[quitefrankly]

Originally Posted by jazman

From what I've read about war, it's pretty boring at times. Hurry up and wait. Bring some good books along for the patrol.

But that is just down to the long waits on the way to the target and then on the way home. And that is eliminated by the time compression. So it isn't boring at all in a game (or atleast, there is no need for it to be). In LOMAC for example, you take off, then you hit time compression and the journey to your target is less than a minute. Then you spend the next 10 minutes (or more), actively fighting stuff, and then you whizz home with time compression again, and do the challenging landing. So there is nothing really boring there at all. And SH4 isn't much different. The slower speed of the sub means that the time compression needs to be >5000 times, rather than just 5 times or whatever LOMAC is. But the result is the same. The journey is made quicker thanks to the time compression, so all you are really left with, is the strategy and the action.

Originally Posted by jazman

This isn't like flight sims. I don't much like flight sims, oh I'll play IL-2 once in a while. But I love Silent Hunter. There's a world of difference. You're noticing it, but not understanding it:

What am I not understanding? I don't think you are understanding me. It IS like a flight sim. You might be sailing a sub instead of flying a plane, but its still technically the same process. You leave base, travel to your target and fight stuff, and then come home. Its the same process, and I like both equally! I explained that already.

But where it differs, is that flight sims dress up these missions with actual objectives and an actual scenario, and once you complete one mission, you are on to the next, and they are never repeated. SH4 is not like that. You get the same "transport a spy" mission, over and over and over and over. Or a "disrupt shipping in area x". That just doesn't cut it.

Originally Posted by jazman

you like the flight sims, but don't like SH, but they're the same? Nope.

You are misunderstanding what I am saying. I like flight sims, and I like SH. But I can only enjoy SH to a much lesser extent, because it lacks the missions and mission editor that you find in flight sims.

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Actually quitefrankly is the absolute target for the add-on--people who want a little more game in their simulation. In that way it can be a bridge for some of them to seek the realism that our mods will have available for them. But some of them will end up doing mods to put even more game into it, so hang on to your hat. You might find that you are suddenly having fun playing a gamed up sim!

A good sim can go beyone reenacting the past. It can also help answer the what if questions that take it beyond reality into......the twilight zone of games.

Yep! I can't wait. But I really hope they deliver with this expansion.

The features generally sound nice, but I am a bit sceptical of them.

For example,

German Campaign in the Indian Ocean: The new campaign spans from July 1943 until end of war, in May 1945. Players will operate from such far off Japanese naval bases as Penang, Singapore, Jakarta and Surabaya.

This may be heaven for some of the existing fans, which is good. But to me, its not really something I am all that interested in. Whether its the Pacific, the Atlantic, or the Mediterranean, it doesn't really make much difference to me. The game doesn't let you explore the coast lines and look at Manhatten etc. And you can't do land attacks with cruise missiles or anything. So you spend most of your time in the ocean, so one featureless blue ocean, is the same as another featureless blue ocean to me. The thing that makes the difference, is the mission and the story, and in SH4, there is little in the way of missions and story. You do a campaign that kind of semi-involves you in WW2, and as I said before, it is just mission after mission after mission, with the same objectives. Nothing really changes. There are the custom made missions in a flight sim, but you also have bombing runs on ships, air to air missions, tank busting missions, bombing a strategic building like a power station etc... In SH it is just ships, so the least they can do is put some kind of story around it, rather than just "disrupt shipping".

I also notice that they call it a campaign, and not a "dynamic" campaign. Something which a lot of flight sim players would expect, but this sub sim genre doesn't seem to offer that yet.

Strategic Warfare: As the player rises in rank and experience he gains access to new strategic resources such as recon aircraft that track down enemy shipping and even battle groups that can help wipe out superior enemy forces.

Do we get any direct control over these things though? In World in Conflict for example, you control your troops, tanks, and choppers, but you can call in "tactical support" wherever you want, and whenever you want! So you see a line of tanks approaching your troops, and you can call in a tank buster bomb from an A10. Or you see a bunch of infantry hiding in some trees, you can call in some napalm to get rid of them. If it worked like that, I would be very excited.

Heroes: Based on actual historical figures, these new crewmembers add a number of special abilities that can change the fate of battle and save the ship when the time is right, as well as adding historical color to the game.

Historical color is something many of the existing fans seem to add themselves, using their own imagination. It may look like a little generic icon of a sailer, but if people are reading books like "Bowfin", they are probably already imagining all kinds of things anyway.

Still, its a nice feature.

But I'm just concerned that none of this is really adding anything gamey. Perhaps us gamers are not welcome in a sim like this. But if thats true, they are only going to screw themselves, and their fans, in the long run. Hardcore simulations are a niche market anyway... but to aim squarely at a hardcore sub sim market... its aiming at a niche of a niche. In my experience, games that do that end up either fizzling out after a while, or end up wanting to make a new game, but lacking the unit sales to get sufficient funding, or to justify spending sufficient amounts. In that case, they usually end up "selling out", and going from one extreme to another. The result is that the once precious hardcore simulation, ends up becoming a very shallow, arcade shooter, with no depth at all.

I just hope that doesn't happen to this. They already have the sub sim aspect nailed pretty much. People love it. If they add the mission editor and some proper campaigns, it would just seem like a fully formed product to me.

Lastly, some people may not see any similarities between one kind of simulation and another, but as I tried to explain above, I do. So the game has atleast some competition, because around the time this expansion pack comes out, there is also going to be this:
http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/

That game has everything I have been talking about, and a lot more too. I'll definitely be buying it, but I would like to have a good SH4 expansion too. That DCS game by the way, has enormous scope. They are making an entire simulation environment, and the first stage is building a pair of combat choppers. The Russian Black Shark, and the American AH64 Apache Gunship. But their intention is to hopefully add others to the simulation in the future. So you could end up being able to fly jets, and maybe even tanks and ships - all within the same game. The fans are getting excited at the possibilities. One person said, "My brother could be playing a first person shooter as a special forces team, and then when he calls for air support... *I* am the air support".