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Originally Posted by Steeltrap
Well if we're talking "immersion", I take a slightly different view of it.
There aren't many 'unknowns' about WWII subs these days. Given that, it is really quite indefensible for blatant mistakes to be built into the sim.
A few cases:
* air warning radar that gives a bearing and range: fact is no submarine-mounted air-warning radar EVER did this (the USA had best sub-mounted radar, and theirs gave range ONLY).
* propulsion and recharging: totally different between German and US subs. SH4 simply copied SH3 in how this was handled, and that's crap.
* deck guns that are absurdly powerful. If you read accounts from the US vets, for example, it took many, many hits from a DG to sink even a modest size freighter (I think Wahoo used around 70 rounds on a target smaller than 2,000 tons).
* AA guns that are like lasers of death. I've read reports in this forum of people destroying 20+ planes on a patrol. That's just nuts.
* Subs were inordinately difficult to spot on the surface at night. Even in 1944, O'Kane had Tang on the surface within 1,500yds of an ESCORT without being sighted. Try that in stock. In fact, try it in many mods. It's one reason why the Allies, with effective radar, vs the Axis, with no/ineffective radar, enjoyed superiority.
* Escorts didn't know the depth of a sub with any certainty until some time in 1943 for the Allies, and NEVER for the Japanese. Why is it DCs always seem to go off at pretty much the right depth?
And so on. Could give a list a mile long. If they want to get it 'right' then it needs to start from the basics of "what was real for the majority of the time?" and then develop. Sure, crew quality will affect things, as will blind luck. But they should be factors affecting a 'real' base, not a case of regularly leading to results that are simply indefensible in light of known facts.
OK, if they want the sim to have wider appeal, they need it to be able to be a 'yippee shooter' for those without the time or inclination to experience things as they were (in so far as that is able to be determined). I'd do that by allowing people to choose between 'total realism', 'some realism' and 'run around shooting everything with ease'. Again, that presumes building the highest level and then being able to turn it down, rather than middle to low realism being the norm with us relying on modders to bring things to more 'realistic' levels.
It would be a fascinating project if approached from that perspective. I'd happily work on it as a researcher/tester - I'm a business analyst/consultant in real life, so a project such as this (in which I would be inherently interested and aiming for excellence) would be a considerable improvement over working on a bunch of stuff about which, in all honesty, I care very little!!
The problems of the real world, especially the financial ones, inevitably lead to compromises being made. I can accept that; the trouble is when the marketers try to flog the results as though no compromises have been made that consumers get pissed off.
They seem to forget one of the basic rules: always under-promise and over-deliver. People will give howls of delight when they get more than what they expected. They give very different howls when they pay for something and it doesn't deliver as promised (and we could quote a few examples of that from our beloved sims, couldn't we?).
Cheers
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