Can anyone explain to me why they're not depressed by games that always end in death?

[Beery]

It seems to me that many simulation type games are often not very good simulations because they all overstate the chances of getting killed by a lot. SH4 is a good example. In reality the US submarine service had about 250 subs and each sub commander did around ten patrols. That's 2500 patrols. Submarines were lost in only 50 of those patrols. That means that the actual chances of a sub being sunk were one in 50 patrols. Now the average commander did only about five patrols, so his chances of getting killed during his tenure as a sub commander were around one in ten.

In SH4, in my experience, the chance of the player's sub being sunk is about one in every 5 patrols - that's close to a 100% chance of getting killed during a career.

10% mortality rate (in reality) versus close to 100% (in the sim) - there's a huge disconnect there.

I've never understood why players seem so willing to accept this. When I play a sub game I would prefer to watch my crew grow and then survive to retire, just as nine out of ten sub commanders did. But with the game as it is in the stock version it's virtually impossible to do that.

I've heard the argument about excitement - that players want to have a lot of stuff happening on patrol - lots of danger, close escapes, depth charges, torpedo impacts, sonar pings, tenacious destroyers etc., but in my view all that stuff is only fun if it's realistic, and all too often it's not. Plus there's the fact that endless excitement ends up in death, and death is boring and depressing. If all careers are virtually guaranteed to end in death it seems to me that all careers become an exercise in futility.

Don't other players find this depressing, as I do? Don't other players ever think that it would be nice to survive a career? Why aren't other players up in arms about this issue?

[LZ_Baker]

I've probably been on 20 or so patrols. I've pnly been sunk three times. Twice from me being dumb and once when I started playing, by not having my damage control team working, so I flooded and sank.

[heartc]

I think another thing you have to take into consideration is that iRL people tend to be a lot more careful than the average gamer. There are tons of safety measures and procedures to follow, you have a whole team behind assisting you (in a sub at least), missions are carefully planned (e.g. in combat aviation), all scenarios one could think of considered beforehand, and again, not just you but a whole bunch of guys who are doing this for a living - and indeed, for a living. I find I have pretty good chances to "survive" the closer I act as they do/did iRL.

So I think the thing in subsims is mostly that

1. There are far more frequent encounters with the enemy than iRL
2. You're basicly the only one with a brain on that sub.
3. Too frequent encounters with enemy air and SD radar not working properly. That's a BIGGY for altering the chances of survival - the Uboats with way higher loss rates were mostly screwed by HF/DF detection, code deciphering and subsequent air attack as you know, while the Subs in the PTO simply just dove with plenty of time when they detected airborne contacts from WAY OUT.

1 and 2 are similar for flightsims. Though, iRL there also was a difference in survival chances between being a Polish pilot flying a Biplane or a Russian pilot in 1941 against the Luftwaffe onslaught, or flying long range sorties in a P-51 escort fighter at 35k feet in late 1944 with almost all of the Luftwaffe already in pieces.

Whatever it is that makes you think that SHIV is unrealisticly "deadly", there is no way I would agree it is the enemy AI. The enemy AI for the most part is REALLY REALLY dumb, there is no way around that. You said in another thread that you think the AI is fine because iRL escorts were pretty much dumb the same way. I also tended to view this poor AI as some kind of "feature" before, but by now I've seen so many downright retarded actions or simply retarded lack of action that there is simply no way.
There is no way that you can just torpedo a convoy for 10 minutes and the escorts are just sitting around watching the show or sail around like nothing has happened - or indeed still IS happening. Regardless how much crew experience or equipment there was on the escorts, ANYONE could have figured out that looking over to the side from where the torpedo hit the ship might be a good place to start searching and do *something*. Imagine playing this thing online with some geek over the net in a destroyer - do you think he would just sit around while you're torpedoing the convoy, or search in an area way off the scene? Now what about a RL destroyer skipper regardless the navy.

Also, from Ned Beach's book "Submarine!" I get the impression that at least when equipped with active sonar (redundant, I know), the escorts found the subs more often than not but were unable to sink them cause of the limitations that technology still had and which were exploited by the sub skippers. He constantly tells of defensive measures like keeping a low profile towards the escort, using thermal, running silent - all things you don't really have to do with the stock AI in the game. I'm sure if the subs would just have kept sitting there iRL or run 2/3rds submerged instead of silent there would have been a lot more losses. They did all those defensive measures and still took heavy/close beatings and some were destroyed.

I haven't really seen this yet in the (stock) game when I use historic tactics and act carefully.

[RocketDog]

Some of the difference in mortality rates may be because of the way in the game we casually take risks no real-life commander would consider acceptable. The same thing happens very noticeably in combat flight sims. This probably means that real-life/game statistics aren't strictly comparable. However, I agree that we should aim as much as possible to keep the lethality of the AI at realistic values. I doubt that historical DDs ever reached the effectivensss of level-4 DDs in the game.

Cheers,

RD

[mcoca]

Originally Posted by Beery

In SH4, in my experience, the chance of the player's sub being sunk is about one in every 5 patrols - that's close to a 100% chance of getting killed during a career.

