Fully immersive realistic WW2 naval sim?

[Ruff EL]

Just a thought, but Ive noticed many tweakers on here adding little details like kamikazes and the landing craft for invasions and making the actual fleet engagements of the war a whole lot more realistic, etc etc.

I guess my question is: Is there a game out there that is like silent hunter (IV i like most due to the pacific theatre) but features actual land battles or allows you to control ships other than a sub (ie a surface fleet in an engagement)?

I doubt there is but if we make enough noise (which we already are) maybe we could push ubisoft to expand on this game to add all the mod feeling to another game with actual ground troop landings/battles to watch (hell maybe even control, that'd be awesome).

any thoughts?

[Sailor Steve]

To be "fully immersive" and "realistic" a sim has to have as narrow a focus as possible. While we might find IL2 to be more fun, a truly realistic sim is more along the lines of the F-16 Fighting Falcon series. A realitic simulation of surface naval warfare would have to be devoted to one type of ship, with others included as add-ons. This is why I don't touch any of the "playable surface ships" made as mods for Silent Hunter. They don't include the complete ship or even the essential basics. They're just submarines with different graphics.

[Ruff EL]

bah! thats a defeatist attitude!

Since you dont wanna do it doesnt mean we cant petition a large game developer to do so. I do beleive it is a possibility with resources available to large developers. To say otherwise is to diminish the ability of human ingenuity

[Soviet Creeper]

Could a really large gaming company thing make an epic simulation based on the entire pacific war with true realism? Yes.

Are they going to? Nope. Games like Call of duty bring in way too much monies.


The closest you can get it to buy separate games and switch between then. (for example, Ill be a part of the solomons campain in SH4, and then play through it in IL2)

[Hylander_1314]

To develop such a game, would require a huge force of people. Your target audience isn't big enough to make the venture profitable enough to make such a game.

And with the majority of game sales going to all the things like WII, XBox, PS, and all the other ones out there for the casual gamer who only wishes to blow stuff up, in an arcadish type game, ........... well I think we would all have a better chance of seeing Hades freeze over before a company takes on such a task.

[Soviet Creeper]

I heard that if hades doesnt expand to accomendate all the souls that go there, It would be frozen over for some reason. So you could be saying theres a really good chance of such a game ;)

[WernherVonTrapp]

You could try a game like BattleStations Pacific where you can man ships, planes, subs, etc., but as previously suggested, you won't be able to get down into it on a man to man level. That would take a whole lotta people doin' a whole lotta coding that might become so big in one file, as to be impossible to load onto a PC.:D:salute:

[Daniel Prates]

I agree with Steve. The mods adding surface ships to silent hunter simply don't work.

You cant just add different graphics on a game that was meant to be all about submarines, and expect things to work out... amongst other things, DDs will RAM your battleship, as that is what they are programmed to do with subs... its an idea that sounds great but simply does not work out.

I dont know specificaly what kind of nava simulation you (ruff el) are seeking for, but as far as naval modern fighters go, I like FA-18E SUPER HORNET by Digital Integration. Actually i would like someone to quote me a more realistic modern aircraft simulator than this one. It is old but still unsurpassed, as far as I know.

[Hylander_1314]

Not modern by any standard, but BoB II is a very good simulator for flight. It only covers the summer of 1940 when England stood alone, but seeing huge furballs over London in the last stage of the battle, is just phenominal. The potential is there, to have 1400 aircraft fighting it out over 800 square miles.

Me 109s, Heinkel 111, JU 8s, Do 17s, JU 87s, Me 110s , Hurricanes, and Spitfires, mixing it up over Kent and the Southeast. Watch bombers get damaged, and drop out of formation and make a break for France.

And the other one, that is really starting to look great, is Over Flanders Fields. Again a flight sim, but WWI based. The next upgrade for it, is going to have a lot of improvements.

But those deal with a small part of the overall events that took place in those days. It would be impossible to have every aspect of those events modeled in the game(s). From the ground troops, to the naval aspects on top of the other stuff. It would drive a sane man mad.

Like it was said above, you might not have a computer big enough to handle the entire game.

[Ruff EL]

well if we dont express our desire to see such a game, than there is truly no way of getting it made. Once one developer does end up making this and it latches on to the audiences like us, then we have a fair chance of reviving the genre.

Its all quite possibly a pipe dream, but why not try and petition one....and i dont mean to want to go down to the man on man level of combat (though that would be even more badass), i just mean to have those actions/engagements scripted or modeled at least, as to increase the realism level

[doulos05]

well if we dont express our desire to see such a game, than there is truly no way of getting it made. Once one developer does end up making this and it latches on to the audiences like us, then we have a fair chance of reviving the genre.

Its all quite possibly a pipe dream, but why not try and petition one....and i dont mean to want to go down to the man on man level of combat (though that would be even more badass), i just mean to have those actions/engagements scripted or modeled at least, as to increase the realism level

The problem is that physics and AI choices grow rapidly with complexity as you add more units types. Consider the DDs ramming Battleships issue. As for the physics, to reach a playable abstraction, you have to hide some things beneath the abstraction layer. But the more playable unit types there are, the fewer things you can hide beneath that layer.