Campaign End?
 

What happens if you get full crosses on all the campaigns.. Does history change in any major way? Or does it just sort of flow on like it would have..

I guess what im asking is.. do you actually have any impact on how events turn out on the war based on your exploits?

From what I know... NO, which is essentially an indication that UBI has put very little effort into this game, and to make the game end at 1943, is a cheap marketing shot to get 1 for the price of two - Well we all know how this has turned out.

I think that anybody who is able to program AI decently and allow 'history changes' will have a sim winner, coz at the moment all games are seriously lacking in one or both these areas.

:)

I think you hit on the main reason why Ubisoft end the game in 1943, along with all that troublesome stuff like type XXI's and so forth. I don't think that the sim should alter world history to suit one sub commander however. Unless you happen to be driving a nuclear sub armed with ICBM's I don't think sinking a few more freighters and escorts is going to save Hitler.

Agreed. Unless you are going to sink 9 million GRT by yourself, then there is no way that history is going to be altered. This is a submarine simulation, not an alternate history game.

Though in the stock version your mission requirements are in the WTF grade
You must single handedly sink the royal navy
so i guess if you succeed every objective you should change history

That's just it...
By taking out this factor, UBI (and others) have destroyed 50% of the RL experience. The subs were out there to make history their way, not to just accept that they were going to lose.

:)

Again, one submarine is not going to change the outcome of the war unless you are going to be sinking 9 million GRT by yourself. Additionally, since there is no way that the player will be able to prevent the destruction of the Luftwaffe, the failed invasion of the USSR and the destruction of the Axis industrial centers, there is no way that you will be able to make history your way. This is a historical sim.

I don't know, one sub commander could have an impact on the war, I mean (ok it may not be entirely realistic) but in my game I've sunk the arc royal twice, and I've taken out the BB's Queen Elizabeth and Rodney and its only just turned Nov' 39. Now these ships have a huge price tag and take years to build, and the propaganda coup de gras of such kills so early in the war may have tipped public and political opinion against the war, upon the presentation of Hitler's Peace offer following the fall of France in 1940 (not to mention the denial of the use of such capital ships in future operation against the Bismark etc..) there's more to war than tonnage, there's politics and manoeuvre too

That is really more of a problem with ahistorical spawns, which is not new to the SH series. I recall, in an earlier patch of SHIV, sinking the Yamato 7 times in one career, despite the fact that she never saw action prior to her sinking. But, I think that you hit upon the right word with realism. Realistically, I should not be able to change the outcome of the war. As such, I have no interest in altering history.

EDIT: However, when it comes to naval warfare in WWII, you have to remember that it was really the coming out party for airpower in the naval war. The Luftwaffe was never truly dedicated to naval air support (an example of where their Japanese counterparts were far more forward-looking, at least in doctrine) and following it's demise, all German naval assets were virtually naked and defenseless. As such, any German capital assets would have suffered the same fate as the IJN's following Philippine Sea. The primary difference is that the Allied aircraft in the theatre were land-based, not from carriers, which puts them beyond the reach of the Kriegsmarine; something that no virtual Kaleun is going to be able to do anything about.

More ship sunk = less weapons for england = you start winning the war.
While this is a really fantastic equation (like e=mc^2), adding to this a randomness factor representing other sectors, is a monumental coding task which I'm sure would take developers decades to achieve.

In the meantime we should just sit back and accept the inevitable.
:)

In LucasArts' Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain, they had a campaign mode that did let you change the outcome, of that battle at least. I played it once, one the battle for Germany, and never played campaign mode again. It felt pretty stupid for one pilot to have that much influence.

In the SH series you can sink 10 times as much tonnage as any real kaleun ever did. That in itself is so unhistorical that it makes me cringe. Changing the outcome of the war in a game where you play a top general or admiral, sure. In one where you play a single ship captain? The only word that comes to mind is LAME.

Again, unless you are sinking 800k GRT by yourself, per month, which was the Kriegsmarine's estimate for the minimum tonnage required to make a noticable impact on the ground and air war, no notable difference will be made. As Steve pointed out, attaining anywhere near this figure is completely a-historical, not for the least reason that should you begin to approach the 200k mark, you should would be promoted to a squadron command and be spending the rest of the war as a desk jockey. Once we enter the realm of the a-historical, we stop talking about a simulation and begin talking about Super Mario Brothers. That is fine if that is what you want, but I do not believe that it should be the aim of a simulation.

You're missing the point completely

The 'equations' are simple to implement in a game, it no more than about a weeks work including testing for the dev. The implementation doesn't require the 'nuking' of the sea lanes.

You efforts are simply a representation, with random factors thrown in for the big picture. In a way very much the same thing that happened in WW2.

If this type of thing is done, it would lead to a large online co-operation game with surface and submerged forces, and tactical decision making.
:)

The thing is that a). you can never achieve any real measure of realism as you will (hopefully) not be malnourished, cold and in fear for your own life while playing this game (unless like me you have to endure the trials of my mothers cooking and hospitality... but that's another story) but my point is that if you were to say turn off limited fuel and ammo and turn on invulnerability, and embark on an Arnold Schwarzenegger style mission of "if it floats and does no say "quacK" sink it mission then a fully dynamic campaign would let you win the war

Ah, so you are only speaking hypothetically. I see. Well, I'll add that I would have absolutely zero interest in a naval WoW.

well it wouldn't be WoW, but the idea of a naval version of WW2 on-line might have some appeal, however that would require ubi to resurrect destroyer command (I didn't have a chance to complete my last post due to the afore mentioned mother demanding a chore or two be completed) however I must confess that the idea has some merit, but unfortunately for such a game to work you'd need some pretty stringent rules on realism and that alone would restrict what would be a pretty small market.

Anyway back to my previous point(s) there were, marked differences in the pacific and Atlantic theatres as well as objectives remember Hitler never REALLY wanted an extended war vs the UK and initially at least he wanted to force a peace, now you can say one captain can't make a difference and that's fine but no matter how onerous the win conditions may be I still feel that if a campaign is going to be TRULY and I quote the back of the box "fully dynamic campaign" then there should be a "win" scenario for the axis even if it is a bitter peace in the west, and as to what is and isn't realistic as a fan of and participant of living history realism can only be taken up to a certain point and then a bit of fun and reward for your effort just gets involved e.g you never heard of Capt Luth having to finish patrol early to go pick up the kids from school, or sticking patrol on pause so he can "pop out and get some milk, or help the missus in"
if you want realism quit your job, move your computer into a damp metal tube buried in the back garden stock it with bad food and move about 20/30 friends in there with you and share bunks with them and only install one small toilet... after three or four weeks living like that (just for that final fear factor) make an arrearage with some "friends" that in the event that you get depth charged in game they should toss a couple of grenades in there and flood it with freezing water so that the compilation of concussion and hypothermia can dull the pain of realising that your computer (and probably most of your friend are about to (if not already) die... unless you'r a technophilic-wizard and have managed to waterproof your computer, in which case your can just get high on the chlorine gas being given off by your cracked battery cells... now THAT is realism :arrgh!:

Simple: If billed as a simulation, then I want a simulation, and that's why I buy and play these games. That means realism. No cartoonish power-ups, no alternate history scenarios, no MMOs. You can make of fun me for it all day, but realism is what we strive for on SubSim. I love other types of games; I am a die-hard Fallout junkie, but I play simulations because I like them to realistically simulate the vehicle and environment. Many of the problems of SH5 are that they took the game in the direction that you are describing. Yes, simulations are a niche market, they have always been. And every time that developers try to water them down in an attempt to give them mass appeal, they fail, as was the case here. That's all there is to it.

I was somewhat intrigued by this discussion so I went through the campaign CFG files to see what would be required, as a minimum, to get a success (and just a success... not a MAJOR success) in every one of the sub campaigns (Drumbeat, Mare Nostrum, Western Approaches, etc).

In other words, near as I can figure, this is what the game designers intended a super successful sub captain (and we're all super successful in our own little game worlds, right?) should look like.

Here are the totals:

Warships/Combatants
11 CVs or BBs
12 CA or CL
11 DDs, FFs, or Corvettes
2 SS
3 AMC
7 AP
3 unspecified warships

This, to my mind, would represent the greater part of of a "world naval power" class battle fleet. Using approximate average displacement for these ships, the total would be around 496,000 tons.


Merchants

1,635,000 tons

In addition...

14 Tankers
5 Cargo ships carrying war materiel
5 Liberty Ships
27 generic merchants

And 3 unspecified ships (merchant or warship presumably)

Using approximate average GRT for the merchant ships called out by type, the total would be around 2,000,000 tons.

Would this (warshis/combatants + merchants sunk) be enough to affect the outcome of the war in Europe?

JD

It probably would be enough. That being said, there is no way that those types of numbers should be achievable if any semblance of realism is sought. A large portion of the mods on SubSim are goaled toward steering us away from those figures, as many of us are not keen on playing 'Rambo on the Waves'. That's not what a simulation is about.

Agreed. However, to the poster's point, I think if the game is played as the designers intended - however ridiculous that may be - then it is not unreasonable to expect that the individual player should be able to impact the outcome of the war.

Which brings me to a second point.

While reality would suggest that an individual (soldier/sailor/airman/marine), or an individual unit (airplane, submarine, etc) engaged in standard combat ops, should not have a decisive impact on the outcome of the war, I don't think it would be unreasonable for a particular event caused directly, or set in motion by an individual or individual unit, to have an impact on the progress of the war.

A most extreme example of that may be the downing of the transport carrying Yamamoto in 43. However, a case could be made that the sinking of a particular ship at a particularly crucial time (eg, USS Enterprise - the last US CV in the pacific - immediately after Santa Cruz) could also influence the war in a significant (albeit probably not decisive) way.

Building this into a game that spans the course of a war, or even an operation, could be accomplished by varying end dates and/or instituting victory conditions.

In SH5 terms, victory conditions for the Med (c'41 -'42) could be used to specify whether or not Malta capitulates, which could in turn influence when the DAK surrenders in NA.

This wouldn't need to be a likely outcome for the player, but it should be possible. The result would be both historically reasonable and personally satisfying.

JD