What I'm going to say here isn't in response to any one post, and it's not said in a spirit of antagonism (although I'm going to be very blunt). But I'm getting the impression (from many posts in many threads) that people think RUb is supposed to be something it isn't, so let me explain some things regarding the RUb philosophy regarding playability and popularity issues...

Firstly, I'm all for players having options, but (and I'm not going to sugarcoat this or bull$hit folks about it, because I think people need to know the whole truth, warts and all) from my perspective RUb must remain 100% committed to making the game more realistic (realism as defined by the SH3 Mod Team alone). Playability takes a close second place and popularity takes a distant third place. It's always been my personal goal to help RUb take a path that will make it more exclusive as time goes by, until it reaches a point where it is as realistic as possible and only just playable enough so that me and a few other hardcore realism junkies will enjoy it. There are plenty of other mods that modify RUb, or that follow their own philosophies in terms of balancing realism and playability, and there can always be more such mods.

A lot of players are going to have difficulty accepting a definition of realism that is cooked up by the nefarious cabal of folks who are behind the RUb mod, but the cold hard fact is that we build it, so we decide what it looks and plays like. The SH3 Mod Team didn't start out as a kind of mod-making version of the Freemasons - everyone was invited to join, even if they had no mod-making experience. Those who joined got to define the shape of the mod, while those who chose not to join didn't get a say. That may not be democratic or fair, but it got the job done the way we wanted it done. If people think that our choices don't meet their needs, or if they think our definition of realism is a load of bull, I urge them to either look for alternatives to RUb or get modding themselves. There is always room for anyone's definition of realism, and for those who don't want to build a major mod from scratch, RUb is always open to modification so that anyone can add to it or subtract from it (just as long as those who did the work get credit for it, and just so long as no one tries to make a profit off the labour of others). :yep:

That would be an EXCELLENT addon for the Sub Commander program..

How about an option that builds a new campaign SCR layer based off whatever current Rub version is out and builds it based on what the player chooses to do!?! :rock:

Not editing the SCR courses of the hunter/killer ships or port patrols, but just changing the ratio of Elites to Novice or Elites to Veteran crews.


To the guy that said there was too much whining on here... "Who are you? Just felt that you needed to spread your ass all over the screen, heh? Well, seems you are the one with the problem. If you don't have any USEFUL input stay off this topic!!!


I just hate stupid bastards :nope:

Beery, I understand that you are the "head honcho' of RUB and nobody denies that fact! And I don't think RUb is that far off from being truely realistic, but I do think that it just needs a bit more tweaking up. Just my opinion. I do acknowledge that more U-boats were sunk in the later years of the war. I'm just trying to state that it wasn't because of the 'eliteness' of the Aliied DDs that were the cause of it. It 'realistically' was the fact that the allies had much better technology than the Germans in the later years. The Germans did not invent a good enough technology to counter the technology that the Allies had.

In all accounts very few DDs ever got into a scuffle with a U-boat, so therefore, how can the DD crew be 'elite'? The only thing that the DD crew had going for them in the later years of the war, was the fact that the allies brought a gun to the knife fight that Germany was still using.

This same fact happened during the American Civil war (1861-1865). The south was spanking the crap out of the North for most of the war, but the North had larger amounts of troops, and eventually brought the repeater rifle to the field while the south was still using single shot black powder rifles.

The south had more fight in them than the North, thus making them better at fighting, but were outnumbered and outgunned in the end. Same scenario for Germany in WWII, Bottom Line...

Maybe we could move this thread to the mod forum and delete Akula's post.

Subserpent I agree with your point of view regarding DD crew experience levels.

Much later when I have time and re-read this thread maybe I can bang out a couple of alternative layers defining crew qualities (with an eye to keeping them verrry dangerous... but not perfect killers)
If the game loses its "kill threat" though... its not fun anymore.

I just have too many other projects today. Unless someone beats me to it... I have put it on my "to be done" list. :yep:

Cool and thank you Sir!!! :rock:

LOL. I've always denied it. As far as I'm concerned, the SH3 Mod Team is a loose affiliation of people, each taking on the work and responsibilities he or she wants to take on. In the early days of RUb we decided to go for a realism mod, and we decided to concentrate on that effort (even though I would have preferred the team to make a number of major mods to suit various tastes in realism). I took the job of being the final assembler of the RUb mod so as the mod grew I have had a lot of say in the final decision-making process. I also have a unique view of the entirety of the mod, which is why I am often in the best position to answer questions about it. But I wouldn't say I was the head honcho of the mod. I take a lot of advice on it, and I rely heavily on a lot of input from others in the team.

If RUb needs tweaking, people should take it upon themselves to tweak it. If the tweak is both popular and realistic, and if the author is willing to have it included in RUb, we'll probably use it. That's how RUb has become the most popular mod - we've always challenged the community to come up with options and we've used the best realism tweaks that exist and passed over the less realistic ones (that's how we went from the 20/40 mod to the Improved Convoy mod - we always look on everything with a critical eye and we're open to change, but that doesn't mean that I personally have to be an advocate of every change proposal - I have been critical of quite a few mods that finally got into RUb - the Improved Convoy mod is one example where I was very reticent to change, but a lot of the team liked it so it's in). In this particular case I have doubts about tweaking the mod in terms of DD/DE effectiveness, since I'm by no means sure that what we have is broken. But if RUb is broken, a third party tweak of the DD/DE effectiveness will show its worth very quickly and hopefully we'll all get a better game out of it. But I'm not going to make the change because at the moment I'm unconvinced of it. That shouldn't stop anyone from going ahead with the tweak. All I'm doing is voicing my opinion.

Well said and spot on!

Perhaps my comment was inappropriate. For that I apologize.

I prefer to speak my mind and say it bluntly. That's what several years in the Marines will do to you. Unfortunately, some of these posts/complaints/comments strike me as pure and simple whining, to which I've developed a pet peeve over the years.

My point was, and is, that some of us need to just sit back, relax, and enjoy the game...remember that old adage, "nobody's perfect?" Well, you're not going to find a perfect game, either.

I mod and adjust and tweak and play around as much as anyone here...but every now and then, I like to play it as well.

-akula-

Discussing how to make a game better is not whining. If you want to sit back, relax, and enjoy the game, go right ahead, but give us the same respect that you feel is owed to your preference.

Even though we're not going to find a perfect game, we can try to make it better. Surely if we always just accepted things as they are, we'd still be eating bananas, picking lice out of each other's fur and swinging through the trees on vines.

I also mod and adjust and tweak and play around as much as anyone here... and these days I rarely play the game. But the fact that I choose not to actually play the game doesn't mean that I don't get enjoyment out of it, and my way of enjoying the game without playing it is no worse than your method. Just because your preference is to play it as well as modding it, that doesn't mean that your preference is right for everyone else.

A bit of MUTUAL respect goes a long way. Sometimes I get the feeling that folks only see respect as a one-way street, i.e. with the respect going from other people to them.

Oh yeah, I was not in the military, but I also have no problem speaking my mind and being blunt. You don't have to be a Marine to get those skills.

[quote="Beery"]
Why deny it Beery? If ALL the contibutors to the RUB mod were standing around in an open field one day and an alien space ship came out of the sky and landed just before a llittle green guy with a tazer gun stepped out and stated "Take me to your leader", I would think that most of the modders in that field would point to you. Most likely the little alien guy wouldn't want to 'taze' you or even anal probe your insides, but rather shake your hand and say, "RUB mod is the best my planet has seen, and keep up the good work" just before getting back into his space ship and zipping off to an unknown planet billions of light years away! Far fetched, I know, but it's just a scenario! :-j

[quote="SubSerpent"]Hehe.

Okay, if I'm the leader, don't I get to determine who the leader is, or whether there's a leader? If everyone in the team insists I'm a leader when I insist I'm not, then there's clearly a discipline problem, so obviously I can't hack it as a leader. :-j

For Improved U-Boat, I'm going to change (in RND and SCR) all 0 crew ratings to 1, and all the 4's to 3. Should lead to a more sensible game.

Now, I'd leave h/k task forces at 4, but I have no idea which units they are. Perhaps someone from the Ops mod would care to let us know? I'm using Harbour Traffic for RuB 1.46 as the SCR layer.

I wouldn´t touch the RND, the Ops mod values are quite good. If you really want to change 4->3 in the SCR it´s best to do it only for units that come into the game after 9/1943.

Why not touch the RND? The "0" values lead to just such absurdly poor crews that you can do almost anything. Of course I would not touch the elites in the RND layer - just the SCR layer.

I also don't see why I'd change the values only after 43? What I'd do is make the h/k groups, which should only spawn after 43 anyway, elite - but if no-one can tell me what units they are, there's not a whole lot I can do other than make all of them veteran to be safe.

Veterans are still fairly dangerous, after all.

Sorry, I didn´t mean the 0->1 change, it makes sense to change it, I just thought you also wanted to change 4->3 in the RND.

Ok, change everything from 4 to 3, it doesn´t kill the game! There are some elite DD protecting Scapa Flow in 1939 onwards (and probably some other important ports) and I think it´s quite good that they are elite, but it doesn´t really matter.