Playing without TC

[Pilot_76]

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.

[Arnold]

^ 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.

[Sailor Steve]

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.

[Pilot_76]

Important thing is that SH series give players a lot of nostalgia moments. First merchant ship destroyed using manual TDC for example. Unforgettable. :-)

[Damo]

Originally Posted by Arnold

Playing SH3 is like when I worked in law enforcement.
Days, weeks, months, years of boredom, broken by occasional episodes of abject terror.

Hilarious!!

[sublynx]

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

[GoldenRivet]

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

Purpose of the 1x patrol:

Since the release of silent hunter III there have been enormous contributions into the SH3 community regarding methods and tactics which can enhance the realism and immersion of the total SH3 experience. Manual Targeting, printing out and creating your own custom recognition manual, hard core navigation mods, and super mods… the list goes on. It is my opinion that the most engaging of any of these realism and immersion mods came with the game initially in its stock condition; and that is the ability to complete an entire patrol in real time using 1x time compression.

If a player wants to experience the true grit of what the Kriegsmarine U-boat fleet endured during the Second World War, a 1x patrol is surely the final chapter in the book of SH3 realism. New challenges which are not apparent during a Time Compressed (TC) patrol begin to present themselves. Player dedication, fatigue, frustration… many of the human elements that TC removes from the game are now injected into the experience when one attempts a 1x patrol.

Though TC patrols can be exciting, fun, engaging and tense; 1x patrols add a dimension of excitement and tension not typically encountered in a TC patrol. Due to the great length of time one must dedicate to the 1x patrol, there is a sense of vitality and a sense of the potential for “loss” which is not apparent in a TC patrol. For example; If a convoy attack within a typical TC patrol fails, you have only lost a couple of hours of game time… however, if an attack fails in a 1x patrol, the failure of such an attack may have cost you many hours or even a couple of days… and it could literally be a few more days before you will have another chance to complete an attack, if you get another chance at all!

Here are some examples of the obstacles presented to the player in a 1x patrol

1.Players of the Silent Hunter III series have become accustomed to using time compression (TC) in order to significantly reduce the time required to reach goals, patrol areas, or expedite attacks, intercepts and even escapes from dangerous situation. This gives the 1x patrol player several self imposed obstacles to overcome.

a.Because the player is accustomed to playing under time compression, consideration is not adequately given to the amount of time which must be dedicated to typical activities on board the U-boat. For example; if the typical player wishes to expedite the process of his sound checks through the use of time compression that is normally an available option however, credence is not given to the fact that even though five to ten minutes might have passed within real time, the U-boat within the game under time compression may have been submerged performing the sound check for perhaps five to ten hours. The result is that the player of a 1x patrol who is accustomed to TC patrols is likely to cut his sound checks far too short.

b.Fuel use is another obstacle which a 1x player will have to overcome. Because the player is accustomed to zooming here and there across the ocean in rapid time compression, a first time 1x patrol player is very likely to use a higher engine speed than he might otherwise use in a TC game. This reduces the range of the u-boat and increases the risk of fuel starvation or fuel shortage.

c.Probably the largest obstacle for a 1x player to overcome is the player himself. If the player approaches the 1x patrol with the same craving for action which he might approach a TC patrol, the player is sure to become disappointed in the overall lack of action, become burned out, and either abandon the 1x patrol or resort to salvaging what’s left of his patrol by using TC.

d. Conclusion of this section: any player who wishes to seriously participate in an honest, enlightening and meaningful 1x patrol should NEVER BE IN A HURRY TO ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING.

2. Real life – real time – 1x patrols require a great deal of attention and dedication on the part of the player. Even short range patrols utilizing the Type II or the Type VII boats could end up requiring as much as one or two weeks of the players time to complete. Type IX patrols could even eat up an entire month or more of play time! For this reason the following items should be observed during a 1x patrol.

a. The player should schedule the 1x patrol to coincide with a summer or Christmas vacation, or any lengthy regular vacation time.

b. A 1x patrol is best suited for a retiree, or middle school, high school, or college student who might have a schedule with a fair amount of breaks which permits a great deal of time to be dedicated to a 1x patrol.
Preparation for a 1x patrol:

The player of a 1x patrol should not underestimate the time involved in completing an undertaking like a 1x patrol. The player will literally be spending hundreds of hours monitoring the situation aboard and around his U-boat, much as in real life.

1.Have plenty of reading material handy. Magazines and books are among the best ways to pass the time during a 1x patrol. Just when you think you have gathered enough materials, keep gathering!

2.Have a second source of entertainment available to you. Go to the grocery store and purchase a few crossword puzzle books and perhaps even a few word search books. If you don’t wish to stick with historically available means of entertainment such as crosswords or word searches, consider a hand held game like a sony PSP, or iPod Touch application etc.

3.The best way (in my opinion) to approach a 1x patrol is to have a computer capable of supporting two monitors. This way you can run applications like an internet browser in the background, and frequently pass between both SH3 and any background applications. Of course this is not recommended for slower machines.

4.One of the most important things you will want to do before executing a 1x patrol is disable any of the operating systems automatic update download applications. For vista users this involves going into your control panel, click windows update, click change settings and then check the box that says “Download updates and let me choose when to install them”. The reason for this; windows likes to install its updates at 3:00 in the morning when it thinks you are asleep in the bed. This is not such a big problem until you realize that windows will perform an automatic restart after installing the update!

The Save Game issue:

During my patrol, I accumulated no less than 40 save games over the 8 days of patrol time. I also encountered a number of issues related to save games which I had failed to previously consider. Any seasoned player of SH3 knows that there is a limitation within the game which causes the potential for problems whenever the game is saved in close proximity to other ships, or while close to other ports. I had initially planned to save every hour. I quickly realized this would not be possible once I came across my first convoy! For almost an entire day I was in close proximity to other ships and could not save the game until after the attack when I had left the convoy behind!
Players must also be cognizant of the fact that there exists a great risk of issues which will interrupt the game. Silent Hunter III may encounter errors and crash, a thunderstorm or windstorm might force the power to go out, an outside application might fail and cause the PC to restart; any number of issues can cause catastrophe within a 1x patrol. There are several methods with dealing with this issue.

1.Save the game approximately every hour, or every two hours.
2.Attempt to start your patrol so that it coincides with your actual time zone. For example; launch your patrol at 10:00am in game so that it is also 10:00am at your home (you may have to use TC to catch the game time up to real time, or pause the game and let real time catch up to the game time).
3.If you experience a power failure or a loss of stability of any kind which closes your game, don’t panic, in this case save games and TC are your allies. Simply load the most current save game, and use TC to catch up to the current time. (Note: if you do not coincide your game with real time you must remember the approximate time of the crash and use TC to reach that point.)
4.Save your games in a manner so as to not “over write” the previous save. For example; start with a save called “01” and work your way up through “02” – “03” up to save “11” and “12” etc. this way, if you experience a crash and your most recent save game is corrupt, you can always load the second most current save game.
5.Any time you receive a contact report, save the game. There is a fair chance that if you don’t, and you are forced to reload a previous session… the contact report may not occur this next time around!
6.Any time you sink a ship save the game… of course consideration should be given to the fact that you will want to be a significant distance away from the sinking location before saving. There is a known issue wherein if you save in proximity to a ship you just sunk… when you reload that save game the ship will respawn on the surface. It would be a shame to sink a destroyer, surface, save the game… then for some reason reload that game and the destroyer respawns next to you! It won’t end in your favor!
7.Finally, follow known SH3 save game issues… never save within 50 miles of land, never save while submerged, never save in the vicinity of other ships or aircraft etc.

My personal thoughts on my 1x patrol

Despite the fact that my 1x patrol only lasted eight days – (luckily I encountered a large convoy and expended all torpedoes by day 6) – the experience was awesome! The first thing I noticed about the 1x patrol is the crew interaction in Silent Hunter III really lets you down as far as a 1x patrol is concerned. If the developers at Ubisoft had made every part of the U-boat interior accessible to the player… and if they had included on duty and off duty crew which could be interacted with – even if such interaction was simulated on a limited scale – the game would be much more enjoyable under a 1x patrol situation. The game Half Life 2 comes to mind… HL2 was filled with characters which you could walk up to and each would say something different to you if you looked at them and pressed the 'USE KEY". Now I know that the guys at Ubisoft probably didn’t foresee anyone attempting to play an entire patrol at 1x compression and therefore such an addition to the game could be considered superfluous, one must agree that such an addition to Silent Hunter III would have made a world of difference in not only the game as a whole, but for a 1x patrol in particular. Despite the aforementioned minor limitation, I have to admit, as the harbor lights fade out in the distance, and the birds stop circling your boat and return to land I actually did start to get a sense that it was just me and my dedicated crew against the world!

A new level of uncertainty and realism is injected into the game play when played at 1x compression. I would imagine that even if a patrol were limited to 16x or 32x it would be almost as rewarding. Most of my time was spent on the bridge with the rest of the watch crew diligently scanning the horizon with my binoculars for small vertical columns of smoke which the watch crew might not have seen. Second to that I spent a great deal of time in the captains bunk adjacent to the sound station working my crossword puzzles waiting with baited breath for the words “Schiff gesichstet!” to be shouted down the conning tower hatch, An event that occurred infrequently… very infrequently.

Another thing I noticed quite quickly was related to radio reports. When playing at high time compression it is not uncommon for us SH3 players to receive a new radio message every 5 or 10 minutes of game play. In fact, some people might consider it annoying, but in high time compression, ten minutes between radio messages could literally be a dozen hours within the game. I must admit, the first time I received a radio message I was excited! It was like someone had given me a Christmas gift and I was tearing into it to see what it was! After I read it… it didn’t matter that the radio message said that “the port of La Spezia was available for U-boat operations”… even though that might have seemed completely irrelevant to a u-boat operating off the coast of Ireland I was mighty glad to have received the message, because for many hours - NOTHING - had happened... suddenly the radio crackles to life with a message.

By day three I had began to question whether or not the game had some goofy quirks if you played the entire patrol in 1x. I asked myself “can I think of any logical reason why ships might not be spawning correctly if I played at 1x all the way through?”. I asked questions like “Where have all the ships gone!?”, and I began to wonder if something was wrong with SH3! After 36 hours of game play with nary a contact report – let alone any sightings or sound contacts – I felt I was justified to wonder such things. But I soldiered on and received my answer in the form of a contact report! During a time compressed patrol, we receive contact reports every few minutes sometimes. I admit that there are times that we don’t receive any… but you must surely agree that when it comes to contact reports – typically we receive several per hour under high time compression. But within that hour… it’s possible that under time compression a few days have passed; but under 1x compression you don’t get the same sensation or appreciation of time. Contact reports become one of those things that during the course of a 1x patrol, you realize you took them for granted!

Would I do it again? Of course, and sadly enough I’m already planning another one! Now, despite the fact that I didn’t sleep in my computer room, or limit myself to eating only canned food. Nor did I grow a u-boat captain’s beard or abstain from showers for those eight days… I found the experience to be quite worthwhile and educational.

In the past I have said that one of the great things about Silent Hunter III is the wide range of skill levels and player types which can appreciate the game. The same could be said of a 1x patrol, however, undertaking a 1x patrol is not for everyone. That said… if you have ever been interested in completing a 1x patrol, or if you have ever entertained the idea, I highly recommend the experience.

[Pilot_76]

As GoldenRivet has stated above; it is a major breakthrough in immersion. Imagine after patrolling for 2 weeks and you get attacked by DCs. I could swear I sensed the smell of fear knowing that those 2 weeks were doing the drill but it was worth. Curious thing: Flight Sim pilots usually do not activate any TC as well even for long flights. They keep themselves busy navigating.

My opinion as I have said before is to get yourself busy (in other words, NOT BORED) by intercepting convoys/single ships in another pc using any other util or SH game (by SH I mean a single mission where a ship will respawn in a certain radius of your sub and then you plan your attack). This way you keep yourself sinking ships while waiting for the "official" patrol to present targets there in the main pc.

Other thing I just remembered is that for those who are playing without map contact updates and also do not wish to see your own sub in the navmap (there are mods for this) you can also load another SH3 or SH4 in the other pc and use its navmap for plotting. Why? In case you want to see the navmap and the periscope at the same time. Just my thoughts here. I dream of one day having a SH6 where I can hook up 3 pcs in LAN and man all stations in multi-monitor support and also save the patrol.

[siege00]

I had the great opportunity to work from home for almost 2 years in a row. During that time I ran a 1x patrol over a whole summer, minimum of 8 - 10 hours a day of realtime game play, often sleeping near the computer with the volume loud enough to wake me if an announcement was made.

It really was an incredible experience and actually the sea sounds took the edge off the workday. lol.

What I found most incredible about it was the excitement at seeing ANYTHING. Even when coming across neutral ships, I'd go through all of the motions of tracking and aggressing them without actually firing any torpedoes because the first thing I realized was that you can get really rusty and easily fail when it really counts. You end up keeping good notes, and even making up imaginary contacts to prosecute. I did have another machine but it was dedicated to paying the bills.

And if you think torpedo duds are frustrating now, try the frustration when you've spent several hours of tracking a target, after spending several days with nothing happening, and you fire and nothing goes boom.

There's a serious sense of satisfaction after completing a 1x patrol as GoldenRivet expressed. A serious sense of accomplishment. Because of that patrol, I have a really hard time playing with TC enabled now so I restrict the use of it highly.

In my opinion, everyone should try it at least once.

[GT182]

I've found that using TC at anything above 1 will at times cause you to miss a convoy, or some event that might have been very important for you to see.

[ninja turtle]

An interesting topic and something I may try in the future. But for me at the moment I play SH3 to ultimately sink ships. I research U-Boat history and tactics, I have added mods to the game (mainly for eye candy), and I try and incorporate all of this into the game as my immersion.

Within a patrol I don't go above 512 TC as I want to fast forward to some action...it's a game. My life is fairly boring enough sometimes to voluntarily sit in front of a monitor reading a book waiting for something to happen.

However, after reading Golden Rivet's post I can understand the attraction. Maybe when I've retired I will try a 1x patrol?

Incidentally I stumbled across this 'Let's Play' with SH4 whilst trying to find something to watch on YouTube a couple of months ago: "Magellan's Route - circumnavigate in real time." The first episode was published on 23 Dec 2013, and DangerDeadpan is still travelling, judging by his latest upload dated 3 Feb 2016. I hope he won't mind me linking his 'Our Journey Begins'. Who knows readers might like to follow it.