Working on a new submarine sim: Sub Commander - advice needed!

[Tango589]

Hi Geoff,

What's the maximum range of the passive sonar? I've tried to hunt ships completely submerged using it, but I find you have to be quite close (about as close as you have to be for ships to show up on the tactical screen) before the sonar detects them. Maybe it's just me not understanding the operational ranges, so any info is useful.

cheers.

[vimza]

Looks a bit like dwarf fortress.

Sails out and dives. Crash into the sea floor. Surfaces again. Use the sonar. The sonar is on fire. Put out sonar fire. Read radio message. Look at map. Notice a fire in the torpedo room, send crew. All of torpedo room and crew on fire.

Hard as dwarf fortress also

[Tango589]

Originally Posted by vimza

Looks a bit like dwarf fortress.

Sails out and dives. Crash into the sea floor. Surfaces again. Use the sonar. The sonar is on fire. Put out sonar fire. Read radio message. Look at map. Notice a fire in the torpedo room, send crew. All of torpedo room and crew on fire.

Hard as dwarf fortress also

Yeah, but that's why we love it! Where else could you deal with simultaneous hull breach, flooding and a fire as well as an overheating reactor and just when you thought it was getting a bit dull the fire extinguisher system in the generator room malfunctions and threatens to suffocate your crew? Nothing like a relaxing bit of gameplay to while away the afternoon!

[TheGeoff]

Originally Posted by Tango589

Hi Geoff,

What's the maximum range of the passive sonar? I've tried to hunt ships completely submerged using it, but I find you have to be quite close (about as close as you have to be for ships to show up on the tactical screen) before the sonar detects them. Maybe it's just me not understanding the operational ranges, so any info is useful.

cheers.

Information about the range of modern military sonar is very hard to find, as I'm sure you can imagine! And from what I have found, the range of sonar is hugely variable anyway, depending on sea conditions, the material on the bottom of the ocean etc. At the moment the passive sonar on your submarine will start detecting faint signals at around 16 nautical miles (each square on the map is 13.3 nautical miles). So if you're moving fairly slowly, it should be possible to identify ships slightly outside visual range. I'll probably tweak this to extend the maximum range a bit next version, maybe to 20 nautical miles. From what I've read, the detection range of modern sonar can vary from about 5NM to more than 100NM depending on the skill of the operator and the weather conditions - so until I get around to coding a more realistic sonar model, I think around 20NM in all conditions is a reasonable value.

Looks a bit like dwarf fortress.

Sails out and dives. Crash into the sea floor. Surfaces again. Use the sonar. The sonar is on fire. Put out sonar fire. Read radio message. Look at map. Notice a fire in the torpedo room, send crew. All of torpedo room and crew on fire.

Hard as dwarf fortress also

Yeah, but that's why we love it! Where else could you deal with simultaneous hull breach, flooding and a fire as well as an overheating reactor and just when you thought it was getting a bit dull the fire extinguisher system in the generator room malfunctions and threatens to suffocate your crew? Nothing like a relaxing bit of gameplay to while away the afternoon!

Someone should really talk to the guys at the shipyard who keep building these terrible accident-prone submarines

[Tango589]

Hi Geoff,

another bug to be squashed:

Out making a nuisance of myself round Rostock, I allowed myself to be spotted by a small warship. He knocked some holes in me, started a couple of small fires which were easy to deal with (O2 level at 18% ) and caused some flooding. I sat the sub on the sea bed and turned on all required bilge pumps and went to work with the welding. Suddenly, my guys start turning blue and falling over. WTF?? It seems the bilge pumps are so efficient they suck all the air out of the boat as well!! Surely this will leave a large mass of bubbles on the surface for any enterprising warship to spot?

[TheGeoff]

Hmm, interesting. Thanks for pointing it out, I'll take a look!

[Leo_93]

It's been a while since I posted but I just have to commend you on the fantastic game your making. I especially like the random failures as it makes commanding a nuke far more interesting. Also I noticed a little bug in the game that will display 2 radio messages overlapping each other as if you were to write two sentences on the same line of paper. However small bugs aside I believe that this game has huge potential as even in this early state of development it is quite playable and is already one of my favorite games. Forgive the length of this post but I just wanted to throw in my two cents and let you know how good of a job your doing, keep up the good work.

[TheGeoff]

Thank you! Comments like that are very encouraging. I'm glad you're enjoying it - and thanks for pointing out that radio message bug.

[pip12345]

The game got featured on Rock Paper Shotgun!

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014...%2C+Shotgun%29

[Sirnicknack]

Greetings had to register to say thanks for the great game. The community Here started a thread on your game and we are loving it, If you get a chance feel free to come say hi and read through the fun times people are having with it. Keep up the great work!

[TheGeoff]

Amazing! A big thank you to Tim Stone for the Rock Paper Shotgun write up. I never expected the game to be this popular, it's great to see so much interest all of a sudden.

Thanks Sirnicknack, I'll definitely be signing up to the Facepunch forum to join in on the discussion!

[Sirnicknack]

Have you thought about creating a wiki for all the ship systems? as the game grows and more systems get added it will make it easier for people to learn the exact mechanics of each system for instance the way bilge pumps don't work after a certain depth etc.

Your adding some really well thought out systems with complicated mechanics but they are kind of transparent unless the player is paying close attention to each system. Having the details of each system documented would make modding support easier if you decide to add it and help the learning curve for new starters if the game grows more complex. Players could also add a lot of content around tutorials or strategies.

[Aktungbby]

Sirnicknack!

[PunkiBas]

Just wanted to drop by and say that I found out about this game through that RPS article and I'm really loving it!
Had to die a lot of times, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it...

Many Thanks!

[Robsoie]

I found out about the game from a Bay12 board thread and after giving it a quick run, i find it fantastic.
Of course my first contact ended in a horrible failure but i really loved it.

Congratulations for that amazing game and thank you for sharing it with the world !