The Silent Hunter IV (Pacific Campaign) WISH-LIST

[tautug]

Well, lots of good things on this list from others.

Have any of you visited Pearl Harbor??? I just did this year, and have done many trips to Gato class subs around America. But, most importantly, the feeling of cruising the Pacific should be paramount.

The whole "Gilligans Island, Midway, McHales Navy" island tropical feel should surround the sim, especially when in ports.

A bit more activity in a lush tropical port with war briefings etc. would help the "feel of the sim" up front.

As far as game play......A huge difference between German subs and American Sub War was the American ships were like being on a cruise ship vs. German subs. Toilets and Showers in sterling silver, much nicer cumfy bunks, polished instruments and guages like driving your yacht, and officers and crew in full uniform at all times, needs to be there for proper look and feel.

Being able to go to all compartments I think is essential, and more interaction with your officers. Possibly, having meals servced in officers mess (which look like art deco diners), and read war updates/communiques, talk strategy with your officers.

A sleep function, as well as time compression. I.e. set watch schedules, plot course, do tasks, but send captain to cabin to sleep. Set wake time, unless watch officer wakes captain for problem or sighting.

My wishes are more asthetic, and should couple with the gameplay wishes of the others. I can only say from sincerity that asthetics will really help capture what it was like to serve on a sub in Pacific.

Also, I would like to see subs ordered to tactical battles. It's one thing to not be "alone" on your sub in the sim, but another to feel like the only sub in the war. US subs were part of group offensives and defensives, and those "single mission" assignments, should coincide with a dynamic campaign at the dates where they actually occurred.

OK, enough for now.

[Safe-Keeper]

Everyone, I don't know how you react to a humble "n00b" with 5 posts telling you what to do :P , but please stop posting things like "dynamic campaign", "milk cows", "AI submarines", "historical events", etc. Those are, as was mentioned, given: The developers know they're good features. They know you want them. Let's not make this thread (which is going to turn into a 1000+ post monster) any longer than it needs to be, hm? Thanks in advance on behalf of whatever poor sod comes in here in a year and needs to Search 600 posts before he can add his idea.

(If the moderator(s) can be bothered to delete the posts of the ego-centric idiots who post already-proposed ideas without searching this thread, that'd be nice as well).

- - - - - -

OK, did a search for "fire" on each page, but the idea didn't come up. So:

• More on-board "catastrophes" in addition to flooding. Examples include fires (create smoke, cause damage to equipment and/or crewmen, and can spread), gas leaks (reduce available oxygen and eventually hurts the crewmen, especially if fans are damaged), smoke (reduce O2), bulbs that go out and need replacing (the darkness making the crew of the compartment less efficient), and other things. Have 3D models change accordingly (give them gas masks, flash-lights, etc.)
• Spare parts: Your crew can repair things that aren't completely wrecked, in the manner of Silent Hunter III, but every minute you begin of repairs uses up one Spare Part Unit (SPU), and when you're out of SPU, you can't carry out more repairs until you dock with a milk cow or other form of supply vessel for more SPU's, or return to a friendly port. Of course "Unlimited Spare Parts" should either be a separate option, or a part of the "Realistic Damage/Repair time" realism option(s).
• Submarines in World War II did not come with GPS systems. Have your crewmen handle positioning of the sub on the map in a realistic way, giving an error rate to the map if you've been submerged or under cloud cover for prolonged periods of time. When the sun/stars become visible again, your crewmen can use their tools to localize just about exactly where you are. Need I say that if this is to be included, it'll have to be a realism option ?
• Instrumentation that's damaged or destroyed. Anyone who's played the X-Wing series knows how much challenge and depth it adds to the game to suddenly be without scanners or other equipment. Imagine diving without a working depth gauge, trying to estimate how far you can get with a fuel metre that's stuck at 74%, and so on.
• To expand on communication: I'd like dynamic, direct communication with AI ships, akin to how you command your wingmen in flight simulator games.
  
  Example 1: Let's say you're on the surface with another submarine. You receive a radio report on a convoy a few miles away, so you lock onto the submarine next to you, access your watch officer menu, and choose "communication", then "follow this boat". The officer acknowledges and gets out a morse light, signalling the other boat to follow. The other boat acknowledges, and you go hunt Japanese merchants.
  
  Example 2: You receive a radio message from a friendly submarine that's spotted a Japanese task force. You bring up the list of available replies and choose "hold off your attack until we arrive". Your radioman acknowledges and tells the other boat to wait.
  
