[gap]

Originally Posted by vdr1981

Hey Gap,
I read you post but I really wouldn't go that far...I fail to see why do you think that removing tonnage bar will make a player less interested in sinking ships? That bar has never been present in SH series and I never noticed that captains in GWX or OM sail the campaign just for sightseeing...

...

Regarding tonnage bar, it is really not "sour grapes" at all, it's thing that distracts players attention to that level that he eventually cant enjoy OHII. Add to that tonnage bur bug and the player will eventually ragequit failing to see that OHII is much more then "sink two ships in Danzing bay"...

That's not my point. I am not really worried about that bar, but about sunk tonnage not being taken into account even in minimal part. I make myself clear. The meaning of dynamic campaign to me is:

a certain degree of randomness + your action making at least a little difference on how your career will evolve.

I am seeing sunk tonnage as a measure of our success. Provided that (as far as we fulfill some minimum requirements) a basic set of campaigns/objectives are always available during the whole campaign, the more tonnage we sink the more opportunities should open up in campaign (i.e. new and more challenging/eminent objectives and campaigns to choose from). Indeed tonnage required to access them should be reasonable and hidden from the player. Keeping them hidden, the way they are in OHII campaign, and removing the damn tonnage bar from our screen, plus some of the campaign adjustments suggested by you (i.e. opening up from the beginning most, but not all, of the campaign objectives, and widening their duration) should be enough to cure the feeling of frustration rightly developed by the average player when he notices that part of his tonnage is not recorded, and his career is getting stuck. As far as we don't see it, part of our tonnage getting "lost" could be considered as acceptable, or even as a feature, adding randomness to the tonnage requirements of each objective. On the other hand, tonnage not being considered at all (due to campaign changes going in that sense), or not being recorded at all (due to the damn bug), to me is not a feature, but a lack of feature. That's what I meant when a was talking about "sour grapes".

Originally Posted by vdr1981

On the other hand, if someone want to play OHII only for sightseeing, no problems there also. Player's rating will after some time become so low that eventually retirement offer will be displayed at some point and that will be it (any patrol without tonnage will give you 1 negative point)...

That's good. All the respect for unlucky captains, but there is no space for idlers here!

Originally Posted by vdr1981

When player sees half filled bar he is prepared to do all kind of things just to fill it up, not knowing that real carrier progress is depending of completely other things...

Those things are:
Promotional points for the crew - secondary patrol missions, spy infiltration ect...
Points for new equipment - number of sunken ships/tonnage from anywhere in the world
New sub offer - Rating points gained by sinking capital ships and tankers anywhere in the world

Of course I am aware that there ways to measure our success in campaign other than tonnage, and I am glad they are there. Can you confirm that the features you described above are unaffected by the tonnage bar bug?

Originally Posted by Trevally.

In the campaign, Gap is correct, there are few ways to pass an objective. In fact there are only two ways.
First is to sink tonnage/ship
Second s to escort a unit form point A to point B

Talking about the second type of objective, I think it is underexploited in OHII campaign. Have you ever considered adding some escort objectives/missions, along the lines of my researches abstracted in the following old posts?

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...postcount=2227
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...postcount=2241

Originally Posted by Trevally.

The campaign will only advance with a pass if these are achieved.

An objective can continue to the next one with a fail.
Fail is to pass the preset time limit without getting a pass (from above)

So without tonnage bar we can only progress in the campaign by failing to pass objective.

Vecko is correct that we could still open up all or most of the objective so the player can pick between them and then patrol to area (remove achievement requirements)
Each return to port would then allow the player to pick that objective again or to pick another.

If the date limits for each objective is carefully set the campaign can progress following history with objective appearing and disappearing on the main campaign map within the bunker.

What about:

hiding the tonnage bar from screen once and for all, as it was brillantly achieved by Vecko!

• Lowering (or rising for that matter) the tonnage requirement of all the objectives to reasonable figures, even considering that some of our tonnage achievements wont be recorded in campaign due to the illfamed bug. Passing an objective shouldn't be necessarily "easy", but it shouldn't be impossible either. Some wartime statistics might offer more than one clue on what could be considered, over the time span and in the scenario of each objective, a fairly good tonnage achievement. A little bit over the real average should be enough.
• Picking two or three objectives from each campaign, opening them up and widening their duration so that they will cover the whole duration of the campaign. They should be chosen so to represent the most common orders assigned to the average u-boat captain for each campaign, and they should ensure that, even if we don't accomplish any tonnage requirement, our career will still go on with orders to accomplish. Whenever possible, a generous overlapping among the chosen objectives should ensure a good level of non-linearity.
• Making the remaining objectives accessible only on passing the tonnage requirements of the "basic" objectives. They should represent tasks and duties which only "elite" captains would have been assigned to due to their proven qualities. Of course the player wouldn't know which campaigns were triggered by time and which ones due to his achievements in campaign (you should hide the relative information on OH's thread using the spoiler tag). No mention of tonnage or small iron crosses on the map. He will only know that some new orders have finally become available.

What do you think? Is it even feasible?

Originally Posted by Trevally.

At the end of each campaign stage the player will not have achieved any victory point and when the final time limit for the campaign is reached the player will advance to the next campaign stage. They will however get the campaign fail screen picture (this could be edited to something else - perhaps a review on the war progress). They will also be told that they have failed every objective set.
I am not sure if it is possible to remove of edit this report.

Correct me if I am wrong: in order to access some campaigns we need to score a total victory in the previous campaign. It is: passing all of its objectives by sinking the required tonnage or by escorting the designed unit from point A to point B. Making some or all of its missions impossible to pass, would render a total victory impossible, thus requiring the opening up of all the available campaigns by time (no total victory required). Is this correct?

If so I would rather prefer the old system, where the player is rewarded for his good result with the possibility to take part in some key-campaigns which would have been closed by default (as he was given the chance of choosing his next flotilla)... This setup would fit better my definition of "dynamic campaign".