Why stop at one addon .

[THE_MASK]

If the sales are good enough then why stop at one addon . What would addon number two be ?

[stabiz]

One where you control one of those huge Japanese subs.

[CCIP]

I think the development is actually heading towards a surface sim title, as I said in another thread.

As for other subs... we've got modders! If you don't believe it, just wait and you'll see :)

[Rockin Robbins]

This sim has ten years of productive life ahead of it if they play their cards right. When computers go to the next level (probably five years would do the trick) they could publish a new realease of SH4 with dynamic reality, containing individual ballast tank control, proper diving behavior with dive plane control, direct input to TDC or radar as well as sonar, emulation of all four sonar types with realistic characteristics depending on hull speed with natural noises in the ocean (fish, whales, surf, wave noise), an in-game whiz wheel which was used by one of the tracking team officers to keep a check on the TDC, realistic AI (where the escort wouldn't automatically ping you just because you have too much aspect at a certain range and depth, they would actually have to look for you). a thermostatically controlled oven...

Add-ons for the next three years could be Dutch Subs, British Subs, Atlantic Futility Add-on (with GWX realism for hardcore simmers), Destroyer Command for both Atlantic and Pacific.

Dare I suggest more mission-oriented (but longer term than most present missions) and more game as opposed to sim versions--get the Ratchet and Clank afficianados a bridge into the sim world.

Then after the souped up version in 5 years, rereleases of all the above add-ons to reflect the new capabilities.

Result: continuous sales, not only of add-ons, but of the original software as more and more people respond to the committment Ubi has for the product. Just like a lot of TV shows needed to be canceled in the first half of their first season but the network said, "We can afford to wait," so they kept it up there and tweaked it until the public responded to the network's committment. It is possible to make a hit game just by insisting that it be so and developing a battle plan for the next ten years to make it happen. It becomes more than a hit game. It becomes a franchise. It becomes a dependable income stream.

It's like running a corporation. Loyalty flows from the top down before it can ever start growing from the bottom up. People have too many options to notice even a tremendous game on release. Only persistence and a viable commercial plan over a number of years makes for success in this oversaturated market, especially in the neglected PC segment.

Maybe it's time to try Linux versions of all of the above in cooperation with Ubuntu and maybe a few other release packages. Even if sales didn't justify the action, think of the free publicity for the game!

SUBSIM is popular, not just because it is so much better than any other naval simulation website (I know SUBSIM actually expands outside the naval realm now), but because Neal Stevens showed the sustained committment over 10 years to make it the go to place all of us can go to with faith that it will be here tomorrow, bigger and better than it is today. Excellence is the product of sustained committment and loyalty. Success is no sprint, it's a marathon.

[Winston Caine]

Nicely said, but a bit utopistic.
I like the plan, but perhaps someone at Ubisoft may find it "too long" or they might invest their money and effort in "other projects". I mean, if they cared for a user-friendly plan like this, we wouldn't need patches, would we?

[jdkbph]

I realize you're asking for speculation on what a future add-on might be, but let me take a crack at the other question first.

Why stop at one? Because one - the addition of German boats to the existing SH4 world - is all the existing code and data will support. This add-on does not appear to involve any significant new modeling or development. From this distance it seems as though the devs are simply adapting what's already there, or importing what they may have left over from SH3, and packaging it up with shiny paper and a pretty ribbon.

The exception seems to be the "strategic element" being introduced. But then, OTOH, the mechanics for directing air and sea assets toward a specific target is already there and in use by the AI. We've all experienced the AI's reaction to our sub being sighted near an enemy TG or air base I'm sure. This may be a case where they've simply added a user interface for those existing functions.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing... lots of money has been made in the past by other publishers employing a similar strategem.

Now keepng the above in mind, I would think that any future add-ons would again attempt to leverage as much of the existing game elements as possible, without duplicating the work that modders can and will be doing with what we've already been given. That would rule out cold war sub scenarios and surface ships as they would both require extensive rewriting of the interfaces, systems modeling and AI, if any real thought is to be given to "doing it right". It would also rule out WWII ETO sub ops as the modders will now have the tools to do that on their own.

That narrows it down to either IJN, RN or Royal Netherlands Navy (KM is it?) WWII sub ops, or WWI in the Northern European waters, western Atlantic, and the Med perhaps. Both of these scenarios would appear to require only minor (relatively speaking) tweaking of the current game system and the addition of new models. I personally would be ecstatic if they were to do the WWI thing. Were I in charge of "what's next" at UBI, I would definitely be keeping an eye on the level of interest in Shells of Fury.

Anyway.... bottom line? I would guess no more add-ons after this one.

JD

[DeepIron]

Nicely said, but a bit utopistic.
I like the plan, but perhaps someone at Ubisoft may find it "too long" or they might invest their money and effort in "other projects". I mean, if they cared for a user-friendly plan like this, we wouldn't need patches, would we?

On the other hand, there is absolutely *nothing* to stop the subsim community from producing their own cutting-edge subsim... I'm sure, that if there was enough interest and project co-ordination, and that the technical skills were available (programming mostly) that this community could produce something worthwhile.

Danger from the Deep http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/ is a ocean sim framework already in motion and could easily be adapted to the PTO. DFTD is Open Source and freely available as long as the mods follow the GPL.

Personally, I'd see the creation of a OpenSource subsim as a solution to a number of the critisims and "wish-lists" from the SH4 community.

[Rockin Robbins]

Nicely said, but a bit utopistic.
I like the plan, but perhaps someone at Ubisoft may find it "too long" or they might invest their money and effort in "other projects". I mean, if they cared for a user-friendly plan like this, we wouldn't need patches, would we?
On the other hand, there is absolutely *nothing* to stop the subsim community from producing their own cutting-edge subsim... I'm sure, that if there was enough interest and project co-ordination, and that the technical skills were available (programming mostly) that this community could produce something worthwhile.

Danger from the Deep http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/ is a ocean sim framework already in motion and could easily be adapted to the PTO. DFTD is Open Source and freely available as long as the mods follow the GPL.

Personally, I'd see the creation of a OpenSource subsim as a solution to a number of the critisims and "wish-lists" from the SH4 community. Cool! I can reply to both of you here.

Patches are a central part of the marketing plan. What is not economically sensible is impossible. The first step to any success is hitting the market before competition does, staking out the territory and giving you an income stream with which to improve and expand your product. No patches equals no game. And what company will survive saying "our product is perfect and we will not service it." That is ludicrous. I suppose open-source projects are never patched?

You will never see an open-source subsim of any remarkable quantity because the open-source process is chaotic. To produce quality over an extended length of time requires a focus only demonstrated by tight control, impartial economic criteria for what works (you can't make people buy), and a way to support those who work for the project. Excellence is not produced in your spare time. It cannot sustain itself for free.

Just install Ubuntu or Kubuntu and check it out. Volunteers are provincial, they quit in a huff with the slightest disagreement, nobody is in charge and there is no focus. Result: a hobby which is interesting but not productive. Commercial <> bad. Socialists are condemned to badly copying real success that comes from voluntarily accepting risk, investing your future without guarantee of success (and with real possibility of failure), and providing something your customers value enough to pay for. Free anything is worth what you pay for it. And it isn't free anyway. Socialism is based on removing responsibility, eliminating risk and asking no personal investment and no possible loss in the event of failure. Somehow we are all supposed to be healthy, secure and prosperous at no cost to anyone! It is a fantasy, based on foolishness. It can only exist in limited practice so long as economically sensible, non-socialist functions support it.

We cannot live in a world we wish existed. We live in a world that behaves as it does without regard for our wishes for "fairness", "cheapness", "justice", lack of poverty, popular sovereignty, or a hundred other wishful psychological constructs. Success comes from seeing through unglazed eyes and operating on the dictates of reality, not wishes. Our task is to seize reality and make it work for the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people.

What is not economically feasible is not possible. Whether we agree or not, whether we like it or not, that is truth. Therefore, what works economically IS the most user-friendly plan.

[Capt Jack Russell]

This sim has ten years of productive life ahead of it if they play their cards right. When computers go to the next level (probably five years would do the trick) they could publish a new realease of SH4 with dynamic reality, containing individual ballast tank control, proper diving behavior with dive plane control, direct input to TDC or radar as well as sonar, emulation of all four sonar types with realistic characteristics depending on hull speed with natural noises in the ocean (fish, whales, surf, wave noise)...


Great! Plus...
Use of pumps
Food/water supply
Mooring lines
Individual engine control
Shore Leave (morale effect)
Show fueling and rearming
More Compartments!! (access to unique tasks in each)
Repair options (mechanical problem solving)
Emergency escape
Give precise Lat/long and time to particpate in Midway/Coral Sea/etc.
Hollywood Damage - Smoke, Fire, Flooding, etc.
Call for a tow (depending on location of course)
More Officer interface (dealing with inept officer or chief)

[Rockin Robbins]

This sim has ten years of productive life ahead of it if they play their cards right. When computers go to the next level (probably five years would do the trick) they could publish a new realease of SH4 with dynamic reality, containing individual ballast tank control, proper diving behavior with dive plane control, direct input to TDC or radar as well as sonar, emulation of all four sonar types with realistic characteristics depending on hull speed with natural noises in the ocean (fish, whales, surf, wave noise)...

Great! Plus...
Use of pumps
Food/water supply
Mooring lines
Individual engine control
Shore Leave (morale effect)
Show fueling and rearming
More Compartments!! (access to unique tasks in each)
Repair options (mechanical problem solving)
Emergency escape
Give precise Lat/long and time to particpate in Midway/Coral Sea/etc.
Hollywood Damage - Smoke, Fire, Flooding, etc.
Call for a tow (depending on location of course)
More Officer interface (dealing with inept officer or chief)
I think you have to be careful that the functions you have in a sim contribute to hunt, stalk, kill. Fook and water supply would just be tedious unless it was just push a "load adequate food and water for the cruise" button. You could make it impossible to leave port without 30 days' food on board. That would stop the double-dippers on a cruise. More than that, like extending into freezer food layout, menu planning and the like would just be tiresome.

I'd have to see mooring lines to be sold on that. However increased use of dramatic cut scenes of boats mooring, torpedoes coming on board, fueling beginning, fueling ending (the whole process takes many hours--you really want to watch that???) would be great!

Same with repair options. Some animation maybe, but captains give orders and the crew does the repair. Having some kind of Laura Croft puzzle to repair a pump would just be silly and degrade the perceived quality of the game.

Call for tow would be OK if someone can establish it was ever done in wartime (or in peace for that matter). I think had it ever become necessary that captain could be skipper of a desk at the end of the tow. But at sea refueling might be researched and talked about.

I like the way SH4 handles compartments better than SH3. It took me awhile to reach that conclusion, but when you're fighting the boat you just took the shortcuts to the compartments you needed in SH3 anyway. SH4 is less cumbersome, so more fun, to fight.

Changes have to be carefully looked at and tested to ensure that they help move the action forward and don't act as quicksand to just snare the captain into a meaningless web of minutia. Many simulations have suffered from this and suffered for it. If the tedious elements are there, there should be way to short-circuit and avoid them if you wish.

A rework of periscope/TDC procedure would be great to make it correspond more carefully with reality. The bearing....mark! Range.....mark! With voices saying the commands when you press the send buttons would add to the realism and allow us to send bearing and range separately.

So many possibilities! We're just scratched the surface of what a sub simulator can do.