Working on a new submarine sim: Sub Commander - advice needed!

[TheGeoff]

A small new update was released which fixes some bugs related to saving and loading the game. In particular, the bug where occasionally you could not save or resume your game from the menu has been fixed. This update could save a lot of frustration so I highly recommend getting it (by redownloading the game) before playing any further.

Unfortunately your old save files will not work with this version.

Originally Posted by Bigulp

Thanks for the welcome guys. TheGeoff you solved my problem perfectly, thank you.

Glad it worked. Feel free to post about your custom sub when you're done, I'd love to see it!

[Nukesub]

Very cool sim! I just watched a video of it on youtube and came here to DL it and try it out.

It works but each time I exit the game I get a message saying that the executable has "stopped working". Not sure why I get that notification, of course its stopped wokring, I exited the game! ><

Anything maybe I have done wrong?

I look forward to playing around with this cool game

[Tango589]

Originally Posted by Nukesub

Very cool sim! I just watched a video of it on youtube and came here to DL it and try it out.

It works but each time I exit the game I get a message saying that the executable has "stopped working". Not sure why I get that notification, of course its stopped wokring, I exited the game! ><

Anything maybe I have done wrong?

I look forward to playing around with this cool game

That always seems to happen, with no ill effects. It may be something to do with OpenGL, but I'm not sure.

[xnonix]

After several years without subsiming I have discovered this game! It's pretty cool even I haven't played it yet since I'm at work.

Congrats TheGeoff!!!

I can't wait to get home and take my hands on this monster!

I have some comments/sugestions about the features I have seen in videos about the game:

1. Every modern submarine it's based on stealth and 99% of the patrol is underwater. Active sensors like radar and active sonar are not commoly used and detection is based on passive sonar, passive intercept, ESM antennas or the periscope.
I see this game is more based on active sensors (for what I have seen on videos), and Towed Array sonars, Hull array sonars aren't modeled where they are the first sensors on locating enemy subs or ships on real life.

2. For modeling TMA, you can make the position accuracy of an enemy time dependant (more time tracking the enemy, better solution), giving a % on how good is your solution. When the enemy change course or speed your solution is degraded and your % decreases. Whe you change your course/speed your solution increases. This is done automatically by the crew giving the solution % and aproximate position based on error in the tactical map.

3. About the general game, I love the mechanics. It's awesome. I think the incidents in the submarine are too common and you could ballance it making training the crew on tracking targets, welding, etc, insteas of managing all those incidents.

Good work again, and keep it up!!!

[JerikTelorian]

Originally Posted by xnonix

3. About the general game, I love the mechanics. It's awesome. I think the incidents in the submarine are too common and you could ballance it making training the crew on tracking targets, welding, etc, insteas of managing all those incidents.

Good work again, and keep it up!!!

If you find yourself too busy putting out literal fires, there's a sub_reliability field in gameoptions.ini that you can raise. Might help you out, sometimes it seems my reactors are made from flat-pack sets with missing pieces

[Tango589]

Originally Posted by xnonix

3. About the general game, I love the mechanics. It's awesome. I think the incidents in the submarine are too common and you could ballance it making training the crew on tracking targets, welding, etc, insteas of managing all those incidents.

You can train your crew to get better at tasks. The more they do something the better they get. Choose someone who is a trained firefighter, give him an extinguisher and get him to put out a small fire you start in somewhere non-critical (crew quarters NOT torpedo room!). After a couple of practise runs, his ability will raise to skilled firefighter. Keep this up a couple more times and he will be a experienced firefighter. You can do the same thing for repairs and welding to get yourself a super-crew!

[curiousepic]

Really enjoying this game!

A couple of requests to consider in future versions:

• How easy would it be to make new missions have a maximum distance from your current location?
• Do you intend to do something about the fact that the map's projection severely distorts distances at higher latitudes?
• Any intention of supporting multi-level subs?
• How about individual interior and exterior hatches on the torp tubes?

