191. Complete rework of depth-charges?

I have already covered aspects such as the 185m and you're safe from asdic, and therefore also DC's, and the ease with which escorts give up on prosecuting attacks/subsequent asdic searches. So I don't propose covering that ground again. This time, I want to consider the rather underwhelming experience of being depth charged. I almost never hear DC's, (even if they confer damage!) and aside from some transient "sparks" there is practically no indication that one has suffered a close miss at all.

Things that could be added:

causing the boat to pitch, roll and/or yaw, subject to the position of the D when it explodes.

Movement of the boat within the water-column caused by aeration of the water affecting bouyancy.

Very VERY loud blast, with "camera-shake", again oriented by the position of the exploding DC relative to the boat.

Knocking crew off stations.

loss of lighting

springing or leaks requiring attention, and a damage model generally.

It seems to me utterly bizarre that the most drama-filled anxiety inducing aspect of the u-boat war, is essentially completely missing from the game, being rendered almost silent, with no damage or much in the way of visual indication that it's even happened! As deficiences in the game go, this has to be, by far, the greatest?

Even lights suddenly flickering can create some tension.

192. Variable size and colour index mark at centre of screen, as used for clicking on control positions/EOT's etc.

This idea came up this evening from Stellaferox, who stated that he was having difficulty seeing the white index mark as it was very small, and he was seeking to click on the off-white EOT. He's currently playing on a laptop.

It may help a few players where this white index mark could be enlarged and/or changed in colour? It would also be good if there was a keymap command whereby it could be suppressed, just prior to taking screenshots for example? Not urgent, but as it'll only take 5 minutes to code, and probably won't break the engines too badly, might be worthwhile implementing? :hmmm:

193. Clip-boards for non-verbal persistent records/orders/reports.

There are already a few clip-boards around the boat, or positions they could be put. I'd like to see each player able to access these by clicking on them, or navigating to the clip-board view via the "c" menu. Each player position would have a distinct page or pages upon which to write. Captains would have the ability upload at game start, a "standing orders" .rtf file, or .jpg of particular size and filesize, so players can familiarise such standing orders he wishes to state. Each player can upload such data in written-form as they wish to either access during the game, or wish others to be able to read.

For example:
Captain's standing orders: Pre-flooding may be done, but opening MBT's to dive before all safety lights are on is forbidden.

Radio Officer:
Quick reference sheet for radio syntax. Decrypted Enigma traffic (if it's ever fixed!)

Dive Officer:
Preferences for assistance, if any, by other crew.
Table of optimal minimum time to depth of different speeds/hydroplane settings.

Chief Engineer:
Instructions to machinist of who does what, when, and any other information he wishes to convey.
Endurance reports for given battery Kah remaining/speed.

The basic appearance of this virtual clip-board would have tabs, for each crew position, and any page viewed would be "marked read" after 10 second or so. Any role where nothing new has been entered, or the contents have been read, would be greyed out. Dark grey for nothing written, and light grey for contents posted but nothing new since last read. Ideally there'd be a function for copying all the comments posted to all the boats clipboards that could be dumped into a report of the game and aid a post-mortem being done afterwards to go along with the "logbook" data.

Why do this? I think it would help new players adjust to the practices and preferences of the captain of the day, which in turn would help newer players. It could be of some benefit in many different ways in helping a collection of players form a crew. It creates some opportunities for humour. ... For experienced players, it would aid comms within the boat in new ways, as a player friendly tool.

194. Additional forms of broken and solid lines on nav chart.

We currently have 3 forms of unbroken line, and 1 form of intermittent line usable on the nav chart. If one is to permit the tracking of up to 4 uboats, and the convoy, plus other plotting lines, then 6-8 or so lines would permit the convoy, the 4 u-boats plus another 4 for using to plot periods underwater for your own boat, and construction lines etc, then another 4 line types would be useful. I defer to those players who use the nav' charts regularly, but it seems to me that another 2 solid line types, and 2 more intermittent, or semi-intermittent lines ( ie "______ ._____." or "___..___.." or "___>____>" etc) could be useful for distinct plotting conventions. To a certain degree, I'm guessing here that in campaign-mode, the plotting of other boats via position reports and DFing maybe of more relevance to the game than is currently the case?

195. Tools for damage-control

It might be interesting for different roles to have different access to tools for effecting repairs, with the CE and machinists generally having more, but each other roles having tools suitable for effecting repairs at their own station. Additionally, some of the more heavily damaged item might require the tools of more than one player to address.

So, lets say a particular length of pipe was leaking, then flogging the nuts could stop a slow leak, but a heavier leak might require isolation valves to be closed, a player to remove the length of pipe, and a second player to put the new one back in before the nuts are tightened.

Or, a leaking pipe could be dealt with until surfaced by closing the isolation valve only, then repaired or replaced.

I suggest the possible tools:
Fire extinguisher - use on fires
Spanner (wrench). - tightening bolted flanges, replacing pipes (full depth repair, more time consuming than gland repair)
Screw-driver. Getting access to electric service panels prior to fault find with multimeter and repair with screw-driver. Also used to replace depth gauges etc
Gland to tighten down over leaking pipe, suitable for effecting repair at shallow depths on leaking pipes.
Bulkhead timbers. Reduces damage (dead light-bulbs) in given compartment by 20%.
Wooden wedges to batter into holes (similar to gland). Stops leaks from seams
Hammer. Applied after wedge to cause leak to stop.
Lead-lamp. Illuminates area.
Multimeter. Used to fault find electrical fault prior to repair.
straps for battery - used to bridge damaged cells to restore available battery voltage.

If you can think of how these tools might be available crew, and what they might help to fix, please add suggestions. One thing that occurs is mouse-hovering over a damaged item could indicate the tools required, in sequence, as well as the period "mousehovering" to use it. This should provoke some lively discussions, as the water pours in, of that damage needs to be repaired, in what order, to make best use of limited tools available?

Nice ideas :Kaleun_Cheers:

196. Exterior rust

Visible in bunker and at sea. A visual indication of the survival streak of that captain over a series of games. See also crew-beards, idea https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/sho...&postcount=192

Get killed, back to clean-shaven crew and pristine paint-job! :Kaleun_Crying:

Could also involve clean hats and uniforms, and whether or not the crew has civilian clothing - or not.

197. Clickable link to Discord channel of organised games, with option for Flotillas to disable it if not recruiting. This would help immeasurably in getting new players past the problem of not being able to gain entry to locked lobbies, nor discover the pass-word. Ideally each organised flotilla could have a link from somewhere in every bunker, stating the time of day they normally play (expressed in the timezone of the putative player) so they can commence the process of making contact with players on a given flotilla.

198. Pitch changes with submerged acceleration at half-speed and above.

I've read accounts of u-boats pitching up when accelerating, (submerged) requiring a compensating pitch down of the 'planes to keep the pitch angle of the boat constant. This was caused by the relatively high-drag of the conning-tower and flak/main armament being above the metacentric height of the submerged boat. I've no figures for it, but it would make the dive-officers job more interesting, as accelerating at PD could become a little more risky, and maintaining dive performance in a crash dive would require changes to the planes to compensate, at least when the speed of the boat is increasing. The same effect, in the opposite sense would also occur with a sudden deceleration, however, I'd expect this displacement in pitch to be fairly modest when decelerating. Type XXI boats (of we ever see one!) were more or less unaffected by such changes, as much more attention had been paid to keeping the conning-tower low drag, they had no artillery piece, and the 20mm AA was in low-drag cupolas likewise. But for Type VII's and IX's, especially the late war ones with lots of flak cluttering the conning tower should probably have this as a "thing" to contend with?

This also touches on something else I'd like to see, which is "pitching" to be added to the routine movement of the boat, especially surfaced, and to a lesser degree at PD. Pitching was usually caused by the action of swell, rather than wave action. As I usually play engineer, I couldn't begin to guess if swell is modelled. It'd be interesting to know. Swell amplitude varies with depth to the sea-bed, and requires a persistant steady wind. So I'd expect swell to be low amplitude in Biscay/Norwegian sea, but of more amplitude and greater frequency in shallower seas.If any sea-faring types can confirm that - or correct me - I'd be interested to know. In practical terms, 3 axis movement (with pitching) would slightly complicate maintaining PD and trim for the dive officer, and might limit pre-flooding to conditions suited for it?

199. Handing notes and real morse.
Looking ahead a bit, until the Enigma is fixed, and DFing is introduced, and we have some form of campaign mode, it's foreseeable that there may be too much to do for a single player operating the radio, especially when real morse is in effect. This is proving more and more popular with several flotillas now regularly fielding sufficient players operating in morse code with USB morse-keys, sending up to 150 short messages a game.

So the first likely change will be to have an assistant radio operator who will encrypt outgoing signals and decrypt incoming ones. Messages from BDU are possibly going to be a cause of a pause in time compression, so that information about a convoy outside of hydrophone detection range may be passed, and the navigator can determine an intercept course and speed, prefereably to arrive near the convoy after night-fall. As all messages from all boats will need to be decrypted, this will be a busy station.

It follows from this that rather than having the assistant radio operator read out the plaintext on every occasion, it would be good if the radio-log was re-introduced, so that decrypted messages, and outgoing ones were rendered in the radio log, which the captain and navigator can read periodically, for situational awareness with only extremely urgent or important messages being brought immediately to the captains attention. Being able to annotate such messages when they're added to the radio log would be useful, so the captain can immediately locate such messages. Because the messages may run to several pages over the course of a campaign game, some means of ranking/ordering them by date, importance, messages addressed to, of from, a particular boat, may be very useful.

A queue of encrypted, but not yet sent messages may also be worthwhile so a captain can see if a message has been sent. Consideration will need to be paid for radiomen using USB morse-keys instead of the ingame keys.

The probability exists that there may not always be a sufficiency of radio assistants, and if Enigma is considered "bothersome" to a boat, that players may elect to send plaintext over the air, or, may develop simple codes such as "abc 45:35" with "abc - TOI and 45:35 is the time, with a secret number subtracted to give the true time). There are several possibilities here. One is that there's a bot who can encrypt and decrypt all messages, at a sensible rate, and these are then presented on the form for the radioman, if any, to send. And/Or that all messages are kept on a radio log on escorts with a time, bearing and encrypted or plain language text. This would allow for allied players to derive some intelligence from messages sent in plain language or whose meaning is lightly obscured. Meaning that there's a risk that not using Enigma could lead to disagreeable consequences!

How to handle the allied efforts to break Kriegsmarine Enigma. For some periods, KM traffic was being broken, rephrased in English, encrypted in British type X encryption, with digests of the situation being sent out to the escorts. This sometimes was not broken that day, and could occur at any time in a 24 hour period after the first 3 hours, if it did. The general number of u-boats within 150nm of the convoy, and 3 bearing DF plots of u-boats outside of that range would be sent. As this information can be culled from the game itself, these digests could be generated and "sent" automatically, with a delay of 3-24 hours, with DF plots from shore-stations and "Huff-duff" could be sent likewise, if it is assumed that uboats transmitting are DF'd the longer they transmit, and the longer the messages. As it's very unlikely that there will be a corresponding radio officer aboard escorts, this will need to be automated with an algorithm to determine if a broadcast from a u-boat has been DF'd - or not.

Some flotillas have a playing style where the sending and receiving of encrypted messages is just not conducive to their preferred playing style, eg the Frost game. So care is going to need to be taken whereby it can be turned off, or all automated, at a lobby level.

One historical task of the 1st boat to locate a convoy, was to remain in visual contact with it, at a distance where escorts would not risk leaving a gap in the screen to chase it down, and was safe from the main-armament. During daylight hours it might submerge if the convoy was a slow one. Every 2 hours, it would radio the position of the convoy to the other boats until sufficient boats were within range to commence an attack at a specified time. It would be good if some aspect of this was possible in the campaign game, whereby u-boats in the game could receive updates on the convoy position, heading and speed and close with it, usually in the early evening, so that the attack could be prosecuted in darkness. Of course if a player-manned escort decided to go after that "1st boat", then these updates would cease for a time.

200. Debris. One of the problems facing us, and the devs, is how to move the game into later war-years, without the advent of ship-borne radar, and airborne radar, from rendering every game like the current "daylight" game with circa 1 hour 15 between attacks, owing to the increased detection distance around the convoy.

There are various things that will help, such as schnorkels, but these are quite limiting in terms of achievable speed, and really only serve to allow a u-boat to close the distance at modest speed, until the submerged diesels operating causes the u-boat to be at risk of being heard. If an allied player is listening for diesels/schnorkel use, it may not actually help the u-boat close much more than 8km or so, subject to how much noise of the nearby convoy blanks out the diesels of the u-boat as a quieter signal.

Other things that can help would be:

Having dead areas if the ship is rolled so the radar is tilted upwards, and reduced range if it's pointed down. If the roll-rate is similar to the rotation rate of the radar head, this could appreciably limit the efficacy of the radar. Roll rate is usually due swell, rather than wave action, so swell periodicity and amount could be tailored by the devs to move well away from "one sweep and you're spotted by radar" possibility.

Another is removing radar returns from AI. If a human player is watching a radar, then he can be given a means to cause AI ships to detect the radar-painted u-boat. The advantage of doing this would be that AI is ALWAYS either FAR too accurate, or FAR too incompetent to be a believable stand-in for human intelligence and perception. Across about any game one cares to mention, AI is infamously hard to program to work as well - and as badly - realistically as a human would. This removes that problem.

Having a certain amount of radar-reflective debris in the ocean, floating wreckage, cargo, carley floats and so forth that would present radar returns sufficiently close to the appearance of a return from a conning tower that many sweeps might be required to determine what the operator is looking at on his PPI. The sea-state can also influence the amount of "clutter" both for ship radar, but especially for the centimetric radar of aircraft. The Naxos and Metox radar receivers could be increased somewhat over their historic performance, so that a u-boat can tell it's being painted with a radar-signal.

The final aspect is that wartime radar, especially early on, was both fragile and prone to faults, especially if the ship was using guns or DC's. Some form of radar failure rate/repair could be built in, so that at any one time, some of the escorts were temporarily unable to transmit, or receive, radar pulses?

Apparently all development has ceased according to posts on steam.

I very much doubt that's the case, and I would certainly not take posts on steam as evidence one way or another. Whilst it is true that the devs are not as visible as they might be in terms of engaging with players on future aspects, they do make an effort to do so, and road-maps are laid out. The rate of progress has always been somewhat glacial, however the design decisions are always smart, and the boat interiors and plethora of operable controls are simply a labour of love, far beyond the norm, especially by a dev team of 3 or so. I find it best not to bother reading posts critical of rate of progress, especially since so much effort has been made to deal with problematic legacy-code which, as I understand it, made the last beta-beta patch testing so problematic. If I don't miss my guess, and this IS a "guess", it was that experience getting the engines/emotors to work with the legacy code, that impelled the effort to deal with legacy code since. The devs have been pretty clear about this since, and openly. There are a number of new features under development, and more slated to be done. Type VIIC/41 boats, a world map and campaign game already being promulgated.

I find it best to try and help with testing, when it's running, and to just enjoy stuff when it comes along. The "ideas" thread is not, and never has been, an expectation, in any way, of what might in sum, come to arise, however, it is designed to provoke discussions amongst the devs and players both, in case an idea as to how something could be implemented, such as damage-control, or PVP/player managed AI proves to be useful/popular. Half the ideas, (and perhaps more than that!) will be unworkable from a coding point of view as things stand, but I have fun thinking about them so the original 10 or so ideas has grown somewhat since!

They are still active.