[UNCOVERED] SH5 officially left for dead!

[THE_MASK]

Originally Posted by privateer

There are times when I wish I could cook all the
'Negativity Stuff' up and inject it!

When I see 'It can be done'
in any shape or form?
It's better then a pot of Kpt.'s coffee!

Some people are going to be SOOOO
kissing backside sooner or later!

Dan and co had the foresight to give us the tools , i just wish there was someway for the few diehards to give you a computer so you can actually play and mod SH5 .

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by JScones

BTW: By all accounts Prien's orders were primarily to infiltrate Scapa Flow for propaganda and disruptive purposes. He was not tasked with specifically sinking The Royal Oak, just told that there were plenty of targets to go for. I can't imagine the sinking of an obsolete WWI battleship as being anything other than a target of opportunity supporting the primary aim of the mission.

Also don't forget that Doenitz himself analyzed the aerial photographs and hand-picked Prien for the job. That didn't happen often, if it ever happened again.

Virtually all kaleuns were indeed given orders to "go here and hunt". SH3's campaign (modded) is nigh-on perfect.

[JScones]

Originally Posted by Placoderm

John, with all due respect, you and others keep bringing up this "Norwegian Campaign" as justification for SH5's myopic attention towards capitol ships...but in reality the 'campaign' was barely a footnote in the overall u-boat war both because of it's utter failure as a strategic doctrine and moreso because it was far, far from what most uboats were tasked to do. (quite frankly because of it's very failure to be of any use in helping the war effort)

Uboats were in virtually every other case specifically ordered to avoid any and all warships unless circumstances prevented otherwise. It was just too dangerous, and the uboats were too valuable to waste on such strategicall useless targets. Doenitz was trying to strangle England by cutting off it's supplies...not by attrition of it's warships. The fact that he was forced to do so with so few submarines (fewer than 15 on station at any one time when the war broke out) meant that he could not risk any unnecessary encounters with warships...he needed to stop the flow of goods into the UK. Doenitz did not have to sink ship tonnage to win the war...he had to sink supply tonnage. The ships that carried those supplies were just a means to an end.

The raid at Scapa Flow was not so that Prien could sink The Royal Oak...but was rather designed to be a psycological blow to both the people of Britain and it's navy. It would have been just as successful and probably just as historically significant if Prein had only sunk a few destroyers or barges...because the key was not what he sunk, but the mere idea that he was able to penetrate the defenses of the port that was the pride and the core of the Royal Navy.

There just is no intellectually honest way to defend SH5 on it's historical merits. It has none.

What SH5 does have is the finest graphics ever to grace a submarine game. It has beautiful water and gorgeous 3D modeling. It is gorgeously ambient, stunningly immersive, and captivating to the imagination. It portrays in ways never before acheived a sense of being there on the high seas in a tiny metal tube with the wind and the spray in your hair and purpose in your heart to return to base victorious!

In those ways, SH5 does what it does best.

But please don't kid yourself in thinking that there is anything historical about it. The dates are wrong, the targets are incorrect, the missions and the goals are nothing but pure fantasy. SH5 is to history what Star Trek is to science...it is exciting and inspiring, but eventually you have to come home from the convention, take off the pointy ears, and come to the realization that it was all just pretend and make-believe. There is no magic soup, and submarines never 'raced' to save the Bismark...One-eyed first officers stayed in port, and submarines were sent to destroy supplies, not taskforces.

I have learned to accept SH5 for what it is...not for what I wished it was. I had wished it would be a historical simulator. I accept that it is a very beautiful game.

It is easier to accept that simple truth than it is to re-write history.

QFT. Brilliantly put.

Thanks for bringing some objectivity and fact into this thread.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Virtually all kaleuns were indeed given orders to "go here and hunt". SH3's campaign (modded) is nigh-on perfect.

Nigh-on,yes. Would still love the very occasional "special mission" though, a la SH4. But otherwise, yeah, fact is it wasn't all rollercoaster rides out at sea, hence the substantial recorded number of zero sightings let alone zero sinkings at the end of 30 day patrols...

[THE_MASK]

With the Litecampaign 1.2 mod you dont even have to do the narvik mission LOL .

[Zedi]

Originally Posted by sober

With the Litecampaign 1.2 mod you dont even have to do the narvik mission LOL .

Not true, I just got it. But I think I will have to pass it because I play on 100% realism and with IRAI on, so this is mission impossible. I almost shot a random salvo at a german BB just because is damn hard to identify a rushing task force from long distance at dawn. Also, is a very low chance that the torpedoes will pass the escort shields undetected, so the main target will dodge it. After that is no way that I will see the sky again, no matter what. If they don't sunk me, the will camp the area for weeks.

SH5 and his campaign was designed to be a game, not a sim. Align the dots, shot and lol. True story.

[janh]

Originally Posted by Magnum

SH5 and his campaign was designed to be a game, not a sim. Align the dots, shot and lol. True story.

That is exactly the one "shortcoming" of SHV that I so far cannot attribute to the designers, and one that I can accept as "needs to be modded". The developers wanted and needed to sell, and sell means game for the casual players. Though they could have invested a little more time and added two different campaign versions, selectable in the difficulty settings maybe, "historical" vs. "enhanced".

[THE_MASK]

Originally Posted by Magnum

Not true, I just got it. But I think I will have to pass it because I play on 100% realism and with IRAI on, so this is mission impossible. I almost shot a random salvo at a german BB just because is damn hard to identify a rushing task force from long distance at dawn. Also, is a very low chance that the torpedoes will pass the escort shields undetected, so the main target will dodge it. After that is no way that I will see the sky again, no matter what. If they don't sunk me, the will camp the area for weeks.




















