Simple Integration - Writing Patrol Logs / Reading Books

[YukonJack_AK]

I ABSOLUTELY love the idea of having an edit-able log in-game! Especially if it worked in conjunction with the existing log:

June 2, 1941
0945hrs: Smoke Sighted at 289
<then add your own text about what, when, etc... ie - 0950hrs: Went to general quarters and readied all bow tubes. Turned to intercept on course 310 etc etc>

I do that right now via a dual screen setup on my system running SH3 on one and Notepad on the other... but DAMN it'd be nice just to do it from the Captains Bunk and it'd save me alot of extra typing.

The other idea of a 'catalog' of your sinkings/sightings/contacts via points on a map would be great - before a mission, when you get your patrol orders, you are viewing an image of the map that has multi-colored dots on it corresponding to sinkings, contacts, etc... don't think that'd be hard to do... hell I do it by hand using a very large version of the SH3 map thats been laminated and a dry-erase marker...

...just some ideas

[FIREWALL]

I like the idea about " Interogateing " Just give'em a good beating and throw'em over the side.

[Sailor Steve]

My thoughts:

Patrol Logs: No automatic entries at all, except maybe start and end of patrol. You sink a ship, you put in what the recognition manual said; i.e. "British tanker, 8000 tons class". At the end of the patrol, as with SH3 Commander, you find out it was the SS Herefordshire, 8398 tons.

Just as long as I can write the actual data myself, I'll be happy.

Books: Maybe historical manuals, i.e. an actual almanac, in which you can look up sunrise and set, and moonrise and set times for any day of the war. These already exist and should be easy to import.

[Frederf]

All reports should be written by you, no more instant course/speed for convoys you spot at 16 km away. And the notepad should be somehow linked to the map, but I disgress.
Maybe they could include a checker/chess game to play with the crew. I need the practice .

The first thing is something I was gunna suggest myself. I think it's silly you spot 3 ships on the horizon in SH4, send a contact report, and then read your own contact report to figure the enemy's course and speed. When you send a report it should pop up a little form where you fill in number of ships, course, speed, uncertainty, position, etc and then send it off. Game might even reward you for highly accurate reports.

The second thing, chess, checkers, cards, etc with your crew is something I hadn't thought of but is a darn good idea.

The other idea of a 'catalog' of your sinkings/sightings/contacts via points on a map would be great

As long as you could make custom map marker marks (why is it always the X?) and they would persist between patrols.... there's really no reason for the devs to work to make a dedicated scatterplot feature. If you give players the ability and the tools then we can do so much for ourselves even with simple tools.

Patrol Logs: No automatic entries at all

As cool as full manual entries is, I think having automatic entries lowers the workload for the player that is not a diehard journaler. You definately want all entries editable or deletable not to piss off the dedicated subsim enthusiast by forcing auto stuff down his throat but if there was a "Auto journal entries" checkbox and/or the auto entries were able to be edited or deleted then the diehard player shouldn't be upset.

The best part about having books built into the game is that UBI doesn't have to make but 2-3 little "starter books." There will come a wealth of book files from the community as long as the feature is there. Low work for the devs for a lot of flexible payoff for the playerbase.