The "special abilities" that some crew have?

[Deputy]

Hi all! :)
I hope someone can help me. I didn't find squat in the instruction manual about these abilities. I first discovered they existed in the mod "German Ultra Subs v1.0.
There are buttons on the panel to activate them. They are special abilities some crew members have that are above and beyond normal abilities. In the mod they are only on German crew members. So maybe they came with the 1.5 patch or maybe only the German crew can have them. I dunno.

What I would like to know:

#1 What are the special abilities available? A list of them and what they do would be awesome.
#2 Where in the SH files is the data on who has them?
#3 Are there any mods that can change/alter/add them?

Thanks in advance. Sure wish there was something in the documentation that described this.

Dep

[Rockin Robbins]

You know, I've always HATED special abilities and the other arcade stuff the game developers added to SH4 with U-Boat Missions. They totally forgot that this is a simulation and got totally silly.

Then, not satisfied with ruining aspects of SH4, they doubled down on the silly stuff for SH5.

Personally, when in a campaign, one of my players sprouts special abilities, he's off my crew. As a result I've spent zero time trying to figure out what special abilities exist and how to develop them. I'll go play Borderlands 2 first.

[Col7777]

I would think it would be better if the crew just got better as time went on, gaining experience made them better so to speak.
I said on another thread if someone wants it then it's on their PC and not anyone else's so no harm done.

[MYWolfe]

It's been so long since I've messed with them to remember the files, but several mods use them, but many are not used. Some are activated by being in the right compartment, others have timers, you activate them and they last only so long, such as tweaking the engines for an extra knot of speed. I don't remember the list, but some that come to mind are ..better eyesight, quicker repair times, quicker tube loading, better gunner/aa shooter, faster engines, medic-quicker heal times, etc..

In Trav mod for TMO, I like the crew ratings, more for injured. I changed the settings some, but if a crew member became injured, ..I think he uses like 20%, like if their health becomes 80% they don't work. I think I switched it to about 50%, I used an older version of Trav's mod for TMO, didn't like the last one.

[Deputy]

Well it appears they happen for US crews too. I'd just be happy if I could get my whole crew trained in one normal skill like I could in SH3. :)

Something else I noticed...the US subs all seem kinda inferior to the German subs. Germans have better guns, better torps, and more advanced subs. US subs almost feel like they are from WW1. I mean even the "normal" German subs like the Type IX are far better than the best US versions. I guess it was that way in WW2 too. Just we had more boats than them. Quantity over quality. Not saying US subs are garbage or anything. Just not as good as the German ones.

[Col7777]

As some of you know I only recently returned to SH and I normally play single missions but to be honest I never noticed, do the crew still get fatigue and you have to swap them about?
I remember having to do that and it was a pain, some said it shouldn't be the captain's job to do so it should be automatic, has that changed in v1.5?

[Rockin Robbins]

Well it appears they happen for US crews too. I'd just be happy if I could get my whole crew trained in one normal skill like I could in SH3. :)

Something else I noticed...the US subs all seem kinda inferior to the German subs. Germans have better guns, better torps, and more advanced subs. US subs almost feel like they are from WW1. I mean even the "normal" German subs like the Type IX are far better than the best US versions. I guess it was that way in WW2 too. Just we had more boats than them. Quantity over quality. Not saying US subs are garbage or anything. Just not as good as the German ones.
Actually, the German subs were barely advanced from World War I models and it was the American sub which was a vastly superior machine.

American subs were faster and quieter on the surface and submerged, had greater range, more torpedoes and torpedo tubes, better TDC systems, better sonar, superior diesel/electric systems (especially superior to the type XXI, which was going to be a disaster).

After the war, when the American subs were optimized for underwater speed like the Type XXI, they outperformed the Type XXI in all respects (they had longer range and were faster) and were also very dependable. During the war, the US purposely abandoned the underwater speed optimized design of the S-boats and went for a new and much more effective definition of what a submarine is: a surface raider, which, in case its miserable life depended on it, could submerge for the minimum possible time, then resurface to resume surface raiding duties.

The Americans realized that the much vaunted German ability to dive very deeply was very detrimental to the effectiveness of the submarine as a fighting unit. A hiding submarine might as well be a thousand miles away. It is entirely harmless. Foolproof strategy against U-boats: drive 'em deep where they'll take a long time to get to the surface, killing them if possible. But if you don't kill 'em, just drive away. They're too slow ever to see you again. You win. That's why about a third of U-boats were killed without hitting a single target with even one torpedo. What the Germans were good at did not contribute to the effectiveness of the weapon. It was if their guns were considered superior because of how shiny they were. Useless capability.

The American torpedoes, on the other hand, were exact copies of captured German ones, so faithfully copied that even their DEFECTS were copied. Their explosive power was equal or better. All those great German homing torpedoes? Not one sinking due to them in the entire war. The on paper inferior American Cutie? Several sinkings during the war. Something dreadfully wrong with a simulation that inherently worships German engineering regardless of pitiful results. Das Boot is a clumsily heavy handed anti-war propaganda movie, not a documentary. The German submarines were a waste of the best men and materials the Germans had to offer. They couldn't afford to lose them. They lacked the capability to win their war theater. They guaranteed US entry into the war, along with most of the rest of the world against the Axis.

But the two most important aspects which made American submarines vastly superior to U-boats were crew usability: air conditioning and humanized control layouts that minimized errors and RADAR. Radar completely changed the game, making a marginal utility weapon into something of consequence, which was capable of winning and did win a war theater.

