How do I know what's real??
 

I see a lot of mods to upgrade and improve the game but I keep wondering how real do they make the game?
Mush Morton's increased dive speed for example, does it make it dive faster than it would in real life?
What mods or upgrades do you have to do to make the game as close to the real thing as possible?

Honestly, no game will be realistic. There's just no way to do it.

In this submarine simulation you're using, there's no way to recreate what real life participants went through. TMO, RFB, others (including anything I've done), only "mask's" the real situations the sailors went through. We can hardly duplicate it.

For instance, no mod I know of for any Silent Hunter series game (III, 4, V) has introduced a very basic modification to the game for inacting "realism". Removing the Time Compression aspect of the game.

Why?

Because "realism" is boring!!

No one wants to spend the "real time" of getting to a patrol area. Two, three weeks of drills, and just the plain boredom of getting to a "patrol area", will never be displayed in a game.

Dangerious..... absolutely. Tedious.... you bet. Nail bitting, gut churning, "I'm heaving my breakfast" situations....yes, that's real life. But, throw in the fact that days, weeks, passed without seeing any action, makes for poor "game play".

And that's all we are really doing......."Game Playing".......nothing else.

Nice post CS : )

Indeed. The biggest hurdle in designing any simulation or wargame is player foreknowledge. You know who wins. What worked and what didn't. You know where the crucial battles are. You have more information on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the IJN in your SH4 folders than the whole Navy Department did in 1941.

OK this not what I meant by realism. You are talking about the emotional aspects of realism.
I was referring to the physics aspect of realism.
Do the subs dive at correct rate. If not does mush Morton's mod fix this? Do they surface at the correct rate?
Battery drain and recharge rates. How accurate are they to the real thing? Batteries with consume a whole hell of a lot more juice at full submerged speed than at say 3 knots. Does the program accurately portray this? Is the recharge rate accurate? Torpedo reload time, is this programmed for realism?

It's quite accurate really. As long as you play with the realistic options on. Personally I love the external cam for fun. Otherwise I play with everything on realistic. The dive time is fairly accurate. It would depend on the crew skill also. The fuel consumption, ammo and reload rate, same with torpedoes. The battery recharge and usage is accurate.

Yes hunter301, in that way it is very realistic. The sonar and radar work quite realistically also. The torpedoes have their flaws, but knowing this, I, and other players know this and know how to compensate for it. That is what they meant by 'unrealistic'. As Dread Knot said, knowing all these flaws and knowing the enemies capabilities is unrealistic, as well as the history.

For the physics, and what you can see while playing, very realistic, especially with TMO or RFB mod. I prefere TMO, because I found in RFB a damaged ship could take hours to sink. Realistic, like the Oceanus, but not fun in a game-play way. Yet the Lusitania sank quite quickly. One torpedo in WW1 did her in, but she was loaded with munitions.

I've been working on the physics of the propulsion and battery issues in the game.

My opinion:

Stock subs: poor diving. RFB and TMO are better, but not great. Never tried MM mod fix. The issue is not as simple as it seems, though. It isn't just a question of "how long", but also how fast do we need to go, and what angle does the boat take. Not everything can be changed by editing the files. The planesmens' behavior cannot be changed.

Batteries are terrible. Ducimus figured out a good workaround for this. S-class boats in stock and RFB and stock, only have about 40% of battery capacity. Speed vs. discharge rates seem ok, though. Recharging varies a lot, and is tricky.

I believe torpedo reload times are fairly accurate.

I'll add this. Acceleration and turning are not good. Everything accelerates too quickly. I have a good solution for this.

If you want to be as realistic as possible.
 

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/...oct/index.html

Find mods that simulate the real thing and then follow the actual procedures as laid out for submarine commanders.