making SH4 more realistic and challenging pt 2: harbor massacres

[jhelix70]

How to rack up easy merchant tonnage in SH4? Visit your friendly neighborhood enemy port. Sometimes they only have one or two merchants anchored in them...sometimes a whole bonanza of six or more! And...only one destroyer patrolling outside.

So, sink the destroyer and it becomes a turkey shoot.

It would be nice if the ships responded by trying to raise steam and escape, but I suppose we would hunt them down eventually anyway.

I wish there was an easy way to mod this semi-exploit out. Sub nets, mines, shallow water with only one channel through to the harbor? Sounds like a lot of work to me.

Maybe a subchaser at anchor that would become active after you sink the DD? Or gun emplacements with super visibility to keep you from approaching too close on the surface?

What prevented US subs from doing the same thing in real life? I assume it was a combination of anti-sub nets (or other obstacles such as sunken ships) and the uncertain navigation in the shallow waters of a harbor (too easy to run a submerged sub aground).

[Julius Caesar]

Yeah, I noticed that too: I was low on fuel and still had to sink 10.000 tons of merchants. So I visited a nearby enemy port and sunk all merchants. Destroyer patroling the port didn't even react (he was only 2-4 km from where I was sinking his buddies?!).

[Egan]

Harbours are, on the whole, far too easy to get into full stop. This is especially evident for larger and more important ports. It should be virtually impossible to get into Tokyo harbour, for instance, without real problems.

There are a couple of things, off the top of my head, that could be done to improve things; For assigned objectives, (Harbour recon mission, for instance.) random ship groups could be spawned within that particular mission which are not at dock but have their speed reduced to a very, very small amount so that, for all intents and purposes, they are at anchor but once something happens they are able to get up steam. This would work nicely for harbour defence ships. For the campaign in general this would probably be less effective as it would work better over a limited time span but you never know.

Coastal defences, minefields and subnets are still the best idea I think for stiffening up the ports. It is a lot of work but it really is the best option. Mind you, I would (and I am going too,) reduce the amount of shipping available in a lot of the ports., contrentrate more in convoy - naval hubs and add neutrals. I would also like to scale up the defences in relation to the merchent presence. Eg: I went into a harbour the other day which had at least 12 ships in it, many of them oilers and the bigger marus. Now, surely in real life such a concentration of high value targets is going to be heavilly defended by patrol craft, possibly destroyers and probably aircraft. What did I see? One gunboat and a destroyer at anchor. :-? If I had had more than 4 torps left (and two of them were duds,) I could have done in ten minutes what it would have taken about 5 patrols to achieve in real life.

[AntEater]

How about simply putting in a hell of a lot more mines?
Most WW2 ports were protected by defensive minefields, even those of neutral powers.
The fields mostly had a single gap or two which was swept daily and also protected by antisub measures like nets which were lowered only for entering or exiting vessels.
I sofar have failed to run into a single mine in SH4, but I am not a harbor sneaker anyway.
When looking at the minefield file in SH4, you see that only large scale defensive minefields are there, as well as some minefields blocking straits like the Sunda or Tsugaru strait.
No defensive minefields close to japanese (or american) ports at all. Or are they stored in a different file.
Main problem would be to prevent the patrolling japanese warships from blundering into their own mines. On the other hand, with mines in place one could safely remove those escorts anyway.

[vindex]

I have never run into a single minefield, at least that I'm aware of.

I think the depth of the ports should be reduced. You should not be able to sneak run up to a dock fully submerged. In ports, depth should be no more than 40 feet or so (a few feet below a battleship's keel), which means your conning tower would be sticking out of the water. Maybe you could get in a long shot from outside the port itself, but that's about it. And, of course, there are ships sometimes anchored outside the port, they're fair game.

Don't know if this is easily moddable or not. Probably quite a bit of work.

At present, it's WAY too easy to sneak right into Tokyo or Kobe and start blowing up the Jap fleet.

[Egan]

@Anteater: All the mines should be in those same files. I think there may be a couple of M.F and subnets that spawn within particular objectives as well but as far as the campaign is concerned they should all be in that one file.

@Vindex: Placing the mines with suitable entry dates is the easy part. The harder part, as Anteater points out, is checking and editing the various shipping files so the Ai don't plow into them. It seems the IJN don't like to tell their skippers where all the big exploding mines are...

I don't think changing the depths of the ports are a great idea. The game does a good job on depth data, i think, and many ports should be deep water just like just now. As in real life, the creation of port defences should take into account the natural terrain. Some ports should, simply, be easier to get into as well.....but why would the IJN be keeping 20 oilers at dock there when they know they can't defend it? ;)

[tater]

Yeah, the ports are a joke. I'd add that Tokyo Bay proper was only entered by subs after Japan quit.

One problem with making them appropriately difficult (read: "impossible") to enter is that many of the patrol objective missions will need changing. Make Tokyo bay impossible to enter, and the guy who gets stuck with idiotic missions to drop off spies there every patrol will be dead rather fast if he tries to comply.

[jhelix70]

Modding all the prots would seem like a big job. It seems that there are a lot more small ports in SH4 relative to vanilla SH3.

I agree with the suggestion that for the smallest ports the solution may be to limit the type and number of ships anchored there. Limit it to mostly fishing vessels and the like, maybe the odd merchant, but only rarely anything big. I do like the fact that the ports are alive and have traffic.

For bigger ports, minefields and nets, but only set up if the AI won't run into them. Are sub nets in SH4 like they were in SH3?