Now, in the game, if Germans have better guns it is because their simulation is badly done. In reality it would take more than a hundred hits to sink a medium sized freighter. The Type IX was slower, carrier fewer torpedoes, had fewer torpedo tubes, lousy crew accomodations, cumbersome and overyly complex control mechanisms--it was a World War I design slightly updated, just like the Type VII.

By the way, the Germans manufactured 1154 U-boats during the war. That means more than 1300 were operational at different times. Only 263 American submarines made patrols in WWII. Germans resoundingly lost the Battle of the Atlantic. American submarines inflicted the majority of Japanese ship losses in the war, resulting directly in the collapse of Japanese ability to aggressively prosecute the war. What does that tell you about the relative quality and efficiency of the submarines and their crews?

[Deputy]

Well I guess the victors get to write the history and interpret it whatever way they want, no offense. I read reports of the Type XXI that was on patrol when the war ended. They were able to totally evade Allied destroyers with no problem.
From the Wiki:
"The design included a huge number of general improvements as well; much higher underwater speed through an improved hull design, greatly improved diving times, power assisted torpedo reloading, and greatly improved crew accommodations.
The design proved enormously influential in the post-war era. Several navies took XXIs on their lists and operated them for decades in various roles, and almost every navy introduced new submarine designs based on them. These include the Soviet Whisky , US Tang and the UK Porpoise, all of which were based on the XXI design to one degree or another. The basic design remains the basis for modern diesel-electric submarines to this day."

My my...if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the Germans should be quite proud.

Also, their Me-262 jet design is still being used by US passenger jets. We brought over former SS Officer Werner von Braun and he got us on the Moon before the Russians, based on his V-2 research. Sorry, but I don't buy into the demonizing of the German war effort. Considering what they had to work with, and the whole world was against them, they did remarkably well. Almost won the dang war.

[Julhelm]

better sonar
That's just not true. The GHG could detect targets out to far greater distance than the JT or WFA were capable of. In fact the Balkon setup was so superior that the USN fitted it with a bearing time recorder and it became the BQR-2 passive set used in all submarines until the Thresher class introduced the spherical array.

[Deputy]

As some of you know I only recently returned to SH and I normally play single missions but to be honest I never noticed, do the crew still get fatigue and you have to swap them about?
I remember having to do that and it was a pain, some said it shouldn't be the captain's job to do so it should be automatic, has that changed in v1.5?

It is done automatically in SH4. They get fatigued and then they switch out with another shift. Pretty cool, actually. :up:

[Rockin Robbins]

Well I guess the victors get to write the history and interpret it whatever way they want, no offense. I read reports of the Type XXI that was on patrol when the war ended. They were able to totally evade Allied destroyers with no problem.
From the Wiki:
"The design included a huge number of general improvements as well; much higher underwater speed through an improved hull design, greatly improved diving times, power assisted torpedo reloading, and greatly improved crew accommodations.
The design proved enormously influential in the post-war era. Several navies took XXIs on their lists and operated them for decades in various roles, and almost every navy introduced new submarine designs based on them. These include the Soviet Whisky , US Tang and the UK Porpoise, all of which were based on the XXI design to one degree or another. The basic design remains the basis for modern diesel-electric submarines to this day."

The type XXI was not the first submarine to be optimized for underwater speed. The American S-boat did that in 1918, THIRTY YEARS before. The concept was consciously abandoned when it made fleet type submarines impossible due to awful surface handling properties. The Type XXI of course had awful surface handling qualities.

The design of the Type XXI was frankly terrible. The unreliability of the diesel/electric mechanism of the boat would have crippled it, leaving many boats stranded in the middle of the Atlantic. I do not exaggerate. I read the Allied assessments of captured Type XXIs from after the war. The whole concept was built upon running diesels while submerged under the grandest blind radar reflector known to man. The Germans simply did not understand how to fight a submarine. They thought hiding was dangerous, and they were right, it was dangerous to THEM. Harmless to the enemy. To radar they were nearly as visible on snorkel as they were on the surface. In the meantime their main battle strategy was to talk on the radio like a bunch of schoolgirls so they could be triangulated and killed, a very large percentage of U-boats sunk before they had ever fired a single torpedo.

Admiral Daniel Gallery's jeep carrier hunter-killer groups would have killed the Type XXI the same way they killed all the other U-boats. Find a U-boat. Draw a circle around the sighting. Cover the circle and wait for the U-boat to pop up. Since the U-boat would do that on a snorkel, broadcasting its position to the radar equipped planes, but entirely blind to the danger, they never knew and never could communicate the cause of their sudden death.

Their crew accommodations, while great compared to their World War I designs the Type VII and Type IX, were great, they were worlds inferior to American boats. An American boat in 1938 had better.

The worship of the immaculate Type XXI is purely the result of them never being in combat, where they would have had their weaknesses exposed. All we're left with is the wishful thinking of the German propaganda machine. Believing it is foolishness.

My my...if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the Germans should be quite proud.

For imitating World War I American hull designs!

Also, their Me-262 jet design is still being used by US passenger jets. We brought over former SS Officer Werner von Braun and he got us on the Moon before the Russians, based on his V-2 research. Sorry, but I don't buy into the demonizing of the German war effort. Considering what they had to work with, and the whole world was against them, they did remarkably well. Almost won the dang war.
Wrong again. It was the British who designed and built the first axial flow jet engines, which actually made passenger jets possible. The Me-262 had one fatal flaw. The motor didn't make enough thrust for good acceleration. Taking way too long to get to speed, the 262's were killed by P-51s and P-47s before they could even get to piston speed. That took a long, long time. They had great top speed, once they finally got there. A jet engine built to the same principles as a Me-262 jet engine would take a runway ten miles long to get a passenger jet in the air.

