I think SHIV must improve the DD'intelligence(NEW) [Archive]

W_clear

04-06-06, 09:22 PM

1. Improve AI's AI
1.1. improve depth charge accuracy of DD
1.2. revise turnaround radius of DD after bypassing the sub(which should require more distance)
1.3. increase closing speed of DD
1.4. improve search capability of DD against Sub

2. Maneuverability
2.1. multiple players on same sub
2.2. adjustable game difficulty(should be sigificant difference between Easy and Real) for players at various level
2.3. full career design feature in misson editor(not just single or online missions)
2.4. encrypted config.ini for all ships and subs so that no easy parameter cracking or modification
2.5. NO icon or label displayed on map at Real-class(100%) difficulty, all bearing math/config should be completed by player with his own efforts, i.e., full manual approach(using gyroscope)
2.6. more manual operability for Radar

3. Graphics
3.1. add 3D interface for other cabins, and motion of crews
3.2. more crew members can be dragged to be standing on to the bridge to create better moods(especially during leaving and/or returning base)
3.3. add Shift+F2 feature on the bridge so that crew members can move freely
3.4. add crew member moving up and down of periscope real-time at 3D commanding room
3.5. for F3 interface, background of the commanding room and crew members in the room should be moving when the periscope is rotating, while a Torpedo Control panel can be added to fire torpedos(just like SH2)
3.6. improve texture details of all ships
3.7. add more types of history ships
3.8. add more 3D motions for the crew members
3.9. more cloud evolution at different weathers, not just two texture files for every situation
3.10. improve water spray effects, especially for water column effects of gun fire
3.11. improve sea water color diversity for different oceans and depth levels.

4. Sound Effects
4.1 improve sound effect diversity, not just like one single gun fire sound for all guns. (so depth charge detonation should hear different above and under sea
4.2 add emotional tone feature for dialogues, not just like recitation

5. controllable DDs are MOST MOST MOST wanted!!!!!!!!!!!

Torplexed

04-06-06, 09:48 PM

Given the poor historical sub kill rate of Japanese destroyers and sub chasers the current DD 'AI' might be spot on. Japanese surface forces, including those working in concert with aircraft, were involved in only 22 of the total 52 USN submarine losses in WW2. :hmm:

The Noob

04-07-06, 12:31 PM

Come On!

We Want a Fun and Challenging Game!

Keep is as Realistic as Possible, BUT Please Make The AI So Good That The Fight is Challenging and Fun/Hell! :-j :damn:

Godalmighty83

04-07-06, 03:33 PM

the AI already cheats, no need to make it any worse.

thyro

04-07-06, 03:47 PM

Improve the DD'intelligence to have more highter precision of droping deepcharges on the subs!

the DD,should run more fast into the head of the sub than now before drop the deepcharges,after the DD do it ,It will go away far more than just now.

and ability of search for sub,should be improve in SH4

I completly agree with "Improve the DD's Intelligence"

But ... also allowing players to play in DDs (like Enigma rising tide) and PVP, destroyer command vs SH.

Beside to play against computer well it will always cheat because AI (IA) will never reach human inteligence and inventive solutions.

Once you know the game mechanics you know how a DD AI/IA would work and what will be the next step... so no challenge enough...

Torplexed

04-07-06, 07:27 PM

Yeah...there's your best hope. Human controlled DDs would be so unpredictable compared to an AI. Here's hoping for DCII someday. :up:

Der Teddy Bar

04-07-06, 07:35 PM

W_clear

04-07-06, 07:47 PM

Hope every one to appeal together

Must make DC2 !!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!1

CCIP

04-07-06, 08:45 PM

Subnuts

04-07-06, 09:29 PM

What SHIII sorely missed that has made it so easy to sail up and down the English Coastline as if you own it is that there is no overiding AI in the forma of a Coastal Command.

Essentiall, in SHIII, the AI forgets that you ever where there is under an hour .

It needs to be that if you sink a ship in location A that staying there is dangerous so it is best to move to location B.

To sum this up, it's what I've been saying all along:

SHIII has tactical AI (which is far from perfect), but lacks a strategic AI (all "strategic" movements are purely random and aren't in any way affected by a player's actions).

The lack of a strategic AI is what, to me, disqualifies SHIII from having a true dynamic campaign (as opposed to Falcon 4.0, for example). I think this is something that a real dynamic subsim will need.

It's probably a big undertaking, and I seriously doubt we'll see it in SHIV. Granted, I'd be willing to let it go if it means more work on the tactical AI - I'd rather have a fully-working tactical AI than a half-working tactical AI (as we have it now) and a half-working strategic AI.

:hmm:

Actually, last night I was thinking about how certain strategic elements could be implemented into the SHIV campaign.

Anybody ever play the game Pacific War? Convoys were crucial in the game. Say a 6,000 ton maru is carrying "150 units" of supplies to a distant Japanese garrison. If it gets sunk, the supplies fail to arrive, and the forces at the merchant's destination can no longer hold out as long.

If I sink a troop transport, all of the AFVs and artillery pieces are lost, and the game calculates how many troops are killed depending on how long it takes the ship to sink. If you sink an aircraft carrier, Japenese offensive operations are curtailed in that area due to loss of air cover. If you sink a destroyer, it will makes everyone's job easier in the long run. And so on. Tankers are crucial, sink enough of them and the Japanese war machine grinds to a halt.

With a random computer-controlled campaign, you wouldn't fight the same war over and over. Midway might not happen, Bataan might not fall, the Japenese might capture North Australia, and so on. A basic submarine AI on both sides could implemented (the AI commander would send them strategic locations to support current operations). I know many are clamoring for sub AI, but at the very least, the player should run into their own side every now and then (with a chance of friendly fire in poor weather!), and be presented with a weekly report of enemy sinkings, and SIGINT reports of axis operations.

Why I find such things interesting is because the US submarine force succeded where the German failed: it almost strangled the Japanese empire. Perhaps not as fascinating as the Atlantic, but more interesting on a "nuts-and-bolts" strategic level, where every major sinking hurts Japan in the end.

Torplexed

04-07-06, 10:01 PM

Anybody ever play the game Pacific War? Convoys were crucial in the game. Say a 6,000 ton maru is carrying "150 units" of supplies to a distant Japanese garrison. If it gets sunk, the supplies fail to arrive, and the forces at the merchant's destination can no longer hold out as long.

If I sink a troop transport, all of the AFVs and artillery pieces are lost, and the game calculates how many troops are killed depending on how long it takes the ship to sink. If you sink an aircraft carrier, Japenese offensive operations are curtailed in that area due to loss of air cover. If you sink a destroyer, it will makes everyone's job easier in the long run. And so on. Tankers are crucial, sink enough of them and the Japanese war machine grinds to a halt.

Been years since I played Pacific War. I have played Gary Gribsby's War in the Pacific. In that strategic level game you got every submarine in the Allied and Japanese inventories...including the Dutch and British ones. Was interesting controlling an entire submarine campaign from the grand strategy position and watching the slow attrition on that level. Unfortunately, you also got every ship in the Pacific war from minesweepers and PT boats on up which made it difficult to always keep perfect tab on what all your subs and ships were doing. Then there was also a land war to fight too...:o

http://zioxville.homestead.com/files/subcombat.jpg http://zioxville.homestead.com/files/WITP.jpg

JU_88

04-08-06, 06:03 AM

Of all the AI in SH3 i think that escort AI needs the least amount of work, My only major gripe with DDs is they inability to aviod landmass and running aground.

Merchent AI is just about adquate.

Aircraft AI is very poor and neds work (its place holder AI)

SUb AI - there isnt any! this has got to change!

There is also no AI inplace to allow other vessels or aircraft to launch torpeedos, this must be corrected for the pacific, where PT boats and torpeedo bombers played a big part!

DeepSix

04-08-06, 06:28 AM

...
I have played Gary Gribsby's War in the Pacific. In that strategic level game you got every submarine in the Allied and Japanese inventories...including the Dutch and British ones. Was interesting controlling an entire submarine campaign from the grand strategy position and watching the slow attrition on that level. Unfortunately, you also got every ship in the Pacific war from minesweepers and PT boats on up which made it difficult to always keep perfect tab on what all your subs and ships were doing. Then there was also a land war to fight too...:o

I've got WitP and love it. For those who don't know, it's a traditional hex map, board-game style sim (Matrix Games).

http://www.matrixgames.com/

You're right, there is a huge amount of detail to keep up with - too much for most people. Definitely not for the "shooter" crowd. If you ever want to play a PBEM game of WitP let me know.

Sorry for going OT, there. :)

Torplexed

04-08-06, 11:04 AM

Tempting DeepSix...I'll have to think on it. The most daunting thing about the campaign game in WITP is it's epic length. At one day turns about 1600 plus turns. I played against the AI once (poor opponent) and even though I achieved victory over Japan in 1943 it still took a good five months of game-playing every day. It's such a strategic mis-match too. Japan is pretty much buried under an Allied avalanche by mid-game. Fun to try tho.

However, it might be a nice way to pass the time until SH4 comes out. :cool:

DeepSix

04-08-06, 03:15 PM

...
However, it might be a nice way to pass the time until SH4 comes out. :cool:

LOL, yeah, we might finish up (maybe) about the time SH4 hits the shelves. You're right, it is a *really* long game - even against the AI I find that if I go for more than a few days without playing a turn, I fall out of the loop and forget what units I had going where.

