[TEC] Adding nations

[Bubblehead1980]

Originally Posted by KaleunMarco

BBH, i have a question or two relating to the topic and not your issue.

firstly, if you create a United States "side" which is different from the current US "side" how will you prevent the United States assets from fighting with the US assets when they meet anywhere in the Pacific?

secondly prior to firstly, how will the SH4-sub driver will able to distinguish between true friendly forces (US) and no-so-friendly-friendly forces (United States)?

thirdly after secondly, how will the SH4-sub driver be able to identify itself to the no-so-friendly-friendly forces in order to call off the attack? with the thought that blue-on-blue attacks continued only as long as the opposing forces did not properly identify each other, the SH4-sub driver may never be able to shake-off-lose his no-so-friendly-friendly adversary unless there is method of self-identification. keep in mind that the game is meant to pit US vs IJF and not US vs US and US vs IJF.

1: The hostile "United States" assets will be strategically placed to simulate friendly fire incidents so they will not or are highly unlikely to encounter the "American " units, aside from the player. While placed at certain time and locations, they will be randomly generated with a fairly low chance of spawning since these incidents were pretty rare overall, chances will be low. One example would be early in the war when Japanese submarines routinely operated in Midway and Hawaiian waters, much more likely to get bombed by a patrol plane in case of mistaken identity than in later war when they had basically stopped and aircrews were not as trigger happy.

Following real life doctrine, I could in pre mission orders, provide cordinates of "safety lanes" approaching certain bases where unlikely to run into the issue, but even then it happened. See USS Dorado, lost to a friendly air attack when it was in a safety lane off Panama.


2:That is kind of the point of adding these units, the sub captain will see an Allied type DD, but knowing the potential for "Friendly fire" is there, will be best to avoid, as subs generally did in real life. Will not really know, until they fire. Subs still have the advantage you will most likely detect them before they detect you and can always dive. Far as Aircraft, well the sim will still recognize say a PBY assigned to the "United States" as an enemy plane and provide the "aircraft spotted!" alert and dialog box if player does not have SD radar. SD contact, probably best to dive and avoid. This will simulate the danger subs were pretty much always in and keep captains on their toes. Again, it'll be rare, but the one time, could be the end.



3: Since the game treats things without much gray area, there will be no way to identify as a friendly, so best option will be to avoid if possible, if find self being hunted, run silent, run deep. IF unable to shake loose, well it happened in reality, see the USS Seawolf story, sunk by US Destroyer Escorts via depth charges.

For the sea trials...which includes a "depth charge indoctrination" (which was part of training for US subs) , I will include a mod "training depth charges" for use during sea trials (if player desires) that will provide an extremely low risk of damage or destruction. Mod can be deactivated once out of training .

While the sim is not meant to put US v US, it overlooked a lot of key elements of the sim, one of them being the risk, that US subs faced in particular of being mistakenly being attacked by Allies. My original intent of creating this was for a more realistic set of sea trials, but friendly vessels in the sim will not depth charge player sub. Then I thought about friendly fire incidents and the element of danger, the challenge could present. SH 4 out of the box grows stale quickly, but the modders have kept it fresh and to some degree, each patrol experience has a high level of unpredictability, that is the point of adding this to my forthcoming TMO upgrade.

Perfect? No, because things must be done within the limitations of the sim itself, but will add an element of unpredictability to the sim.