This sounds very good, and realistic too. You may even add a warning from BdU about "All Uboat Kaleuns be advised about a carrier TF roaming in your general area," if this is the case. Go for it:up:

The message part is kinda bugged now, but I will find a way to bring the Bdu messages back. I want these messages again on my screen, I have to make this working again no matter what.

I'm unsure about the "Sink X amout of tons" part.

I doubt u-boat were told to sink X amout of tons\ships or anything. I would have thought they were told to go out and sink as much as possible.

SO maybe...

Go out and patrol the designated area.
And have the sink X amout of tons hidden?

You would need an x amount of tons for rewards but dont tell player what they are. But keep them realistic.

Every mission need to have an achievement, goal. But I will go with something like "sink at least X ships (or X tons) in the patrol area", thats pretty fair. If the campaign will have no goal at all, it will be extremely boring. I wanna make this campaign realistic as much as possible. And now that we will have new ships with less tonnage, this is very doable.

Here are just a few ideas about achievements, based on my experience with the previous installments of the SH series:
- In SH3, the main mission goal was something like "Patrol the area for 24 hours," then roam freely.
- SH4 came with a different type of main mission, like "Intercept that particular convoy" that left .... yesterday and is heading towards ..." After completing the main mission, the player was assigned a different task (spy insertion, rescue pilot etc.).
- Ops Monsun, a supermod developed by Lurker_HLB specifically for Uboat warfare in Atlantic, mainly had missions based on "Patrol that grid for X hours" then another grid would be assigned upon completion, with a certain amount of tonnage defined as secondary and hidden achievement IIRC.

So, asking the player just to patrol a particular area has been done, and seems most realistic to me, AFAIK. Add to this other kind of hidden objectives (uber tonnage, sinking a certain type of ship), and we'll have something as close to real Uboat warfare as can be. And, if you really can fix the issue of radio messages in campaign, you'll have it as real as can be, given the SH5 hardcoded engine. BTW, you're doing a great job:salute:

I second the comments from everyone who complains about the original objectives. The standard campaign really makes me wonder what kind of research was done for this sim.

Sinking multiple battleships? In reality these were fast-moving, well screened targets that were almost never sunk by subs; the only U-Boat successes against battleships were "Royal Oak" and "Barham". The same goes for carriers; the only full sized carriers sunk were "Eagle", "Ark Royal", and "Courageous".

If every campaign must have an objective, I would recommend that the player be assigned to sink maybe 10,000-15,000 tons of generic shipping. Even that objective is a bit challenging, because so many U-Boats never sank any merchant ships throughout their entire careers. Still, it's better than being ordered to wipe out task forces.

@zedi... what do you think about this:

1) you are gived an order to go in an special area and to put some mines

2) After you go in that area and put mines the bdu give you orders to go and patrol and sunk ships in the area from that patrol mission

3) something like in the situation when you are send to make a recon photo or to deploy a spy and after that you can continue the patrol

Do you think it is duable? This will be realistic... read here:

On the 5th Sep 1939, U-32 left Kiel under the command of Paul Büchel and after three and a half weeks arrived at return on 30th Sep 1939.
Paul Büchel hit two ships on this patrol.

• On 18th Sep 1939 he sank the British 4,863 ton Kensington Court.
• On 28th Sep 1939 he sank the Norwegian 875 ton Jern.

U-32 laid mines on this patrol. These mines were hit by 2 ships.
The 8,063 ton British Marwarri was damaged by a mine on 5th Oct 1939.
The 9,462 ton British Lochgoil was damaged by a mine on 6th Oct 1939.You can read more about the Norwegian ship listed for this patrol at www.warsailors.com.
Click the link for more information on Jern.


LINK

How do you plan to lay mines with the sub?

Hi Zedi,
maybe it coud be enough to pass on a set of given waypoints for accomplishing this kind of missions? Not need for being actually laying the mines.
Though it would be nicier having them layed down in you current position by pressing a given hotkey.
I don't know anything about the process you are following for adding mines to the campaign. Are they placed in given positions via Campaign Editor, or do they spread during the campaign, like generic convoys do?
If the second option was true, maybe you could link their placement to the current player's position and input (like pressing a key).
Sorry If I am suggesting undoable or silly things. Just trying to contribute to this brainstorming session! :)

Never mind...

Its not possible with the current game engine.

And the mines are still a big problem right now as they are considered naval units. I can spawn endless amount of mines in a dynamic spawn point, but already at 20 mines there is a major fps loss. And if set them as elite units and Docked=False.. the pc can even freeze when your getting close. Only hope to get them work is in TDW's IRAI, or I will need to reduce their numbers dramatically. But then none will notice their presence.

If the sub can drop a spy from uboat... i dunno... but if is not duable just to reach an point and we pretend he put mines?... dunno... if tdw puted parachutes on plane you think is hard to put mines to a uboat?:)

The most annoying thing about the campaign imho is that when you do manage to sink a capital ship, it seems to make no difference at all! They just re-spawn in any event.

I don't know if I'm right about this and as someone said earlier maybe its just the other sister ships of that class that you keep on sinking. It kind of kills the incentive to keep sinking them as you don't feel youre actually altering anything.

That's what annoys me most anyway.

P.S, Zedi, I'd love to see Bismarck in the campaign on that famous run down from the Denmark Straights. The other day, I was playing in Western Approaches on the evening of the 28th May 1941 and suddenly came across a county class heavy cruiser (HMS Dorsetshire??) and a King George V class battleship all alone steaming north from the historical kill site! It must have just been an eerie coincidence but if you could somehow script that sort of thing into the game it would be fantastic. I was amazed they were unescorted though...

I think usually is forgotten the gameplay objective should be more than to travel and shoot in an Uboat, like "Sail Similator" (alter ego for Flight Simulator ;D). We have to win a war and as captains we do as much as we can. So the objectives should be linked always to the war "outside the sea", offensive and defensive with some special missions. Anyways our actions should influence the Battleground although it can or can't influence historical events (depends if we want it realistic or fiction).

For example germany prepares a disembark in Crete or Norway uboats are deployed to protect a corridor until the operation will end. Disembark completed, cities taken = mission succesful. Omg! now we have to protect our supplies :damn:...patrol area. Any or few loses in our patrol = mission succesful. Belgium fell Paris is awaiting, deploy uboats to cut off British suplies....etc....North Africa supplies, war on the soviets....now to Britain, ops! :damn: fail...american comboys, allies kick ass and disembark in Sicily...allies pretend to disembark in Calais...prevented = mission succesful. Omg it was a decoy...deploying uboats to disrupt supplies lines to Normandy coast...and bla, bla. :D

Its all there, I dont need to mod anything. Every important events from WW2 is already added in the stock campaign. Weserubung, Torch, Pedestal.. you name it. The Bismarck events is also added and all ships involved in the event are following their historical route.

But.. this is not a movie. And as in real life, you cannot do a thing twice in the exactly same way, there will be always a difference. And thats the beauty of a living and dynamic campaign, once a ship leaves the ports, you will never know what will happen next. The ship can encounter a random patrol taskforce, an air raid, enemy sub etc.. so this way "history will change". But this change is a low priority change and will not affect the major events... with Bismark sailing or not, Germany will still loose the war.

Uboats were not warships and their power was not in attacking strategical military spots and stuff like Haegemon dream on. Germany has a very weak war fleet that was no match for the powerful allied surface fleet. But the real power of the uboats was the ability to disrupt the supply lines to Britain, a country that was depending 100% on these supplies. And they almost succeed, Britain was almost on knee when US steeped in saving Britain and whole Europe from a total disaster. And this was the end of the uboats domination, after 43 the battle of Atlantic was already lost and the begining of the end has started.

In one word, an uboat sim campaign should only about hunting the merchant fleet and nothing else. Of course, if you have the chance to sink a capital ship.. do it. But the main goal is to disrupt the supply line to Britain, is the only order Donitz will keep repeating.