Career progression starting at Pearl vs. Asiatic?

[treblesum81]

I found this information years ago, but searching hasn't brought it up for one reason or another. I'm currently using TMO + RSRDC and I'm wondering what sort of career progression I can expect if I start at Pearl with a newer boat versus starting at Manila with an older boat. Its been a year since I've started a career out of Manila, and I remember that the first patrol is usually spent trying to chase down the invasion convoys, but beyond that I'm pretty fuzzy. As for pearl, I haven't started a career there in a much longer time (maybe 3 years?), so aside from the first order to run off to Japan, I'm clueless. Thanks for any input.

[Armistead]

Overall, more action starting out of Manila/Asiatic fleet, but as you stated older boats. With RSRD the action is historical, so it will move more south towards Java for the first 4 months of the war. Starting out of Pearl, new boat, harder to find nice groups due to range and where the Jap navy is operating.

[treblesum81]

Overall, more action starting out of Manila/Asiatic fleet, but as you stated older boats. With RSRD the action is historical, so it will move more south towards Java for the first 4 months of the war. Starting out of Pearl, new boat, harder to find nice groups due to range and where the Jap navy is operating.

Will it stay pretty much the same throughout the whole war? Does Pearl home base ever move south / west, or is cross-pacific trekking the norm for 4 years?

[TwoGamers]

You can ask for a transfer

[Armistead]

Will it stay pretty much the same throughout the whole war? Does Pearl home base ever move south / west, or is cross-pacific trekking the norm for 4 years?

You'll get moved to Midway soon after the battle of it, then Pacific Fleet will start moving west about late 43, eventually you'll end up at Guam...late 44 I think.


As stated, you can transfer when it becomes available.

[treblesum81]

Thanks for the info, I'll have to give both a try eventually. Last question: If I start an Asiatic career, I can still upgrade to a newer sub at some point, correct? I think I remember reading that this was the case, but I've never made it far enough in a campaign to get the option.

[magic452]

When working form the Asiatic, it seems to me that if you complete at least 3 objectives each patrol you will get upgrades sooner. Anyway that is what work for me. Early war that is where I prefer to be based.

Magic

[Ruff EL]

i always go out of the asiatic fleet nowadays, well nowadays means since ive installed RSRDC and TMO as you have.....these are amazing missions compared to the vanilla campaign....sorry i cant give any advice on pearl missions, as ive only played from there one time and transfered ASAP to australia

[Armistead]

Thanks for the info, I'll have to give both a try eventually. Last question: If I start an Asiatic career, I can still upgrade to a newer sub at some point, correct? I think I remember reading that this was the case, but I've never made it far enough in a campaign to get the option.

It depends on what type boat you start with. For instance, if you start with an S boat, you may get offered a newer boat sooner, such as a Sargo within a few patrols. If you start with a Sargo, it might take longer before a new boat like the Gato becomes available unless you transfer to Pearl to get it. Simply, you can upgrade to the best sub class the base has available, but it may be 43 until the Asiatic fleet has the Gato class available.

Much depends on your play style, do you want to be where the action is or
will you do your patrol zones. Many ignore patrol zones and go seeking battles, etc. The big action in 42 is in the Solomons.

[treblesum81]

It depends on what type boat you start with. For instance, if you start with an S boat, you may get offered a newer boat sooner, such as a Sargo within a few patrols. If you start with a Sargo, it might take longer before a new boat like the Gato becomes available unless you transfer to Pearl to get it. Simply, you can upgrade to the best sub class the base has available, but it may be 43 until the Asiatic fleet has the Gato class available.

Much depends on your play style, do you want to be where the action is or
will you do your patrol zones. Many ignore patrol zones and go seeking battles, etc. The big action in 42 is in the Solomons.

Maybe I'm a little out of date, but wasn't one of the main purposes of RSRDC to put you where the action is by giving you patrol locations near those points at around those times?

[Armistead]

Maybe I'm a little out of date, but wasn't one of the main purposes of RSRDC to put you where the action is by giving you patrol locations near those points at around those times?

For the most part it tries, but many other factors come into play. Traffic will always spawn at certain dates, so sometimes you can arrive too late or too early too a patrol zone and miss it. The key to patrol zones is to put you in a position where traffic probably come through, so it may be best to hang around after your patrol star greys out. Now, if you take your sweet time getting to the zone, attacking other groups, you may get there too late. The other issue is it's hard to get timing down perfectly depending what day you
leave port.

