history
 

I would suggest for those who are font of alternative history to trigger Ubisoft for SH6 or 7 or 8 for something like that.

Remember the logo of GW "...not so long ago...".

History is always written in one way.

After all these years of SH3 I think that this game is devoted to serve history. A lot of us had the chance to learn things that we would never know.

The case here, as long as technically the game has reached perfection, is to reproduce all the historical events (battles-naval incidents-refuelings-etc).

Maybe time is not totaly passed to ask UBIsoft to change the game engine with a 1.5 patch in order to be able to assigne missions after the complation of the first patrol as in SH4 according to the developing situation.

In my opinion this is the holly grahal of SH3.

I apologize upfront for the length of the message, trying to put the idea into words was a real challenge.

Not sure if the game would be able to work in this way, but there's a different approach that could be taken to have things extended. Instead of having Germany win the war, go forward with the possibilities that Germany could win the war, or at least extend it long enough to force a stalemate with the US. Hitler may have been a charismatic leader, but a poor military commander. Using true historical dates Hitler could have been assasinated early as July 1940, leading the way for a complete new government structure; or at least put the good field marshalls in control of the armed forces leading the way to plow through Hitler's moronic military blunders - eg during the battle of Brittan the bombers continue to target the airfields and not civilians; which most luftwaffe historians would say that Germany would have defeated Brittan's air force. Research in general would have accelerated such that boats like the XXI and XXIII could be in service as early as 1943.

As major historical events happen calls would come over the radio for all ships to converge at one area (like Dunkirk) and prevent the rescue. Or if you're too far out of range (even if you give say a 8 hour time window) factor in how much tonnage that you sink along with historical or random and have it affect England's military power as the supplies dwindle and ships are forced to sit idle. The main underlying idea would be that you could actively take part in shaping how the tide of the war goes - say you sink the HMS Hood in early 1940, resulting in the Bismark making it into the Atlantic safely. An event that would've had a notable effect on the war.

The final result could still be that Germany looses, but the actual goal wouldn't necessarily be victory (or make it such that Germany can't win as Germany fails every time they tried to invade England) but to reach a stalemate. With the allies in Europe unable to get any materials imported due to Germany's complete supremency of the sea there could be a final battle that cements the stalemate - something like the destruction of the Naval shipyards at Norfolk; thus wiping out the USA's Atlantic fleet. Then Germany has the same problem that gets hard coded into England (and a few other allies) that they always remain allied rather than occupied. The final victory being that the allied countries can no longer wage war as they are unable to get any supplies to arm themselves; a treaty or peace is finally made such that the allies accept and acknowledge Germany as it is and all hostilities end.

Try www.biblioz.com mate. There are copies there at the moment for $30 AUD.:up:


Great site for finding all sorts of books.

First let me say, Onkel Neal, you have my undying respect. So do many of the rest of you, and you know who you are.

Seems the bulk of the rest of this communities members pretend to support the little guys, but really can only lick the boots of the big dev houses while disqualifying everything else. True sim snobs aren't we.

This is a hilarious thread, I have to hand it to you. I can tell you from experience how alternate history is received by this community: not well.

We did real research, found real historical weaknesses and circumstances, wrote tens of thousands of words of not just alternate history, but explorations of real events, real people, and real circumstances that only happened by the most precarious of margins that DID indeed change the world.

Oddly, no one was interested in lobbying TAG to add realism to Enigma, but here we have the "gee wouldn't it be great to do alternate history in SHXXX". Do you know what it would have done to help a small project like Enigma progress if we'd had the same kind of community support about features, etc. as you put into UBI for the next revision or patch to SHX?

Its like I'm waking up from a diesel induced coma; wtf was I thinking to keep trying to make something intended for this market.

I'm going to side right along East on this issue. The extraction of "history" from a fabricated alternative is no mean feet when contemplating version 2. My documentation alone has been at least double that initially created.

Does anyone here other than East (or the remnants of TAG Version 1.0) have a major game release under their belt? I believe on this site there is one other - maybe 2?

So...what are the lessons learned? Perhaps next time this question might be better bantered towards those that have the knowledge, rather than hyptothetical back-and-forth between "I want this..." factions.

Or alternatively, developers not visit fan sites lest so they don't take in their wishes, and just create a game and be done with it.:|\\

You want an alternative WW2 campaign? Enigma: Rising Tide.:rock:

You want SH5 features - send your resume to Ubisoft and get back to us once you have a title with your name on it.

Nobody here has the time or the patience to re-edit all the campaign.scr, campaign.rnd and campaign.lnd. It would be the ultimate sacrifice. I have a lot of creativity, and if I had to do NOTHING else in my life and had a lot of money, I would surely devote myself to something this size. And it would be great.

I'm sure if someone acomplish such a feat, everybody will test and enjoy, coz we love this game more then we love accurate history.

