Enigma?

[FIREWALL]

Dowly has a good idea Guys.

Let it take 3-5 mins to get the message instead of 10- 15 secs like in SH-3.

[Sonarman]

I remember, as I am sure many here do, that the old Three Sixty Pacific/Artech MS-DOS game "Das Boot" had a much simplified Enigma codebreaking mini-game.

Perhaps something similar to that could be incorporated into SH5, something along the lines of an AI crewmember takes 5 (game time) mins to break message, alternatively human player can "jump in" and break it himself in (hopefully) less time. Additionally perhaps this could be enabled/disabled in the realism menu for those who do not want/enjoy this feature

[Fluffysheap]

It's easy enough now to tweak the config files so receiving a radio message doesn't drop you out of TC. It wouldn't matter much, if more of the radio messages were actually useful. That is why I think a real dynamic world where the radio messages have real information in them is better than worrying about the best way to cut down on chatter. A decoding minigame might be amusing but it's not why I'm playing the game. The thing is that Enigma didn't really involve anything that you'd do as a minigame - it was more like typing. So a minigame would just be an add on thing. Not really a realism option either, after all the captain would never decode a message, most were decoded by the radioman except for some special high security ones, but even those were decoded by the watch officer. I'd be happy just to watch the radioman operate a working machine.

[Schultz]

A ideea struck me, you know that the americans when they captured the Enigma, they studied it , and started to send false messages to ships and subs.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by infernos

A ideea struck me, you know that the americans when they captured the Enigma, they studied it , and started to send false messages to ships and subs.

*starts to dig a foxhole*

[kptn_kaiserhof]

and the enigma finaly got comprimized

(pardon my spelling)

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by infernos

A ideea struck me, you know that the americans when they captured the Enigma, they studied it , and started to send false messages to ships and subs.

I don't remember this coming up in any of my readings. I believe that the British (the Americans did not do all that much with the Enigma) would be in receive mode only. I don't know of any operations where the British sent any encoded false messages.

I think the risk would be too great to tip off the Germans that the British were able to crack the Enigma. The Germans thought that even if an Enigma machine were to fall into enemy hands (British) that the British would still not be able to read the messages.... And if the Germans would have used the Enigma correctly it might have been true.

The risks of sending out false encoded messages would outweigh any potential benefit IMHO.

Imagine how long it would take the Germans to find out when radio operators at BDU receive a message "from" BDU to a submarine when they never sent. One slip up could adversely affect the entire British code breaking operations from then on.

[bart]

Originally Posted by Sonarman

I remember, as I am sure many here do, that the old Three Sixty Pacific/Artech MS-DOS game "Das Boot" had a much simplified Enigma codebreaking mini-game.

Perhaps something similar to that could be incorporated into SH5, something along the lines of an AI crewmember takes 5 (game time) mins to break message, alternatively human player can "jump in" and break it himself in (hopefully) less time. Additionally perhaps this could be enabled/disabled in the realism menu for those who do not want/enjoy this feature

This sounds to me like a good idea and would add a lot to the imersion of the game.

I live near to Bletchley Park and have been there quite a few times now and the enigma story is an interesting one. I've just read a book by one of the leading codebreakers that worked at BP from 1939 to 1945, althought he was involved in the army and airforce codes not naval ones, in this summary he said if enigma was used as it was intended they could never have broken it. It was the way the german military sent their messages and the sometimes lazy way they made up their keys that allowed flaws to come to the surface and let the codebreakers do their stuff.

Going back to the game, as the enigma story played such a big part in the battle of the atlantic, wouldn't it be great if the devs did include it in the game in some form or other. Also if in say the dynamic campaign you're ordered to shadow a convoy you could give the necissary order to the radio guy to send out regular contact reports, or maintain radio silence, or receive command instructions that were for the captains eyes only! and decode these messages yourself. What do you guy's recon??