I apologise if anything I have said was taken as criticism of a particular mod. . I was only commenting generally on what I think would make the game harder while still simulating the sometimes poor Japanese ASW.

I have nothing but respect for people who mod the game. It's the modders that will take SH4 to a new level and keep it playable for years to come.

Actually, you made an excellent point. I think there are simply too many targets other than merchants around. We know that there were on the order of 250 merchants at sea every single day. The number of warships, particularly larger than DDs at sea any given day would be TINY. The combined fleet didn't steam around in circles, they were short on oil, they were saving it up to use on planned operations. The plus side is that we know what those were.

Combinedfleet.com has troms for the large ships, I think we'll find the place to find them is home waters at anchor with the Hotel Yamato, Truk, etc.

When they steam someplace, they do so for a reason.

tater

Source:http://www.geocities.com/thomasdclayjr/Results.html

"Of the 116,000 casualties, 69,600 were administered by U.S. submarines. This by a force 288 submarines. Of this force of 288, fifty two were lost"

The convoys in the pacific where badly organized if at all present. Also the Japanese overconfidence played a big role here. So sure it was a big difference between the 2 TO's. Something that I think is sort of reflected in this game.

You do the old "but its not realistic" attack. There is not some sort of contract that modders have to sign where they have sworn to make "more realistic". The title is rather rude, isn't it? Just a polite version of "Yo, morons, this ain't the ****in' Das Boot".

That being said, make a Research thread where you put up all the goodies you can find about Subs in the pacific during WW2. It it is things like that the modders need to get inspiration. And still, I prefer a good time to diamond hard realism. Lots of things could be changed to make the game more challenging, but if some of them are not entirely realistic, you won't see any flak from me because of it.

To me,

Mods are Mods. If I want somthing that gives me a realistic simulation of the pacific war, I'll download the corresponding mod. If I want a giant laser on the front of my submarine, i'll download that mod. If I like beery's mod over another mod, i'll download beery's mod. The point i'm making is that I will download the mods that I like. I feel that Modders should be free to make whatever mods they want to make and let the community decide what they want to download and what they wont.

Two Cents Entered :ping:

~DeePsix

Funny, I seem to recall a PM from you dictating me to use manners?

/Immacolata gains Reflection
/Immacolata casts Manners! on castorp345 inflicting 345 points of back-at-ya

Beery, as much as I like realism, I wonder how you are going to approach the problem of poor intelligence and a shoddy doctrine?

We know stuff today they didn't know back then. Knowing what we do today and using that knowledge ALONE gives the player a drastic upper hand in the battle against the japanese. IF you decide to go with the opinion that japanese ASW was from pisspoor to shoddy, then couldn't the game turn into a turkey shoot?

It is already now. I wonder if you have any good ideas how to mod out or work with this latent EZ-mode that the pacific theatre seems to hold versus the Atlantic.

Strange. I had the opposit. Part of my mission was that I had to shoot some pictures from Tokyo harbor. From the entrance of the bay up to the harbor it was crawling with subhunters, destroyers fishingboats and merchants. While getting in the bay a Merchant convoy left and a taskforce arrived. After taking some nice pictures I tried to leave the bay but somehow I was noticed and in no time I had about 10 destroyers and other stuff on my back. It resulted in the fact that now I'm mainly in underwater marinelife photography ;) It was a july '42 mission.

This is the case with every single historical simulation ever made. In the end, if we build a realism mod right, the player's advanced knowledge shouldn't matter because we build in checks and balances to counteract those issues.

I'm going to prevent it from being a turkey shoot in probably the same way it didn't become a turkey shoot in real life. Most likely I'll try the standard method of restricting scores - I'm going to make it hard to find contacts (the Pacific is a big ocean), so that it will only be possible to get the sorts of totals that real sub commanders achieved. Apart from that I'm going to do everything I can to make the player's experiences seem realistic. Most importantly, I'm going to read everything I can about the submarine war in the pacific and try to implement what I learn in the game. I can't be much more specific because I know virtually nothing about the subject yet, but give me a couple of months and I will know lots more.

Poor intel is easy to model in a computer game - you just remove features that clue the player in on what the opponent is doing. Shoddy doctrine is hard, but doctrine has always been up to the player - you can't force a player to play historically (well, you can, but it might be illegal :D).

In the end, no computer game can model everything perfectly, but what can't be modelled can be approximated. It all depends on what the most important goals of the sim are - get the important stuff looking right and the unimportant stuff can be fudged to fit. Mod design is not rocket science and every simulation is basically a fudge factory - we fudge factors :D until things look right. Knowing what's most important in the sim is key - if we keep our eye on the ball everything falls into place. This is how I've built (or helped build) three very successful major realism mods (Beery Superpatch for Red Baron 3D, the Beery R&R mod for B-17 II and the RUb mod for SH3).

With respect, I think you may have missed the point slightly, the modders are not trying to get the Atlantic campaign into the Pacific, rather they are trying to meld the best of SH3 and SH4 to form a new Atlantic based game with the enhanced graphics of SH4 but with the advanced AI and game play of SH3 or mods therein.

I've been playing SH4 for little over a week , while I have been stunned by some of the graphic advances, (and totally baffled by others), I'm fast coming to the conclusion that the Pacific theatre was/is not all that interesting form a sub sim point of view, sorry but that’s my opinion. Now a Pacific flight sim or a land based shooter is a different thing altogether.

I mean no disrespect to the US navy or sailors therein, far from it; essentially they had the Japanese all but licked by 1943, which makes for a somewhat lacklustre long term game prospect.

For me the point, or challenge of SH3 is not to trundle Around the Atlantic sinking stuff and scoring points, its actually just trying to stay alive, particularly after 1943, when the Allies really got their ASW **** together and this is were the SH3 comes into its own.

I for one can’t wait for those talented moders to do their stuff cos I'm sad to say I'm already bored with SH4 after less than a week, yet SH3 kept me going for nearly two years.

By the way this is not a criticism of the dev team or Ubi soft or any one else, its just history

I think there is indeed a huge difference (which relates to gameplay) in the two theaters. One pits the ubootwaffe against the allies' effectively infinite number of merchant ships and escorts, the other pits the axis' limited surface targets and combatants against infinite resources to attack them.

BTW, a PTO flight sim suffers somewhat as well. In actual play, it tends to end up unrealistically hard for the allies since many of the negatives of the japanese forces don't get modeled in a sim—poor supply/maintenance, and perhaps most importantly pilot quality.

Balance (from a gameplay standpoint) will be tough in a realistic mod, but certainly not impossible. There is one other factor to consider from a GAME standpoint. The player need not be representative of the entire force. What I mean is that the player can have interesting play by being given all the scut work of the silent service in game. Archerfish gets all the sweet patrols sinking unescorted tankers, but the player's poor Pike gets stuck sneaking into dangerous, mined harbors teaming with subchasers :D . That sorta thing.

tater

Well, from a realism standpoint I'm not too worried about play balance, after all the real world isn't balanced. Realism fans are looking to get historically accurate results, so if the real thing was relatively tame compared to the Atlantic that's not a problem for them. It's not like there's no danger at all, and there's still tonnage to go after. The player's goals in SH4/RFB are unchanged from those of SH3/RUb: survival and tonnage. Survival is easier but that also means it's less frustrating and you really get to know your crews in a way that may not have been possible in SH3. Tonnage is still as much of a challenge even though the chances of racking up lots of it in RFB will be fewer and farther between - the player will still be striving to find that fat merchant, perhaps harder than he might have been in SH3/RUb, and that's where I think the challenge really lies in this game. In short, in SH3 the primary challenge was survival in a deadly environment, whereas in SH4 the primary challenge is going to be to rack up tonnage in a comparatively target-poor environment.

In the end though, it's the feel of the sim that's important - if the war in the Pacific feels real players will forgive the fact that it's not as challenging as the war in the Atlantic. Sim fans aren't arcade fans - they don't need play balance or continuous excitement in order for the sim to be fulfilling.

Great answer Beery! Like I stated earlier in this post, study needs to be done. Modders need to pour over the books on the subject. This will take more than a week after release. I'm awaiting RFB and waiting patiently. You da man!:rock:

Beery, I'm glad you are on the case. The PTO has always been my favorite theater. If you are looking for an excellent one volume history of the U.S. submarine war which covers all the key points, I highly recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Victory...5183515&sr=8-1

The book covers all the key points: U.S. torpedo problems, intel, descriptions of almost all encounters, statistics, etc., its basically as detailed as his 2 vol. history of the Atlantic war, but more readable and more of a labor of love, since he served in a U.S. sub during the war. He also interviewed about 100 U.S. skippers in preparation for the book. I am re-reading it now.

Personally, its my opinion that major modifications should wait until the devs have done what they can. Everyone knows that they were rushed and they want us to have a great game as much as we all do.

Its a good idea using what we learnt from SH3 to improve on SH4, but what I'm saying is people are modding a game thats still getting updated, which is kinda jumping the gun. Some of the best mods for SH3 came out post-1.4 and I think the devs should be given more of a chance before the guts of SH4 are rummaged through.

Anyway, just my two cents :)

Good point but it is nice to be ahead of the game knowing what can be modded and what can't. What the community is looking for in the mods, etc. When the patch comes out either install the changed files or do a total reinstall.

I started reading through most of the posts on this thread and then got a little tired of it half way though, so I skipped ahead and decided to reply because I just wanted to remind everybody about one thing.

Forum members consist of children through adults with varying degrees of knowledge and maturity from around the globe, so it is completely expected that we will get a very mixed bag of posts here.

Just keep that in mind (modders) when you become a little annoyed with the way certain individuals reply to your work. :know: :yep: Don't let it effect what you do. It really is not that significant. :up:

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No where did you get that idea, most modders are trying to get a realistic Pacific campaign going some are but I think peopel are just testing what can be used..btw the Japanese were NOT licked by 1943. Far from it is was in mid to late 1943 that the torpedoes were fixed. Now if you prefer the Atlantic subsims or Pacific flight sims or shooters that's cool!! :|\\

I totally agree. Thats why the focus of my modding hasn't been to polish, or for realism, but for making the game less painful and more enjoyable. I have a few tweaks that i'll have to reverse after next patch assuming Ubi address the problem.

Beery, when you do, I suggest reading - among other things - the late Capt. Edward L. Beach's "Submarine!". The author was XO on the "Trigger" during WWII, then CO on the Piper, albeit the war was over by the time he reached his assigned area in the later ship as CO.

After you've read it, you'll laugh at the many BS you can read here in these forums and you'll probably come to the conclusion that the subwar conducted by the PacFleet against Japan was dangerous.

The one conducted by the Kriegsmarine in the Atlantic was simply suicidal (later on) and became this way because of the ignorance of yet another Hitler admirer in command position (Dönitz).
When people think the sub campaign in the Pacific was a cakewalk, it's like saying normal infantry duty is a cakewalk, because suicide bombers on the other hand have a 100% casualty rate.