Wolfpack vs Uboat -- Differences ? ? Pro's/Cons

[AP514]

OK

I have to ask.. What are the differences between the 2 ?

A list would be nice... Any one want to give it a shot ?

[Sub187]

They are 2 completely different games

Wolfpack is a multiplayer-only sim where a group of players work together to hunt for enemy vessels. "Co-op Silent Hunter" is the best description for it.

UBOAT is a crew management game wrapped in a submarine theme. "The Sims submerged" would be the best description for it.

[Justaguyinnc]

Yep 2 completely different games.. BUY BOTH



Wolfpack - Instant action Mission base.. very immersive solo or as designed, Multiplayer Crewed.. all manual..


UBOAT - think Silent Hunter series with a RPG twist .. you really have to keep up with the crew, including shooting the cook now and then.. although most solutions can be AI.. you can manual attack..kinda too.. When you first start it looks a lot like the map and time compression everyone is use to from the Silent Hunter Series.. The Planes are already there with a full UBOAT interior.. radios stations and transmissions from HQ etc.. a very good looking FULL Blown game.. mission can be anything from ship sinking to spy drop off to find lost ships and help other subs damaged to diving for wreckage goodies.. but lots of bugs to start with in their Early Access (more features = more bugs).. I am sure that will change.. NO Multiplayer..


I have to say by content UBOAT has the top spot.. but for an immersive feel on a 1-2 hr hunt.. Wolfpack wins there.

yep...need both...

[gutted]

Originally Posted by Sub187

....to hunt for enemy vessels.

I wish.

The game is currently just a convoy attack simulator, of which you are already near enough to find them. There is no "hunting" for targets involved.

[Thecoroner]

Both games are great but not finished yet. Completly different styles. Unfortunatly Uboat is almost unplayable atm. But really promising. I'd say the best mod ever would be a way to switch to Wolfpack when you are close enough to hear a contact in Uboat then back to your Uboat campaign with updated stat^^ It will depends on the games but if we could get enough info from saved games and edit them maybe. Or a campaign in Wolfpack but doesn't really seem to fit in the game. I don't know. We will see but I hope they will both be finished and polished :-) I love the crew management in Uboat. Having to sleep, repair, recharge, ... is really cool. It adds to realism imo. Uboat is more a campaign solo game while Wolfpack is pure immersion. In wolfpack you are on a mission to attack a convoy. It's really the time when in a campaign you dive to make a sweep and you heard them. It's time to attack on full realism mode in coop (or even lonewolf style)

[Thecoroner]

If wolfpack get a good mission editor, accessible through editable files
+ stats files at the end of the mission.
and
if Uboat makes it possible to edit saved games :

You could pass from one to the other.

That would make that the perfect game Imo.
No places feels like Wolfpack
but full traversal of the Atlantic makes no sense in wolfpack.

By the way : Wolfpack > Uboat (since a wolfpack is many uboat ;-))

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by gutted

I wish.

The game is currently just a convoy attack simulator, of which you are already near enough to find them. There is no "hunting" for targets involved.

Can you give us some ideas on how we can make it a "hunting" sim?

[gutted]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Can you give us some ideas on how we can make it a "hunting" sim?

Co-oping a single uboat (with captain controlled time compression) through a silent hunter style career is the game i really want.

But that's not what wolfpack is, and i'm ok with that. It's just not something that will (or even hasn't so far) kept my attention. It's become rather repetitive already. Cool for an occasional session, but not something we'd do nightly.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by gutted

Co-oping a single uboat (with captain controlled time compression) through a silent hunter style career is the game i really want.

But that's not what wolfpack is, and i'm ok with that. It's just not something that will (or even hasn't so far) kept my attention. It's become rather repetitive already. Cool for an occasional session, but not something we'd do nightly.

Thanks, gutted, for the feedback. Agreed it can be repetitive, although we have a lot more content to come and a lot of other features that will deepen the gameplay. The current version is about 20% of the total game. We have stuff planned that will address the variety of missions, some of it I cannot discuss at this time. I will say that when the Enigma, HF/DF and kurzsignale parts are finished, you will have more hunting options.

We had a lot of discussions about time compression and warping. Initially I was in favor of it, because my time to play games is pretty limited. We examined the mechanics of a Silent Hunter style career and essentially, it is the same thing over and over:

1. the player starts the mission
2. clicks on max time compression
3. watches a sub icon move across a computer screen map of the world
4. waits 2~20 minutes for the game to spawn a convoy ("intercept" a convoy)
5. alerts the player and stops time compression
6. player now makes the observations necessary for the approach.

Spawn a convoy or to "intercept" a convoy is essentially the same thing. Whether the game has convoys in a database and they are generated when the player's coordinates meet the required criterion for "contact" and convoy generation. Or if the game randomly spawns a convoy at predetermined intervals, the player really has no way of seeing this and the perception is the same: our sub is sailing at 2048x times actual speed and we came across a convoy.

When a player watches a sub at max TC zipping across a map of the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean, it's all imaginary and simply feeds the perception that the sub is "in the world". When a player is "hunting" he is simply watching a screensaver until the game spawns a convoy.

If there are radio messages informing the player of possible contacts or map updates that show intel where convoys might be, that does add a lot to the perception that the player is hunting. But it still boils down to the same thing--max TC until the game stops you and says "hey, you just found a convoy". Player decides to investigate a harbor? Spawned enemies, contact. Player sails across the Atlantic to the Horn of Africa? Spawned enemies, contact. Player sails to the US East Coast? Spawned enemies, contact. That's not bad, I'm not saying that. But it is what the games amount to.

With a co-op game, we simply cannot expect 5 players to spend a lot of time looking (waiting until the game spawns a convoy). We sure don't want 5 people to spend an hour looking for a convoy and never finding it. And we made the decision to avoid time compression because that's too game-y for the atmosphere we wanted for Wolfpack. Real time tactics build a lot of tension, real human emotion, and that makes Wolfpack different from Silent Hunter where a guy can zip around a convoy in 2 minutes and replay the same scenario until he gets the results he wants (that's fun too, but a different fun). In Wolfpack, no computer message alerts you "there's a convoy, get ready!" You and your crew find and examine the convoy with your own eyes.

So the current version of Wolfpack cuts out the hunting aspect that involves a lot of time waiting. Because as any hunter knows, there is a lot more time involved in hunting than in finding.

[fastfed]

Originally Posted by gutted

Co-oping a single uboat (with captain controlled time compression) through a silent hunter style career is the game i really want.

But that's not what wolfpack is, and i'm ok with that. It's just not something that will (or even hasn't so far) kept my attention. It's become rather repetitive already. Cool for an occasional session, but not something we'd do nightly.

very true, this game (wolfpack) what we see now is about all we will ever get. BUT! I do think its a good foundation for another company to take this work and make a silent hunter type of sim, with the wolfpack feel to it.

Time compression/missions/campaign with co-op is the dream. Wolfpack is nothing more than a quick linear action and that's it.

one day the dream will come true, but it might be many more years from now.

Wolfpack IMO is great, but IMO its a 10-20 dollar game at best

[Elphaba]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Can you give us some ideas on how we can make it a "hunting" sim?

It already is a hunting sim; the only thing to possibly change is that the grid were supposed to go to, we never need to get there... we could have to hunt in and around that grid, but that would probably mean about an hour plus, of real time “hunting” before a convoy was detected.

Most people wouldn’t be up for that, but having it as a separate mission as an. option would be great.

The only other hunting I can think of is multiple different contacts at range, and some might be ships we can’t attack, this we have to then turn around and go to find the other contacts and see if we can find some to attack.

That would be very cool, but again increases game time.

I definitely however veto any time compression in the game; it would destroy what the game is.

[THE_MASK]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Can you give us some ideas on how we can make it a "hunting" sim?

Have a slider on the lobby settings page that gives you approx min to max distance that a convoy would spawn from the sub . The slider would adjust the approx random distance that a convoy would spawn . Have it visible on the join page so players can decide if they have the time to play that particular scenario . It might be too technically difficult to implement at this stage of game development or dumb idea , i dunno . Maybe just have 3 different spawn distances to choose from .
I know its a lot of work but if there was a mission editor and a steam workshop it would solve the problem .

[Ragnarokkr]

After getting some shuteye and coming back to see whats up in the thread:
AI can only be so smart and is always slaved to its directives, ergo. it cannot really act unpredictably, like a human opponent would.
I'm also reminded to quote "It is hard to make a AI that makes mistakes."


I think it would be a improvement to the game to aim the game towards a PvP element such as a Wolfpack vs. Escorts, with all but the merchants themselves being directly human controlled.
Don't get me wrong though, I think the game is fine as it stands. I only think it benefits from having both sides controlled by humans to add in the unpredictability the game needs.
Regarding the destroyers/corvettes etc; it could be done as with the uboats. One or two areas for the players, a captain, helmsman, sonarman. A captain for commands and weapons control, helmsman for engine and rudder control, sonarman for hydrophones and ASDIC.

While I say weapons control, I don't mean direct control though. I think the gun mounts and depth charges should be AI controlled but with indirect fire commands/directives given by the captain. (as in, captain directs fire by binoculars but has no direct control on aiming)

Additionally the escorts could give orders to the merchants such as evasive manouver directions, speed changes, assume column/line/box formation etc.
Though this then should be somehow balanced that the convoy cannot outright outrun the sub players to win the scenario, though this can be rebalanced after playtesting and feedback. (if the idea ever makes the cut)

This could also be expanded to the aircraft being controllable, armed with depth charges and machineguns. Also with radios for the pilot to communicate with, searchlights, flares to mark sub positions etc.

I'm not too familiar with how transparent the atlantic ocean water is, as in, could you see a sub's silhouette that is in periscope depth from say 30-150m height, or how visible the periscope would be.
But while the aircraft would not neccesarily be a remarkable threat factor (speaking in game terms) to balance out the planes not being too OP, they would add in significant pressure on the subs crew, knowing that there are planes around, and staying in periscope depth is a risk in itself.
I also remember somewhere hearing accounts that the noise from the aircraft could be heard vibrating in the sub hull, though this could be with the cold war turboprop bears...


"Aircraft in the early days of Air ASW primarily relied upon visual lookouts to detect submarines. These patrolling aircraft consisted mainly of Consolidated PBY-5 Catalina seaplanes, smaller aircraft, and various airships (or blimps). Their weapon systems were limited to guns, depth bombs, and rockets."
Technically if the devs were to add a warship "convoy" (read: carrier/battleship with escort) then it could be also sufficiently logical to have fighters/dive bombers instead of Catalinas.


I see land with a harbor. A convoy with heavy escort is barely out of the bay when the first torpedo sinks the vanguard corvette, the small airstrip near the harbor scrambles three fighter-bombers and convoy increases to flank with the escorts frantically banging the seafloor with their ASDICs while reinforcements are inbound from the port.

The wolfpack lurks about getting into position and fires off salvoes while being chased by briton warships and american planes.


EDIT; Thoughts?

[Thecoroner]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Can you give us some ideas on how we can make it a "hunting" sim?

Here's my "brainstorming" ideas for a mission based campaign in wolfpack.
An interactive map like that one :

https://www.abmc.gov/sites/default/f...iles/BOTA_Web/

where you could click on a large number of available historical site to get a mission. It wouldn't be possible to do all the mission for a time period. you would have to chose your path through the war. You could chose the length of the campaign based on the number of missions to pass to get to the next time period and technology should evolved timebased. With recorded stat and journal + maybe historical info. In my opinion that would be a very good mission based campaign without needing to compress time.

you could add hunting missions where maybe you will have to give up coz you don't find any ship at all.

Idea 2 (that keeps the online crew spirit of the game):

Same kind of map but online and shared through players. That would required different crew to pass missions and when enough missions are crossed on the global map the time based would advance with a new map and missions for everyone (every week, month,... I don't know). Continue like that to the end of war (or end it with black may on Iron Men servers :-D)

Thanks for the game by the way, it's great. Good luck and keep up the good work.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Thecoroner

Here's my "brainstorming" ideas for a mission based campaign in wolfpack.
An interactive map like that one :

https://www.abmc.gov/sites/default/f...iles/BOTA_Web/

where you could click on a large number of available historical site to get a mission. It wouldn't be possible to do all the mission for a time period. you would have to chose your path through the war. You could chose the length of the campaign based on the number of missions to pass to get to the next time period and technology should evolved timebased. With recorded stat and journal + maybe historical info. In my opinion that would be a very good mission based campaign without needing to compress time.

you could add hunting missions where maybe you will have to give up coz you don't find any ship at all.

Idea 2 (that keeps the online crew spirit of the game):

Same kind of map but online and shared through players. That would required different crew to pass missions and when enough missions are crossed on the global map the time based would advance with a new map and missions for everyone (every week, month,... I don't know). Continue like that to the end of war (or end it with black may on Iron Men servers :-D)

Thanks for the game by the way, it's great. Good luck and keep up the good work.

Wow. that's awesome, I'm going to have to spend a few hours there.