Some issues that drag down DW MP experience
 

Hi, let me start by saying I'm long time fan of Jane's 688i, Sub Command and now Dangerous Waters - great sims, all of them.

However, here are few very annoying design flaws/bugs/lacking features that drag down the MP experience (coop and adversarial) at least for me and my mates, no matter how much we love Dangerous Waters. I've listed some main issues below:

1) Restricting loadouts is impossible, every player is able to stock anything he/she wants sometimes stuff that should not be possible (like Tomahawks which have been put to storage in reality). Host has no control over loadouts. I've tried some scripting/mission editing, none of those methods work reliably at least for me. Enlighten me if I'm wrong.

2) Host can't disable friendly AI vessels which are set as playables by the mission designer. This results in missions having unwanted friendly AI vessels fighting it out and ruining the entire mission. Tried a script that should delete those vessels that are not controlled by humans but it ended up deleting human controlled vessels randomly as well so it was not a workaround.

3) When host alt-tabs to Windows (He's dead or just wants to spend surfing the web during long cruise to target area) the entire game pauses for all connected players. Only client players are able to alt-tab without experiencing problems. This is very annoying.

4) It's not possible to join a game which is in progress, even as a spectator. This would be nice to have as some missions may drag on for very long periods.

5) There's is no real spectating mode, only Show Truth selectable by host which shows all platforms to all players - which of course ruins the game for those that are alive. So dead players are forced just to watch their destroyed vessel for the remainder of the game instead of having a blast watching the battle come to conclusion.

Let me remind this is not intended as a rant, I love the game but these issues need to be addressed in order to have more enjoyable multiplayer.

No replay with full 3d and easy navigation. I miss this badly.

I think 1 and 4 are very reasonable gripes, and that 2 comes close. I think there is a doctrine that is supposed to address that, but as far as I know, it doesn't work. If someone knows better, feel free to correct me. =)

But yeah, just about any other MP game has the ability for the host to restrict loadouts, and that's really irritating.

And not having the ability to join in the middle seriously restricts the ability to use DW to create anything resembling a multiplayer campaign. Given the amount of time involved in naval battles compared to air battles, it's strange that flight sims allow this but DW doesn't.

I agree. It would be nice if one had the option of fixing a submarine's loadout in the scenario editor. That way you could create a scenario in a specific time period. For example, present day SSNs don't cary TASMs or Harpoons. That's important, because the ranges of the available weapons really dictate the distance scale over which a given scenario will be fought.

All of your other points are good too.

Cap'n - a neat critique. :ping:

If the Host is running the game in Windowed Mode, he can freely select between open applications without pausing the game.

Problem #3--solved.

Cheers,
David

Doh, should have tried that, thx LuftWolf :arrgh!: