Sub physics - experts needed

[Zachstar]

It may be a joke now... But I am more than sure people will really push for it later.

But on top of all the work needed to program realistic guidance. Its ethically wrong. The way that the sim is setting the world makes things like a big risk board. Then someone will simply plop themselves in an Ohio or Delta and lay waste to any country they suddenly do not like. No conventional war or planning. Just press launch and watch the screen.

It is NOT good for gameplay and can even go so far as to land you in trouble with different types of groups. Remember its the impression that counts here. Dosent really matter that it is a simulation in this case.

There is simply no reason to want to simulate the deployment of nuclear weapons in this game. Most of the time they are an "I Win" button and worthless to gameplay...

[Zachstar]

Now that I think about it.. I am quite interested in your idea for the craft configs. I assume you mean a normal config right? No building project files right?

Have you considered the use of LUA or Python for scripting such as missions?

[To be]

Lets look at this nuke issue later. I don't see why not to have them, but, thats for some other time. At this point we are looking at what is basically a physics testbed, and nowhere near a sim yet. So lets get back on topic.

[Zachstar]

Give me a good reason to have nukes.

Please discuss the gameplay impacts.

I do not feel like waiting till its well in development and nukes just kinda seep in resulting in a mess later. Let us discuss it now.

[To be]

No, later. See you then.

Dive! Dive!

[Zachstar]

You see.. that isn't cool.

You want to push off the discussion of nuclear weapons to a different time.. a time that will likely see the sim in major development and more likely to draw off much debate about those weapons giving them a greater chance of them being included.

So either you want these nuclear torpedoes or these ICBMs or both or whatever...

With the nuclear torpedo there isnt a reason to attack because the foe will simply send a nuc torp on a snapshot and sink you with the blast. He may dodge the weapon you fired and go home. Or maybe you also fired one and you are both dead.

Game over...

Or you are sitting in an Ohio where you ought to be having fun doging the other side's desperate hunt for you. However now you want the ability to deploy your Human race ending payload? Against who? A simulated Iran? Maybe Sim North Korea deserves a volly today? A simulated China pissing you off?

What does this got to do with gameplay. Its a "I win" button in the least.

There is never a one shot wonder. If you toss your load everyone is going to toss theirs and thats it. Almost everyone is dead. There is no sneaky way to do it. If you want anything why not just have the screen say "Game over" the moment you press the launch button. It will save alot of coding work.

[To be]

Originally Posted by Zachstar

You see.. that isn't cool.

You want to push off the discussion of nuclear weapons to a different time.. a time that will likely see the sim in major development and more likely to draw off much debate about those weapons giving them a greater chance of them being included.

So either you want these nuclear torpedoes or these ICBMs or both or whatever...

With the nuclear torpedo there isnt a reason to attack because the foe will simply send a nuc torp on a snapshot and sink you with the blast. He may dodge the weapon you fired and go home. Or maybe you also fired one and you are both dead.

Game over...

Or you are sitting in an Ohio where you ought to be having fun doging the other side's desperate hunt for you. However now you want the ability to deploy your Human race ending payload? Against who? A simulated Iran? Maybe Sim North Korea deserves a volly today? A simulated China pissing you off?

What does this got to do with gameplay. Its a "I win" button in the least.

There is never a one shot wonder. If you toss your load everyone is going to toss theirs and thats it. Almost everyone is dead. There is no sneaky way to do it. If you want anything why not just have the screen say "Game over" the moment you press the launch button. It will save alot of coding work.

Can't it wait until there are sensors? or weapons? or a GUI? Don't you think that is a little more important?

[Bubblehead Nuke]

Originally Posted by To be

Can't it wait until there are sensors? or weapons? or a GUI? Don't you think that is a little more important?

Agreed....

Can't this wait till we have some of the more basic things functional and the we can decide gameplay, doctrines, available units and such at a later time.

While I would love to see a discussion on the matter, this is not the time nor place for it. We (or more correctly, Dr. Did) are working on a physics model for submarine movement and operations.

In other words. Please stop hijacking this thread.

Thank you.

[Zachstar]

Just making my views known now. As im sure it will be tried in the future. Atleast I may have planted some realistic seeds here.

Dr. Sid have you come up with any ideas based on the above links on how to provide a semi-realistic dyamic lce layer?

[Reaper51]

While on the subject of ice, how will subs surface through the ice? Will it be like dangerous waters, or will they actually be able to fully surface through ice?

[Dr.Sid]

Nukes:
- Since I want to have adding new platforms or modifying of existing platforms as easy as changing your signature in Outlook, I can't completely disable them.
They will be available, at least as unofficial add-on.
I have seen games with nukes. On of that good old F18 simulators had it. Korea and Iraq. Very popular areas for bombing these days I guess. You even could flatten the city with it. You even had to use them in one mission, but not against city, but ships on open water. It also was not megaton doom devices but small tactical nukes.

I think we really don't need nukes to use them. It's not realistic, since they were not used. On the other hand, the boats carried them. Some still do I guess. The feeling of carrying world's end, not wanting but willing to use it if needed .. I think that is something witch coldwar-modern subsim must try to capture. There also MUST be missions of type 'prevent that Typhoon from firing'. At least the launch must be there.

We don't have to stress the damage. We can allow lunch and let the missiles vanish in the deep space. But really, these 'things' do exists. They are designed to being used. You might not like it. I don't like it. But I don't like 'political correctness' too. Somebody will complain about nukes in sim ? Complain about real nukes first.


Configs:
Everything, including GUI, will be easily configured. No projects, no building. TXT files and nothing more. Adding new playable will be matter of having 3d model and notepad.exe.
There will be some scripting language. Lua is candidate number 2, candidate number 1 is again my own language. That will allow some more control. But I'm not fully decided yet. I did something with Lua but it was some time ago, must check new features and so.
There will be chance to add DLL, but I guess it will be needed only in extreme situations, where speed would be needed. I think (based on my work experience) the scripting language (and the database design in the first place) would suffice for most tasks.

Ice:
I would like to have better ice than DW. But ice really is a pain. It would be great if it could break and stay broken. If you could break through with ice breaker ship and another ship could use that broken area. It would be great to have many small ice floes correctly floating and colliding with surfacing sub (and with each other). But that all is pretty expansive. I can't tell at the moment what will be possible. But I can promise I'll try.
As for sonar conditions under the ice, that seems to be no much complications (while big differences).

[Zachstar]

I think that it is where and how thick ice is that is more important than how it acts.

Things like ice staying broken will cost huge amounts of code work and resources and to be honest.. what is the point? Icebreakers are nice but not very useful in a subsim.

Simple broken ice parts hanging around when you surface are fine. And the occasional polar bear attack.

I like the idea about having the missile vanish in space. The tactical nukes in addons I guess can't be helped much short of capping the max amount of explosive force.

Hunting a simulated SSBN that can actually launch is going to be fun in that case. I look forward to playing that.

I really suggest giving Lua a view again if it has been some time since youve played with it. Having Lua will greatly reduce the documentation you will need to do since LUA is highly documented and there are totorials. Use the simple parts of lua and mission script writters as far as mission editiors ought to find it easy to make them.

[XabbaRus]

As long as where ice is supposed to be it is and where the sea is ice free it is unlike DW where you can be sailing along in supposedly ice free waters and then sink from hitting ice which doesn't show up in any display.

One thing and I think this is to do with physics is how collisions will work. IN DW you bump something you damage until dead, you can be in dock and wave motion makes you bump the dock and you die.

How are you planning to work this in? I know this is in the future but having working tugs would be fun that would back you into position from the wharf or if you have a surface vessel it can ram small boats without inflicting heavy damage in itself.

[Zachstar]

I feel there is going to have to be a sorta effect like you said for the ice except this one I think will occour from the monthy change.

At first I thought that the ice layer needs to be fixed at runtime.. However, you run into the problem of long patrols running over the months which quickly ages the freshness of the layer.

Having a constantly changing layer means a ton of code work to manage the resource hit. Accepting the gameplay cost by having it update every month is worth it.

The good thing is. Multiplayer requires the centeral server to generate the ice layer and send it. That will likely be upwards of 3mb per client. Because you have to limit time to 1x there is no need to have the layer update.

[MarkShot]

Lots of interesting information in the operational section for fleet boats. I'll try to add some notes later. Two things which I recall are:

(1) We've heard the sequence "green board" and "pressure in the boat". The green board as everyone knows is that all external openings are sealed up. "Pressure in the boat" - once sealed, air is bled into the boat and the diving officer makes sure that the pressure remains constant as this done as a final test that the boat is truely tight before he takes her down.

(2) During a dive due to operations and firing of torpedoes, it is possible that pressure can build up in the boat to the point that a sudden drop could cause injury. Upon preparing to surface, the captain and bridge crew seals themselves in the conning tower. The positive pressure in the small space of the conning is not nearly as great as the whole boat. Thus, upon surfacing, without worrying about pressure, the captain and the bridge crew can get to their stations very rapidly.