  Example 3: You're low on supplies and request a supply ship. Just then a Japanese destroyer tears out of the fog and starts shooting at you. Before dying, you barely have time to send a message telling the poor merchant to abort his rendezvous with you as you've come under attack.

A sleep function, as well as time compression. I.e. set watch schedules, plot course, do tasks, but send captain to cabin to sleep. Set wake time, unless watch officer wakes captain for problem or sighting.

I liked much better how you "just were there", ad hoc, not really needing rest, healing etc. And anyways, you can sleep when time compression is at max

[Drebbel]

Originally Posted by Safe-Keeper

Everyone, I don't know how you react to a humble "n00b" with 5 posts telling you what to do :P

We don't react at all. We read his message with great interest because even people from Norway are welcome in these forums And we give him a warm welcome. But we do tell him that white text is a bad idea because people using the subsilver theme can not read that white text on a grey background

See the screenshot below:


Drebbel (with my moderator hat on)

[Safe-Keeper]

Anchored and moored ships that actually have their anchores or mooring ropes as part of the model. Perhaps a few crates lying around, and repairmen working on the ship? Or cranes that actually load/unload cargo or weapons?

In SH3, "docked" meant "ready to go to full speed and sink you at a second's notice". Shouldn't docked ships take a little longer than "regular" ships to get up and running? Something else that woulb be nice is if docked/anchored ships had most of the lights in their cabins shut off, for then to turn them on when they saw you and started manning stations.

[Sniper_1]

More stuff....

-Sampans and Junks and loads of coastal traffic...juicy targets for the 40mm and 20mm guns of your fleet boat.
-Lifegaurd duty, beach recon/photo recon misssions and special forces landings.

Sniper_1

[fargel]

Hmmm let’s see....

-What I truly want to be able to do is to go into all compartments. If you can only have a fixed spot (like SH3 where the camera is fixed) doesn't matter. I just want to hear, and see the engines running. Seems that everyone wants this feature...

-Another one would be sailors on the sub are able to walk around, and not be fixed in the same spot, unless you remove him from crew management.

-I want to have more variety in submarines, and in nationalities. I don't want to only play as the Americans, but also play as part of the Japanese or Germans. I'm afraid that I won't buy a game where you can only play as the Allies. I would want to play a game that focuses on each side as they fought their enemy. It has much more appeal to the game!

-Improved multiplayer is a must. I play 3/4 of my time gaming on multiplayer because I never feel "alone." It’s great to talk to other people while you're playing and not exiting the game to talk to someone. I've never played SH2, but the idea of a multiplayer that has a human player controlling a destroyer trying to sink your sub, would be a good time.

-Improving graphics isn't that important for me. I would like to see changes done to the model's head and body. The clothes seem...chunky. And at times, when I play, the neck and body would disappear and all I see is the head floating with binoculars looking out to the sea. It looks funny, but gets annoying.

[donut]

Tips'n'Tricks
Courtesy of SilentHunter site
Evasion
You can get an idea of how far away an escort is by listening to its pings. Escorts that are less than 4500 yards away have a sharper sounding ping than those that are more than 4500 yards away. The escorts' sonar seems to be able to pick you up only when you're within 3500-4000 yards. Consequently, if you're sneaking away from several escorts and some have sharp pings and some have fuzzy pings, you can ignore the escorts with fuzzy pings, i.e., keep a small profile to only the escorts with sharp pings. The escorts with fuzzy pings are too far away to detect you.

At periscope depth with the periscope down, ships passing overhead will sometimes wreck your periscope. It's better to go down another 20 feet while the ship passes over and then come back to periscope depth than to take a chance on destroying your periscope. This can happen while working your way inside a convoy's escort screen, inside the convoy during the mad scramble after you sink a ship, or if you stay at periscope depth while evading the escorts. The hardest time to avoid this is while maneuvering around a harbor during a photo recon, because you'll have no sonar info on the ships at anchor and won't know when they're overhead if it's been awhile since you've looked around with the periscope.

On a related note, destroyers have a hard time depth charging you if you are directly underneath a ship. I don't know if it's because they're smart enough not to drop DC's close to one of their own because it could be damaged or because they can't make a proper run on their sonar contact with the ship in the way. I hid underneath a heavy cruiser in Truk Harbor all day after a photo recon. When the destroyers gave up on me, I snuck out from underneath the cruiser, sank a juicy target nearby, then hide underneath the cruiser again. In between sinkings, I put the TDC in manual mode to keep track of the location of the cruiser while I was under it. I've used this several times since then.

Gone as deep as you can and can't find a thermal gradient to hide under? You might want to think about returning to periscope depth, so that you can see what the escorts are doing. (I find this especially true when playing at 115% realism.) Listen to the amount of time between when the depth charges splash and when they explode. A long time means the DC's are going deep before exploding, so you might as well be shallow. If you can keep the escorts from spotting your periscope, they might keep thinking you're deep.

You can sometimes mislead escorts by having a torpedo explode away from where you are. Torpedoes explode when they have travelled their maximum distance. The escorts will investigate the explosion, which can buy you time to get away. I found this out accidentally when trying to sink an escort (one of 8) with a small angle-on-the-bow shot. The torpedo missed, travelled its 3500 yards, and exploded. All of the escorts went chasing after it at high speed. I took off in the other direction and escaped. I've only used this with Mark 18's, so I'm not sure if it will work with the Mark 14's, since the escorts may see the wake and know where it was launched from. It does cost you a torpedo, but if you don't have enough torpedoes to get away from the escorts, or if you can't go deep because of damage or shallow waters, this can be a good option.

If you're evading on the surface, keep in mind that you can do a much better job of aiming your deck gun than the computer can, especially if the sea is rough or you're turning. I put the deck gun on "auto" for a second to let the computer find the target for me. (Make sure it picks the target you want, if there's more than one nearby.) Then I switch to manual and select the target to do the shooting myself. For whatever reason, the Japanese destroyers don't usually shoot at you unless the range is less than 2000 yards. (This is not always true. I've been shelled at up to 5000 yards. I think it depends on the quality of the destroyer's crew.) I can usually hit destroyers at a range of at least 4000 yards in moderate seas. If two destroyers are chasing me with one nearly behind the other, I aim for the nearest one, hit him several times to slow him down, and then change course such that the undamaged destroyer has to go around the damaged one. Usually the undamaged destroyer slows down while going around the damaged one, so I can open up the distance and get away.

Beware of the depths on the nautical charts. Several times I've been in locations where the chart shows water deeper than my test depth, only to run aground on my way down. (The dark blue area southwest of Manila comes to mind...only some of it is greater than 200 feet deep.) If you have time, submerge ahead of time in questionable areas to find out if the water is shallow. If you're caught in shallow water and have to evade, pay attention to your speed gauge: It will drop suddenly to 0 a few seconds before the sub runs aground, which can give you a chance to react. Also, you'll run aground sooner if you have a down angle than if you're level. Of course, if you play with the "depth under keel" gauge, you don't have to worry about the charts.

If you've taken pressure hull damage, flooding seems to get worse as you go deeper. So stay as shallow as you can if you're having trouble with flooding.

The test depth of the subs is conservative by about 50%. I've taken an undamaged Balao class sub (test depth of 400 ft.) to 627 feet before being crushed and an undamaged Gato class (test depth of 300 ft.) to about 460 feet. I don't know how much this varies from ship to ship. Note that in order to go below 600 feet, you have to control the dive manually. The depth gauge won't let you set the depth below 600. Don't let the sub get too steep a down angle or else you won't be able to level off before being crushed. To tell how deep you are when below 600 feet, you have to go to the chart screen and put the cursor over the sub.

Evading subs: If an enemy sub launches a torpedo at you, go to flank speed and turn toward the torpedo so that your course is parallel to the torpedo track. Turning toward allows you to bring your forward tubes to bear on the enemy sub, and takes you closer to it for a counterattack.
Patrolling
For guesstimating distances and intercept courses, I drew a set of concentric circles (You can also download it as a JPG if your system doesn't like postscript...I'll try to make this file smaller. It's 52K now.) with markings every 15 degrees in my favorite drawing program, printed it out and photocopied it onto a transparency. You can lay this over the chart screen to estimate where a convoy will be in a few hours and to plot an intercept course. It works best if you make the largest concentric circle equal to the length of the scale on the waypoint tool.

O'Kane said (in Wahoo, I think) that putting the target at 90 or 270 degrees relative will guarantee interception if interception is possible. I use this only rarely, but it comes in handy when I get a long range radar contact without any course information from the game. This is called the normal approach course. (Normal here refers to the angle between your course and the target's bearing being 90 degrees.)