<nitpick>
Actually, assuming 20% (1 in 5) chance of dying in each patrol, and 5 patrols per career, that's a 68% chance of dying during a career, nothing close to 100%
</nitpick>

I agree with those who have said gamers take a lot more risks than they would IRL. To get really realistic results, you must get them in a realistic way. As an example, a career started in December 41 will nearly always get unrealistically high tonnage. Why? Because very few players will try sonar only solutions without even putting up the periscope, as many real life captains did.

In the same way, it should be rare to be killed if following proper doctrine: running slow when submerged, not going up to periscope depth unless you are using the periscope, etc. But that's no excuse for keeping the current passive AI calling it "realistic". The IJN escorts were not good at their job, but they were not the lazy idiots the game AI escorts are. I mean, in some cases the escorts let the convoys sail ahead unescorted while they pursued a sub contact. Not intelligent, but certainly not passive.

I just read Silent Victory, and I was surprised by how often subs were depth charged and how often the DCs didn't cause any damage. I think of it as DC suppression fire.

[TDK1044]

It's just a game.

[AVGWarhawk]

Depressing? Nope. I go out not looking to get sunk. I go out planning on bringing in the booty. As TDK stated, just a game. It is an escape from reality. Sure get sunk, crew lost. Your platoon gets shot up in another game. Your plane goes down do to flak in another game. Just another escape from the real world. Besides, you can always restart the game, over and over and over.

CTD after a great mission.....now that's depressing

[Ducimus]

Im guess i follow in on, "Its just a game". Is it a sim? Sure. But a sim, is stil just a genre of game, and what is 100% historically accurate, isn't always fun. To take an example from SH3 (only because its the easiest illusration), is that in reality, many uboats didnt sink any ships at all. In reality, patrols were long, tedius, and filled with monotany. Frankly, that just doesnt make a good game.

Likewise, approaching a convoy, sinking ships with near impunity, and having no retribution on the player at all most of the time, isn't a game at all, but a very fancy interactive screensaver. Making decisions, is what being a "skipper" is all about, and those decisions should have consequences. When theirs little to no risk, theres a certain level of interaction with the game thats missing. Your simply going through the motions, but with no consequences, theres really not much of a point.


As per death statictis cited about how often the player dies in SH4. I dont beleive that at all. Maybe im an exception, but i dont die very often, not in SH3 with GWX or NYGM, and certainly not in SH4. I end more careers out of boredom, then by action from the AI.

[Beery]

Originally Posted by TDK1044

It's just a game.

No, it's not 'just' a game. Not to me anyway. It's a simulation. If it was 'just' a game it could have flying nuns, chimpanzees and spaceships. It doesn't, and in fact it couldn't have those things and still be on the same serious level. No one would play a WW2 sub game that had chimps, flying nuns and spaceships in it because it wouldn't be a WW2 sub game then.

The fact that it is indeed a game doesn't mean that "anything goes as long as it's fun".

[Beery]

[quote=mcoca]

Originally Posted by Beery

In SH4, in my experience, the chance of the player's sub being sunk is about one in every 5 patrols - that's close to a 100% chance of getting killed during a career.

You're right. I knew I was making some fundamental mistake because I knew that 1 in 5 didn't mean that every career would end in death. I must brush up on my math.

[Beery]

Originally Posted by heartc

...Whatever it is that makes you think that SHIV is unrealisticly "deadly", there is no way I would agree it is the enemy AI. The enemy AI for the most part is REALLY REALLY dumb, there is no way around that.

It doesn't have to be intelligent to kill you. It just has to occasionally be in the right place at the right time, and all too often it is. The other thing is that there are 5 levels of AI, and 3 of them are by no means dumb, and one of them is certain death.

[Beery]

Originally Posted by heartc

...He constantly tells of defensive measures like keeping a low profile towards the escort, using thermal, running silent - all things you don't really have to do with the stock AI in the game...

All these things are modelled by the game, and if you meet the better escorts you have to do these things in order to escape. If you meet the level 4 AI even if you do these things you're going to get sunk.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Roughly one third of frontline U-boats were lost to enemy action on their first patrol.

To me this translates to, "If I make a dumb mistake, the AI built into the simulator should punish me. If it does not punish me, it should be altered to punish dumb mistakes.... not for the sake of a challenge... but for the sake of causing a historically plausible behavior to be emulated."

... and

"When I stop making dumb mistakes... I will live as long as I please... though sometimes that means that I have to let a target go because I was unable to obtain a firing solution without taking an idiotic risk."

Dead sailors cannot fight... putting myself in a suicidal position is an avoidable circumstance.

[Beery]

So you guys all seem to be saying that having a career end in death is more satisfying than ending a career alive. I must say I just don't understand that attitude. My whole goal in playing is survival.

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Beery

So you guys all seem to be saying that having a career end in death is more satisfying than ending a career alive. I must say I just don't understand that attitude. My whole goal in playing is survival.

But ending a career game alive isnt satisfying if it was a walk in the park snore fest either.