WE WILL NEVER HAVE ANOTHER ACES OF THE DEEP

[wg_emevet]

I have been pritty dipressed lately with SHIII. I bought the game a few months ago and thought it had everything. When I bought the game I was like WOOT ANOTHER ACES OF THE DEEP. But unfortunatly after several months I found that lack of convoys, not many radio messages (aces of the deep had were you can send contacts in and get a wolfpack also you could radio a sos if needed and a supply or repairs), the resuply in the middle of the sea (If ya run out of fuel your screwed in SHIII), able to abandon ship and being picked up or become a prisoner, and the great wolf packs that would lure away the escorts and tell you when to move in. These all are aspects I miss about Aces of the deep. I love the graphics and the new features such as fireing from the guns or the detailed harbors in SHIII but there will never be an Aces of the deep.

I have tried RUB1.44 but found that when using this engin a deck gun takes 2 min to reload. Historical facts state that it took 2 min to man but less than 30 sec to reload. Also when I used this engin I noticed no capital or merchant ships in harbors . I like the game but I am afraid there will never be the days I had when I was a kid and played Aces of the Deep with my dad. I will always remember the game in a way that it really got me into suberines and the only way my father and I spend time. Thanks to all the modders out there trying to make the game fun and enhanced but we will never have will never be a Aces of the Deep.


If a computer company reads this to make a U-boat game please play aces of the deep and SHIII and put them into 1.

[rolfatle]

2 that. And pleas give us some kind of attachment 2 our crew like the pub in AOd, that really made my game. Make it in 3d with some background information etc etc.... since SH3 got crew and all that why not give them some history/background, new assignments osv, whould have been real nice.

[The Avon Lady]

I have been pritty dipressed lately with SHIII. I bought the game a few months ago and thought it had everything. When I bought the game I was like WOOT ANOTHER ACES OF THE DEEP.
I've never played AOD but I received the original game's manual and map as a gift. Nevertheless.............
But unfortunatly after several months I found that lack of convoys,
I'm running RUb and the latest Improved Convoys mod. No such problem here.

Furthermore, way before I was using either of those mods, I had sufficient convoy contact and reports.

Are you using the game's map to travel in the area of known convoy routes? Do you put your hydrophones to good use?
not many radio messages
I used to have the Radio Messages mod installed but I stopped using it, as my game is set to drop down to 1x TC when a message comes in.

But if you're playing at 1x TC anyway, why don't you just install the mod? The messages will not really be relevant but they'll add atmosphere you might feel is missing.
(aces of the deep had were you can send contacts in
This can be done in SH3. Click on your radio operator's reports icon.
and get a wolfpack
OK. This is missing.
also you could radio a sos if needed and a supply or repairs), the resuply in the middle of the sea
The Milkcow Mod exists and has been incorporated in the latest version of Rubini's Harbor Mod.
(If ya run out of fuel your screwed in SHIII),
You can surface and select RETURN TO BASE. No, not as realistic but not a killer, either.
able to abandon ship and being picked up or become a prisoner, and the great wolf packs that would lure away the escorts and tell you when to move in. These all are aspects I miss about Aces of the deep.
Admittedly, those would be nice, though I assume that after abandoning ship and heading for POW camp, AOD offered no ESCAPE PRISON options. So that's pretty irrelevant. A captain should go down with his ship anyway, someone always used to say. :smug:
I love the graphics and the new features such as fireing from the guns or the detailed harbors in SHIII but there will never be an Aces of the deep.
I cannot comment but obviously you wax nostalgic.
I have tried RUB1.44 but found that when using this engin a deck gun takes 2 min to reload. Historical facts state that it took 2 min to man but less than 30 sec to reload.[quote]
There are a million and one ways to restore or customize this RUb setting. One of the easiest is via the latest version of the SH3 Commander utility.
[quote]Also when I used this engin I noticed no capital or merchant ships in harbors .
Again, you desperately need the Harbor Traffic Mod. :yep:
I like the game but I am afraid there will never be the days I had when I was a kid and played Aces of the Deep with my dad. I will always remember the game in a way that it really got me into suberines and the only way my father and I spend time.
Now there's something no mod can make up for. ;)

[kiwi_2005]

Yes we will have a Aces of the Deep, its now called Silent Hunter 3!

[FERdeBOER]

I'm agree with emevet, sometimes I thing that just the game (AOD) with actual graphics would be and outsanding game. The same with SHI.

