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SUBSIM: The Web's #1 resource for all submarine & naval simulations since 1997 |
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#1 |
Chief
![]() Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: São Paulo, Brazil
Posts: 321
Downloads: 462
Uploads: 0
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Hello.
I've been asked by my friends why I do play Sub games and yet, why I do not use the so called time compression (or TC for short). For the second question I have a very good explanation so I'd like to share that here on the forum. I guess that 99.9 percent of the people playing SH series or DW/SC/688i from Sonalyst use TC a lot. Why would anyone wait 3 hours for the convoy to show up when TC is there? Very handy for the regular parent or for the soon-to-be-married guy which has a very impatient woman waiting for him to "get this game over and come to bed". I am not among those because I consider TC a blasphemy (regardless of marital status). Sort of cheating. It kinds of takes out all of the expectation that real sub-skippers experienced in their patrols. I remember reading the SUBSIM's book (I believe there are only 2 editions available) which are depicted in details patrols, funny stuff, events, making of games and everything related to Submarine Warfare. One of those articles was about a guy in Europe which worked as a courier during the day and he had plenty of time back home so he decided to play SH3 without TC. As far as I remember. I enjoyed so much his tales about his patrols and methods of conducting a real-time patrol which lasted for weeks and months. At night he would leave the game running and sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with some DDs after his sub. Now that was hardcore sub simming... So if you decide to run a patrol without TC at all here are some things that I have been thinking which would help endure this long (very very long) patrol. First is that I am assuming that you are not a complete noob into SH or DW. Let's say you did play all SH and DW for some time and that you are comfortable with the game itself and with proper mods installed and knowing its enhancements and limitations or bugs. If you are a complete rookie you can still play without any TC but I doubt that will happen. Anxiety searching for juicy targets comes to mind but please bear with me... Yes there are still some good things in not becoming alienated and actually conducting a patrol in real-time in SH or DW. When on patrol I understand that all the crew when not eating or sleeping are studying and preparing themselves for any event and getting their dolphins earned after a lot of hard work and dedication. So why not apply that same thinking while patrolling in these games? Get yourself busy. While conducting the main patrol have a second laptop or desktop running up a copy of any other SH. This is a list that I intend to do while patrolling. The second PC/Laptop will be used to: -Study and practice Torpedo setups using any SH mission editor. (SH 1-5). Here TC will be used of course. It is training after all. -Run the utilities found on Subsim/downloads section for torpedo practice and target interceptions. (MoBo for instance). -Celestial Navigation calculations (Stellarium+Python). -Real Navigation. Google Earth with some NAV add-ons I found on the net (protractor, ruler for example). Dead Reckoning. Be aware that the map in SH3 and 4 (Don't know about the others) is flat. So there will be errors in distances and true headings for Great Circle navigation. Check the readme file for SH3 Grey Wolves mod for a better explanation. I will test this error and check if navigation through GE is a possible thing. Reading material while on patrol: -Submarine Warfare. -Any other pocket book. -Celestial Navigation. -WWII History. -Chess. -Some magazines. -Any work related material as well. It is a bit unrealistic but actually reading work-related stuff and having an Ocean in front of you riding a Sub is less boring for sure. Typical Day: Check in the message box as to what happened in my absence. Did a contact pass by? Did Sonar pick up anything? If I chose not to be disturbed while sleeping in the real World this is the drawback of real-time patrols. Unless I am on vacations I'd be happy to wake in the middle of the night and engage a convoy. If Sonar reported a merchant I would see if I could intercept it. Check the navigation status. Where am I? How far have I gone off course from my nav fix? Fuel is OK? How much fuel have I spent here? What is the status of the crew. When is noon so I can do a Run-Sun-Run fix with a sextant. Check for radio messages, reports on convoys and task forces. Do a radar search. Dive for a hydrophone check every X minutes. Practiced some torpedo shootings on the second PC. Read a lot about tactics. Also took a closer look in the recognition manual. Examined and studied real photos of the Destroyers and Escorts depicted in the game. Did some reading on work related material. Updated my logbook entries. Wow. There is a lot to do on a shift. Practicing torpedo shots is all what we want so that is why I advise in doing that in a second PC with TC on in a single mission designed in any SH Mission Editor. I strongly advise to leave the PC on only when going to bed. Leaving home with the game running is socially counter-productive. Anxiety will build slowly and ruin your day. In my experience in the past I have completed a patrol in SH4 for 70+ in game days. Real-time...about 6 months. Yes. it took that long. Every time I arrived home I would fire up the PC and load SH4 instantly. Doing house chores and all I would leave the volume a bit up in case aircraft spotted my boat and had to crash dive immediately. Playing poker as well got in the way. Having to fold in order to check what the lookouts were shouting or what the sonar operator found. When leaving home for a couple of hours I would submerge and leave the boat on ahead 1/3rd. Of course saving the game and loading again I would cover the same distance or more surfaced with the boat speeding up but I wanted to leave home with the game running so I would simulate going to my cabin and sleeping for some time. Anyway it was worse than Whats Up message beeping interruptions. So at the end it wasn't as pleasant as I thought it would be. Nor that realistic. It did not allow me to live my life in a regular pace. Social events were postponed or canceled and so other things were left undone. It was a Super What's Up distraction app in my opinion. Speaking of Whats Up; I do leave notifications in OFF all the time. I access it ONCE per day and that is together with e-mail. No peeking during the day. Especially business hours on my day off. I have become more social and started to pay more attention to real things such as rain falling, people on the bus stop etc. Noticing little details of this World which I think only writers and poets do have a good sense to capture the moment. Just my thoughts here. Cheers. ![]() ![]() |
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#2 |
Gunner
![]() Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: 44.26'N 83.20'W
Posts: 100
Downloads: 22
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^ Excellent ideas, sir. I have heard it said that if one wanted to join a Flotilla group you need to be able to devote enough time to play, guided by the rules of the group. SH3 is a SIM for those with patience. Those who can be content traveling to a National Park and spending two weeks alone and never once feeling lonely. I have done that, many times.
I find a very peaceful solitude while playing SH3. While my wife sits nearby, watching her t.v. game shows or crime shows, I can simply watch the ocean and the stars drift by, ear buds in place, listening to records play on the gramophone. If a sound contact happens to occur, then things get exciting. Playing SH3 is like when I worked in law enforcement. Days, weeks, months, years of boredom, broken by occasional episodes of abject terror.
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"We shall pass this way on Earth but once, if there any kindness we can show, or good act we can do, let us do it now, for we will never pass this way again." - Stephen Grellet |
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#3 |
Eternal Patrol
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We've had this discussion more than once in the past, and there are as many reasons for doing it, or for not doing it, as there are players. All of those reasons, positive and negative, are good ones, and it's all subjective.
I can only give my reasons for not doing it. First of all, I love the sights and sounds in GWX, with a host of other mods added, so my departure and homecoming are mostly run in real time. I love the harbors and all the ships in them, so I stick with 1x for at least until I've left the port itself. That said, I can hardly claim I'm realistic in this because I use the external view to look at the other ships, the planes flying overhead, and to watch my own sub make its way past the docks and buildings and through the locks. Once I'm in the open sea, or even the Canal, I speed things up, returning to 1x just to look at the occasional sight. I sometimes slow things down and watch the ocean, listening to period music on the gramophone. Mostly I get to the next event as quickly as I consider feasible. Part of my reason is that I was in the navy, aboard a real ship. and even then life can be boring. What is different is the motion and the smells. When you're reading a book, playing a game, talking to a friend or working at your job, you can feel the ship moving. It never stops. In the game you can see the rocking on the screen, but as soon as you start doing something else the game ceases to exist except as background noise. In real life that doesn't happen. The rocking of the ship and the smell of the ocean is always with you. Secondly, I play music. I build models. I work on my own games. I visit SubSim, along with several other sites, several times per day. Playing Silent Hunter takes up a fairly small part of my life. Having it run in the background while I do all those things does not feel more realistic to me. When I play I want to play, not do something else. How realistic would a movie like Das Boot be if it was 840 hours long, and followed every little detail of every minute of everyone's life. You could argue that it would be more so, but even real life is boring most of the time. We do other things to keep us entertained when nothing is happening. I don't see much point in trying to recreate all the boring moments and then come up with other things to do because the game is now boring. We all have different things that make the game more realistic for us as individual gamers, and I can't say anything bad about someone wanting to play the whole patrol in real time. For myself, however, I prefer to spend my game time playing the game, and my doing other things time for doing other things. But that's just me.
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“Never do anything you can't take back.” —Rocky Russo |
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#4 |
Chief
![]() Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: São Paulo, Brazil
Posts: 321
Downloads: 462
Uploads: 0
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Important thing is that SH series give players a lot of nostalgia moments. First merchant ship destroyed using manual TDC for example. Unforgettable. :-)
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#5 | |
Captain
![]() Join Date: May 2009
Location: Forever stuck in Data folder...
Posts: 482
Downloads: 259
Uploads: 0
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The owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat. It only took one T1 eel to convince that boat not to float. |
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#6 |
Sea Lord
![]() Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: In the conning tower of my VIIC scanning the sea through the periscope
Posts: 1,698
Downloads: 173
Uploads: 7
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Abject terror? Yeah, I do remember the first time I was sunk by DC's. I was still playing GWX back then and had had no problems at all in evading the escorts. Suddenly late 1943 the escorts just picked me up time and again. I was getting damaged and had very little experience in what to do to repair the damage. After a while I realised I would not be able to escape from them. I even lost the will power to keep trying for a little while, I just left the boat going on at a steady course and didn't have any idea where the escorts were or what they were doing. I lost all situational awareness about them.
Dead is dead and low TC does add a lot to the game. SH3 is the only game I know of that can induce a sense of fear or hopelessness ![]()
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#7 | |
Subsim Aviator
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Some years ago, myself and other players completed 1X patrols, i posted my final thoughts on the subject after having completed the 1X patrol, and i have quoted that here for you if you are interested
Quote:
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