radio call...

[Bulkhead]

Hi.
After a refuel in guam i headed northwest, and after a while i get a radiocall saying that all nearby patrolcraft should assist the task force headed the same direction.
When i get this message i am 7 hours away, and when i get there its nothing unusual happening. Just a few subchasers.....2 or 3 of them.

What am i suppost to assist?

[Bulkhead]

Sorry, i forgot to mention. Its the invation of Iwo Jima....

[-Pv-]

Just go to the area and look for targets. It's not really a specific objective you are after, but rather the game has spawed extra interesting traffic in the area for a while.
-Pv-

[Bulkhead]

I did that, i sunk a subchaser and just waited for days... an suddenly i got the radio call that says american troops won the battle..

This is one of those things I hope that they remedy in the new patch. I would really like to see the major engagements appear on the map as a star just like the other mission locals, then we can pretty accurately guage the likelihood of arrival in time and if the fleets actually sail to and from the battle sites rather than just spawn on site, we could have an opportunity to really have an impact on the battles

[Fincuan]

Remember that enemy units do not spawn within 20 kilometers from the player. That means you have to be at least the same 20 kilometers away from the spawn point of any invasion fleet, or there will not be one.

[SteamWake]

Unfortunatly alot of these radio reports are just 'color text'.

Steamwake, that is my major issue with the messages, IMHO either make the messages meaningful and actionable or remove them.

[SteamWake]

Well they are tagged to specific dates.

Im sure the dev's wanted you to feel as if you were involved in the pacific theater.

If they had enought time to place those epic struggles in the game they would have.

[DeepSix]

Originally Posted by simonb1612

Steamwake, that is my major issue with the messages, IMHO either make the messages meaningful and actionable or remove them.

I strongly sympathize, but one thing new players (those who have Silent Hunter IV but not Silent Hunter III) may not know is that with SH3 we bombarded the devs with comments like "where's the rest of the war; I feel so alone out there." So I suspect the radio traffic was included as a way of increasing the ambience and giving the career some context.

It sounds like a cheap solution and it's far from perfect, but flip over to the mods forum and read a while about the challenges of making things random while at the same time keeping them historical. For instance, it's not easy to spawn the random encounters required for a dynamic career and still make Midway happen between 6/4 and 6/7 1942 complete with Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu, and Soryu. I'd rather encounter empty ocean than a Battle of Midway being fought between a T3 and a Large Modern Composite.

Although it won't help with this particular kind of radio message, the "Fewer Radio Contacts" mod is great for cutting down on the wild goose chases while still retaining enough ambience that you don't feel all alone in the ocean.

[Torplexed]

Yeah, I remember when the game was still in development people stated that it would be a neat feature if their sinking of major Japanese warships somehow would change the outcome of battles or hasten the end of the war. In real life it would, but considering all the variables involved, there really is no way for the game centered solely around submarine warfare to realistically calculate how the loss of a ship here or there is going to influence the outcome of the war. To keep things as simple as possible the war as fought has to be the background framework on which the game is hung.

[Bulkhead]

Originally Posted by Fincuan

Remember that enemy units do not spawn within 20 kilometers from the player. That means you have to be at least the same 20 kilometers away from the spawn point of any invasion fleet, or there will not be one.

I didnt spawn, i arrived there from guam.

[raifg]

I received a lot of radio messages, and every time I change my course I found nothing unusual in the indicated area.
So, now I prefer to ignore this kind of message ! Mabye this will change with the new patch but I will not bet 1 euro....

[dean_acheson]

what does tater have to say, he's kinda the expert here, ain't he?

[Digital_Trucker]

Originally Posted by Bulkhead

I didnt spawn, i arrived there from guam.

He didn't say you spawned, he said that the enemy units won't spawn near you. You got there too fast.