The Silent Hunter IV (Pacific Campaign) SUGGESTIONS-LIST

US boats used a split-image rangefinder that gave you a very good estimation just by focusing the image and then looking at the dial. Bearing is indicated on the stadimeter, so the captain at the periscope said "Bearing" and his XO looked at the dial, wrote down the EXACT bearing and said "MarK"; then the captain said "Range" and the XO wrote that down and said "Mark", and they had it darned close right off the bat.

As to the sound, doesn't the SHIII sound man already say "Merchant, bearing xxx, long range, moving fast, moving away"? Could a WWII hydrophone man actually say "Small merchant, making seven knots"? Somehow I don't think so.

[Safe-Keeper]

Auto-Depart and Auto-Dock features once we've sailed in and out of harbour 1000 times and are starting to grow a little tired of the ships, planes, cheering crowds, and whatnot:p. Akin to the option to start off airborne in flight simulators, rather than on the runway.

Auto-Depart: You start at standard speed, moving towards your assigned area, 25km from the port.

Auto-Dock: When you're close enough to a base to hit "escape" and choose to dock there, a message automatically appears:

Dock at [port]?

[ ] Don't show this again.

[Yes] [No]

Auto-Dock and Auto-Depart are both toggled on/off at will in the options menu.

If possible, no ghost ships reporting contacts. If I see a contact on the map, it should be because an actual entity of whatever shape and form visually or otherwise spotted it, pinpointed it by radio intercept, or otherwise verified its whereabouts. I'm not saying this is possible as there migth not be enough ships and aircraft and they might not cross the shipping lanes, and it's quite possible that if someone spots the contact they'll also destroy it, but if it can be implemented without too much trouble, I'd be all for it.

More info in the UI: Screenshot. Look at that gray bar with the Stealth Meter and Silent Running icons. You could squeeze so much info in there that it frightens me. Weather, torpedo tube status, objective status (completed, unresolved, failed, by use of icons), depth under keel, etc. Depending on difficulty level and whatnot.

More info documents off-screen that you can pull into view and use, like in the Grey Wolves super-mod.

More sounds on hydrophones: As shown. Sea-life, whales calling, waves against beaches, shells hitting water, etc.

[Safe-Keeper]

OK, so I like the way saved games work in Silent Hunter IV, as it made it a bit harder to exploit by loading old saved games (to try a convoy attack again, for example).

What I liked less was that if you arrived at a moment you wanted to return to later (not for the career's sake, but because it was a good moment, like when you found a historical event like the Bismarck's sinking or something), you couldn't. Return to it, and all following saves are deleted.

But how about this:
You have the option to save your career, and you have the option to save the current moment (with all stats such as ammunition, provisions, crew, damage, etc.) as a file that can be opened as a single mission. The game's so early in development that it might be possible. When saving, you enter a short description of the situation, then hit the [OK] button, and then you can later open the situation from the Single Missions list. This'd also allow you to easily spread good moments over the Web. And no matter how well or poorly you do when you play the Single Mission-version of the Career save, it'll have no effect whatsoever on the career it's from.

You can re-live past moments without being a cheater, and without losing your current moments to the anti-exploit "save-all-games-after-this-one-feature".

That's actually how Empire Earth and Empires: DOTW (and thus very likely Rise and Fall, since it uses about the same engine) worked: They saved games in scenario format (although with a different extension). So you could play the campaign, save, fish the saved game out of the Saved Game folder, change the extension to .scn, and open it up as a scenario.

[Safe-Keeper]

Yes, Ubisoft, we want everything. This too. Was it 2039 the game was going to be released:p?

http://www.anbg.gov.au/flags/signal-meaning.html. Good read.

Initially, I thought this'd be nice as eye-candy (along with ship's names shown on their sides, flying a broomstick upon returning to port, and so on). But then I thought about it some more and figured it'd be a good actual game feature, getting information from ships by means of signal flags and pendants.

I'm not asking for having to read and translate them yourself. I'd rather have it so that you had the game read them for you, to put it that way.

For example, when selecting a vessel on the navigation map, you see all the data shown by the flags next to it in addition to everything else. Like:

S/S Mayflower, Coastal Merchant.
Speed: 19 Knots.
Heading: 093°.
Doctor on board.

"Doctor on board" being a flag-communicated stat and the rest being default information (ship name shown if within proximity).

As a side note, ships with doctors on board could be docked with to unload wounded.

Another relevant one is "I am disabled, communicate with me" flying from the mast of a crippled ship.

[Drebbel]

Besides the recognition manual being on a shelve in the control room (I would hate it to be just availble at the scope) and Coastal Pilot book I was thinking the following --->

How about having a couple of empty books on the shelve. Clicking on those books would open (in-game) the book with the text you have added (out-game) to a specific txt file.

So now we can all create an in-game book with notes we really want to have at hand ourselves.

