The next level

[Spin Doctor]

Originally Posted by GakunGak

What, no nukes and no cold-war???!!!
I feel hunting typhoons under ice pack for 80 days...

You already have "Sub Command" by Sonalyis for that. It was very good, but a bit too scripted for my taste. The the campaign made me lose interest somewhat. Still, it was and is a great modern subwarfare sim. Should be easy to find and cheap to run. For those who are into doing everythng imaginable on a nuke boat, it's probably the best sim going.

On another topic, I'm afraid Silent Hunter will never have the type of player involvement that TDK1044 mentioned because UBI isn't going to allow the time necessary to develop those interactive modules. It would definitely help the game and there are probably some easy ways to get the same feel of interaction without major rewrites, but I haven't thought about it. Actually having this kind of interaction will possibly increase favor among casual gamers since you get the "wow, that's so cool!" factor.

There is no imagination required to do graphical updates which is the standard MO for sequels today. For this reason, I'm passing totally on SH4. I don't need SH3 in a new dress, especially with even less crew interaction. Sailing around racking up a half million tons of cargo in a few patrols is what bored me about SH3. Thank God for GWX. I like the idea of being glad to even get 20 or 30K of shipping and still escaping with my life. Or even getting no shipping and escaping with my life.

However, I believe the common aspect of classic games and sims is that you have to give a sh*t about your people. Everything else that happens has to revolve about your caring. Red baron 3D, X Com, EAW, Mig Alley (to an extent) to name a few, all have this in common. When you turn the crew into animated puppets and faceless cardboard cutouts, most people rapidly loose interest after the "gee whiz" graphics wears off. If you take these same cardboard cutouts and give them personality ala X Com, then you have a world beater. Anyone who played X- com knows that 80% of the game was building your guys up and literally being distraught if one of the "heavy' guys died.

I distinctly remember a buddy of mine playing one evening assultng a large spaceship. He had a few of his best guys stationed at a hole he had blown in the top, with nuke launchers and I casually mentioned that I've never seen an X com agent auto launch one of those nuke footballs. Well, just about that time an alien ambled past the hole and all four of his agents auto launched into that hole, killing all involved. He was playing a dead is dead game and I tell you, if you've never seen a 6'5" 300 lbs man cry, take it from me, it isn't pretty. He didn't actually cry, but it was as close as I want to get to that. He did, in fact put both fists through the keyboard sending parts flying in hundreds of directions...

I dirgress...

Anyhow, fortunately for UBI, there is a dedicated and I mean very dedicated mod community that keeps their sims alive and thriving well past the time when the relevancy of the original developers ideas has faded. They have the ability to take the most important aspects of subwarfare and make it believeable. UBI really needs to be paying these guys. Not hiring them. Just paying them.

I tip my hat to these guys.

My 2 cents plus tax.