Wave Skipper

Long ago I saw a fight about DCs and their blast damage range. One guy, forgot who, actually contacted a US Navy Weapons engineer who explained the real DC damage disatnces that the Navy research had discovered after the war. But no one else here at the time cared, and they kept repeating their usual "I think.." "it seems unlikely.." and yadda yadda. I mean a bunch of them must have been like 12 or something. Facts did not matter to them. But hey, its a game!

And I have seen arguments going all different dirrections. In the early days everyone on here seemed to want rusty subs. Rusty subs ruled - the rustier the better. Then came out popular mods of well painted subs and suddenly well painted subs were all the rage. There was the big stink about shooting deck guns when the water was an inch over the crew's feet even though some people posted war pictures and real crew testimony that such had happened. But the haters of FACTS would not listen. Of course most people changed their weather settings anyway. What I didn't see much was modders saying "I based this on historical facts and here they are." Mainly just bold assertions and personal whims and think so's.

As for DCs some have modded stronger DCs and some have called for weaker ones. but there is always another factor to consider - realistic is not always GAME-GOOD.
Because it is just a game. And most of the other values and factors are not realistic either. And when you alter something in one place you often end up throwing another game parameter off - creating unexpected blow back. So in making DCs weaker or in the case you speak about concerning depth limits you will make the already terrible DD AI less likely to sink U-boats. I think weakening DCs might be ok IF and only if we could have real human controlled DDs in a multiplayer game (sadly not possible).

This was the problem with water on decks while shooting the deck gun. If a U-boat was moving only 2 knots or was at a stand still, shooting the deck gun was likely possible under some weather conditons. But if the U-boat was going 15 knots I think the deck gun crew would be swept off. Sadly the game did not allow for such fine tuning. So changing the weather settings to allow such activities was likely a bad idea.

The upshot is simply that often it is a bad idea to try to change SH3 settings to relect realism - unless you could change all the settings of everything and also create a whole new AI and game.

Another example: realistic aiming. I tried that in the early days, but the truth is in a real sub the captain did not have to handle all those duties alone! Trying to fight in rapid combat situations and using all the realistic game settings is more like a circus act than a battle depiction. IF SH3 had an automatic mode for controlling the U-boat's navigation while I was busy with torpedo calcs I might do it. Heck on a real U-boat your second in command WOULD AT THE VERY LEAST KEEP THE CROSS HAIRS ON THE TARGET FOR YOU while you were busy doing something else (at least SH2 did this) but SH3 loses targeting all the time if a U-boat makes big turns.

Or take the outer camera. If the silly sonar man DID his job during near combat with DDs I might get rid of the outer camera. But using the sonar man is about like trying to get President Bush to speak under oath. Not only that I have caught that SOB (sonar man) calling out 'ship moving away', when in fact it was moving right toward me! Unless I can get a sonar man not right out of cadet school and who lost his hearing at age 4, I will continue to use the outer camera. The sonar man is totally incapable - thus sailing blind is NOT REALISTIC.