The future of Submarine simulations

[Julhelm]

Writing in the 1970's Admiral Gorshkov identified one of the primary causes for the failure of the U-Boat campaign as the inability of the germans to support their submarines with surface units and aircraft, thus giving the allies free reign to hunt down the subs with specialized hunter-killer groups. Interdicting these would have been a much better use of the pocket battleships than trying to use them for merchant raiding. But the ultimate reason for the failure of the U-Boat campaign must surely be Hitler's hybris in declaring war on the Soviet Union and the United States in the same year.

On the subject of what a sim should be like, there is no one size fits all. I personally would not be interested in a hardcore DCS-style sim. I can say categorically that the one sim I had and still have the most fun with is the old Red Storm Rising, with Fast Attack and the original Silent Hunter as runners up.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

Writing in the 1970's Admiral Gorshkov identified one of the primary causes for the failure of the U-Boat campaign as the inability of the germans to support their submarines with surface units and aircraft, thus giving the allies free reign to hunt down the subs with specialized hunter-killer groups. Interdicting these would have been a much better use of the pocket battleships than trying to use them for merchant raiding. But the ultimate reason for the failure of the U-Boat campaign must surely be Hitler's hybris in declaring war on the Soviet Union and the United States in the same year.

Huge factor in why using U-boats as an offensive weapon in the war was grossly inappropriate! And the Germans could not produce enough surface units to control the Atlantic, no matter what, even if they sacrificed every piece of land weaponry ever built.

Their only path to victory was to focus on one adversary at a time, keeping all others at arms length until each one was defeated in turn. That would have required discipline that Hitler did not possess. And even that would not have guaranteed a win.

The best way for Germany to have won would have been not to fight the war at all, to pay off the British and French, then make them dependent nations to superior industrial and management skill.

And Germany should have accepted the Jews as major contributors to their efforts in WWI, proven patriotic citizens who would sacrifice for the good of Germany. The Jews had indispensible talent to contribute and Germany squandered all of it. They thoroughly deserved to lose and defeat looks much more like victory today than victory would have at this point.

But they were led by a delusional madman, worshiping himself, sacrificing his own nation on the altar of insanity.

[Julhelm]

All of the german heavy surface units constructed after the Deutschland class were bad designs that were entirely inappropriate to operations in the North Atlantic, mainly because the steam machinery limited their range.

The invasion of Norway only accelerated the defeat of the kriegsmarine by robbing them of several surface units that could not be replaced.

[BigBANGtheory]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

On the subject of what a sim should be like, there is no one size fits all. I personally would not be interested in a hardcore DCS-style sim. I can say categorically that the one sim I had and still have the most fun with is the old Red Storm Rising, with Fast Attack and the original Silent Hunter as runners up.

DCS has a lot to teach other sim, granted the hardcore simulation and study sim style is not for everyone which is also why the developers of DCS have the Flaming Cliffs series allowed to operate side by side.

What do I mean by that...
- Free downloadable simulation with very basic units for players to try out and get a feel for things.
- Free and regular updates to the core simulation with a mixture of improvements, bug fixes and new major releases every few years.
- Players pay for naval units of their choosing with the developer focusing on the most popular e.g. U-boat type7 & 21 and more modern units like a Vanguard class nuclear sub, perhaps patrol boats too anything playable basically but non-playable is all free in the core sim
- All about attention to detail and immersion, knobs and switches doing things, radio chatter, VR
- Having a lite version which includes many playable units but at a lower level of simulation e.g. not being able to walk around a sub interior, but you get many subs

The point is to have a model that continues to fund new development on the base simulation for all by selling new simulation modules to players that want them. From my observation what doesn't work well in sims is where players make a one-off payment for a sim and then require (no fault of their own) updates, fixes and improvements over many years and sims need this.

DCS and Falcon4 are the only sims that seem to have nailed that model and for different reasons. I'd just forget Ubisoft at this point this way of games development is incompatible with their business model... they wont share their code and they wont do rolling updates.

[Ketoujin]

Salve All,

Yes, I would very much agree that some kind of other developer with a business model that included regular rolling updates and a passion for functional and historical accuracy and depth and also breadth in terms of the number of campaigns/subs/surface vessels which might be conned.

Best,

Gunnar