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Kresge
Joined: 25 Dec 2001
Posts: 441
Location: The Motor City
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 Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 12:13 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, we'll just have to wait until we get more details on the setup to find out how 'dynamic' it is. From I've seen in the posts it can be anywhere from as dynamic as SH1 patrols to as scripted as SH2 missions. I wish somebody (maybe Neal or a dev. team member) would make it a point to address this all-important issue for us!
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mystery meat
Joined: 22 Nov 2002
Posts: 268
Location: Little Rhody
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 12:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Everyone seems most worried that the missions will be like SHII (I.E. Sink 8,000 tons of enemy shipping to proceed") Where is there any indication of this? |
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Hanz
Joined: 22 Nov 2002
Posts: 8
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 1:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | So you mean that in reality the U-boat commandor would get a choice out of a three assignments from BdU upon returning to the home base and that he would not have to sail through dangerous Biscay to seriously risk his life and the lifes of his crew in order to get to the patrol zone |
Where in my post do you read that I like the player to get a choice what mission he wants? I would like to have the missions based on how you performed in earlier missions, i.e. you shouldn't be assigned to do a raid on Scapa Flow if you haven't performed well in earlier missions.
| Quote: | | and after doing a number of patrols, the U-boat commandor would know exactly what the enemy will do because British and American would run out of the scripted scenarios of the war encounters. Does it stand for historical credibility and flexibility? Because that's what SH3 seems to offer. |
Only because the orders for a mission can be the same when you play the game over again it doesn't mean the AI should behavie the same, if you have sunk many carriers in earlier missions you shouln't be as likely to run into a new one as if you hadn't etc.
I don't want a game where the standing order is "go out and sink as many ships you can and do it where and how you like it." That for sure doesn't stand for historical credibility and flexibility! |
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sergbuto
Joined: 14 Sep 2002
Posts: 2530
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 1:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Hanz wrote: | | Where in my post do you read that I like the player to get a choice what mission he wants? . |
It is not you. It is what SH3 offers: a choice out of three scripted scenarios with random elements for the next patrol.
| Hanz wrote: | | Only because the orders for a mission can be the same when you play the game over again it doesn't mean the AI should behavie the same |
Unfortunately, that is how things are usually, in scripted scenarios. |
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Neal Stevens
Joined: 25 Jan 1997
Posts: 3517
Location: Houston, Texas
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 3:01 pm Post subject: |
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| sergbuto wrote: |
So you mean that in reality the U-boat commandor would get a choice out of a three assignments from BdU upon returning to the home base ... |
Note: I've since amended this. I believe what Tiberius was telling me was that the game will select one of 3 missions in the branch, not the player. He also pointed out the player can continue to remain in the patrol zone well after the allotted time, it just means that instead of the normal allottment of the next three missions the game would have to select from, it would select one of three further down the line chronologically.
Also, keep in mind, my article is based on an alpha game, as told to a Texan, by a Romainian developer in English, amid a lot of E3 noise and lights, lol, so I will wait and see how it plays out when they send me a beta build. That will give me a better impression of the campaign and gameplay. All I can tell you for sure at this point was
a.) the dev team are very tuned in to the Subsim community--they told me this several times, with plenty of respect for what you have to say. I was very flattered to be told that they were expecting Subsim Review to see them at E3 
b.) From what I saw, campaign and all, I was not feeling "oh crap, this doesn't look fun or realistic", quite the opposite. I had to reply on a lot of discipline not to kiss them and thank them!
How will the final version come out? I don't know. Do I have any reservations or concerns? Yes, minor concerns. I agree with the dynamic campaign backers, I hope the campaign has enough dynamic, chance encounters and randomness to avoid the canned SH2 mission feel. Remember, I loved Sh2 enough to devote around 120 hours making the "Second Kampign" where I tried to replicate an Aces type campaign, from leaving the port to sailing to a patrol zone, and random encounters, convoys, etc. The SH2 game engine limited the effectiveness (Hitman did a much better job than me with his campaign tools!). I think the current SH3 campaign will be okay, at least as good as SH1. It all depends on the chance encounters factor that Florin and Tiberius assured me would be included.
