Practice this

[DelphiUniverse]

Much better to implement that kind of behavior on dud torpedos, instead of messing up healthy ones.

I have an idea, how about if we do not mess up the uboat any further, and instead, have the AI become better so it becomes harder to play that way, instead of making the game harder than necessary from inside the uboat.

[Zanarkin]

Originally Posted by DelphiUniverse

Much better to implement that kind of behavior on dud torpedos, instead of messing up healthy ones.

I have an idea, how about if we do not mess up the uboat any further, and instead, have the AI become better so it becomes harder to play that way, instead of making the game harder than necessary from inside the uboat.

I'd much rather see new things in the game than just bashing the game with more miniscule realism. Like that spy I just planted last night off the coast of England. How about having him actually on my ship during the voyage with some dialog (even if only text). As it stands I dropped off a invisible man. That's the kind of realism I want.

Another suggestion on the topic is prize ships. I get plenty of reports on my radio about captured ships but I can't do it. Even if it were a radio button you press to demand surrender or face sinking with a % based result. If they agree the ship is auto piloted to German port and you escort her until a escort ship shows up to follow her home. That's the kind or realism I want.

I like realism but I like fun too.

[DelphiUniverse]

Do you mean, having him in the dining area for a cup of coffee, or just a dialog in the conning tower?

[gap]

Originally Posted by Zanarkin

Another suggestion on the topic is prize ships. I get plenty of reports on my radio about captured ships but I can't do it. Even if it were a radio button you press to demand surrender or face sinking with a % based result. If they agree the ship is auto piloted to German port and you escort her until a escort ship shows up to follow her home.

That's a nice idea, most probably not feasible but still nice!

[Zanarkin]

Originally Posted by DelphiUniverse

Do you mean, having him in the dining area for a cup of coffee, or just a dialog in the conning tower?

Just physically being in the ship somewhere would be nice. His dialog could be his mission or the war in general. He could even speak to you in English to 'show you how well he speaks the enemy's language' and then a brit modder could record his own voice as the guy. I'm not a modder so have no clue of the capabilities of the game but just a model and skin of a spy standing in my ship until that mission is completed would be the realism I crave. It's a long drive to the the drop off point and apparently he was hiding in a torpedo tube the whole way there.

[Zanarkin]

Originally Posted by gap

That's a nice idea, most probably not feasible but still nice!

I think my favorite part would be protecting it with my U boat for 36 hours until a escort shows up to take over the escorting of her home.

Another realism thing that occurred to me was getting orders to report to a nearby grid to look for survivors of a fellow u boat mayday. Finding a raft in the middle of the ocean would be incredibly challenging. Find them, pick them up, return them home.

I wish I had the brain to put my ideas into actual mods.

[gap]

Originally Posted by Zanarkin

Another realism thing that occurred to me was getting orders to report to a nearby grid to look for survivors of a fellow u boat mayday. Finding a raft in the middle of the ocean would be incredibly challenging. Find them, pick them up, return them home.

Well, rescuing survivors was not part of common U-boat duties, though indeed it happened that survivors were occasionally taken aboard german submarines that were in their proximity. If memory serves me well the previous title had a feature for rescuing pilots of downed allied aircraft.

As for your other idea, it would only apply to the very beginning of the war: soon after the start of the conflict U-boat captains received the strict order to attack enemy shipping at first sight, in order to avoid unneeded risks.

[Off the Rails]

Yeah, it was the old "look at target with binoculars and click" gameplay mechanic.

[Dogfish40]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

Great lead in to another idea I have...it deals with torpedo drift.

The idea is simple: the game makes the torpedo travel on a perfect course to the target. Whatever course the torpedo was set to follow after it's initial turn is where it heads. Now in game this is a perfect straight line. I HIGHLY doubt this was the case in real life. The torpedo had to drift some - maybe 0.25 degree to the left then maybe 0.38 degree to the right then...well you get the idea. I plan on modelling something like this with another patch. Thoughts

Absolutely! If the sea is just a bit rough, you can't set the torpedo to run too deep for the usual reasons. This being the case, every once in a while the fish might actually break the surface where it has the most chance of gaining error as it dives back into the next wave. You know what I mean, the fish is riding next to an unstable surface, it has to take a hit now and again from wave effects. I would imagine that this accounted for a lot of misses from torpedoes that were aimed dead on.
My only comment would be that it should be pretty random, not something you would want to have happen too much. It would give you one more thing to consider before taking that safe long shot.
Perhaps you could make the chances of this happening go up a percentage with distance.
D40