They're many battles, invasions, etc., that RSRD doesn't clue you in on. Often you'll be sent to shipping lanes, when you could be in a major battles, just up to you to choose.

The only issue with RSRD is once you learn it or study history, you can easily find battles, invasions, etc., course it can take a few years.

[treblesum81]

For the most part it tries, but many other factors come into play. Traffic will always spawn at certain dates, so sometimes you can arrive too late or too early too a patrol zone and miss it. The key to patrol zones is to put you in a position where traffic probably come through, so it may be best to hang around after your patrol star greys out. Now, if you take your sweet time getting to the zone, attacking other groups, you may get there too late. The other issue is it's hard to get timing down perfectly depending what day you
leave port.

They're many battles, invasions, etc., that RSRD doesn't clue you in on. Often you'll be sent to shipping lanes, when you could be in a major battles, just up to you to choose.

The only issue with RSRD is once you learn it or study history, you can easily find battles, invasions, etc., course it can take a few years.

That's advice I've taken in the past with varying degrees of success. Unfortunately, it started making me feel like I was playing the arcade original again and I backed off of it some. I think that's always been one of my biggest gripes with this iteration of the game... Once you've gotten it to be a good sim by putting a megamod and RSRDC in place, you can end up running for days on end (IRL days, not game days) without doing anything unless you insert "god-mode" information in and even then you can still end up doing nothing. In the past, I came up with a little mod to enhance sonar effectiveness so that I could at least rove around on the surface at 512 TC and still get contacts, but even then, the Pacific is huge, and your 20mi spawn radius is too damn small.

[Armistead]

RSRD is a great mod, but with so many fixed parameters, it becomes easy to find the same groups and battles over and over. The stock campaign is silly and unrealistic. TMO alone does make it harder to figure out campaign traffic, as it uses more generics, percentages and loops, but lacks the mass of historic traffic.

I'm surprised someone hasn't created another campaign mod, wouldn't be hard, just time consuming. I think most of us tweak existing mods to our preference.
I've reworked RSRD so much it's hardly noticeable.

[treblesum81]

RSRD is a great mod, but with so many fixed parameters, it becomes easy to find the same groups and battles over and over. The stock campaign is silly and unrealistic. TMO alone does make it harder to figure out campaign traffic, as it uses more generics, percentages and loops, but lacks the mass of historic traffic.

I'm surprised someone hasn't created another campaign mod, wouldn't be hard, just time consuming. I think most of us tweak existing mods to our preference.
I've reworked RSRD so much it's hardly noticeable.

Ever thought about asking Lurker for permission to release your version? I've personally never touched the campaign layers so I wouldn't begin to know what goes into altering them for playability. That being said, one of my favorite mods from SH3 was the radio contacts mod because it allowed you a little extra information without giving you god-mode knowledge of when and where each convoy would be. I've been told in the past that implementing this in SH4 + TMO + RSRDC would require a massive reworking of the campaign layers, so maybe your modifications of RSRDC might be a good intermediary?

[Moonlight]

I'm surprised someone hasn't created another campaign mod, wouldn't be hard, just time consuming. I think most of us tweak existing mods to our preference.
I've reworked RSRD so much it's hardly noticeable.:know:

I haven't got a clue how to mod the campaign layer thingies but you do it seems, perhaps you'd like to give us some info on what you changed. Better still, why don't you give us a copy of them so we can have a bash at them too.:D

[Armistead]

Ever thought about asking Lurker for permission to release your version? I've personally never touched the campaign layers so I wouldn't begin to know what goes into altering them for playability. That being said, one of my favorite mods from SH3 was the radio contacts mod because it allowed you a little extra information without giving you god-mode knowledge of when and where each convoy would be. I've been told in the past that implementing this in SH4 + TMO + RSRDC would require a massive reworking of the campaign layers, so maybe your modifications of RSRDC might be a good intermediary?

No one has seen Lurker for years to get permission and it's been debated many times about reworking RSRD, but many frown and say it would be wrong to mess with his work. It's more than just making a mod to overwrite RSRD, because so many files are changed, you basically have to work and change many files within RSRD itself. SImply, if you made a mod for it, you would be
reloading all the same RSRD files again, which is silly..For instance, RSRD uses easier crew ratings than TMO, so to fix this you basically have to hand edit all the campaign files.

You can implement radio contacts, just two settings within group properties. RSRD does this, but more so during 43 and 44, but probably not as much as was done historically. You can hand edit these the same as crew ratings, easy, just takes time.

I honestly think for more random game play it would be better to mod TMO's campaign. I like history. but I prefer difficulty. Plus TMO is based more off generics, so it's easier to add ships made by others.

[treblesum81]

No one has seen Lurker for years to get permission and it's been debated many times about reworking RSRD, but many frown and say it would be wrong to mess with his work. It's more than just making a mod to overwrite RSRD, because so many files are changed, you basically have to work and change many files within RSRD itself. SImply, if you made a mod for it, you would be
reloading all the same RSRD files again, which is silly..For instance, RSRD uses easier crew ratings than TMO, so to fix this you basically have to hand edit all the campaign files.

You can implement radio contacts, just two settings within group properties. RSRD does this, but more so during 43 and 44, but probably not as much as was done historically. You can hand edit these the same as crew ratings, easy, just takes time.

I honestly think for more random game play it would be better to mod TMO's campaign. I like history. but I prefer difficulty. Plus TMO is based more off generics, so it's easier to add ships made by others.

That's the reason I've never touched the RSRD campaign files: From what little I know, lurker hand edited all of them, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, so implementing a little edit like increasing radio contacts would be hugely time consuming. That was the beauty of that radio contact mod, it was an external mod that would go in and set all of the necessary parameters without messing up the rest of GXW's files so if you made a change and found it suddenly too easy, dialing it back only took a few seconds.

As for the random factor, I think that the main issue is the fact that the pacific campaign is hung on the framework of so many large sea battles. In the atlantic, chasing convoys for the whole war doesn't mean you end up missing out on much since 1) they are all compressed into a much smaller area, leading to much more action and 2) there weren't all that many naval engagements, so there wasn't much to miss out on if you weren't at a certain place at a certain time. I like the idea of a more random war, but because of the size of the pacific and the existence of major battles, I feel like if you push too far in the non-scripted direction, you'll just end up roving around an empty ocean with an itchy trigger finger and nothing to shoot at. I actually think this is why the original game was such a shooting gallery, spending days without something to shoot at is just boring whether you consider this a sim or not, so they upped the targets to the point where you spend your time planning and executing attacks rather than looking for something to attack.

I personally would like to see a "best of both worlds" type of campaign mod that will preserve as much as possible of the historical traffic and naval actions, but also include a way to increase the amount of random convoy traffic to suit individual tastes. I can't possibly be the only person who doesn't want a shooting gallery, but also doesn't want to play a game where a 3 hour stretch of game play is spent doing nothing but hourly sonar dips...

[Armistead]

:hmm2:That's the reason I've never touched the RSRD campaign files: From what little I know, lurker hand edited all of them, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, so implementing a little edit like increasing radio contacts would be hugely time consuming. That was the beauty of that radio contact mod, it was an external mod that would go in and set all of the necessary parameters without messing up the rest of GXW's files so if you made a change and found it suddenly too easy, dialing it back only took a few seconds.

As for the random factor, I think that the main issue is the fact that the pacific campaign is hung on the framework of so many large sea battles. In the atlantic, chasing convoys for the whole war doesn't mean you end up missing out on much since 1) they are all compressed into a much smaller area, leading to much more action and 2) there weren't all that many naval engagements, so there wasn't much to miss out on if you weren't at a certain place at a certain time. I like the idea of a more random war, but because of the size of the pacific and the existence of major battles, I feel like if you push too far in the non-scripted direction, you'll just end up roving around an empty ocean with an itchy trigger finger and nothing to shoot at. I actually think this is why the original game was such a shooting gallery, spending days without something to shoot at is just boring whether you consider this a sim or not, so they upped the targets to the point where you spend your time planning and executing attacks rather than looking for something to attack.

I personally would like to see a "best of both worlds" type of campaign mod that will preserve as much as possible of the historical traffic and naval actions, but also include a way to increase the amount of random convoy traffic to suit individual tastes. I can't possibly be the only person who doesn't want a shooting gallery, but also doesn't want to play a game where a 3 hour stretch of game play is spent doing nothing but hourly sonar dips...

I did spend a lot of time hand editing the crew ratings, cargo, etc in RSRD, but I did it in stages. For one thing 90%, if not all of merchants and capital ships have competent ratings, so I even adjusted a lot of those to vet and elite, simply because they react better, repair faster, ect. I also adjusted ratings of escorts to more vet and tried to have an elite escort in most groups.

