Subsim, or arcade game?

[Pythos]

This was a comment from another post and it voiced so much I have felt here.

" I think this is also some of the core of the flame wars over time compression. I.e. the historical sim folks want to be able to lurk in open ocean, not watching the birds and skylarking, but listening for hydro contacts at a particular time and place at intervals, put down a bearing line or two and feel the thrill of predicting and finding a target on the open sea. "

My input

Precisely. This is why options are always great. Let us HAVE the option to have automatically updated positions OR have ambiguously accurate position reports given perhaps every hour.

I see people saying that this is mostly a management game...yea, that's great. Do you not think that those skippers of those boats during the war were not managing crew when the crew were plotting intercepts? There were headings to be given, engine orders...hell there were the engines to be sure were being maintained...there was also the tremendous possibility of screwing up an intercept, or blundering into an UNREPORTED convoy, or task force...or the occasional lone hunter killer destroyer, or group of those. You as skipper had to maintain your crews moral, and be sure duties were being performed, and rotation schedules were being maintained ect.

Plotting an intercept hours away, and when enroute encountering a storm, or massive fog, could really mess things up...and this could effect moral of the crew (Das Boot showed this...recall the exasperation of the Chief when YET another radio message was a convoy U-96 could NOT reach due to the weather, which was signaled by the dejected Commander, tossed aside the pencil and protractor and sulked away "too far away". ) This is what I was hoping for, and I don't think I was alone in that. As I have said, it is the Hunt that is part of the "thrill" of Subsims. Having what can only be termed GPS accurate reports, and targeting on a 40s vintage diesel submarine like the Type VII....or indeed even the Type XXI, is not a Uboat sim. Hell, I don't think even 688 attack sub had such things.

I really think people are wanting something like an arcade game, and if that is what the devs truly want...then they need to be very clear, so us veteran subsimmers can go back to SHV (well I'm outta luck since Ubi screwed up my account info...oh yea...remember that about SHV, the REQUIREMENT to be online and logged in with Uplay...a reason I finally left). I LOVE the crew management, though there are definitely issues with it, but the distance/time compression is an issue when it comes to the resorce consumption rates being affected by those things. I love the graphics, and sound, along with SOME of the crew doing the torpedo solutions....though that still leaves much to be desired. I tried setting up a non auto, 90 degree torpedo run, and thinking I could get the solution, set my scope a few degrees ahead of teh target and wait for my targeted area to cross the lines and firing....I found my torps going to the area the target was at at the time of the solution being made. I tried the manual, and got the same effect. That's not right at all. U-boats unlike Fleet boats lacked a Automatic TDC and the 90 degree shot was standard. Firing at the stern of a retreating vessel was not often done either...which is something that can be done in Uboat.

[CellNav]

There are times when I think I'm playing a "pirate in the 18th century" ... Many hints of that as we all know :

* but ammo and food
* scavenge boxes at sea
* morale and discipline

I'm waiting for the king's daughter to show up at port so I can court her ... :/

EDIT : .... Fun game, just a little strange ... :P

[Pythos]

Originally posted by CellNav:

There are times when I think I'm playing a "pirate in the 18th century" ... Many hints of that as we all know :

* but ammo and food
* scavenge boxes at sea
* morale and discipline

I'm waiting for the king's daughter to show up at port so I can court her ... :/

LOL. To be honest I do like the "looting" cause if I am not mistaken U-boats in the early part of the war, if not later on engaged in some piracy and "booty looting, Aarr". LOL. But seriously, if they were able to scavange from wrecked ships, no matter the nationality, they did. Early war the tactic was when an unarmed merchant was encountered the sub would surface, aim the deck gun at the bridge, and the crew would be ordered to leave. Which they did usually. The U-boat would send some officers and crew over to the merchant while the U-boat would take on the Merchant's captain. The U-boat crew would get whatever they could while claiming the merchant as a war prize...and if the worth was enough, the merchant would be taken over, and sent back to Germany, OR (usually), scavanged for what useful items could be found for the U-boat, and the rest sent to the bottom after the merchant was torpedoed. The captain of the Merchant...at times given wine and a map and general directions to land. THIS is not from the German side reports but the British. The German U-boats were not the savage murderers as depicted in U-571, and gunning down life boats was completely forbidden by Donitz...even to Hitler's chagrin. Only one U-boat commander gave the orders to gun down lifeboats...and upon his return, Donitz had that commander executed.

But back to your point...in away, U-boats were kinda pirates of the high seas for a while....well until convoys, hunter killers, aircraft...oh, and the Lacitonia incident.

[Jacky Treehorn]

Love the fact that you can shoot at a merchant with deck gun so the crew abandons ship and then sink it with a torpedo. Woud be awesome if you could send an away team to search for 'contraband' or check if that supposedly neutral ship isn't secretly transporting ammunition for the british.

Oh just read the above answer. So yeah, we can allready reenact some of it..

[branimir.maksimovic]

Arcade game was scramble, space invaders and such.

[Tenderkaj]

Originally posted by nc5506h:

Originally posted by CellNav:

Only one U-boat commander gave the orders to gun down lifeboats...and upon his return, Donitz had that commander executed.

What was the commander's name?

[Pythos]

Originally posted by Tenderkaj:

Originally posted by nc5506h:

What was the commander's name?

I think it was Eck Looking it up on Uboat.net

[Pythos]

Found it...well found a whole lot. I am mistaken though about Eck being executed by Donitz...apologies...it's been years since reading Donitz's autobiography. This is long...but some fascinating info on the topic of U-boat treatment of their victims. https://uboat.net/articles/55.html

[Pyrrhus]

Compare to this?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/404890/UBoats/

[Jacknine]

I would like to see a 'Hardcore' mode further down the road where you are able to turn certain things off to make it more of a sim, but it is early days at the moment!

[gerald2]

Originally posted by Nippel Talermachos:

Love the fact that you can shoot at a merchant with deck gun so the crew abandons ship and then sink it with a torpedo. Woud be awesome if you could send an away team to search for 'contraband' or check if that supposedly neutral ship isn't secretly transporting ammunition for the british.

Oh just read the above answer. So yeah, we can allready reenact some of it..

such situations when u boats was stopping and inspecting ships happened not so often and only at start of war .later they was ordered to not endanger ship and crew by doing so afaik.

[gerald2]

Originally posted by nc5506h:

This was a comment from another post and it voiced so much I have felt here.

" I think this is also some of the core of the flame wars over time compression. I.e. the historical sim folks want to be able to lurk in open ocean, not watching the birds and skylarking, but listening for hydro contacts at a particular time and place at intervals, put down a bearing line or two and feel the thrill of predicting and finding a target on the open sea. "

My input

Precisely. This is why options are always great. Let us HAVE the option to have automatically updated positions OR have ambiguously accurate position reports given perhaps every hour.

I see people saying that this is mostly a management game...yea, that's great. Do you not think that those skippers of those boats during the war were not managing crew when the crew were plotting intercepts? There were headings to be given, engine orders...hell there were the engines to be sure were being maintained...there was also the tremendous possibility of screwing up an intercept, or blundering into an UNREPORTED convoy, or task force...or the occasional lone hunter killer destroyer, or group of those. You as skipper had to maintain your crews moral, and be sure duties were being performed, and rotation schedules were being maintained ect.

Plotting an intercept hours away, and when enroute encountering a storm, or massive fog, could really mess things up...and this could effect moral of the crew (Das Boot showed this...recall the exasperation of the Chief when YET another radio message was a convoy U-96 could NOT reach due to the weather, which was signaled by the dejected Commander, tossed aside the pencil and protractor and sulked away "too far away". ) This is what I was hoping for, and I don't think I was alone in that. As I have said, it is the Hunt that is part of the "thrill" of Subsims. Having what can only be termed GPS accurate reports, and targeting on a 40s vintage diesel submarine like the Type VII....or indeed even the Type XXI, is not a Uboat sim. Hell, I don't think even 688 attack sub had such things.

I really think people are wanting something like an arcade game, and if that is what the devs truly want...then they need to be very clear, so us veteran subsimmers can go back to SHV (well I'm outta luck since Ubi screwed up my account info...oh yea...remember that about SHV, the REQUIREMENT to be online and logged in with Uplay...a reason I finally left). I LOVE the crew management, though there are definitely issues with it, but the distance/time compression is an issue when it comes to the resorce consumption rates being affected by those things. I love the graphics, and sound, along with SOME of the crew doing the torpedo solutions....though that still leaves much to be desired. I tried setting up a non auto, 90 degree torpedo run, and thinking I could get the solution, set my scope a few degrees ahead of teh target and wait for my targeted area to cross the lines and firing....I found my torps going to the area the target was at at the time of the solution being made. I tried the manual, and got the same effect. That's not right at all. U-boats unlike Fleet boats lacked a Automatic TDC and the 90 degree shot was standard. Firing at the stern of a retreating vessel was not often done either...which is something that can be done in Uboat.

i doubt they fired torps w/o making solutions ,until target was immobilised at least ,can you point source where you got info about shooting torps w/o solutions in WWII times?

[ossi]

I think this game has potential to be Arcade or hardcore Sim.
Because of modding.
Those Silent Hunter series games got heavily modded too.

In this came I think modding will be somewhat easier,
we already got xlxs files to play with, and the console.
And the SDK coming up later.

I'm pretty sure the game will be modded for any kind of playstyle.
Right now it's bug hunting time, we just have to wait and see the
real 1,0 release version.

[gerald2]

Originally posted by ossi:

I think this game has potential to be Arcade or hardcore Sim.
Because of modding.
Those Silent Hunter series games got heavily modded too.

In this came I think modding will be somewhat easier,
we already got xlxs files to play with, and the console.
And the SDK coming up later.

I'm pretty sure the game will be modded for any kind of playstyle.
Right now it's bug hunting time, we just have to wait and see the
real 1,0 release version.

i hope so by allowing modding or add options wchich will make both styles playable they gain more playerbase .

[Jacky Treehorn]

You can fire torps without solution 'from the hip'. If you come in from the right angle and at 800m-1000m it's hard not to hit. That's why the surface attacks at night were prefered (early war), even though the UZO did not really permit accurate firing solution, but relied heavily on guesswork.

[Jacky Treehorn]

" I think this is also some of the core of the flame wars over time compression. I.e. the historical sim folks want to be able to lurk in open ocean, not watching the birds and skylarking, but listening for hydro contacts at a particular time and place at intervals, put down a bearing line or two and feel the thrill of predicting and finding a target on the open sea. "

Sometimes I enjoy just watching simulated ocean for duration of a cigarete wich was nice in SH but not as pretty as it could be today. So more options is never a bad thing. Couldn't buy Bomber Crew wich is somewhat similar because they did not give pause option.. Hate it when games decide how I have to play them.