Interesting, although I somewhat disagree. RSRD doesn't greatly impact TMO's sensors and what sensors are impacted are easily corrected if you desire to do so. Certainly RSRD uses overall easier crew ratings until about 43, but that's easily adjusted as well.

I do agree once you learn RSRD, they're no surprises finding ships. Guess that's the downside of history. Duci uses more generics and percentages in his traffic layers, so groups do look different, but they still travel the same paths...if they spawn.:O:

RSRD can be made much better. The problem is you need to rework much of his work and files, by the time you get done, you've touched all his work, so his mod becomes nil so to speak. Simply no need to install it, since 90% of it would be included in your patch. I edited all the crew ratings, by that alone you've touched every file. The problem is obvious, his mod and he's not around anymore. The other issue, several of his special missions are broke, so you'll seldom see one.

I've added numerous ships and generic traffic, so with that you don't know what you'll get or if it will show up, least it adds flavor. I replaced his subhunter groups with those of TMO, which includes many more.

Groups in any mod, including TMO can act stupid and unrealistic. I hate when they sense you they go into that slower helming, when realistically the behavior would be different. Strange, some groups, although rare, do break up, take off at different speeds, different directions and later regroup. I've long tried to figure what makes groups react differently, but can't figure it, although I may have stumbled upon something last night. Still, most of them do that dumb helming and slow down, which makes easy target practice.

Trav did a hell of a job with his mod, but I think he got a lil carried away with his last version. I prefer version 2.2, more realistic and stable.

People have to decide what game they want. I use TMO/RSRD/Trav/several others, but tweaked to no end and my own envs.. I think the biggest issue or problem many have is stacking mods not knowing exactly what is being overwritten. Course many don't understand changing one value could effect another untouched value.

Sure, if you're intent is for TMO to act just like TMO, then don't add to it, bout any mod makes mass changes, but as far as difficulty, you can make RSRD as difficult or easy as you want.

Well we have to be a LITTLE rational. Land masses and seas do not change shape depending on events in the war except minutely if thermonuclear devices are dropped in littoral areas. Ocean depths don't change much either. No reason to randomize any of that.

But as far as traffic goes, what the submarine does changes that during the war. You sink a freighter who squawks on the radio. Do merchies continue to ply their way through your sector as if you were not there? In R/L no! They would be interrupted or routed around you. That is why submarines moved around a lot. But RSRD will continue to feed you with victims you would never see if you were in the real war.

Now, so will the stock game. It was made without a feedback loop too. But at least the traffic is random within limits and you cannot predict what you will find. And there are defects in what you encounter: way too many single merchants, not enough convoys or escorted merchants. Wrong kind of traffic in the wrong area. The traffic mod guys are right. When you analyze it there's very little sense in it all.

But random encounters, even defective random encounters much more faithfully represent the experience of the real participants of the game, who NEVER said well, what's the longitude and latitude of the main Japanese force for the Battle of Midway on June 6?

And it's fun to check that stuff out in SH4. It's fun to see the carrier attacks for the Battle of Midway. It's fun to sit in the Slot and watch the Tokyo Express thunder by. But once you engage the action what follows is definitely not historically viable.

When producing a simulation of war you have all kinds of paradox to deal with. Every sailor was afraid for his life. Almost 24% of American submariners didn't come back. But looked at from a boat's perspective it was ungodly safe out there! Trying to reproduce the actual percentage losses, Beery, when he was the RFB guy, made depth charges less and less effective.

In his last RFB you could just sit at periscope depth ignoring all the escorts and torpedo the merchies because the depth charges couldn't sink you! The result was realistic in the percentage of boats that would be lost.
But when you were playing you were John Wayne in some movie where you knew that after you were shot you'd get off work, go home and have a beer. Your playing style became totally unrealistic. Realism sometimes leads to unrealism.

So Ducimus came into the picture and suddenly DDs were making accurate runs with deadly depth charges. They would make an accurate run without even pinging you, and you better take evasive action because if you didn't change course and speed after they dropped just get a key from St Peter and find your room. It was completely unrealistic in mechanics but YOU ended up playing in a very realistic manner: afraid for your life and squirming for your life. Unrealism sometimes leads to realistic game play.

That would be my goal. Constrained randomness. Ships would appear unpredictably in expected groupings and with appropriate units for the area. If you were on the tanker routes, you would encounter tankers. Off tanker routes, no tankers. But you would not be able to predict where a convoy will be, go there and sink it, as you can with RSRD.

Ahistorical? What do you call historical? I call historical an analogy of the experience of a submariner in the war. Their experience included fear, not knowing where the enemy was, patrolling empty sectors, unexpectedly discovering convoys, an expectation they might not survive. Introducing rationality and predictive events loses more reality than it produces.

What someone needs to do is combine RSRD's battles and the random convoys and shipping from the stock game.

RR, I agree with your perspective completely. Furthermore, I appreciate that you wrote so exhaustively upon the topic. You have a clarity of word which is laudable.

I believe there would be some merit to having a game that randomized the world at the beginning. The captain would have to make his own evaluation of choke points and perceived military objectives of the other side, rather than know what landmass might be invaded, or where to lay in wait for convoy traffic. However, 'ahistorical' gaming is something of a particular interest for me. I have always enjoyed making other decisions than what may have actually been made, to see if I could achieve better results.

Gary Grigsby's War in Russia (circa 1990) was great for this. It allowed you not just tactical & strategic control, but you could change production priorities back in Germany. A very good, basic game.

No, stock is silly in it's randomness. Stock spawns and despawns ships anywhere. The good thing about RSRD is 90% of all groups spawn in ports and return to port. As I recall, even many of TMO groups simply spawn and despawn in the open sea.

The good thing about TMO's traffic is it has decent zig patterns, about every 10 miles, RSRD really doesn't have many, cept course changes. With TMO you have to work to put yourself in position, trying to figure out the base course.

Which to improve upon, I think RSRD is better choice. At least by adding a bunch of random groups, it confuses you somewhat. Playing now, I seldom go after the same battles or invasions, gets rather boring.

Actually, one of RSRD's best points is that the missions make sense and are put together well. If you ignore where you know where traffic is, do what the mission does and pick up a couple of additional assignments as you fulfill them, returning to port when your torpedoes are nearly exhausted it plays, in general, really well.

That's the way I played it until this particular cruise where I got too smart and actually anticipated where the bad guys would be. I'm finding that although that is an interesting investigation, as soon as I attack something everything falls apart as the enemy does stupid things that don't make sense in the context of the mission they are on.

So I have this love/hate relationship with RSRD. I fully understand that Lurker wanted every Japanese ship to go where and when it went during the war. But the results of historical ship movement is extremely unrealistic gameplay by the player.

You can get around that if you make up your mind to forget everything you know about historical battles and ship movements and just do the missions.

I still think the vision of crews in RSRD is way ratcheted up. There's no way on a pitch black night that a ship should be able to see you at 4 miles and plop the first salvo in your lap. RSRD does this with incredible regularity where stock TMO had you pretty safe operating on the surface anywhere outside 3 miles from an enemy ship.

If the enemy can see and kill you from the horizon with one shot there's no sense in playing the game against warships.

So yeah, count me in. RSRD as base with constrained randomness and some historical movement added and restoration of TMO AI.

I can't remember TMO's escort visuals vs.RSRD,but I thought RSRD would be a tad weaker. I know Duci greatly increase gun range in 2.5. about 5 nms on a clear day. Tater made a patch to restore TMO visuals to RSRD.

The patrol missions are fine in RSRD,it's the special missions, supply drops,etc., that need a lot of work and addition.

Running TMO2.5/RSRD I'm sitting decks awash in the slot on a moonless night, getting tagged on first salvo by bad guys more than 4 miles away. Under TMO 1.7 I could run 3 miles away on the surface without any problems. If they did send shells my way (didn't happen very often) they were wild at first, not dead on my smoldering carcass....:doh:

TMO 1.7...you weren't gone that long were you:O: On a moonless night you should be able to get in 1500 yards...I think 1.7 gun range for TMO was 6000, now it's 10,000.

I'm gonna try to get done with my night env mod for RSRD today. Making a new env for night darker and getting the sim tweaked is like pulling teeth. Right now you can get too close, about 600 yards. Just trying to figure what a good night range should be when moon is out. Duci once told me there is no perfect balance, problem is too many values effect day and night. Even today often your crew can't see ships far enough in the day, then too much at night, that's gotta be reversed.