State of manual TDC after 5-years

[XLjedi]

Mid-year 2019, I loaded this game and played for about 8 hours. I uninstalled it when I realized it was the Sims on a boat.

The absolute deal killer for me at the time was no ability to manually takeover and enter my own TDC solutions. Working out the intercept and attack solutions was what I loved about the SH3/4 games. I read all the historical submarine accounts of the famous skippers, digested their tactics and was able to apply them in the game. I loved it.

I tried UBoat and the firing solutions were all managed by countdown timers. It was a huge disappointment. I shelved the game and thought, "It's still EA, maybe someday it will be worth revisiting." Keep in mind, 5 years ago, I believe it was like 4 years into development.

It's been 5 years and a couple weeks... the game now is what? almost a decade into development? Yesterday, I decided to raise the banished wreckage from the depths of the ocean and reinstall it. I hold out hope that the game will now allow me to disable autosoluion timers, grant access to the firing solution knobs, and allow me to engage the TDC solution to the periscope so I can play the Skipper/XO again.

Alright, here we go... "PLAY" [click]

[The cursed Jäger]

In the stable, no. In the Unstable, yes. The Unstable has a TDC, many new knobs for torpedo stuff I yet have to use and other things.

[cato]

Originally posted by XLjedi:

Mid-year 2019, I loaded this game and played for about 8 hours. I uninstalled it when I realized it was the Sims on a boat.

The absolute deal killer for me at the time was no ability to manually takeover and enter my own TDC solutions. Working out the intercept and attack solutions was what I loved about the SH3/4 games. I read all the historical submarine accounts of the famous skippers, digested their tactics and was able to apply them in the game. I loved it.

I tried UBoat and the firing solutions were all managed by countdown timers. It was a huge disappointment. I shelved the game and thought, "It's still EA, maybe someday it will be worth revisiting." Keep in mind, 5 years ago, I believe it was like 4 years into development.

It's been 5 years and a couple weeks... the game now is what? almost a decade into development? Yesterday, I decided to raise the banished wreckage from the depths of the ocean and reinstall it. I hold out hope that the game will now allow me to disable autosoluion timers, grant access to the firing solution knobs, and allow me to engage the TDC solution to the periscope so I can play the Skipper/XO again.

Alright, here we go... "PLAY" [click]

How does 5 years equate to almost a decade?

And yes, the most realistic tdc ever programmed in a game has not long been released on the unstable branch for some final testing before the glorious and upcoming full release.

[XLjedi]

Originally posted by cato:

Originally posted by XLjedi:

Mid-year 2019, I loaded this game and played for about 8 hours. I uninstalled it when I realized it was the Sims on a boat.

The absolute deal killer for me at the time was no ability to manually takeover and enter my own TDC solutions. Working out the intercept and attack solutions was what I loved about the SH3/4 games. I read all the historical submarine accounts of the famous skippers, digested their tactics and was able to apply them in the game. I loved it.

I tried UBoat and the firing solutions were all managed by countdown timers. It was a huge disappointment. I shelved the game and thought, "It's still EA, maybe someday it will be worth revisiting." Keep in mind, 5 years ago, I believe it was like 4 years into development.

It's been 5 years and a couple weeks... the game now is what? almost a decade into development? Yesterday, I decided to raise the banished wreckage from the depths of the ocean and reinstall it. I hold out hope that the game will now allow me to disable autosoluion timers, grant access to the firing solution knobs, and allow me to engage the TDC solution to the periscope so I can play the Skipper/XO again.

Alright, here we go... "PLAY" [click]

How does 5 years equate to almost a decade?

And yes, the most realistic tdc ever programmed in a game has not long been released on the unstable branch for some final testing before the glorious and upcoming full release.

When I was playing 5 years ago... at the time, the game was about 4 years into development.

So TDC control is about to be released? I may have returned at just the right time.

[Cristi]

we had a TDC mod that works for stable version for at least 2 years

[XLjedi]

Originally posted by Cristi:

we had a TDC mod that works for stable version for at least 2 years

So a mod is required to manually control firing solution?

[The cursed Jäger]

Originally posted by XLjedi:

So a mod is required to manually control firing solution?

No we do not. There's no TDC in the Stable build but one can still disable auto-aim and do all the math themselves. The TDC mod is just a nice add-on for L'immersion.
For the Unstable, the TDC has been incorporated.

[XLjedi]

Originally posted by The cursed Jäger:

Originally posted by XLjedi:

So a mod is required to manually control firing solution?

No we do not. There's no TDC in the Stable build but one can still disable auto-aim and do all the math themselves. The TDC mod is just a nice add-on for L'immersion.
For the Unstable, the TDC has been incorporated.

Am I allowed to disengage the TDC from attack scope view, manually enter solution via dials, for distance, speed, AoB, etc. then reengage the TDC so the solution updates as I pan the scope? If so, I will be able to hunt once again!

[cato]

Originally posted by XLjedi:

Originally posted by cato:

How does 5 years equate to almost a decade?

And yes, the most realistic tdc ever programmed in a game has not long been released on the unstable branch for some final testing before the glorious and upcoming full release.

When I was playing 5 years ago... at the time, the game was about 4 years into development.

So TDC control is about to be released? I may have returned at just the right time.

Think there is only 3 devs working on this and I believe one may have passed away during development so I would cut them some slack dude. This isn't ubisoft who were behind the silent hunter series and would have had dozens if not hundreds of staff working on those games.

