Closed beta starting soon!

[mapuc]

I really like this Beta test period. It means that the product hopefully will be a great game when it's fully released

I like their strait forward report about the game and it's failure.

Markus

[Skoaler]

I sent my request.. Very interesting.. Bout time for an American ship sub sim period .. At least we won our war

[Halcyon]

Originally Posted by Skoaler

Bout time for an American ship sub sim period .. At least we won our war

Why even write that last bit?

[Artur Salwarowski]

Once again, I would like to thank everybody for the very insightful feedback. I have read through all of it and the way I see it, apart from fixes and corrections, the biggest task ahead of us is to improve U-boat AI. I am 100% on board with your observations, and I am happy to say that we've got all the necessary tools and procedures implemented - we just need to readjust them to achieve the effect you are after.

As for the AI, the biggest problem that we have had with it was when it was the other way round - whenever we turned U-boat aggression down too much, the game would appear pretty boring. But, as Onkel Neal has remarked, this is a tough thing to get 100% right, and that's also the main reason I have reached out for your help.

The problem here is that I have been playing this game for 2 years now, and it might be that my understanding of pace and intensity might have become blurred. After reading your remarks it occurred to me that I focused way too much on the sense of urgency and constant pressure that I wanted to achieve. It is now apparent that I overdid this, and I am very thankful that you have made this very clear.

In all honesty, I have actually nerfed the U-boats A LOT since the demo. As it appears, however, they need more of that and that is exactly what they are going to get

Therefore, the roadmap towards the release seems very clear: while the programming team continue working on the tutorial, save game, and bugs/fixes, I will focus on cranking up certain mechanisms that will make U-boats more reactive and more likely to take the defensive stance. After in-house testing over the weekend, we will update the project so that you can evaluate the changes and let us know whether things have changed for the better.

Please remember, that we are making this game primarily for you - subsim and naval warfare afficionados. This is not supposed to be a frantic, action-oriented game, but if you say it appears as such, then we will do our best to step down the intensity

Sounds like a plan?

[Rickster1]

Im know im late to the party but just recovering from covid. I guess what i was looking for was to simulate the reading that ive done on ww2 escorting convoys where it goes as follows ( and its similar but opposite to the game Uboat). The convoy starts out on a tact. map from base with the ability to cut the the escort at any time and to start with its just boring escorting but helped along by time compression then as we are heading to the uboat hunting areas tension picks up, next stage some probing and hopefully battling off the first few attacks then as the time approaches the attacks start, the uboat commanders were a mixed bunch some were good and pressed there attacks some were not and easily beaten off or destroyed and the game needs to reflect that. I think to get some replayability its not about 4 hours oh full on battle its more about some attacks and then a lull whilst the uboats try to get into position. For me its exactly the opposite of uboat except some long lulls on activity. Im not for switch game on choose battle hi intensive action game over. Its only my view offcourse

[mapuc]

An answer to post #34.

Mentioned before-Have different skill settings. going from Novis to expert.

As for the AI, the biggest problem that we have had with it was when it was the other way round - whenever we turned U-boat aggression down too much, the game would appear pretty boring.

Do not change this setting, it could be used in the Novis setting.

When it comes to the Expert setting, then program the game in such a way that the submarine is driven by AI's own Otto Kretschmer.

Idea
Novis-Amateur-Expert

There should be more skill levels between amateur and expert.

Nothing but a crazy idea-which may not be possible since the game is almost ready.

Markus

[Furia]

Originally Posted by Artur Salwarowski

Please remember, that we are making this game primarily for you - subsim and naval warfare afficionados. This is not supposed to be a frantic, action-oriented game, but if you say it appears as such, then we will do our best to step down the intensity

Sounds like a plan?

This is music to my ears and be sure I will support your project as much as I can.

I am really interested in escorts (Destroyers, Destroyers Escorts, frigates and Corvettes) and besides having read all that I could about it I have played countless hours with Destroyer Command and Dangerous Waters.

For a DD player the main characteristic of this subject is the "hunt" and with that I mean the detection and location of the enemy sub. You spend hours trying to figure out where the sub may come from, checking if you have deployed your other escorts properly to cover the convoy flanks.

You spend a lot of time listening to the passive hydrophones since this has more detection range and capabilities to detect the sub on initial contact than the narrow cone of the ASDIC.
Different speed, different water conditions, different capability and range to detect the enemy but this also works for the submarine.
You monitor your radar, listen to your lookouts, if enabled you get some "HUFF/DUFF bearings. Then you manage your convoy Zigzag plan to try to ruin any well planned submarine approach. Depending on the time of the day and visibility you spread your escorts or you order them to keep tight station with the convoy.

A successful convoy defense is not about sinking subs but preventing them from sinking anything.

If I manage to detect a sub in the radar at 10000 yards and I force him to submerge and evade, this sub its out of the combat. He need to wait for my DD to leave the area and then he needs to surface , by then the convoy is too far away for him.

As Neal mentioned, the sub must behave in accordance to "normal expectations" as realistic as possible but of course without being an “easy to predict bot"
The attractive part of the hunt is to try to outsmart the sub captain, anticipate his movements.

In Destroyer Command I have spent long hours searching for the submarines, sometimes maneuvering the convoy in a way that the sub could not engage them.
The most attractive game play was always against human sub captains that knew well our limitations and capacities and maneuver accordingly to destroy the convoy, but we the escort also knew they capabilities. That was the best part of the game.

Like Neal mentioned, the “Save Game" function is probably a great tool to allow us to have a more realistic and attractive scenario.
In Destroyer Command enemy subs went deep when the destroyer was on top, that made killing them extremely difficult, almost an art.
In the actual game the AI sub is staying most of the time shallow and all my kills have been on shallow subs.
Sub captains have a huge bag of tricks to confuse the DD and prevent an effective DC attack.

A scenario like the actual one in the game where you have have up to 5 subs in a one hour battle is too much for my taste. One sub or max 2 should be enough.
A smart sub captain maneuvers his sub undetected into a firing position where he could fire all his bow torpedoes and the first hint the DD captain would have that a sub is around would be the first torpedo explosion respect for those captains. But not on my watch

Destroyer has an AWESOME potential!!!! Just give us the historical immersion of fighting subs commanded by captains that are not far more aggressive or smarter than Otto Krestchmer himself.

Thanks for bringing life to the Destroyer escort simulation !!

[mapuc]

^ After having read the comment above an idea popped up in my head.

You have problem with the subs AI-Here's my idea

Why not remove AI and let a human control the submarine.

Here me thinking at the beginning of the game a player can choose sub or destroyer. (then the skill levels are not needed)

Thereby the skill of the sub will be based on the players skill.

Markus

[Halcyon]

Originally Posted by Artur Salwarowski

Once again, I would like to thank everybody for the very insightful feedback. I have read through all of it and the way I see it, apart from fixes and corrections, the biggest task ahead of us is to improve U-boat AI. I am 100% on board with your observations, and I am happy to say that we've got all the necessary tools and procedures implemented - we just need to readjust them to achieve the effect you are after.

As for the AI, the biggest problem that we have had with it was when it was the other way round - whenever we turned U-boat aggression down too much, the game would appear pretty boring. But, as Onkel Neal has remarked, this is a tough thing to get 100% right, and that's also the main reason I have reached out for your help.

The problem here is that I have been playing this game for 2 years now, and it might be that my understanding of pace and intensity might have become blurred. After reading your remarks it occurred to me that I focused way too much on the sense of urgency and constant pressure that I wanted to achieve. It is now apparent that I overdid this, and I am very thankful that you have made this very clear.

In all honesty, I have actually nerfed the U-boats A LOT since the demo. As it appears, however, they need more of that and that is exactly what they are going to get

Therefore, the roadmap towards the release seems very clear: while the programming team continue working on the tutorial, save game, and bugs/fixes, I will focus on cranking up certain mechanisms that will make U-boats more reactive and more likely to take the defensive stance. After in-house testing over the weekend, we will update the project so that you can evaluate the changes and let us know whether things have changed for the better.

Please remember, that we are making this game primarily for you - subsim and naval warfare afficionados. This is not supposed to be a frantic, action-oriented game, but if you say it appears as such, then we will do our best to step down the intensity

Sounds like a plan?

Sounds great! Developers who focus on player feedback are always welcome, instead of pushing their own vision and you're either on board or not.

It's very refreshing to see.

Originally Posted by Furia

This is music to my ears and be sure I will support your project as much as I can.

I am really interested in escorts (Destroyers, Destroyers Escorts, frigates and Corvettes) and besides having read all that I could about it I have played countless hours with Destroyer Command and Dangerous Waters.

For a DD player the main characteristic of this subject is the "hunt" and with that I mean the detection and location of the enemy sub. You spend hours trying to figure out where the sub may come from, checking if you have deployed your other escorts properly to cover the convoy flanks.

You spend a lot of time listening to the passive hydrophones since this has more detection range and capabilities to detect the sub on initial contact than the narrow cone of the ASDIC.
Different speed, different water conditions, different capability and range to detect the enemy but this also works for the submarine.
You monitor your radar, listen to your lookouts, if enabled you get some "HUFF/DUFF bearings. Then you manage your convoy Zigzag plan to try to ruin any well planned submarine approach. Depending on the time of the day and visibility you spread your escorts or you order them to keep tight station with the convoy.

A successful convoy defense is not about sinking subs but preventing them from sinking anything.

If I manage to detect a sub in the radar at 10000 yards and I force him to submerge and evade, this sub its out of the combat. He need to wait for my DD to leave the area and then he needs to surface , by then the convoy is too far away for him.

As Neal mentioned, the sub must behave in accordance to "normal expectations" as realistic as possible but of course without being an “easy to predict bot"
The attractive part of the hunt is to try to outsmart the sub captain, anticipate his movements.