And the Saturn V had no parts in common with the V-2, any more than a Prius has in common with a Ford Model T. Werner von Braun was a brilliant designer. But the V-2 did not make the Saturn V possible.

And the Germans did NOT almost win the war. They made a dozen fatal mistakes, any one of which would have made victory impossible. One of those mistakes was even considering the use of submarines in the Atlantic, an Allied lake. Every screw, every torpedo, every man, every drop of fuel put in U-boats was wasted effort. U-boats could not ever win the Battle of the Atlantic and were an inappropriate means to Axis war aims: the best weapons the Allies ever had.

This irrational worship of "superior German U-boats" is completely misplaced. The men were superb. But Germany wasted its best resources and best men to make artificial reefs. They were obsessed with undersupplying what they were good at and lavishing their best on what they could not win.

[Deputy]

Giving up on this one. Just not worth the effort. Have a Merry Christmas. But be careful crossing the street with those blinders on. Could be dangerous. :yep:

[Rockin Robbins]

Deputy, you just lack the specific knowledge beyond sweeping general statements to defend your position.

In general, German submarines were designed to perform interesting technical achievements: deep diving, fast dive times and they didn't hesitate to harm the combat effectiveness of their machines to achieve these technical achievements.

U-boats didn't carry enough weapons to justify their long traverse. Fifty U-boats against a thousand ship convoy could hardly make a scratch even if everything worked perfectly.

U-boats could dive deep, becoming entirely harmless. All that was necessary was to force them deep and then move the convoy on its way. Those subs could never be seen again. In the course of the entire war, U-boats sank less than 1% of Allied shipping.

They talked on the radio like schoolgirls in order to still fail to bring enough firepower to the party to have any strategic significance. This ensured the deaths of hundreds of U-boats, many before they ever had a chance to fire a single torpedo outside of a training exercise,

There was almost no part of the German U-boat strategy which was not fatally flawed. As such, the Type XXI, even if it were successful and it would not have been, could not have achieved anything more than being a fancier place for German sailors to die.

The German navy was built for only one purpose: to further the careers of Raeder and Doenitz. It achieved that at a terrible price to the nation.

American submarines, however, were built to carry enough weapons to the point of attack, to have the legs to get there and back with plenty of fuel for maneuvers, to support a crew under great stress with as much comfort as possible and to have the tools to make their torpedoes effective. Americans willingly gave up technical items of no strategic importance, such as the short dive times the Germans were so proud of, the ability to dive to 1000 meters. They purposely abandoned the advanced hull design of the S-boat to make the American submarine fast on the surface, where, with radar the American submarine could search 10 times the surface area a Nazi Sub could in a day. That means ten times the targets developed and attacked per submarine WITHOUT on-shore micromanaging and schoolgirl gossiping on the radio. American submarines and American tactics were built around results, not a list of cool things to make a submarine do. German subs were propaganda weapons first. Americans were silent but deadly. It wasn't until 10 years after the war that their story even started to emerge to the public.

But today, people continue to swallow the ridiculous German propaganda: U-boats were better. Well, they mostly sucked. The U-boat was an entirely inappropriate weapon to achieve Axis victory. It was using a wrench to extract a phillips head screw. It doesn't matter what cool features the wrench has, you'll never move the screw. The men were incredibly good and sacrificed in a foolish strategy that could never succeed.

[Barkerov]

Giving up on this one. Just not worth the effort.

Good plan. Constructing a flawed argument agaist someone who knows what they are talking about when you have no evidence of your own rarely is worth the effort...

RR I have a question for you though. How do you think the US subs would have gone against the allied ASW measures?

[MYWolfe]

‘The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.’
Winston Churchill

[Factor]

How do you think the US subs would have gone against the allied ASW measures?The USS Seawolf (SS-197) didn't evade allied ASW measures successfully....

[propbeanie]

...
RR I have a question for you though. How do you think the US subs would have gone against the allied ASW measures?
In the planning stage, for when FotRS Ultimate is stable, are two mods. One for ATO-style ASW, in IJN possession for use against US Fleet Boats. This will include Hunter / Killer groups based around CVE. I don't know if we can get a US hedge hog or RN squid on an IJN DD, but that'd be cool. If that's not enough, there's a plan for a MAD Hatter mod, with Magnetic Anomoly Detection "simulated", and extra airplanes oh boy. We'll pretend like the IJN thought about convoy escorting ahead of time, and had plenty of DD & DE type vessels for the job... We'll have to make it to where it's easy enough to turn the screws down tighter or looser if the player wants it more or less difficult. Anyway, with that, you'd get an idea of what would have happened. I don't think they would have done quite as well, but, they did have radar... Just be a little more selective in your targetting... and like Factor says, "lady luck" is needed...

[Aktungbby]

http://cdn.historynet.com/wp-content/uploads/image/2015/MHQ/SPRING%202015/600x481xMHQ_Kriegsmarine_Graph.jpg.pagespeed.ic.m8 XTrgaPwS.jpgON numbers alone, Germany's Uboat war never came even close to winning. Unlike the Allies, the Germans were never able to mount a comprehensive blockade of Britain. Nor were they able to focus their effort by targeting the most valuable cargoes, the eastbound traffic carrying war materiel. Instead they were reduced to the slow attrition of a tonnage war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnage_war). To win this, the U-boat arm had to sink 300,000GRT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_register_tonnage) per month in order to overwhelm Britain's shipbuilding capacity and reduce her merchant marine strength.
In only four out of the first 27 months of the war did Germany achieve this target, while after December 1941, when Britain was joined by the U.S. merchant marine and ship yards the target effectively doubled. As a result, the Axis needed to sink 700,000 GRT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_register_tonnage) per month; as the massive expansion of the U.S. shipbuilding industry took effect this target increased still further. The 700,000 ton target was achieved in only one month, November 1942, while after May 1943 average sinkings dropped to less than one tenth of that figure.
By the end of the war, although the U-boat arm had sunk 6,000 ships totaling 21 million GRT, the Allies had built over 38 million tons of new shipping. The ability of the allies to break the losses down with new cargo construction was the strategic element to Doenitz's poor tactics disguised as 'strategy'. Some tech marvels could not make up for the poorer quality crews as the war progressed; after the handful of 'great' U boat aces were gone, many U-boats failed to break even: ie sink more of the allied shipping than their cost to build, train and equip: "money is the sinews of war" and the German maritime strategy, with a essentially a type VII short-range boat was evidence of Doenit'z limited imagination-essentially geared for a coastal siege-war around Great Britain. His early successes only served to delude him into thinking he was on the brink of victory-he was not! During the final six months of 1942, Dönitz received approximately 30 new U-boats every month, though few technological upgrades had been made to them; their lack of radar made it difficult to identify and follow convoys or to attack at night. To Dönitz, the U-boat war continued to be a matter of tactics, not technology. The fact that the Germans built nearly three times as many Type VIIs as Type IXs and continued to produce Type VIIs throughout the war underlines Dönitz’s lack of strategic imagination. The more so after Hitler declared war on the US where the only practical boat was the type IX. Moreover, the new boats masked the fact that raw numbers could not make up for the steady decline in the level of training and experience of U-boat skippers. The commanders of the new boats proved incapable of attacking convoys effectively. Despite moving their boats away from the North Atlantic after the disastrous losses of May 1943, the Germans lost 143 over the rest of the year. In 1944 they would lose 249 boats and in the five months of 1945 another 159; in the last year of the war they were losing close to one U-boat for every two merchantmen they sank. There go the '$inew$' BYY! Nearly 30,000 U-boat sailors would die in pursuing Dönitz’s flawed hope that somehow fanaticism and faith in the führer would lead to success. Throughout the war, the Germans failed to recognize how effectively their opponents were using technology to counteract the U-boat attacks. Part of this was the result of inadequate staffing and analysis, but part was due to Dönitz’s decision to move his boats from one theater to another as the Allies adapted. Seeking the weak link in the Allied system of shipping, the Germans eventually faced a situation when the Allied defenses were strong everywhere. For example: When a large number of escorts were pulled off convoy duty to protect Operation Torch, the landings in North Africa, the Germans again savaged the shipping in the SLOCs. October’s total was 105 ships sunk, 566,939 tons, and in November the U-boats achieved their highest total of the war: 123 ships, 768,732 tons. Then the Atlantic blew up a series of storms that severely limited the ability of the U-boats to operate in December 1942 and January 1943. After which, without making any real changes in their own technological and tactical effectiveness, their U-boats were quite literally sunk. {too many sources to enumerate incl. WIKI}

[Deputy]

Good plan. Constructing a flawed argument agaist someone who knows what they are talking about when you have no evidence of your own rarely is worth the effort...

RR I have a question for you though. How do you think the US subs would have gone against the allied ASW measures?

I posted my sources. All he did was post a wall of words and his OPINION. And you know what they say about opinions. :03:

[Col7777]

Certainly was a 'Wall of Words' I found it hard to read, mainly because I think it was copied and pasted from somewhere and the paragraphs if any were lost.
I found myself reading the same lines over again so in doing so I lost interest then the point didn't come across.
I hate it on forums when someone picks up on an others grammar as I'm no expert my any means but if the above post had been split in to sentences it would have been easier to read and understand, no offence meant. :03:

[Barkerov]

I posted my sources. All he did was post a wall of words and his OPINION. And you know what they say about opinions. :03:

I like how wiki is not just a single source, but sources.:haha: Better yet you took the information that a type XXI was able to "evade" ASW efforts to mean that it was somehow an undetectable superweapon.:har: Not the same thing since the boat attacked exactly no targets. The same marvelous feat could possibly be achieved with a destroyer if it wasn't looking for a fight. The Atlantic is a big ocean...

One thing the Germans were undoubtedly masters of, was propaganda.:up: Your beliefs that they were technologically superior are living proof of just how effective it was and continues to be even to this day.

I hope someone gives you some good submarine history books for Christmas. You will need to do a lot of reading to catch up to Rockin Robins knowledge of the subject.

[Deputy]

I like how wiki is not just a single source, but sources.:haha: Better yet you took the information that a type XXI was able to "evade" ASW efforts to mean that it was somehow an undetectable superweapon.:har: Not the same thing since the boat attacked exactly no targets. The same marvelous feat could possibly be achieved with a destroyer if it wasn't looking for a fight. The Atlantic is a big ocean...

One thing the Germans were undoubtedly masters of, was propaganda.:up: Your beliefs that they were technologically superior are living proof of just how effective it was and continues to be even to this day.

I hope someone gives you some good submarine history books for Christmas. You will need to do a lot of reading to catch up to Rockin Robins knowledge of the subject.


I like how you insert words into people's mouths. Welcome to my ignore list. Didn't think I would need one on this forum, but I guess people like this are everywhere. BTW...the Wiki lists it's sources, which are quite legitimate.

I suppose national and even ethnic/religious bias are on every forum of this type. I find that regrettable. It gets in the way of reality. But people will believe what they want to believe and as I said, the victors get to write and even re-write history. Ah well. :salute:

[Col7777]

Nobody has mentioned the Enigma yet, if they hadn't found that and broke the code it could have been a different story.

