Next SH.....as WE want it.

[kv29]

I really hope UBISOFT will listen, and listen carefully about many thing we expect to see in the next installment, things that are important to us, the people who will continue to support this series....

care to take a little time and dream with me?... dream on then...

- ALL SIDES & WAR THEATERS: german, american and japanese sides to play. All subs, all seas.

- REAL NAVIGATION: no more GPS maps that magically shows your sub position. we need real tools to calculate our position (sextant, another clock, and true stars).

- MORE ACCURATE PHYSIC: no more hitpoints please, we want to see a ship sink as it should be (pay attention to wernersobe work!). No more "flying" subs either please.

- REAL GUNS: yes, you know what Im talking about, no stabilized guns! (DG or AA) and full dg crew animations (gun loading & shells handling)

- BETTER ENVIROMENT: fully 3d rendered clouds, more stars, better storms, no jelly water :p

- NO BULLETPROOF CREW: yes, we want to see dead people!

- FULL SUBS: the ability to walk (yes, walk) between all compartments. and of course, we would like to get more of them.


... anything else? is up to you now.

[The WosMan]

I can't help but think how awesome a game with graphics and an entire world mapped like Silent Hunter merged with Dangerous Waters or Sub Command. Start off in your LA/Seawold/VA class sub at a US naval base and steam under nuclear power on missions. I don't care if they have to create fictional situations........it would be fun if designed right. Throw us in the Persian Gulf to take on the Iranian diesel sub menace. Track and sink N. Korean ships carrying nuclear materials to Libya or Syria. Imagine having the little SH event window following 12 tomahawk cruise missiles headed for Hugo's palace. It would be fun.

[Rockin Robbins]

It's a good goal for the next generation of computers, or maybe 10 years down the road. It wouldn't be possible now, as we are stretching the capabilities of all but high-end systems. In order to produce a profit, and selling video games has to be conducted as a business with all the slimey compromises that implies, a game has to be runnable on a large number of available machines.

Ubi obviously had to dispense with some of the interactive goodies of SH3 to make SH4 playable on enough machines to give it a chance to be profitable. This will not always be true.

Compare SH4 to Silent Service II. That is how SH4 will compare to the next generation of subsims. However, to finance the next generation we have to be willing to pay for this one. And this one is pretty good. I'm having more fun than I should be allowed to have, thanks in part to the descendent of your real deck gun.

[Ducimus]

I want to be able to control each engine seperatly. If i want to put all 4 on the line, let me do it. If i want to put 3 on the charge and 1 on the line, let me do it.

I want seperate propeller control. If i want ahead full on the port propeller, and all back full on the starbard propeller, let me do it.

I also want full throttle and rheostate control. If i want to push the engines or E Motors to 105%- 110% of their maxmum, let me do it.

I want full control on the dive planes. If i want as few as 5 degrees down on the planes, or 25 degrees down on the planes, let me distinguish which.

I want more control of my boyancy. I want to be able to control things like the saftey tank and negative tank. Not to mention just how fast the main ballast tank floods. Trim tanks would be nice too, but i woudlnt ask for THAT much.

[CDR Resser]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I want to be able to control each engine seperatly. If i want to put all 4 on the line, let me do it. If i want to put 3 on the charge and 1 on the line, let me do it.

I want seperate propeller control. If i want ahead full on the port propeller, and all back full on the starbard propeller, let me do it.

I also want full throttle and rheostate control. If i want to push the engines or E Motors to 105%- 110% of their maxmum, let me do it.

I want full control on the dive planes. If i want as few as 5 degrees down on the planes, or 25 degrees down on the planes, let me distinguish which.

I want more control of my boyancy. I want to be able to control things like the saftey tank and negative tank. Not to mention just how fast the main ballast tank floods. Trim tanks would be nice too, but i woudlnt ask for THAT much.

These are huge points. Reading everything that is available, these items are critical to controlling and maneuvering the submarine, both in and outside the harbor. Determining the number of engines on charge and propulsion is critical to determining the endurance of the submarine.
Independent propeller control affects the maneuverability of the ship.
Ballast control is critical. What is the default bouyancy state in the game. Is safety flooded as it ordinarily would. Is negative ever "blown to the mark". Are daily trim dives needed to correct compensation for stores used. Is there a stability penalty or decrease in diving performance for not doing trim dives.
Many times captains asked their engineers to push their diesels and motors beyond their specs to catch a ship.
All of these would add much to the immersion factor of the game.

Respectfully Submitted;
CDR Resser

[Penta]

Um...playability, guys. You lose a lot of people if SH becomes the Falcon 4 of sub sims, needing a 600pg manual.

[LobsterBoy]

I would like to see more features that force you, as the CO, to make decisions. I'd like to see weather affect decisions (seeing some of Kriller2's work on the new PE2 screenshots is amazing, especially the fog). The engine and shaft separation that Ducimus mentioned would give the CO many more options on how to run the boat. Imagine random failures in an engine and using three to balance your boat's needs. Do you go back to base? What about increased noise from your boat if you've taken damage? What about wounded crew that may only survive if you return to base in a timely manner?

For my money it's all about the decisions

[difool2]

Weather and the sky are my big things; the samey partly cloudy skies constantly remind me that I'm in a simulation. Planets, Milky Way, most of the brightest nebulas; at least 10 different cloud types, ranging from light high cirrus to a "mackerel" sky, puffy summer cumulus to massive thunderheads, occ. waterspouts, massive typhoon-driven waves. Yeah I can dream can't I?

[peabody]

Originally Posted by Penta

Um...playability, guys. You lose a lot of people if SH becomes the Falcon 4 of sub sims, needing a 600pg manual.

Don't mean to be rude, but do you have any idea how many people play Falcon4. There are online squadrons everywhere. There are 5 versions of the game. 4 modded and one commercail product. Falcon4:Allied Force. The game is only available because when the original Developers dropped support for it the community took over and kept improving the game. And that is how Lead Pursuit ended up with it, there were so many people playing it they made a deal and bought it and put out a new version.
So, making a Sim more 'real' does not scare the diehards away. But, I will admit that they would sell less copies if they didn't have the "easy" mode and different levels of difficulty like SH4 has. Manual targeting or not, dud torps or not, unlimited fuel or not. As long as you make it playable for the ones who don't want to learn how to run a "real" sub, it will sell.
And as long as you have people like the ones here that will help you out when you don't understand something. I can show you pages and pages of tutorials from when I was learning Falcon, now i'm a "Full Bird" Colonel with 3 Distinguished Flying Crosses and 8 Air Medals and 9 Campaign Medals and I started Falcon just like SH4, didn't know squat. And I can show you a lot of tutorials on SH4, right here at subsim!!
So, don't say they won't sell, like I commented as long as you leave in the "easy" choices then people can advance at there own pace. If they never get past the automatic targeting so what, they still are having fun and still have to get away from the damn DDs. Could you put "Stupid DDs" on the list of must haves?

But adding some of the things asked for would make a great game. I would give anything to have forward on one screw and back on the other, cause frankly this thing turns like a ....well, like a submarine. I can eat lunch before it goes 180 degrees.

Peabody

[Charlie901]

I bet the next SH game, if Published again by UBI, will be heavy on pretty graphics, even shorter on features, buggy as all hell, and completely unfinished, requiring at least a year's worth of patches to be even playable...

Anyone care to disagree!!!!

[maerean_m]

- ALL SIDES & WAR THEATERS: german, american and japanese sides to play. All subs, all seas.
* Can be done but it will take a lot of time and will cost a lot. I preffer doing one or two sides and allow for completely new sides to be added later.

- REAL NAVIGATION: no more GPS maps that magically shows your sub position. we need real tools to calculate our position (sextant, another clock, and true stars).
* Nice and not so hard to do
* "GPS maps" must exist for low realism settings.

- MORE ACCURATE PHYSIC: no more hitpoints please, we want to see a ship sink as it should be (pay attention to wernersobe work!). No more "flying" subs either please.
* Hit points and physics are not the same thing, but I see what you mean.

- REAL GUNS: yes, you know what Im talking about, no stabilized guns! (DG or AA) and full dg crew animations (gun loading & shells handling)
* stabilized views must exist for lower realism settings.
* why not?

- BETTER ENVIROMENT: fully 3d rendered clouds, more stars, better storms, no jelly water :p
* very computational intensive (the water), without adding something to the gameplay.

- NO BULLETPROOF CREW: yes, we want to see dead people!
* dead people were not implemented because of the age rating of the game

- FULL SUBS: the ability to walk (yes, walk) between all compartments. and of course, we would like to get more of them.
* nice to have and maybe there is gameplay in that too

[Blood_splat]

I'd also would like to see internal damage like flooding and broken equipment, fires with smoke all over.

I remember playing B17 II and having to order a crew member to put out a fire. Damn that game was ahead of its time.

[Rockin Robbins]

Everybody has great suggestions, but have patience. All these things will come with time. In the meantime, we should enjoy what we have, which is darned great!

I don't see any problems with all the details, so long as there is a heirarchy of options to let you phase in the use of real navigation, engine options, ballast tank management, fuel tank management, sonars individually accessable and useable (there were at least 3 on American subs), radar realism, radio coding and decoding, MoBo or something very like it should be incorporated into the game for realistic plotting.

But these need to be options that don't lock the casual player out of the game. If you don't have fun from the first startup of the game, it will sit on the shelf. Realism doesn't have to be at the expense of playability.

And finally, actual schools where you learn all this stuff in the game with an instructor in real life training situations.

Folks, you're looking a minimum of five years before anything like this is possible. You're looking at ten years before it gets installed on a single user computer. It will foster a whole new generation of complainers just as bad as this one.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Blood_splat

I remember playing B17 II and having to order a crew member to put out a fire. Damn that game was ahead of its time.

Great game! Too bad about all the bugs and stability problems it had/has. But really gave you the 'I'm there' immersion.

[Navarre]

An AAA graphics engine (if the game is again marketed as a AAA game), that deserves the triple A.
meaning:
- Light sources behind non-transparent objects should not be this visible through these objects
- shadow rendering as in other AAA graphic engines
- no longer transparent sailors due to incorrect environment/shaders development