In Destroyer Command I have spent long hours searching for the submarines, sometimes maneuvering the convoy in a way that the sub could not engage them.
The most attractive game play was always against human sub captains that knew well our limitations and capacities and maneuver accordingly to destroy the convoy, but we the escort also knew they capabilities. That was the best part of the game.

Like Neal mentioned, the “Save Game" function is probably a great tool to allow us to have a more realistic and attractive scenario.
In Destroyer Command enemy subs went deep when the destroyer was on top, that made killing them extremely difficult, almost an art.
In the actual game the AI sub is staying most of the time shallow and all my kills have been on shallow subs.
Sub captains have a huge bag of tricks to confuse the DD and prevent an effective DC attack.

A scenario like the actual one in the game where you have have up to 5 subs in a one hour battle is too much for my taste. One sub or max 2 should be enough.
A smart sub captain maneuvers his sub undetected into a firing position where he could fire all his bow torpedoes and the first hint the DD captain would have that a sub is around would be the first torpedo explosion respect for those captains. But not on my watch

Destroyer has an AWESOME potential!!!! Just give us the historical immersion of fighting subs commanded by captains that are not far more aggressive or smarter than Otto Krestchmer himself.

Thanks for bringing life to the Destroyer escort simulation !!

Some really good feedback in here.

I agree with the points on making the sim more tactical in nature, instead of just immediately placing subs in melee range of the convoy, which is never more than 4,000-5,000 yards away.

4,000 yards is roughly 2 miles, and I can't imagine a destroyer that wouldn't notice a surfaced contact approaching the convoy until 2 miles. It seems a bit forced to immediately put pressure on the player to have the u-boat so close to the merchants right off the bat, instead of detecting the sub 10-20 miles away and intercepting it in more open waters before it can get closer to the convoy.

I also agree about the volume of subs in the easiest of the scenarios. 4 subs is a wolfpack, and the player shouldn't be fighting a wolfpack on the easiest difficulty. 1 or 2 at the most as suggested would be more in line with the easiest difficulty setting.

Originally Posted by mapuc

^ After having read the comment above an idea popped up in my head.

You have problem with the subs AI-Here's my idea

Why not remove AI and let a human control the submarine.

Here me thinking at the beginning of the game a player can choose sub or destroyer. (then the skill levels are not needed)

Thereby the skill of the sub will be based on the players skill.

Markus

This would effectively turn the game into a multiplayer game, and I believe the focus is fine tuning its single player capabilities right now. They would have to design a completely new interface for the sub and its controls and mechanics, which is a huge project.
Multiplayer introduces another level of coding to sync variables and states between both clients, and it's not something that is easily implemented this close to an Early Access release.

[mapuc]

^ You're are right
Never thought how much work there is to create a human controlled sub.

It is my dream though that we once again in the near future can play
human Vs Human-Sub Vs Destroyer.

Markus

[mebz]

I remember destroyer command, it was a really good game, ahead of its time.

This game looks like something I have wanted to play for a long time, a good companion to Silent Hunter. I think its important to have a good variety of missions types, from plain old escort duty to guarding a harbor and resuce ops. Consider me a day 1 buyer!

[kris73]

Is the early access still spet 28? I thought there was a teaser video coming at SubSim.

[Onkel Neal]

Won't be long

[Furia]

After my initial report, I have had the chance to play a little bit more and I have found some issues to report.

The ship phyisics still need to be reviewed.
For instance if you go at 15 knots and select all stop you slow down to 0 knots in 20 seconds. A +2000 tons ship would take long minutes to slow down to 0 knots. Same goes to acceleration althogh not so dramatically as to slow down.

On today's testing it was night with heavy fog, I could barely see the merchants unless almost colliding with them, however the Black Cat Aircraft had no problem to visually sighting periscopes and attacking them with depth charges. Seems the Ai aircraft has the same issues with atmospheric limitations like the AI subs and are not affected by visibility or illumination.

Regarding illumination the Light projectors behaviours was strange. I could turn them On but not off. (The light switched off as seen through the optics from the gun control station however it was fully on in the external view)

The analogic clock on the bridge shows the hours in a strange way. It was 16:57 as seen in the digital clock and as well as comented by the crew in relation to the time a new cocntact was located however the "hour hand" was centered in 4 where it should have moved to be almost at 5. The moment it was 17:00 the "hour hand" jumped from 4 to 5.

And the next comments are not "bugs" but some feedback.
It would be great to have information about actual number of DC remaining on board. At this moment seems unlimited but I cannot confirm that.
regarding Depth Charges, I would love to have the capability of deciding the total number of charges to be droped in one pass and then be able to select if I want only the stern rail ones or the lateral throwers, and even select maybe one side of those throwers, for instance port throwers only.

Another nice to have would be the convoy information about base course, speed and if implemented , the zig-zag plan. Now when it is foggy I need some time to figure out the convoy direction.

This is all so far from my side.

[Rickster1]

I know its only a beta but it makes my pc run a bit hot and its a decent rig