The timing of Scapa?
 

It seems to me that Scapa is an odd choice of subject for dev-time to be spent on, at this juncture in the game's development, as there are so many other aspects of the game which would add a lot more to general game-play, than what is in effect a one-off mission. Now, I havn't seen any information detailing how Scapa will be put together, but it's hard to see how much "replayability" it cab have, if it's an historically difficult mission.

It is, in essence, a prolonged "sneak" into a sheltered anchorage, with (and I'm not an expert on the Scapa attack) a profusion of nets, minefields and escorts milling about, and if one is detected, rather poor onwards prospects for the U-boat commander!

So it's easy to see how people are likely to play it until they achieve it, and some of the ultra-hardcore players will enjoy playing it as "crew". The fundamental problem, however, is that we'll still be playing versus AI escorts.

"Shirely" it would be a better mission if the defenders of Scapa were also human players, operating escorts, and that this therefore suggests playable escorts in general gameplay are a sensible pre-cursor to implementing Scapa?

Anyone else agree?

:k_confused:

Well, the last thing we want now is a Commander of a development team thinking of turning back to port to confer with BdU while they are halve or at least partial underway of working on maritime real estate. (neccessary for not just Scapa) Changing focus on PVP gameplay now would only be wasting development resources. They seemed to have decided that fixing networking bugs the past weeks is more important than mission development at the moment. Let's keep them on course for a while. Or nothing gets done.

If you read the threads of the past where this is discussed before you will find that Neal imagines there will be 2 versions of the Scapa mission. A historical mission similar if not with the same opposing elements as Prien encountered. And also a mission in the general area with much more random elements. You would not be able to rely on own past or historical knowledge.

That's interesting, thanks. The two versions of the Scapa mission sounds sensible, and does partially allay my fears as to the replayablity side of things.

It was not my intention, in any way, to "divert" the Dev effort on Scapa, I fully agree with you that now that it's underway, it is important to continue. That said, I still find it surprising that Scapa was proceeded with before playable escorts, as programming the AI escorts to manoeuvre correctly and patrol effectively in the shallow and constrained waters of Scapa must a nightmare - one that could have been completely obviated if Scapa required the escorts be manned by players...

In other words, it's the sequence of devving that's a bit tricky, not Scapa itself. In my view PVP (as you put it) or "playable escorts" will utterly revolutionise the game, in a very positive way.