As much as I love the subs, I'd like to see the developers of Silent Hunter to take on WWII surface ships. I'd like to stand on the bridge of a destroyer and aim my guns on land. I'd like to support landing craft fir the Invasion. I'd like to hunt U-boats and be on the other end of a depth charging for a change :yeah:

In other words...Destroyer Command 2. Might also allow for multiplay where we can actaully battle each other instead of these cooperative mulitplayer battles we have now.

The tradition continues!

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...&postcount=369

Land is irrelevent in a submarine sim. Perhaps they'll included that in "Destroyer Command II - USCG on Patrol"

...and you forgot the Nautilus easter egg. I mean the JV version, not the US nuke.

I'm more concerned with things like a better paradigm for the player as the skipper. I want the plotter to plot given only the data I give him from the periscope, or that he could reasonably (and realistically) get from sonar/radar/etc.

Not updated in real time, moving on the map by magic. I want an observation, and mark on the map. Another piece of data, then a mark on the map, and a line drawn between them.

Also, I'd like to see zig-zag behavior as part of the AI. Not "constant helming" when the sub is detected, real zig zags. There should be a text file with descriptions of different available patterns (RL ZZs were complex, not /\/\/\/\/, and then they get applied to waypoint groups as needed.

:yep:

I've been rooting for something like that all along - sonar lines only move when the soundman calls out the new position, only the ships you identify and pinpoint end up on the map etc.

I would also like to see is the attack map be oriented toward the bow of the boat, not true north. The plotting crew will be drawing what you tell them relative to you, not the outside world. Also the boat should always stay at the center of the attack map - not move across it.

With realistic plotting (as I outlined above) there would be no attack map.

Nothing on any map would move (animated) at all.

Your sub would be periodically updated, but would not "move" along the map, you'd hit "update" and you'd see the animated hand of the plotter avatar draw in the sub, or perhaps just move the range/bearing tool over the current position.

There would be a dot (range/bearing tool) where you are NOW ("now" defined as when you select the map, or "ask to update map"). There would be lines behind you (which you'd have in you log, forever). Not a curvy line, either. Straight line plots from the time you turned.

No magical GPS system.

I'd also build-in a more realistic navigation system. No, I'm not going to shoot positions with a sextant, I simply don't have the time for that. What I would like, though, is for my position on the world map to be somewhat uncertain. A daily exercise would be for my junior officers to calculate where we were. Have the AI do it, and the results might have an error bar that fluctuates with crew skill. If I'm in a storm for days, I should be VERY careful about steering near land.

The issue is how do you make your game *not* just turn into a giant group of spreadsheets? Realistic navigation might be fun but that's something to be left up to the options menu of course. I generally reference B-17 2's navigation game play which was simple and consequential at the same time. The Mighty Eighth did a lot of things I frankly wish more sims would do. Things that are inconceivable to fanhards. Ya know, a streamlined interface, a wide list of adjustable realism settings, an intelligent use of crew training and station management to keep the player active even in downtime etc etc.

"I am prepared to go anywhere, provided it be forward"
D. Livingstone

Oh man, B-17 was brutal at times. When you'd get near the target and had to go back around because you couldn't see the target. That was agonizing.

i think a fully developed navigation system would be fine, including sextant if you wanted to do it yourself, but getting a fix should also be obtainable by asking the Nav officer and the fix would vary in accuracy depending on weather and perhaps navigator experience.

If it's overcast for a week, you can expect to become lost

and obviously it should be a checkable option in the realism section. GPS fine for those who need it

That would actually be pretty awesome, though I never understood the sextant. Or math, for that matter.

Scaleable realism is a must for any sim. I think SH4 actually did a pretty decent job of that. For every fanatic who wants to line up everything perfectly on his TDC and know only what the actual skipper on a WWII sub would know, there are a bunch of amateurs like me who would miss every shot and stop playing the game if it weren't for our color changing arrows.

All maps and plotting in RL is usually done north up, JSYK.


I'm with Tater, no moving contacts, only Updated fixes on a map. I'd like to be able to make notes, such as time and estimated speed on the map too. But most of all, it would be nice to see RL navaids like lighthouses and some major topographical features noted accurately so one can navigate visually. Having a workng rendition of a sight compass would make the game for me, though in RL, I think they used the periscope. I think they should increase the resolution and accuracy of the textures on the compasses modelled in the game.

I dont care when SH5 comes out.

The transition between SH3 and SH4 blew my mind. I dread to think what SH4 to SH5 could blow.


Wait what? :timeout: