Sim or Arcade? My too successful patrol
 

Hi all, just finished my first patrol and sadly I´m under the impression that SH4 appeals to the arcade and casual gamers, so here´s why:

started mission on Dec. 1941. Once I´d arrived near Japan my 25 day patrol went like this (without exceptions):

- from 6 a.m. to 22:00 there were planes spotted three or four times a day (please note I did NOT equipp any radar, they were all visual contacts, even when dark)

- contact reports every couple of hours (LOADS of traffic out there)

- ran into ships and convoys accidently every now and then. This and all the planes at day made it difficult to travel at all

- fired all my torps, NOT A SINGLE DUD, three misses (auto TDC)

- sank 5 merchants 30,000+ tons easily, auto shot one plane. Destroyers sometimes as near as 2000ft didn´t notice me or didn´t care at all. I didn´t take them seriously after my first experiences and started being careless, e.g. waiting for ships to sink at pericsope depth while destroyers were all around. I didn´t care, they didn´t notice, no matter whther I was rigged for silent running or reloading and doing stand and singing some songs with Bernard loudly farting...

I played at about 77% (auto TDC, free camera).

Now what I´ve seen so far seems pretty arcade to me. Some features are just ridiculous and beyond belief, e.g:

- all those planes never reaching me in time although they were sometimes only spotted at "medium range" and my GAR takes 80 seconds to dive

- no DUDS in 1941? Forget it! (and yes, I DID check the "dud torpedo" setting)

- blind, deaf and dumb destroyers...

- way too much traffic and too many radio reports. Historically, US skippers were not too successful and their individual tonnage was comparatively small. 20.000 tons on one patrol was considered a huge success, not mentioning the fact that they tended too vastly over-estimate the size and tons of enemy ships (see Padfield: U-Boat war). The tonnage I sank on my first patrol is way too high, and it didn´t take any serious calculating or submarine tactics. Just periscope depth, waiting for them to come, fire torps, bingo. Even with manual targeting it wouldn´t have been a real problem.

I guess there will be some kind of GWX mod some day. Until then, SH4 really seems very arcadish too me.

I still like the game for what it may be one day. However, I think it´ll take some tweaking...

Cheers, AS

-

The mods that make this game will come someday SOON. These modders
cut their teeth on SH3 and I expect to see this game transformed in less than
90 days (probably sooner the way that it happening now over at the modders forum).

JIM

PS. I learned from SH3 that its best to wait on the campaigns till the modders
are done....

After sinking two unescorted huge liners at 18,000 tons apiece and 2 DD's on my second patrol, I kind of am getting the same feeling here.

I'm at the top of the "Sub Aces" chalkboard with 50,000+ tons. Second place has about 6500 tons. :roll:

As far as modding, there's some new stuff to work with but its easy to figure out and there is TONS of original SH3 stuff to be ported over.

To make it tougher, try playing the game on Very Hard difficulty level. You set your OWN individual difficulty in the Main Menu options. When you start a career and choose difficulty there it is setting the enemy AI more than anything. Even on Very Hard, I find it possible to sneak unbelievably close and the AI is still a bit dumb, but at least the DDs swarm you more instead of stopping to make more coffee.

If you want to make it tougher, try manual TDC. Between the difficulty of getting it perfect and the glitches that occasionally interfere, it will have you screaming at your monitor before long.:yep: Could also try handicapping your crew... leave a guy from each shift in each compartment on shore while you go on patrol.

But I DO wish the enemy AI was better than "Heavily Intoxicated". Even with several DDs BLASTING me with sonar, they still drive 1000m away and drop charges. The REALLY smart ones decide to just stop. Others don't have the common sense to consider that XYZ Freighter was hit on the Port side... let's look for the sub over there. Still more will see a torp strike and run 30km away to hide.

The enemy needs to be a STRONG one.

Just as a 'for instance'. There ought to be NO WAY I could approach a Japanese carrier group without being sent to the bottom. This was on Hard and I was fortunate enough to plot a good intercept to get directly ahead of the fleet and stop to wait for them. But I was also able to loose all 10 torps on 3 different targets... sinking two and leaving a heavy cruiser listing to starboard and limping on 1 screw. I did that with 10+ DDs nearby, 2 other Heavy cruisers and a smattering of other military ships all within 3000m in all directions. Dang if I didn't get away untouched after adding the limper and a seaplane tender to the list. I just went to silent running and turned between a few ships then turned 90 degrees to the fleet's direction and cruised out on silent mode.... while the rest of the fleet pretty much sat there.

wooo.... i can hardly contain my excitement.... :doh:

I agree that sometimes yuo can be too sucessful. I had a patrol where I sank 196,000 tons. I deck gunned about 7 or 8 merchants and then ran into a large TF with a Yamato, 2 Kongos, 2 Shokakus, 2 Hiryus and a Fuso. I sank the Yamato, a Shokaku, a Hiryu, and a Kongo... in a Salmon. And during all this I was attacked my a DD once. Needless to say I was given a new sub when I got back to base.

Thank you for reminding me to look at the airstrike.cfg :roll: Yeah i agree, the planes are a wee bit excessive.

edit: btw, dumb AI.. how dumb we talking about? stock Sh3 dumb, or just thermal layer dumb?

Also, what type of torps were you using? Though the Mark 14's had real, serious issues the contact, early war Mark 10's were preety much bug free! Also, there is a mod on the mod forum that reduces the contacts shown on the map. I find this little tweak very realistic and seems to corelate well with the Pacific sub war!

In SH3 you could wipe out entire convoys so this is nothing new here. Things will be tweaked I'm sure.

I found a convoy on my second patrol, and having not sunk any ships yet, I went for it.

There were extremely rough seas, and the destroyers seemed to be listing as though partially flooded, and were barely moving, and seemed to take no notice of me.

I sailed straight into the convoy on the surface in daytime, right past the destroyers, and took out about 35,000 tons of merchants using my deck gun and surface torpedo attacks.

I then used up the last of my deck gun ammo on the destroyer, which floated for another minute, then exploded and sank in about 8 seconds.


Crazy.:o

just FYI on the OP, with the exception of dud torpedo rate, just about everything there is fixable without ubi's help. Some of it already IS fixed. Others of it, nobody's gotten to yet.

on my first patrol i found a convoy on the southwest side of japan and started playing with them. took a few down while the rest fled and i started my way back home i ran into another convoy. they steamed straight into land and several of them sunk and there was one left beached i surfaced to gun down. two destroyers showed up but didnt do anything. no shooting at all. gunned them down too. this was 1.0 tho so i dunno exactly all they changed but there are tons more airplanes now because ididnt see any that whole patrol

Like I said, give the modders some time to do their thing and
we will have a NEW and very playable SH4 very soon....

JIM

Something doesn't seem right here: There have been quite a few times that when I get into range of a merchant (1000 ft) they start firing at me. Usually when I resort to using my deck gun, I usually have a running gun battle with the other merchants. I wonder if the realism settings have anything to do with this! I always select either hard or very hard when getting a new ship. Then in the office, I click on the settings book and tone down my realism setting to my liking, usually around 65. It almost seems that selecting hard or very hard increases areas not shown when you tweak your realsim settings via the book in the office. This makes sence considering that those tweakable settings were slightly altered between version 1.0 and 1.1 Sorry if this has been brought up before...

Odd, USS Nautilus (SS-168) attacked Kaga at Midway, and while attacked by several DDs, she wasn't even damaged. Go figure. :roll:

tater