dynamic campaign?

[nonverba]

hi guys,

so what is this "dynamic campaign" thing?

do my actions influence the war in the pacific? in a bad and/or a good way?

thx

[Rockin Robbins]

No the dynamic campaign means that there is no scripted itinerary of enemy encounters. The ocean is populated much as it would be and you are in charge of which targets are engaged, when and in what manner.

Your actions have no impact on the war as a whole, but in real life, the actions of a single submarine very rarely had a direct effect on the overall war effort. That would be like insisting that the actions of a single Corsair fighter impact events in the war as a whole. It just didn't happen.

Japan was defeated not by individual actions, but by the accumulation of thousands of singular blows inflicted by all the services. It was a coordinated and shared effort with shared credit.

Some mistakes were made in the campaign mode. For instance you can sink the Yamato, then encounter her again in a future engagement. There is no attempt by the game to update the content of the enemy fleet by what you sink, and there are no sinkings that happen by any other entities than you in the game, other than collisions of enemy vessels during an engagement in which you are a participant.

[nonverba]

aha ok thanks

[Carthaginian]

Some mistakes were made in the campaign mode. For instance you can sink the Yamato, then encounter her again in a future engagement. There is no attempt by the game to update the content of the enemy fleet by what you sink, and there are no sinkings that happen by any other entities than you in the game, other than collisions of enemy vessels during an engagement in which you are a participant.

I don't think this is so much a 'mistake' as it is an impossibility.
For instance, on my 2nd war patrol in this campaign, I sank a Kongo class battleship and a Mogami class flight deck cruiser (that didn't exist in 1941). I did this before New Year's Day, 1942. For argument's sake (and to make things interesting) we'll say that I sank the Kirishima as she was 'in the neighborhood.'

Ok, so it's 01JAN42 and Kirishima now rests on the bottom off the coast of Luzon, about 200 nm west of Olongapo. Hiei now sorties alone to Ironbottom Sound, and meets the American forces there without help. Now heavily outnumbered, not only is Hiei sunk as historically but so are half a dozen of the destroyers- the cruisers are free to engage the smaller vessels without having to worry about two heavies. In addition, South Dakota isn't heavily damaged and isn't out of the war for several months... nor is San Fransisco damaged, and as a result Admiral Callaghan lives through the battle.

What happens next?
Did one of those destroyers do something important?
Would Callaghan make a great tactical decision- or error- that would have influenced the war?
How could having the South Dakota available for the next battle in that area changed history?




BTW - there are no other sinkings?
I've had destroyers suddenly sink in calm water while I was submerged. I was assuming it was aircraft. Are the Japanese actually that poor at handling their boats, that they can founder in calm (sea state 2 at most) water?

[nonverba]

cool story Carth, and i wish the campaign was this way. so the endless supply of merchants i sink doesnt do anything to the overall story. I think that is a shame.

and another question do you ever encounter the large scale engagements ? is this possible in stock?

[Rockin Robbins]

Things can happen when vessels are within your detection range. They can be attacked by aircraft, they can shell each other, they can collide and things including damage and sinking can happen from any of these. But outside of sensor range, those are virtual vessels which exist only in theory, as they are randomly generated within the parameters of the underlying campaign files.

In the virtual zone where ships neither live nor die (Schroedinger's cat!) nothing happens. It is truly.....the twilight zone.

However when traffic is materialized within the detection zone, there is no inventory system to decide that a ship has been previously sunk so it will not appear.

No matter how you deal with it, a truly dynamic campaign can't happen. Suppose you were using RSRD, which has historical traffic. But as Carthaginian previously said, there was a two ship convoy and one is previously sunk.

In the real (actually dynamic) world, Japanese commanders would put together another ship to function as the one actually used in the historical engagement and send out this new configuration. Can't do that within the game. If history played out differently, entire battles would not have taken place and entirely different engagements would have happened. How do you make them "historically accurate?" It's a quandry.

You can define "realistic engagements" confined to the vessels actually present in history. or define "operational realism" by letting circumstances define future deployments, which will not conform with historical deployments. And we will have two opposing camps fighting this out until the end of time. What is realism? We can't agree.

[nonverba]

would be cool to do this :

between random mission ( patrols , rec, photo rec etc) at given dates you can participate in a major engagement with your sub , like say cape esperanz. I know they where no subs at that battle but its a game right :).

When you lose the battle, but survive another branch opens and other engagements you can participate in are different. you win there are for example more allied ships who aid you in another engagement


i think this would be cool , sort of like battlestations pacific

[Sailor Steve]

Well, it's supposed to be more sim than game. Your example is the very reason I avoid games like Battlestations Pacific. It's also one of the most hated things about SH5. The idea is to be a sub skipper, not the saviour of the world.

LucasArt's Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain let you do that. Conquering Britain single-handedly in my Bf-109 got old after the second time.

[nonverba]

did you play BF pacific or midway? its not some call of duty going-in-gunsblazing hero story

i admit they dont have the level of detail , and realism like sh III, or other SH. but the feeling that you "matter" in game is fun :)

i feel kinda left out in SH, but as you said its a sim and in real life subs were on there own.

Just when i read "dynamic campaign" my fantasy took over. But hey its a great series nonetheless

[Carthaginian]

cool story Carth, and i wish the campaign was this way. so the endless supply of merchants i sink doesnt do anything to the overall story. I think that is a shame.

and another question do you ever encounter the large scale engagements ? is this possible in stock?


I'm VERY GLAD that it won't happen that way.
I'm here to sink the merchants and occasionally a stray warship. I want to make Otto Kretchmer jealous... I don't want to try and eliminate the Combined Fleet. It doesn't fit within the spirit of the game.

Me and S-38 to contribute to the war effort, not to be Rambo.

To answer your other question- some of the mods like RSRD, TMO and RFB make the larger battles more accurate. I sank a cruiser in the Java invasion fleet.

[Rockin Robbins]

would be cool to do this :

between random mission ( patrols , rec, photo rec etc) at given dates you can participate in a major engagement with your sub , like say cape esperanz. I know they where no subs at that battle but its a game right :).

When you lose the battle, but survive another branch opens and other engagements you can participate in are different. you win there are for example more allied ships who aid you in another engagement


i think this would be cool , sort of like battlestations pacific


Ummmmmmmm. That would be a SCRIPTED campaign, not a dynamic campaign. That is precisely what Silent Hunter 3 avoided and left behind when it came out as an update to Silent Hunter 2, which incorporated a scripted campaign. There's a reason why SH3 sold so well. That is a very large part of it.

[Hylander_1314]

Yep, SHIII, was one of the first ones to come back to the dynamic campaign, as opposed to scripted missions. One of the reasons I stayed away from SHII. And why I liked SHI and played it for years. I still have the CDs for that one, and I bought it back in like 93 or 94.

Scripted missions ruined what could have been some really cool simulators in the latter 90s, when more powerful computers were starting to come out.

[Carthaginian]

RR,

I think the gentleman is wishing for a campaign similar to the one that was in Starfleet Command II (a Star Trek starship command sim based on Star Fleet Battles). The campaign was something that I guess is best called 'Semi-Dynamic'; while there were scripted missions that related to an overarching storyline, there was also the chance to directly influence the campaign. Your performance in a given hex (hex based campaign maps BTW) influenced an 'ownership value' for the area- and you could actively roll up territory as you fought. The stroyline was almost optional- you could play along or you could simply go around blasting anyone who you were at war against.
Of course, it payed almost as much attention to the fleet lists from SFB as SHIV pays to the fleet list of the IJN- you could not only run into ships that didn't ever get built in SFB, you could see more than one of them in the same mission!:har:




Nonverba,

You have something like what you want in SHIV already- watch for the PacFleet News to come over the radio. It will tell you when a major battle is underway. At that point, you have the same choices that a historical sub skipper who might have been 'in the neighborhood' had: 1.) leave your patrol area and support the battle OR 2.) stay in your assigned area and continue with your assigned mission.
Sub skippers were given a lot more latitude in how they interpreted their orders, so I don't think that the brass would get after you too hard for leaving to support a major action- unless you were unsuccessful... because sub skippers weren't supposed to be unsuccessful.

[nonverba]

Hi Carth,

thanks will pay attention to the pacs

[Sailor Steve]

Yep, SHIII, was one of the first ones to come back to the dynamic campaign, as opposed to scripted missions.
I like to call it "career mode", due to the confusion over "dynamic campaign" as exemplified by this very thread. The campaign is random, but not truly dynamic as it doesn't actually change.


One of the reasons I stayed away from SHII. And why I liked SHI and played it for years. I still have the CDs for that one, and I bought it back in like 93 or 94.
As far as subsims are concerned Aces Of The Deep was the first, in 1994. SH1 didn't come out until '96.

For those who weren't around or don't remember, SH3 was due to be released in late 2004. They announced that it would have a scripted campaign similar to SH2's, only more sophisticated and variable. We (the entire community) raised such a stink that they said the game would be delayed six months while they tore out the entire campaign and rewrote it. The promised a "dynamic campaign as good as AOD's. So good, in fact that they next time a new subsim appears people will demand a dynamic campaign as good as SH3's."

They delivered on that promise, and I wish they had remembered that when they made SH5.

[Rockin Robbins]

RR,

I think the gentleman is wishing for a campaign similar to the one that was in Starfleet Command II (a Star Trek starship command sim based on Star Fleet Battles). The campaign was something that I guess is best called 'Semi-Dynamic'; while there were scripted missions that related to an overarching storyline, there was also the chance to directly influence the campaign. Your performance in a given hex (hex based campaign maps BTW) influenced an 'ownership value' for the area- and you could actively roll up territory as you fought. The stroyline was almost optional- you could play along or you could simply go around blasting anyone who you were at war against.

Now that sounds like Spore, a great game until you get near the end when it morphs from an imaginative and challenging game to a dull, monotonous and nearly impossible game. That works when you are in pure imaginative mode.

But when you are playing something with historical roots, people want to show up June 4, 1942 and sink the Kaga before she can launch her planes in the Battle of Midway. In a truly dynamic campaign, the Battle of Midway might not even happen. That would make proponents of a particular brand of "realism" cranky.
http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa293/RockinRobbins13/smileys/argggggg.gif

I think that is just fine because a single submarine would normally not have a bearing on the course of the war as a whole anyway. Sure, if you placed one in the middle of the Japanese fleet just as or before they launched the Pearl Harbor strike, there would be an impact, but then you're going to have to deal with the cranky crowd who would get their shorts in a wringer that all those other battles they studied for years just won't be taking place.

So I think the devs took the best path for the future of the game. A relatively small number of people who never got up in arms kinda wished they had a "truly" dynamic campaign where they could win WWII with a single submarine or at least shape the war if they got lucky. And the much larger group of rivet counters who wanted to participate in historical clashes were happy. There's no right choice here, so the path of least resistance (a good one too) was chosen.

Hey, I've always wondered..... Why the heck didn't the Japanese INVADE Hawaii? Oh, yeah, they waited until AFTER the war! That was a much better invasion plan.:har:

[Capt. Morgan]

would be cool to do this :

between random mission ( patrols , rec, photo rec etc) at given dates you can participate in a major engagement with your sub , like say cape esperanz...

You should probably try out the R.S.R.D. mod. All major sea engagements (and quite a few minor ones) are included at their historic times and locations (although the outcomes of the battles are not historically correct). You and your sub can act as a tourist of the pacific war.

[Hylander_1314]

I like to call it "career mode", due to the confusion over "dynamic campaign" as exemplified by this very thread. The campaign is random, but not truly dynamic as it doesn't actually change.



As far as subsims are concerned Aces Of The Deep was the first, in 1994. SH1 didn't come out until '96.

For those who weren't around or don't remember, SH3 was due to be released in late 2004. They announced that it would have a scripted campaign similar to SH2's, only more sophisticated and variable. We (the entire community) raised such a stink that they said the game would be delayed six months while they tore out the entire campaign and rewrote it. The promised a "dynamic campaign as good as AOD's. So good, in fact that they next time a new subsim appears people will demand a dynamic campaign as good as SH3's."

They delivered on that promise, and I wish they had remembered that when they made SH5.


Yeah, "career mode" is a better less confusing way to put it. I think of it as dynamic, in that no 2 patrols are the same, even from campaign to campaign.

On the sub games, I think, I was thinking of the old Nintendo Silent Service. Although, instead of going to a specific patrol zone, you just toured the pacific on on huge map, and when you came across any enemy ships, the game dropped down to a tactical map, which being a console game, was pretty advanced for its time.

[Sailor Steve]

Silent Service was first, around 1985 I think. :sunny:

[Hylander_1314]

Yeah, it was an older game, but I didn't get into computers unil around 92. My first was a Packard Bell 486DX2. Wow! What a dinosaur these days! I think I had a whopping 4 MBs of ram! :har:

Played the Aces series from Dynamix on that one, and a few others. Those were the days! Type in the commands from the DOS prompt to start the game, making floppy virtual drives (can't remember what they were really called) to help speed up gameplay, the whole bit!

One of the things with SHIII, and SHIV, that I really liked, was being able to mod the depth you could go. Knowing that subs were often taken beyond test depth and survived, used to frustrate me, because if you went passed test depth in the old games, you were done for.

Amazing how far it's all come!

[TorpX]

I think a semi-dynamic campaign would be a good addition to the game, but I can certainly see why they didn't do it. As RR said, many rivet counters would have a fit, and most who play wouldn't miss not having one too much. Crafting a good one would probably be quite a bit of work.

However, I would say the most important purpose of a dynamic, or semi-dynamic campaign would not be so Captain Ablab could single-handedly sink the IJN Combined Fleet, and so recieve the surrender of Tojo's sword on the deck of his fleetboat. No sensible student of WWII, would expect to be able to greatly alter the course of history in this way. The purpose would be so the player did not know, in advance, what was going to happen in the coming months and years.

In SH 4, we know, or can easily find out, where enemy fleets will sail, when bases will fall, when new escorts will make an appearence, what tactics they will use, how well our torpedos will work, and how long we must wait until new and better equiptment becomes available. If we had a semi-dynamic campaign, we would not know any of this. Ideally, this would extend to the reliability/availability of critical equiptment, such as torpedos, boat classes, radar, decoys, and even enemy equiptment and tactics. [Conceivably, the war could be longer/shorter than it was, or even end in IJ victory or stalemate.] There would be a large uncertainty in your career. Will the IJN be escorting more convoys? Will I ever get decent torpedos? This aspect, IMO, is more important than how many Yamatos we get to torpedo.


....but the feeling that you "matter" in game is fun
I agree the feeling in the game can be a little lacking in some ways. If I were developing the next generation of subsim, I would try to make both crew and perhaps more importantly, one's superiors more lifelike. For example, if you had a good patrol, even if you didn't earn a medal, your boss, the admiral would definately let you know he was pleased, and might ask where you would like to go on your next patrol, or maybe send you a case of scotch. You might get first pick of officers for your boat. I know you can pick crew for the boat now, but the crew are almost cardboard cut-outs. There is little to be gained by fussing about them. There should also be some kind of Officer's Club, where notes could be compared with other captains, and significant information gleaned.

[Loudspeaker]

Thanks to all for this interesting explanation on the term "dynamic campaign". I didn't quite understand it either. I can see that these dynamics are necessary, if we are to call this a simulation - and not an arcade game.

[nonverba]

hi guys,

great comment to my questions and TorpX i like your ideas

thx all forsharing your ideas

[Rockin Robbins]

Part of the lure of simulation is asking the question "What if I were there?" In a dynamic campaign, where events are not predictable, you can't ask that question. At least you can't ask the question, "What if I were in a submarine in WWII and I discovered the Japanese fleet about to launch the raid on Pearl Harbor?" or Midway or Truk, or whatever battle you choose.

With SH4/RSRD you can ask those questions. I think that's what most simulation buyers want to do and a truly dynamic, unpredictable campaign wouldn't answer their questions. So it wouldn't interest them.

It would be great to have both options built into a game to cover both concepts of what a dynamic campaign is. Then you could choose one or the other.:D

Actually, we have that now to a limited degree. In the stock game almost no effort is made to historical dispositions of Japanese and friendly vessels. Encounters are random and composition of the encounters is randomly generated. This is the unpredictable war. But it has defects, such as regeneration of sunk vessels in future encounters.

Then RSRD, Run Silent Run Deep campaign mod has historical deployment to a ridiculously meticulous degree during the war, to the extent that we can know what they were. If you want to pop up in the Battle of the Coral Sea you can do so and know what you will encounter. You can ask "What if I were there?" Again, it's not perfect but it's pretty darned good.