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.