Despite that, all games when we were childs will be better. No game will be better than "the great escape" or "maniac Mansion".

I think that SHIII is, at least (so many years waiting), as good as AOD was in his time. With differences, can be improved, but is GREAT. :up:

[wg_emevet]

Dude these are mods, meaning no matter what ya do there will be a day when the mod creator will no longer wish to make the updated mods. I feel the game should have came with these things to begin with not just a few patches and then leave us in the middle of the atlantic. No matter what you mod on this game you will never have another aces of the deep

[Nightowl]

If I remember right, AOD did at times allow you to Escape from Prison Camp and you were allowed to resume your career. Am I right on this Guys? (It's been a long time since playing AOD) :hmm: -Nightowl

[Heffalump]

I liked the sound better in AOD. It did a better job at conveying what was going on around me.

I also had more dramatic moments in AOD. In SHIII a typical convoy attack results in me either getting away undetected (vast majority of attacks), or getting detected and killed relatively quick. I don't suffer the same long, undersea bombardments that made AOD so dramatic for me.

That said, SHIII has a lot of plusses as well. The graphics, the manual targeting, so much modding potential...

[Hitman]

This is an old discussion....we have been trough this many times :)

Each game has its strengths, both have been revolutionary in their time, and each one has its drawbacks and problems....

If you let aside the graphics engine (This would not be a fair comparison, obviously), what you have left is a matter of personal preferences. I for one would prefer a good wolfpacking system like AOD had, instead of a 3D crew like SH3 has, but this is something personal.

I recognize that with many of the mods that the talented community has worked out, this game gives me now almost as much inmersion as AOD gave me (Except for the damned 3d crew.....I really can't feel like being aboard a real sub when I see those artificial looking cyborgs, same as in Medal of Honor and other shooters), BUT only when I play in late war campaigns with a long range Type IX and play "Lone wolf" as it historically was done.

The lack of wolfpacks is for me a major drawback in SH3, and can only be solved with a good sub AI. Let us hope someone finds out how to crack and open the AI files, and we will possibly be able to talk then about a game that matches and supercedes AODs gameplay.

:up:

[Beery]

The one thing AOD had as an advantage over SH3 were the wolfpacks. HOWEVER, wolfpacks in AOD were very unrealistic. In real life wolfpacks set off from their base together and stayed together for the entire patrol (you couldn't 'radio in' for a wolfpack). Wolfpacks also had very rigid rules regarding the positioning of each boat in a line of boats, and you'd have to stay in that position for perhaps weeks until one of the boats established contact with a convoy.

In short, AOD's wolfpacks were nothing like the reality, and any game that achieved a realistic wolfpack feature would be hated by many players due to the movement restrictions and other gameplay issues.

[SubChief]

I dont think they left their bases together as a group of uboats, that wouldnt be very smart in case of attacks. When the wolfpack tactics was introduced several uboats were ordered to patrol more or less the same area. When one of them spotted a convoy a message was sent to the others, and those up to 10-12 hrs away at maximum speed rushed to the scene. The boat in contact with the convoy followed it until the others arrived, and then they planned an attack together. Each boat got its own target, and the planning was also important to avoid running in front of each others torpedoes.

[Beery]

True. But they did stay together for the vast majority of the patrol. Hardly what happened in AoD.

[SubChief]

Yes that happened in the beginning, after a wolfpack attack they continued to stay together. But Dönitz didnt like the idea of a large number of uboats patroling a very small area, that way many convoys could escape. They were sent up to 12 hrs between each other, which means any of them could reach the other uboats within this period of time. This way a much larger area was covered.

[Beery]

Yes that happened in the beginning, after a wolfpack attack they continued to stay together. But Dönitz didnt like the idea of a large number of uboats patroling a very small area, that way many convoys could escape. They were sent up to 12 hrs between each other, which means any of them could reach the other uboats within this period of time. This way a much larger area was covered.

I don't mean they stayed close together. Often the line covered hundreds of miles. My point was that they had to stay on station for days, sometimes weeks. They certainly did not 'radio for backup' when in contact with a convoy as they did in AoD.