[DelphiUniverse]

Originally Posted by Dogfish40

Absolutely! If the sea is just a bit rough, you can't set the torpedo to run too deep for the usual reasons. This being the case, every once in a while the fish might actually break the surface where it has the most chance of gaining error as it dives back into the next wave. You know what I mean, the fish is riding next to an unstable surface, it has to take a hit now and again from wave effects. I would imagine that this accounted for a lot of misses from torpedoes that were aimed dead on.
My only comment would be that it should be pretty random, not something you would want to have happen too much. It would give you one more thing to consider before taking that safe long shot.
Perhaps you could make the chances of this happening go up a percentage with distance.
D40

Yes but there is some thing you need to keep in mind. A random error value will not improve your torpedo skills, not even a fraction of a percent will it improve your torpedo firing skills. It will not only not do that but its theoretically impossible to gain firing skills from a random error value. Your skills will be exactly the same before and after the patch. The only thing this patch will give us, is "Ah, I missed, thats not too boring, I like that". But there is absolutely nothing to gain from it, your skills will be the same as before BECAUSE you cannot improve your skills on random values, so your skill is already peaked (the best you can get) before the patch is applied. In fact, the patch will make you a worse torpedoman, believe it or not. When you hit a ship in a place you didnt intend to, you have no idea if that was because of drifting or if it was because of your bad math preparations, you will mess up things and become a worse torpedoman and have no idea which part needs improvement.

So based on this idea, if you want to measure your torpedo firing skills, you would have to measure it without this future patch, because random values will mess up the test results. And even if the torpedo is going somewhat straight, that still doesn't matter, there are plenty of people who still need to practice this, they hit either on the bow or stern or a mix of these, some people actually miss. The whole skill is in the process of preparation, not the line that the torpedo follows. So you need to get things straight and get your ideas straight.

If a similar idea was implemented by a professional software company and not by 3rd party developers, they would have taken a different step, they would have made some sort of an artificial "corridor", perhaps with a colored circle around to show you how some sort of visual picture of how the seas is in front of you, and you need to use that in calculating the path, to create a more challenging game. Sort of an opposite way of doing it.

But to implement random error values is just a waste of time, its like implementing the lottery into a predictable system, the lottery will only create an uncertainty factor which will always be different and unpredictable every time, you cannot train yourself further by implementing that, no firing skill gain.

You could however find a system with constants, predictable constants to have the game more challenging. Perhaps a very tiny array of different constants for the rough seas, I don't know exactly how this would be implemented and its not well thought out, and I don't actually support it either, I'm against the whole thing. but then if you do that, if you have 10 constants in an array, each constant is a unique random error value, this list must be generated every time the game starts. But Its important that the constants are used in a pre-defined order so that he have a chance to familiarize himself with the 10 error values. Even though only 10 error values are far from being near of simulating rough seas, you could have 10 different levels of rough seas, its better than nothing at all. But then again, im against the whole thing. I think I said that.

And even if you did what I suggested, it would not actually make you a better torpedo man even with that, it would only add another annoying layer to the whole scheme. I think the game is already time consuming based on all the things that needs to be done, so for the third time, im against all of that. hehe.

Test your firing skills without random values, then afterwards you can apply the random mod to it and make bets of which way it will turn, but that doesn't gain you anything at all. Your skills is only measured by the basic parts and constants that make up a system. The rest (all random) adds uncertainty and is always a gamble. In fact, if you hit a ship, you might just have missed the ship if the patch was not applied at all, it may have been all luck. And IF it was luck, IF you ought to have missed the ship without the patch, then you would get success based on bad torpedo firing skills. The point is that the entire preparation that you do before firing a torpedo would be rendered useless, as you can no longer measure which parts was bad and which was good. It depends on how huge a number is used for error values. If it is a significant error value, it gets harder to judge where you need to improve yourself. This is why I would go for an array of constants based on how rough the seas are, so that you can watch the seas from the conning tower and then instinctively know which error constant will be used. To be honest, I dont think this error value was that much present, if not present at all during the war. The only place I know for sure it was present was when airplanes dropped torpedo on top of a wave, the wave peak top could set the torpedo off course.

Anyway, I hope it will be part of the general patcher, so that people can choose if to use it.