[Factor]

....and if your Aunt had balls she would be your Uncle.

[Deputy]

Nobody has mentioned the Enigma yet, if they hadn't found that and broke the code it could have been a different story.

Stop that Col! Nobody wants to hear that reality stuff!!! :haha:

[Rockin Robbins]

‘The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.’
Winston Churchill
Leaders often say things for enemy consumption, like accidentally having a microphone live with Russians in the room when Reagan said "the bombs start falling in five minutes."

We can disregard anything Churchill said for public consumption as speech for effect, not baring his soul. Leaders aren't allowed to bare their souls.

[Barkerov]

I like how you insert words into people's mouths. Welcome to my ignore list. Didn't think I would need one on this forum, but I guess people like this are everywhere. BTW...the Wiki lists it's sources, which are quite legitimate.

I suppose national and even ethnic/religious bias are on every forum of this type. I find that regrettable. It gets in the way of reality. But people will believe what they want to believe and as I said, the victors get to write and even re-write history. Ah well. :salute:

Ignore list achieved. Brilliant

Yes I am extremely biased. Australians are widely regarded as being pro american and anti german. Just ask wiki, they probably have dozens of sources confirming that.

Now that ive seen the light of Wikipedia I now know how silly I was not to bow dow and worship at the altar of the supreme technology of germany, especially their glorious war winning uboats. Good thing we got that enigma machine when we did...:yeah:

[Rockin Robbins]

Good plan. Constructing a flawed argument agaist someone who knows what they are talking about when you have no evidence of your own rarely is worth the effort...

RR I have a question for you though. How do you think the US subs would have gone against the allied ASW measures?
Now THAT's a great question. You notice I said that U-boats were not an appropriate weapon for Germany to use in the war aside from near shore defensive work. I meant that generally. If we could just substitute American submarines for the U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic THEY wouldn't have been appropriate weapons either. They couldn't have won the theater.

Why?

First, the nature of the war against Japan and the war against Britain, while looking similar: islands, lacking in war resources, shipping is their lifeblood, etc, were actually markedly different! The Germans stopped there when they were missing the most important point.

Japan shipped everything on Japanese bottoms. Sink a ship going to Japan you sink a Japanese ship. They're already royally pissed, what are they going to do? Get more pissed? Probably. Tough toenails. Those ships are manufactured in Japan, or at least their replacements must be, so you're in the clear to sink them.

Britain, on the other hand, received their shipping from the world on ships belonging to the US, Canada, Brazil, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru....... and when you sink one of those ships you make a new enemy! Germany might be able to beat up on Britain alone, although that remains in serious doubt, but unrestricted submarine warfare GUARANTEED that many presently uninvolved major nations would declare war against Germany. What odds for Germany beating Britain, the United States, Canada, and all of South and Central America? That's an unwinnable proposition, and the use of submarines guaranteed that situation: Germany against the world. Germany cannot win that matchup in any circumstances. And it does not matter if they had NUCLEAR submarines. (so long as they didn't have the fancy nuclear missiles that tend to come as a package deal with them.)

Then there is the nature of the Atlantic: the Allied Lake. Every inch of surface was under total uncontested control of the Allied navies and air power. There was a gap in the middle until the American jeep carrier hunter killer groups parked in the middle of it. Then it was game over. Find a sub. Draw a circle around the sighting with the maximum diameter before the sub surfaces. Cover the circle. Notch the gun stock cause that's a dead sub. Allied radar could spot a periscope at five miles. A snorkel was more than twice as visible.

As long as the enemy has uncontested control of the water's surface and the air above, plus enough units to leave very few gaps, diesel/electric submarines can't live. The Atlantic was like that. The Pacific was never covered anywhere near that extent. Both the air and surface could be controlled at will by Allied power for most of the war. Subs had a good sprinkling of bases on islands all over the Pacific. US resupplying of subs was not done in an immovable and obvious concrete sub pen but from a ship which could move to the most convenient place for the operations at hand.

All of that doesn't care what kind of diesel/electric submarine is used. No diesel/electric submarines, including US ones fighting for the Axis, could have won the Battle of the Atlantic. In the Pacific, German subs couldn't have won. No radar. Not enough firepower to make a strategic difference. Not enough range (except for the Type IX, which was relatively rare).

Now toss in the foolish policy of micromanaging their boats from shore radio and even without breaking the Enigma, you have a lot of dead U-boats. And when 14 U-boats found a thousand ship convoy, and there were many dozen of those during the war, they were risking their lives for no gain. The crews knew it.

That is why U-boat after U-boat surfaced and surrendered while not badly hurt. It happened so often that Admiral Daniel Gallery actually planned to capture a U-boat and bring it back to the US by making it surface and taking over the boat. It worked first time. They even captured the code books and towed U-505 halfway across the Atlantic to American shores. Let that sink in a little. Planning on German lack of morale and resolve. Success on the first try. The war was over in the middle of the Battle of the Atlantic and U-boat crews knew it.

I contend that the best men and materials Germany had were totally wasted in the submarine war. How many guns, tanks, trucks, bullets, shells, fill in the blank, can you make with the materials saved by not making a single future artificial reef and grave marker? The Germans made over 1,100 U-boats during the war. Each one carried, what?, 60 of the best men in Germany? 66,000 men generously supplied with the best materials of the war would have made a big difference on land, where the Germans were excellent.

They were artificial reefs and fish food where they were sent, and for no gain for Germany.

