Go here - Sink that
 

I started to post this in another thread, but I didn't want to hijack it with general comments and questions for debate.

Does any one else find this whole notion of mission success based on "Go here-Sink that" completely off the wall?

[rant]

IMO, it's totally ridiculous! One mission says sink a bunch of AMCs and two carriers. Another says go sink a couple of battleships!

You sink multiple cruisers and the game treats that like it's not good enough?

Nonsense!

Many top aces, recognized as being among the best in the craft, went whole careers without sinking a cruiser. In reality only a small handful of capital ships were sunk by submarines during the entire war... mainly a result of blind luck (stumbling into the right place at the right time). Most sub skippers never even eyeballed an enemy capital ship through the periscope, much less fired upon and sunk one!

With a few very specific exceptions (the X craft attacks on Tirpitz for example) I don't think any RL sub or sub commander was ever sent out with the specific task of sinking a CV or BB - or a set number of ships or a specified amount of Merchant tonnage - like we are in SH5.

They weren't given orders to sink 25,000 tons, or else fail. They weren't commanded to sink an Aircraft Carrier, or else fail.

Ridiculous.

As far as I know, submarines were typically sent out on "patrols" not missions. And they called them "patrols" for a reason... they went to an assigned area, nosed about for a period of time, attacked what came their way, and were hailed as heroes if they came home with a few decent kills.

OK so they were assigned the occasional mission, to be sure. But these were atypical - usually recon or spec ops type missions - not nautical assassinations.

[/rant]

So I've taken notice that the modders have already reduced some of the totally unrealistic tonnage requirements for mission success. But I think it needs to go quite a bit further. I think the tonnage requirements should be removed altogether... particularly when we (eventually) get a reasonable variety of ships to hunt, rather than every other one being a 10,000 ton tanker.

And of course, all success criteria bound to a specific number and/or type of ship (other than perhaps a general distinction between merchants and warships) should be removed entirely.

If the game is properly balanced, I think it's enough to say "Proceed to <specified area> and sink one or more <ships/merchant ships/warships>", depending on the type of assignment given and any high level operations (blockade, seaborne invasion, surface force transit, area denial, etc) being conducted in the assignment area.

Anything more than that is arcade. Success in the campaign, at the submarine commander level, should not depend on hitting a grand slam home run every time you step to the plate!

What say you?

JD

Agree 100%

Yeah, that's really a crappy campaign. Arcade is a fitting description for it.

One of the most disappointing issues, because it's completely non-historic and cannot fixed easily.

I am unable to guess why UBI deviated from accurate mission orders to such a FPS nonsense. If they are trying to attract more casual gamers, it's a complete fail. It's like implementing air strikes in a golf simulation.

Yeah I'm not a fan of it either. I find myself having to leave merchants alone because I'm not in the right area and I can't afford to waste eels. This goes against the grain somewhat.

I can see what they were trying for (and probably for casual players it works fine) but for me - I'd prefer something more in keeping with the actual history of the U boats, or indeed the original SH3 idea of patroling a specific area only.

I'm also finding the lack of variety of ships to sink a tad worrying too - I'm not sure if SH5 will keep my attention if all I can sink is tankers and freighters.

Another agreement. The whole concept of the mission based campaign is wrong IMO. I am quite sure that the most common mission was "patrol and sink commerce!"

All these missions for Capitol ships.... grrrr.. as someone once said on the SHIII forums. "My job is not to look for a fair fight. My job is to destroy enemy shipping"

This dynamic thing is crappy imho. Would like to have campaigns like in SH3+SH4.
I hated SH2 for this kind years ago and so i do now.

We've got the editor, go to it! :) I'm sure we'll see a player made campaign more along the lines of "patrols" rather than "bag x number of unrealistic kills" stuff once the game it stable.

How do I access the editor? Had bit of a poke around but not found it yet.

Agreed. Right now it is 'go bag an unrealistic number' but that is for the guys who like to blast stuff. Nothing wrong with that. We are missing a lot of things yet to make it more realistic. Hell, all of my torps work! Not one dud! In due time fellas. :up:

Hmmm.... I don't think the magnetic detonators are working at all. They will go off on contact, but when they're used properly, most just sail placidly by, a meter or less below their target's keel.

JD

I watched one sail under a ship the other night and blow up just before it passed, so they do work. Slow speed helps apparently.

It's not a subsim, just an arcade game. I'll keep waiting for the patches. I waited for your reviews and convinced i'll pick it up in the bargain bin later.
That's just pure silly...sink two BB, Carriers, ect....

I don't know how people play it. A few silly bugs would drive me mad.

All ahead extreme speed to SH4.

I Agree. I dont like what happend to the game now whit thos totaly unrealistic campaing goals.

I think its possible to mod thos goals so they have more realistic values but it will be hard to mod them away from the game and its beyond my knowleadge to do so.

For thos missions where we have to sink a specific target. Thos can be changed so the rooster have more ship types. Like any military boat instead of a carrier etc.

each patrol we do we also get thos normal mission types, patrol an area, insertion etc. If we could tune down and change the campaign goals and increase thos micro missions so we actually can get a new mission while we are out in a patrol when we have finished of one instead of going to port each time it wud be nearly the same then as it is in sh3 and 4.

But iam not sure if i will get involved in this kind of mod. I simply dont play the game anymore. Got tired of it after first campaign. It lasted barely 2 weeks for me. And it makes me kinda sad cuz ive allwasy loved the SH games untill this one was released. But i gived it a go only to find out that the game is not the same anymore.

Well, like you pointed out in your OP, it's an arcade game. So of course it would have cartoonish elements like this in it.

Realistic or unrealistic, we haven't had any of that yet in SH3 or 4. All you did in those games was find - position - kill. How many times before that gets old?

In Sh4 you did have some goals which made it seem more interactive (interesting). Now we only need to find a balance with the new goals set and what works in game play for this to work.

Some need goals and some just need interaction with the game. I don't believe we'll ever have historically correct.