Observations on Realistic Realism and gameplay

[Bosje]

So you're bored and you start writing something which you think may be worth writing, for consideration by the community.

Why, what?


This is not a comparison of various mods, it is not a set of rules by which to play the game, it is neither a gripe on the stock game nor a celebration of any mod. It is simply what the title suggests: an observation on realistic gameplay in so far as the game engine realistically allows it. These observations are the result of playing Silent Hunter 1 through 4, reading much of what is written on these excellent forums, watching a fair amount of movies and documentaries and reading a modest collection of relevant books. I hope to provide the veterans with an interesting read while providing a number of gameplay suggestions to those newcomers who were looking for ways to enhance their gaming experience by taking submarine warfare seriously. In the course of writing, it inevitably focused on the Atlantic side of things, since that is where most of my own knowledge and gaming experience is based, but I do feel that the basic principles hold true for both operational theatres and as such I feel that this forum is the best place for it. Much of this will apply to SH3 as well but SH4 UBM is simply the latest thing.


As my join date suggests I am a relative newcomer myself. Even if I have been learning much about submarine warfare in WWII, I am likely to be incorrect in some of my comments and observations. In addition to that, historical sources are notoriously one-sided (I have three books myself, each of which contradicts the others on many 'facts'). Fortunately, this community is known to correct itself where needed so I invite (and expect) you all to add your own thoughts and to point out any serious errors. I don't presume much, despite what you may think, lol.


So much for the introduction, let's get cracking.


-
Realistic Realism? Reality check please...


It is a computer game, of course, which means that one is limited to sitting on a deskchair, watching a screen and hitting certain keys on the keyboard. Realistic Realism therefore means the amount of realism you can realistically throw into your approach of the game, if you still follow me. If you get your spouse/girlfriend/offspring/pet/roommate/partner to throw a bucket of water over your head as the boat crashes into an Atlantic roller, you may well wreck some of your hardware. Bad weather resulting in faulty equipment is quite realistic, but perhaps not quite desirable from a gameplay point of view. A childish example but the same applies to many issues that have to do with the much discussed concept of Realism. The Atlantic Ocean towards the end of 1940 featured some severely terrible weather and only one convoy was ever engaged during the whole month of december. Some further sinkings were accomplished due to chance encounters with lone merchants but that was about it (David Mason, U-boat - the secret menace, 1968). These forums, however, are rife with gripes about 3 week rainstorms and not being able to attack anything for a month. A usual comment in such gripes is: 'Having a hard time is fine, but this is just ridiculous!'


So, we don't want a month of bad weather, because we'd spend that month on high time compression waiting for the weather to clear up. I do not expect to find many players who would sit there, looking at the rain, listening to the rain, sulking, reading mildew ridden books, wearing damp clothing and generally being miserable. All the while actually swelling with happiness inside: 'This is fantastic!' Yah, unlikely. So we don't want that kind of realism. We are happy to contend with bad weather for a bit and then we are very happy to find the weather clearing up while we shadow that convoy, setting up for a night attack. That, of course, also happened often enough during the real thing, and we'll all say: 'This is fantastic!' But even if we look for enjoyment from playing our game, most of those who read this will want to live through the fear, horror, excitement and boredom which the real skippers lived through in real life. Immersion is the word.


Realism is in the mind of the beholder. Or somesuch.


“And what the heck is realism anyway? Tater observed that in Trigger Maru, unrealistic enemy behavior results in extremely realistic player behavior. You are properly operating in fear for your life. Wow! How authentic! Therefore you do not take stupid chances. You cannot just duck below the thermal layer, put it on silent running and go eat lunch. You will be dead when you return. When being depth charged, you MUST evade. They will kill you. Be afraid. Very afraid. It's wonderful”


Rockin Robbins nails it down in the above quote. Tigone adds:


“...Accuracy is objective; either the height of this ship's mast in the game is correct or it's not. Realism, though -- the feel, the affective domain in which the game connects with the player -- is much more subjective, and arguably harder to attain. While both accuracy and realism are criticial in an historical game like SH4, the realism factor remains even when there's no real-life counterpart to measure accuracy by (think of almost any science fiction game title)...”


These quotes are taken from a discussion which took place on these forums. Originally titled 'RFB vs TMO', it developed into a very illuminating read about perceived realism. ( http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=140918 )


Realism, then, does not exist anywhere except in the imagination of the player. You are not on a submarine, you are sitting on a deskchair in front of a computer. Possibly smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of beer as a convoy heaves into view. The curtains are closed because otherwise the monitor would just reflect the interior of your study, rather than reveal the enemy against a star lit sky at night. The lower right corner says it's 1.00 am, December 12th ,1942. But it is also just after dinner on a late summer's evening, 2008. What we are talking about is the illusion of realism, measured by what your imagination expects it to be. As such, each individual's perception will be slightly different. Some will surround themselves with trinkets and memorabilia and gadgets from the era, using authentic sliderules and chronometers to assist with plotting and keeping a written log as the war patrol goes on. Some will park the camera on the pillow of the captain's bed, whisper 'good night, boys' to the radio room crew and go to bed in 2008, hoping their Type VIIB will still be there in 1943 as they wake up. Some will do their own manual targeting, others will allow their crew to take care of that while still attempting realistic gameplay. Whatever floats your boat, as they say. Relative Realism is perhaps a more accurate description and it's largely a matter of taste.


What, then, is the purpose of this post?


As stated in the introduction, I intend to provide the veterans with a hopefully interesting read while providing suggestions to those newcomers who were looking for a proper Submarine Simulator, rather than the arcade game which they got when they bought the thing from the shops. Having said that, the dev team does of course deserve due credit for making the games in the first place. Popular opinion holds that they created the stock games to appeal to the casual gamer while leaving it up to the community to modify it for those who are looking for a more serious and historically accurate approach. Much information can be found on these forums even if it requires much browsing and searching. This post hopefully serves as a decent summary of ways to play the game realistically\historically accurately, leaving it up to the individual to determine what they consider to be real.



From here, I shall attempt to provide thoughts on the various aspects of submarine warfare as you encounter them during play, possibly coming up with the odd dogma or truism.



Should I stay or should I go? Engage or evade aircraft and escorts.


The main factor in all of this is the behaviour of you, the player, the Commander of the boat. Do you dive to safety, do you run away, do you engage or do you do nothing at all? At this stage I am tempted to leave the stock game for what it is but the fact is that you are perfectly free to dive from aircraft, even if the stock game allows you to shoot it out with a good chance of killing the bomber without your boat getting a scratch. Likewise, you are free to either engage a destroyer with your deckgun or to attempt a submerged getaway. You can leave the gun alone, even if the stock game allows surviving a gunfight. Many players will have experience with mods like GWX, TMO and RFB, where one quickly learns to fear aircraft and one no longer even considers using the deckgun for anything other than finishing off a crippled freighter. That is exactly the kind of behaviour displayed by the real skippers and as such, those mods are celebrated as highly realistic, but there is a catch. A German account from the 1950s mentions many surface encounters where the Uboat ran at full speed on the surface, passing destroyers at ranges as close as 200 meters, slipping inside the convoy lanes and picking out the juiciest of targets from within before slipping away in the darkness (Harald Busch, So war der U-Boot Krieg, 1955). This is an impossibility with any game setup I ever tried. Either the game makes them kill you, or the game makes them incompetent boy scouts. Randomness and luck is hard to script. I could be wrong here, of course, since I know little about coding. But even GWX which models the progressive Allied skill as the war drags on, does not allow me to actually go inside the convoy lanes, fire torpedoes and get away on the surface in 1939 (except in rainstorms before radar is available and from my sources, attacking under such conditions was not commonplace). In the end, the stock game is not all that bad for serving our purpose, even if I stay away from it myself. What matters is your decision as the skipper, do you run or do you fight?


So then we can ignore any difference between stock and all the available mods, we can simply take the official submarine manuals of the day and say: The Aircraft is the biggest enemy of The Submarine. Even if you have a pea-shooter and even if you have shot them down in the game before, history tells us that Coastal Command is responsible for the majority of U-boat kills (I don't know about Pacific records but I assume the real skippers were quite afraid of the real Japanese aircraft). You are to be afraid of aircraft and you are to crash dive immediately upon sighting them. Radar, radar warning receivers and an experienced lookout are all aids to increase your survivability, in that you get to dive sooner. Period. (For German crews, during the summer of 1943 it was briefly fashionable to attempt a gunfight, as ordered by BdU since the air patrols were so dense that it became almost impossible to even reach the open ocean from the French ports. However, after losing many boats for only limited successes this order was soon reversed.)


And so we are afraid of aircraft and we dive on sight, sweating and hoping that we survive their initial bombing run.