EAST. I am licking no ones boots.

I really would have liked to support you guys, still in some way I can say I did because I bought your game. But since SHIII came out I have not launched ERT a single time. SHIII is just 100 times better than ERT.

Imo you have missed the topic. Just because a game has subs in it it's not automatically a subsim, at least for me.

So I am still not feeling bad if I want to see SHIII or SHIV with a what-if campaign. This is really something different than what you guys have chosen.

SHXXX should be better, they could afford it. But mate, its not 100x's better, it is only a budget better.

I wasn't isolating you with my comments, but it still fits, you didn't get the point either.

I'm done trying to make games for this market. Subsims died from lack of interest before, oh look...here it comes again, the next subsim ice age. You may understand when UBI stops making the SHXXX series, and Akella decides it isn't worth it. Both are coming sooner than you realize.

Let's get back to topic.

Now that it has U-Boats, I would rather prefer to see new campaigns based on SHIV. Besides some annoyances, it has much better graphics and the campaign structure is much more interesting.

Another thought, imo "alternative" campaign does not necessarily mean pure fantasy, like Great Britain occupied or other rather unlikely events. Some variation in strategy and U-Boat tactics, new allies and different theaters of operation could already be enough to spice up these games, without making them unrealistic. It's only the convoy hunting in the Atlantic that I have become fed up with.

I think it's an interesting idea as well. The one aspect that I'd like changed is simply being on the losing side every campaign.

Simple fact of the matter is that by the end of the war, even with great advances in sub tech - the allies completely owned the u-boats. (or pwnd, if you will)


The only thing is it is standard video game logic that the game gets harder as you go along with it. So the progress of the u-boat war as it happened is perfect for a video game.
But at this point, when most of us have played so much, that isn't significant. No matter when it is harder or easier - what does it matter? You've played in both eras many many times each. What does it matter which comes first?

What I'm getting at is (if it something that can be done) that there weren't such breakthroughs on the allies side in ASW.
Perhaps because things go badly for them they don't have time to develope their radars?
So while your subs improve the allies ASW don't (as much)


I realize that this is talking about making something that no one wants to do the work on as is a lot harder - but just my 2 cents.

Again, the sub war is set up perfectly for a video game - with the difficulty growing the further you go. But it stinks sometimes when you have a good long campaign. You really have nothing to look forward to but hell :arrgh!:


That's not to say I don't like it the way it is and will continue to play. Heck, my late war expirence is still quite limited. It would just be a different ... well a different game, really.

Its interesting but I think that a lot of the ideas in here, ones which seem to be erring on the side of Political Correctness. I think that the simplest and least dramatic change would be to just assume Operation Sealion went ahead and succeeded. That way you only needed to completely rewrite the USA's part of the campaign files and then you could add new levels of interest by adding to the far east campaign. Aiding Japan could be helped by perhaps peeking at the SH4 campaign and then you could simulate a speeding up of the US preparation for war while U-boats assault close to Canada (this would be complicated figuring the US reaction to falling Britain or dealing with commerce between Canada and the US.

You could have bases in Iceland and Britain. If people wanted to get really ambitious you could imagine the invasion of North America but thats pretty complex too.

If you did a non-Nazi party future then you'd have to account for Italy since the fascist alliance between Hitler and Mussolini was a factor and then there was Japan, are they part of it at all? The entire texture of the war would be so different it would be more than just changing the campaign layers but actually having to invent a cohesive and at least slightly plausible series of events in the war.

As for the political correctness... I mean come on we're afraid of keeping Hitler alive but we're still planning on re-enacting a war which will cost millions of lives. As a game we're pretending to send men to an icy death in the cold ocean. Is it really that big a deal that we can rationalize this kind of murder but not the other stuff? Or how about Stalin? Are we do remove him too and try to create a nobler war? Make it into some kind of adventure a la pre-WW1? I don't want to start up the hot words again but really war is war... trying to make it slightly more palatable to our sensibilities is just a mind game. Its all **** and you gotta accept that. Hitler or no Hitler lots of people suffer in war. Every war is populated by more crimes than we can know. So trying to make the potential project ten times more convoluted just to please the anti-Hitler indoctrination of our culture which somehow makes us still open to war in general is just silly in my mind. No I'm not minimizing the Holocaust but I think this attempt just minimizes the inherent offensiveness of war itself.

Imo sealion could never have succeded, Hitler was bluffing and not even very well because Churchill was totally unimpressed. Today many believe that the outcome of the Battle of Britain saved Htiler from the greatest military disaster in history, but I doubt he would have ever attempted it.

Entirely possible would have been the destruction of the BEF at Dunkirk, if Hitler had given his generals a free hand. The psychological impact might have led to a profound transformation of Britains look on Germany and the war, a conciliatory, pro-german prime minister like Lord Halifax, the warming up of the alleged anglo-german kinship and a prolonged period of nazi domination and terror in Europe. In the end, all not very good for the world and especially bad for Britain, but after the miracle victory in France Hitler was really close to his goals.