[CptGrayWolf]

Avon lady you never played AOD, believe me, the author of this thread is right.
There was something extremely immersive about AOD. I'm not sure exactly what it was, probably the radio messages ( that were relevant! ) had a lot to do with it.
Sometimes I dream that I walk into a store a see a shiny box that says
Aces Of The Deep II...

oh and SHIII still rocks :rock:

[ReM]

Despite that, all games when we were childs will be better.

That says it all!

There are a lot of old games we all loved to play.......and no newer version, how good it may be, will ever give the same excitement en sleepless nights that the older games did......it's not that the new games aren't good; it's just that we've been spoiled !
(and gotten older :hulk: )

[kholemann]

smoke on the horizon kaptain!

[Stiebler]

I think it is a little premature to say that AOD will *never* be replaced. Forever is a long time.

However, it is certainly true that AOD was a ground-breaking program that managed to get the simulation model pretty much accurate at the first attempt. By the time of the second patch for the original DOS version, all planned features were present. It is a sobering thought that no submarine simulation since has matched AOD's accuracy. The key weaknesses were its terrible instability once an aircraft carrier came within computational range of the U-boat, and its weak (by modern standards) graphics. The WIN-95 version appeared to be even less stable.

Ubisoft's real problem with Silent Hunter 3 was their belief that adding
i) crew management and
ii) animated crew members
to the older, mission-based SH2 would make a more desirable game. The programmers realised too late that these 'big ideas' for improvement were not actually wanted by most players, who instead wanted random missions in a war-time career. I don't even look at the crew members any more (nor at the beautifully-detailed ports), and I hate the crew management which should be handled automatically (as AOD did). Instead, the programmers had to spend many further months in adding the career options, delaying the game, and, it is widely believed, hadn't finished all the necessary features before the release date arrived. SH2, incidentally, also had great graphics but poor realism (for example your periscope being detected by radar in the instant you raised it, while the enormous schnorchel was never detected by radar or by sight at all).

Evidently like others in this forum, I still miss the old tingle felt when the AOD crew announced "Smoke on the horizon, captain!". However, to look to the positive side: SH3 is available now, once modded it approaches AOD for accuracy, the graphics are better and it is much, much more stable than AOD. In fact, it's a great simulation! Hats off to the Romanian programmers about sums it up. When are they going to finish the job?

[Hitman]

I dont think they left their bases together as a group of uboats, that wouldnt be very smart in case of attacks. When the wolfpack tactics was introduced several uboats were ordered to patrol more or less the same area. When one of them spotted a convoy a message was sent to the others, and those up to 10-12 hrs away at maximum speed rushed to the scene. The boat in contact with the convoy followed it until the others arrived, and then they planned an attack together. Each boat got its own target, and the planning was also important to avoid running in front of each others torpedoes.

More or less, yes, but Beery is right also. Wolfpacks were set as predetermined lines with U-boots separated by about 100 km maximum (Sensors maximum area) and some U-boots left the pack if they had exhausted their fuel, and some new ones were told to join the pack, but in all the pack simply patrolled until one of the members spotted a convoy and was told by BdU to shadow it until the other U-Boots of the pack that BdU specifically picked because of their availability were called in (Bdu not always called all U-boots, f.e. a U-boot high on fuel but with no torpedo was simply told to hold position or fill the gap left by another U-boot who joined the attack, etc.)

In all, wolfpack operations looked much like a board game when viewed from BdU's headquarter at Kernevel, France. BdU directed the pack and decided which submarine should do what, even where to head for interception sometimes. The only thing the U-Boot commander really did under his own responsability was the final approach and attack, and even sometimes BdU did hold some of them until two or three other Boots finsihed their attack, to ensure maximum efficiency in confusing the escort ring.

For the U-Boots, wolfpack operations looked much like fleet operations for surface vessels, because essentially they were told what and when to do anything.

When an operation ended, BdU also decided, based on the reports all U-Boots sent about their status, which ones stayed, which ones returned and even if some were to refuel at sea and join another pack. It was a complex decision, based on the amount of supplies available, the submarines that were heading for an area and might form a new pack, the ones that were still available, and even intel reports and the guessing game about what the allies would do now that one of their convoys had been attacked at a certain location....¿Send the next through the same area...north...south of that?

Aces of the Deep simulated some aspects of that, and it did a good job altogether, but yes it was not ultimately realistic....but it was very enjoyable!!

