Welcome aboard!
 

I must firstly admit that I have not read all of this extensive thread, but it seems to me that some degree of multiplayer is most necessary, especially for the long-term health of the game.

I think it's necessary, however, to break down the multiplayer element into three areas (looking ahead slightly too):

multi-player within a U-boat
multi-player within up to 4 U-boats
multi-player within 1 or more escorts

Of these, in my estimation, and as a generalisation, the 1st and 3rd do, are, or are likely, to work well. The 2nd is a problem area, as all too often it just means that a minute before your torpedoes strike, someone else alerts the convoy and maybe an hour and half's effort on your part is wasted. Although the wolfpack attack is well documented, I have my doubts that it was so concentrated an attack that these near simultaneous attacks were common at all.

I think that there's no question that the multiplayer within a particular boat works well, especially when you get an experienced crew together, plus maybe one new-guy. Likewise, provided that the right measures are put in place for crewing escorts, such as the ability to transfer between escorts (with a cool-down period between such transfers), then this will be very good for gameplay for several reasons:

Firstly it will greatly improve the otherwise rather lacklustre AI performance of escorts, it'll greatly extend the periods when a particular U-boat is hunted, and also the periods under actual attack. Secondly it creates a very personal battle of wits between the U-boat commander and the escort captain and convoy-commander - and it'll feel personal too, with the intelligence behind and persistence of, a nerve-wracking DC attack being directed by an opposing player rather than the AI. Thirdly, it'll no longer be possible for a commander to be able to look at an escort and know that he's out of visual range at a particular range, or indeed that the escort he's looking at is AI manned or human manned. If the former, then the range/observation limits, as now, would apply, but he can't know that he's not been spotted....

In summation, some aspects of multi-player work well, other's less so. It's my estimation that multi-boat crewing should only be possible with a variable spawn-distance from the convoy and well out of visual range. YMMV. In other areas swapping AI for human multiplayer would greatly improve the game, again YMMV.

Look, frankly I'm just upset that this isn't Half Life 3. So is this Half Life 3 or what? Why did they make Wolfpack when they could've made Half Life 3 which I'd rather play?

Ok I kid... I would MUCH rather play Wolfpack than Half Life 3!

:up:

Guys,

I am a sub-fanatic and especially the U-Boat type VIIc. I love this game and where it is going. Also I notice some stutter in the development with minor updates on the radiotraffic and missing some, more challenging, missions for those who played the encounters endlessly, like I did.
Of course I have a list with tons of suggestions as a diehard subplayer from the eighties on. I wont complain, but a little bit more focus on developing more challenging missions to choose from (Scapa Flow???) would be a good thing to get back on course of keeping the subscribers and backers happy.

The single biggest change that would deliver more challenging missions is playable escorts, and a set of victory-conditions whereby both sides have an equal chance of winning. Playable escorts will result in much longer Asdic searches and DC attacks, and combine with a more nuanced damage-model on the U-boat, a much more varied game experience for the U-boat crews as they have to overcome all manner of damage problems.

Ideally tonnage sunk should be set against number of U-boats involved/time, so that the rate of tonnage sunk is the gauge of victory, rather than the total tonnage. Similarly, having U-boats sunk would materially affect the chance of a U-boat victory.

Playable escorts will allow the currently rather dumb AI to be much more cunning, whilst allowing the dumb AI to move un-manned escorts back to their original position in the convoy, once escort players crew a different boat. This will make the search aspect of the game more interesting for the escort players, but also introduce uncertainty into the minds of U-boat captains as to whether an escort they are observing is human or AI controlled, and therefore some additional uncertainty as to it's likely future courses and behaviour.