Silent Hunter 1 questions

[MarkShot]

SHCE is quite good and runs great under DOSBOX.

My two gripes compared to AOD are:

(1) The patrol maps are convenient, but they also mean that you cannot stay with convoy for days and days. The maps are just too small for that.

(2) There was a serious over abundance of enemy traffic.

It had a very easy to use mission editor and there is something like 600-1,000 custom missions available. Also, there quite a number of third party utils. You could set your boat and the patrol zone you wanted to go to etc...

With the maps, there was a lot of hunting in the shallows. Also, it introduced missions other than just hunt for shipping.

The ASW AI in my opinion is not as good as AOD, but still far exceeds the SH3/4 series.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by MarkShot

(1) The patrol maps are convenient, but they also mean that you cannot stay with convoy for days and days. The maps are just too small for that.

Also I had one experience in which I was chasing and killing a merchant with my deck gun. Suddenly my boat started turning around. I tried to turn back, but my boat kept turning on its own. Turns out I was at the edge of the patrol zone and it wouldn't let me leave.

The plus side: It's the last subsim I played in which the merchants would actually try to turn tail and run away from you. Outstanding!

Also, there quite a number of third party utils. You could set your boat and the patrol zone you wanted to go to etc...

Also one that corrected the S-boats. The stock game gives it the stern torpedo, which only four of them had, and they didn't see combat. Also a merchant tonnage scrambler (not quite a randomizer, but close), as well as one that lets you choose your boat, including the big V-boats.

I have them all, and can put them up if anybody needs them.

[MarkShot]

Another nice thing about the maps is that some of them are largely in the shallows. This requires a very different mind set. You need not be thinking of evading, but rather taking long range shots and being long gone before the party starts (like a sniper).

In games with large maps like AOD/SH3/SH4, you can also hunt in shallows. However, I find that when given a choice, I always hunt in deep water rather than reduce my odds of survival.

---

Two of the reasons I rate the SH1 AI not as challenging compared to the AOD AI are:

(1) You can knock out destroyers on attack runs at PD with a stern tube. This is virtually impossible in AOD. Destroyers are fast small maneuverable ships. They are not the ideal target for dumb weapons which require static solutions.

(2) With 5 escorts in AOD, it is very, very hard to disengage once they have all arrived on station. Your best window to break contact is while there is just with 2-3 close. In SH1, it is easier during a DC attack to draw all the attackers to one side and then slip away in the other direction. In AOD, they are more likely to maintain a circular distribution.

I also like how AOD gives you two critical resources to manage: battery and compressed air.

[Eugene]

[quote=Sailor Steve
I have them all, and can put them up if anybody needs them.[/quote]

Yes please!

There is life in this one, still.

[Sailor Steve]

@ Markshot: I completely agree about it being too easy to kill destroyers with a stern shot. I agree but I used to get a kick out of doing it anyway.

On the other hand I remember that SH1 destroyers were more uniformly tenacious in their attacks. I had more than one occasion in AOD in which an early-war destroyer would run right over me and not drop depth charges, but think I was further on and hunt for me there. I never had that happen in SH1. In SH3, believe it or not, I have had that happen from time to time.

Dislikes: the fact that in both AOD and SH1 you can see everthing on the map when you have the scope up. In that I like the mods for the newer games much better - nothing shows up on my SH3 map unless I tag it first. Of course that's still much better than in Silent Service, in which everything was on the map even if you were 300 feet down. I used to dogfight with destroyers, twisting and turning and firing torpedoes by-guess-and-by-golly from that depth, and hitting as often as not.:rotfl:

@ Eugene: I'll try to have those up tomorrow.

[Hitman]

My two gripes compared to AOD are:

(1) The patrol maps are convenient, but they also mean that you cannot stay with convoy for days and days. The maps are just too small for that.

That's true, but after reading Silent Victory and O'Kane's both clear the bridge and wahoo, I must say that US boats rarely tried to stay with a convoy. It was more of an "intercept and kill" way of attacking.

(2) There was a serious over abundance of enemy traffic.

Agree completely. However, if you stay away from the map except for plotting your course you only will see what your crew spots.

The root of the problem is that SH1 version 1.0 had only a 256x time compression hence small maps and pretty overcrowded were the way to provide reasonable gameplay. When later patches kicked the game to 2048x, overabundance of targets and small patrol areas became more evident.

Two of the reasons I rate the SH1 AI not as challenging compared to the AOD AI are:

(1) You can knock out destroyers on attack runs at PD with a stern tube. This is virtually impossible in AOD. Destroyers are fast small maneuverable ships. They are not the ideal target for dumb weapons which require static solutions.

That's correct in my opinion, though you also must remember that indeed japanese destroyers were far larger and less maneuverable than british counterparts. Japanese DDs were largely authentic fleet destroyers, and not merely sub-hunters. Many US skippers frequently mistaked japanese DDs for light cruisers because of their size.

Japan didn't really bother start building true convoy escorts until it was too late; either they sent larger fleet destroyers or small gunboats to escort their merchants until 1944. When many of the first ones were sunk, they started to build smaller and cheaper destroyer-escorts.

also like how AOD gives you two critical resources to manage: battery and compressed air.

Wasn't that also in SH1? I recall having seen both the Co2/oxygen and of course the battery gauge

[Eugene]

Thanks, Steve!

[Sailor Steve]

And here you go!
http://files.filefront.com/Hawks+Sil.../fileinfo.html

[CTarana]

Wasn't that also in SH1? I recall having seen both the Co2/oxygen and of course the battery gauge

Yes, when dived in SH1, you had to keep on eye on the battery power and the O2 levels. Both dropped as time went by. One of the early patches actually fixed an issue where the O2 was being used up at a very fast rate. Once SH1 was patched up (or you had SHCE), it was actually a great simulation.

ChristopherT

[MarkShot]

Hitman,

Are you using those values with GWX3?

Another thing which I could be wrong about SH3/GWX is that time compression seems to alter sub detection. I am not talking about 1024-4096, but simply running 4X-16X. I often run at 4X-16X in AOD and SHCE when making an attack run. Given the visibility, size, and speed of a convoy, it could take 1-2 hrs of realtime for them to arrive in position. So, I usually speed up time for about 10 minutes (especially with no near escorts), then take a scope sighting and then accelerate again. I drop into real time as I set up the actual shot.

However, with SH3/GWX I got the impression that as soon as I used time compression, the escorts make a bee line to my position. Thus, in order to sucessfully attack in SH3/GWX, it seems one needs to dedicated anywhere from 2-4 hours making the approach in realtime. Now, that is fine for real life submariners, since it wasn't like they had any place else to be anyway. However, my personal time is too precious to be creeping through the water at a pace slower than walking speed for hours.

So, does time low level time compression affect SH3/GWX detection algorithms?

Thanks.

[Hitman]

Hey Christopher, long not seen you what happened to your old profile? Did you lose the password? You can post in "Comments to subsim review" forum and ask Neal to fix any trouble you had with your previous profile

See you