improvements - Silent hunter 5 did it better...

[Delayed_Revelations]

just a few quality of life reccomendations, if you would like to see them implemented like me, +1 in the comments to get attention from devs.

please note, all reccomendations are ones already in silent hunter 5 that i think should be braught over. and also i make factual claims to ww2 realism, and im not a historian, if any of my facts are wrong then factual correctness is welcome as long as its polite.

1. The map with ship icons makes it too easy, especially when they are only in sonar range. Silent hunter 5 demonstrated a good map overlay and didnt use ship icons, instead it represented the bearing of a detected vessel with a line, and simply a verbal communication of wether the distance was close, medium range or far. This kindve limited information on your map, was still enough for you to make informed decisions on positioning and what depth you want to be at. Yet it made it so much fun to come up to periscope depth, not knowing 100 percent wether the ship was right ontop of you or at a safe distance. Infact it takes skill to position yourself correctly in silent hunter 5. Whilst in uboat, its more like an arcade game because you get given too much information. Ship icons showing the exact locations is just too easy and unrealistic.

2. Verbal ship bearing communicated to you. Again, silent hunter 5 did this. when a new ship is detected, the officer calls out the bearing as well as rough distance. You also have the option to request that officer focus his efforts on a particular ship, calling out the bearings of that ship anytime the bearing changes. This would go well with the removal of ship icons on the map, allowing for another way of collecting information on ships thats actually realistic.

3. SPEED!!.. Uboats surface speed was 17 knots, and underwater speed was 7 knots. Freighters typically travelled between 9 and 15 knots. and destroyers upto 45 knots. In this game i can literally overtake a convoy underwater. i just dont think this is realistic.. in silent hunter 5, you moved slower than ships whilst underwater, therefore you had to get far enough away, surface the ship, calculate enemy ship course, and full steam ahead on the surface and set up your ambush ahead of convoy... If you missed your chance whilst the convoy passes, you must repeat the above step, i dont think you should be able to overtake the convoy whilst your 100 meters down...

4 Better map tools. I highly reccomend a dev play silent hunter 5 and look how they did the map. There was even tutorials on how to triangulate enemy ship positions just like they did in ww2.

I love uboat, its an amazing game. in an ideal world i would like to see these changes implemented as options when you start a new game. because they are not for everyone. However i do believe alot of people will appreciate it

[captainpanda34]

+1 for #2 and #3
i'd like to have verbal comunication on speed selected: slow, flank,...(not just faster faster !)
and headings. And keyboard shortcuts for dive, straigth, full left/right ruder, etc..

[TinTin]

+1 I'd still play SH 5, but it often crashes with mods.

[jackpalanca]

+1

[Royal Raven]

#1, I can see Devs adding in an option to make map more realistic, but if not, there is a mod that removes all map contacts or gives less info.

#2, the Devs are still going to add in more Verbal things. Right now you get a limit of verbal information from Officers, I believe devs said they are going to add in more voice overs.

#3, I am not sure about what is better. I am not a historian. But I think convoys might of went the max speed of the slowest ship. Usually I catch right back up to the Convoy running on the surface if it allows me. Only time I run underwater is during most attacks or hiding from Destroyers. I am sure other players can add their input on this.

#4, We might see this come also, but its defiantly something the modders want to do, but can not right now, with limited ability.

The Devs here have been pushing this game ahead and beyond anything I seen so far with any Uboat game, but since it is EA, it will take some time.

This last year updates, the B129, was a huge update to the game so far that added a lot of QoL stuff. Before B129, I did not play the game much, I felt some things were missing, but after B129, it brought me back and I am waiting for larger future updates.

[bogazkele23]

very good new patch U boat to be more nice

[Nz0]

i agree, hydrophone guy reporting instantly the exact bearing and distance of ALL ships, that's pure ballshit.
(currently without mods this game is not a sim)

[Jin Mack]

i agree, atm this game is far too reliant on mods, so sick of each new update being a dice roll on which mods are still compatible, its become a literal mini-game of working out which mods are needed before starting the actual game, sometimes takes hours. I shouldnt have to mod something super simple like realistic oxygen, or ship ID book. The devs are thinking "Oh we dont have to fix that atm, players can just use the mod" its lazy, counter-productive, and is delaying the overall completion of the vanilla game.

OP is right on every point, its hardly a sim when you can just look at the map and see a perfect model of all ships sizes, positions and speeds, in heavy fog, with 0 visibility, i could still zoom out on the map and see the enemy ships, but could see nothing on my periscope.

Claiming to be a sim game, shouldnt the MOST BASIC sim elements, like your speed, enemy speed, oxygen and fuel levels, visibility, be done FIRST, then take care of all the other superficial bonus stuff later, seems all your updates are just meaningless stuff i really dont want or need, while avoiding the critical elements that make this game upplayable without mods.

Personally, id like to see the workshop closed completely, with it only being opened again once the vanilla game is completed. Mods are meant to give an added option for a game, they arent meant to be duct tape that hold the actual game together while it does other things.

[Pyrrhus]

Never myself have played SH5 after my last straw with SH4. Remember how buggy it was with SH3, even some bugs still existed with Grey Wolf mod. SH5 requires Uplay launcher and Ubisoft tend to no longer support their games with updating patches after one year or so. They have lost huge player base from SH3. Many gamers no longer want to support Ubisoft by not buying their products anymore. What happened to old tenet for companies? Rule number one, customer is always right. Rule number two, if a customer is wrong, see rule number one. But today's tenet, the companies own you because too many lemmings are so willing to throw away their money at them.