And they still managed to make a mess of those games, if it wasn't for modders those games would've been unplayabled back in the day, but then if you've played those games then you will know this lol

Yeah the new tdc was only released a few weeks ago and if you like realism then you are in for a treat.

[XLjedi]

Originally posted by cato:

Originally posted by XLjedi:

When I was playing 5 years ago... at the time, the game was about 4 years into development.

So TDC control is about to be released? I may have returned at just the right time.

Think there is only 3 devs working on this and I believe one may have passed away during development so I would cut them some slack dude. This isn't ubisoft who were behind the silent hunter series and would have had dozens if not hundreds of staff working on those games.

And they still managed to make a mess of those games, if it wasn't for modders those games would've been unplayabled back in the day, but then if you've played those games then you will know this lol

Yeah the new tdc was only released a few weeks ago and if you like realism then you are in for a treat.

Cut them some slack? I have not bashed them in any way. In fact, I just finished the first 2 tutorials and the game has progressed tremendously in 5 years! I am so far tickled with everything I am seeing.

[cato]

Originally posted by XLjedi:

Originally posted by cato:

Think there is only 3 devs working on this and I believe one may have passed away during development so I would cut them some slack dude. This isn't ubisoft who were behind the silent hunter series and would have had dozens if not hundreds of staff working on those games.

And they still managed to make a mess of those games, if it wasn't for modders those games would've been unplayabled back in the day, but then if you've played those games then you will know this lol

Yeah the new tdc was only released a few weeks ago and if you like realism then you are in for a treat.

Cut them some slack? I have not bashed them in any way. In fact, I just finished the first 2 tutorials and the game has progressed tremendously in 5 years! I am so far tickled with everything I am seeing.

All good mate i was just explaining why development has taken this long.

Glad you are enjoying it we're on the home run now. Game is very moddable as well so it will cater for all tastes, future looks bright for subsimming

[Urfisch]

Originally posted by The cursed Jäger:

Originally posted by XLjedi:

So a mod is required to manually control firing solution?

No we do not. There's no TDC in the Stable build but one can still disable auto-aim and do all the math themselves. The TDC mod is just a nice add-on for L'immersion.
For the Unstable, the TDC has been incorporated.

To be fair, the mod was more than that :) but it has its limitation when it comes to lut or fat. The newly added tdc in the game is much more complete and a very good simulation of the original device. You can do all settings manually.

[Cristi]

Originally posted by XLjedi:

Originally posted by Cristi:

we had a TDC mod that works for stable version for at least 2 years

So a mod is required to manually control firing solution?

If you want to control the firing solution manually, yes, it's called "(2022.1) TDC MOD (TVh-Re/S3)", but don't forget it's for the stable version and as someone already mentioned it can't handle advanced torpedoes.

[XLjedi]

Originally posted by FreekOly (aka Urfisch):

To be fair, the mod was more than that :) but it has its limitation when it comes to lut or fat. The newly added tdc in the game is much more complete and a very good simulation of the original device. You can do all settings manually.

This is what I wanted to hear. Will happily wait patiently for the release of that one. As for the mod and advanced torpedoes... I use to outfit my VIIC with all of the old steam torps just so I could watch the trails advancing toward my targets. The FAT and LUT patterns are least of my concerns, although cool that the new TDC will somehow accommodate them in special ways.

[emilkant]

You have returned at just the right time then.

The current beta has two separate TDCs modeled, both with different historical capabilities.. If you've played a lot of SH, then the T. V. Re. S2 is closest to what you're used to.

I've been playing SH for years and had always assumed that the "TDC was the TDC." I knew nothing about different TDC models with different capabilities. It's a nice addition to the game.

The beta still has some bugs to work out, but I haven't had any issue hitting targets with no map contacts on, even with the more primitive TDC in the Type IIA.

[ramjbjb]

For the record: I also tried UBOAT very early on in early access, and I also didn't care too much for how arcadey it was.

A few months ago I came back, gave it a try with mods that added realism to it. It's a completely different animal from early access. So much so that I began a campaign series in my YT channel.

AS for whatever you want to think of it...just watch an actual in-game attack, and decide by yourself. If you choose to keep on watching, I recently started an "unstable beta" campaign, where you'll see a lot of the new things the unstable branch beta includes (that will be in the regular game in release). The first 15 minutes of this video include an attack on a lone merchant I found in the north sea, where you can see what you need to do in order to conduct a proper attack with high realism settings (manual torpedo aiming).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWgW8aPP8Ok&ab_channel=ramjb

Campaign is on the playlist.


Personal opinion of mine and reccomendation. Unmodded UBOAT stable beta (meaning: what is going to be the soon to be released game) is leaps and bounds better than SH3/SH4 ever were when unmodded.
Modded SH3/SH4 (with any of the historical megamods, particularily so things like GWX) is still quite better. But UBOAT is going to have (already has, even if they obviously won't work in the beta version) a massive amount of mods that will put the game at the same level, if not above, than any modded SH game. They are somewhat different games (UBOAT puts a lot more emphasis on crew management), but UBOAT, at least on high realism settings, certainly delivers a very good experience for a WW2 subsim, and it's well worth it.


TL:DR: take the advice of someone who also thought it was too arcadey 5 years ago: Give it a serious try again, you won't regret it :)