Other concerns are how realistic the enemy AI is. It looks okay at this point, possibly very good. Tiberius demonstrated how the DDs will have abilities to find your sub or lose contact, chase a false contact, etc. along the same lines as you might expect the real thing to do. However, he did say something about ensuring the sub vs DD battles are balanced to make them interesting, "the whole point of the subsim is the battle between sub and escort" (to paraphrase him from memory). Not sinking ships....
I do not agree. I feel the whole point of a U-boat subsim is to give the player the feeling of really being at sea in a U-boat, give him the feeling he is a skipper on a real boat, to task him with locating, shadowing, and sinking merchies without being detected by escorts, and when detected and attacked by escorts, to struggle to evade and lose them and stay alive. To me, that's Das Boot in a nutshell. (I would be very interested to hear from all of you on what your idea of a U-boat subsim is too).
Now, before anyone panics, let me say I think the dev team "gets it". The escorts will be hard to torpedo, they pointed out the" DD's beam is narrow and they change course a lot". They agreed that good, realistic, competant but not uber DD AI is essential to have a good game. All these things are good, I'm just not sure there is a lot of historical validity in U-boat vs DD head-to-head battles. In my view, just as I say in WPL battles, any U-boat skipper who wants to take on an escort should expect to miss 75% of the time and get sunk in return about 75% of the time. Historical numbers reflect along those lines. Sam Dealy was the greatest DD hunter of all sub skippers, he sank 5 in three days, but eventually it cost his life, his crew, and the Harder.
Enigma does a good job of having DDs see and dodge torpedoes. In Enigma, you know better than to take on DDs, because they can then catch you at a shallow depth and end your patrol 
I hope you guys trust me enough to know I am not trying to sell you on SH3. I defended SH2 a lot because I knew first-hand of the difficulties the dev team had in just getting it done. I knew how hard they worked and how much time and effort they put into it. SH3 is not being created under such circumstances. The dev team is doing a fine job, I believe that and E3 confirmed it in my mind.
cheers
Neal
Last edited by Neal Stevens on Sat May 15, 2004 3:32 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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Neal Stevens
Joined: 25 Jan 1997
Posts: 3517
Location: Houston, Texas
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 3:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Kresge wrote: | | Of course U-Boats were sent out for many days and not hours. How many people have time to spend a week glued to their computer and ignoring all other aspects of life??? Has anyone thought of that? I'll bet that if they did allow us to sail out of port and sail all the way to the patrol zone nearly everybody would crank up their time compression to get there, no? |
That's exactly right. In Aces, you left port and used TC at 2048x until the game found a chance encounter and dropped you to 1x. SH3 will do much the same. |
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JJ
Joined: 22 Apr 2004
Posts: 879
Location: Oulu, Finland
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 3:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Neal Stevens wrote: | (I would be very interested to hear from all of you on what your idea of a U-boat subsim is too).
cheers
Neal |
Well... for me U-Boat subsim is pretty much the same what you already mentioned. The feeling of being the captain of U-Boat out in the open seas, patroling areas, searching enemy ships.
Watching and listening for the enemy, tracking them down, making plans and then striking when they least expect it. And all the time trying to stay as silent and invisible as possible, like some sort of stealth assassin.
I like to think subsims as slow paced "strategy games" rather than "action-games". I don't need to get into any head-to-head duels with DD's or any other enemy boats. I just wanna do my thing and get the hell out of there before the enemy gets the time to think who-what-where-when and how 
And if things really get fubar and I get DD's on my tail, then maybe I'd use already destroyed ships as shields and covers while trying to outsmart and loose the enemy and finally disappear in to the murky depths of the Atlantic, leaving nothing more than scattered, smoking convoy in my wake.
