[Safe-Keeper]

Like a great many other consumers I am a gamer largely for social reasons and get great pleasure out of the friendships built up in multiplayer enviroments with buddies. Accordingly my top request/wish for SH IV would be the (MASSIVE) improvement of the online game by permitting multi-crewed submarines in multi-player. i.e 4-5 people in th same sub in various crew roles - Captain, Engineering Officer, Signals Officer, Navigation Officer, Torpedo Officer. This would instantly catapult this game into a legendary success as EVERYBODY will then want to play the multiplayer and that's what publicises and makes any game a super success however good the single player is. This would instantly create a whole range of possible game types in mutliplayer. Single sub against an entirely AI enemy. Two or three allied sub-pack mode against AI surface vessels or enemy subs. Japanese sub against American sub. Or integgrated with a Destroyer Command 2 where the players crewed destroyers and other surface vessels. Like Oleg Maddox with his excellently planned series of integrated combat flight simulators Ubisoft whould be planning ona family of ocean combat sims. Ours is only a niche market because it has not formerly been well catered to or properly marketed. The could become as lucrative a realm for developers as Combat Flight Simualtion, if it was handled with imagination and wish-lists of the gamers who want to buy it are treated as the developer's blueprint

It'd be very interesting. I don't know how it'd handle, and I'm not crazy about it, but I'd try it if it was implemented.

3. Step-By-Step training missions and Tutorials to ensure rapid learning and practise with all game control functions.

Absolutely. Much, much better than video tutorials.

I'd also like "advanced" tutorials in addition to the basic ones. I don't know, maybe a "stealth" totorial, an "escape-from-furious-destroyer" tutorial, etc.? You get my point.

4. Permit one backup so that if your original DVD gets damaged, you can play from a backup. Even better perhaps online registration giving one access to the right to download a fresh copy to the registration email address (perhaps with an incremented serial number to prevent piratical exploitation with mutliple copies) if the original becomes damaged. Simple, cost-effective and safe.

Back-ups are essential (as I learned the hard way when my doggie bit my Battlecruiser Millenium Gold Edition CD in two). The problem is finding a pirate-safe way of doing it.

5. Like Safe-Keeper said " "casual" (sound) ambience in normal situations and some other sounds for other situations? Heavy breathing, sobbing, etc. for when the boat is under heave depth charge attacks, screaming and panic when the boat's damaged, etc." Sound makes a really massive difference to immersive realism in any good simulator. If I have a single critisisnm of the (otherwise excellent) raw SH III game it is the "empty world silent boat feeling." I worked for almost 20 years as a North Sea saturation diver (or "Sat-Rat") and can assure you all that the working environments of sub-sea personal are full of constant sound, vibrations, humming engines, creaking bulkheads, hissing pipes, sirens, alarms, timers, shouts, laughter, coughing, etc. Sound "tells you" what is going on subliminally andf is a crucial component in creating or dissapating tension. What is required is an AI controled random sound generator which modifies sound depending on the situation, i.e. depthcharge attacks trigger cries and shouts, asdic triggers murmers and anxious chatter, success triggers cheers, home port in sight triggers collective singing etc. Simialrly the natural reaction of almost all crew members when a searching destroyer is above, is to look up as they listen. Such a function need not occupy much code space or CPU cycles, could be accessible to add-on sound packs and would hugely enhance the ambiance.

Very good ideas, there, I think. I like how in Grey Wolves they had this cheer whenever I hit/sunk a ship (I'm less happy about the "silence!"-shout at the end, though:p). Have some random cheers go off when there's a reason to cheer, have people shout when they should, have them duck when they should, etc.

Look at the bombed-in-Gibraltar scene in Das Boot. Think about how all the yelling, screams of pain, etc. add to the atmosphere. While in Silent Hunter III it'd have been something like: "-Aircraft sighted. -Crash dive! -Surface. -Medic! -New course one-eight-zero." Yawn.

6. Sub-sea AI life - shoals of AI fish, sharks, rays, whatever. A "populated" sea instead of a sterile empty world. This could be a random AI generated sprite thing but would greatly improve the realism of the ocean, which already looks good. I also agree that the sea floor needs loads of complex kelp and other textures in shallow waters, and especially around the shore line and inlets. But I have actually personally walked the deep sub-sea floor in reality for many thousands of hours and can attest that it is almost invariable pretty featureless like a rolling golf course of sand and mud, so that doesn't need much changing. I agree that wrecks need to stay there once sunk and gather weed but have no idea how complex or even impossible that might be to implement.