[Julhelm]

Add to the above the fact the German naval strategy was further hampered by interservice rivalry and misaölocation of resources. The Soviets were cleverer and would figure out that for subs to be effective they need to be supported by surface groups and aircraft.

[Rockin Robbins]

Ignore list achieved. Brilliant

Yes I am extremely biased. Australians are widely regarded as being pro american and anti german. Just ask wiki, they probably have dozens of sources confirming that.

Now that ive seen the light of Wikipedia I now know how silly I was not to bow dow and worship at the altar of the supreme technology of germany, especially their glorious war winning uboats. Good thing we got that enigma machine when we did...:yeah:
Actually the Germans lost the war in 1939. As they ran over the border of Poland, Polish scientists fled to Britain and finished up the final details of how to decipher the enigma machine. They then showed how it was done. Just in case Britain were able to be invaded, they sent a crew to the US and we set up a massively scaled up decoding team. Much of the time we could read the message before its intended recipient.

But two Polish scientists were the beginning of all that, and all the important breakthroughs in breaking the Enigma were worked out in Poland before the Nazi attack. The war was over before it began.

Do I need to say how foolish the Germans were? In a contest with a rock they would have been good to outsmart it one time out of two. Germany made not one fatal mistake but dozens of fatal mistakes in World War II, any one of which guaranteed their defeat. Destiny itself was against them, and I'm really happy about that.

I don't understand German worship as some kind of conquering ubernation. Because they lost the war and we acted as better people than they, Germany is greater now than it ever was during World War II. It is greater than if it had bought several vowels and actually won World War II. Why worship the stupid, fatally flawed Germany of the World Wars? They deserved to lose. They lost. And they are a better people now because they lost.

[Barkerov]

Now THAT's a great question. You notice I said that U-boats were not an appropriate weapon for Germany to use in the war aside from near shore defensive work. I meant that generally. If we could just substitute American submarines for the U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic THEY wouldn't have been appropriate weapons...

Thats essentially the conclusion I have come to as well. I will never understand the way german tech gets put on a pedastool either. It seems to come mostly from people who read a little but never from those who read a lot.

[Col7777]

Yeah, it must be fantastic to be really clever. :doh:

[propbeanie]

triangulate this:
http://uboat.net/allies/technical/hfdf.htm

or maybe this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_direction_finding

[Rockin Robbins]

Yeah, it must be fantastic to be really clever. :doh:
It must be fantastic to think that a complete inability to present your case would carry the day. Facts carry the day and they're on my side. Germany lost because Germany was inferior. And it was not inferior by a little, they were entirely outclassed. Logistics is one area where the Germans didn't have a clue and Americans developed that boring aspect, which wins or loses most conflicts, to a fine art.

Lets take one basic fact. Less than 10% of German army personnel had ever driven a car. They had to be trained from ground zero before they could even drive a truck, much less a tank. Well over 90% of the American military drove cars every day. It was second nature to them. Any American could jump in a truck and drive it away with great skill. In a pinch they could jump in a tank and drive it too. In war, there are casualties. When those left can operate the equipment, you win! Superior training was another factor ensuring Allied victory.

In Japan Yamamoto made a fatal mistake before the war even started. In charge of Japanese pilot training, he made it very difficult to gain admission and stay in the training program, taking pride in training "elite" pilots. They were some of the best in the world. But they were very few. For a very short time they outclassed the US air effort. But as they collected casualties and there was nobody on the bench qualified to get the job done, the Japanese air force became an empty shell--a non-factor in the war. That is why they sacrificed their carrier fleet to try to get to the American invasion fleet at the Philippines. And they failed, even with the sacrifice of losing just about every plane and pilot they could field. In fact, the carriers were already useless. Yamamoto had seen to that in the 1930s.

[Col7777]

Blimey, the Axis were real idiots then, you wouldn't have thought it would take six years in Europe and Eight years in the Pacific to beat them, good job they they weren't very clever. :03:

[Julhelm]

When you are fighting against suicidal fanatics who refuse to even acknowledge the possibility of defeat, when the battles become gruelling block-by-block wars of attrition - yeah, wars drag out for MANY years.

Germany lost already back when it failed to defeat Britain in 1940. The failure of Operation Barbarossa should have further cemented this idea. D-Day was the final nail in the coffin. But because the Nazi leadership could not admit defeat, they had to drag it out until 1945, with untold millions more dying for no good reason other than vanity.

Same thing with Japan. That's why nuking them was the right call.

[Rockin Robbins]

Blimey, the Axis were real idiots then, you wouldn't have thought it would take six years in Europe and Eight years in the Pacific to beat them, good job they they weren't very clever. :03:
Advancing an idea by snide comment is admission that you know you are wrong. Since YOU say your are wrong I don't have to. You are so enlightened that you refuse to take your own side in the discussion.

See, I can do it too, but better.

[Barkerov]

Yeah, it must be fantastic to be really clever. :doh:

:yep: It is.

[Col7777]

:) @ RR, You should be a fish, I dangle a worm and you bite lol.

[Rockin Robbins]

:) @ RR, You should be a fish, I dangle a worm and you bite lol.
You're shootin' blanks my man. You have nothing to say and you say it anyway. This post of yours, for instance, is worth my hitting the report button. You're not on subject and you are taunting. Hope you're outta here, at least for awhile.

Again, those who know they have a losing position quit talking about the subject and start sniping at other people. I've dealt with three year olds and am quite good at handling them.

[Col7777]

OK you best report me then, with reference to your post about most US soldiers could drive and jump in to a truck and even a tank, my dad was in the RAF (not a pilot) but worked on radio communication, I had uncles in the army, they all got medals etc but guess what, none of them could drive either.

