Do Modders Realize this is not the Atlantic Campaign?

[Captain_Jack]

Dont get me wrong. I truly appreciate all the work modders have done to improve SHIII and SHIV. RUB, NYGM, and GW were works of art!

But as I read these posts it seems many are just trying to put the Atlantic Campaign into the Pacific and call it "realism". It was a different campaign all together. The Japanese escorts were no where near the skill of the allies. And in the early years of the war many Japanese Merchant Vessels traveled alone without escorts. Mush Morton attacked an unescorted convoy of four merchants in 1943. And the Japanese did not even have their depth charges set to correct depths until mid war. US Subs did not have widespread use of SJ Radar until Aug 1942.

But then I read posts of modders giving US Subs SJ Radar in 1941, Making the Japanese Escorts Much more deadly, Getting rid of small unescorted convoys, etc....

Is this the Pacific War? Or just a transplanted Atlantic Version?

[Forlorn]

I fully agree upon this. I just read in a book about two destroyers being unable to kill a S-class boat although an outside torpedo losses the compressed air in big bubbles for minutes in mid 42. Most of the time japanese destroyers just released one wave of ehm wasserbomben ( ;) ) and went back to their position in a convoi. And they didn't know how to use the ping as well.

[ParaB]

The problem here IMHO is that from a gameplay point of view it's just totally boring to ravage unescorted convoys time after time without resistance or laugh into the face of japanese DD's who can't set their depth charges to explode below 200 feet.

Right now the escorts don't pose a threat to my boat at all. This is just not much fun.

I don't exactly need the kind of GWX-terror I encounter in the Atlantic in 1944 but a tiny bit of a challenge is something I really like to see in SH4.

[Sailor Steve]

I don't see them as trying to put the Atlantic campaign into the Pacific at all. Mainly they're trying to make things that work in one sim be transferable to the other; and there are a lot of things being reported already that are not realistic.

[Ducimus]

You have options you know.

a.) Don't use the mod if you don't like it.
b.) delete the bit in the mod you don't like
c.) make your own mod.


There's really no need to make a stink over what people decided to alter. And since i think im the only one who altered SJ radar availablity. Umm early by what, 6 months or so? Big whooope. I just wanted to see how it worked. Espeically since SD radar was so jacked, i wanted both to see WTF was going on. Now i think i may have a decent adjustment for both so they work how they're supposed to - assuming the bloody things dont quit working mid patrol :roll: Anyway, don't like it, choose, a, b, or c.

[PeriscopeDepth]

Tater makes a great post here: http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/6421019045/m/6581072435/p/2 and backs his assertions up with references.

What I gather from that:
- Merchants WERE unescorted for the most part until late war.
- The IJN gave ASW a very low priority. IJN escorts were unprepared for ASW.

And that doesn't mean you can just go "ravishing" convoys without a care in the world, keep in mind that 22% of USN submariners did not come home. Sure, that's nothing compared to KM loss rates; but you still should have to be careful. But I can still certainly see why people wouldn't like this from a gameplay POV, but I guess that's why modders exist.

PD

[PeriscopeDepth]

You have options you know.

a.) Don't use the mod if you don't like it.
b.) delete the bit in the mod you don't like
c.) make your own mod.


There's really no need to make a stink over what people decided to alter. And since i think im the only one who altered SJ radar availablity. Umm early by what, 6 months or so? Big whooope. I just wanted to see how it worked. Espeically since SD radar was so jacked, i wanted both to see WTF was going on. Now i think i may have a decent adjustment for both so they work how they're supposed to - assuming the bloody things dont quit working mid patrol :roll: Anyway, don't like it, choose, a, b, or c.

Yeah, I think your addition of SJ radar at war's start was a great idea. Because without it the radar is fairly useless.

PD

[Banquet]

Dont get me wrong. I truly appreciate all the work modders have done to improve SHIII and SHIV. RUB, NYGM, and GW were works of art!

But as I read these posts it seems many are just trying to put the Atlantic Campaign into the Pacific and call it "realism". It was a different campaign all together. The Japanese escorts were no where near the skill of the allies. And in the early years of the war many Japanese Merchant Vessels traveled alone without escorts. Mush Morton attacked an unescorted convoy of four merchants in 1943. And the Japanese did not even have their depth charges set to correct depths until mid war. US Subs did not have widespread use of SJ Radar until Aug 1942.

But then I read posts of modders giving US Subs SJ Radar in 1941, Making the Japanese Escorts Much more deadly, Getting rid of small unescorted convoys, etc....

Is this the Pacific War? Or just a transplanted Atlantic Version?
He has a point. The lack of success of American subs in the early war was mostly due to passive sub commanders that were making sonar only torp attacks (when the Germans were attacking at night on the surface), dud torpedo's and lack of experience.

I've had a few torps explode early in SH4, but no duds at all yet despite having the realism option ticked.

Once the US started copying the Germans and doing night time surface attacks there are accounts of escort DD's heading in entirely the wrong direction.. dropping depth charges when the sub was still on the surface, some distance away.. and being tied to their escort duties and only chasing the subs a few hundred yards away before returning to their merchants, when obviously the sub would come around for another attack. The Japanese didn't get a good handle on ASW.

You can never simulate the fear of dying, and the cautiousness that brings, but we can have more/some early war duds (I say early war, I don't think it was until mid 43 that they sorted that problem out completely) and probably less ships so we spend more time searching.

Also, the Japanese regularly patrolled certain corridors that were known sub passages. I haven't seen that in SH4 but it would add to the difficultly of even reaching your patrol objective.

There are various ways of making SH4 harder but I don't think making the escorts uber effective is the way to do it. Sure there may need to be some tweaking, but nothing too extreme.

If you want realism.. apart from the above suggestions, how about..

Use manual TDC
Even if the stopwatch speed bug is fixed, still calculate speed manually
Don't use map updates
Patch so that you lose 25% of your best experienced crew after every patrol
Patch to lose a lot of the contact reports.. there was only ULTRA and that was vague
Add in a bit of tweaking to escort AI
Play so once you die you don't load a save, but start again

I reckon that would make it a bit more challenging, if that's what you're after..

Edit.. I should add that there are also documented cases of Japanese ships that were very adept at ASW.. that pinged very effectively and knew just when to listen, just when to move and just when to depth charge.. it would be very realistic to have 'some' escorts that were very skilled.

[Sailor Steve]

You can never simulate the fear of dying, and the cautiousness that brings, but we can have more/some early war duds (I say early war, I don't think it was until mid 43 that they sorted that problem out completely) and probably less ships so we spend more time searching.

Also, the Japanese regularly patrolled certain corridors that were known sub passages. I haven't seen that in SH4 but it would add to the difficultly of even reaching your patrol objective.

There are various ways of making SH4 harder but I don't think making the escorts uber effective is the way to do it. Sure there may need to be some tweaking, but nothing too extreme.
Excellent points. I didn't copy your other suggestions; I just wanted to say that in SH3 I usually try to play like it's real: no harbor raids, don't play chicken with destroyers, crash dive as soon as a plane is spotted and don't try to fight them, don't use guns or even torpedoes when the weather is so bad they obviously couldn't in real life, and like that.

[ParaB]

And that doesn't mean you can just go "ravishing" convoys without a care in the world, keep in mind that 22% of USN submariners did not come home. Sure, that's nothing compared to KM loss rates; but you still should have to be careful.

PD
Sorry, but it exactly means that. The fact the US subs suffered quite heavy casualties in WW2 just doesn't really translate into SH4. In about a dozen Patrols (from 1941 to 1943) on full realism (except outside view for screenshots) I have sunk more then 500,000 tons of enemy shipping, including 2 Battleships, 2 Carriers and 5 Cruisers while only suffering light damage (at worst) from air attacks. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Fun for some time, but without some modifications to escort AI and abilities I will soon head back to the Atlantic for some challenge.

[joea]

You have options you know.

a.) Don't use the mod if you don't like it.
b.) delete the bit in the mod you don't like
c.) make your own mod.


There's really no need to make a stink over what people decided to alter. And since i think im the only one who altered SJ radar availablity. Umm early by what, 6 months or so? Big whooope. I just wanted to see how it worked. Espeically since SD radar was so jacked, i wanted both to see WTF was going on. Now i think i may have a decent adjustment for both so they work how they're supposed to - assuming the bloody things dont quit working mid patrol :roll: Anyway, don't like it, choose, a, b, or c.

Ummm ok, so you know me and how much I support modders but we're not allowed to state our opinion? I and a couple of others have posted a lot of valuable research links that could help making some interesting mods but it does seem like a lot of stuff is just being copied over from SH3 because a lot is still broken here.

So how can we do some constructive criticism? Are the alternatives just what you gave?


P.S. Six months is a big deal for some...but that's cool.

[Egan]

Improving traffic patterns, air cover and so on is top of my list once i've actually sat back and enjoyed the sim for a couple more weeks. I would like to see patrols improved in narrow straights as well as well as other things.

While it obviously isn't a U-boat campaign there is still a lot that is relevent.

[PeriscopeDepth]

And that doesn't mean you can just go "ravishing" convoys without a care in the world, keep in mind that 22% of USN submariners did not come home. Sure, that's nothing compared to KM loss rates; but you still should have to be careful.

PD
Sorry, but it exactly means that. The fact the US subs suffered quite heavy casualties in WW2 just doesn't really translate into SH4. In about a dozen Patrols (from 1941 to 1943) on full realism (except outside view for screenshots) I have sunk more then 500,000 tons of enemy shipping, including 2 Battleships, 2 Carriers and 5 Cruisers while only suffering light damage (at worst) from air attacks. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Fun for some time, but without some modifications to escort AI and abilities I will soon head back to the Atlantic for some challenge.
I wasn't referring to the game in it's current vanilla state. But that's completely true, the vanilla game in it's current state is a cakewalk. I was referring to a closer to life version of the game that will hopefully appear in the next couple of months (realistic torpedo fail rates particularly). When/if this truer to life version appears, if players restrict themselves to real life restrictions that were in effect at the time it WILL be challenging. And I'm sure there will also be mods that make it more difficult than it really was if that is your flavor.

PD

[Alex]

@ CPT Jack : I agree with SS, modders are just trying to make SH4 much more realistic taking mods that we use for the Atlantic campaign.... Well, I don't know very much the Pacific War ( :roll: ) but I understand how you feel right now.... Hopefully you can make a modpack yourself of all the mods you think that are realistic for this Pacific version. ;)

[ParaB]

I wasn't referring to the game in it's current vanilla state. But that's completely true, the vanilla game in it's current state is a cakewalk. I was referring to a closer to life version of the game that will hopefully appear in the next couple of months (realistic torpedo fail rates particularly). When/if this truer to life version appears, if players restrict themselves to real life restrictions that were in effect at the time it WILL be challenging. And I'm sure there will also be mods that make it more difficult than it really was if that is your flavor.

PD

Ah, Ok. Then I completely agree with you.

:up:

[Banquet]

I have sunk more then 500,000 tons of enemy shipping, including 2 Battleships, 2 Carriers and 5 Cruisers while only suffering light damage (at worst) from air attacks. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Fun for some time, but without some modifications to escort AI and abilities I will soon head back to the Atlantic for some challenge.

I would suggest that is because SH4 has far too many ships, especially navy combat ships, sailing around.

Less than a week after PH I saw a US taskforce of (amongst other things) 4 BB's. I believe the US only had 1 operational BB after 7th Dec 41. On my first patrol from Manilla I came upon a Japanese invasion TF with 3 Mogami class CA's. It's just too easy to find the big battlewagans that most real sub commanders never got a sniff of.

I doubt this will be patched, but I hope it will be modded so that there is a more realistic amount of carrier, battleships, etc, sailing around.

I would add I can completely understand why the devs did this.. the casual gamer will want to see the Yamato, Akagi, etc.. and get the chance to sink them.. but a more realistic approach would mean you'd probably play the career mode many times before you saw such a ship.

[Captain_Jack]

You have options you know.

a.) Don't use the mod if you don't like it.
b.) delete the bit in the mod you don't like
c.) make your own mod.


There's really no need to make a stink over what people decided to alter. And since i think im the only one who altered SJ radar availablity. Umm early by what, 6 months or so? Big whooope. I just wanted to see how it worked. Espeically since SD radar was so jacked, i wanted both to see WTF was going on. Now i think i may have a decent adjustment for both so they work how they're supposed to - assuming the bloody things dont quit working mid patrol :roll: Anyway, don't like it, choose, a, b, or c.

Ummm ok, so you know me and how much I support modders but we're not allowed to state our opinion? I and a couple of others have posted a lot of valuable research links that could help making some interesting mods but it does seem like a lot of stuff is just being copied over from SH3 because a lot is still broken here.

So how can we do some constructive criticism? Are the alternatives just what you gave?


P.S. Six months is a big deal for some...but that's cool.


Yes I was expecting such a response from some individuals.

"Make your own Mod" "Dont like it, dont use it" ...etc....

So...are we allowed to express opinions? How do we crticize gently so as not to inflame?

[mookiemookie]

So... don't use the mod's that do things that you don't like? :doh:

Expressing opinions is fine, but it came across kind of condescending, IMHO

[AVGWarhawk]

What cake walk? DD drop precision DC...when they do attack. Not to mention the screwed up TDC and fast torpedos, that well, do not go fast. TDC calculations are why off. Apparent bug. The planes attack a bit much but hey, keeps me on my toes.

One thing is for sure, you can choose the mods that you work better for you. Currently I find the ship numerous and I find that unescorted vessels all the time. That was how it was. The modders get my full support on anything they create or fix whether I install or not is up to me. Do I feel some of the Atlantic is spilling over? A very small amount. But one has to realize there was a huge amount of study that went into the SH3 mods. That huge amount of study needs to happen here as well. One can not get it all done in a week. Please note, there is a forum for study on reality and fiction within this forum. It is stickied. It has begun. Give the men a chance. The modders dedicate their time for the love of the game/WW 2 specifically.

Two mods I currently use that have made a world of difference for me:
Green color HUD mod for the buttons.
Reduced radio clutter on the clipboard.

Man, world of difference from me that I got from a couple of guys willing to tinker with it for a better game:rock: I'm really looking forward to some more mods. MOD away men:up:

[Ducimus]

Personnaly, i view this thread as an attack, or at the least derogatory, and i dont see it as constructive posted in the manner it is. Hence my reply, which was reserved i might add. I think its out of place to basically chew people out for what they decide to mod.

[Deep Six]

Well I'm a great believer in realism but what the game offers at present is no more than a cake walk....Shesh my first mission out of Hawaii was to insert an agent inside Tokyo Bay...Now this would have made a real skipper cringe with fear...Well it was a cakewalk....I sighted but One ship by a non existent SD radar..But thought I better give it a wide berth..Guys That bay should have have been crawling with ALL manner of small craft from Sampans to Small ships..Not one NADA!!

I'll give my whole hearted support to all the modders because IF we get the patches then in 6 months time THIS game will be unrecognisable from when I first purchased it....Based on the assumption that 75% of the modding will be a carry-over exercise from SH3....The modders will know exactly how to and where.
Then you can bet that SH4 the modded game will be a realistic rendition of pacific theatre Sub war against the Japanese, not a turkey shoot which I'm afraid to say right now that's all this game IS.:damn:

Deep Six

[CCIP]

Personnaly, i view this thread as an attack, or at the least derogatory, and i dont see it as constructive posted in the manner it is. Hence my reply, which was reserved i might add. I think its out of place to basically chew people out for what they decide to mod.

The man has a point :hmm:

I think the conclusions people are jumping into are completely wrong. Noone here wants hard escorts, just esccorts that aren't blind. Likewise, noone here wants a game that's neccesarily hard - but as hard or challenging as it should be.

I tap my old 'realistic result' sign again - what counts is an overall plausible outcome. If a game about Pacific subs kills you more often than in 1 of 5 careers when you don't misbehave, something may be fishy. When a game about pacific subs allows you to run amok sinking ships on impulse, and dismiss your enemy as incompetent, then something is even more wrong.

In the end, what we really need is a good, plausible balance that rewards good, realistic behaviour and punishes players who act rashly and unrealistically.

[Balu0]

I just had a great idea... everybody is saying that the US crew was inexperienced in teh early war.. yet we start the campaign with a quite efficient crew..

What about a mod that give you a much less experienced and capable crew in the begining.. say even the watch and engine room is below 70% efficiency even if you put your best crew there...

If US had inexperienced crew in the begining, why should we have a 100% effective watch and 100% effective engine room?

AS I read (not sure if its true) for example if your engine room is not 100% effective your engines are louder, the acceleration is slower , top speed is less..

If this is true.. .we can have a quite challenging early war with a "GREEN CREW MOD" .. :D see we already have a name for it too...

Any modder up for this task ?

[Ducimus]

Well, when it comes to anything i do, i stand by my words. Thats my bandwidth they're using if they D/L my mod. Yesterday alone i had 1400 MB's of traffic from a 25 MB file. So when i feel ive been singled out, i get a little upset.

As for having a point, if he does, im not seeing it. I dunno about others, but most of what ive been doing is fixing what bugs i can, or doing workarounds to make the game less painful until the next patch.

[PeriscopeDepth]

I dunno about others, but most of what ive been doing is fixing what bugs i can, or doing workarounds to make the game less painful until the next patch.
I believe that you also clearly state in your Flavored to Taste Mod that it is Flavored to YOUR taste. So I can understand why you get a bit angry when you have someone calling you out saying it's inaccurate. I mean, it's called Flavored to Taste for crying out loud...:doh:

Just sayin'. Hope you didn't take my comments regarding historical accuracy in the wrong way. I use and enjoy FTT. :)

PD

[Beery]

...as I read these posts it seems many are just trying to put the Atlantic Campaign into the Pacific and call it "realism". It was a different campaign all together. The Japanese escorts were no where near the skill of the allies. And in the early years of the war many Japanese Merchant Vessels traveled alone without escorts. Mush Morton attacked an unescorted convoy of four merchants in 1943. And the Japanese did not even have their depth charges set to correct depths until mid war. US Subs did not have widespread use of SJ Radar until Aug 1942.