Well, I'll leave the invite open. I might even be persuaded to play as the Japanese (they do have it tough in the game).

Cheers :)

-Pv-

04-09-06, 07:55 PM

You can go too far improving the DD AI in SH4 in the Pacific compared to what you saw in the Atlantic. One major problem the Imperial forces had was bad intel on US sub performance. One major point is despite the US subs not diving as deep as German subs, the Japanese DDs set their max DC depth even shallower believing the US subs didn't go as deep as they really could. The US subs used welded boats sooner than the Germans and could take a pounding. Although the US fleat boats were slower than hoped, they were faster and generally larger, longer-ranged than German boats. Because of this it was possible to evade escorts on the surface at night using speed and low profile. The patrol area was much larger, but the US boats could cross the distance a little faster, and patrol farther.

One difficult feature in DD AI is the logic behind DD tactics. Some convoys would only have one escort. More valuable convoys would have several, but the AI needs to decide how much attention to give the sub (keeping it submerged until the remaining convoy gets away) and when to abandon the sub and run at full speed to get back to the convoy. As much as we all like a good knife fight, if the programmers get it right, there will be times when a more persistant and skillful DD will pound you relentlessly, and times when they will completely ignore you once they have you slow and low so they can stay with the running convoy. Also, if you've played Destroyer Command (I assume most here have) you also realize on the DD side you can't sit there and drop your entire DC load on one target (esp if it appears to be particularly elusive) because you have to save something for the next fight or your value as an escort for the remaining route is null.

A hunter-killer group is expected to persue until all possibility of regaining contact is lost or ammo expended. Escorts however will favor keeping the convoy ships in view even if it means abandoning a contact. Sub hunter-killers were rare for Japan in the Pacific because they had a shortage of escort ships over an area much larger than the Atlantic theater. Convoys were generally smaller than we saw with the Brittish and US in SHIII, but a valuable convoy with large target ships will be heavily and aggressively escorted. The Japanese gunnery on smaller ships was considered above average making surface actions in less than ideal conditions (in favor of the sub) risky.

"Know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, know when to run."

I realize we are all just shooting the brease here for our own amusement. The programmers will do what interests them with the time and budget they have appropriated. I guess asking the community to maintain realistic expectations is a waste of bandwidth. Since the SHIII dev team demonstrated above-average attention to detail, provided an affordable experience, and patched the most game-stopping issues promptly, I expect any forthcomming product to meet the same standards, so I'll buy it if the sub gammer sites review it possitively, especially since this is the sub battle theater I enjoy the most.

Special ops were very important aspects of the Pacific Island hopping campaign. Gathering port intel, picking up and dropping off special forces near islands and picking up downed flyers near the major sea battles would be important features to me to give the sim a period and location feel.
-Pv-

DeepSix

04-09-06, 08:52 PM

Very well stated. I especially like the skillful incorporation of a Kenny Rogers "Gambler" quote. :D

oche

04-11-06, 08:38 AM

It appears that some people really miss the laser guided depth charges from SHII since they wish to see even more precise depth charge attacks in SH4...that's not realistic in any way and they know it, japanese sonar and ASW capabilities was crap compared to US and British technology.

Beery

04-18-06, 11:06 AM

1. Improve AI's AI
1.1. improve depth charge accuracy of DD
1.4. improve search capability of DD against Sub..

On what data are you basing this? Destroyers in SH3 are very much MORE effective than their real counterparts. Depth charges are ridiculously overpowered and often dropped with a precision that no real life sonar or hydrophone could guarantee even in TODAY'S navies.

If anything, search capability and depth charge accuracy needs to be severely REDUCED. The last thing I want to see is a game where it's impossible to survive more than a couple of patrols. That's not fun, and it's not realistic. I've seen too many sims where the deadliness was cranked up too much to please the arcade crowd. At a certain point, running a campaign in such a game just becomes depressing.

The fact is, in real life, 75% of U-boat commanders survived the war (they survived longer than regular crewmen because they were retired after between 3 and 16 patrols - regular crewmen were expected to serve for the duration of the war, which is why their survival rate is about 20%). In SH3, using realistic tactics and restricting one's career to a realistic length, the survival rate for a commander is less than 20%, and that of crewmen would be close to 0%. It's incredible to me that anyone can complain that the game is not deadly enough in the face of such facts.

The question is this: is SH4 to be a simulation of sub warfare, or just another shoot-em-up arcade game?

The Noob

04-18-06, 11:49 PM

Okay, make it Like in Silent Service 1!

Make an Realism Option!

Expert Destroyers On = AI Gets Improved

Expert Destroyers Off = Destroyers Get as Inneffecient as it Would be Realistic!

That Would be an Solution for that Fu*kin' Problem! Both Sides Would be Pleased................ :rock:

Safe-Keeper

04-19-06, 05:32 AM

On what data are you basing this? Destroyers in SH3 are very much MORE effective than their real counterparts. Depth charges are ridiculously overpowered and often dropped with a precision that no real life sonar or hydrophone could guarantee even in TODAY'S navies.
And that's to compensate for the poor system.

All you have to do in Silent Hunter III is dive as deep as possible and stay there on Silent Running. I tried to make the Gibraltar Strait mission that shipped with the game difficult by making the player get jumped by four destroyers almost immediately after mission start. All you had to do still, with four destroyers on you, was to dive to the bottom and hug it until you were trough the Strait.

That's the reason the destroyers are given tactical atomic munitions to use in their depth charges: Because they suck at what they're doing.

Beery

04-19-06, 07:48 AM

...All you had to do still, with four destroyers on you, was to dive to the bottom and hug it until you were trough the Strait.

That's the reason the destroyers are given tactical atomic munitions to use in their depth charges: Because they suck at what they're doing.

Firstly, the destroyers are supposed to suck. It was virtually impossible at any time in WW2 to find a sub that had gone deep. I read in (http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WAMUS_ASW.htm) that "In the first few months of the war only 5 percent of all depth charge attacks were successful (note: this is the US Navy, so they're talking about 1942, not 1939). Normal combat conditions reduced that figure to 3 percent. In mid-1944, the USN was claiming an 8 percent kill rate with a single Hedgehog pattern. By the middle of 1945, that figure had risen to 10 percent.". In the game this means that if you get killed more than once in every 10 depth charge or hedgehog attacks where the enemy knows your location, the game is already too deadly. I don't know about you, but I get killed far more often than that.

Secondly, it may be that in the single missions, the game is unbalanced. The game was tweaked in version 1.4b to adjust for better play balance in the campaign game - NOT the single missions. When the patches were being made, the single missions were regarded - rightly or wrongly - as a secondary part of the game. Having said that, if you used the tactic you speak of in real life, chances are you'd be safe. The Gibraltar strait was fairly deep, so it should be fairly easy to negotiate it. In real life, 62 boats attempted the passage, only 9 were sunk. In the game that translates to getting through 5 out of every 6 times you try it. I've tried it twice and got sunk once. When you get through six times out of six, give me another shout. ;)

Thirdly, whether you can avoid detection depends on when in the war you're playing. If you're in 1939-40 the Allies have virtually no chance of finding you, but in 1944-45 you will find that if two destroyers find you, you'll die ten times out of ten.

You shouldn't just assume that 'destroyers suck' simply because they suck in one particular scenario or in one period of the war. This game is more complicated than that, and destroyers go through an evolution as the game progresses. Destroyers 'sucking' in 1939-40 is a FEATURE, not a flaw. Basically, in 1939 you should, on average, be able to survive 33 focused single pattern depth charge attacks - and, to the game's credit, it's not too far off. In 1945 you should be able to survive up to ten (and you should be able to survive two out of three engagements where numerous depth charges and hedgehogs are dropped - in my experience in the game it's virtually impossible to survive a single such engagement). In the game it's far more likely that you'll get killed after two or three single depth charge attacks - something that was unlikely in reality. A big part of the problem is that destroyers in the game don't lose track as easily as those in real life. Contrary to your assertion that the game's destroyers suck, according to official statistics, the fact is they don't suck enough, especially in 1943-45.

Again, the widely-held assumption that every U-boat patrol was full of deadly depth charge attacks is deeply flawed. Take the movie Das Boot for example. In the movie the boat was attacked several times by destroyers, it sustained damage from depth charge attacks and was finally sunk by an air raid. In the real patrol that the movie supposedly depicts, the boat was attacked only once, by an aircraft, and the attack failed to cause significant damage. This is the reality. Das Boot is an accurate portrayal of U-boat operations, but it is a highly condensed portrayal, and gives more of an overview of U-96's entire career, rather than that of a single patrol. The question is, are we after a movie's version of reality, or do we want a true simulation of U-boat warfare? I prefer the latter, because even if it's slower-paced, the tension is that much greater if I know that I have a realistic chance of career survival. When I have no chance, then the whole thing devolves into a tiresome test of endurance before the inevitable destruction of my boat.

-Pv-

04-22-06, 07:36 PM

Good job Beery. You expressed what I have experienced in SHIII and what I expect for SHIV. The Rock was feared as a heavily patrolled chokepoint, but not impassible. I think you will find the many very shallow harbors in the Pacific very challenging also. The inland Japanese convoys would thread very complex jump and dodge courses through the islands taking advantage of shallow water, night, moon out to sea and the complications islands and reefs made in the attempt to get a good firing solution.
-Pv-

Godalmighty83

04-23-06, 10:27 AM

in sh3 destroyers were too effective, from the right viewing angle you could se the DD's rudder moving exactly as you moved your meaning a great deal of AI cheating was going on.

that and the infinte supply of rapid fire depthcharges which were always set to the perfect depth.

The Noob

04-23-06, 01:22 PM

What about my Solution?'

Wouldn't it Be The Best of all?

Sulikate

04-23-06, 04:30 PM

What about my Solution?'

Wouldn't it Be The Best of all?
It really may work, but it is important to have both opitions working correctly.

Subnuts

04-23-06, 04:33 PM

I've been playing the original Silent Hunter recently, running patrol encounters at 60% realism (limited depth data, visability, and realistic charts off) and laughing at the schizophrenia of the escort AI. If you dive below a thermal layer (which don't seem to be implemented until after you get your bathythermograph) and jettison debris, the escorts, and every aircraft in the area, will gang up on the debris and depth charge it over and over again.

After a while I got bored and started shooting torpedoes at random. When the torpedoes exploded, the DDs would go chasing after the spot where it exploded and depth charge it. I fired three torpedoes, each in a different direction, and the escorts went nuts and chased after each explosion. Then I came up to periscope depth and released more debris. A passing Zero sighted it and crashed into it! :rotfl:

The escorts came back and I stayed at PD until they detected me. Then I dived back below the thermal layer, accelerated to ahead full, releasing debris everywhere. Again, the escorts ran around, DCing the debris. A second Zero roared in, and I heard a loud BAM! I came up to PD, looked around, and noticed that one of the destroyers was on fire! I dove back below the layer, and kept releasing debris until the escorts ran out of DCs and went away.

Trout

04-25-06, 11:51 AM

I dont think the problem is about the skill level of the hunters or their technolgy, it is:

1) Hunters give up WAY too easily as compared to RL

2) There is no strategic AI so that it gets hotter for you the longer you stay in an area

3) OUr subs are not difficult enough to handle while being depth charged. See below:

We all know that the damage modeling is not complete enough in the game. THere are all kinds of minor damage that we simply dont take (even very minor leaks) that are survivable, but make evasion more difficult. How would you like to maintain your depth with broken gauges, bent planes, jammed valves or a sudden change in dive angle because a charge went off over you? Or how about damage that makes your boat louder? (there are many kinds!)

And fixing ANY kind of damage basically means you can be heard better underwater.

Perhaps if the focus was put on fuller modeling of our boats, the hunters would pick up more sounds which would "encourage" them to stick around longer?

Any way you slice it, SOMTHING needs to be done to make evasion more of a challenge and more fun (but perhaps more of a "patrol ender" than a "life ender" when you do get seriously tagged).

By the way, have you EVER run out of battery or air in this game? GEtting held under for many hours and having a very scary experience was a common thing for submariners. It hardly ever happens in this game, although when it does you typically die in the end.

Trout

Beery

04-25-06, 04:35 PM

I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again: surviving in a SH3 U-boat is far MORE difficult than it was in real life. Nothing needs to be made harder for the sub except perhaps for aircraft attacks. Certainly, depth charge attacks are MORE deadly than they were in real life, and U-boats get killed by DDs FAR more easily in this game than in real life. I've posted stats on this elsewhere on this site (I'll repost them below if I can find them). I don't know what else I can do to prove that U-boats weren't as easy to kill as some players want them to be.

Here's the post I was referring to. What I did was take real life stats and figure out what the game should give the player if it was accurate in terms of survivability.

Basically, if you run twenty careers (with the career length limited using SH3 Commander) in order for it to be historically accurate you should get results something close to this:

15 careers completed where your commander survives the career.
3 careers where you were killed by ships.
2 careers where you were killed by aircraft.

If you're simulating the boat's history (i.e. without limiting career length) after 20 careers you should see results something like this:

4 careers where your crew survives the war.
9 careers where you were sunk by ships.
7 careers where you were sunk by aircraft.

These figures reflect historical reality. If you're getting killed more often than the above, then the game is too deadly compared to the reality.

There is no way that the game comes near these sorts of statistics. I reckon that the game is at least twice as deadly as the above stats.

-Pv-

04-25-06, 04:58 PM

In response to Trout,

I assume you are talking about your experiences in SHIII compared to what you expect in SHIV.

Don't expect DD AI in SHIV to ALWAYS be more aggressive or lethal than SHIII. That would not be historically accurate. However due to the fact that 52 subs were lost in the Pac war and 5,200 submariners died, there should be times when you unexpectedly meet a lethal or lucky opponent.

Concerning the lack of hot zones due to sub activity, I have definitely seen evidence in SHIII that the AI does respond to attacks and sinkings where if I stuck around I would see aircraft and hunter patrols show up eventually. The ruling factor in SHIII appears to be spotting. If I was SEEN by any enemy (even if I shot them down or sunk) there would be follow-up patrols by the enemy. When this happens, I quietly leave the area or suffer unending attacks.

In the Pac the best hunting should be near ports, but they will also be heavily patrolled making them very dangerous.

Historically, 1.5 percent of the nation's naval manpower sinking one-half of the Japanese tonnage would indicate there will be a target-rich environment and the fleet boats will be tough to sink compared to the Germans. In addition, the Pac boats had the latest technology the Allies could produce (with the exception of the torps.)

How do you know that in SHIII there were no damage or noise effects that affected your chances of detection and being sunk?
Just because you didn't get a text message telling you "...the compressor is making too much noise sir..." doesn't mean the game logic did not account for some of these things. Remember when you selected Silent Running you elected to forsake repairs and the noise that made. That is indication SHIII likely had some logic in place for the effect of repair noise.

I think it's important in our speculations to avoid the these assumptions:
1) The game logic in SHIV will be unaltered ports of SHI or III.
2) SHIV will be like SHIII with different visuals and map.

I've seen no evidence these two are likely based on past releases.

What controls game development more than anything are:
Skill, size, and enthusiasm of the development team.
Time/Budget.
Current devel technology available.
Target consumer technology available.

Market pressures as in potential sales and purchaser requests are a relatively small part of the picture (except for the facets that contributed to the investment decisions) although SHIII worked hard at the last moment to include a requested feature. The dynamic campaign came close to not being there.

When programmers can make AI as smart as humans, it's time for them to stop creating games and switch to creating millennium man robots. They'll make a lot more money. Games that cannot be won by humans playing at the highest reality level will not be well-received by the majority of gamers. Each person has their own challenge assessment. Some think the SHIII at highest is too hard, some too easy. For me, I can no longer spend 50 hours a week gaming.

What I CAN expect from past releases:
1) Game play will be more or less historically pertinent to the theater and time period.
2) Graphics will exceed expectations and game logic will take a measurable back seat.
3) There will be notable bugs at release that will be patched after sales have begun and the sales are positive enough to warrant the added investment.

Point two is unfortunately due to human behavior. Many people will buy and play a game once or twice even if they're uninterested if the graphic representation wowed them. Some people will play a flawed game for the graphics only. I call these people TV Gamers.
Lots of eye movement, little cognitive activity.
-Pv-

Trout

04-26-06, 01:14 PM

I'm not making predictions about Sh4, I'm simply saying that in SH3, the events that typically happen after you have made your attack do not play out with the same level of excitement or challenge as in other sub sims.

Evasion, damage control and survival should be the climax of a sub battle. In SH3 I simply dive, go to silent running, and escape. No near misses, no flickering lights, no minor damage, and certainly no being held underwater for hours at a time.

Most accounts I have read about boats being depth charged were completely unlike what I've experienced in the game. As Beery said, most sub commanders survived, (but most, I would add, could tell hair raising stories about being depth charged)

I cannot, and I've been playing a few hours a week for over a year now, on the highest difficulty level.

I submit that the damage system in SH4 could use far more attention than it got in SH3. We need many more kinds of minor damage that can create challenges for the commander, and we also need longer DC attacks.

Trout

Trout

04-26-06, 01:18 PM

"Don't expect DD AI in SHIV to ALWAYS be more aggressive or lethal than SHIII. That would not be historically accurate"

PV,

I forgot to respond to these points:

If aggressive means tenatious, then yes, it would be more historically accurate to have longer ASW battles. Accounts I've read from both theatres indicate that destroyers and other sub hunters simply don't bugger off that quickly.

As to lethality, I agree with Beery that we don't need attacks to be more lethal. I simply feel they should last longer and do more damage.

Trout

Sailor Steve

04-26-06, 01:24 PM

As to the amount of time destroyers spend hunting you in SHIII, part of it seems to be the routine that governs time spent away from the convoy. A lone destroyer or hunter/killer group should stay with you until they are sure you're dead or have lost contact for at least an hour. The ones tied to escort duty don't have that luxury. In real life spending too long hunting for one submarine could allow others in the area to attack too easily. The escorts have a time limit between when they lose contact with you and when they return to their escor duties. After all, keeping the enemy away from the convoy is as good as killing him, if he's too far behind to resume his attack.

One of the problems with SHI was that the destroyers could be too tenacious.

Godalmighty83

04-26-06, 01:25 PM

I agree with Beery that we don't need attacks to be more lethal. I simply feel they should last longer and do more damage.

Trout

lasting longer and doing more damage isnt more lethal in you book???

SH4 does not need to be harder then SH3, but the way in which ASW takesplace should evolve a bit. make DD's a bit more conservative with depth charges (and a bit more inaccurate) but a bit more persistant and lee likely to give up.

difficulty stays the same but realism improves.

Beery

04-26-06, 05:52 PM

Evasion, damage control and survival should be the climax of a sub battle. In SH3 I simply dive, go to silent running, and escape. No near misses, no flickering lights, no minor damage, and certainly no being held underwater for hours at a time.

This reflects reality. In reality U-boats most often evaded their attackers without much problem. Are you saying you NEVER get near misses? I often get them. Heck, I often get killed in the game - more often than real commanders did. That means I'm experiencing MORE depth charge attacks - or at least more deadly ones.

Most accounts I have read about boats being depth charged were completely unlike what I've experienced in the game. As Beery said, most sub commanders survived, (but most, I would add, could tell hair raising stories about being depth charged)

I cannot, and I've been playing a few hours a week for over a year now, on the highest difficulty level.

What period are you playing in? You have to realise that the game gives a very realistic simulation, and it changes as the war progresses. If you've only played in 1939-41 then your experience is true to life. Very few German U-boats were destroyed in this period. Try later in the war and you'll have more than your share of nail-biting times. One thing to note though, is that what real U-boat men found deeply frightening, you might see as no big deal. Their lives were on the line, yours isn't.

I submit that the damage system in SH4 could use far more attention than it got in SH3. We need many more kinds of minor damage that can create challenges for the commander, and we also need longer DC attacks.

It depends on what's attacking you. For hunter-killer groups I'd have to agree with you, but these groups were rarely encountered. For convoy escorts I think the game's DC attacks are long enough. The problem is, SH3 doesn't make a distinction. It goes for a generic 'one size fits all' approach. Anyway, in reality commanders had their LI attend to damage control. The commander directed the boat. I don't think that minor damage would create challenges for the commander in the way you suggest.

Beery

04-26-06, 06:02 PM

Accounts I've read from both theatres indicate that destroyers and other sub hunters simply don't bugger off that quickly.

The big problem with reading anecdotal accounts is that they are part of the entertainment industry. Boring accounts simply don't get published. If you were a publisher, would you publish accounts of a 5 minute engagement where the sub easily avoided depth charges, or would you publish the ones where it was a 12 hour life and death struggle? Anecdotal evidence is often misleading. It leads people to believe that all depth charge attacks were long, drawn out, deadly duels. That simply wasn't the case.

It's the same with gun camera footage. Have you ever seen gun camera footage where a pilot put hundreds of rounds of ammo into an enemy plane to no effect? I haven't. Yet these types of things happened most of the time. But for a TV documentary they need gun camera footage where something explodes or breaks up after a few seconds. This is why air combat simulations give such a poor representation of air combat - the people making the sim assume that infotainment of the sort we get on The Military Channel represents real data and hard fact. So we get sims where air combat lasts the same amount of time as a two-second snippet of gun camera footage from an air war documentary (yes, I'm talking about IL-2), or we get sub sims where every depth charge engagement is an endurance test. This is why campaigns in most air combat and sub combat sims have been impossible to survive - in real life half of WW2 fighter pilots survived the war, and 3/4 of U-boat commanders survived the war, but in every air combat and sub sim I've ever played it's virtually impossible to survive for more than a few weeks. Modern media mislead us because they need sound and visual bytes - a couple of seconds of film that shows a gripping story, or a sentence that grossly misleads the viewer about casualty rates in WWI air combat: who hasn't heard the sentence "The life expectancy of a pilot in WW1 was two weeks"? It's completely false - the true life expectancy was between one and two years. Documentaries often use the life expectancy for untrained pilots thrown into the breech during the worst month of the war, and 'accidentally' use this statistic as if it applies to the whole conflict.

In other words, documentaries and anecdotal evidence should be taken with a pinch of salt. They're entertaining, and single experiences can even be true in themselves, but unless you have the whole context it's just not realistic to rely on anecdotal evidence when you need to find data relating to the entire experience (such as you need when building a simulation). One U-boat's exceptional experiences never equate to the entire experience of the U-boat war. Reality is a lot more mundane than anecdotes would have you believe.

FAdmiral

04-26-06, 10:34 PM

[/quote] Reality is a lot more mundane.[/quote]

And that is exactly why most of us play games
BUT we still want them to be REAL SIMULATIONS !!!

JIM

Beery

04-26-06, 11:33 PM

My point was that if someone's facing death every day, then facing it only once a week would be more mundane, but I'm sure whatever he's doing when he's facing that more mundane threat would still make a good simulation. There would be no need to make it into an arcade game to make it more exciting, as I think a realistic simulation of facing death once a week would be exciting enough.

Torplexed

04-27-06, 01:32 AM

I have to agree...drives home the old maxim that war is usually 90 percent boredom and 10 percent sheer terror.

Safe-Keeper

04-27-06, 04:37 AM

Thanks a huge deal for your reply, Beery, that was really educational :know: .

We all know that the damage modeling is not complete enough in the game. THere are all kinds of minor damage that we simply dont take (even very minor leaks) that are survivable, but make evasion more difficult. How would you like to maintain your depth with broken gauges, bent planes, jammed valves or a sudden change in dive angle because a charge went off over you? Or how about damage that makes your boat louder? (there are many kinds!)

Exactly! Ever played TIE Fighter (or any X-Wing series game)? You take damage to engines, flight control, etc., but when you get hit, you also risk that a gauge or screen dies on you. You can really make it just fine without knowing how much energy your laser cannons have, but once your sensor screens shatter, you're blind (you can't make do with visual info only in that game).

Silent Hunter IV should be like that. They need to implement supplies (in this context spare parts), too, so that you can't just keep repairing everything without re-supplying.

Trout

04-28-06, 12:47 PM

Beery,

I've played through a number of campaigns in 1.5 years and I've lost count of how many DC attacks there have been. I've read a fair number of decent books and some "hollywood" garbage too. I have an MA in history and am probably qualified enough to know the difference most of the time.

I'll conceed that it was not a rare thing to escape an attack quickly and without damage. But attacks that did last hours and create damage were not uncommon either. In the game they hardly ever happen. It is significant that we never have to worry about battery charge or co2 and air supply.

So I've experinecd probaby hundreds of DC attacks and NEVER worried about my air supply?!

Even playing into mid-1944 this is one of the least challenging sim's I've experience. To challenge yourself you need to focus on racking up huge tonnage scores and/or taking silly risks. Somthing is not right and I'm simply suggesting that a more detailed and complex damage model would create more realistic encounters.

Trout

DeepSix

04-28-06, 02:24 PM

No offense to anybody, but IMO if SH3 - even played at just 50% reality - is "easy" for a player after late 1943, that experience is the exception rather than the rule. For me the AI destroyers are tough enough - although I would agree that there's a need for better strategic AI (just as with weather).

In fact, my problem is that with SH3 by the end of '44 or '45 I can almost count on getting killed - from my point of view the AI is actually too hard; the lethality of ASW goes up too much, while the general skill of the AI does not. Same with planes. In SH3, if you see 1 and shoot it down (late war), the AI will respond by sending 2 or 3. Shoot those down, it sends 5 or 6. The more you shoot down, the more it throws at you, until you there are too many and you have to dive. Lethal, yes. Realistic, no.

So for me the problem with SH3 is, IMO, that the ability to survive falls into a linear progression from "so easy it's ridiculous" in the early war to "virtually impossible" by the end. That's just my two cents - but I rarely play the game on 100% real so my perspective may be skewed as a result.

Beery

04-30-06, 08:29 PM

...attacks that did last hours and create damage were not uncommon either.

The question is, how uncommon were they? The statistics tend to suggest that thjey were very uncommon, since even in 1944-45 the frequency of depth charge sinkings of U-boats was relatively low. If long drawn-out duels were at all common, I'd expect the rate of sinkings to be higher. If a destroyer has a U-boat targeted, it's only a matter of time until that U-boat is sunk. The number of escapes, in my opinion, is way too high for long duels to have been very common at all.

In the game they hardly ever happen. It is significant that we never have to worry about battery charge or co2 and air supply.

How often did real U-boat commanders have to worry about those things? Certainly such concerns come up frequently in movies, but we need actual statistics if we're to find the facts.

So I've experinecd probaby hundreds of DC attacks and NEVER worried about my air supply?!

All I'm suggesting is that that may not be odd. The fact that air supply CAN run out is no guarantee that it often DID run out.

Even playing into mid-1944 this is one of the least challenging sim's I've experience.

Challenge and realism are not necessarily linked. As far as I can tell, this U-boat simulation is the most realistic sub sim ever, mostly because it is LESS deadly than all the others. The others are much more challenging, much more deadly, and much LESS realistic because survival factors are poorly modelled.

To challenge yourself you need to focus on racking up huge tonnage scores and/or taking silly risks...

The challenge is in long-term survival. But again, challenge is not really the point. A challenge is what players look for in an arcade game. The point of a simulation is in getting historically accurate results. When the simulation produces careers that fall within historical limits (in terms of tonnage, overall 'feel' and survivability) the sim works, and in my view this simulation comes closer than any other. If anything, according to the statistics, it's too unforgiving.