[urseus]

Originally posted by Jin Maq:

i agree, atm this game is far too reliant on mods,
Personally, id like to see the workshop closed completely, with it only being opened again once the vanilla game is completed. Mods are meant to give an added option for a game, they arent meant to be duct tape that hold the actual game together while it does other things.

Do not listen to this lunatic. It's important to balance game play and realism for new players, and mod the super realism in for those who want it.

I hate games that don't have an active modding cummunity, because you have no options to fix something you hate.

This isn't EA games, is a small studio. If you people had your wish the game would not be released yet. If you are angry then don't play it yet. Pretend it's not out and wait till the final release.

[Camomille]

+1 Urseus.
Like it or not, afaik, UBOAT seems close to completion. In vanilla, it hits a nice balance being a sim game with some unrealistic parts to be casual friendly, while well-working mods are available for a more hardcore experience.

Since I play this game (early B129), mods are mostly unaffected by game updates. I really don't understand how one could spend hours on sorting mods.

It is a small but very active and tied community : devs are in contact with some modders. Maybe maybe some mods will be included in the base game, before or after official release.

[Dewgle]

Originally posted by Delayed_Revelations:

1. The map with ship icons makes it too easy

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2230136199
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2518835584

Use both of these mods in conjunction with each other to remove the 'god camera' and the ship icons from the map. With these two mods, the only icon you will see on the map is your own boat.

But, there's an even better mod that came out recently called Real Navigation that removes all ship icons from the map and adds a slew of new features that force the player to take a position fix with a sextant reading, or an estimated position fix if there are clouds or if the player is submerged.

This mod should also satisfy your second recommendation:

Originally posted by Delayed_Revelations:

2. Verbal ship bearing communicated to you.

Alligator, creator of the Real Navigation mod also added in relative bearing call-outs for all contacts that your officers detect. These call-outs are in text form only, apologies but perhaps soon we'll be able to add our own custom voice-lines into the mod as well.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2618451929

Originally posted by Delayed_Revelations:

3. SPEED!!.. Uboats surface speed was 17 knots, and underwater speed was 7 knots. Freighters typically travelled between 9 and 15 knots.

This is a known issue, the consensus is that smaller fixes like randomizing convoy speed other than the constant 7 knots are on the back-burner while the devs race to complete their promised roadmap first.

Also, there is an incredibly talented modder named Eagle who just recently joined the Uboat community Discord server and is working on a mod to let you change your boat's speed manually. If you want to run at exactly 5 knots? Now you can.

Originally posted by Delayed_Revelations:

4 Better map tools.

Another popular request and funny story about that. Two members of the modding community, creators of the very popular TDC mod have actually joined the dev team and one of them is a skilled artist in UI design. So perhaps soon we'll see further improvements to the user interface and map tools.

I actually agree with many of your suggestions. But I also agreed with them when I saw them the first time someone posted them in a past thread. I'm glad you're enjoying the game and I'm happy to see more folks who want the same things out Uboat that I do.

But many of your suggestions are already in the game now in the form of mods, or will be modded into the game very soon.

Originally posted by Delayed_Revelations:

I love uboat, its an amazing game. in an ideal world i would like to see these changes implemented as options when you start a new game. because they are not for everyone. However i do believe alot of people will appreciate it

I hope you'll be just as enthusiastic when everything you want is added to the game as a mod. Mods are what carried the Silent Hunter community for as long as it did.

[⚓ 🅵🅸🅴🅳🅻🅴🆁]

Silent hunter 5 did it better...?

Seriously? You really mean that completely broken game by Ubisoft?

[Bobby]

I loved the automatic ‘whispering’ from the crew and the tension in SH5 when ships were detected. The immersive part of that alone endeared me to the sim. Remember encounters in the fog or bad weather where ships would go right past you or you them! Couldn’t see 30ft!!
The other thing that I liked about that was you would give a simple command to one officer (say the conning tower) and he would feed it down the chain and it would filter out to the entire Sub-systems it was relevant to.
Every sub sim has good and bad, but very rarely does one get it correct other than SH3. Bearing in mind, I’m talking about owning them from day of release and a different era from gamers perspectives today. Anyone can say “this is better than that, today” but it wasn’t back then.
Like there’s been nothing to beat Falcon 3/4, EF2000, Mig Alley, Flying Corps etc.
That’s why I still play them all as each has something that ticks my box for an evening.

[Urfisch]

I recommend you wait for the weeks before final release to see, what is upcoming :) one thing, voiceover, is already confirmed to be improved

[Ultra]

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

I loved the automatic ‘whispering’ from the crew and the tension in SH5 when ships were detected. The immersive part of that alone endeared me to the sim. Remember encounters in the fog or bad weather where ships would go right past you or you them! Couldn’t see 30ft!!
The other thing that I liked about that was you would give a simple command to one officer (say the conning tower) and he would feed it down the chain and it would filter out to the entire Sub-systems it was relevant to.
Every sub sim has good and bad, but very rarely does one get it correct other than SH3. Bearing in mind, I’m talking about owning them from day of release and a different era from gamers perspectives today. Anyone can say “this is better than that, today” but it wasn’t back then.
Like there’s been nothing to beat Falcon 3/4, EF2000, Mig Alley, Flying Corps etc.
That’s why I still play them all as each has something that ticks my box for an evening.

SH4 with FOTRS is dam good and comes close i think to SH3 greatness. I think its the best balance in series between graphics and gameplay. I still play SH4 and its the reason i havent picked UBOAT up yet and likely wont until its release.