[Aktungbby]

curiousepic!

[Jimbuna]

Welcome to SubSim curiousepic

[ReallyDedPoet]

Originally Posted by curiousepic

Really enjoying this game!

Welcome to SUBSIM

[JerikTelorian]

Geoff, I have another bug report for you.

I went in for a refit after a long patrol. I started in the USA on a November-Class sub but berthed at Oslo, Norway to get more torpedoes before a push into the Baltic Sea.

I'm not sure these Norse guys have a grip on submarines, really.



Firstly, they nicked my nukes. Maybe I didn't have a license and they're in impound or something, I don't know.
The torpedo loading pattern isn't quite right, I assume it's loading them in the style of the default sub. You can fire those ones that are halfway into the tubes, though.



And by god when you order a reload your men will do it. That's what I like about these boys, they got pluck. Doesn't matter if you need to push the torps through an inch of plate steel bulkhead, they'll get the job done .

When reloaded the torps work as usual. Also, you'll notice that the nukes don't get restocked (more to say that they were taken -- I hadn't fired them, the nukes were just gone after refit). Thinking this might be because Norway doesn't have nukes, I steamed back to Norfolk for another refit but no dice.

I've attached the savefile below. Happy to answer any questions you have!

Notes:
-USA
-November class
-Random start city
-This was my first refit of this particular run
-I had saved and loaded this game before refitting

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...2/SaveFile.sav

[USS Drum]

Wait, you fired nukes without blowing up half the world?

[JerikTelorian]

Originally Posted by USS Drum

Wait, you fired nukes without blowing up half the world?

Actually, the nukes just disappeared after the refit -- I hadn't fired them. Maybe my crew brought them to the bar when they went drinking in port and lost them in a poker game, I don't know. Thanks for pointing this out, though, I corrected this in my post.

[TheGeoff]

Originally Posted by xnonix

After several years without subsiming I have discovered this game! It's pretty cool even I haven't played it yet since I'm at work.

Congrats TheGeoff!!!

I can't wait to get home and take my hands on this monster!

I have some comments/sugestions about the features I have seen in videos about the game:

1. Every modern submarine it's based on stealth and 99% of the patrol is underwater. Active sensors like radar and active sonar are not commoly used and detection is based on passive sonar, passive intercept, ESM antennas or the periscope.
I see this game is more based on active sensors (for what I have seen on videos), and Towed Array sonars, Hull array sonars aren't modeled where they are the first sensors on locating enemy subs or ships on real life.

2. For modeling TMA, you can make the position accuracy of an enemy time dependant (more time tracking the enemy, better solution), giving a % on how good is your solution. When the enemy change course or speed your solution is degraded and your % decreases. Whe you change your course/speed your solution increases. This is done automatically by the crew giving the solution % and aproximate position based on error in the tactical map.

3. About the general game, I love the mechanics. It's awesome. I think the incidents in the submarine are too common and you could ballance it making training the crew on tracking targets, welding, etc, insteas of managing all those incidents.

Good work again, and keep it up!!!

Hope you're enjoying it!

The passive sonar and periscope are definitely the most useful tools the player has access to at the moment. As of v0.27 using active sonar or radar will immediately alert nearby enemies to your position, so they should rarely be used - but they are included because they can be extremely useful in certain situations. Other passive sensors like radar intercept and towed sonar arrays will probably be added in the future (the passive sonar behaves roughly like a bow sonar array at the moment).

I like the idea for TMA simulation, and will probably add this soon. It would definitely make combat a lot more challenging and force the player to plan attacks better.

As others have said, you can decrease the frequency of random accidents in the options file. I keep if fairly high by default because dealing with accidents and disasters is a big part of the game.

Originally Posted by curiousepic

Really enjoying this game!

