[Deamon]

Ok guys if you have wishes that you would like to see in a WWI subsim than post them here please

Deamon

[DAB]

[Oesten]

Realism. Especially in terms of the campaign.

Lots of single ships sailing all over the world - very few ships were sunk in convoy in WWI, compared to how many were sunk sailing alone.

Crew modelling, like SHIII the sub should have a crew. The skill of the crew will affect the performance of the boat in combat.

An unskilled crew might even make a mistake when diving, leave a valve open, and result in your boat sinking to the bottom without the enemy having needed to drop a single depth charge. This was more common in WWI, when submarines were new and somewhat unsafe and unreliable.

Destroyers shouldn't have depth charges until 1916. Until then the submarine can only be sunk by surface gunfire or by mines.

Mines should be a major problem in WWI. Biggest killer of U-boats in that way. Belts of them in the English Channel especially, and the North Sea later.

Aircraft - patrolling seaplanes were common in 1917-18. They can't really destroy a sub unless they get a direct hit with a bomb. But they can at least report you by wireless and send a destroyer patrol heading in your direction.

Warships to sink as well as merchants.

Q-ships.

Some way of penalising the player's career if he disobeys standing orders, like sinking ships without warning in 1914 or 1916. That will force them to come up to the surface and shoot it out with guns.

Merchants that can be ordered to heave to and abandon ship. Very common in WWI, most merchants didn't resist for long when caught alone. The U-boat merely sank the stationary ship afterwards. A few will resist to the end, others will stop after they've taken a few hits from your deck gun, and many (especially neutrals) will stop at once and do what they're told.

Boarding and demolition parties would be great! That way you can sink merchants without even using up torpedoes and cannon shells.

Lots of very small anti-submarine craft (trawlers). Very slow, very poorly armed, no depth charges, but Britain had 3,000 of them. And they can call in the big destroyers when they spot a U-boat.

Help from the German surface fleet would be nice. A few light cruisers can nip out from Belgium and drive away the British destroyers temporarily. Might save your butt one day.

Zeppelins on patrol over the North Sea reporting ships for you. Only one or two of them airborne at once, and they are very slow, but better than no air recon at all.

[Deamon]

Thanks for the first replys guys. I hope more people will express their wishes. But i see so far whe have very common wishes.

[Oesten]

Dynamic campaign would be best. Simply sail the U-boat to a high traffic area, submerge, and wait for the targets to pass by.

Attacking convoys was no more difficult in WWI than in WWII. Except that there were no wolfpacks, so the U-boats had to attack alone. And the U-boat crews weren't trained to attack convoys. Most of the time, U-boat commanders in WWI simply didn't want to take the risk of engaging a convoy, when there were still enough lone merchants around to provide much easier pickings.

The convoys in WWI were small, about 12-24 ships, and were heavily escorted for their size, 4-8 escorts. Usually 2-4 destroyers, and the rest armed trawlers. With so many escorts guarding so few ships, attacking such convoys was fairly difficult for a lone U-boat. Stragglers were common and the U-boats always went for stragglers first.

The German surface fleet was a threat to convoys between Bergen in Norway and Britain. On 16 October 1917, two fast German light cruisers, Brummer and Bremse, attacked a convoy consisting of 12 merchants, 2 destroyers and 2 armed trawlers. The convoy was wiped out except for 3 merchants that managed to escape. The German cruisers then evaded British cruiser patrols and escaped.

On 12 December 1917, four German destroyers attacked a convoy of 6 merchants, 2 destroyers and 4 armed trawlers. The Germans wiped out this convoy with only one crippled British destroyer surviving, and suffered no losses themselves.

There were a few occassions when the Germans sortied cruisers or even battlecruisers in attempts to inflict loss on the British destroyer and cruiser patrols. Two such incidents where in November 1917 and April 1918, but were generally unsuccessful.

[Deamon]

[ABBAFAN]

LOVELY STUFF!!!!!!

my list of things;

1 bridge and deck views
2 authentic torpedo and gun aim and fire
3 parrafin powered uboats that can blow up(as im sure some must have)
4 torpedoes that perform like ww1 types
5 visual signaling methods(flags lamps etc)
5b primitive morse wireless
6 gramaphone with poular ww1 music
7 being able to ccontrol boat with boarding party in
8 authentic early war rules of engagement
9 airships that can be shot at mabye blimps too
10 lots of smoke from coal fired ships
11 authentic ship types
12 possible friendly fire
13 enemy subs mines nets
14 missions of historical significance such as dardanelles scapa flow and things involving crevice like coastal places
15 perhaps nasty weather that smacks uboat to bits
16 sea wildlife



any of these features would be nice.

[Deamon]

[2019]

[Deamon]

[gdogghenrikson]

I wish SH4 was ww1 based

[Deamon]

[Xeidos2]

Parrafin was the fuel used in some of the earliest submarines. It's basically melted wax. It would usually leave a big white column of exhaust smoke. One German submarine officer said that he felt like the children of Isreal in the Bible story of Exodus because they always had this big white cloud hanging over them where ever they went. Parafin had other problems and was quickly replaced once diseal engines became available.

[Deamon]

[Xeidos2]

In the book titled, Submarine Boats, in chapter 15, there's an article written by the XO onboard the U-9 before the war, and shortly after the start of the war. In this article he describes life aboard the early submarines. There's a paragraph where he writes that the submarine had four parrafin engines. It's implied that he was writting this around 1912. There's a photograph of the U-9 sailing on the surface in a harbor, the photo's caption mentions the thick column of white smoke being due to the fact that the engines were burning parrafin. I got the book from the local library. I can scan the pages and e-mail them if you're interested.

I got the impression that some of the early, kerosine powered boats experimented with using parrafin as an alternate fuel, but that this was quickly abandoned in favor of switching to diesels.

After the war, my grandfather was involved in a business venture to sell parrafin powered engines. At the beginning of the venture, the cost of parrafin was about 1/3 that of gasoline. My grandfather spent a few months attaching special carbouraters (sp?) to small 2-stroke engines that allowed the engines to run on melted parrafin instead of gasoline. Just as he finished the last conversion and they were ready to go to market, the price of parrafin shot up to match that of gasoline. The business didn't last long. My grandfather lived in Nova Scotia. One of his brothers was killed at the battle of Vimy Ridge, a step brother lost a leg. A second brother survived 2.5 years in the trenches and wrote several books about his war experiences that were published in Canada.
My grandfather was not allowed to join the service since he was the youngest and sole support for his mom. Sort of a Saving Prvt. Ryan situation in WW1.