Main thing is to leave lurkers files alone and create your own to add traffic with the ME. If you want to change up his work, best to use the batch editor. For instance, if you want to add extra ships like the Nagato, etc., to his existing groups.

I did add many convoys with random factors to try and confuse myself. Main thing that improved game play for me was to add many more sub hunter groups in straits, shipping lanes and around ports. Bad enough to fight a convoy escorts, so when a subhunter elite group joins in, you have a fight on your hands. I also made ports damn near impossible to attack. I have several convoys that may have only one troop transport escorted by 6 elite escorts. Very fun to try to attack.

I agree, historical battles should remain, just need more randomness to convoys, more loops, ect. One thing I like about TMO was Duci took the time to add zig patterns, for the most part convoys zig every 10nms.

I also added what I call China traffic late war. Many convoys late war basically hugged the coast. I have them running in and out of harbors, in between islands and reefs, must attack at night and your forced to attack from one side, on the surface and you have to be back to deeper water by morning. Not to mention I have minefields floating on the surface....

Obvious, I prefer difficultly over perfect history. I've tried to adjust my sensors, env., and traffic to really punish me if I make mistakes. Also, reworked contact ranges, increased escorts hunting times, etc..

My goal was to get my tonnage in line with reality, let's face it, going out and scoring 100K tons per patrol is easy even with TMO/RSRD once you learn the AI and figure where traffic is.

What we need is a group of modders to make another supermod combining and tweaking many of the newer mods out there.

[treblesum81]

:hmm2:

I did spend a lot of time hand editing the crew ratings, cargo, etc in RSRD, but I did it in stages. For one thing 90%, if not all of merchants and capital ships have competent ratings, so I even adjusted a lot of those to vet and elite, simply because they react better, repair faster, ect. I also adjusted ratings of escorts to more vet and tried to have an elite escort in most groups.

Main thing is to leave lurkers files alone and create your own to add traffic with the ME. If you want to change up his work, best to use the batch editor. For instance, if you want to add extra ships like the Nagato, etc., to his existing groups.

I did add many convoys with random factors to try and confuse myself. Main thing that improved game play for me was to add many more sub hunter groups in straits, shipping lanes and around ports. Bad enough to fight a convoy escorts, so when a subhunter elite group joins in, you have a fight on your hands. I also made ports damn near impossible to attack. I have several convoys that may have only one troop transport escorted by 6 elite escorts. Very fun to try to attack.

I agree, historical battles should remain, just need more randomness to convoys, more loops, ect. One thing I like about TMO was Duci took the time to add zig patterns, for the most part convoys zig every 10nms.

I also added what I call China traffic late war. Many convoys late war basically hugged the coast. I have them running in and out of harbors, in between islands and reefs, must attack at night and your forced to attack from one side, on the surface and you have to be back to deeper water by morning. Not to mention I have minefields floating on the surface....

Obvious, I prefer difficultly over perfect history. I've tried to adjust my sensors, env., and traffic to really punish me if I make mistakes. Also, reworked contact ranges, increased escorts hunting times, etc..

My goal was to get my tonnage in line with reality, let's face it, going out and scoring 100K tons per patrol is easy even with TMO/RSRD once you learn the AI and figure where traffic is.

What we need is a group of modders to make another supermod combining and tweaking many of the newer mods out there.

Are there enough modders left to do something like that? It seems that most attempts at something like that (Cold War and Modern Subs being the two most noticeable by me) have just fizzled out over time.

[Armistead]

Are there enough modders left to do something like that? It seems that most attempts at something like that (Cold War and Modern Subs being the two most noticeable by me) have just fizzled out over time.

Plenty here, but don't think anyone has any interest or time.

[msumpsi]

I use RFB/RSRD but i think for these tread is the same. I would recommend you to take a little reading on japanesse centrifugal offensive on wikipedia and you see the main axis of their objectives for first 4 months of the war. Then the action turns to the solomons with japanesse main army force in Rabaul and the naval force at Truk. About the end of 43 the action is around New Guinea and the Bismarck sea in the south and the central pacific towars the marianas. Then in 44 and 45 towards the philipins iwo jima and okinawa. The main supply of oil and raw materials for the japanesse comes from the netherlan east indies, malaya, and borneo towards the home islands.