Post modding/patching gripes

[Seminole]

I'm pretty sure almost every thing you mentioned has been hashed and rehashed to death by now.

I suppose most of us still with the sim have learned to cope with or ignore these issues and love it anyway. Those that couldn't have either tried to correct them by coming up with mods that address the issues or they have simply moved on.


Not really much point in dwelling on the sim's shotcomings now I think.

From what I hear there is a GW style mod in the making...so wait I would say.

[banjo]

Your comments and questions are valid and were well written. When I first transitioned from SH3 to SH4 I was disappointed in many facets of the game. There were many useful interesting parts of sh3 that didn't make it to sh4--a weather report for example. However, I stuck with sh4, patched it, modded it, and have been having a lot of fun with it for, oh, I don't know, a year or more by now. It is a different game from sh3, but a great game in it's own right. Play it and try not to compare it to sh3, and I bet you will enjoy it.

[LeeVanSpliff]

Sorry if I'm rude, but I think most of what you criticize is really unimportant for the game.

Seven or six crew members? I'm playing this game because torpedoes are a challenge - not to watch accurate numbers. Who is who in the control room is not really something I'm concerned with.

I typically load the game once every three or four hours I play. The fault damage message when loading does not bother me (scary the first time, but I guess we're all past that point).

The planes not working visually after hours of being submerged? Not exactly the thing that ruins the game for me.

I fail to understand why these post spawn periodically. If it was an appeal for a new patch I could understand it. Personally my annoyance with these minor issues does not amount to one tenth of the sheer joy I experience because of this game. Accurate way of setting torpedo data - yay! Risk of torpedo duds - double yay! The risk of getting in a Das-Boot type of situation where depth charges are just raining down gets me downright giddy! I guess people just have different tolerance levels for these things!

Frankly to me most of the things you mention do not take anything out of the appeal the game has. That being said I could do without the transparent crew like everyone else

-Lee

[Bosje]

Just to clear up a possible misunderstanding:

the point of the thread is not to rant about or emphasize on the faults in the game, the point is to try and understand what's what. there are questions within the comments.

For me, the fun is in the interaction with and command of the boat and crew. I love a visible crew, I love the fact that they made working dive planes, I love the fact that they modelled torpedo failure. I enjoy dealing with all the many detailed intricacies of crew and boat management during a long war patrol. What I want to know is:

WHO am I looking at. WHY is the diveplane sometimes not working? WHAT is the reason for my torpedo running under the target even at the shallowest depth setting?

I found that the 'diving officer' is actually the second guy in line from the command room and the 'officer on deck' is the senior officer on watch. So who is that guy who stands by the christmas tree and what is he doing there? Just now, my watch officer was invisible. glitch or is he busy doing something else? i doubt the game models officers going off to dump a brick.

Playing a game which is as detailed as this one is a big thing for me, you have a boat at your command which is detailed in many ways, it can do many things, it has many limitations. Likewise the crew who are on board. I want to know what's behind all the stuff I come across as I sail the thing for a month, going from pearl to japan and back again. THAT's half the fun from where I am sitting. Again, it's not a rant about everything that's wrong, it's a query as to why they seem to be wrong (and consequently what, if anything, can be done about it)

thanks for the replies so far

[Rockin Robbins]

Mostly I have to agree with LeeVanSpliff. Eyecandy stuff like what crewmembers are on duty where, dive plane animation, periscope animation in the conning tower (people about committed hari kari over that one!), volumetric fog follies and the like are irrelevent to gameplay. They are the inconsequential window dressing to what makes the game work. We accept "rudder...rudder" and panicked damage reports on loading the game also as inconsequential problems. If they are fixed, we will be happy. If not, we will ignore them because they do not ruin gameplay.

As far as CTDs, that is something you chould not be seeing. My last CTD was last year after I accidentally uninstalled some mods in a different order than I loaded them. That is the normal experience with the game.

Trigger Maru is a mod to make the game more challenging, not a realism mod. Escorts are going to find you because they have superman on board. They will make pretty scary runs on you without doing much or sometimes any pinging. They are NOT invincible. Their purpose is to produce fear, an accurate simulation of the feelings of the real particpants in WWII. Sometimes to produce accurate simulation in player behavior, inaccurate enemy behavior is necessary. Idea stolen from tater.

Now you might not like that at all. I say do what I did: squealed like a stuck pig, called Ducimus some impolite names, lived with the mod for a couple of weeks and fell in love with Trigger Maru. If you don't get the desired effect, switch to the equally excellent Real Fleet Boat and all that objectionable escort behavior will vanish like magic.

Torpedoes: in TM, torpedoes are better than they were in real life.LukeFF is preparing a special place in hell for you by modeling the actual characteristics of the real torpedoes. Hint: one real submarine disabled a huge Japanese tanker with his first shot. Then with the tanker dead in the water, he proceeded to shoot his entire inventory of 18 torpedoes without a miss, but also without a single explosion. Running deep was a given, usually on the order of 10' or so too deep. It seems the depth was calibrated with a warhead filled with water instead of explosive. Cheaper that way you know. But the heavier real warhead overpowered the trim vanes, causing the torpedo to undercorrect. Oops.

The TDC also works considerably better than it did in real life because you have accurate recognition manual info on every ship in the game. Well that will change too, as Real Fleet Boat gets the actual information given to the real boats. No longer will you find every ship in the manual. No longer will the information you are lucky enough to find be reliable. Actually, you're in big trouble, as were the real captains. I'm thinking that torpedoes that miss their targets probably don't sink them.

I wouldn't bring it up, but you mentioned being awed by GWX. The central organizing principle of the U-Boats was the wolfpack. Where are the wolfpacks that were at the center of just about every command decision made in a U-Boat? They are not there. So did Kapt Lehmann and crew throw up their hands in dispair, or continue, ignoring the fault, to make the best U-Boat they could? I submit that that omission in SH3 is more crippling than any or all of the faults in SH4. And look at what they accomplished in spite of that unfixable problem. You are awed.

We've all been over this ground before. We fix what we can and ignore the rest. Then we have a great time in the best two sub simulators on the planet Earth. What else is there to say?

[Bosje]

thanks for that, Admiral

touche on the wolfpacks, I stand corrected

I admit to being a bit of a realism junkie, that's why I want to know the ins and outs of my boat, to be able to perhaps remotely approach from my desk where the real guys actually were. Hence the 'what's what' stuff.

I remember reading about that tanker and the failing torpedoes, if the game modelled that it wouldn't sell very well, lol

I dont mind my torpedoes running deep if that's historic behaviour, just wanted to know the reason behind the stuff I saw happening

Being more enlightened, I'm currently giving it another go. Patrol off the Jap coast coming up, I'll keep you guys posted on how it treats me.

Thanks

[Rockin Robbins]

Most of us fussy folks are realism addicts. But we have to make peace with what we have to play with or have no simulator at all.

When you run into a Trigger Maru convoy of six merchies protected by six escorts (usually those cursed sub chasers) there is doubt as to whether you'll get a shot off on the merchies at all in your first and second approach. I take it for granted they'll spot me and just count it as part of the experience.

I try to use thier strength and persistence against them by hoping they all bunch up looking for me. If I can catch one stopped and listening, I try a snapshot to whittle the numbers down a bit. Then I escape, break contact and end around to the other side. Hopefully the escorts are still over on the other side of the convly looking for me. I have had some epic all-night melees that just wouldn't have happened in RFB.

[Mush Martin]

None of us eat moldy bread for the cause. none of us can claim
anything even remotely resembling reality not even the 1 TC'rs.

I Love the american boats best of all If I have a choice.
I Love Subsimming.
I will drive any sub for any country in any year that is either
Viable or state of the art without remorse, it isnt an endorsement
of ideology thats for sure ive sailed for them all.

the reason..... I love the way it makes my brain jiggle.

for those that love the game it isnt even on screen those are just
placemarkers, we would play this game with an abacus and dice
if that was the only system, and the display then would be the
same display we use now. not our monitors our situational awareness.

the esper feeling

what makes paintball great ... You know

the thing.