The information box that pops up on the map screen when you put your mouse over a convoy gives different information based upon how zoomed in you are. If you are at the strategic level (25, 50, and 100 miles on the scale), the dialog box gives the convoy's course. If you are on the tactical level (scale less than 25 miles), the dialog box gives the convoy's bearing. (Note that a convoy has to be sighted for it to show up on the tactical level.) The course is the compass direction the convoy is moving in; the bearing is the angle between the front of your sub and a line drawn from the center of your sub to the convoy.

As you are patrolling, watch the contact reports to find out the most heavily travelled routes. Try to place yourself where two or more routes come together. You should also pay attention to whether the convoys are merchants or capital ships. Some routes seem to be more heavily used by one or the other. If you're running low on torpedoes, you might not want to be on a route which is mostly used by capital ships, as they require more torpedoes to sink and tend to have more escorts.

If the seas are moderate or heavy, your sub will lose speed on the surface and submerged down to about 100 feet. Below 100 feet, the state of the sea no longer affects your speed. There's a small difference in speed between radar depth and periscope depth, and larger difference between periscope depth and 100 feet. The extra speed can have a major impact in the distance you travel between recharges while patrolling, and how close you can approach a ship's track submerged.
Torpedoes, Radar, and TDC
Dud torpedoes can be a real problem before the end of 1943. You can lower the number of duds by having the torpedoes strike obliquely rather than at right angles. I try to have torpedoes strike at an angle of 30-50 degrees. After 1943, duds no longer seem to be a problem.

I leave at least 5 seconds between firings because of prematures: The second torpedo will sometimes detonate in the wake of the first if they are launched with not much time between them. Setting torpedoes too shallow (less than 3 feet) seems to increase the number of premature detonations, too.

The estimate of the distance to a ship is an overestimate by quite a bit until the ship gets within a couple of thousand yards. Use the radar to get accurate distances.

The radar can also help you estimate a ship's speed. 100 yards a minute equals 3 knots. Be sure to account for your own movement...I'm working on a scenario to help show how to use the radar for TDC inputs.

The SD radar tells you how far away a plane is but not what direction. If a plane is low enough, it will appear on the SJ. Watch for small blips away from the convoy.

Use the offset dial on the TDC for ships that are turning at the time you fire. The TDC assumes the target will be moving straight ahead on the course given at the time of firing. If the target is turning, it won't make as much progress in that direction and using a non-zero offset can account for that.

A rule of thumb is that each degree of offset on the TDC gives you a spread of 17 yards for each 1000 yards to the target, assuming they will impact at 90 degrees. For example, if I launch two torpedos, one with a 0 degree offset and one with a 2 degree offset at a target 1000 yards away, the spread between them will be 34 yards. At 2000 yards, the spread will be 68 yards. There's a table at Jim Atkins's site with the exact values, but this rule of thumb will get you to within 10 yards of the table values for offsets of 5 degrees or less at a distance of 3000 yards.
(Note to the geometrically minded: This rule of thumb works because the limit of sin(x)/x [x in radians] goes to 1 for small x. The difference between the angle in radians and the sine of the angle is less than half a percent at 10 degrees, and less than half of a thousandth of a percent at 1 degree. Most of the error in my rule of thumb comes from approximating 1 degree as 0.017 radians. But 17 yards per 1000 yards per degree is easier to figure in my head than 17.5 yards and is good enough for all but long range shots. )
All this SHIII faults corrected & no Starforce to crash my DVD CD/RW----Just hope SHIV developers,can get it programed as well as SSI

[JU_88]

See my sig (doesnt apply to a pacific campaign though)

[DAB]

Originally Posted by JU_88

See my sig (doesnt apply to a pacific campaign though)

See post 2 http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopi...=46279&start=0

Then see Wikipedia article on British Pacific Fleet - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Pacific_Fleet

The fleet included 17 aircraft carriers (with 300 aircraft), four battleships, 10 cruisers, 40 destroyers, 18 sloops, 13 frigates, 29 submarines, 35 minesweepers, other kinds of fighting ships, and many support vessels.

Also see books like One of our Submarines by Edward Young for details of the British Submarine Activities in the Pacific

http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituari...888559,00.html

[JU_88]

Happy to support your cause Brother!

Here is my full wish list.


AIRCRAFT

Planes in SH3 were poor, they looked horrible, they were stupid and innefective in their attacks, what they lacked in abilty they made up for in numbers making the game very unrealisic.

1) Planes should not fly around on fire.

2) Planes should not collide with each other.

3) heavy aircraft like B-24s and Sunderlands should not be able to manouver like a fighter

4) Where were the torpeedo bombers?

5) Where are the rockets?

6) Why dont they straffe more often?

I hope they get some flight sim boys from the IL2 team in to do it properly for the next SH installment.


Other AI submarines

We all know about wolfpacks, but what about enemy Submarines?

Ok so they didnt play a MAJOR ASW role, but there were many sub on sub encounters, of these 24 resulted in a submarines being sunk, (that doent even count the pacific war)

Also i think Sub against sub encounters could make for some very interesting and challenging duels - providing the Ai was half decent.

Playing as the only submarine in the world (SH3) is a really frustrating and a immersion killer.

Torpeedo boats

This is a no brainer. Either have PT boats launch torpeedos or dont bother puting them in the game. I hope the devs will play PT boats knights of the sea - to see the real threat a PT boat posed to surfaced submarine.


Communiation and radio traffic

Once again, make us feel like there is a war going on out there, news bullitens, SOS signals and proper contact reports. (not just unexplained ships appearing on the nav map)
The-send-contact-report-to-get-luftwaffe-attacks was a nice feature in SH3, so build up on it as it has real potential for good game play.


Graphics

The damage model to player sub has plenty of room for visual improvement, a dented bent up conning tower, chunks of hull and deck missing, the deck guns and rigging should get blown right off!
The sub should split in two if torpedoed or badly shelled amid ships.
the nose of the submarine should get really smashed up if involved in a collision or ramming.

Friendly and enermy ports (like scapa flow) should be even more painstakingly moddelled than they already are, coasts could use more detail too, some more cliffs, rocks, houses and roads would be nice.

The world looks too samey and bland in SH3, try to create a unique appearence for certain locations, example:

The carribean should have clear blue waters, palm trees, beach huts sharks and dolphins.

The artic should have ice shelves, snow, penguins and killer whales.

Crew animation and activity was very basic, I sugest more facial expressions and body language, have them, tightening bolts, panicking, smoke cigarettes, wave to passing fiendly shipping, show signs of exaustion, fear and exitement.

Neutral ships should not be blacked out at night!!

Thats all for now.....

[JU_88]

It will never happen, but these are 45 units that should have, but never made it to an SH3 add on



VESSELS

Royal navy
T – Class submarine
S – Class submarine
O - Class submarine
Bangor class mine sweeper
Isle Class MS trawler
Town Class Destroyer
ASW Trawler
Kent class Heavy cruiser
Merchentile coversion class carrier escort
Colossus Class Aircraft carrier


Kreigsmarine
Uboat Type XIV Milk cow
Uboat Type VIID minelayer (playble)
(+All playable Uboats able to be Ai controlled)

Dutch
O 21 class submarine
Jan van Amstel mine sweeper
Admiralen class destroyer

Norway
Sleipner class Destroyer

Soviet
SC (Scuka) class submarine
Type 37 Torpeedo boat
Project 7 class destroyer
Sevastopol class Battleship

USN
Higgins 78 Motor Torpeedo boat
Vosper 72 Motor Torpeedo boat
SC4-97 submarine chaser
Yms class mine sweeper
Astabula class oiler
Bolao class submarine
Gato class submarine
Gearing class Destroyer
Baltimore Class heavy Cruiser
Iowa class Battleship
Essex class Aircraft Carrier


AIRCRAFT

Coastal Command (RAF)
Armstronq whitworth whitley
Hadley page halifax
Bristol beaufighter
Lockheed Hudson
De havilland mosquito
Supermarine Seafire

USAF/USN
B25 michell
Lockheed Hudson
Grumen Wildcat

Lufftwaffe
Junkers 88 (fighter variant)
FockWulffe 190
Dornier Do-24
Arado Ar-196

Soviet
Ilyushin Il-10
Ilyshin Il-4t

[Sniper_1]

If SH4 has more interior compartments then how about the ability to operate the switchboards in the manouvering room i.e. the dials/levers/switches are not just eye candy but can actually be manipulated. Same for the ballast and trimming controls in the control room etc..

Sniper_1.

[Marko]

i want a galley modded and have to prepare meals

[oche]

I want to see again in the dynamic campaign Photo Recon and Life guard duty missions just like in SH1!

[DAB]

A debate on SHIII reminded me of this.

Depth soundings for shallow water near commercial and (friendly) military bases. Don't have to be comprehensive, don't have to be every few inches (every couple of miles will make things interesting), their could even by mistakes on the chart like in real life - but I would be keen to see them.