Here's why crew interaction won't work. (Cut me some slack I'm leading up to something;)) We aren't US Navy enlisted men. First of all our vocabularies of profanity aren't large enough to get anybody to listen to us. If we showed up on a submarine, we'd pop out a "What a great submarine, nice to be aboard!" And they, not hearing one @#%%^ or @#$@# or @#$@##$^ in the whole sentence would just assume you were an idiot or a civilian (they are synonymous most of the time), chuck you overboard into the drink and then report you AWOL.

EVERYTHING we think goes on aboard a submarine is wrong. We wouldn't know an honest submarine conversation if it was dropped on top of us when we opened the conning tower hatch. If we DID encounter an honest submarine conversation, we wouldn't have the sense to believe it.

Tell you what. I have a reading assignment for you. Now, realize that this thing is long. It has something like 200 stories, but you'll never know that. One of three things will happen. You'll be in the hospital in traction with broken ribs from laughing too hard and we won't see you for several weeks here.

Or you corporate types will be horrified that such a bunch of idiots could possibly be part of something as serious as the US Military, and then if you're bright you'll realize you don't know squat about really managing. You'll also be missing for several weeks as you learn your job.

And then there's the misfits around here who will read the first article and realize they aren't a misfit after all. Yes, you're a rank amateur, but you are the raw material from which our submarine force created the greatest fighting men in the history of the world. You won't be back until you read the very last story.

Any way you cut it, I'm sending you on a one-way trip, at least for awhile. Just the titles will hit your laugh button, like "Telling Time by Progressive Putrification." If you come back you'll find my writing as boring as reading the back of a box of tampons, but that's a small price to pay for excellence, isn't it? So take a trip to the real world of tuna can boats and find out what was really going on in boat conversations. Then think: do I want my son or daughter exposed to that crap?:rotfl:

Introducing Bob "Dex" Armstrong, a crude, authentic After Battery Rat: a genius who uses the english language as a weapon to tear apart all notions of what you think went on aboard American diesel boats, and who will exercise your laughing muscles to the breaking point. Welcome to the After Battery.

Warning: this is definitely mature material.

When a story starts out with

You know it will be a winner. :yeah:

My wife would disagree with you on the profanity part. I think computer gamers that deal with the frustration of windows, games, CTD's, ect...can cuss with the best of them.

Heh... you've had duds like me, huh? :up:

Man... I'm supposed to be cleaning the house after lunch. Now how the heck am I gonna do that if I've got my nose stuck in a bunch of ol' sea dog stories? Wife's just gonna have to holler at me now... :salute:

I find it interesting that there appears to be two camps for what should be added to SH4 (recognizing that many people have interests in both camps

1. The group that wants better graphical depictions

2. The group that wants more simulation

I wonder if any single software program can ever make both camps happy?

Some people probably won't be happy until they invent the first commercial "holodeck." At which point they'll promptly give their drab lives over to the thing and society will have a new addiction to cope with. :doh:

Back to business:

• An actual roster of enemy ships. Once you sink the Yamato, you should ideally not encounter it again. It should be child's play for the game to keep a list of all possible ships and cross them off as you sink them so they don't regenerate.
• Air traffic that makes sense, relating realistically with airbase locations, or aircraft carriers out only far enough to return to a landing field or carrier. And numbers should make sense for the number of planes possible to maintain in the air from a given base.
• Enemy air bases marked on our nav map. Updated as bases are eliminated or built during the war.
• Steal Ducimus' evil airplanes. Within reason, airplanes should be able to see you when submerged, subject to depth, light, surface conditions and water clarity modifications.
• Adaptive AI. You're off the coast of Honshu. The game schedules convoys through your area. You sink a ship. Convoys should avoid you for the foreseeable future, forcing you to move locations. It's not enough to do the RSRD schedule ships where ships really were. Good starting point only. The Japanese reacted to events and so should the game.
• Relative maneuvering. You should be able to order a 30º left turn. You should be able at 90' to say take her down another 30'.
• Realistic weapon loads on planes. Zeros didn't carry torpedoes.
• Realistic air search radar. Give us the right scope for the right radar. Don't show a radar screen when the sub has no radar. Let us find the direction of the plane by rotating the antenna and using the edge of the antenna, but don't put the plane on the map or wrong radar scope.
• Give us an intelligent crewmember to call out range and bearing of the plane. In conjunction with the wonderful radar, don't make us hover over the radar. Let us run our boat if we choose.
• Have an intelligent sound man to let us select what target to track and actually give us appropriate continuous info on that target until we change our specification. If he's sweeping, how bout letting him find things and inform as a real crewman would?

And another list bites the dust. I'm sure there is lots I've left out. Notice that I'm putting gameplay first. Eyecandy is fine and adds immersion as long as it doesn't break the game. But when it interferes with gameplay everyone curses the eyecandy and it defeats its own purpose. Works good always must have priority over looks good or the game is a loser. The game must play well on an average gaming machine of the time it is released. That means the previous generation of video card, motherboard, and microprocessor. Requiring a $6000.00 machine to play is the same as not having a game for sale. On the other hand, it's not a bad idea to have the game ABLE to take advantage of a $6,000 machine to strut its stuff.

Great list RR.....

:haha:

What scares me is now that we have systems that can run what we need, want, wish for, simulations are fading fast...:-?

Lets not forget independent screw control, for those pesky times your rudder is damaged.

Larry, Moe, Curley, and Shemp?

Someone named their cannons with those names......I would bet you know who......

I wish your deck watch would act on a individual basis calling out ships in their sector. Be nice if a little picture icon with their name would pop up when they called out a ship. It would help with surface attacks. Having an icon that keeps up with one ship doesn't get it.