Arctic Convoys

[kylania]

Originally Posted by rulez_Cz

How many ships did the best reallife U-boat commander ever actually sink ? The campaign is nice but these insane targets are kinda game breaker ...at least for me.

Otto Kretschmer was the u-boat commander with the highest tonnage total.

40 ships sunk for a total of 208,954 GRT
3 auxiliary warships sunk for a total of 46,440 GRT
1 warship sunk for a total of 1,375 tons
1 ship sunk for a total of 2,136 GRT
5 ships damaged for a total of 37,965 GRT
2 ships a total loss for a total of 15,513 GRT

That was from Oct '39 through Mar '41. So yes, the original campaign requirements are ridiculously high. In game I've doubled this amount and I'm still on Total Germany.

[Commie]

Originally Posted by kylania

, the original campaign requirements are ridiculously high. In game I've doubled this amount and I'm still on Total Germany.

Hate to think that the huge totals required and simple(no?) AI is to make the game more appealing to the action game crowd. Don't see any real reason for it otherwise. In that case they should have gone the Battlestations Midway/Pacific or HAWX route, though Battlestations at least had a good approximation of battles and was fun to blast away with the Yamato.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Commie

Hate to think that the huge totals required and simple(no?) AI is to make the game more appealing to the action game crowd. Don't see any real reason for it otherwise. In that case they should have gone the Battlestations Midway/Pacific or HAWX route, though Battlestations at least had a good approximation of battles and was fun to blast away with the Yamato.

yes, the huge totals is to make the game more appealing to casual gamers. It was the same with the stock campaign in SH3 and SH4. You run across way more ships than you would in real life.

In real life, a typical U-boat commander would be out on patrol for an average of 60-80 days and sink an average of 2 ships. Realistic yes, but the average gamer will find that as interesting as watching paint dry.

Of course, that is not just a Silent Hunter problem, many sims, including IL-2 and Falcon 4 ramp up the action to make it more palatable to casual gamers. That has been well known for a long time.

Even among us, how many (other than Dowly) use HI TC to skip over the boring part and get straight to the action?

That is part of the reason why I always wait until modders get around to producing a more realistic campaign before I start a real one.

[rulez_Cz]

So when du you people think there will be a realistic campaign mod? First RuB hopefully?

[ShadowWolf Kell]

Originally Posted by rulez_Cz

So when du you people think there will be a realistic campaign mod? First RuB hopefully?

Hopefully.

[Nordmann]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

Even among us, how many (other than Dowly) use HI TC to skip over the boring part and get straight to the action

I can't even imagine running the entire game in 1x TC, my electric bill would be huge! Not to mention my eventual loss of (remaining) sanity.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Nordmann

I can't even imagine running the entire game in 1x TC, my electric bill would be huge! Not to mention my eventual loss of (remaining) sanity.

Even though I don't go to that extreme, I still play at a low TC, say max 32x or 64x, stopping every hour or two, just to look around, appreciate the scenery, look for targets.

One of the improvements in the game is to the environment, the sea, weather, landscape. I can easily waste 10 minutes just looking at the storm tossed ocean.

[Sgtmonkeynads]

Sheeet, every single time I bump the T.C. up to ANYTHING above 1050, I get ran into by some ship my watch crew missed steaming on a collision course with us. So far, I have died four or five times, all but once has been because of ramming by some ship or another.

[Commie]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

Of course, that is not just a Silent Hunter problem, many sims, including IL-2 and Falcon 4 ramp up the action to make it more palatable to casual gamers. That has been well known for a long time.

Even among us, how many (other than Dowly) use HI TC to skip over the boring part and get straight to the action?

That is part of the reason why I always wait until modders get around to producing a more realistic campaign before I start a real one.

Yeah it annoyed me in Il-2 as well how every mission you'd bag a half dozen bogies. I read someone from some experten that they would average 3 or 4 sorties just to run into something to shoot. I know the DCG gave a lot of sightseeing missions where you might run into something or might not and transit ones for added realism to mix it up a bit.

And yeah ,I do like TC, would never finish a game otherwise! Though of course I still would prefer a realistic rewarding hunt for a merchant or two with a rare opportunity for more or a determined dogfight where I'd be happy with just one kill and surviving to give examples, rather than the bag 10 planes or 20 ships per flight/voyage we get in sims as stock. For me it's not 100% realism in operating the equipment that is important( I don't have the time or patience as when younger to learn Falcon 4.0 or Lock On inside and out at 100% realism), but the overall FEEL of the campaigns. I'd like to get an idea of the danger and fear and difficulty of success in combat, and not worry about memorising fuel mixes or 100 key commands. This lack of interest in the fanatical detail that I have these days is also due to the crappy manuals we get with games. You can't fly and have a manual open to learn and practice detailed things as you could with the beautiful Falcon 4.0 ring bound edition I have.

[rsslcs]

I sank HMS Rodney and the Queen Elizabeth in Scapa Flow. 2 weeks later they re-appeared.

[Nico71]

This sort of gamey campaign is a show stopper to me. I generally prefer the realistic campaigns of GWX or OM. Makes hunting the rare prey much more exciting and rewarding. I'd rather RTB without even having spotted an enemy ship after a low TC patrol than with some 20 kills. But I figure that this makes me a minority even among us sub skippers, let alone the casual players. In fact, the lack of a decent campaign in SH5 and the great alternatives in SH3 and SH4 is the only issue remaining that keeps me from actually playing SH5 even after so many great mods have been released that solved most of the other issues. That being said, I have to add that I am on disability and therefore have plenty of time to spare. I may think differently about it after coming home from a hard working day.

[gimpy117]

Currently im stuck in the Mediterranean...a sea that seems to only be populated with destroyers cruisers and aircraft. especially when i have to sink 25,000 tons of shipping

[kylania]

Originally Posted by Commie

Hate to think that the huge totals required and simple(no?) AI is to make the game more appealing to the action game crowd. Don't see any real reason for it otherwise. In that case they should have gone the Battlestations Midway/Pacific or HAWX route, though Battlestations at least had a good approximation of battles and was fun to blast away with the Yamato.

This is totally the case with the stock game. But thankfully there's enough sim and advanced features and scripting under the hood that we'll be able to mod it into the sim it should be.

[The General]

Before release The Devs wrote that in the Campaign, once you sink a particular ship, you wouldn't see it again, 'just like real life' they said, while holding up SH5 like it was the benchmark for realism. How many Dido class have you gotta sink?! How many Dido existed in The Big One?!

[kylania]

16? But yeah, ships respawn, but perhaps they weren't supposed to?