Ive never played SH4 as the Pacific Campaign never appeald to me. However what you describe above sounds acceptable to me as long as the 'pool' of mission types is vast and that there are no scripted 'triggers' where the game forces you to move from the atlantic to the med for example. If this is to happen it should only happen depending on how the war is progressing and not on a predefined date.

But historically the war progression is tied to dates. For example in SH3 if you're in Brest, when 6 June 1944 comes you'll be transfered back to Germany all the time at the same date. But it's still fun and replayable.
Now in SH5 this might be different with the dynamic aspect, but I doubt that our actions will have more than local effects has shown in the video, it shows enemy assets redeploying but it doesn't show/say that Malta can fall in German hands. I hope so anyway, a single u-boot singlehandly changing the course of the whole war sounds silly IMO.

not hope too much, read the last sentence in this PDF document
http://static4.cdn.ubi.com/SH5dynami...9d1f2c89396c3c
(right click and save as...)

I have less than zero interest in playing a u-boat, but it sounds like the campaign might actually be partially dynamic. Dynamism requires that the campaign can alter due to player actions in some meaningful way. In SH4, you can get spotted and have the airstrike chance increase, for example. This is not dynamism. Neither SH3 or 4 were dynamic, IMO. Not in the least.

In a u-boat campaign, if the boat uses the radio, for example, there needs to be a chance that a convoy headed right at him (but over the horizon and invisible) might very well alter course and never be seen. If the boat makes a torpedo attack, the same should also e true, and perhaps have ASW assets assigned to the area to try and hold the boat down until it is forced to surface.

I don't expect or require "war changing" stuff in most circumstances, it's just too complex. I could see certain important engagements written with alternate (scripted) outcomes. Say smaller invasion forces in the med—a mythical attack might well change the short term outcome. The nice thing from the perspective of scripting the u-boat war is that there is nothing the boats could have done to do anything but delay the inevitable. I the PTO all fleet boats could do was accelerate the end for Japan, the outcome was certain in both cases (in hindsight though people at the time could have not been so sure).

Failure to redirect convoys, etc would mean no real dynamism, IMO.

I'd be very disappointed if the game didn't actually keep track of named ships so that once a certain ship is sunk it is gone forever. Ie: if a warship with 1 in the class gets sunk it should never be seen again. If there were 2 and you sink one, the chances of seeing the other should appropriately drop. For merchants this isn't a big deal, the US effectively built an infinite number. Heck, DEs and DDs were effectively built in infinite numbers (the USN built about 2/3s as many DE/DDs during the war as the KM built u-boats, lol)

Thanks, good find, it's very interesting. Well it can indeed go into alternate history, but... if I play with 100% difficulty, it will be near impossible for me to wipe out an entire task force or convoy, so ultimately my actions would have only little reactions. I hope :)

Perhaps an easy and civilised way to deal with the campaign controversy
 

Hi to all
I've been thinking about another post re the campaign issue that many of us are worried about - the post in question states that there is a difference between 'dynamic' and 'random' and I think the difference and the explanation provided is excellent

So perhaps the easiest way to deal with the problem would be for Neil if He's in touch with the any one from the developer team to ask Dan for a more detailed explanation of what 'he' means by dynamic

As one who has been moaning the apparent lack of Dynamic Campaign, and who would dearly love to be wrong on this count, I stand corrected if what I should be moaning about is the apparent lack of an 'open-ended, random' campaign - as it would seem that this latter description would be closer to the way SH3 was constructed.

I think the problem remains for all of us that are concerned about this, be it dynamic, open-ended, or random, what we are concerned to learn is if the new SH5, or the missions therein will play out differently every time, or at least appear to do so as in the case of SH3 or will the game play out pretty much the same way once we've played through the first time round

Can some one get a comment on this single issue from the developers, its all that concerns me, the rest of what I have seen so far looks absolutely fantastic and I can wait to purchase and play this game?

Best Regards
Rascal

^^Great find. Best info on the campaign workings I've seen so far if still very high level. Everyone concerned or confused about what Dan means about Dynamic Campaign needs to read this!

I'm now more comfortable with how the dynamic campaign will operate and only have the two key complaints around the 1943 end date and the

In reading this if you got to 1943 with the Med and Egypt in German hands, then the result of the Battle of the Atlantic may not have been quite so decisively certain by May 1943. Almost all the German u-Boat assets would potentially be freed up for Atlantic convoy duty instead of being stuck in the Med. This actually makes the decision to end the campaign in 1943 even more confusing.

Spot on here. This is what I have been thinking for a couple of days. If the campaign is truly dynamic--as everyone here who seems to know better has been telling me--then if I do well, the Battle for the Atlantic may not end in mid-1943...I, the lone hero and ultimate saviour, may still be going strong winning the war all by myself well into 1944...1945...1946...1947...

TBH I'm not a fan of "alternate reality" campaigns, as I fail to see how one person can make such a difference (look at Prien - he sunk the Royal Oak within the first month of the war when the Allies were most vulnerable, but did it really make that big a difference? And did he go on to sink Task Forces like we are seemingly expected to do in SH5? And even if he had, do we really think it would have made a difference, overall?).

Only difference one boat could have made would be if it came home with 100,000 GRT every patrol. 4-5 boats doing that WOULD have made a big difference to the result.

Given this it beggar belief that ending it all in May 1943 makes any sense beyond not meeting the challenge of modelling the technical changes seen after that date into the game.

Yes, that could be the true reason why the campaign ends in 1943.
With such a system under the hood, the player and his successfully operations could be come so overpowering that he could be win the war alone for the German side.

Because then Ubisift can not just say "hey... you still lost anyway" without lost of credibility, so it is better to stop the whole thing in 1943 and it is up for you to think about how it could go further and ends.

So is one of the last questions in this document:
"Do you have any idea how "your" world look in May '43?"

:rotfl2:

Yeah, I thought that..for about 1 second. The thought of me singlehandedly winning the war in 3.5 years was not a pleasant one, lol.

The u-boats winning the war period is not plausible, frankly, so yeah, alternate realities are silly.

Partial dynamism—tactical for sure (rerouted convoys and ASW assets)—is desirable. Keeping track of major combatants sunk is incredibly desirable (when you see a 3d Yamato class in the PTO after having sunk 2 it's a major immersion killer). Even a sort of theater-wide dynamism is useful—a given campaign (say Malta) is prolonged because of heavy losses to subs, for example.

Any larger-scale stuff is just nonsense, and only as accurate as the least modeled bit (you cannot gauge the overall war success based on merchant losses without having a decent model of, say, the entire wartime American economy).

Better to have dynamism where it would be visible to one guy (the skipper).

Misspelling Neals name. -5 points.:shifty:

Or you could simply read the document they have released to Journo's:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...8&postcount=43

:up: Certainly the most informative thing I have seen on the topic to date.

How the dynamic campaign looks like...
 

In another thread SEEADLER (thanks SEEADLER) published a real screen with a dynamic campaign map SH5. It can therefore see how the dynamic campaign ...

link to full size: http://www.bilder-hochladen.net/files/big/76m2-k.png

http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/7228/sh5map.jpg

We see that the dynamic campaign is being built by the three scenarios. The player can choose where to fight (attack the convoys to Malta, or enemy forces in Alexandria), which can help realize the available missions. We are not alone - if you can find enemy contact our Regia Marina that can help us to destroy all enemy ships.

These are my assumptions, I have not seen this presentation to the press in Germany. Maybe our german friends tell us something more about it.
:salute:

Thanks.

Looks interesting. :salute:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...8&postcount=43

Ok , there is an actual purpose to the campaign . That is great . Actually better than great . I guess you play as representing the entire u boats in the area you are fighting . You just have to imagine that your outcome is the outcome of all the u boats in your area of fighting . Thats fine with me . Anyway they are trying to show the player the outcomes when certain stretegic things happen .

sure, no problem. but after studying the german document, i must admit, that its only a written version of the dynamic campaign trailer. so nothing new in here. just this pic is new.

So you read the PDF then ? Its on the link on my post .