The Silent Hunter IV (Pacific Campaign) WISH-LIST

[MGR1]

Well, my wishlist is:

1. Do one side only, and do it well.

Adding in the British, Dutch and Japanese boats as playable would add to the complexity unneccesarily.

By all means, have them as addon packs, but not in the core game.

If I want to play as the US, I don't want to be limited to the Gato/Balao class. The thought of chugging up the Phillipino coast in an S-Boat appeals.... As does the Narwhal, Nautilus etc

2. Realistic upgrades.

At the start, the US Boats had big conning towers, no AA and were painted black. If I play 1941-42, I'd like my boat to look like it should, not like a late war one minus the AA. (I'm slightly biased - I liked the US subs when they looked like that! )

I'd also like the camouflage scheme to change as the war progresses, i.e. black to grey.

3. Better fatigue model - need I say more!:rotfl:

4. AI subs - friendly and enemy.

Plus a lot of what's already been suggested!

Mike.

[The General]

I've read that during the production of SH3 the original team had to shelve the project for some time, to sort out some financial issues and/or 'Corporate Restructuring'. This is why I know, despite many of you arguing with me, that SH3 wasn't finished when they put it out. They needed some quick cash for that particular tax year or something. I offer as proof the fact there was supposed to be a proper mission structure delivered via the Radio message system, but the team didn't have time to implement it and thus, you just get the 'proceed to grid reference blah, blah for 24 Hours' etc.

On the bright side, what was finished was great and there was room for some great Mods etc, which I hope to see more of in the near future, 'cos I believe there is still room for improvement.

[101Dixie]

I haven't read all of the previous posts, so at the risk of repeating what other people have said.

DUTCH AND BRITISH SUBS

I'd like to see Dutch and Royal Navy subs, mostly as a matter of national pride, I want to dock at Freemantle while flying the Jolly Roger . The Dutch and Royal Navy ops in the PTO were vastly different from the USN ops. RN subs tended to operate in shallower coastal waters around the Malaysian coast and around the DEI. However, I wouldn't want to see these at the expense of US subs (even/especially the rubbish types) such as the S boats operating from Manilla.

SPECIAL MISSIONS

Self explanatory really. A few random things chucked in such as rescuing downed airmen or assisting in the evacuation of the Philippines.

[TDK1044]

The ability to set the depth using the number pad.

[mcsquared]

Don't know if this has been mentioned before, but it would sure be nice if when you've gone to all the trouble and danger to penetrate any enemy harbor, there was some ships there! I remember in SH I, enemy harbors had all sort of nice ship targets in them, however, in SH III, I've penetrated Gibraltar, for example, and found nothing there! I've even docked at night at the pier in another enemy harbor!

[Safe-Keeper]

I second that.

Download Grey Wolves or some other mod if you haven't already. The ports will be full of ships.

[TDK1044]

1) Evidence of noise and whatever visuals of people are feesible from on board a ship that has been struck with a torpedo. In SH111, a sinking ship was a ghost ship with no sign that anyone had ever been on it.

2) Use of the number pad to enter in a specific depth.

[Safe-Keeper]

Modder's tools. Give us a program that lets us easily find and change the contents of cfg files, tga files, xml files, wtf files, or whatever files you need to edit to change what's in the game.

Silent Hunter III's easy enough to mod, but it's a bit hard to find the file to mod in the first place.

Especially when I don't speak Romanian:p.

[Piter_]

I'd like celestial navigation

[Piter_]

May be it is already included in SH3 and I am blind, but i want possibility to assigne time list of duties for each crew member (for example: sailor "name" 18:00-24:00 engine room, and so on). And special standart list of duties in special situations.

[jas39]

And Enemy Ai Subs Too!

[Berserker2]

I just finished reading the interview of the SH4 DevTeam......very good!

One point you brought up was phosphorescence of sub and torpedo wakes. That's a really good item and I hope it can be included in the game.

Back in the early 60's I was a pilot flying S2 Tracker ASW aircraft on the East Coast and we did some night tracking exercises with the Nautilus.....yes, THAT Nautilus. After dropping sonobuoys abeam her while she was on the surface so we could get readings and recordings, she then dove so we could see how well our tracking equipment worked and I was amazed, looking down at how easy it was to follow her by that phosphorescent wake. Not sure how deep the boat was when I lost sight of her, but I'd have to estimate at least 100' or so. She also booted it in the butt and we lost her completely a short time later ,as noisy as she was, she was still way too fast for us to effectively track her with passive buoys that you had to drop a little minibomb on to act as an echo pulse.

I'm really looking forward to SH4 as I've always loved the original SH1 and the campaign it had. There's just something about the Pacific!!!

Bill

[edjcox]

Several quick wish list items came to my mind..

1. Enemy submarines, seemingly dismissed in Neils interview by UBI. The Japanese submarines posed a significant threatto our submarines and many were engaged and possibly sunk by them. The enormous variety and abilities of Japanese submarines made for interesting adversaries. Midgets, Seaplane carriers present interesting scenarios for missions. Find the mother ships and sink them. Track down and kill a submarine seaplane mobile base etc. I think knowing there may be periscopes looking for you as well is to important a facet of the game to simply dismiss.

2. The ability to fire colored flares from the conning tower (red, white, blue, green) for special signals in Wolfpacks, identification, turn points,etc. Historically accurate flares were used a lot.

3. Pilot recovery, including approaches, enemy air overcap, and some neat twists like encountering both enemy and allied survivors and recovery. Could be interesting if a crew might obtain vital sea lane intelligence from those adrift if they are recovered.

4. Ability to dump oil, the famous torpedo launch of fake debris, dead crew, to confirm to the enemy a sinking...

5. The inclusion of the historical torpedo fusing difficulty.

6. The use of Deck guns and machine guns on light vessels and wooden vessels. Realistic debris, damage, explosions initiated, fuel leaks, fires started. Incendiary shells (white phosphorous) for surface tanker attacks.

7. Realistic AI reaction to radio messages from sub and intercept for location.

I'll keep growing the list but my impression is that time is short and so is manpower at UBI for this project.

****

UBI might do well to keep a certain amount of the metadata on servers that only game owners can access and download to their PC's. Thus certain elements of the game might grow over time and extend the development of certain game elements beyond the initial release date...


Laters...

[ijozic]

How about starting the campaign before the war so that you have a prewar patrols where you would train, test the sub, some recon missions, tracking Japanese fleets, etc?

[Lionman]

Having just finished reading the otherwise excellent review of the state of play regarding SH IV I confess to already being dissappointed as, reading between the lines, it sounds as if they are simply going to give us SH 3 + enhanced graphics and gameplay. Not that this isn't good, as I am a huge fan of the SH series and think SH3 is a benchmark for this type of simulator. BUT . . . . . the developers are seemingly ignoring the clamour from the whole community for more and better realism INSIDE the submarine and movement within the hull. This is a BIG DISSAPOINTMENT.

Why?

Because the whole ethos of submarine warfare revolves around being "trapped inside your sub in the midst of battle" so the whole game actually focusses on the sub's interior in combat and on long voyages. Think of Das Boot - we all became intimately familiar with that U Boat and the program makers knew that this was so crucial that they built a whole WW2 submarine and filmed live on board. This was absurdly difficult and expensive but it made the difference between another run-of-the-mill war series and a great all-time classic, possibly THE all time classic of the submarine genre.

So developers - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE heed the community's many many many requests for this aspect of the simulation to be enhanced. Restricted motion on board and those badly drawn and unconvincing AI avatars are just not good enough.

I am a Sub Sim enthusiast and a former professional underwater person (North Sea diver) and I tweaked my SH4 with a nice start up movie sequence inside real WW2 submarines from Das Boot, but I had to use the black and white version because when I used the colour version the transition into the SH3 sub's control room was just too unrealistic by comparison. You can't allocate grillions of polygons to complex warship graphics, then ruin the realism and immersion by leaving the human faces of the crew blocky, fixed, wooden and cartoon-like. We humans are more sensitive to the human face than any other image in our world, so the interior realism of the sub, motion within it and the convincing "look" of the AI crew are CRUCIAL to the realism of a submarine simulator.

Submarine warfare, just like living in saturation diving systems, which is very similar (and I did that for 17 years) is "up close and personal" and the realism of that interior world is totally crucial to SH 4. SH3 was a quantum leap forward from SH2 but SH4 must give us the ability to move around inside the subs, access more compartments and be with more realistic looking AI avatars. (Think of the faces of the avatars in Brothers in Arms for example.)

Otherwise SH4 will just be seen as a glorified add-on or "SH3 mark 2" and you will lose half your sales because the majority will see it as "more of the same" with a few cosmetic changes, however unfair that is. I have been a sales and marketing manager too since my offshore years and I seriously stress that you ignore this aspect of SH4 at your peril. The community (your market and buyers) made a BIG issue of how much they wanted the dynamic campaign in SH3 and you listened and did it. So don't ignore the fact that virtually every virtual submariner's wish-list has included the request for movement within the sub and more interior detail and realism.

We virtual submariner's want to "believe we are there" and "there" is INSIDE OUR SUBMARINE however marvellous the exterior world is. Personally I find the ocean world of SH 3 so realistic that I often take voyages in rainy weather just for the feeling of "sea time" in the NOrth Sea, my old professional work environment. My only real criticism is that in the real deep ocean the waves are MUCH BIGGER than they ever appear in SH3 and if we had bigger waves in SH4 the far closer visual horizon could surely be used to compensate for polygon demands? Seriously guys towering waves look even more dramatic from a lowe waterline craft like a sub and the awesome scary magesty of the ocean is really imposing from that perspective. Try crossing between two vessels offshore in an inflatable. Within 20 yards you are lost in a landscape of moving grey hills even in fairly mild weather and in a Force 5 plus it is really terrifying from that low perspective. The same applies ot small yachts in big seas offshore, something I have also expereinced first hand. The two "stars" of a submarine combat simulator are the ocean and the submarine itself. You could even use that as a marketing tag line because it is absolutely true.

In general the SH series is excellent and totally unparalleled in the history of simulations and we appreciate your work guys but remember that we scrutinise it perhaps more closely than any other online combat market of players.

The new multiplayer stress in SH4 sounds EXCELLENT as I for one play simulators mainly for social reasons and the single player game is far less important to me. I want human opponents and colleagues.

My personal dream is a multi-crewed submarine online which I could crew with my buddies, just as multi-crewed online aircraft have become possible in the combat flight sim world. There are few experiences more immersive or productive of cameraderie than sharing combat as a team online and I have made many great friends this way.