I share many of your concerns. As I said a few days ago, harder isn't necessarily more realistic. My focus, with the Real Fleet Boat mod, will be to make the game as realistic and deadly (no more, no less) as it was in the Pacific theatre (just as RUb did for the Atlantic theatre). When RFB is complete it will (if it's humanly possible) give the player the same chance of survival in a campaign as a real submarine commander had in the Pacific. Every mod I use and every mod I make will be measured against all the real world data I can get my hands on, and if it doesn't give realistic results it will be adjusted until it does. If unmodded SH4 generates more casualties than were generated among US sub skippers in WW2, RFB will tone down the deadliness of the simulation even if doing so means that some players will say it's boring. RFB will not be an arcade game and if players want more excitement just for the sake of it they will have to look elsewhere.

On the other hand, if unmodded SH4 has a survival rate that's higher than it was in reality, RFB will make the game more deadly.

In my experience with SH4 so far, I'm not getting the impression that it's not deadly enough. I've been attacked by aircraft three times on my first patrol - they all missed, but if they keep attacking as they have been they're gonna get lucky sometime, and it doesn't take much to bring the death toll up to that 22% level (a single deadly attack in 5 careers will do it). On the other hand, targets should be far fewer and farther between than they are in the unmodded game. Something has to be done to reduce the target population.

There's room for many mods with many different focuses. RFB will be focused squarely on realism and on giving players the same range of experiences that real WW2 Pacific submarine skippers had.

[Beery]

I just had a great idea... everybody is saying that the US crew was inexperienced in teh early war.. yet we start the campaign with a quite efficient crew..

What about a mod that give you a much less experienced and capable crew in the begining.. say even the watch and engine room is below 70% efficiency even if you put your best crew there...

If US had inexperienced crew in the begining, why should we have a 100% effective watch and 100% effective engine room?

AS I read (not sure if its true) for example if your engine room is not 100% effective your engines are louder, the acceleration is slower , top speed is less..

If this is true.. .we can have a quite challenging early war with a "GREEN CREW MOD" .. :D see we already have a name for it too...

Any modder up for this task ?

Real U-boat did this, and Real Fleet Boat will also do it. If US crews were inexperienced at the beginning of the war they will be when using RFB too.

[clayton]

Dont get me wrong. I truly appreciate all the work modders have done to improve SHIII and SHIV. RUB, NYGM, and GW were works of art!

But as I read these posts it seems many are just trying to put the Atlantic Campaign into the Pacific and call it "realism". It was a different campaign all together. The Japanese escorts were no where near the skill of the allies. And in the early years of the war many Japanese Merchant Vessels traveled alone without escorts. Mush Morton attacked an unescorted convoy of four merchants in 1943. And the Japanese did not even have their depth charges set to correct depths until mid war. US Subs did not have widespread use of SJ Radar until Aug 1942.

But then I read posts of modders giving US Subs SJ Radar in 1941, Making the Japanese Escorts Much more deadly, Getting rid of small unescorted convoys, etc....

Is this the Pacific War? Or just a transplanted Atlantic Version?

I share many of your concerns. As I said a few days ago, harder isn't necessarily more realistic. My focus, with the Real Fleet Boat mod, will be to make the game as realistic and deadly (no more, no less) as it was in the Pacific theatre (just as RUb did for the Atlantic theatre). When RFB is complete it will (if it's humanly possible) give the player the same chance of survival in a campaign as a real submarine commander had in the Pacific. Every mod I use and every mod I make will be measured against all the real world data I can get my hands on, and if it doesn't give realistic results it will be adjusted until it does. If unmodded SH4 generates more casualties than were generated among US sub skippers in WW2, RFB will tone down the deadliness of the simulation even if doing so means that some players will say it's boring. RFB will not be an arcade game and if players want more excitement just for the sake of it they will have to look elsewhere.

There's room for many mods with many different focuses. RFB will be focused squarely on realism and on giving players the same range of experiences that real WW2 Pacific submarine skippers had.

Glad to hear you say that. Though I like a rather large Pacific rising sun (I'll just take that out of your mod), I fully support what you all do. BTW, what I dont want to see in SH4 is having to sneak up to a convoy going 2 knots silent running at depth in early 42. Sound familiar? Now,...

STFU and begin modding!!! :)

[nvdrifter]

Personnaly, i view this thread as an attack, or at the least derogatory, and i dont see it as constructive posted in the manner it is. Hence my reply, which was reserved i might add. I think its out of place to basically chew people out for what they decide to mod.
I have to agree with you Ducimus. Some people here are attacking mods that are being released as not having enough realism or whatever... and personally I am already sick of this and have decided to stop releasing mods for SH4 because of this and a few other reasons. There does seem to be be a somewhat snobbish, know-it-all attitude here in the SH4 mod forum with some of the posts. Not everyone of course, but some. I helped answer some of Tater's modding questions a few times and never once a 'thank you' or anything from him. Just 'Where's this?'.. 'How do I mod that?'. It's simple really- no one is forcing people to use any mods. Don't like a mod? Then don't install it. It's that simple.
Long live the U-boats. :rock:

[nimitstexan]

RFB will be focused squarely on realism and on giving players the same range of experiences that real WW2 Pacific submarine skippers had.

That is my kind of mod.

[castorp345]

I have to agree with you Ducimus. Some people here are attacking mods that are being released as not having enough realism or whatever... and personally I am already sick of this and have decided to stop releasing mods for SH4 because of this and a few other reasons. There does seem to be be a somewhat overall snobbish attitude here in the SH4 mod forum. Not everyone of course, but some. I helped answer some of Tater's modding questions a few times and never once a 'thank you' or anything from him. Just 'Where's this?'.. 'How do I mod that?'. It's simple really, no one is forcing people to use any mods. Don't like a mod? Then don't install it. It's that simple.

'funny, i seem to recall you praising tater's "good attitude" (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=109595) and encouraging his efforts...

and who said anyone is being "forced" to use a mod? but if everyone doesn't blow sunshine up your a$$ then you pick-up all your toys and go home?? tell me, who really is the one here with the "snobbish attitude"???

[Lannes]

I have sunk more then 500,000 tons of enemy shipping, including 2 Battleships, 2 Carriers and 5 Cruisers while only suffering light damage (at worst) from air attacks. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Fun for some time, but without some modifications to escort AI and abilities I will soon head back to the Atlantic for some challenge.

I would suggest that is because SH4 has far too many ships, especially navy combat ships, sailing around.

Less than a week after PH I saw a US taskforce of (amongst other things) 4 BB's. I believe the US only had 1 operational BB after 7th Dec 41. On my first patrol from Manilla I came upon a Japanese invasion TF with 3 Mogami class CA's. It's just too easy to find the big battlewagans that most real sub commanders never got a sniff of.

I doubt this will be patched, but I hope it will be modded so that there is a more realistic amount of carrier, battleships, etc, sailing around.

I would add I can completely understand why the devs did this.. the casual gamer will want to see the Yamato, Akagi, etc.. and get the chance to sink them.. but a more realistic approach would mean you'd probably play the career mode many times before you saw such a ship.

Exactly right! In my entire time playing SH3, vanilla and GWX, I sank exactly one BB, no CV, no CA, and 2 or 3 CL...That's in hundreds of hours of patrolling.

In SH4, first patrol out of Cavite, I sank 2 CA and seriously wounded a Kongo. Yeah, it was fun, but it won't be the 4th or 5th time it happens...at least not for me.

[E.Hartmann]

Dont get me wrong. I truly appreciate all the work modders have done to improve SHIII and SHIV. RUB, NYGM, and GW were works of art!

But as I read these posts it seems many are just trying to put the Atlantic Campaign into the Pacific and call it "realism". It was a different campaign all together. The Japanese escorts were no where near the skill of the allies. And in the early years of the war many Japanese Merchant Vessels traveled alone without escorts. Mush Morton attacked an unescorted convoy of four merchants in 1943. And the Japanese did not even have their depth charges set to correct depths until mid war. US Subs did not have widespread use of SJ Radar until Aug 1942.

But then I read posts of modders giving US Subs SJ Radar in 1941, Making the Japanese Escorts Much more deadly, Getting rid of small unescorted convoys, etc....

Is this the Pacific War? Or just a transplanted Atlantic Version?

Good post!!!!

[CCIP]

As for having a point, if he does, im not seeing it.

To clarify, I was referring to you (having a point, I mean), sorry I did it in such a half-assed way. :p

By the way, we had long and hard discussions in the RUb team forum, and even longer and harder discussions with WaW and NYGM, on the subject of "why are tonnages easy to get?" - and they still are.

Beery had a fantastic answer of "this game is a U-boat ace simulator" (as opposed to just a U-boat simulator), and I still basically stand by it. Many issues regarding the ease-of-sinking also stem from the AI, which I'm sure in SHIV will be a little better, but it's still an AI; it acts artificially and even in the best conditions, once you know what you're doing - the AI's behaviour normally won't surprise you that much.

So as far as answers, all the way from SHIII there were ideas of reducing traffic, better varying traffic routes, setting up more efficient enemy patrol patterns, getting rid of easily-exploitable 'features' and adding more nuances in detection, damage modelling and weapons modelling for the player to worry about in general.