My personal choice RE SH3 has been to grab a long range IX Boat and play lone wolf in mid-late war campaigns, or a Type VII in very early or late war ones, because that is very realistic. Unfortunately, anything between 1940 and 1943 means wolfpack operations if you use a type VII, so I avoid that. A good solution to play realistic careers is to stick to the Type II and VII until 1940 (Or later if you go to the Mediterranean) and go for the Type IX in 1941-1943, then return to a Type VII if you want.

Happy hunting :arrgh!:

[TDK1044]

All the DEVS need to do for SH4 is replicate AOD with 2006 graphics and a few touches from SH3. Perfect WW2 sub sim!

[sdcruz]

I too have been let down with SH3 not sure - there seems to be something missing - In AOD, you could just put your mouse pointer on the map, and the uboat would sail there etc etc, then you would get an encounter, but SH3 just takes too long -

SH3 just simply does not cut it for me anymore, havent been playing for months.

Regards
Shelton.

[joea]

I too have been let down with SH3 not sure - there seems to be something missing - In AOD, you could just put your mouse pointer on the map, and the uboat would sail there etc etc, then you would get an encounter, but SH3 just takes too long -

SH3 just simply does not cut it for me anymore, havent been playing for months.

Regards
Shelton.

Dude you think that's realistic? Just sail anywhere and encounter a convoy? Many real boats spent their patrols without sinking or spotting a ship.

[SubChief]

Whats so special about AOD compared to SH3? Nothing, in my point of view. You talk about wolfpacks in AOD, but i never saw any wolfpack, except a couple of times when i reported a convoy and some yellow dots appeared on the map as other uboats. But i was usually alone when attacking convoys. I remember AOD as an old DOS-game full of memory problems, and the update based on Windows was full of bugs.

If you cant find convoys in SH3 you hunt in the wrong places, as far as i know SH3 simulates real convoy traffic while AOD was random. And later in the war you wont find much outside convoy lanes, which is realistic. When the allies could read uboat messages in late 1941 uboats could patrol for a month or even two without spotting a convoy or a single ship since convoys changed course when they knew uboat positions. But the germans came up with the enigma-codes...too bad SH3 came without the Enigma-machine, how about a mod? ;)

But i dont miss anything from AOD, except that online manual maybe...historical info about the uboat war and more.

[don1reed]

I find myself agreeing with both sides of this discussion. However...

AOD was very special...it's even better today because of the capabilities of my cpu. It still presents "palm sweating" situations that I think are mainly due to the fact that you cannot go outside the boat with "hollywood" camera. You cannot cheat. Your mind is left to wonder where the DD's are. You cannot pop up to the surface and choose an easy way out when you're getting hammered with DC, as you can with SH3

The DD AI is far more aggressive in both the original SH and AOD than in SH3...as a result, higher scores are attainable. A lot of times in SH3 I can keep my scope level with the surface (awash) and fire away at a convoy and never get pinged.

As far as I can (personally) determine, the only thing I didn't like about AOD was it's not having manual TDC...and of course, it's grafics. So...IMHO SH3 is nothing but an arcade game except for ONE thing...this community's MODDERS. <hand salute>

...one final thought--the main purpose of the undersea weapon is to sink ships...not shooting down airplanes. A/C are not cost effective.

[Etienne]

When the allies could read uboat messages in late 1941 uboats could patrol for a month or even two without spotting a convoy or a single ship since convoys changed course when they knew uboat positions. But the germans came up with the enigma-codes...too bad SH3 came without the Enigma-machine, how about a mod? ;)

But i dont miss anything from AOD, except that online manual maybe...historical info about the uboat war and more.

Look at the far wall of the radio room. That typewriter? Looks familliar?

And Enigma was designed before the war. The poles stole one (Army version) in 1939, in fact.

[ttraveler]

Aces of the Deep :up:

Reading this thread makes me remember the good ol' days of doing Aces of the Deep, which is the only sub sim I completely finished to the wars end. Best sub sim ever made. It would be great to see a sub sim made exactly like AoD with all the original features and then add current graphics and a few good things like the hydrophone room to it.


:cool:

[JScones]

Whats so special about AOD compared to SH3? Nothing, in my point of view. You talk about wolfpacks in AOD, but i never saw any wolfpack, except a couple of times when i reported a convoy and some yellow dots appeared on the map as other uboats. But i was usually alone when attacking convoys. I remember AOD as an old DOS-game full of memory problems, and the update based on Windows was full of bugs.