SH5 and his campaign was designed to be a game, not a sim. Align the dots, shot and lol. True story.

What i meant was with litecampaign you can ignore narvik and the northern patrol if you want . Western approaches and coastal traffic will give you 5 iron crosses which is enough to fullfill the campaign objectives .

[Kapitanleutnant]

Originally Posted by janh

The developers wanted and needed to sell, and sell means game for the casual players.

No it doesn't. SH5's terrible reception is a perfect example of this fallacy. Ubisoft may have believed that making it "casual" would make it sell, but they were wrong.
The best way to sell a simulation is to make it a good simulation. Games like IL-2 Sturmovik and Armed Assault sell well because people recognise the pedigree there. They respect the effort that has gone into providing a comprehensive and detailed simulation.

By simplifying your game in an effort to appeal to the "casual" market, you piss off your core fanbase of simulationists, and you still don't attract the casuals because they're just not interested in a sim, even with a half-arsed RPG mechanic bolted onto it.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Kapitanleutnant

The best way to sell a simulation is to make it a good simulation. Games like IL-2 Sturmovik and Armed Assault sell well because people recognise the pedigree there. They respect the effort that has gone into providing a comprehensive and detailed simulation.

That is a terrible comparison. Even the most meagre of first-person shooters or flight simulators will outsell the greatest of submarine simulations. Respect and effort have nothing to do with it.

[Zedi]

Originally Posted by Kapitanleutnant

No it doesn't. SH5's terrible reception is a perfect example of this fallacy. Ubisoft may have believed that making it "casual" would make it sell, but they were wrong.

You can't be sure about that. Subsim community is not the whole SH5 customer base. Maybe SH5 sales is better than any previous SH had before, so that's why they don't give much on those opinions who wish a more hardcore game. Maybe we are just a minority, even if we think that the world is spinning around us.

This is a general tendency in the game industry. I remember what a damn hardcore game was vanilla WoW around 5 years ago and how dumbed down is now when any retard can have the best items in the game for almost no effort in just few days. But this was the way of success for WoW and the key of how they managed to have over 12M subscribers/month. The kidos don't like games where you have to think/work much, just point, shot and lol.

With these facts, will you listen to the minority who dream about a hardcore game, or to the overwhelming majority who wish only easy entertainment? Business is business, not a charity ball. So if we want the hardcore/sim part of this game, we must work on it ourselfs...

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

That is a terrible comparison. Even the most meagre of first-person shooters or flight simulators will outsell the greatest of submarine simulations. Respect and effort have nothing to do with it.

Agreed. Subject plays a large part in sales.

[janh]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Agreed. Subject plays a large part in sales.

I would assume so, yes -- independent of whether it is a submarine simulation, a captain simulator, a shooter anything similar around the topic "submarine warfare against civil merchants in Atlantic or Pacific in WWII", it will not be a mass market game. It is just not a hot topic, at least presently. Whether SHV now has attained more casual gamers than it's predecessors would now be an interesting information that would show whether Ubisoft's new strategy succeeded. Quite sure, it has annoyed quite a few hardcore simulation fans, but this didn't come as a big surprise. At least the developers tried to put in a core engine into SHV that would allow turning it back into a detailed simulation. So they surely didn't forget the simulation fans entirely.

[scrapser]

Originally Posted by karamazovnew

I wouldn't go scaring children like that

Truth is, I've seen lots of buggy games cut from patch support. And I still can't forgive Ubi for not patching the spawning road blocks in Far Cry 2. Then there's Sh4 UBM with a buggy notepad and stadimeter, easy things to fix by the devs, but which were never fixed.

However, with all the "Silent Hunter is dead" threads and most modders jumping overboard or simply waiting for the next patch, Ubi's notorious "case closed" policy seems a bit more expected. That must be why Elanaiba and Sorlim urge us to continue to mod the game. With a bit more support from us and a more clear view of the bugs, they might persuade the suits to release another patch.

And, on the bright side, progress with SH5 mods has been stunning so far. I'm beginning to subscribe to the opinion that one year from now, SH5 will be
better than all previous titles (with mods ofc).

Since you mention it here, what was the problem with Far Cry 2 spawning road blocks? I know it seems weird when playing the game that you can clear a road block of guards and when you return a short time later they are all back. Is this what you're referring to? If it weren't for the respawning of guards the game would get boring very fast.

[Faamecanic]

Originally Posted by krashkart

Technically it's not quite dead yet, hasn't died and therefore has not yet had the chance to become undead.

OTOH this provides a great opportunity for further comedic segue:

Im not dead yet..... no but you will be..... Im getting better!!!

[Faamecanic]

Originally Posted by SteelViking

So, I suppose what would be the most realistic would be a sort of mix of the two systems. Perhaps they(bdu) could give you a strategically placed patrol grid, and give you instructions on whether you are to concentrate on merchants or warships(and it could get a bit more specific).

However, the idea of being assigned to sink 2 battle ships here, sink 1 aircraft carrier there, now sink 100,000 of shipping in this other place, is not realistic by any means.
.

I wouldnt mind the "Engage Warships" type campaign. BUT being as SH5 is geared to reward TONNAGE ONLY (just like SH3 and 4)..the last thing I want to do is engage DD's or Corvettes. Just not worth the torpedos.

I also have to agree that yet....BdU DID assign Uboats OCCASAIONALLY to concentrate on warships. But this was never the norm. And as others have said BdU never said "I want you to sink 2 Battleships".

Missions for Uboats were targets of oportunity.... not hard a fast Sink X type ships or Sink 100,000tons of Cargo (which is historically rediculous to begin with.)