-JJ |
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les green01
Joined: 10 Jan 2002
Posts: 288
Location: East Lynne,Missouri
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 3:58 pm Post subject: |
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| My idea of a u-boat subsim is this,i like to have the feeeling i'm there,my job as a skipper is to sink ships and have the crew survive,fact is merchants and major warships should be the target not the dd,because a dd isn't worth the fish to use,course if a dd jig or jag in one of my fish i wouldn't shed a tear,i want to be able to struggle to evade them and lose them to say alive,right now i have a wait and see look about buying the game,I'm going to read neal report and make my decision. |
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Thunderhorse
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Posts: 58
Location: Poplarville, MS
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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The point of a u-boat subsim is to stealthfully hunt/shadow/attack enemy shipping without being detected....and if detected, take the necessary measures to escape with your and your crew's lives....all while trying to sink as much enemy tonnage as possible. By the developers saying that the point of the subsim is the u-boat vs the escort, I really hope that they don't make it to where your spending most of your time attacking escorts instead of being able to sneak up on a convoy undetected and attacking the merchants, or carrying out an attack on merchants even though being detected. From the sound of it, to me anyways, it sounds like they're planning on making the subsim action oriented with intense engagements between the u-boat and convoy escorts with sinking merchants a secondary priority. If this is indeed true, then this is obviously to make the game accessible to action-oriented players. While certainly brave and perhaps reckless commanders would decide to take on escorts instead of persuing merchants, if the game is going to be "sim", it needs to "sim" the way an actual war patrol was undertaken, and historically u-boats endeavored to evade convoy escorts once detected, instead of charging full speed ahead and engaging them. Anyways, my 2 cents
-Thunderhorse- |
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america person
Joined: 01 Mar 2004
Posts: 1309
Location: fairfax, VA, near D.C
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 5:56 pm Post subject: |
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and it was a good use of your two cents i might add  |
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Thunderhorse
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Posts: 58
Location: Poplarville, MS
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 6:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Why thank you! |
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Oberst Oswald
Joined: 15 May 2004
Posts: 7
Location: New Jersey, USA
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 10:45 pm Post subject: |
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| First...hello everyone. In the Ubi forums I go by SOF_Timber but I'll use my Panzer Elite name here. The question I have, that I don't think has been addressed yet, is there any information at the show about the multiplayer coop aspect of SH3? |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 10:38 am Post subject: |
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From what I have read and am reading, multiplayer will be pretty lame.
Co-op or sub vs. sub missions only, no player controlled escorts.
Now I am seeing that multiplayer may only be up to 4 players. |
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america person
Joined: 01 Mar 2004
Posts: 1309
Location: fairfax, VA, near D.C
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 11:31 am Post subject: |
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| Thunderhorse; your welcome |
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U56
Joined: 22 Nov 2002
Posts: 196
Location: Rockall
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 12:58 pm Post subject: |
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[/quote]
Also, keep in mind, my article is based on an alpha game, as told to a Texan, by a Romainian developer in English, amid a lot of E3 noise and lights, lol,
[/quote]
Lol  I sure laughed when I read this, the mind boggles at the potential for confusion here!!! Chinese whispers
Seriously Neal, thanks for your updates. I am one who hoped for an Aod style campaign, but have to agree that nearly all the time I put the game in high time compression until a random encounter developed. I do hope the Dev Team will program the random encounters to coincide with the time in the war, as in many single ship encounters early on, getting less as the war progresses, and increasing amounts of random encounters with aircraft as one crosses the Bay of Biscay after 1942 if your route takes you through the bay. A lot will hinge on how the patrol zone is designed. If you stay after your time will random convoys etc still occur?, will there be a difficulty or realism setting in the game to modify the number of encounters that occur during your time in the zone, so hardcore players will not encounter unrealistic numbers of contacts? Ideally the game will hopefully include something like a "Beginner", "Intermediate", and "Realistic" option with the campaign to govern how many encounters you are likely to... errr....encounter!
Regards |
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