But i dont miss anything from AOD, except that online manual maybe...historical info about the uboat war and more.
I must admit, I agree. Yes, I thought AOD was the bee's knees at the time (after I *finally* got the thing running on my 486SX40 - flashbacks to heavily modified boot disk). I was mesmerised by the rolling wave effects and the graphics were more than a step up from Silent Service II. I played it for hours, nay days, straight - even moreso than I now play SH3.

BUT...

Wolfpacks? Didn't care for them. Even back then I didn't think they were "quite right". Would I want Wolfpacks in SH3? For completeness perhaps, but only if they were rendered accurately. But this would, for reasons already explained by others, get boring pretty quickly. So I'm not fussed by it.

What I *do* miss from AOD, however, is:
-the printed grid map - but this doesn't really count 'cause I still have it and use it to this very day :smug:;
-the nightclub - SH3 Commander has a Newsmod, but I'd love to include somewhere the typical "scuttlebutt" of the time - the true and not-so-true tales that add to the atmosphere;
-the pennants on the boat when you returned to base.

AOD will always be groundbreaking, but the fact is, I'm playing SH3 now and loving it - thanks to all the modders :up:...it's great to wax nostalgic and reminisce, but the bottom line is, where's my copy of AOD? In a box where it's been for 8 years! (I had CAOD, but that lasted all of about 1 week on my hard drive).

PS to wg_emevet and rolfatle, try SH3 Commander, it will do/support some of the things that you are hanging for.

[Schpeedy]

Aces of the deep, was great, I liked it alot, but it did have a few things about it that drove me nuts. (more on that another time)

Things that AotD had that I don't think SHIII has...

1) We can't park our sub at the bottom of the ocean down to 200meters about. In SHIII, we get all kinds damage if the bottom of the boat even touches. Nor can we get stuck in the mud.

2) AotD had 'water seeping into the boat.' Remember the gauge that indicated how much water was in the boat? Why doesn't SHIII have it? (the water in the tanks, i don't think it had one for water inside the presure tank either though.)

3) Yes SMOKE ON THE HORRIZON is not in the game. I think that its because, for all the graphics can do, they maybe can't simulate 'smoke on the horrizon' from the bridge view. So they don't put it in, sux.

4) In AotD, I believe, that our subs speed had to do with impact damage of the torpedo. As in, try to 'charge' at full speed just before firing a torpedo at a ship. I believe this gave a better chance of doing more damage to a ship in AotD.

5) Yep, wolfpacks, let alone convoy reports from other subs, were the bomb.

Stuff that I think SHIII could have...
A button to tell sonar man to 'report ALL contacts.' If theres more than one ship on sonar, we can ONLY tell the sonar man to report on the NEAREST (warship or merchant) contact, but not ALL CONTACTS.

About the convoy debate... AotD had too many convoys sometimes. They would cris-cross each other sometimes there were sooo many.

Just a question, in SHIII, am I supposed to sink neutral ships??? Thx in advance.

[Gizzmoe]

Just a question, in SHIII, am I supposed to sink neutral ships??? Thx in advance.

No, that´s gives you negative renown.

[ttraveler]

[snip]

AOD will always be groundbreaking, but the fact is, I'm playing SH3 now and loving it - thanks to all the modders :up:...it's great to wax nostalgic and reminisce, but the bottom line is, where's my copy of AOD? In a box where it's been for 8 years! (I had CAOD, but that lasted all of about 1 week on my hard drive).

PS to wg_emevet and rolfatle, try SH3 Commander, it will do/support some of the things that you are hanging for.
I forgot about the pennants! That was a nice touch.

What happened to CAOD? One week? I never had that one. What happened to you?

SH3 Commander? What does it do? What are 'must have' mods for SH3?



:cool:

[Drebbel]

Yep, AOD definately had it. Was great subsim that really gave you the feeling of being there.

But nowadays the standard gods-eye map and the too-easy-to-beat artificial intelligence would be the main immersion killer for me.

[JScones]

What happened to CAOD? One week? I never had that one. What happened to you?
It was a rather poor attempt at porting AOD to Windows. Quite buggy and rather disappointing after the "real deal". That's what I thought at the time anyway.

SH3 Commander? What does it do?
Read about SH3 Commander here (http://members.iinet.net.au/~jscones/software/SH3Cmdr%20Help.html).

[Catfish]

Hello,
i know this thread is old, but still...
SH3 is better than AoD, there can be no doubt. There probably would not have been an SH2 or 3 without AoD though. But if you really play AoD again after SH3 you will suddenly realize that there are a lot of things missing and wrong in AoD. Convoys were so abundant, and you were always told their exact position that you somtimes met three convoys crossing each other on different courses, which is absolutely unrealistic - but it certainly was fun, ok. In reality boats came home having never found a ship, let alone a convoy.
And i cannot remember enemy harbours full of ships in AoD, in fact there were no enemy or own harbours at all (SH1 had that). Sure, leaving and entering port in AoD was shown with one bitmap being pulled along in front of another, but you do not really want to compare that, do you? AoD was very good for its time, almost a quantum leap in that genre. But i just never had a subsim before SH3 with that realism and immersion, and where i could see my own boat diving from outside (OK, the old "Das Boot" subsim had it, and SH2, but SH2 failed with a lot of other "features"), and in such graphical quality - this is simply outstanding (let alone "seeing" your control room and crew members).

The wolfpacks never left port together, and they marched to their op area single, the courses were set up by the boat's navigators (there were a few deviations like those FlAK traps in the later war, and when they marched to intercept the invasion - but that was all). In fact the commanding officers often did not even know of other boats in the vicinity before an attack. Wolfpacks were alone managed and organized by the central command, first from the villa "Kernével" and later the HQ "Koralle" near Berlin, leaving U-boat commanders virtually blind concerning the general situation. The build-up of wolfpacks was dynamic - boats were contacted to give away their position, and if they were near a projected intercept position ordered to patrol a certain region, but only after the "B-Dienst" (Military observation with spies, radio intercepts etc.) had reported the probable position/course of a convoy. And the yellow rectangles in AoD were absolutely unrealistic, U-boat commanders would have been happy to know the position of other boats to synchronize an attack, but this was almost always impossible and only known and ordered from "above". Also the boats bound for the operation "drumbeat" were leaving and marching alone on different courses (which was certainly never a wolfpack).
Greetings,
Catfish

[Etienne]

2) AotD had 'water seeping into the boat.' Remember the gauge that indicated how much water was in the boat? Why doesn't SHIII have it? (the water in the tanks, i don't think it had one for water inside the presure tank either though.)

4) In AotD, I believe, that our subs speed had to do with impact damage of the torpedo. As in, try to 'charge' at full speed just before firing a torpedo at a ship. I believe this gave a better chance of doing more damage to a ship in AotD.


Both of these are pretty unrealistic. I don't think you'd have a gauge for total ballast onboard. They might have had them for single tanks - I'm not sure - but having one for all the tank would be a piping and tubing nightmare.

The speed of the boat at launch is only going to affect the speed of the torpedo for the first hundred meters or so.

[benetofski]

AOD:

I will always remember the game in a way that it really got me into suberines and the only way my father and I spend time.

errr.... Get Over It! :roll:

(Heard of NFL, NHL, - 'GIRLS?? - well perhaps the latter with 'Father' is pushing it - but hey!) :rotfl:


PS - Dont bet money on there EVER being another subsim (at least on a PC platform) there isnt enough profit in it - see other threads!

[Hartmann]

I think that Silent hunter 3 is better than AoD.

Aod was very good for his time but we have now a game that do about the same things and more with better graphics .

only few things remain from AoD with is not possible with sh3:
wolfpacks, bdu ordering new patrol grids, and bilge water gauge.

I have a copy of Cod that works in windows, but runs a bit fast in my computer :roll:

I thin that sh1 was a very good game too.
a great campaign ( start departing in manila and finish the patrol sinking ships in the same port that is now japanese), good damage modelling ( the water in the engine rooms could damage the e-motors and diesels) , very good graphics, and enemy submarines .

[nelson]

The stand-alone version of SH3 isn't even as good as the old Wolfpack or SS2 on the Amiga, ( gameplay-wise I mean, not so much graphically ) God bless all modders.

[Schpeedy]

WELL MODDERS?
How about a Water in the Bilge Gauge???

[nelson]

Need wolfpacks, it gets a bit lonely out there trying to take on convoys and their escorts by yourself!

[ttraveler]

The stand-alone version of SH3 isn't even as good as the old Wolfpack or SS2 on the Amiga, ( gameplay-wise I mean, not so much graphically ) God bless all modders.


I've been forming a theory on this.

Because graphics are so complicated these days, it takes an enormous amount of programming time to finish the graphics. That leaves not so much time for the gameplay. Back in the days of Aces of the Deep, the graphics were way simpler. The result: An enormous amount of the programming time budget could go for gameplay programming with AoD.

The modern computer gamer thus suffers.




:(

[Drebbel]

Sufers ?

Hmmm, remember that the AOD AI also was quite *&^%$%&(

People tend to forget that , they seem to remember the good stuff and forget the bad. Of course I am like that as well

:-)

[Catfish]

Hello,
i always thought of AoD being better than Silent Service or the later Silent Hunter (1), not that those were bad, but AoD was somehow - better ;) .
It is also a theory of mine that the AoD AI was not too good. But remember you had no real clue on the AI - since you never saw your submerged boat, or any destroyer dropping ash cans, or any destroyer's course circling above your boat from outside everyone tends to say AoD is more realistic or had better AI.
Solution: Just turn your exterior camera off - so you will only experience what you experienced in AoD. But even me with my realism-kick certainly has a hard time turning off this exterior camera and beautiful graphics ...
I do not second the view we need a bilge-metre, this is the same crap as this 65-percent-damage info. You should see the damage (leaks, broken-down pumps and the like) and decide yourself how damaged your boat is. The damage modelling in SH3 is wrong in a way that U-boats would seldomly die suddenly from a depth charge, because the pressure hull did not really suffer - the sealings, pumps and trim tanks did. Maybe we could simulate an assistant mechanic telling his views of the damage helping you decide, like it was in reality ...
Greetings,
Catfish

[nelson]

Hello,
i always thought of AoD being better than Silent Service or the later Silent Hunter (1), not that those were bad, but AoD was somehow - better ;) .
It is also a theory of mine that the AoD AI was not too good. But remember you had no real clue on the AI - since you never saw your submerged boat, or any destroyer dropping ash cans, or any destroyer's course circling above your boat from outside everyone tends to say AoD is more realistic or had better AI.
Solution: Just turn your exterior camera off - so you will only experience what you experienced in AoD. But even me with my realism-kick certainly has a hard time turning off this exterior camera and beautiful graphics ...
I do not second the view we need a bilge-metre, this is the same crap as this 65-percent-damage info. You should see the damage (leaks, broken-down pumps and the like) and decide yourself how damaged your boat is. The damage modelling in SH3 is wrong in a way that U-boats would seldomly die suddenly from a depth charge, because the pressure hull did not really suffer - the sealings, pumps and trim tanks did. Maybe we could simulate an assistant mechanic telling his views of the damage helping you decide, like it was in reality ...
Greetings,
Catfish


Don't you just hate that? pounding an escort for ages, eventually setting it alight only to be "killed" by one lucky shot from it.
Why can't we be crippled and try to deal with it, even if it means sitting on the bottom for hours while the engineers fix the problem, or we have to abandon ship and be picked up by a passing aircraft and took home for our next mission? I don't know, any more ideas?

[Excalibur Bane]

Hmm...Yeah, I remember playing Silent Service on my old 286/12 mhz with it's kicking EGA graphics. All hail the 16 colors and the cookie cutter ships! :lol:

*wipes a tear from his eye*

Sure seems like ages ago. I must be getting old.

[rik007]

In your memory everything seems to be better. However if you install dosbox (see: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net) and have a try with AOD or Silent Service you will notice that SH-III represents a lot of progress compared to the 386/486 games. :know: :know: :know:

[nelson]

Hmm...Yeah, I remember playing Silent Service on my old 286/12 mhz with it's kicking EGA graphics. All hail the 16 colors and the cookie cutter ships! :lol:

*wipes a tear from his eye*

Sure seems like ages ago. I must be getting old.

I played it on the Amiga 500, that's going back a bit ;)

[JScones]

Hmm...Yeah, I remember playing Silent Service on my old 286/12 mhz with it's kicking EGA graphics. All hail the 16 colors and the cookie cutter ships! :lol:

Sure seems like ages ago. I must be getting old.
I played it on the Amiga 500, that's going back a bit ;)
C64 here. As a budding programmer at the time I remember spending hours reading the code behind the game - for if you pressed CTRL-BREAK and typed LIST, the whole code was available for perusal!