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Originally Posted by gi_dan2987
One of the things I loathe the most about SH4 is its inherent sloppiness of engineering and programming. Ubi clearly was not focused on accuracy at all. IMO I feel that they made the game under the guise of "simulator" but actually intended it to be played mostly with auto-targeting turned on. With that in mind, that's why I feel they took little effort in actually making the measurements correct for manual targeting.
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Believe me, this is a dead horse around here. We've chewed this topic so much, our jaws hurt. I don't blame the developers at all. They had a project of turning a German campaign into an American one, with the producers (UbiSoft) expecting it to be a simple transformation. A deadline was set by UbiSoft to start profiting from SH4, and they held the developers to that date, ready or not. I believe UbiSoft had planned all along to update SH4 with the German Missions files. They figured patch 5 was good enough for the "fixing", now let's bring to life files that were laying dormant in the game, and add a few mission files. UbiSoft's plan to squeeze out a bit more money from us sub loving junkies was probably planned well before the spring 2007 release date. They made money off our expectations of the "next best thing", which turns out having more loop holes than a New York lawyer.
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Originally Posted by gi_dan2987
Now my next question though... Unless I play with map contacts on (which I really hate to do) I notice that the built-in error margin on the map measuring tools throws much of the information off for the solution, especially speed. This is a pain in the rear for sure  . Now if I can't rely on my map tools, and I can't rely on my periscope and my stad/dials, what can I rely on? Active and passive sonar? |
To give the developers credit, they realized they hadn't finished what they had set out to do. When the game was first released, this American Campaign used only metric measurements!? No feet or yards, all metric. This was corrected with patch 1, no sooner than the game was released. It however spoke volumes of the rush to release a product that wasn't ready. Most all who bought it KNEW this was so, within the first few minutes of play. Eye candy, we got a boat load. Completed details, where hard to come by.
You mentioned the error factor that's built into the measuring tools on the nav map. I'm assuming you're referring to the ruler tool that only produces a measurement every 50 yards. If you check, the measurement is very accurate at the point where the dimension changes to the next 50 yard figure. The tool holds this figure until the next 50 yard increment, before it changes again.
To be honest, this really isn't too bad considering what the original game provided. It was either patch 3 or 4 that the ruler tool changed measurements to read in yards instead of 10ths of nautical miles!! Yep, 10ths of nautical miles. Who the heck figures measurements in 10ths of nautical miles?? To give credit to the developers, who used to look-in on us here at the SubSim forums. They heard our calls for a better measuring tool and changed it to what we have now. Believe me, you don't want to use nautical miles for measuring a simple distance.
To the point of figuring distance with the ruler; knowing the "spot" where the measurement in 50 yard increment changes, and estimating where the
next 50 yard measurement change will be, can put you fairly close to what can be considered an accurate measurement. It's not perfect, but as we used to say, "close enough for government work"!