As I said, the key should be not to make it hard for the player universally, but to make the player work for his kills and pay for his mistakes correctly. It might sound like just a gameplay issue, but realism is right up there too. I think that's right at the centre of all 'realism modding' - putting more accurate restraints on what a player can and can't (or shouldn't) get away with.

[Ducimus]

on the subject of "why are tonnages easy to get?" - and they still are.

Good greif as much time as ive spent dismanteling stock SH3, NYGM and GWX, i could probably write an essay on why tonnage scores are high.



Just as an aside on the topic of this thread in general, of the three choices a person has that i orginally mentioned. I excercise all three constantly. I didn't just say that, ive been doing just that for the last few years. Using a mod, and liking some parts of it, but not other parts is how i got into learning more about how to mod the game myself. Ill say straight up, i dont mod for the public. I mod for myself, first and foremost, and share what i did out of nothing more then good willl, not as a mandantory community service who's demands must be obeyed.

[Crueak]

I have to agree with you Ducimus. Some people here are attacking mods that are being released as not having enough realism or whatever... and personally I am already sick of this and have decided to stop releasing mods for SH4 because of this and a few other reasons. There does seem to be be a somewhat overall snobbish attitude here in the SH4 mod forum. Not everyone of course, but some. I helped answer some of Tater's modding questions a few times and never once a 'thank you' or anything from him. Just 'Where's this?'.. 'How do I mod that?'. It's simple really, no one is forcing people to use any mods. Don't like a mod? Then don't install it. It's that simple.

'funny, i seem to recall you praising tater's "good attitude" (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=109595) and encouraging his efforts...

and who said anyone is being "forced" to use a mod? but if everyone doesn't blow sunshine up your a$$ then you pick-up all your toys and go home?? tell me, who really is the one here with the "snobbish attitude"???

Sorry to say but you seem to be the one with the snobbish attitude by going by with this post and some other posts you have made. I've mainly seen you just criticize peoples work that they are doing for free and have no requirements on you installing it. It's not like they are charging you a fee to play their mod. You don't like it simply don't use it. One thing you gotta remember criticizim is good if done correctly, when it's done in a matter that someone percieves as attacking is when its becomes bad and is not needed to be said. Some will just stop modding for the public for these reasons and as a community we need to encourage them not discourage them.

[castorp345]

Sorry to say but you seem to be the one with the snobbish attitude by going by with this post and some other posts you have made. I've mainly seen you just criticize peoples work that they are doing for free and have no requirements on you installing it. It's not like they are charging you a fee to play their mod. You don't like it simply don't use it. One thing you gotta remember criticizim is good if done correctly, when it's done in a matter that someone percieves as attacking is when its becomes bad and is not needed to be said. Some will just stop modding for the public for these reasons and as a community we need to encourage them not discourage them.

thanks for the input Crueak, but to the best of my knowledge the only "criticism" that i've offered up in this regard was that perhaps just porting over gwx sensor settings to make the asw harder didn't really qualify as "realistic" (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=108075&page=2)...
that nvdrifter felt "attacked" by this and persisted in making all manner of puerile ad hominems is, while unfortunate and regrettable, not my problem;
and if that makes me a "snob" (or any other of the trite appelations that have recently been thrown my way) then so be it, "i'm a snob"...
:lol:

[Crueak]

thanks for the input Crueak, but to the best of my knowledge the only "criticism" that i've offered up in this regard was that perhaps just porting over gwx sensor settings to make the asw harder didn't really qualify as "realistic" (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=108075&page=2)...
that nvdrifter felt "attacked" by this and persisted in making all manner of puerile ad hominems is, while unfortunate and regrettable, not my problem;
and if that makes me a "snob" (or any other of the trite appelations that have recently been thrown my way) then so be it, "i'm a snob"...
:lol:[/quote]

well i am by no means calling you a snob, was only stating the impression i gathered while reading a few threads and that is no means to make a basis of judgement on someone. So i do apologize if the post above was takin the wrong way. My whole point was just that there is both a good and bad way to criticize someone. The fact is that modding is for some is almost a second job, which is most of the time a thankless job. So I can understand how some may get fed up with it.

[castorp345]

i do apologize if the post above was takin the wrong way. My whole point was just that there is both a good and bad way to criticize someone. The fact is that modding is for some is almost a second job, which is most of the time a thankless job. So I can understand how some may get fed up with it.

no worries.
in my profession (working concert musician) one gets a lot of both the good and the bad sort of criticism (and in print!) and one learns to separate out the wheat from the chaf and to not really take anything with too much salt... so yeah, i know all about good vs bad criticism. but i'll stand by that i'm an ardent supporter of the hobby and its hobbyists and don't believe that i at any point crossed the line such as to warrant the ill reception that i've been seeing here of late.

[tater]

Hey, I didn't realize people were so sensitive, sorry, perhaps you shouldn't take every little thing so personally. I had baby duty today, and was typing all that with a squirming 9 month old in my lap and a 3 year old running around in the background... somewhat distracting. Thanks, nvdrifter, you helped me find a few files I needed (and figure them out), lack of an explicit thanks wasn't an intentional slight. <S>

Modding this is very much like skins and mission building in Il-2. People works on what interests them. If your thing is LW in north africa, it's pretty pointless for someone to chew you out for not making skins and missions for the IJAAF in Burma. Presumably everyone can come out with the flavor of game they like. Some will have it as real as SH4 can do, even if it's considerably more boring than mods that make it less boring. They might also switch back and forth---I like historical Il-2 missions, but that doesn't keep me away from the odd online furball :D

tater

[Banquet]

I apologise if anything I have said was taken as criticism of a particular mod. . I was only commenting generally on what I think would make the game harder while still simulating the sometimes poor Japanese ASW.

I have nothing but respect for people who mod the game. It's the modders that will take SH4 to a new level and keep it playable for years to come.

[tater]

Actually, you made an excellent point. I think there are simply too many targets other than merchants around. We know that there were on the order of 250 merchants at sea every single day. The number of warships, particularly larger than DDs at sea any given day would be TINY. The combined fleet didn't steam around in circles, they were short on oil, they were saving it up to use on planned operations. The plus side is that we know what those were.

Combinedfleet.com has troms for the large ships, I think we'll find the place to find them is home waters at anchor with the Hotel Yamato, Truk, etc.

When they steam someplace, they do so for a reason.

tater

[CaptainCox]

Of the total 9 million tons of merchant shipping built by Japan by August of 1945, less than 1 million tons were afloat by 15 August 1945 upon cessation of offensive actions by U.S. naval forces. Roughly 1 million more tons were in shipyards in some state of repair.

Whether this tonnage counts as Japanese losses is debatable. JANAC records that 8.1 million tons of Japanese Merchant Marine vessels were sunk by Allied forces during the war. Submarines of the United States Navy sank 4.9 million tons or 60% of those losses.

An additional 700,000 tons of Imperial Japanese Navy vessels were sent to the bottom by American submarines bringing the total tonnage credited to U.S.N. submarines to 5.6 million tons.

With these shipping losses go the crew casualties. Japan?s merchant fleet began the war with 122,000 merchant seamen. Of the 116,000 casualties, 69,600 were administered by U.S. submarines. This by a force 288 submarines. Of this force of 288, fifty two were lost (sunk or grounded) with forty eight of those being in the Pacific with 3,617 officers and crew lost with them.

That gives the submarine forces, comprising 1.6% of the manpower of the U.S. Navy a loss rate of 22%, the highest in the United States Armed Forces. While the German U-boat loss rate was much higher and the numbers deployed were four times what America fielded, the average number of ships sunk per submarine by the United States Navy was 4.88 per boat while the U-boats sank 2827 Allied ships sunk by a total of 1159 U-boats (not all deployed, just like the U.S. submarines) gave 2.44 ships sunk per U-boat.

Why wasn't more of this known? The confidentiality of submarine operations purposely hid the effectiveness of our submarine forces. This was done to prevent the enemy from learning of the methods Used by U.S.N submarines that worked or did not work, as well as prevent the Japanese from learning the effectiveness of their ASW efforts.

Source:http://www.geocities.com/thomasdclayjr/Results.html

"Of the 116,000 casualties, 69,600 were administered by U.S. submarines. This by a force 288 submarines. Of this force of 288, fifty two were lost"

The convoys in the pacific where badly organized if at all present. Also the Japanese overconfidence played a big role here. So sure it was a big difference between the 2 TO's. Something that I think is sort of reflected in this game.

[Immacolata]

Yes I was expecting such a response from some individuals.

"Make your own Mod" "Dont like it, dont use it" ...etc....

So...are we allowed to express opinions? How do we crticize gently so as not to inflame?

You do the old "but its not realistic" attack. There is not some sort of contract that modders have to sign where they have sworn to make "more realistic". The title is rather rude, isn't it? Just a polite version of "Yo, morons, this ain't the ****in' Das Boot".

That being said, make a Research thread where you put up all the goodies you can find about Subs in the pacific during WW2. It it is things like that the modders need to get inspiration. And still, I prefer a good time to diamond hard realism. Lots of things could be changed to make the game more challenging, but if some of them are not entirely realistic, you won't see any flak from me because of it.

[DeePsix501]

To me,

Mods are Mods. If I want somthing that gives me a realistic simulation of the pacific war, I'll download the corresponding mod. If I want a giant laser on the front of my submarine, i'll download that mod. If I like beery's mod over another mod, i'll download beery's mod. The point i'm making is that I will download the mods that I like. I feel that Modders should be free to make whatever mods they want to make and let the community decide what they want to download and what they wont.

Two Cents Entered :ping:

~DeePsix

[Immacolata]

'funny, i seem to recall you praising tater's "good attitude" (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=109595) and encouraging his efforts...

and who said anyone is being "forced" to use a mod? but if everyone doesn't blow sunshine up your a$$ then you pick-up all your toys and go home?? tell me, who really is the one here with the "snobbish attitude"???

Funny, I seem to recall a PM from you dictating me to use manners?

/Immacolata gains Reflection
/Immacolata casts Manners! on castorp345 inflicting 345 points of back-at-ya

[Immacolata]

Beery, as much as I like realism, I wonder how you are going to approach the problem of poor intelligence and a shoddy doctrine?

We know stuff today they didn't know back then. Knowing what we do today and using that knowledge ALONE gives the player a drastic upper hand in the battle against the japanese. IF you decide to go with the opinion that japanese ASW was from pisspoor to shoddy, then couldn't the game turn into a turkey shoot?

It is already now. I wonder if you have any good ideas how to mod out or work with this latent EZ-mode that the pacific theatre seems to hold versus the Atlantic.

[Ziem]

Well I'm a great believer in realism but what the game offers at present is no more than a cake walk....Shesh my first mission out of Hawaii was to insert an agent inside Tokyo Bay...Now this would have made a real skipper cringe with fear...Well it was a cakewalk....I sighted but One ship by a non existent SD radar..But thought I better give it a wide berth..Guys That bay should have have been crawling with ALL manner of small craft from Sampans to Small ships..Not one NADA!!


Deep Six


Strange. I had the opposit. Part of my mission was that I had to shoot some pictures from Tokyo harbor. From the entrance of the bay up to the harbor it was crawling with subhunters, destroyers fishingboats and merchants. While getting in the bay a Merchant convoy left and a taskforce arrived. After taking some nice pictures I tried to leave the bay but somehow I was noticed and in no time I had about 10 destroyers and other stuff on my back. It resulted in the fact that now I'm mainly in underwater marinelife photography ;) It was a july '42 mission.

[Beery]

Beery, as much as I like realism, I wonder how you are going to approach the problem of poor intelligence and a shoddy doctrine?

We know stuff today they didn't know back then...

This is the case with every single historical simulation ever made. In the end, if we build a realism mod right, the player's advanced knowledge shouldn't matter because we build in checks and balances to counteract those issues.

I'm going to prevent it from being a turkey shoot in probably the same way it didn't become a turkey shoot in real life. Most likely I'll try the standard method of restricting scores - I'm going to make it hard to find contacts (the Pacific is a big ocean), so that it will only be possible to get the sorts of totals that real sub commanders achieved. Apart from that I'm going to do everything I can to make the player's experiences seem realistic. Most importantly, I'm going to read everything I can about the submarine war in the pacific and try to implement what I learn in the game. I can't be much more specific because I know virtually nothing about the subject yet, but give me a couple of months and I will know lots more.

Poor intel is easy to model in a computer game - you just remove features that clue the player in on what the opponent is doing. Shoddy doctrine is hard, but doctrine has always been up to the player - you can't force a player to play historically (well, you can, but it might be illegal :D).

In the end, no computer game can model everything perfectly, but what can't be modelled can be approximated. It all depends on what the most important goals of the sim are - get the important stuff looking right and the unimportant stuff can be fudged to fit. Mod design is not rocket science and every simulation is basically a fudge factory - we fudge factors :D until things look right. Knowing what's most important in the sim is key - if we keep our eye on the ball everything falls into place. This is how I've built (or helped build) three very successful major realism mods (Beery Superpatch for Red Baron 3D, the Beery R&R mod for B-17 II and the RUb mod for SH3).

[rascal101]

With respect, I think you may have missed the point slightly, the modders are not trying to get the Atlantic campaign into the Pacific, rather they are trying to meld the best of SH3 and SH4 to form a new Atlantic based game with the enhanced graphics of SH4 but with the advanced AI and game play of SH3 or mods therein.

I've been playing SH4 for little over a week , while I have been stunned by some of the graphic advances, (and totally baffled by others), I'm fast coming to the conclusion that the Pacific theatre was/is not all that interesting form a sub sim point of view, sorry but that’s my opinion. Now a Pacific flight sim or a land based shooter is a different thing altogether.

I mean no disrespect to the US navy or sailors therein, far from it; essentially they had the Japanese all but licked by 1943, which makes for a somewhat lacklustre long term game prospect.

For me the point, or challenge of SH3 is not to trundle Around the Atlantic sinking stuff and scoring points, its actually just trying to stay alive, particularly after 1943, when the Allies really got their ASW **** together and this is were the SH3 comes into its own.

I for one can’t wait for those talented moders to do their stuff cos I'm sad to say I'm already bored with SH4 after less than a week, yet SH3 kept me going for nearly two years.

By the way this is not a criticism of the dev team or Ubi soft or any one else, its just history


Dont get me wrong. I truly appreciate all the work modders have done to improve SHIII and SHIV. RUB, NYGM, and GW were works of art!

But as I read these posts it seems many are just trying to put the Atlantic Campaign into the Pacific and call it "realism". It was a different campaign all together. The Japanese escorts were no where near the skill of the allies. And in the early years of the war many Japanese Merchant Vessels traveled alone without escorts. Mush Morton attacked an unescorted convoy of four merchants in 1943. And the Japanese did not even have their depth charges set to correct depths until mid war. US Subs did not have widespread use of SJ Radar until Aug 1942.

But then I read posts of modders giving US Subs SJ Radar in 1941, Making the Japanese Escorts Much more deadly, Getting rid of small unescorted convoys, etc....

Is this the Pacific War? Or just a transplanted Atlantic Version?

[tater]

I think there is indeed a huge difference (which relates to gameplay) in the two theaters. One pits the ubootwaffe against the allies' effectively infinite number of merchant ships and escorts, the other pits the axis' limited surface targets and combatants against infinite resources to attack them.

BTW, a PTO flight sim suffers somewhat as well. In actual play, it tends to end up unrealistically hard for the allies since many of the negatives of the japanese forces don't get modeled in a sim—poor supply/maintenance, and perhaps most importantly pilot quality.

Balance (from a gameplay standpoint) will be tough in a realistic mod, but certainly not impossible. There is one other factor to consider from a GAME standpoint. The player need not be representative of the entire force. What I mean is that the player can have interesting play by being given all the scut work of the silent service in game. Archerfish gets all the sweet patrols sinking unescorted tankers, but the player's poor Pike gets stuck sneaking into dangerous, mined harbors teaming with subchasers :D . That sorta thing.

tater

[Beery]

Balance (from a gameplay standpoint) will be tough in a realistic mod, but certainly not impossible. There is one other factor to consider from a GAME standpoint. The player need not be representative of the entire force. What I mean is that the player can have interesting play by being given all the scut work of the silent service in game. Archerfish gets all the sweet patrols sinking unescorted tankers, but the player's poor Pike gets stuck sneaking into dangerous, mined harbors teaming with subchasers

Well, from a realism standpoint I'm not too worried about play balance, after all the real world isn't balanced. Realism fans are looking to get historically accurate results, so if the real thing was relatively tame compared to the Atlantic that's not a problem for them. It's not like there's no danger at all, and there's still tonnage to go after. The player's goals in SH4/RFB are unchanged from those of SH3/RUb: survival and tonnage. Survival is easier but that also means it's less frustrating and you really get to know your crews in a way that may not have been possible in SH3. Tonnage is still as much of a challenge even though the chances of racking up lots of it in RFB will be fewer and farther between - the player will still be striving to find that fat merchant, perhaps harder than he might have been in SH3/RUb, and that's where I think the challenge really lies in this game. In short, in SH3 the primary challenge was survival in a deadly environment, whereas in SH4 the primary challenge is going to be to rack up tonnage in a comparatively target-poor environment.

In the end though, it's the feel of the sim that's important - if the war in the Pacific feels real players will forgive the fact that it's not as challenging as the war in the Atlantic. Sim fans aren't arcade fans - they don't need play balance or continuous excitement in order for the sim to be fulfilling.

[AVGWarhawk]

Beery, as much as I like realism, I wonder how you are going to approach the problem of poor intelligence and a shoddy doctrine?

We know stuff today they didn't know back then...
This is the case with every single historical simulation ever made. In the end, if we build a realism mod right, the player's advanced knowledge shouldn't matter because we build in checks and balances to counteract those issues.

I'm going to prevent it from being a turkey shoot in probably the same way it didn't become a turkey shoot in real life. Most likely I'll try the standard method of restricting scores - I'm going to make it hard to find contacts (the Pacific is a big ocean), so that it will only be possible to get the sorts of totals that real sub commanders achieved. Apart from that I'm going to do everything I can to make the player's experiences seem realistic. Most importantly, I'm going to read everything I can about the submarine war in the pacific and try to implement what I learn in the game. I can't be much more specific because I know virtually nothing about the subject yet, but give me a couple of months and I will know lots more.

