Go here - Sink that

[jdkbph]

I started to post this in another thread, but I didn't want to hijack it with general comments and questions for debate.

Does any one else find this whole notion of mission success based on "Go here-Sink that" completely off the wall?

[rant]

IMO, it's totally ridiculous! One mission says sink a bunch of AMCs and two carriers. Another says go sink a couple of battleships!

You sink multiple cruisers and the game treats that like it's not good enough?

Nonsense!

Many top aces, recognized as being among the best in the craft, went whole careers without sinking a cruiser. In reality only a small handful of capital ships were sunk by submarines during the entire war... mainly a result of blind luck (stumbling into the right place at the right time). Most sub skippers never even eyeballed an enemy capital ship through the periscope, much less fired upon and sunk one!

With a few very specific exceptions (the X craft attacks on Tirpitz for example) I don't think any RL sub or sub commander was ever sent out with the specific task of sinking a CV or BB - or a set number of ships or a specified amount of Merchant tonnage - like we are in SH5.

They weren't given orders to sink 25,000 tons, or else fail. They weren't commanded to sink an Aircraft Carrier, or else fail.

Ridiculous.

As far as I know, submarines were typically sent out on "patrols" not missions. And they called them "patrols" for a reason... they went to an assigned area, nosed about for a period of time, attacked what came their way, and were hailed as heroes if they came home with a few decent kills.

OK so they were assigned the occasional mission, to be sure. But these were atypical - usually recon or spec ops type missions - not nautical assassinations.

[/rant]

So I've taken notice that the modders have already reduced some of the totally unrealistic tonnage requirements for mission success. But I think it needs to go quite a bit further. I think the tonnage requirements should be removed altogether... particularly when we (eventually) get a reasonable variety of ships to hunt, rather than every other one being a 10,000 ton tanker.

And of course, all success criteria bound to a specific number and/or type of ship (other than perhaps a general distinction between merchants and warships) should be removed entirely.

If the game is properly balanced, I think it's enough to say "Proceed to <specified area> and sink one or more <ships/merchant ships/warships>", depending on the type of assignment given and any high level operations (blockade, seaborne invasion, surface force transit, area denial, etc) being conducted in the assignment area.

Anything more than that is arcade. Success in the campaign, at the submarine commander level, should not depend on hitting a grand slam home run every time you step to the plate!

What say you?

JD