Any way I can see you have thrown your dummy out of the pram so I'm out of here, not wasting any more time on you. :salute:

[Jimbuna]

Any way I can see you have thrown your dummy out of the pram so I'm out of here, not wasting any more time on you. :salute:

Nor I on you....stay on topic and argue in an adult fashion if that is your wish but don't resort to taunts.

I thank you for your understanding in advance.

[Barkerov]

Nobody has mentioned the Enigma yet, if they hadn't found that and broke the code it could have been a different story.

I dont mind mentioning it but in doing so I will also consider the breaking of the allied naval codes. The information battle in the battle of the Atlantic improved the ability of both sides in the conduct of their operations in the short term and were about even in terms of length of time over the 6 years of the battle from what I can tell. But this is where RRs point about the Germans chatting openly over the radio becomes important.

One of the stupid things the germans did, was send daily weather reports which were coded but were intercepted and read by the british. But they knew the weather as well, and hfdf helped them find the location of the transmitting craft. This considerably cut down the number of possibilities for codebreaking efforts. The fact that the germans did this throughout the war tells us about how short sighted and overconfident the germans were.

But intelligence alone doesn't sink either ships or uboats, it only tells you roughly where they
will be. Technology is what gets the job done and uboats were greatly inferior because donitz put no effort on that side of things.

The capture of the enigma machines didn't lose the battle of the Atlantic for Germany. It just sped up the process. Nor did B-Dienst's breaking of the allied naval code win the war for the Germans, it only prolonged the conflict which for the Germans was unwinnable for all but a small window at the beginning of the war IF they had enough uboats to start with and a reliable torpedo.

[Deputy]

I find it rather humorous that the people screaming the loudest to "stay on topic", are the very ones who have veered WAY off topic. The topic was "The "special abilities" that some crew have"? Mr. Robbins saw fit to veer off on a tirade about the abilities of German subs and equipment and completely left the original topic behind. He expounded his opinions without anyone asking them.

What I asked for in my original post was:

#1 What are the special abilities available? A list of them and what they do would be awesome.
#2 Where in the SH files is the data on who has them?
#3 Are there any mods that can change/alter/add them?

Thanks in advance. Sure wish there was something in the documentation that described this.
----------------
What I got was a bunch of opinions that have ZERO to do with my original questions. So I would be quite happy if folks WOULD stick to the original topic and keep their opinions to themselves.

Thank you,
Dep :)

[BarracudaUAK]

...
#1 What are the special abilities available? A list of them and what they do would be awesome.
#2 Where in the SH files is the data on who has them?
#3 Are there any mods that can change/alter/add them?

Thanks in advance. Sure wish there was something in the documentation that described this.
----------------
....

Thank you,
Dep :)

The file is fairly easy to decipher as you look through it. The beginning of the file has some comments that help make sense of the 'special abilities' that are in the game.

The file you are looking for is in:

../Silent Hunters Wolves of the Pacific/Data/UPCData/UPCCrewData/
SpecialAbilities.upc


The U-boats have a separate file located at:

../Silent Hunters Wolves of the Pacific/Data/UPCDataGE/UPCCrewData/
SpecialAbilities.upc

The Commander's abilities are located after the crew abilities.

In both of the directories there is also a file named:

CrewMembers.upc

Look under each crewman to see the default special ability. Which should be null.
The entry you are looking for is:

"SpecialAbilities="

Also for your current "career" check out

/SH4/data/cfg/UserPlayerContext/

and

/SH4/data/cfg/UserPlayerContextGE/

Under these the file should be:

CrewMembers.upc

Also:
/SH4/data/cfg/UPCInitial/


As well as your current save game, pick which save game you want, example:

/SH4/data/cfg/SaveGames/00000001/UPCInitial/

And look for the file:

ActiveUserPlayerUnits.upc

If you want to tweak overall, for a new "career", use the file in one of the first two directories I mentioned, for a "career" in progress, use one of the others, depending on which "side" you're playing.

Remember to make backups, and or make it as a mod using JSGME. Avoids trouble later

Apologies for not replying sooner, I've been really busy lately.

Barracuda

[Barkerov]

Something else I noticed...the US subs all seem kinda inferior to the German subs. Germans have better guns, better torps, and more advanced subs. US subs almost feel like they are from WW1. I mean even the "normal" German subs like the Type IX are far better than the best US versions. I guess it was that way in WW2 too. Just we had more boats than them. Quantity over quality. Not saying US subs are garbage or anything. Just not as good as the German ones.

Yes its all our fault it went off topic. What were we thinking?!?!

Please accept our apologies

[Julhelm]

In the context of the game, he is correct. The uboats are much better than the fleet boats. Even the torpedo firecontrol system ends up more powerful because of how the UI is implemented.

[Rockin Robbins]

In the context of the game, he is correct. The uboats are much better than the fleet boats. Even the torpedo firecontrol system ends up more powerful because of how the UI is implemented.
In the concept of the game it's all what you are used to. As I show with the Dick O'Kane procedure, you can execute U-boat style attacks with a submarine perfectly well. Dick O'Kane in Clear the Bridge shows it was done with American submarines. But you cannot execute a conventional attack as American submariners were trained to do with the PK with a U-boat.

With an American submarine, you can set up your attack, submerge to 100', run at high speed to another point, fire torpedoes without being able to raise the scope and you'll hit your target. No U-boat in game or in reality could ever execute an attack that resembled that in any way.

But from a conceptual standpoint, if you learned on a U-boat and refuse or are unable to let go of that paradigm, the submarine TDC will always feel strange. You will always be trying to do things the U-boat way and ignoring the strengths of the American TDC.

Without discarding what you know and learning the new environment as if you knew nothing, you can never appreciate the new environment.

If you are an American and living in Germany you cannot keep filtering everything through the English language, hearing "Guten Tag" and thinking "that means hello." You have to learn to think and even dream in German before you can claim to be able to live there transparently. You're experiencing the American TDC through the filter of a U-boat's. That will always be an invalid understanding, just as guten Tag does not mean hello all the time.

Things deserve to be understood on their own terms and not through the filter of other paradigms.

[Julhelm]

I was referring more to how the uboat interface gives you manual control over almost all settings whereas on the us TDC it is not possible to enter e.g range or bearing manually. Something you could do in SH1.

[Rockin Robbins]

Add to the above the fact the German naval strategy was further hampered by interservice rivalry and misaölocation of resources. The Soviets were cleverer and would figure out that for subs to be effective they need to be supported by surface groups and aircraft.
Interservice rivalry was also a large factor in why the Japanese never made a credible threat against submarines.

[Rockin Robbins]

I was referring more to how the uboat interface gives you manual control over almost all settings whereas on the us TDC it is not possible to enter e.g range or bearing manually. Something you could do in SH1.
I'll agree 100% there. In the real TDC you had a dial, which looked like a mechanical odometer for a car, where you could numerically enter all the parameters, AoB, range, bearing and target speed. Unfortunately, we can only enter target speed and AoB directly. And range and bearing are always a combined input with the American submarine in the game.

That does not hinder a U-boat style attack at all, as long as you are executing a straight shooting attack (gyro angle less than about 20º). If range matters in the solution then you are hampered. And it makes a position keeper attack more problematic.

[BigWalleye]

I'll agree 100% there. In the real TDC you had a dial, which looked like a mechanical odometer for a car, where you could numerically enter all the parameters, AoB, range, bearing and target speed. Unfortunately, we can only enter target speed and AoB directly. And range and bearing are always a combined input with the American submarine in the game.

That does not hinder a U-boat style attack at all, as long as you are executing a straight shooting attack (gyro angle less than about 20º). If range matters in the solution then you are hampered. And it makes a position keeper attack more problematic.

Cap'n Scurvy's OTC mod adds the capability to manually input target range to the TDC. The mod does much more, also, but that one additional dial is a great enhancement by itself.

[Deputy]

THANK YOU Barracuda!!!! That was EXACTLY what I was looking for. I really appreciate it. :salute::up:

[BarracudaUAK]

THANK YOU Barracuda!!!! That was EXACTLY what I was looking for. I really appreciate it. :salute::up:


No problem! Happy to help.:)



...
/SH4/data/cfg/UserPlayerContext/
...
/SH4/data/cfg/UserPlayerContextGE/
...
/SH4/data/cfg/UPCInitial/
...
/SH4/data/cfg/SaveGames/00000001/UPCInitial/
...

Barracuda

I did forget one thing though, The directories I quoted from my post are in "My Documents".


Barracuda

[Deputy]

No problem! Happy to help.:)




I did forget one thing though, The the directories I quoted from my post are in "My Documents".


Barracuda


Got it ;)

[Rockin Robbins]

Those are \my documents\SH4 for the stock game. The three letter name of the directory changes if you're using MultiSH4 and different mod configurations. On my machine I have a \SH4, \TMO, \GFO and \FRS directory for each mod setup.

[Rockin Robbins]

I find it rather humorous that the people screaming the loudest to "stay on topic", are the very ones who have veered WAY off topic. The topic was "The "special abilities" that some crew have"? Mr. Robbins saw fit to veer off on a tirade about the abilities of German subs and equipment and completely left the original topic behind. He expounded his opinions without anyone asking them.

What I asked for in my original post was:

#1 What are the special abilities available? A list of them and what they do would be awesome.
#2 Where in the SH files is the data on who has them?
#3 Are there any mods that can change/alter/add them?

Thank you,
Dep :)

And someone who will remain anonymous also said:
Something else I noticed...the US subs all seem kinda inferior to the German subs. Germans have better guns, better torps, and more advanced subs. US subs almost feel like they are from WW1. I mean even the "normal" German subs like the Type IX are far better than the best US versions. I guess it was that way in WW2 too. Just we had more boats than them. Quantity over quality. Not saying US subs are garbage or anything. Just not as good as the German ones. That opened the discussion for some education which was badly needed. That and other statements like the US won by having many more boats than the Germans, quantity over quality and other similar statements which required correction.

Once a line of reasoning is opened by the OP, followup on that line is in order and the OP loses the right to say "off topic!" We were dead on topic, as you defined it. The wrongness of your and Col's proclamations required detailed and inarguable counters. A few of those, not even half of them, were presented, to show that the U-boat, not the submarine, were the boats only slightly advanced from WWI, the type XXI did not have the capacity to win the Battle of the Atlantic, and American submarines could not have won that battle if they were fought on the German side. All this is interesting stuff because while the German effort was primarily a propaganda effort, publicized breathlessly with outlandish claims of excellence, the American effort was top secret.

You have met the enemy and he is you!:D:D Once you lay something out there, it is open for discussion.

[Deputy]

Wow...can't even post an observation, and that's all it was, on here without an "expert" trying to enforce his opinion about it. Pretty sad. I guess some folks just HAVE to get the last word in. And that WILL be his last word. Another one going on my ignore list. :down:

[Rockin Robbins]

Wow...can't even post an observation, and that's all it was, on here without an "expert" trying to enforce his opinion about it. Pretty sad. I guess some folks just HAVE to get the last word in. And that WILL be his last word. Another one going on my ignore list. :down:
....