As for surface ships: warships have a harder time spotting us than we have spotting them (radar aside), so it is possible to evade them on the surface at night or in other low visibility conditions. Radar upsets the balance but it should be noted that your radar is not guaranteed to pick up on them, and vice versa. Your boat is after all a small thing. It is even possible to engage a warship (either capital or escort) from the surface, getting quite close at night, even late in the war, even with supermods. Submarines did engage warships in both theatres, and with success, with their main weapon: the torpedo. Such attacks were made both from the surface and from periscope depth. With some skill and experience, the game allows exciting and rewarding torpedo attacks on warships and there is no reason to shy away from those (more on torpedo attacks later). But for our purpose of realistic behaviour, a gunfight is of course out of the question. Speaking of guns, there is a further observation to be made:


Did submarines never fire their guns at destroyers? Yes they sure did. Just before the destroyer lived up to its name by destroying the submarine. You see, the escorts did not really engage the submarine with their guns, historically. That only happened at long ranges, where the main battery of the destroyer could actually be trained to hit the sub's hull and the sub would (and should) be quick to dive under such conditions. You lose, try again later but thank you for playing. Of course, you will not usually find yourself under fire from long range because you do not usually steam into the enemy's visual range in daylight, right? (more on surface operations later). You approach the enemy at night and they only spot you at close range and that's where trouble starts.


Typically, the destroyer would race straight towards the submarine in an attempt to ram, while the sub was still on the surface or while it was attempting to dive. If successful, this resulted in a severely crumbled bow on the destroyer and a severely wrecked hull on the submarine. The destroyer could take such damage, even if it did require a hasty return to port for extensive repairs. It was considered to be worth it: one damaged escort for one wrecked sub. (There are even some records of escorts going down with the submarine, both hulls completely devastated by the collision.) The submarine would be in serious trouble at this stage and was forced to blow all ballast . If lucky enough, it popped up, no longer operational, and it would either be abandoned by the crew before sinking back down, or it would sometimes attempt a desperate fight. Those are the recorded occasions where submarines engaged destroyers with their deckgun. And the destroyers typically won, charging in for another collision while the sub's decks were peppered with small arms fire, machine guns and things like Oerlikons and Bofors (20mm and 40mm AA). Or with the main guns from range. (This is from what I presume to know, I lack sufficient sources about the Pacific Theatre so if anyone has more details on that, I'd appreciate it.)


Interestingly, in the game with any mod they always engage you with their main guns at close range though my sources insist that a destroyer's main battery could not be trained down low enough to shoot at submarines from close ranges. History suggests that, on sighting you, they charged straight at you, crushing you with their mass unless you made like a bakery truck and hauled buns. There is the famous account of a German Kaleun who died a rather gruesome death getting pinned between his own conning tower and the bows of an escort. This does not happen in the game (not to me, anyway), although you will find yourself rammed at periscope depth by an escort which charges straight over you on it's depth charge run. So...


By all means attempt your torpedo attack from the surface, evading and avoiding escorts as you go, or even engaging the escorts themselves in an effort to remove your target's protection! (This also actually happened during the war.) But if they catch you on the surface (and they will, sooner or later), get out of there asap. To put it another way: leave the gun alone and either run away on the surface or seek refuge in the deep. The fact that they will hurt you bad with gunfire, rather than actually ramming you is just something you have to contend with but it amounts to the same thing, whatever your setup:


If the escorts catch us on the surface we can expect to be in trouble and we should be afraid. If we do not want to risk our boat, then we shouldn't come close. Being daring can have both great rewards and severe consequences. If we DO go in on the surface, we should be prepared to pay the price.


This thing is getting much longer than I thought it was going to be, I'll just post this now and see if anyone is actually interested before proceeding onto evasion, engaging and the matter of general surface operations from a historical point of view.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by Bosje

Did submarines never fire their guns at destroyers?

Pretty long post, but this sentance jumped out at me.

"Fire guns at destroyers?!" What are you nuts? If your in that kind of range your focus should be on evasion. Even exchanging rounds with a merchant can be deadly. Not to mention the DD turning your way and flat out running you over.

No... not on my boat we dont 'fire at destoyers'.

[Fincuan]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

Pretty long post, but this sentance jumped out at me.

"Fire guns at destroyers?!"

You should have continued reading, it goes on like this: "Yes they sure did. Just before the destroyer lived up to its name by destroying the submarine."

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by Fincuan

You should have continued reading, it goes on like this: "Yes they sure did. Just before the destroyer lived up to its name by destroying the submarine."

I did, I cannot remember any instances where a sub was foolish enough to conduct a running gun battle with a destoyer. Prove me wrong Id love to read about it.

[tomoose]

Bosje;
you're touching on all the points that generally cause debate etc but as you state "realism is in the eye of the beholder". That's the luxury of this game, some guys like to rack up the kills and be completely brazen with their tactics while others love the sneak and shoot technique.

I, for one, like to think I play "realistically" (i.e. 100%) in that there's no external cam, everything is manual and underestimating the enemy can be deadly. This results in, maybe, one or two kills per patrol but the satisfaction of manouevering, stalking and lining up those kills is immense.

Other players don't have that kind of patience or simply don't get enjoyment out of that style of play and can adjust the game to suit them, that's the beauty of the game itself (and the mods).

[Rockin Robbins]

A fine post! Please continue with your observations. Having been quoted while I myself was quoting tater, I'll consider myself in the sights of a destroyer's main batteries.


Carry on sir, I'll observe from radar depth.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

Prove me wrong Id love to read about it.

This started as a fantastic thread about realism being in our heads. Why is it suddenly an argument on what's 'realistic'?

Excellent job, Bosje. I particularly like the distinction between the way we play ourselves and the way we want the game to make us play. I'm looking forward to more.

i found the part about DD guns not going low enough to shoot at close range to be quite interesting.

what would be the minimum realistic range they could fire low enough to hit you?

[Lexandro]

Thats simple a matter of declination. Ship deck guns were not really designed to angle downwards beyond horizontal. They were capable of a few degrees but nothing major. It would be a case of researching the ships weapons station and finding the maximum angle of declination and working from there.

[Sailor Steve]

-7 degrees on the standard destroyer gun, and the forward freeboard was 6-8 feet, with the aft freeboard being probably 4-6 feet.
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP_5-50_3ns.htm

[vanjast]

Mann that is a long story.. you must be bored...

As mentioned, 100% 'realism' makes the game more immersive and more dangerous for you 'and your crew'. It forces you to develop tactics, instead of being Gung-Ho.

As an example with SH3. As times got harder in the later years. I would pick off stragglers, by creating them by long shots into a convoy (To get hit's like this you could only fire at certain angles to be guaranteed a hit). It amounted to about 0-2 ships per convoy, as the ASW just loved you for hours on end.

In the end I was looking at about a 80% torp strike percentage, and was doing ok, by being very very...very cautious.

You yep... this was my realism at 100%

[Bosje]

Before I continue, some clarification may be in order. Steamwake, I tried to explain that there are records of gunfights with escorts but only as a last desperate measure after the boat was forced to the surface. The game allows it, as it should allow it, but the player should not attempt it except as a last measure in a hopeless situation. Many mods will support this behaviour (you'll die) while the stock game does not (you may survive), the point of this thread is to provide thoughts on historic happenings as my sources describe them, compared to various approaches to the game. From my sources it seems that the escorts DID pound the subs with the main guns but only AFTER it was forced to the surface, to finish them off.

I am writing this because I myself had many many questions as I started to play both SH3 and SH4 on higher 'realism'. I was blown away by the level of immersion which I got from playing with supermods on 100% (90% ext.cam.) and I found myself wanting to know just exactly how things happened for real, and how I could implement that knowledge in my gameplay to enhance the experience. Basically this thread attempts to summarize the many lessons I learned and am still learning.


This may turn into a longwinded manual but I hope it doesn't, lol. Carrying on:


Submarine of submersible torpedo boat? Surface operations.


Most of you will be familiar with the notion that these WWII subs are nothing like the modern day nuclear hunter-killers and boomers, not even anything like the modern day diesel-electric subs although they work in much the same way. Your basic method of propulsion is the diesel engine and your usual condition is 'surfaced'. Free after the German Uboat handbook: The boat is designed to operate on the surface, being a fast and highly maneuverable torpedo attack boat. During daylight attacks and for purposes of remaining undetected and evading the enemy, the boat has the capability to fully submerge. It should be noted that, while submerged, your boat is restricted in it's ability to move and to detect the enemy.


It is that last sentence that struck me, when I read that handbook. The SH series has always invited me to dive and do a hydrophone check to see if any ships had entered my area of operations. Any data on the technology insists on ranges of up to 20 or even 30 kilometers (throw me a bone on the nautical miles). But from what I'm reading they considered the watch crew's eyes a much more important sensor than any bit of kit on the boat. There you have it and it is actually confirmed by 'Das Boot', the official Kriegsmarine Manual and some books on Dutch submarine warfare in my possession. They relied on their lookouts to spot the enemy and even when they spent the day submerged for fear of enemy attack, there was a watch on the periscope to look out for smoke on the horizon (and aircraft). In 'Das Boot' they only dive to listen for contacts when the weather is so bad that nothing can be expected to be seen. The translation goes something like: 'In this [crappy] weather we can hear more down here than we can see up there.' On US fleet boats you have the benefit or SD radar (aircraft detection) and if you stick your conning tower up a bit, even SJ radar (surface contact detection) to help you with getting contacts, but all the same, the submarine was mainly a surface vessel. What to do with this bit of information? Well, it seems that the 'crappy sonar guy' is in fact quite true to history. Anyone who does not do his own manual hydrophone checks is rather 'realistic'.

But it's still a sub, yeah? No worries, you are indeed in command of a sub. A typical procedure was to spot a ship or group of ships (convoy), get an initial idea on their speed and course and then outflank the contact on the surface. After gaining an edge on the target by setting up ahead of it, doctrine stated that you submerged to close in for the kill. During daylight this is common sense but even during the night, this was the standard procedure. Accounts from early operations mention a sense of 'great daring and cool-headed thinking' on the part of those U-boat commanders who ignored the rules and went in for the kill by attacking on the surface under the cover of darkness. Later, this became the standard but it was 'invented' by the early aces. Whatever else can be said about your boat, it is a very small thing indeed, even if it is a comparatively huge US fleet boat, and a lazy lookout is quite unlikely to spot it. Another interesting observation is that the target was looked at from low angles, against the background of the horizon and the night sky, while the sub was looked at from the much higher positions on a tanker or freighter, as such blending in with the murky darkness (and ever shifting shapes of the waves) of the sea itself. At this stage I personally feel unhappy with the stock game and most mods which tend to take away the ability to call 'smoke on the horizon'. I've been confronted with merchants on evasive maneuvers long before my watch crew actually yelled 'ship spotted' but that is just a personal gripe. The more important thing is: how do we deal with surface operations?


Range: your boat has no range on electric propulsion. Even if the batteries support a speed of 1 or 2 knots for a day, it doesn't get you anywhere. You cover your ground on the surface and you keep a sharp lookout. Diving is something you do several times a day. At least once. This is the 'trim dive' and it serves to check on the boat's submerged handling and depth changing/keeping. (Technical information on how submarines actually worked is extremely interesting and I learned a fair bit during the past months but I know that many people out here will be able to explain it much better than I possibly could.) Either way, while you are down there it does not hurt to do a hydrophone check, of course. Getting anywhere at all is still done on the surface, with your diesels. And you dive on contact with surface ships and aircraft, determine whether you are going to intercept or not and you move on.


Each his own, of course, and this applies to the real deal as well: Kretschmer (greatest German ace) had a standing order on his boat that the officer of the watch was NOT allowed to initiate a crash dive upon visual sighting of a ship, especially at night. Kretschmer, then, went against the rules by realizing that his boat was unlikely to be spotted, even by a warship, at the time when his watch crew spotted that (war)ship. He tended to get more information on his target while on the surface and he usually went through the entire engagement without ever diving. Only if he was found out, as proven by a destroyer's bow charging straight at him, did they crash down into the deep. In fact, there is an account which describes his capture in the spring of 1941. It says that his watch officer made the mistake of crash diving on sighting a ship, before waking up the commander. The destroyer heard the noise made by the diving boat and before anything could be done, Kretschmer found himself in a boat wrecked by depthcharges, blew ballast and abandoned ship.

So for a realistic approach to gameplay there are many options: spend most of your time on the surface if you want, or spend any daylight hours submerged for safety. Attack with bravado from the surface, at night, or do all your sinkings from periscope depth. Run with decks awash to lessen your profile or rely on hydrophones to keep an ear on situational awareness. Surface operations give you range and good eyes (depending on the game setup) and you can go looking for targets. Submerged running will keep you safe but you'll have to wait for the targets to come to you. Again, radar tends to unbalance this later in the war and the commanders had to re-invent their tactics. This is also where you find a real difference between German and US operations. It seems that eyes were considered the primary sensor on the boat, but if hydrophone checks get you your beloved targets then by all means go for it. This is where things get interesting, referring to the fact that realism is in the mind of the beholder:


Even if the real guys did not get those lone merchants by hydrophone checks, it feels like a very professional and 'ace' thing to do in the game. Killing those ships after hunting them down from that initial far-away whisper on the hydrophone is one of the main perks of the game (in my opinion). Who cares that I don't really have any accounts of that happening historically? (Even I find it hard to believe, if anyone HAS got numerous accounts of subs hunting mainly by hydrophone, please share.)


Pull the plug! Submerged operations.


'Pulling the plug' is a lovely bit of vernacular, mainly from the US subs, I believe. It means to dive the boat. Diving quite literally involved pulling the plug on the main ballast tanks: big containers on the outside of the pressure hull which had vents on the top- and down sides. When the boat was surfaced, these tanks contained air. When all vents were opened, water was allowed to flow into the tanks from below as the air was expelled on the top. Basic physics tell us that this decreased buoyancy and it caused the boat to sink (in a controllable fashion). Inside the boat are stored reserves of compressed air. If you close the top valves but keep the low valves open and then force this compressed air into the ballast tanks, this will force (some of) that water out again. That will increase buoyancy and the boat goes up. By messing around with the buoyancy you can make the boat go up and down a bit and that is how you reach your desired depth. From there, the depth keeping is mainly handled by the diveplanes which work much the same way as ailerons on aircraft wings, water flowing past the diveplanes will make the planes have an effect on the boat's angle, allowing you to propel yourself upwards or downwards or to level out and maintain your depth. Steep diving (crash diving) means you allow the tanks to fill completely with water while moving at top speed in a downward angle. That will make the needle on the depthgauge shoot down quite rapidly. Blowing for surface means the opposite: Forcing all water out of the tanks with compressed air while moving at full speed on an upward angle, causing the boat to pop up to the surface like a cork. If you run out of compressed air, you are in trouble. If you run out of submerged propulsion, you are in trouble. If you run out of both, you are lost. (Correct me if I'm wrong about any of the above here, please.)


The game does not model this to my own satisfaction. You can spend all day submerged, changing depth casually, you can sit still at 85,5 meters depth all day without moving an inch, etc etc etc. That is not how it worked but hey, let's work with what we've got. For purposes of immersion you should always maintain some speed while submerged, to cause the diveplanes to have an effect. One knot does the trick without causing you to make too much noise or to run out of juice any time soon. 'Surface the boat' would historically involve using some of that compressed air to empty the tanks which is not featured in the game. (You can spend all day at any depth at 0 knots, order the boat to surface and it will zoom up there without any trouble, compressed air still at 100%. This could only have happened if the crew were manually pumping all that water out of the tanks.) Ah well, I just order a 'blow ballast' when I want to surface.


Free from the 1950s US submarine manual: When the boat does not respond during a dive and keeps on going down there are several steps that can be taken to arrest that seemingly uncontrollable dive. In order of severity:
-Cut the engines. This will cause the boat to stop propelling itself down while the boat is at a downward angle and should slow or completely halt the descent. If it fails, the next measure is to:
-Order a full speed reverse. If the boat is still at a downward angle, this will cause the boat to pull itself back up, quite literally. If this, too, fails:
-Blow all ballast, use compressed air to drastically increase buoyancy.


This actually worked in SH3 (at least it worked in GWX 2.1) and I fail to understand why SH4 does not feature such basic principles on submerged operations, but either way I hope this gives you some idea on how the boats actually got out and about in the cellar. The hulls were built to maintain a constant pressure (equal to that on the surface) for the crew and at depth, this means that the sea is exercising an incredible pressure on the hull. The boats were built quite well and could withstand quite a lot but one should always be aware of the dangers of going deep. (The yard guarantees 90 meters but we can also go deeper.) Many Skippers/Kaleuns have gone to great depths in order to evade depthcharge attacks, both for real and in the game. Personally I find this aspect of the game among the most interesting and appealing features. There is nothing like it. The hunter hunted, cat and mouse, a battle of wits, 'Jetzt wird es psychologisch, meine Herren', you spend several hours in real time, inside the control room, listening to the destroyers above you and trying to stay alive, trying to stay one step ahead of them. Brilliant. But I'm drifting a bit now, let us get back to basic operations:


After having lived through a depthcharge attack, or after diving away from that air attack, or after diving for any other reason, sooner or later you will surface again. Oxygen runs out after about 40 hours on most boats, batteries run flat and you're not getting anywhere while you're down there. So you surface. If you want to approach this realistically, here is how they would do it (from the German handbook, also featured in 'Das Boot', after the convoy attack):
Hydrophone check at shallow depth, listen all around you to make sure there are no screws churning around anywhere near you. Then proceed to periscope depth, do a quick scan around without zoom, to make sure you are not being ambushed by a destroyer, sitting there 100 meters off your stern, engines stopped. (I never actually witnessed such a thing but I'm always thinking how cool it would be to actually find your periscope view completely filled by a lurking destroyer, lol.) Then, do a more careful scan of the horizon all around you by zooming in and slowly making a complete turn with the periscope. Then surface, the commander goes out onto the bridge alone or with his first officer (strikes me as odd to risk both senior officers, but anyway) and make sure there is really actually nothing at all anywhere around you. Then call the 'all clear' and proceed to surface operations.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

This started as a fantastic thread about realism being in our heads. Why is it suddenly an argument on what's 'realistic'?.

You know what your right, Ill just sit and watch now.

[Bosje]

lol, actually it is about what's realistic, in the sense that realism is extremely subjective and as such, always worth a discussion from where i'm sitting.

Moving right along because i'm having fun writing this. stop me if i'm boring you guys and girls:


Flooding tubes one through four! Torpedo attacks.


Back in the days of playing SH1 and 2 on easy settings I always used to wonder why they called it the solution. After locking onto the target it said something like solution 60%, 70%, 80%, 85%... good enough, FIRE! I took the solution percentages to be the odds of hitting the target and that's what it basically amounts to. Here is why: your boat probably moves (if only at one knot), the target probably moves and the torpedo most certainly moves. So how do you get the torpedo to meet with the target at a specific time and place? This is the much discussed Torpedo Firing Problem and solving the problem results, logically, in a Solution. It's simply the angle at which you fire the torpedo so that it meets the target as they both move on their own paths. Torpedoes were the 'smart weapons' of their day, even if the early versions could do little else than maintain a certain depth (which they in fact failed to do during the early war years, in both theatres) and travel in a certain direction. For more information on this subject and on the interesting details of early war torpedo problems, please read Ducimus' excellent thread ( http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=128185 ).


How to come up with this solution to the torpedo firing problem? Generally, the idea of realistic gameplay calls for Manual Targeting to be checked ON in the realism options, because that will remove the 'point and shoot' function from the game. Some players are not interested in drawing lines and measuring ranges and speeds and angles on the chart, they choose to let their crew handle this aspect of the game. As with so many aspects of gameplay: each his own. Speaking for myself, I started to do manual targeting several months ago and it's both hard and rewarding. Somewhere halfway through a steep learning curve I started hitting some targets and it feels great to know you got it right, after carefully collecting all the required data. These forums feature many excellent guides, tutorial videos and suggestions on how to master the fine art of manual torpedo attacks and a basic search should give the player many hours worth of material to study.


An interesting compromise is to disable the point and shoot function but to still allow the weapon's officer (SH3) to calculate the solution for you. You can have a go at it yourself and then have the officer check it for you, if you will. Of interest in this widely discussed topic is the following notion from the documentary on US fleet boat attack strategies (Link Referral in Ducimus' thread):


Each individual skipper had his own style of attack, the necessary data was gathered by a team of crewmembers using all the different sensors and equipment at their disposal. Each commander had his own team organized to his own personal taste. Some commanders took charge of the attack from the periscope view, others had their XO take care of target data acquisition while the commander himself oversaw the whole team's efforts from the conning tower.


Interestingly, then, the skipper was not solely responsible for getting the data all by himself. If you watch 'Das Boot' there are two interesting scenes involving torpedo attacks. First they engage a destroyer from periscope depth where the commander has his eye on the periscope, calling out the values to the XO who is with him in the conning tower and then the XO transfers those values down to the crew who put them into the TDC (or German equivalent thereof). The other attack is a nightly surface run at a convoy where the commander does nothing except keeping an eye on the convoy and calling out which targets are to be engaged, the XO is on the UZO (German equivalent of the TBT) and calls the bearings, ranges, speeds and AoBs. ('Lage 60' translates as 'Angle on Bow 60', unless I am much mistaken).


So neither scene in 'Das Boot' features the commander having to go to the attack map and twisting all the dials and inputting all the settings, after calculating all those values in the first place from the navigation plot, after manually observing all the values from the periscope or UZO views to begin with... all of which needs to be done in a short space of time while the boat is in extremely close range of a heavily guarded convoy...but it's a game and in the end, it is the commander who decides which speeds and depths and triggers are to be used. It's just that the game requires you to set those values yourself, as well as all the other values if you go for manual targeting. (And to be honest, I wouldnt trust any AI to decide on torpedo depth and speed settings for me.) Tough.


But then, nobody said it had to be easy. Using the assistance of your crew when engaging a target with torpedoes is both historically accurate and realistic, if you want it to be. Doing it all yourself is equally real. Remember, it's all in your head.


Keeping this in mind, there is also a remark on the previously mentioned 'TMO vs RFB' thread which says: TMO with 'realistic map updates' OFF is actually more realistic than the stock game with 'realistic map updates' turned ON. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about here: 100% realism in the stock game results in contacts not being shown on your plotting map. Thus, you have to do draw every line on the plot by personally marking the bearing and the range at certain intervals in order to get the necessary data to hit the target. This is indeed a challenge but it's actually more of a challenge than that which faced the skippers of the day. Historically, the commander (you) would not have to do it all by himself, he had a navigator who plotted the target on the charts, based on the details given by the officers and crew on the bridge, or by the hydrophone operator, or by the radar operator, or by any officer who was looking through the periscope or UZO/TBT. Getting the exact speed and heading of the target was a process which involved time, multiple marks of bearing and range estimates, and more time to confirm if the estimated values were correct. So then TMO's dot on the charts with a basic mention of 'generally heading north east at slow speed' is a lot more 'realistic' than having to do that all on your own. Here we reach the weird conclusion that the stock game at 100% realism is not realistic at all, it is simply a very hard (and very satisfying, if you like that kind of thing) way of playing the game.


My roommate is very happy to play the game on low realism settings without mods, he zips through an entire war patrol in around 2 hours of real time, sinking at least 60k tons of shipping, he hates duds and yet, of course, he loves the game as he plays it, who am I to judge? He fails to see what possesses me to sit there for an hour, looking at a stopwatch, drawing lines, muttering numbers and punching on my pocket calculator, finally firing one torpedo and then cursing like a dockworker when the thing misses or fails to explode. Then going through another half hour of drawing lines because the target now takes evasive action and requires a new session of data collection. But I love the game as I play it, who is he to judge? I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but: Each his own.


Having said all that, here is my take on torpedo attacks: For those who want to have a taste of the problems, the careful collection of data, the anticipation of setting up for the attack, the excitement of hitting the target and the frustration of missing the target...in other words for getting the most out of an emotionally realistic approach to the game: I recommend getting familiar with manual targeting and all the different methods and styles which are available for it. Dick O Kane and Fast 90 appear to be the most famous but there are many ways to catch a monkey. Even shooting from the hip is possible, when you realize that one knot roughly equals one degree for fast torpedoes, provided that the target steams more or less at a 90 degree angle across your sights. I am by no means a crack shot myself but I have sometimes hit destroyers by aiming 15 degrees ahead of them as they made their turn around me: lucky shots, educated guesses, instincts developed after firing so many shots. And of course reading any relevant threads on these forums. There are the famous historical accounts of commanders using a protruding bit of metal as an improvised aiming device, of commanders using their instincts and experience to set their torpedoes loose on seemingly random guesses and hitting their targets, to the amazement and reverence of their crews. Experience will come to you too, in due time, and you will find yourself more and more confident about your aim. Personally, I think it's worth the time and frustration it takes to learn. But is point and shoot Unrealistic? Is using map updates Cheating? No. Developing your own style and having your team tasked and set up to personal taste is exactly what they did in real life.

The End

It got a bit out of hand but these are, for now, my observations on realistic gameplay, as they came to mind. If anyone finds this helpful in getting more enjoyment out of the game, then I consider the mission successful. (forgot all about external camera usage while under depthcharge attack etc, maybe some other time )

[Sailor Steve]

Another outstanding analysis!

I loved your description of you and your roommate's different styles.

I still use Weapons Officer Assistance. I do consider it cheating for myself, but only because information gathering is immediate and perfect. If it took several sightings for a good solution and was capable of mistakes I would be perfectly happy. What I do to offset the speed and accuracy is to take at least three sightings, just as if I really was doing the calculations, and do it again when I switch targets.

Again, a great summation, and not long or boring at all.