Poor intel is easy to model in a computer game - you just remove features that clue the player in on what the opponent is doing. Shoddy doctrine is hard, but doctrine has always been up to the player - you can't force a player to play historically (well, you can, but it might be illegal :D).

In the end, no computer game can model everything perfectly, but what can't be modelled can be approximated. It all depends on what the most important goals of the sim are - get the important stuff looking right and the unimportant stuff can be fudged to fit. Mod design is not rocket science and every simulation is basically a fudge factory - we fudge factors :D until things look right. Knowing what's most important in the sim is key - if we keep our eye on the ball everything falls into place. This is how I've built (or helped build) three very successful major realism mods (Beery Superpatch for Red Baron 3D, the Beery R&R mod for B-17 II and the RUb mod for SH3).


Great answer Beery! Like I stated earlier in this post, study needs to be done. Modders need to pour over the books on the subject. This will take more than a week after release. I'm awaiting RFB and waiting patiently. You da man!:rock:

[Bilge_Rat]

Most importantly, I'm going to read everything I can about the submarine war in the pacific and try to implement what I learn in the game. I can't be much more specific because I know virtually nothing about the subject yet, but give me a couple of months and I will know lots more.

Beery, I'm glad you are on the case. The PTO has always been my favorite theater. If you are looking for an excellent one volume history of the U.S. submarine war which covers all the key points, I highly recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Victory-Submarine-Against-Japan/dp/155750217X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-3045748-1689754?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175183515&sr=8-1

The book covers all the key points: U.S. torpedo problems, intel, descriptions of almost all encounters, statistics, etc., its basically as detailed as his 2 vol. history of the Atlantic war, but more readable and more of a labor of love, since he served in a U.S. sub during the war. He also interviewed about 100 U.S. skippers in preparation for the book. I am re-reading it now.

[Kapitan_Phillips]

Personally, its my opinion that major modifications should wait until the devs have done what they can. Everyone knows that they were rushed and they want us to have a great game as much as we all do.

Its a good idea using what we learnt from SH3 to improve on SH4, but what I'm saying is people are modding a game thats still getting updated, which is kinda jumping the gun. Some of the best mods for SH3 came out post-1.4 and I think the devs should be given more of a chance before the guts of SH4 are rummaged through.

Anyway, just my two cents :)

[AVGWarhawk]

Personally, its my opinion that major modifications should wait until the devs have done what they can. Everyone knows that they were rushed and they want us to have a great game as much as we all do.

Its a good idea using what we learnt from SH3 to improve on SH4, but what I'm saying is people are modding a game thats still getting updated, which is kinda jumping the gun. Some of the best mods for SH3 came out post-1.4 and I think the devs should be given more of a chance before the guts of SH4 are rummaged through.

Anyway, just my two cents :)

Good point but it is nice to be ahead of the game knowing what can be modded and what can't. What the community is looking for in the mods, etc. When the patch comes out either install the changed files or do a total reinstall.

[fredbass]

I started reading through most of the posts on this thread and then got a little tired of it half way though, so I skipped ahead and decided to reply because I just wanted to remind everybody about one thing.

Forum members consist of children through adults with varying degrees of knowledge and maturity from around the globe, so it is completely expected that we will get a very mixed bag of posts here.

Just keep that in mind (modders) when you become a little annoyed with the way certain individuals reply to your work. :know: :yep: Don't let it effect what you do. It really is not that significant. :up:

[joea]

With respect, I think you may have missed the point slightly, the modders are not trying to get the Atlantic campaign into the Pacific, rather they are trying to meld the best of SH3 and SH4 to form a new Atlantic based game with the enhanced graphics of SH4 but with the advanced AI and game play of SH3 or mods therein.

[/quote]

No where did you get that idea, most modders are trying to get a realistic Pacific campaign going some are but I think peopel are just testing what can be used..btw the Japanese were NOT licked by 1943. Far from it is was in mid to late 1943 that the torpedoes were fixed. Now if you prefer the Atlantic subsims or Pacific flight sims or shooters that's cool!! :|\\

[Ducimus]

Personally, its my opinion that major modifications should wait until the devs have done what they can. Everyone knows that they were rushed and they want us to have a great game as much as we all do.

Its a good idea using what we learnt from SH3 to improve on SH4, but what I'm saying is people are modding a game thats still getting updated, which is kinda jumping the gun. Some of the best mods for SH3 came out post-1.4 and I think the devs should be given more of a chance before the guts of SH4 are rummaged through.

Anyway, just my two cents :)

I totally agree. Thats why the focus of my modding hasn't been to polish, or for realism, but for making the game less painful and more enjoyable. I have a few tweaks that i'll have to reverse after next patch assuming Ubi address the problem.

[heartc]

Most importantly, I'm going to read everything I can about the submarine war in the pacific and try to implement what I learn in the game. I can't be much more specific because I know virtually nothing about the subject yet, but give me a couple of months and I will know lots more.



Beery, when you do, I suggest reading - among other things - the late Capt. Edward L. Beach's "Submarine!". The author was XO on the "Trigger" during WWII, then CO on the Piper, albeit the war was over by the time he reached his assigned area in the later ship as CO.

After you've read it, you'll laugh at the many BS you can read here in these forums and you'll probably come to the conclusion that the subwar conducted by the PacFleet against Japan was dangerous.

The one conducted by the Kriegsmarine in the Atlantic was simply suicidal (later on) and became this way because of the ignorance of yet another Hitler admirer in command position (Dönitz).
When people think the sub campaign in the Pacific was a cakewalk, it's like saying normal infantry duty is a cakewalk, because suicide bombers on the other hand have a 100% casualty rate.

[castorp345]

When people think the sub campaign in the Pacific was a cakewalk, it's like saying normal infantry duty is a cakewalk, because suicide bombers on the other hand have a 100% casualty rate.
:rotfl:

i don't think though that anyone's saying it was a cakewalk and beery (as usual) summed up the situation quite succinctly:

In the end though, it's the feel of the sim that's important - if the war in the Pacific feels real players will forgive the fact that it's not as challenging as the war in the Atlantic. Sim fans aren't arcade fans - they don't need play balance or continuous excitement in order for the sim to be fulfilling.

btw, capt beach is wonderful!! what terrificly human accounts he gives of his experiences! 'full of wit and fascinating detail. 'highly recommended to all (as i'm sure most reading these forums already know).

[Banquet]

Another good read with lots of info is 'Silent Running' by by James F Calvert. I downloaded the audio book and it's a great listen with lots of info on the operations of the Jack.

[clayton]

Personally, its my opinion that major modifications should wait until the devs have done what they can. Everyone knows that they were rushed and they want us to have a great game as much as we all do.

Its a good idea using what we learnt from SH3 to improve on SH4, but what I'm saying is people are modding a game thats still getting updated, which is kinda jumping the gun. Some of the best mods for SH3 came out post-1.4 and I think the devs should be given more of a chance before the guts of SH4 are rummaged through.

Anyway, just my two cents :)

Well said! :up:

[heartc]

BTW, just to avoid misunderstandings - I'm fully on the side of those who say "Please don't make this Atlantic Campaign II". It wasn't. There were plenty of unescorted merchantmen underway in the Pacific etc. But that's only part of the story, not the end of it and I find the notion of some people that this simulation must be boring when properly patched/modded a bit uninformed, frankly. It's not gonna be boring, but it's not gonna be suicidal either.

[Beery]

If you are looking for an excellent one volume history of the U.S. submarine war which covers all the key points, I highly recommend [Silent Victory]

Hehe, I ordered it from Amazon this morning. :up:

[clayton]

If you are looking for an excellent one volume history of the U.S. submarine war which covers all the key points, I highly recommend [Silent Victory]

Hehe, I ordered it from Amazon this morning. :up:

Congrats!!! The bible of the sub war in the pacific!

[Beery]

Some of the best mods for SH3 came out post-1.4

All of the later mods used lots of stuff the community modded before 1.4. I don't think people who never used RUb realise that both NYGM and GW used a whole bunch of stuff from RUb and other early mods. The SH3 Mod team allowed ANYONE to use the mods we created - no restrictions - because we felt the community benefitted most if we shared the knowledge as widely as possible. That's how mod development got done so fast, and that open attitude played a big part in how NYGM and GW became so good so fast.

I must admit to being a bit taken aback by what seems to be a generally held notion that RUb was somehow a mod of lesser importance in the SH3 mod world. It is a major mod that is as good quality as any, even now. It was the only game in town for the best part of a year (you only have to look at the readme file for RUb to see that prior to SH3 version 1.4 the SH3 Mod Team had already done the majority of the mod work that was ever done on SH3), and as I understand it both NYGM and GW used RUb as their basis and added their authors' tweaks to it. In short, the SH3 Mod team built a very solid foundation for the modding of SH3 - a foundation that later modders relied upon extensively when they created mods that had different focuses than that of RUb.

As for waiting until the devs are done, I agree, but you should understand that RUb always got updated and was ready with a new version within 24 hours of every official patch. The reason I agree with you is that this time I don't want to be working 20+ hour days updating the mod after every official patch.

Anyway, if you use the mod enabler you won't have to worry about official updates forcing you to reinstall the game, and you won't have to delay using mods - all mods install and uninstall flawlessly when using the JoneSoft Generic Mod Enabler.

[Beery]

When people think the sub campaign in the Pacific was a cakewalk, it's like saying normal infantry duty is a cakewalk, because suicide bombers on the other hand have a 100% casualty rate.

That's why I don't like to use words like 'cakewalk' when describing any activity that involves significant risk. A death toll of 22% among Pacific submariners, when compared to the 75 to 80% of German U-boat crews, might seem tame in comparison, but if I was to do an activity that had a 22% death rate I'd enter it with great care and not a little trepidation, and I'd avoid it if I possibly could.

The thing is, players know they can always start over, so there's little downside in a short but eventful campaign. Real life is a lot different.

[Captain_Jack]

If you are looking for an excellent one volume history of the U.S. submarine war which covers all the key points, I highly recommend [Silent Victory]

Hehe, I ordered it from Amazon this morning. :up:


YES!! Silent Victory is a true gem! I'm reading it for a second time now. It is full of useful descriptions of just about every aspect of the US Pacific Sub Campaign. For instance, I just read last night that the largest Japanese Ship sunk solely by deck gun was only 3000 tons. That deck guns were mainly used for sampans and such. Little tidbits like that should be helpful when modding the game.

The appendix also has a wealth of information on individual sub patrols, their tonnage sunk, and other data.... A good resource all in all...:up:

[Beery]

For instance, I just read last night that the largest Japanese Ship sunk solely by deck gun was only 3000 tons. That deck guns were mainly used for sampans and such.

Hehe, I feel a disturbance in the Force - either a "deck gun reload time" discussion is about to develop, or I shouldn't have eaten that corn dog I had for lunch.

[heartc]

[...]The thing is, players know they can always start over, so there's little downside in a short but eventful campaign. Real life is a lot different.

Very true. I try to simulate "fear of death" or something by playing "Dead is Dead" like many others here seem to do and this indeed can make you go ahead with realistic caution.
There are many other simulations (actually, most if not all) where your casualty rate is way below the 80% of the U-Boat campaign. I don't know a flightsim where I would die in 8 out of 10 missions for example, online or offline. The submarine war in the Pacific was a combat operation. And in combat, when there are people out there wishing you ill, and there are bullets flying or explosives going up around you, odds are that you'll die, and the more mistakes you make the higher those odds become, or as the saying goes "the one making the least mistakes will win". The thing in the Atlantic was that later on many U-Boat crews didn't return even when not making any mistakes, except for the one of sailing out at all.

[Forlorn]

When people think the sub campaign in the Pacific was a cakewalk, it's like saying normal infantry duty is a cakewalk, because suicide bombers on the other hand have a 100% casualty rate.

That's why I don't like to use words like 'cakewalk' when describing any activity that involves significant risk. A death toll of 22% among Pacific submariners, when compared to the 75 to 80% of German U-boat crews, might seem tame in comparison, but if I was to do an activity that had a 22% death rate I'd enter it with great care and not a little trepidation, and I'd avoid it if I possibly could..

However even that 22% came from the issue that the boats were used to cover japanese main harbours like Truk which were well defended or they were ordered to attack highly risky areas/ targets (like landing crafts or merchants supporting japanese troops on Guadalcanal). At least til mid 43 merchants were ignored by sub command.

[Beery]

At least til mid 43 merchants were ignored by sub command.

Interesting. Was that official policy? If so we might be able to reduce the renown points (or make them negative) for sinking merchants before that time.

[Bilge_Rat]

At least til mid 43 merchants were ignored by sub command.

Interesting. Was that official policy? If so we might be able to reduce the renown points (or make them negative) for sinking merchants before that time.

Forlorn's statement is incorrect, official policy from dec. 7 1941 was to sink anything that had a japanese flag on it, warship or merchantman.

[Forlorn]

At least til mid 43 merchants were ignored by sub command.

Interesting. Was that official policy? If so we might be able to reduce the renown points (or make them negative) for sinking merchants before that time.

Forlorn's statement is incorrect, official policy from dec. 7 1941 was to sink anything that had a japanese flag on it, warship or merchantman.

That is true. Guys were trained for battles vs battleships only, and there was no concrete doctrine to get actually the most important stuff on that area - supporting merchants - every Navy was pressing for a "final" battle and tried to damage the other Navy. So basically by orders I am wrong - but by what was actually done I am right.

[Tigrone]

During the first 9 months the US was completely on the defensive. Coral Sea and Midway are defensive battles. The next 9 months the US and Australia were locked in a better fight of attrition in New Guinea and the Solomons with Japan. The few subs available were tasked to screen for, harass, and block Japanese fleet operations, which is pretty dangerous stuff close to their main bases and often under enemy air. Like Japan, pre-war US doctrine was for the subs to act in support of the battle fleet.

After that there were enough boats available for the US to go on the offensive and go after the main lines of communications and supply in the enemy's rear areas. The sub force also realized from it's own experience and the German example what subs were really good at doing and how best to use them. Not to mention that they began to get the torpedos to work.

[Bilge_Rat]

At least til mid 43 merchants were ignored by sub command.

Interesting. Was that official policy? If so we might be able to reduce the renown points (or make them negative) for sinking merchants before that time.

Forlorn's statement is incorrect, official policy from dec. 7 1941 was to sink anything that had a japanese flag on it, warship or merchantman.

That is true. Guys were trained for battles vs battleships only, and there was no concrete doctrine to get actually the most important stuff on that area - supporting merchants - every Navy was pressing for a "final" battle and tried to damage the other Navy. So basically by orders I am wrong - but by what was actually done I am right.


I just dont want Beery to go off on a tangent, a ship was a ship and a skipper who sank a merchantman got as much credit as one who sank a warship, it's the ones who came home without a catch which were given a desk job. Right from the start, PH was sending patrols off of Japan and other areas of the pacific to snag merchant traffic.

One mod which would be correct would be to end the career of a player who sinks no ship in two consecutive patrols prior to summer 1944, since that was more or less official practice.

Forlorn is right that due to circumstances, many fleet subs were assigned to indirectly support military operations and attack warships and troop/supply convoys (ie SE Asia in 41-42 and around guadalcanal in 42-43). Its only in 43-44 that enough subs were available to regularly send alot of subs to the prime fishing grounds around Japan and Formosa.

[tater]

I don't think the statement the US was entirely on the defensive is accurate (IMHO).

Even before the April Doolittle Raid the USN was conducting hit and run raids on japanese outposts. Not major offensive action, but not entirely defensive, either. Midway would have been defensive if it had been reactive, but due to codebreaking it was really an offensive action IMO. Nimitz chose to engage the IJN on his own terms. I'd tend to call an ambush "offensive" thinking.

If you define "offensive" as taking land, then yeah, 9 months it is (Guaadalcanal).

[Bilge_Rat]

If you are looking for an excellent one volume history of the U.S. submarine war which covers all the key points, I highly recommend [Silent Victory]

Hehe, I ordered it from Amazon this morning. :up:


you wont regret it, you may never want to go back to the Atlantic!:up:

[Sailor Steve]

At least til mid 43 merchants were ignored by sub command.

Interesting. Was that official policy? If so we might be able to reduce the renown points (or make them negative) for sinking merchants before that time.

Forlorn's statement is incorrect, official policy from dec. 7 1941 was to sink anything that had a japanese flag on it, warship or merchantman.
Also incorrect, to a point. There was a list of priorities, and warships were Number 1. I'll have to look again to see where the merchants landed. I agree, they were to sink anything they could, but on the other hand even Lockwood didn't act like Doenitz: there was no applied anti-merchant campaign with a central commander sending boats en masse to chase known convoys. In fact, for most of the war the separate commands were just that; they didn't even have an established set of operative rules that all commands were to follow.

[Forlorn]

Just reread a bit of a book covering Atlantic and Pazific War. June 25nd 1943 tankers were ordered to be the most important target behind all other military ships by Lockwood. Right before that the monthly rate just got near 65000 BRT for around 40 to 50 boats in their patrol area. :doh: Sorry, can't add more - more than 4 books I can't read at the same time. ;)

[Captain_Jack]

For instance, I just read last night that the largest Japanese Ship sunk solely by deck gun was only 3000 tons. That deck guns were mainly used for sampans and such.

Hehe, I feel a disturbance in the Force - either a "deck gun reload time" discussion is about to develop, or I shouldn't have eaten that corn dog I had for lunch.

Ha Ha!

Another interesting tidbit from the book concerns torpedo usage. This endorsement was attached to one of Morton's Patrol reports by his commander after Morton went on a patrol and decided to use only one torpedo per ship. It ended up being a wasted patrol (unsual for him)

"The decision of the commanding officer to fire single torpedoes, while understandable, is not concurred in. A minimum of two, preferably three, torpdedoes, using a spread, should be fired at any target worthy of torpedo expenditure, taking into consideration the poor performance of the Mark XIV torpedo........Torpedo spreads must be used...."

So....taking these two exerpts into consideration...if I wanted to run my patrol that way and try to simulate a plausable WWII sub patrol outcome i would:

1. Not use my deck gun, unless on small targets, or to finish off cripples
2. Fire two to three torpedo spreads at any enemy ship

That combined with a mod that makes it harder to find contacts would probably result in a realistic patrol result...No more 100,000 Merchant ships sunk on a single patrol!

So...the book is definately a treasure to have! :up:

[Beery]

I just dont want Beery to go off on a tangent

Don't worry. I'm just trying to learn a bit before I go into full info-gathering mode. I have two books coming in tomorrow, so by this time next week I should be less clueless. Anyway I'm not going to make any radical alterations to the game through RFB until I have referenced and cross-referenced a lot of info.

[Beery]

There was a list of priorities, and warships were Number 1. I'll have to look again to see where the merchants landed.

I'll be interested to hear more on this, because if we can adjust renown points gained for sinking vessels based upon these priorities it will go a long way towards getting players to play historically. If the navy wanted subs to support the fleet it would be good to boost the renown gained for sinking Japanese navy targets while reducing the renown gained for destroying merchants. In this way players will tend to seek out military targets - perhaps holding on to torpedoes in the hope of a juicy carrier or battleship.

If there's no incentive to attack military ships it will just be a tonnage war as in the Atlantic - clearly we want to avoid this if SH4 is to have its own separate identity - not to mention the historical accuracy issues that have been raised here. I think we have an opportunity to make the two sims (SH3 and SH4) very different in terms of the experience and the sense of history they give to the player.

Of course all this is moot if the developers have hard-coded the renown points gained for sinking various ship types.

[tater]

Well, the ship cfg look like this:
[Unit]
ClassName=CVHiryu
3DModelFileName=data/Sea/NCV_Hiryu/NCV_Hiryu
UnitType=9
MaxSpeed=34.3
Length=223.3
Width=21.3
Mast=20
Draft=7.5
Displacement=16000
RenownAwarded=900
CrewComplement=400
SurvivalRate=90
SurvivalPercentage=30


So it looks like this is adjustable. Renown award for a sampan is 20, FWIW. Tyohei is 100. Warships are clearly weighted renown wise. A sub-2000 ton DD is worth more than a 5000 ton freighter.

[nimitstexan]

Interesting; I think the Hiryu had more than 400 crewmen . . .

[PeriscopeDepth]

Interesting; I think the Hiryu had more than 400 crewmen . . .

Does that variable even matter for an AI ship? It's something that's pretty abstract as is.

PD

[tater]

All the crew numbers are very low. I assume it might have somethign to do with how many lifeboats/survivors are generated and so is an abstract figure.

tater

[PeriscopeDepth]

When people think the sub campaign in the Pacific was a cakewalk, it's like saying normal infantry duty is a cakewalk, because suicide bombers on the other hand have a 100% casualty rate.

Excellent comparison.

PD

[Bilge_Rat]

I pulled out some raw numbers from silent victory:

1942-there were 350 patrols resulting in 180 ships sunk (725,000 tons), including 2 cruisers and 6 submarines. 7 U.S. subs were lost, 1 in port to an air attack, 3 by grounding, 3 sunk. An average of 8 torpedoes were fired for each sinking.

1943-there were 350 patrols resulting in 335 ships sunk (1.5 million tons), including 1 escort carrier and 2 submarines. 15 subs were lost. An average of 11.7 torpedoes were fired for each sinking.

1944-there were 520 patrols resulting in 603 ships sunk (2.7 million tons), including 1 BB, 7 CV, 2 CA, 7 CL, 30 DD and 7 subs. 19 U.S. subs were lost. An average of 10 torpedoes were fired for each sinking.

No matter how you cut it, the overwhelming majority of ships sunk were merchantmen.

[Beery]

Interesting data. But the numbers can have various interpretations. There are always many more merchant ships on the seas than military ships, so whenever you have unrestricted submarine warfare merchants are always going to be the ships that feature most often in lists of ships sunk.

[Bilge_Rat]

Beery,

Its clear that the US admirals wanted subs to sink warships, throughout the war subs were sent on missions based on Ultra info to intercept IJN warships, in most cases however nothing came of it. The skippers that did manage to sink one did get extra renown but the ones that only sank merchants were not penalized.

In 1942, 15% of sub patrols wers sent to the area of Japan, east China Sea and Formosa, they bagged 45% of the ships sunk that year. Seeing that success, 50% of patrols were sent to that area in 1943.

So they wanted to bag glamorous warships, but they were quite happy to settle for unglamorous Marus.

Regarding specific priorities, AFAIR, there was the one in June 1943 to prioritize tankers. There was also another one in early 1944, to prioritize Destroyers.

[Beery]

Regarding specific priorities, AFAIR, there was the one in June 1943 to prioritize tankers. There was also another one in early 1944, to prioritize Destroyers.

Good to know. Perhaps there's scope there to adjust the messages.txt file to include messages ordering such priorities.

[Banquet]

I pulled out some raw numbers from silent victory:

1944-there were 520 patrols resulting in 603 ships sunk (2.7 million tons), including 1 BB, 7 CV, 2 CA, 7 CL, 30 DD and 7 subs. 19 U.S. subs were lost. An average of 10 torpedoes were fired for each sinking.


Wow, 7 CV's sunk by subs!! Presumably some of these were finished off after air attack?

[Bilge_Rat]

Regarding specific priorities, AFAIR, there was the one in June 1943 to prioritize tankers. There was also another one in early 1944, to prioritize Destroyers.

Good to know. Perhaps there's scope there to adjust the messages.txt file to include messages ordering such priorities.


I have all that info somewhere, I will track it down and report back, sir.

:ahoy:

[Sailor Steve]

I pulled out some raw numbers from silent victory:

1942-there were 350 patrols resulting in 180 ships sunk (725,000 tons), including 2 cruisers and 6 submarines. 7 U.S. subs were lost, 1 in port to an air attack, 3 by grounding, 3 sunk. An average of 8 torpedoes were fired for each sinking.

1943-there were 350 patrols resulting in 335 ships sunk (1.5 million tons), including 1 escort carrier and 2 submarines. 15 subs were lost. An average of 11.7 torpedoes were fired for each sinking.

1944-there were 520 patrols resulting in 603 ships sunk (2.7 million tons), including 1 BB, 7 CV, 2 CA, 7 CL, 30 DD and 7 subs. 19 U.S. subs were lost. An average of 10 torpedoes were fired for each sinking.

No matter how you cut it, the overwhelming majority of ships sunk were merchantmen.
You failed to point out that there was an average of right around 1 ship sunk per patrol.

[tater]

Taiho, Shokaku, Shinano, and Unryo were sunk by subs in 1944.

CVEs Taiyo, Unyo, and Shinyo were also sunk in '44 by subs.

[Banquet]

Thanks Tater :)

[Bilge_Rat]

I pulled out some raw numbers from silent victory:

1942-there were 350 patrols resulting in 180 ships sunk (725,000 tons), including 2 cruisers and 6 submarines. 7 U.S. subs were lost, 1 in port to an air attack, 3 by grounding, 3 sunk. An average of 8 torpedoes were fired for each sinking.

1943-there were 350 patrols resulting in 335 ships sunk (1.5 million tons), including 1 escort carrier and 2 submarines. 15 subs were lost. An average of 11.7 torpedoes were fired for each sinking.

1944-there were 520 patrols resulting in 603 ships sunk (2.7 million tons), including 1 BB, 7 CV, 2 CA, 7 CL, 30 DD and 7 subs. 19 U.S. subs were lost. An average of 10 torpedoes were fired for each sinking.

No matter how you cut it, the overwhelming majority of ships sunk were merchantmen.
You failed to point out that there was an average of right around 1 ship sunk per patrol.

Should'nt there be a smiley in there COB? you are starting to remind me of my boss.

:ahoy:

[Beery]

You failed to point out that there was an average of right around 1 ship sunk per patrol.

Blimey you're right! Well spotted!

[Beery]

I have all that info somewhere, I will track it down and report back, sir.

That would be great! Would such info have been transmitted to subs at sea, or was it the kind of thing that would only be done in port? If in port, then there's bound to be some way of getting the orders into the 'in port' screens.

[Forlorn]

From the profiles of the missions I can say that on an average mission a sub was sent to at least 4 different positions by ULTRA during a single mission. 3 out of 4 were on assumed battleship positions. The rest was merchant convois, however most convois consisted of 2/3 ships. It seems that single movers were never reported to the boats but I guess they were very welcome when they were out of fuel and still had torpedos. ;)

[Iron Budokan]

Another good read with lots of info is 'Silent Running' by by James F Calvert. I downloaded the audio book and it's a great listen with lots of info on the operations of the Jack.

Agreed. I read this a couple of weeks ago. Very well written with strong characterization and excellent descriptive passages and detail about the war. Almost on a par with Iron Coffins. Calvert doesn't hold back, including passages about his extra-marital affair. One of the best retrospectives about the Pacific sub war I've come across.

I highly recommend it. :up: