[WIP] Overall Campaign Enhancements...

[urfisch]

[TONNAGE]

i havent gone so far, to play the campaign further on. but i read a lot about high tonnage amounts...and their need, to reach the mission goals. i looked into the campaign files and saw tonnage goals in operations drumbeat of "sink 300.000 tons off the american east coast"...

lol...this definitely must be corrected.

also:

[MEDALS]

this is a another problem. you can only get 6 different medals, which is crap. there must be also all steps of the knights cross, etc. a uboat commander was theoretically able to be rewarded with 12 medals! + 3 different types of "wound bagdes"

- uboat war badge
- uboat war badge (with diamonds)
- uboat front clasp bronze
- uboat front clasp silver
- iron cross 2nd class
- iron cross 1st class
- german cross
- knights cross
- knights cross with oak leaves
- knights cross with oak leaves and swords
- knights cross with oak leaves, swords and diamonds
- knights cross with golden oak leaves, swords and diamonds
- wounded badge black
- wounded badge silver
- wounded badge gold

more of these must be included.

[RENOWN]

the renown steps where a problem in all sh versions. also this version has renown values, far from beeing realistic. this must be corrected.

[RANK SYSTEM]

the rank system is also crap and must be corrected.

[RADIO MESSAGES]

sh3 mods with radio messages from all over the war should be imported here, to get some more immersion.

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hopefully i will find enough time to digg into this!!! first steps are done...

;)

[CCIP]

What about traffic? Any thoughts on this yet?

I've not really looked into it very deep so far, but that's one aspect of the campaign I'll probably be interested in working with myself, further down the road.

[Coldcall]

Great news you are looking at the campaign!

Tonnage: Yes its way over the top, almost embarassinly so considering the real tonnage figures accomplished by the best U-boat aces of the war. On average a top u-boat ace sunk no more than about 200k for the whole of the war. And the majority were dead before they even hit a few tens of thousands of tons. I actually feel guilty coming back from a patrol with a 50k -100k tons having been sunk. Its sort of an insult to the real u-boat aces.

Medals: Similar to the above problem with the overt tonnage quotas, one gains medals way too easily. I had my iron cross first class after my second patrol. Again, just silliness and no feeling of real accomplishement.

Radio Messages: YES! I've already offered to write radio messages on a daily/weekly basis which accurately depict news from the war. There should be way more background noise informing the player as to the current state of war across the world making it much more immersive.

So i reckon this game needs something like 500-1000 news messages reporting on the war across 39-43. Im willing to write them as i dont see it too hard work since these will all be real events of which there is a historical record so turning them into small news reports will be easy.

If you seriosuly want to do it let me know, and I'll email you a sample of the kind of radio message a sub commander can expext keeping him informed of the war.

PS: I rather start again because while GWX went some way to achieving this i think it could be done still better for Sh5.

[Coldcall]

Just to add the radio news messages should be somewhat propaganda like making a meal out of axis victories and playing down allied victories. This way the player who perhaps has a keen sense of history can sort of dissassemble what really happened as in victory or loss.

PS: I was also wondering why there needs to be any tonnage quota at all? It makes it very gamey that one must sink x number of tons to complete a campaign. Were the real u-boat fleet given tonnage targets like that?

What would be cool is if one got more orders while at sea. So for instance map contacts appear only after a message from BdU saying that a convoy or task-force has been spotted in such and such area. U-boats by their very nature were an opportunistic type of threat when having discovered a poorly protected convoy.

If Das Boot is an accurate description of how orders were given then it seems that most of the hot tips came while at sea. This would be neat to mimick on Sh5.

[CCIP]

PS: I was also wondering why there needs to be any tonnage quota at all? It makes it very gamey that one must sink x number of tons to complete a campaign. Were the real u-boat fleet given tonnage targets like that?



I would actually sort of agree. From the perspective of the game engine, it makes sense to set strategic quotas to make the progress of the war go either way. But from a simulation point of view, eh... again in Das Boot, the captain is quite derisive of the idea of tonnage quotas or tonnage war in general, reacting rather angrily to U-boat successes being measured in nothing but tonnage, of being perceived as "butchers of the sea". In general, I think any branch of the military is by and large mission-oriented. It'd be very strange for an infantry unit to be given a task of killing 50 Krauts or something, so I don't think this works well on any level. Tonnage and other such statistics are mainly something for the high command to think about - they're a concern of grand strategy, not of tactical command. For a unit commander like this, basing their progress on sheer numbers of enemy destroyed is kind of insulting imho.

In the U-boats' case, they were notorious for being micro-managed by Doenitz. In a way, when choosing our own patrol area, we're already stepping all over Doenitz's shoes. Since we can't really have an intelligent AI overlord managing our strategy, I guess that's the next best thing. But if anything, I think tonnage goals should be reduced and hidden so that when at sea, your main goal is to go and complete your mission as ordered, not catch a quota. That's something more suited to a fishing sim than a submarine sim.

[Coldcall]

CCIP

I think the Das Boot depiction is very accurate re attitude to tonnage quotas (from a human perspective). More respect should be had for the type of ship sunk rather than tonnage value.

I think most u-boat commaders would have more respect for sinking harder protected targets as opposed to lots of easy defencless merchant kills. It would be nice if that was represented in the campaign.

Obviously i'm not knocking the importance of disrupting/sinking an enemies supply lines but from a return on investment cost perspective; a sub taking out an aircraft carrier or major capital ship is of greater significance. Not forgetting the effect on morale by such a victory/loss.

[CCIP]

Well again, a lot of this is a matter of grand strategy. Arguably a sub sinking a loaded tanker had a far bigger impact on the war than a sub sinking a battleship, which was kind of a dinosaur weapon by then. It says a lot that the biggest impact battleships had on the war was as commerce raiders (or commerce-raiders-in-being, really) or in terms of the morale effect of them being sunk. As fleet units, they really mattered fairly little.

The campaign focus should definitely be on sinking merchant traffic; I'm just not sure how best to do that. The dynamic and open-ended nature of the game is kind of something that doesn't leave much option besides this, since noone is there to micromanage the subs based on contact reports and so on.

[Sepp von Ch.]

[MEDALS]

this is a another problem. you can only get 6 different medals, which is crap. there must be also all steps of the knights cross, etc. a uboat commander was theoretically able to be rewarded with 12 medals! + 3 different types of "wound bagdes"

- uboat war badge
- uboat war badge (with diamonds)
- uboat front clasp bronze
- uboat front clasp silver
- iron cross 2nd class
- iron cross 1st class
- german cross
- knights cross
- knights cross with oak leaves
- knights cross with oak leaves and swords
- knights cross with oak leaves, swords and diamonds
- knights cross with golden oak leaves, swords and diamonds
- wounded badge black
- wounded badge silver
- wounded badge gold

more of these must be included.

first steps are done...


Great pity that this has not been corrected and resolved:cry:

[Krauter]

I just wanted to say maybe we should just implement the SH3 version of patrolling (Patrol Grid Square XX)

Also, what about new Flotillas?

[elanaiba]

[MEDALS]

this is a another problem. you can only get 6 different medals, which is crap. there must be also all steps of the knights cross, etc. a uboat commander was theoretically able to be rewarded with 12 medals! + 3 different types of "wound bagdes"

- uboat war badge
- uboat war badge (with diamonds)
- uboat front clasp bronze
- uboat front clasp silver
- iron cross 2nd class
- iron cross 1st class
- german cross
- knights cross
- knights cross with oak leaves
- knights cross with oak leaves and swords
- knights cross with oak leaves, swords and diamonds
- knights cross with golden oak leaves, swords and diamonds
- wounded badge black
- wounded badge silver
- wounded badge gold

more of these must be included.



Beware, some of those medals are kind of "late war", so only make sense if the campaign is extended to '45.

[elanaiba]

Well again, a lot of this is a matter of grand strategy. Arguably a sub sinking a loaded tanker had a far bigger impact on the war than a sub sinking a battleship, which was kind of a dinosaur weapon by then. It says a lot that the biggest impact battleships had on the war was as commerce raiders (or commerce-raiders-in-being, really) or in terms of the morale effect of them being sunk. As fleet units, they really mattered fairly little.

The campaign focus should definitely be on sinking merchant traffic; I'm just not sure how best to do that. The dynamic and open-ended nature of the game is kind of something that doesn't leave much option besides this, since noone is there to micromanage the subs based on contact reports and so on.

Having campaign (not patrol) objectives related to sinking of capital ships is needed (and desired) in order to have the campaign adjust on a strategic / force deployment level if you complete it. Remember, the game has to account for many possible player behaviours - you are free to do what you want and may have chance encounter - and adjust accordingly - dynamic campaign.

For example, you could have a campaign layer with the Tirpitz exiting against Arctic convoys, activated if an objective related to Royal Navy BBs is accomplished. Of course you could have it related to any objective, but I'm just saying this is what makes sense - the Tirpitz didn't really get out much so we have to think in "what if scenarios" if we're talking dynamic campaign.

Modding the campaign for perceived greater focus on merchant tonnage is easy to be done:
-every campaign takes a number of victory points to win
-victory points are gained by completing campaign objectives
-simply make it so tonnage related campaign objectives total enough VPs to win the campaign; you may want to make it so that enough VP are NOT possible without completing tonnage objectives. It's all simple arithmetic to achieve this.


IMHO campaign objectives are ok to contain specific tonnage requirements, because:

a) they are meant to be based on strategic/logistic studies of the current war situation. Doenitz would sometimes say they need to sink 500k tons each month (of course, not 1 boat), there are also calculations on how much supply Rommel would need,etc
b) they give the player some sense of progression from patrol to patrol, otherwise you're too much left in the dark.

PATROL objectives on the other hand can have their description text with no specific "tonnage/ships sunk" requirements without many side effects as long as actual objective is set low enough (1 ship, 1000 tons) so that there are not many players coming back and yelling "cant complete mission X, what did I do wrong?"

[Sepp von Ch.]

Yes, but absence of knights cross with oak leaves
- knights cross with oak leaves and swords
- knights cross with oak leaves, swords and diamonds
- knights cross with golden oak leaves, swords and diamonds in SH5 is absurd.

[Hartmann]

I think that a campaign based in capital ships objectives must be corrected

Have to sink a fixed number of battleships or carriers in the same patrol to complet the targets and continue is absurd.

U-boats sink merchats and warships, but only if they had the opportunity, not as a main objective, except in some cases ( for example save the Bismark )

[THE_MASK]

I think that a campaign based in capital ships objectives must be corrected

Have to sink a fixed number of battleships or carriers in the same patrol to complet the targets and continue is absurd.

U-boats sink merchats and warships, but only if they had the opportunity, not as a main objective, except in some cases ( for example save the Bismark )I dont see the problem , just ignore those objectives if you want.