I think this must be easy to code and would be welcomed very warmly by many users !

What you think, good idea ?

Happy Sunday All !

[DS]

Here's my perfect SHIV (some items no doubt similar to previous posts):

1. SH1 game play. Don't take anything away. Just add. (I'm undecided about the value of long transit times on the way to patrol areas in SH2 and 3. I think it made sense to do the whole transit in the Atlantic where enemy shipping was everywhere. I'm not so sure about the Pacific, unless we can up the time compression ability somewhat. I think the sailing from Pearl to a patrol area near some Pacific islands would be pretty quiet until you arrived in enemy waters.)

2. Add SH3 graphics

3. Complete the boat interior and keep the crew members. I thought they added to atmosphere in SH3.

4. Add better coastal detail (more action happened by the coasts in the Pacific, and some palm trees and beaches would be a nice touch for photo recon and harbor penetration missions). Mines, nets, etc should be added to protected harbors. Add charted and uncharted coral reefs and sea mounts for shallow water grounding hazards.

5. Make repairs take as long or longer than they did in SH1 (SH2 and SH3 repairs all seem to be complete within really quickly even on max realism, no matter how battered the boat. In SH1, repairs could take hours...). The "realistic repairs" option should mean REALISTIC.

6. Model crew training challenges. Add occasional misshaps for inexperienced crews (accidental broaching after torpedo launches, too much diesel smoke on the surface giving away your position, temporary loss of depth control on crash dives (diving with red still on the board?), occasional unexpectedly slow dives due to crew error, etc). This will really encourage cyber skippers to run training dives and manouvers between contacts to build crew experience to they don't scr*w up during a real contact)

7. Model sailing challenges. Allow a more fluid sailing model, which is to say, the boat should not handle as if it is on rails. Let the boat dive to 71 feet before leveling back up to PD at 65 feet. Let a turn run a few degrees over before the helmsman corrects. Wave action should cause depth and course reading fluctuations, especially when shallow.

8. Model navigation shallenges. Add currents and weather affects on speed and course, and allow growing deviation between plotted ownship position and actual position, to be corrected periodicaly with an occasional sextant shot or shore land mark triangulation (makes it harder to plot and intercept a convoy or avoid that charted shallow spot if you're not even a 100% sure where your own boat is, right?)

9. Bring back target zig zagging.

10. Random tonnage is a big plus.

In short, add to the sailing and submarine simulation aspects, as well as the combat simulation aspects.

Those are all plus's that wil help ensure that SHIV sails off into subsim history as a winner. At the very least, don't take away anything that SH1 had that made it a classic still played by some today.

Cheers.

[Wilko]

:rotfl: if they put in everything suggested in this thread we should see it some time in 2010 for the cost of $150us/$230aus :rotfl:

I agree with DS about the long transit times from base to your patrol grid, be nice to have a warp feature for those that don't want to have the puter sit there endlessly, I read a book now while I transit.

Agree with keeping our 3D crew- I am used to them and would like the ability to have them wandering around with out a shirt or just a rag tag shirt as we see in most pictures, and have a automatic crew rotation in place, I'm the boss and don't need to tell Joe that he is tired and should be in his rack.

theres more but my head hurts and thinking is fading fast

[sumpis]

Originally Posted by Wilko

I agree with DS about the long transit times from base to your patrol grid, be nice to have a warp feature for those that don't want to have the puter sit there endlessly, I read a book now while I transit.

Maybe someone already has suggested this, but lazy me would like a complete warp feature. When everything is sorted up I would like the ability to take a nap in my quarters and only be disturbed if something important happens. I decide whats important before I go to bed. It's a checklist with options like:

Wake me up:

at waypoint #
at dawn
at sunset
when # torps are loaded
radio contacts in vicinity

and so on.

So when I have modified the checklist (usually at default values) I click sleep and get a black screen with some nice ambient sounds from the boat. Now the computer does a lot of number crunching without the need to display graphics. Now anything could happen, maybe I hear a soft hydrophone report and wake up, or maybe I hear "Crash Dive!!!" because I have ordered the watch to crash dive on plane spottings.

...and have a automatic crew rotation in place, I'm the boss and don't need to tell Joe that he is tired and should be in his rack.

Fatigue should only come from work and bad environment. Rest reduces fatigue. This calculates whatever the TimeCompression. The only time the captain should have to care is when undermanned or when whole crew is in bad shape. However, overriding and topping the crew should be possible.

Wear and tear on equipment would be very nice. Leaks, electrical problems, loud engine and pump sounds and so on happening on patrols. Best have a skilled Chief Engineer to work on these major and minor problems that show up. Some gets fixed totally, some you have to live with. The problems should follow a boat/equipment from patrol to patrol. The engineers in port promises a problem to be fixed, but later it may show up again.

[LoBlo]

I'ld just like to say that I won't buy this game without a demo first. Nothing personal, but its policy. Others may or maynot feel the same, but my gut says that having a demo will boost sales.

Originally Posted by Drebbel

So now we can all create an in-game book with notes we really want to have at hand ourselves.

I think this must be easy to code and would be welcomed very warmly by many users !

What you think, good idea ?

I just noticed this part. SHII had a logbook that recorded every order given and everything that happened. It was a bit too much, and it while you could type in your own comments it was difficult and awkward.

A logbook that records dive/surface times and torpedo firings would be nice, along with an easy-to-use player-notes function.

[Safe-Keeper]

More accurate feedback, both from my officers and from the UI.

What I mean with officer feedback is that I want to hear things like "we've been entangled in a sub net, captain!" or "captain, we've hit a mine!". As long as the officer responsible knows what's happened, he should tell me. Damage reports are great, but I'd like to know what caused the damage, too.

Also, "Cannot comply" is very vague. It'd be far better to say something like "no officer at helm station", "we're out of fuel", "engines are destroyed", etc. Also, when torpedoes aren't being loaded, it's misleading to say that it's "waiting in queue for loading" if something's keeping it from being loaded. It should say "loading halted due to silent running", "embarrassing G.W. bug prevents loading", and so on.

As for UI feedback: If I lose my boat to a titanium anti-submarine net, I don't want the post-patrol screen to say "U-boat destroyed by collision". I want it to say "u-boat crushed by atomic bomb-proof titanium anti-submarine net" or something to that effect. If I'm rammed by a destroyer, I don't want the game to tell me that I lost my submarine in a "collision". I want to hear that I lost my submarine to "ramming". Likewise, running aground is not what I would call "colliding" (although in the technical sense it is, of course). If I run my boat aground, simply give me a message saying "submarine grounded".

[edjcox]

:p

Some ideas

Bad weather with crews manning deck guns, AA, loss of crew if really bad waves.

Lightning strikes with crew injuries, loss if direct

Ability to cram supllies ie extra ammo aboard for AA, Deck gun.

Night lighting of conning tower instruments (red or green) reticles lighting.

More rapid ability to range deck gun say using numeral and then refine ( ie 15 = 1500 meter then refine, or 65 = 6500 meters and refine, command could be ctrl key then numerals)

Azimuth and elevation indicator on TYPE XII Flak turrets (perhaps a scal on turret sidewall with a mechanical pointer for elevation and a simpe mechanical azimuth scale with boat bow as 0 and stern 180.)

Depth charge noise (click of detonator then the wham, splashes)

Torpedoe noise on sonar (whine of props, failures, etc)

Multiple sonars ( how to confuse one another in surface boats)

Sonar repeater/jammer employed by Germans to replay sonar location attempts. Device picked up ASDIC and then repeated false echoes.

Ability to cram extra ammo (deck gun, AA, etc ) aboard

Ability to fire (red, green, white, abd blue flares)

[Safe-Keeper]

Some ideas

Great ones at that, if you ask me.

Bad weather with crews manning deck guns, AA, loss of crew if really bad waves.

Another man-over-board fan? Splendid!

Lightning strikes with crew injuries, loss if direct

Why didn't I think of that?

[alfonsuas]

Destroller Command 2 is very important

Originally Posted by edjcox

Ability to cram supllies ie extra ammo aboard for AA, Deck gun.

Where? It wasn't done that I've heard of.

Night lighting of conning tower instruments (red or green) reticles lighting.

Did they do that? I'm not arguing, I don't know.

More rapid ability to range deck gun say using numeral and then refine ( ie 15 = 1500 meter then refine, or 65 = 6500 meters and refine, command could be ctrl key then numerals)

Submarine deck guns were moved manually by turning hand cranks. Naval Weapons of World War Two has traverse and elevations rates, but I can't get to my copy right now. I think it was something on the order of 3-4 degrees per second, so speeding it up that way would probably not be realistic.

Azimuth and elevation indicator on TYPE XII Flak turrets (perhaps a scal on turret sidewall with a mechanical pointer for elevation and a simpe mechanical azimuth scale with boat bow as 0 and stern 180.)

Nice idea if fixes are retrograded to SHIII, but SHIV will feature US subs in the Pacific.

Depth charge noise (click of detonator then the wham, splashes)

Great Idea. It's already available for SHIII as a mod.

Torpedoe noise on sonar (whine of props, failures, etc)

Already in the game.

Multiple sonars ( how to confuse one another in surface boats)

Did WWII subs have that ability?

Sonar repeater/jammer employed by Germans to replay sonar location attempts. Device picked up ASDIC and then repeated false echoes.

Really? Never heard of that. Again, SHIV is not German u-boats.

Ability to fire (red, green, white, abd blue flares)

Again, did they do that?