A couple of requests to consider in future versions:

• How easy would it be to make new missions have a maximum distance from your current location?
• Do you intend to do something about the fact that the map's projection severely distorts distances at higher latitudes?
• Any intention of supporting multi-level subs?
• How about individual interior and exterior hatches on the torp tubes?

Thanks for the suggestions!

1. The game already tries to assign missions close to you, but if it doesn't find a valid target nearby it will assign you a mission at a random location. I'll be improving the mission generation code in a future version so this happens less often.

2. I tried increasing your horizontal speed to compensate for the distortion once but it makes the submarine extremely difficult to control, and judging distances becomes hard. The control systems for missiles, torpedoes etc would also need to be remade to take the curvature of the earth into account. Since almost all of the action takes place at latitudes where the distortion is pretty minor I have no immediate plans to fix this.

3. When I first started on the game I planned to include multi-level subs, but there were always more important missing features and I never got around to adding them. It would probably be quite difficult and introduce a lot of new bugs, but I might do it one day.

4. Better simulation of torpedo tubes (hatches on both ends, requiring the tube to be flooded before firing) is definitely planned for the near future, maybe even next update.

Originally Posted by JerikTelorian

Geoff, I have another bug report for you.

I went in for a refit after a long patrol. I started in the USA on a November-Class sub but berthed at Oslo, Norway to get more torpedoes before a push into the Baltic Sea.

I'm not sure these Norse guys have a grip on submarines, really.

Firstly, they nicked my nukes. Maybe I didn't have a license and they're in impound or something, I don't know.
The torpedo loading pattern isn't quite right, I assume it's loading them in the style of the default sub. You can fire those ones that are halfway into the tubes, though.

And by god when you order a reload your men will do it. That's what I like about these boys, they got pluck. Doesn't matter if you need to push the torps through an inch of plate steel bulkhead, they'll get the job done .

When reloaded the torps work as usual. Also, you'll notice that the nukes don't get restocked (more to say that they were taken -- I hadn't fired them, the nukes were just gone after refit). Thinking this might be because Norway doesn't have nukes, I steamed back to Norfolk for another refit but no dice.

I've attached the savefile below. Happy to answer any questions you have!

Notes:
-USA
-November class
-Random start city
-This was my first refit of this particular run
-I had saved and loaded this game before refitting

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...2/SaveFile.sav

This made me laugh and it's also really helpful - the bug has occasionally been reported before but nobody mentioned that they had saved and loaded the game before it happened. That's definitely the cause of the problem, looks like when you restart the game it forgets what sub you were using and when you refit it puts the torpedoes in the default positions. The game also refuses to give you any nukes because it thinks you're using the default sub. I'll try to fix this soon, in the meantime this will prevent the bug from occurring:

1. Start Sub Commander
2. Start a new game with the same sub as your old save file (eg. November class)
3. Wait for the game to begin, then press Esc and return to the menu
4. Load your saved game. You should now be able to refit properly.

[arl85]

Hi,
first of all I want to express all my admiration for this incredible work you are doing!

I just want to report you a couple of things:
it seems that in several screen (ex: periscope) you can change depth using +/- keys, but in F1 help this info is missing (at least in periscope mode).

Strictly related, I found that only in map mode you can see ordered speed (but not ordered depth) so I suggest to always display speed, depth and heading together with ordered one

and now some questions:

1. is there any advantage in stopping damaged systems while repairing? is there any "danger" in repairing a working damaged turbine, for example?
2. how does the algorithm for selecting a crew member when ordering "repair" or "assess damage" at cursor work? it seems that when I order "assess damage" a crew member is called, but when ordering a repair from the "damage assessment" view, another different member is called.
   is it only related to assigned compartment/task permission or are experience in specific field and equipped equipment also considered ?

finally a bug report: while trying to save my sinking sub, I locked some bulkheads.
after a while, game started complying about "unable to find path". I thought "it's normal, no problem".
But after several cycle of different crewmembers complaining game hanged as how it was in a infinite loop. I'll try to give you more info next time.