Game too easy

[lukterran]

Is there any mod that makes the game realistically more intelligent?

I'm not looking for better sensors for the IJN but just smarter tactics. (Sensors don't matter to me because I don't even have to "hide" from escorts.)

It isn't a challenge for me to locate a convoy and sink every ship. I just dive, get into firing position and fire on the first ship in the merchant convoy and send it to the bottom.

I then ID the escorts and wait for them to come running after me. Saving the rest of my fish for them. I don't even need to worry about staying silent (actually it helps if they know where I am). As soon as they get close under 1000 yards, I just torp them at point blank range so they don't have time to turn out of the path.

The escorts behave like Pac Man ghosts charging at Pac Man completely oblivious to the fact he is sitting next to a power pelt.

Even in the rare case that I miss with a torp shot on a charging DD and it tries to depth charge me. It is easy enough to flank and crash dive and turn to avoid any attacks and rise again to periscope depth after it passes over and hit it with a torp as it comes around.

Once the escorts are gone it is easy to pick the rest of the merchants off that have been hanging around in an unorganized group with either deck gun or the remain torpedoes.

If the Japanese send in aircraft. Usually just dive and wait for them to leave area or if I get caught on the surface my AA gunner has about a 90% kill ratio. Just flank speed and hard zig zag turns usually makes sure the bombs don't hit their targets.

I know this is very "gamey" play style. The problem is that I understand the game behavior and how to ships will react it isn't challenging anymore.

Why don't the merchants keep moving at full speed away from the area? The sub moving underwater couldn't catch up. It seems like a more realistic response to GTFO of an area with a sub than to just hang around.

Also the escorts don't operate as a unit. But each as an individual. If they lined up side-by-side and dropped depth charges across wide area or strip of ocean together they would easily catch any sub trying to turn out of their path.

[cdrsubron7]

Have you tried TMO v2.5? It raises the bar on realism quite abit.

[max-peck]

Listen to cdrsubron7 - try TMO 2.5
It will force you to play as a genuine American skipper during the war
Aircraft are deadly
If you elect to stay on the surface and shoot it out with them you will end up with a wrecked submarine very soon/

You can be bombed by aircraft at periscope depth (rare - but it does happen - has happened to me a few times whilst setting up an attack)

If you battle surface to deck gun something there is a a very good chance they will answer with so much ordnance it will puncture your pressure hull and you end up not being to submerge and in a world of hurt

If you do not plan your attack on escorted merchants you can end up in a world of hurt

You cannot just go deep and silent and think job done - you will have to think about your escape route before you attack

If not - you may have to suffer a few hours depth charging
Do not even think about attacking anything escorted in shallow waters - they will hunt you down and they will kill you

The stock AI experience is laughably easy - that is why we have so many excellent mods on SUBSIM to fix that

Try TMO 2.5 - I think it may just be what you are looking for

PS - or you may want to wait until FOTRS Ultimate is finished - it is being worked on at the moment
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=226270

It is the best of TMO merged woth the best of FOTRS
I think it may give you the challenge you are after, as well as adding loads of functionality and eye candy too!

[Captain Dave]

Are you using auto or manual targeting?

[lukterran]

Originally Posted by Captain Dave

Are you using auto or manual targeting?

Using Manual Targeting with OTC mod only.

TMO sounds too me like all that it does is make your sub weaker to damage, which doesn't even have a chance of happening to me. Does it arm all the merchants? Because I am not looking for a mod that unrealistically turns ever merchant convoy into an SAG.

[XTBilly]

Originally Posted by lukterran

Using Manual Targeting with OTC mod only.

TMO sounds too me like all that it does is make your sub weaker to damage, which doesn't even have a chance of happening to me. Does it arm all the merchants? Because I am not looking for a mod that unrealistically turns ever merchant convoy into an SAG.

TMO does not make your sub weaker at all, in fact it gives them the ability to dive much deeper. The only approach so far to make the destroyers deadlier is by making their sensors better. The game has limitations to what can be modded. And, believe me, TMO escorts are DEADLY. Much deadlier than you actually think. You must use all your skills to evade them.

It does not arm all the merchants as far as I remember, haven't played it for some time...

Why don't you give it a try? If you really think you're good, you may be surpsised...
Good luck! You'll need it!

Regards,
Billy.

