This is the announcement of the “Run Silent, Run Deep, the Campaign” (RSRDC) project. It is a major rewrite of the campaign layer of SH4.
This project will be released in Phases, The first phase ( Phase I ) will cover 7 Dec 1941 to 30 June 1942 in the central Pacific, 7 Dec 1941 to 30 Sept 1943 in the North Pacific, and 7 Dec 1941 to 1 March 1943 in the South Pacific.
Phase II will upgrade the Center Pacific to 7 Dec 1941 to 1 June 1944, and South Pacific 7 Dec 1941 to 1 June 1944.
Phase III will upgrade all theaters to the end of the War.
The major stock campaign problems are as follows:
- The various stock “battle” layers (i.e. BurmaJawa.mis, BattleOfMidway.mis, BattleofGuadalcanal.mis, etc) are sub-standard, not only from a ship content point of view but also from a track generation point of view and in my view completely un-reliable from a game play point of view. The reason for this is that these layers are written in a “Scripted” format that is completely unreliable when playing in “Career” mode.
- The various Taskforce, Convoy, Merchant layer at total devoid of reality.
- The mission objectives are sub-standard and need a major rewrite
- The Special missions are also sub-standard and need work.
To solve these problems RSRDC does the following:
Item1: All “battle” layers have been rewritten from scratch, using ‘Pseudo Random track’ generation. A ‘Pseudo Random tracks is a “random generated” track file that is generates only “once” and along with “hand edited” changes that are not supported by the SH4MissionEditor, will ensure no matter when you start a campaign, the tracks will generate where and when they are supposes to.
Now for the downside of this format, you can’t set the formation to the historically correct layout.
During all the testing I have conducted using this format, the reliability of correct track generation when and where they are historically suppose to be, far out weighs the fact that there isn’t a plane guard “DD” 2000 yards astern of the carrier.
Item2: Using the ‘SH4 Batch Mission Editor v0.4’ and custom script files, ships within the various layers have been recreated and the routes they travel have been change to have zigzags and various speeds. One of the key item is there is virtually nothing left of the stock layers The recreation of the ships within each layer is more realistic for that time of the war, i.e. your not going to see 4 Yamato in the same TF in
1943.
Item3: Every Patrol and Sink Objective file has been rewritten from scratch and now provides more detail information to execute the mission. The following is and example of one of these new Mission Briefs:
Proceed to the Korea Straits (33N 128E) and conduct barrier patrol within 150nm of its center point for 72hrs. If IJN units are detected outside of the Patrol area, process at your discretion to intercept and destroy. Make daily reports a 0001Z daily to ComSubPac.
Item4: All Stock Special Ops missions have been disabled. New special operations missions are based of actual patrol logs. These new special ops missions are Coast Watcher insertion mission in the Solomons / New Guinea, guerrilla re-supply missions and down pilot pickups.
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The CareerStart.upc, Flotillas.upc and PatrolObjectives.upc have gone through some major revisions:
CareerStart.upc: You now 22 different Start dates
Flotillas.upc: You now have 6 Flotillas vice 3 that were in stock
Flotilla 1 is now call ‘SubPac’ and starts in Pearl Harbor. It moves to Midway Island on 7/42, to Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands 4/44, to Saipan in the Marianas on 7/44 and finally to Guam on 10/44
Flotilla 2 is now called ‘Task Force 51/71’ and starts in Fremantle, WA on 3/42 and moves to Mios Woendi in the Dutch East Indies on 8/44
Flotilla 3 is now called ‘Task Force 42/72’ and starts in Brisbane on 4/42, and moves to Milne Bay, New Guinea on 10/43, then on to Manus Island in the Admiralties on 5/44 and final Subic Bay, PI on 2/45
Flotilla 4 is called ‘Task Group 8.5’ and starts in Dutch Harbor, Aleutian Islands on 5/42 and exits on 10/43
Flotilla 5 is called ‘Task Force 3’ and starts at Cavite Naval Base, Manila, Philippines on 12/7/41 and exits on 12/23/41
Flotilla 6 is called ‘ABDA-Task Force 3’ and starts in Surabaya, Java on 12/24/41 and exits on 02/27/42.
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In RSRDC there are 20 new ships, 22 New Aircraft, 72 new patrol objectives, 9 new campaign layers.
You will see the following battles in detail:
The “Japanese Centrifugal Offensive ( Dec 41 – Apr 42)” i.e. Invasion of Malaya, including the destruction of Force Z (complete), The Invasion of the Philippines , Dutch East Indies 1941-1942 , Capture of Micronesia, Melanesia and New Guinea. The Dutch East Indies 1941-1942 includes all the various sea battles between the IJN and the ABDA (American British Dutch Australia) Forces, the attack on Darwin, IJN ops in the IO.
Battle of the Coral Sea, Battle of Midway, First Battle of Savo Island,
Battle of Eastern Solomons, Battle of Cape Esperance,
Battle of Santa Cruz, First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal,
Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, Battle of Tassafaronga and all 65 documented runs of the “Tokyo Express”.
A full readme with complete credits for all the various add on items that I obtained from other and modified to support RSRDC will be posted after final testing is complete.