[pilotinho]

Some things I would love to see in SHIV...

1. Accurately model Japanese sonar and radar capabilities. Japanese had sonar but it was of a poor quality and they typically ran right over US subs without hearing them, this sonar was often out of action due to maintinance issues.

2. Japanese RADAR also stank but it worked occasionally. They never had centimetric wavelength RADAR. Their dectection probabilities should vary with weather, and sea condition. I don't want a Japanese destroyer to come charging at me with a SONAR lock while I am being conservative with my scope at silent running on a poor sonar condition day. A skillful US captain could remain undetected on most occasions until his torpedoes were either sighted or exploded.

3. I don't think I am the only player who uses SH3 as a surface warship simulator. I use the editor to set up opposing fleets and set myself up in a sub, out of the way, as an observer. I have noticed an AI bug that was present in SHII and seemed to carry into SHIII. One ship will start firing before the other, but the vessel fired upon will respond as soon as it is fired at. Indicating to me that it had detected the other vessel it just withheld fire for some reason. Guns are trained but not firing until the first enemy shells start splashing around it. Large warships were also not firing with the salvo method. I realized that this occured in real life for various circumstances but as a rule most ships fired full main battery salvos. Only advanced vessels had continuous fire such as modern US Cruisers (Helena, Boise)

4. Variable visibility. SHIII made huge strides in this direction but there is room for improvement. Fog banks moving around, Isolated thunderstorms moving across the water forming "sea going fox holes" False radar contacts because of the storms. Unreliable radar performance based on side lobe problems (the galloping ghost of the japanese coast). Interisland sailing vessels that you can close in on and look over, and that can report YOU to the enemy. The periscope fogging over when in cold water with warm air flowing across it.

5. In SHIII most ships took an unreasonbly long time to sink, in SHIV they took an absurdly short time to sink. I realize that the Barham went down quickly. Most large well served warships could take hours to sink. Overall I found sinking times WAY too fast in SHIII. The Yamato will not sink in immediately even if you pump 24 torpedoes into the son of a bitch. Also I have noticed that SHIII had progressive damage algorithms, but usually a ship would take a certain amount of damage and be stuck that way. What happens when ships repair themselves? This certainly happened. A good ship could level itself and pump out water. Increase speed after assessing its level of damage.

6. A mortally wounded ship could still fight, don't let me surface next to a sinking ship thinking that some brazen crew member wouldn't open up with a 25mm or a manually trained 5". The dying Yagumo nailed the Chevalier in Vella Lavella, the USS Duncan fired a torpedo by seaman's eye after the ship was knocked out. Merchant ships had military crews servicing their guns. The USS Tang was shot at by a dying ship and nearly hit. "How they pointed and trained their gun on that slanting deck with remain a mystery to me, and should be a source of pride for any nation" Dick Okane.

P.S. thanks dev team for reading my comments, they are just wishes and I am sure I will be thrilled with what your final product is, in whatever form it is. Thank you for all your hard work. Paul