The funny thing about this one is that I didn't get how important it was until I saw it in Grey Wolves, in the form of dolphins in this a Spanish harbour.

7. As Sailer Steve said (Hi Steve how are ya doin' buddy? Long time no see) I think we need an abandon ship option and never mind all that avoiding "ethical dilema" twaddle we need to see enemy and friendly crews abandonning sinking vessels and taking to life boats. What we do about it in game (if they are the enemy) should remain, as it did for the actual Captains, up to us but with possible "war crimes trial" scripted consequences if survivors are ever gunned in the water. Picking up survivors is seldom going to be an option on a submarine.

Indeed. If some twisted soul finds joy in gunning up survivors, implement court martial. Or simply remove the collision meshes of survivors so that you can't shoot them, which'd be much better as it'd save considerable CPU power.

8. I would certainly like to see an elaborate manual even if it was a payware extra add-on. (Does anybody remember the gorgeous manual they used to sell with the original Red Baron II WW1 combat flight sim game? That has become a collector's item.) Maybe we could have a slightly more expensive "Commander's Edition" with such extras? But as Drebbel observed, there are a plethora of excellent books for the detailed history. However a general background gloss on WW2 Pacific submarine warfare would be excellent and I believe necessary because although us old salts may know the history don't forget that the majority of gaming industry consumers are still kids many of whom will never to read books about anything. Games can and do educate as the Pentagon have clearly grasped with their clever investment in their free (effectively training) FPS game AAO.

Kudos.

10. Maybe I am just a dumb bunny or having Homer Simpson finger problems but in SH III I find it far from simple to either load new songs or radio chatter to the gramphone function or adjust it so that i can even hear it over the game sounds. So a better "add music or radio programs" function for SH IV please.

The gramophone annoys me no end. There should be Randomize options and the ability to switch directly from one track to another. Gramophones were not MP3 players.

As for the eye candy vs game model argument - I believe this is just the expression of a common and long-standing bigotry on the part of a certain type of player. 20 years ago the same guys were dismissing Windows and GUI's as "eyecandy" and extolling the superiority of DOS! Thank goodness more sensual heads prevailed and as a consequence we now have the increasingly amazing realism of today's virtuality which improves every year, thanks mainly to the demands of gamers such as ourselves. I was the guy who first asked for seagulls in SH III! After all they tell you when land is within 10 miles and where subs dump their garbage, so they are actually valuable navigation aids at sea!

As long as there's an option to tone graphics down, I don't mind it. Just keep in mind that we aren't all playing this game on TRANSLTR:p.

I have a confession to make.

Ye-haa! Let's hear it!

Having spent a working career offshore, mostly in the North Sea, the realism of the stormy weather in SH III is sooooooooo nostalgic for me that I actually go for long voyages in stormy weather, especially at night, with driving rain and waves breaking over the bridge in SH III. That is about the biggest compliment I can give the game as a simulation. I could never do that in SH 2 or 1 or any other subsim. What makes SH III so marvellously immersive isn't the rivet by rivet accuracy of the boats, or the detailed accuracy of the game model. What makes it addictively immersive is the sheer "cinema" of it, the feeling of "being there". Being able to move around inside the whole vessel, having animated AI crew who go about their business and have to be navigated around - all that will increase the feeling of "being there" even more, as would multi-crewed subs in multiplayer. THAT'S what will make SH 4 a huge success. MORE cinematic realism, FPS style freedom of motion etc. These things are NOT as some dry folk claim just "a waste of CPU cycles" - they are the difference between just another schematic strategic chess game and an immersive masterpiece.

Good confession.

[QUOTE]So the game under the skin has to be EXCELLENT and that means having developers read every line of these forums and see how they can address all the complaints and issues raised. [/quote]I'd be very, very disappointed if it turned out that the developers don't keep track of what we write here.

A lot of this will repeat other people's requests but the more votes for a feature the more likely we are to get it.

I don't know if spamming is such a good idea, but as I've made myself guilty of it a few times myself, what can I say?