[propbeanie]

... and, as the game progresses through time, ASW gets more "deadly", as the tools to fight against the sub get better, and tactics get better.

[fireftr18]

You can also add RSRDC to TMO. RSRDC renders traffic and AI skill as historically accurate as the game allows.

[Rockin Robbins]

I would disagree that RSRDC makes enemy AI as accurate as the game allows. For instance, RSRDC cancels out Ducimus' Evil Airplanes, Lurker hated them, even though they were perfectly accurate and an ingenious (cruel) addition to the game.

RSRDC's traffic aims to replicate every Japanese ship sortie of the game (a claim I deeply doubt. How would the records of a defeated nation bombed into the stone age be perfect?) But that introduces a laughable fallacy to the game.

You see, the US sub skippers didn't have a fancy Japanese shipping chart, complete with changes each year during the war. They didn't know where they would encounter shipping. Their charts were often centerfold maps from National Geographic magazine from the 1920s. What they found was accidental or the result of going where they were sent.

From the standpoint of the skipper of a US submarine in the war, encounters were random, not expected, as in RSRDC. In RSRDC if convoys were sent out once every other day during the war from a certain port, you can just sit outside the port and rack in the tonnage, because you're fighting a pre-programmed bot which pays no attention to you whatever.

I've said it before, but it's a great example. It's as if someone set out to make a perfect simulator of the Frazier/Ali II fight. You're Ali and Frazier is programmed for "RSRDC realism." (in this alternate reality RSRDC is worshipped as the ultimate way to realistic simulation) So Frazier is out there throwing punch for punch exactly what he did in the fight.

You can stay on the stool at the start of the round. Frazier won't come after you, he's in the center of the ring punching the air in the exact place where Ali stood in 1971! What accuracy! Halfway through round 1 you get off the stool, slowly and in perfect safety, shuffle over behind Frazier and knock him out with one punch to the back of the head. He could not see or react to you. He was busy throwing the exact same punches that worked 45 years ago.

You go home and write a review about how awesome the game is and how Ali/Frazier II Simulator renders traffic and AI skill as historically accurate as humanly possible. NOT!!

Historical accuracy is that both Japanese and Americans governed their operations according to what they thought at the time were their strengths and the enemy's weaknesses. If a sub got a sinking outside a port, the Japanese routed shipping around the sub. If the sub wanted more targets it had to move to a new hunting ground. If the real war were to have a do-over, it would unfold in a different manner, with different battles in different places with different results. It would not be "RSRDC accurate!"

There were big breakthroughs that made Silent Hunter 3 and 4 successful, but the most important factor is the dynamic campaign, where you can't predict encounters, where you react to what the enemy does and they react to you. RSRDC restores the scripted games that were exactly the reason people were excited about the huge advance between Silent Hunter 2 and Silent Hunter 3! The fact that we celebrate that Silent Hunter 4 can become the failure that was Silent Hunter 2 is just mind blowing to me. The fact that they call a game fossilized into complete immobility "historically accurate" is complete lunacy. A predictable enemy is a defeated enemy. And a complete farce.

By the way, no adaptation of RSRDC will be coming to FOTRS Ultimate.

[captcrane]

I guess I must really suck at this game. With manual targeting even in the stock game I wouldn't openly go looking for destroyers or hang around to take them on.

[XTBilly]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

I would disagree that RSRDC makes enemy AI as accurate as the game allows. For instance, RSRDC cancels out Ducimus' Evil Airplanes, Lurker hated them, even though they were perfectly accurate and an ingenious (cruel) addition to the game.

RSRDC's traffic aims to replicate every Japanese ship sortie of the game (a claim I deeply doubt. How would the records of a defeated nation bombed into the stone age be perfect?) But that introduces a laughable fallacy to the game.

You see, the US sub skippers didn't have a fancy Japanese shipping chart, complete with changes each year during the war. They didn't know where they would encounter shipping. Their charts were often centerfold maps from National Geographic magazine from the 1920s. What they found was accidental or the result of going where they were sent.

From the standpoint of the skipper of a US submarine in the war, encounters were random, not expected, as in RSRDC. In RSRDC if convoys were sent out once every other day during the war from a certain port, you can just sit outside the port and rack in the tonnage, because you're fighting a pre-programmed bot which pays no attention to you whatever.

I've said it before, but it's a great example. It's as if someone set out to make a perfect simulator of the Frazier/Ali II fight. You're Ali and Frazier is programmed for "RSRDC realism." (in this alternate reality RSRDC is worshipped as the ultimate way to realistic simulation) So Frazier is out there throwing punch for punch exactly what he did in the fight.

You can stay on the stool at the start of the round. Frazier won't come after you, he's in the center of the ring punching the air in the exact place where Ali stood in 1971! What accuracy! Halfway through round 1 you get off the stool, slowly and in perfect safety, shuffle over behind Frazier and knock him out with one punch to the back of the head. He could not see or react to you. He was busy throwing the exact same punches that worked 45 years ago.

You go home and write a review about how awesome the game is and how Ali/Frazier II Simulator renders traffic and AI skill as historically accurate as humanly possible. NOT!!

Historical accuracy is that both Japanese and Americans governed their operations according to what they thought at the time were their strengths and the enemy's weaknesses. If a sub got a sinking outside a port, the Japanese routed shipping around the sub. If the sub wanted more targets it had to move to a new hunting ground. If the real war were to have a do-over, it would unfold in a different manner, with different battles in different places with different results. It would not be "RSRDC accurate!"

There were big breakthroughs that made Silent Hunter 3 and 4 successful, but the most important factor is the dynamic campaign, where you can't predict encounters, where you react to what the enemy does and they react to you. RSRDC restores the scripted games that were exactly the reason people were excited about the huge advance between Silent Hunter 2 and Silent Hunter 3! The fact that we celebrate that Silent Hunter 4 can become the failure that was Silent Hunter 2 is just mind blowing to me. The fact that they call a game fossilized into complete immobility "historically accurate" is complete lunacy. A predictable enemy is a defeated enemy. And a complete farce.

By the way, no adaptation of RSRDC will be coming to FOTRS Ultimate.

Great example and great comment. Completely agree with everything said.

Billy.

[Rockin Robbins]

First of all, they're a waste of torpedoes. You only have a few torpedoes on board to start with. Wasting them on no tonnage destroyers is not wise, even if you could hit them all the time.

But with TMO you can fire a torpedo down the throat with them on your tail and you wide open throttle, wait until they're 400 yards away. If you shoot one you have about a 50% chance of hitting them. If you shoot three then two of them automatically miss for zero tonnage.

In TMO the DDs can sashay out of the way of torpedoes like a matador from a charging bull. You come up empty and they're 400 yards away coming like gangbusters. That first drop is deadly accurate no matter how you try to squirm out of the way.

And in construction is Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate with an AI module by Florida Sailor which we will label "Impossible Difficulty." If you want to be punished, this plugin mod will be designed to make you run for home crying to your mommy! It will be Bungo Pete times hundreds of equally smart escorts.

These remarks and insults over RSRDC and Lurker I can not agree.
If one clearly adheres in RSRDC to his commands as CO, to get at all in such situations, as they were described in advance. Where the skipper has to go out, no responsibility of its decision-making power ... he can only decide in and out of the situation, what he is doing there.

In addition, a drive in RSRDC no "Zombi-ships" more about the way ... maybe 10 countersunk Yamato`s ... this always made me most annoyed at the dynamic missions.

We should not forget the great and exchanged for remuneration without work have left us Ducimus and Lurker ... and they had always worked together and / or to each other.

Those who like to want the evil planes in RSRDC - you can quite simply re-activate.
And who wants to experience love incarnate Bungo Pete, you just pause via SH2 / DC to mess with me ... he will fail in his submarine.

Sooo ... I am looking for my old times Destroyer Command ...

On a "bouquet" of sunken submarines.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Bleiente

These remarks and insults over RSRDC and Lurker I can not agree.

First of all, I'm not insulting Lurker. I'm criticizing his mod. My criticism is on two levels: one that he puts the war in a straitjacket where the Japanese send the exact missions and convoys out that they did during the war whether or not that would be appropriate. In fact war is a dynamic thing that wouldn't repeat itself were it to be done over in real life. Lurker paralyzes the enemy, renders him completely predictable and thereby cripples Silent Hunter 4.

The second level is that RSRDC is not a campaign layer, as advertised. In fact, it extends tentacles into every aspect of the game. It is a supermod in itself, and if you layer it over RFB, TMO or GFO you are no longer playing those mods. All their settings are overridden by unannounced RSRDC changes. For example, Ducimus' brilliant evil airplanes that see you are periscope depth are just wiped out arbitrarily by RSRDC. This is not a product of "working together." Had Ducimus known the extent to which RSRDC nullified all his carefully balanced gameplay, he would have been outraged. However, at that time Ducimus was pretty burned out. He never checked to see to what degree RSRDC wiped out TMO. He merely trusted Lurker, even saying "if Lurker says it's compatible, it's compatible." It wasn't, unless your definition of compatible is "the game doesn't crash to desktop when you run the two mods together."

While Lurker was vicious about defending his mod, saying that various one file mods that interfered with RSRDC not at all were not compatible, he was running amock, changing every aspect of supermods he claimed RSRDC was compatible with.

The honorable way to make RSRDC would have been as a standalone mod built on the stock game only, like TMO, RFB, GFO and FOTRS. They specifically say that they change just about every aspect of the game, and as such are not compatible with each other or other mods. Mods should do what they say they do. They should not do what they don't say they do. The end, and everyone would live happily ever after if modders were that honorable.

Insults are calling names. I point to specific behavior and why it is bad. There's an important difference there. I even jumped on Webster once on an ethics issue and he didn't go ballistic and claim I was insulting him. I don't do that.

Originally Posted by Bleiente

In addition, a drive in RSRDC no "Zombi-ships" more about the way ... maybe 10 countersunk Yamato`s ... this always made me most annoyed at the dynamic missions.

It's hard coded in the game that if you run into a task force you can specify the types of ships in the task force, but not the exact ships themselves. RSRDC can't do anything about encountering the Yamato multiple times in a career. And it doesn't.

Originally Posted by Bleiente

We should not forget the great and exchanged for remuneration without work have left us Ducimus and Lurker ... and they had always worked together and / or to each other.

I was there. I actually worked with them. No, Lurker and Ducimus were not working together, they were working at the same time on separate projects. Ducimus thought RSRDC was compatible because Lurker claimed it was, and by Lurker's very strong defense against other mods assumed that Lurker applied those same standards to himself. Ducimus was wrong.

Originally Posted by Bleiente

Those who like to want the evil planes in RSRDC - you can quite simply re-activate.

Show of hands! Who knows how to "simply re-activate" Duci's evil airplanes? Anybody? Nobody? That's what I thought. I did write a mod to restore Duci's planes to RSRDC. But there are dozens of other gameplay and AI changes that RSRDC commits which nobody has researched or countered.

As a matter of fact only Webster has a patch to undo RSRDC gameplay shenanigans to his mod. A couple thousand bonus points tossed Webster's way for insisting on the integrity of his mod.

Modders simply shouldn't step on each others' territory without clear agreement between the modders and clear notice to players. That's one of the major reasons for being for the new FOTRS Ultimate mod. It will feature a large collection of single purpose, guaranteed compatible plugin mods so the player is in control of his game.

Compatible means two things: that a plugin makes the changes it says and those are the ONLY changes it makes. You want evil airplanes? Install the evil airplane plugin. Want 'em out? Remove the plugin during a campaign, even during a mission without returning to base! Want the game easier? Plugin. Want it back? Plugout. Even during a fight. We're going to show what "compatible" should have been from the beginning, and that modders don't need to dictate the environment the players play in. Players deserve to be in charge of all that. Modders are to make possibilities available, not to choose them.

Lurker is a very capable modder. Were he to be active here I'd be the first to see if he would make up a campaign mod. But it would be ONLY a campaign mod, introducing scripting to existing ships and with existing capabilities not to be interfered with. No new ships. No reconfigured enemy AI. No environmental hocus pocus. No modifications to your submarine. No messing with airplanes. No reconfiguring sonar. No torpedo modifications. Just campaign changes, as the title of the mod and the description in the download area says. More is not better! For players to be in charge of their games modders need discipline.

And all of this is not my idea. I stole it, fair and square, lock, stock and barrel from Webster. That's not a joke, it's the simple truth. And I hold myself to the same standard I advocate for others.

[Vince82]

I increase the depthcharge sink speed, and blast damage/radius values with a crush depth between 200-250m. I usually survive just a few patrols. I'm a sh3 player though, because enemy radar/air cover is a very nice challenge.

Another thing you could do is tweaking/modding the AI sensors.

Have you ever tried SH3 NYMG?