[ReallyDedPoet]

Good idea here, will add to the evolving SH4 experience:yep:

RDP

[U-Bones]

I think a more realistic scenario would be to camp in the channels outside the port, and wait for the big fish to swim out...

Something about port raiding and realism leaves an oxymoronic taste in my mouth. Reminds me of camping the ports in SH1... very gamey. I know that it happened some, but most ports were probably death traps for a sub...

[tater]

The reality is that until the japanese belatedly adopted convoys as a standard in 1944, ASW was not done by "escorts" it was a regional thing. A given port would have some pitiful number of 2d rate ships for ASW work, and they would patrol important areas nearby their home port.

I'd expect the home port would see much coming and going by those ASW ships/craft.

[kikn79]

My current mission is to recon and photograph any enemy BBs in the Koror harbor. I am having a little difficulty in sneaking in to photograph (and hopefully blow up) the battleships that are in port as there are six (yes, SIX!!) destroyers seemingly on full alert guarding the entrance. Not wanting to be on eternal patrol just yet, I would like to sneak into the harbor and avoid a fire fight with all the DDs. I don't know if this is ComSubPac's way of offing me or what but it seems nearly impossible.
I was able to sneak in close enough to paint the harbor with radar and it seems there is only one BB in port along with a few merchies. It is going to be one heck of a challenge to get in there.

Chuck

[AntEater]

One thing that needs to be done is actually to replace all those "ports" in the pacific with villages
I strongly suspect our favorite rumanians used current imagery of the pacific as a base for their map. Honiara town, for example, did not exist in 1942.
There could be 1-2 small merchants and maybe lots of stationary sampans off those villages and no protection at all. If somebody has an urge to massacre sampans, he can...
"real" ports in Japan and Truk (which definitely needs to be added) and other territories should be heavily mined.
One other thing is simply to remove those unrealistic photo recons in the inland sea and Tokyo bay. They could be replaced with more recons elsewhere.

[tater]

Actually, the problem with Truk (and every other Atoll) is the lack of a REEF. Truk Lagoon had no "port" even as big as the smallest SH4 port object. It was an anchorage. There were only a few gaps in the reef, and they were not all that much wider than a couple of ship beam widths or maybe ship lengths. Getting inside Truk Lagoon should basically be impossible.

http://www.nps.gov/archive/wapa/indepth/extContent/wapa/paradise/paradise5.jpg
The only possible ways in for a sub, even on the sirface are marked on that pic as a "pass."
We really need "reef" objects.

The

[AntEater]

Would it be possible to create an "invisible" barrier object?

(ok, outrageous avatar gone...)

[FAdmiral]

A "Bungo Pete" guarding every large Japanese harbor. Now that would keep
all the riff-raff out :up:

JIM

[vindex]

I definitely vote for reefs, even if it's just a really shallow area marked on the map. It's just not the Pacific without reefs.

[Julius Caesar]

A "Bungo Pete" guarding every large Japanese harbor. Now that would keep
all the riff-raff out :up:

JIM

this could work!
just in case, make TWO of them per harbor... :arrgh!:

[jhelix70]

So reefs arent modelled? I figured it would at least be in as an area of very shallow water.

I think a more realistic scenario would be to camp in the channels outside the port, and wait for the big fish to swim out...

Have we confirmed that ships actually go in and out? Or do ships appear and disappear in ports/convoys by magic?

[tycho102]

Between sub-nets and shallows, I would have thought that reefs were "modeled". They ain't?


I've always assumed the ease of port sneaks was just due to simulation contstraints of actors (ships and artillery lookouts) and artificial intelligence. There is the little issue of being able to (basically) sink moored ships with little repercussion, provided that you fire torps from as long range as possible.

Ships appear by magic in ports, just outside your detection range.

[U-Bones]

So reefs arent modelled? I figured it would at least be in as an area of very shallow water.

I think a more realistic scenario would be to camp in the channels outside the port, and wait for the big fish to swim out...
Have we confirmed that ships actually go in and out? Or do ships appear and disappear in ports/convoys by magic?

I was speaking to reality, not the game, ie it would be more likely that a skipper would be ordered to patrol an approach or chokepoint than to assault or invade a port...

Usually scripted convoys pop and depop.

[tater]

The shallows are not shallow enough. The surf breaks on the reefs, so even at high tide they should be within a meter or two of the surface. Running aground in game requires actually hitting the shore I think.

My thought was to create some large arc-shaped objects (large meaning MILES (5-10?) long in a gentle curve) and they can have a texture map of reef stuff. If they were made to break the surface, they'd need a "surf-like" outer texture facing the sea at the water line and above so you could spot the reef from the periscope. The objects could be VERY simple. Do a few types to match longer segments of important reefs like Truk, then reuse them throughout the map rotated as needed.

[Plasmoid]

Historically all but the largest of Japanese harbours were shallow.

The Yamato class was specifically designed to be wide rather then deep for this reason.

I have yet to find a harbour shallow enough that a yamato would even need to think twice about charging on in... which kind of sucks.

Its kind of not possible in the game, but docks that were in river deltas should be shallow at the edges with just a small deeper channel that the player actually has to find and follow. That kind of detail would be hard and be even more likely to mess with AI. Also the risk of running aground would be likely without risking a sonar ping or using the external camera.

Some extra anti-sub patrols and maybe even something to make destroyers nearby come back to the port to trap the sub in the harbour would work nice too.

[jhelix70]

I wonder if mines can be set to be detonated by a submerged sub (say 50 ft or so) and not an AI enemy ship? That would make approaching harbors underwater much more hazardous.