If Britain had fought on without the BEF, they should still have lost North Africa and most of their Empire, also an interesting scenario because it would have created tailwind for Mussolini and who knows what this could have meant in the long term? Think of an Italian Empire around the Mediterranean, not nearly as powerful and long-lived as Stalins Empire, rather brittle and weak like the Austro-Hungarian one, but still with an impact on the region during the following decades.

Oh now we're just splitting hairs here. Don't tell me that you're starting to quibble about the vaibility of Sealion when we're talking about an alternate history campaign designed around the Germans winning WW2.

The fact is they were never gonna win the whole thing anyway. If we can talk about going back to say that Hitler died or that Whilhelm III is in charge than we can say that they had Sealion better prepared, that Goering didn't bugger up the Blitz, and that Hitler's megalomania didn't become unbound and erratic.

And if Hitler was bluffing then why did I see a show today on History talking about the 'Auxiliary' units recruited by military intel to fight as a 5th column from inside their villages in total secret. They were expected to live 15 days. I think you're taking liberties with Mr. Churchill there.

No I don't want to quarrel with you. But look, there has been too much hype about Sealion. It sounds an exciting plan, but in the face of the RN the invasion could never work. As long as there was no cooperation withing Britain itself, of course.

1588: the Spanish had a huge army in the Netherlands and failed
1805: Napoleon had the best Army in the world failed
1940: Hitler had an Army certainly as good as Napoleon's and failed

All because they couldn't cross the channel. Of course it has been said many times, but only because of the island position could Britain maintain her world domination.

Another important point, Hitler was really not interested in occupying Britain. In Mein Kampf at many places he expressed secret admiration, he considered Britain (and to a lesser degree France) as racially equal nations that would fight with the germans if only freed of jewish "puppetmasters" (no need to repeat any more nazi propaganda here). Instead of putting another half million soldiers in a country he did not want, Hitlers hope was rather Britain would accept the second place behind Germany one day, and that France would get out of the way completely.

Again, please don't see is as quarreling, but personally I find occupation of Britain too much of a stretch of the realities. Of course it could have it's place in an alternative history, but there are also more subtle variations of history. I am suggestion a middle way, so to say, like a different approach to strategy by the participants, or different technology like Umfuld suggests.

Agreed! And I don't think that alternative campaign means Germany must win.

You're right. Britain's island nature is as much a natural defense as Russia's size and bitter coldness.

But remember that in 1066 someone did invade Britain and they won. Changed our entire history that did. Imagine a little storm coming along and ruining Willies day... Well then we might look at him like a lesser Ghengis Khan rather than a 'Conqueror'.

Yes the RN was a real obstacle, but in a narrow channel the size of your navy isn't always the most important fact. Narrow waterways have been the means to defeat a number of superior fleets in the past. If I recall correctly the Spanish Armada was significantly larger than the British Fleet.

I don't think that you can discount the underdog so easily. So often you have seen in history the fluke opponent win a decisive engagement. The Romans were piss poor sailors at best but even they could fake their way to victory. They mocked up designs of Quinquieremes with Green wood which was good enough for a single season of sailing against the Greeks and then they beached their ships which promptly fell apart.



Decisive force is not always that decisive. Absolutism in speaking of 'what if' is also pretty silly since we're taking liberties with the fog of war to reconstruct a different course of events to satisfy the creativity of our intellects.

And at the end of the day we're making believe here. This is a fantasy, so we can alter the stakes or the facts just enough to make it plausible.

And Churchill did take measures in case of invasion so that had to show he thought it possible.

And you used the example of superior armies rather than navies. At the time of the blitz the only combat worthy unit prepared to defend the British continent was the Canadian 2nd Division... one division against a whole invasion. If they got on land it was far from such a longshot I think. The only part of the invasion which is really in favour of the Brits was the water crossing bit, something which Hitler was always extremely wary and uncomfortable with. And yes I was aware of his somewhat boyish submissions towards the British. But at the end of the day I think he would have gone through with it had the air blitz crippled the RAF (another what if more to do with Goering's need to ingratiate himself with a total 'air victory' and thus preclude the land invasion, a notion which Hitler latched onto whole heartedly thanks to his afore mentioned Brit-Envy).

No it doesn't but it does assume that the Germans either didn't lose as soon as really occurred or it assumes that they won significantly more before they were beaten back.

In any 'fun' alternate reality for my game-enjoyment I'd imagine one where Hitler doesn't invade Russia, though that would never happen since he was planning on doing just that since before he was elected, and would see at least an attempted invasion of Britain then a more aggressive expansion into the North and South Atlantic.

But like I said, its all an intellectual game, a puzzle, for us to play at... *checks his clock*... 2am.

Cheers :up: