarines.

As far as minor issues my biggest complaint is how repair works right now - two separate guys always have to run to every object, one to diagnose it and one to repair it, and often reaching a component is so hazardous you want one man to do both and have to coerce him into it by locking doors.


Here's my latest run, inspired by your comment explaining the reliability system, I set mean time to malfunction at 2 seconds. This gives a few minutes until the reactors explode - they fail too fast to shut them down - and a few minutes more until all the battery power is gone, so you have to abuse fast travel between nearby ports like East and West Germany in order to sink anything. With all vents open, all fire suppression on, and the command center staffed by SCBA men, you can render yourself almost invincible to anything except unlucky nuclear reactor explosions that blast too big of a hole in the wall.




Also, one question: I tried desperately flooding the nuclear reactor with seawater once to cool it down, but it didn't have an effect - is that something that isn't modeled, or would it be ineffective in real life too?

[Urist McSubmariner]

Welcome to SubSim 299314! There. I've pre-empted the established SubSimites

[Jimbuna]

Welcome Aboard 299314

[TheGeoff]

Rayboy1995 from the Facepunch forums has created a vastly improved submarine editor for the game!

Download link is here: http://filesmelt.com/dl/subcomeditor_v0.22_.4_.jar

It cuts out about 90% of the tedious .ini file editing involved in making a submarine, and I'd highly recommend it. He posted some basic usage instructions:

-You can load a submarine by selecting the folder that contains its files.
-You save a submarine the same way by selecting a folder to put all of the files in.
-To select what to edit, click the dropdown menu labeled edit. There [SUP][/SUP]are four buttons: "Edit Tiles", "Edit Doors", "Edit Objects", and "Edit Areas"
-While editing tiles use the scroll wheel to move through tile types. Left click to place the tiles, right click to change them to water. Hold control then click and drag to fill in a square with the tiles.
-While editing doors you can left click to place them, right click to remove them, and left click on any existing door to change its orientation.
-While editing objects you can hold left click to drag them, right click to edit their properties, and remove them by selecting them and clicking edit->delete selection to remove them.
-While editing areas you can do the same things you do with objects.

Also thanks for the feedback 299314. There's a few improvements I'm hoping to make to the battles in the near future - the main ones are implementing damage models for AI ships (so they aren't killed in one hit), and improving the enemy AI so they stick together and use teamwork. That should increase the challenge significantly.

And at the moment, flooding the reactor room has no effect. The ability to flood the reactors with seawater for emergency cooling is a unique feature of US submarines as far as I know, but most of the systems in the game are modelled on Soviet submarines. It's easier to use Soviet subs because:
1). They have exported them several other countries (like India), and as a result information which would be classified on most western subs has slowly leaked.
2). More accidents and near misses have happened - so more is known about the behaviour of the emergency systems and response procedures.
3). Western countries have spent a long time building up data on acoustic signatures and specifications of Soviet subs, and some of this data has slowly been released (particularly through academic papers).

More information means I can make a more detailed simulation, so most of the stuff in the game is currently based on Soviet equipment. I do plan to include the differences between different nations' subs at some point though.

[LoSboccacc]

Hi! I am new here and registered just to say I love this game!

I found a minor issue: if the pressure hull under a torpedo launcher cracks, I can't get it repaired as crew always try to act on the launcher


Anyway: I managed somehow to kill my objective with a combination of radar, luck and torpedo spam

I do have some questions however: how does targeting torpedo works? do you always need to be at surface using the periscope/radar? What is the radar max working depth?

Currently my tactic of dropping ballast, firing a shot and emergency dive isn't working so well XD

[Tango589]

The radar only works up to periscope depth. After this, it is submerged and useless.

[TheGeoff]

Thanks! Glad you like it.

Currently, you can only select targets from the periscope or tactical map when at or above periscope depth. You can fire torpedos at any depth, and they will always lock on to your current target. If you fire a torpedo without a target selected it will run straight.

In the next version (I expect to release it this weekend) the sonar system can also be used to identify and track targets, meaning you can engage enemies from below periscope depth.

And thanks for pointing out the torpedo tube repair bug, I'll put a fix in the next version.

[Tango589]

I CAN'T WAIT!!!!

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by LoSboccacc

Hi! I am new here and registered just to say I love this game!

I found a minor issue: if the pressure hull under a torpedo launcher cracks, I can't get it repaired as crew always try to act on the launcher


Anyway: I managed somehow to kill my objective with a combination of radar, luck and torpedo spam

I do have some questions however: how does targeting torpedo works? do you always need to be at surface using the periscope/radar? What is the radar max working depth?

Currently my tactic of dropping ballast, firing a shot and emergency dive isn't working so well XD

Welcome and I see your question has been answered

[Tango589]

I'm having trouble with the new sub editor. I've copied the sub 'triton' and renamed it 'tritonbeta' I've opened the sub editor, opened 'tritonbeta', clicked on 'edit objects' and moved one of the generator room bilge pumps to the reactor room to deal with leaking reactor coolant or flooding the reactor with sea water in future. I've saved the new sub under 'tritonbeta' and loaded the sim. For some reason , my crew is no where to be seen, I get messages that the crew can't find their pathway (the same as when you want them to get through a locked door), and I get a barrage of low oxygen warnings and sirens. what's going on?

[Aktungbby]

Losboccacc!

[Jaystew]

This is truly awesome. It reminds me of the old Sub Battle game I used to play hours in 1989/1990 on the Apple II GS. And sort of reminds me of Silent Service on NES.

The nuclear reactor sim aspect is pretty good too. I think it needs some tweaking for realism but its a great game. Works on my netbook too

[TheGeoff]

New Update: Version 0.23
Download here: http://goo.gl/9lOLz2

Changelog:

• Active pause mode added - you can now give orders while the game is paused. Default key is Left Alt, but this can be changed in keybindings.ini. If you don't like this feature you can turn it off in gameoptions.ini for more of a challenge!
• Crew can now rescue injured comrades. Point at an unconscious crewman and press H - a crewman will run over, drag the unconscious guy to safety then administer first aid.
• Mouse control improved: Almost every control panel is now clickable. Clicking on gauges will set your target speed/depth/secondary coolant pump pressure/whatever. Also, if using mouse control, you can choose to instead control the cursor with the keyboard by pressing \ (you will still be able to use the clickable control panels).
• Improved the sonar on board the submarine. It is now possible to locate and track targets from the sonar screen (then move to the weapons control panel to fire a torpedo). LOFAR analysis can be used to identify ships (match their sound signature to the database).
• Sonar and visual contacts are now reported, so you won't accidentally fast travel past an important ship. To avoid spamming the message log you can enable/disable contact reports with Lshift+C.
• Reactor damage models have been fixed. They now put out a LOT more radiation when damaged, and damage to the coolant pumps will severely reduce the coolant pressure.
• You can now switch on city labels on the map screen by pressing Z.
• Better hydrodynamics modelling - dive planes are now simulated, so it is quicker to dive/surface while moving quickly.
• Completely recoded pressure and water flow calculations. The models for both are now extremely realistic and should handle almost any situation correctly.
• Nitrogen narcosis and other health adverse effects related to water pressure are now simulated.
• Sound effects now loop more smoothly (thanks to Torkovsky from Reddit)
• New sound effect for crash dives (thanks to Tango589 from Subsim)
• Added an adjustable 'safety period' after the start of the game and after refits, when no accidents can occur on the sub. The length of this safety period can be changed in gameoptions.ini.
• Added two types of AI submarine and one more class of AI destroyer
• Added Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Taiwan and the Netherlands (all playable). Brazil is also a playable nation now.
• Added 11 new cities, mostly in South America
• The world map now renders more efficiently, significantly improving performance on older computers.
• Added crew names for Italy, Turkey, India, Poland, Netherlands.
• Added ship names for Poland, Netherlands, Australia, Indonesia.
• Added ability to change number of ships and aircraft in world in gameoptions.ini
• Added support for up to 8 torpedo tubes, 4 reactors and 4 turbines in custom submarines, although the GUI will look weird. Also added support for single-reactor subs.
• Added ability to choose what GUI folder a sub uses (top of objects.ini in sub folder), and added a GUI folder for use with single-reactor subs.
• The most important performance characteristics of the sub have been moved to "performance.ini" in the sub/default/ folder. This allows you to change the maximum speed, battery capacity, bilge pump power consumption etc.
• Depth charges can now cause more damage.
• There is now a bit more visual feedback when the submarine is undergoing a refit.
• Tweaked ability of reactor shielding to withstand water pressure.
• Tweaked submarine noise characteristics.
• Doubled the rate of oxygen production from electrolysis.
• Fixed a bug preventing repairs to objects without a damage assessment - you can now point at an object an press R, just like you would repair the hull.
• Fixed a bug where the player was ordered to sink a ship which was already destroyed.
• Fixed a bug where the diesel generators continued to generate 4kW while switched off.
• Fixed a bug where torpedoes where not automatically reloaded during a refit.
• Fixed a bug which prevented players from repairing the hull under a torpedo tube.

Note: If you created a custom submarine for version 0.22 and you want to port it to version 0.23, you must take the following steps:
1. Copy "performance.ini" from the /subs/default/ folder to your custom sub folder, and set your submarine's maximum speed, battery capacity etc.
2. Add "ui_folder = default" under [GENERAL] in your submarine's objects.ini file.
3. Replace the entire [TURBINES] section in your custom sub's objects.ini, with the [TURBINES] section from the default sub. You can then customise it again if you wish.

[Robsoie]

Thank you very much, i really like that new version.
On a patrol i managed to sink my first warship from the sonar -> press T and + or - to try to match the signature -> weapon station -> spacebar without visually seeing it.

And those panels , gauge and levers that are now mouse controlled, it's really great.

On a long patrol (started in China) i was above Canada and surfaced, i was having most of the crew repairing the heavy damage an explosion in the torpedoes room caused.

Still moving , and while at the map display, with fast travel active i pressed 1 (the zoom in) i got an "Illegal Memory Adress" error message.
Odd because i have done this a lot during that patrol without a problem.



The surface radar was turned off, i had no contact message from sonar and all i can think that was different than usual was that many of the crew members were working on repairs.

2 of them were "nauseous" after having to make some repair in the reactor room.